The Book of James : BST notes

Introduction

The letter reads like sermon notes. Punchy, lively and abrupt.

Introduction and  Conclusion talk about need for patience and prayer in all the contrasting circumstances of life.

The central content of the letter carries the theme of the birth (1:13-19), growth (1:19-25) and development (1:26-5:6) of the Christian.

Not all growth is true growth; true Christian growth can be assess by noting whether certain specific developments are taking place: The controlled tongue, care for the needy, personal purity of life.

The new birth and the reality of the struggle:

Before James tells us about the miracle of that birth which comes to us by the Father's will, through the Father's word, he reminds us that, Christians though we are, the old nature is still virulent and active within us. The new birth does not solve the conflict, nor give us an automatic victory. Nor does it put us beyond the reach of temptation or into the possibility of falling; the new birth in fact brings us into the arena where the old nature and the new nature battle it out.  

Special people but not immune to suffering:

Christian are a special people, but not a protected species.  

Maturity through struggles:

Ask James 'does the road wind up-hill all the way?' and hear him reply, 'Yes, to the very end.' 

40 years ago it was popular in the church to encourage 'separation from the world' for holiness. Now it has swung almost too far the other way. The old 'reactive separation from the world has led to a forgetfulness of the concept of separation, and for very many Christians what goes in the world goes in the church. Everyone does it, why should not the Christian?'

The unsuspected factor

Like a doctor who comes to a patient and says 'let me see your tongue.' James examines our tongues, not only as an index of spiritual health but as a key to spiritual well being. 

James is reiterating with his own imagery (horse, ship and fire) a repeated Biblical truth about our words.

At enmity with Paul?

No. It is a misunderstanding of both Paul and James to think that they are in disagreement as some scholars have said. For Paul our lifestyle will inevitably look different after becoming a Christian because we have 'died' with him and also 'risen' with him to new life. For James he pointed to the true definition of faith as something that includes behaviour along with it.

The author. 

This letter is a 'law book' in a deeper and more pervasive sense than any single writing in the NT.

It reads like something written by the James who authored the letter at the Council of Jerusalem (James, Jesus' brother).

Setting the Scene (1:1)

Believers in the Lord Jesus are the intended recipients of the letter. He uses OT language (dispersion) to connect them to the historic and ongoing people of and work of God. These are the 'true Israel' of God.

We can think of our ancestral tribes... redeemed by the blood of the lamb... battling to enter into what the Lord had promised and struggling ever after to live in holiness amid the enticements of a pagan environment. 

This is how James would have us think of ourselves. We are the Lord's twelve tribes dispersed throughout a menacing and testing world. Our homeland is elsewhere and we haven't yet come to take up our final residence there.

Our present lot is to feel the weight of life's pressures, the lure of this world's temptations and an insidious, ever-present encouragement to conform to the standards of our pagan environment.

First priority

The letter has as major theme the whole area of relationships:

• 1:27 care for orphans and widows
• 2:1 care for others
• 2:8 love for our neighbour
• 2:15-16 scorns profession of faith that doesn't love others
• 2:25 applauds those who risk it for others
• 3:14 warns against things that break fellowship
• 4:11 warns against words that wound others
• 5:4 discharge honourable debts
• 5:9 guard reactions
• 5:14 minister to the sick
• 5:16 share with the distressed
• 5:19-20 urgently pursue those who stray from Christ

Yet before he gets into these things he begins by emphasising the importance of caring for self. The Christian is to look after Number One. Forget others for a bit! What is your life with God like?

The Lord Jesus Christ

James uses the term 'brother' throughout the letter to refer to the people he's writing to and yet when he writes of Jesus he calls him simply 'The Lord Jesus Christ' and himself his 'servant'. Servant:

Not a term of special humility, nor... to be understood as involving a claim to the rank of a prophet or distinguished leader... simply... to belong to Christ as his worshipper.'

He is there to worship his Lord and to do his bidding.

2:1-7 Denying our faith

James' words are: 'show no partiality, as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.' Partiality is linked to holding the faith, our faith in not Buddha but the Lord's glory himself. James transitions from talking about 'true religion' (defined perhaps as the outliving of our faith) to 'the faith in'. Christians behaviour displays our 'religion' because of our faith 'in'.

Motyer:

By falling into the sin of partiality, we deny our faith in the Lord Jesus.

Two sorts of glory

This is not talking about honouring people who deserve honour: Lev. 19:32 (elderly), Prov. 24:21 (rulers).

It is one thing thus to acknowledge inherent dignity, whether of age or position; it is another thing altogether to be swayed by the mere chance that one possesses worldly advantages such as money and the other does not.

Glory:

Why is it a sin to show favouritism?

Literally the Greek says: my brothers, not with pariality of any sort must you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the glory.

If James wanted simply to say 'the Lord of glory' he could have done so. He didn't.
Instead it should be read that it is to be read as:  'faith in the Jesus Christ (who is) the glory.' Although the grammar doesn't force you into that. 

Glory then is 'shorthand' for the personal presence of the Lord in all his goodness and in the fullness of his revealed character. The Lord Jesus Christ is God's glory: God himself comes among us in all his goodness and in the full revelation of his person.

Ex. 34: 'show me your glory' to which the Lord replies 'I will make my goodness pass before you and will proclaim my name before you.' the name means 'what he is; a summary of the Lord's character and attributes.'

Divided loyalty in C1 was about trusting God in difficulty here: it is whether we put the Lord's glory first in our scale of values or whether, all the time or from time to time, we allow ourselves rather to be led by the standards of this world as to what is worthy and worth-while.

Are we 'facing both ways'? nominally to Christ and actually to worldly snobbery.

Jesus took our nature upon him (Heb. 2:14, our sin upon him (1 Pet. 2:24), our curse upon him (Gal. 3:13), bringing the light of the gospel of the glory of God (2 Cor. 4:4).

In a word it was in Christ that God the Father shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Jesus must reign supreme:

As to how we accept others, we must ask how he would accept them (Rom. 14:, 3,15:7). As to how we appraise others, we must ask how he appraises them. As to how we act towards others, we must ask how he would act towards them. Our values, priorities and activities must ever be governed by the definition of true glory displayed in the person, conduct and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

To dishonour the poor...

is to contradict the mind of God. Or, in terms of verse 1, choose another glory as exceeding the glory of Jesus.

When God chose the slaves in Egypt:

'he made a name for himself ie. revealed what he's really like.'

Favouritism in the church?

It is by no means unusual for a person to have a voice in church affairs related not to his wisdom but to his wealth. In the same way it is common for well-heeled congregations to assume that they ought to have (and to get) the most gifted pastors, while fellowships in less promising or attractive areas cannot expect more than the average. Money still does the talking far too loudly in Christian circles, and where and when it does, the glory of Christ departs.

How do we weed out favouritism/ worldly glory?

1) think of Jesus as the true glory: he came down to the poorest level, identifying himself with the least and the worst. If our faith rests in him who is the glory, then how shall we behave?
2) Think of the mind of God: what choice did he make and how would he choose now?
3) Our identity of being called into that honourable name. Think marriage custom. We have the name of God on us. Think baptism. We've been called here.

Not just the poor however: neighbour love is the royal law in fulfilment.

When you've been redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus, you long to be like him. Just as the law in the OT served as a way of helping God's people see how they can become like him so for us:

Jesus' example comes to us with the force of divine law. 

The Proving of faith - 2:14-26

James has an impish sense of humour. 2:14 we can well imagine causing his audience to sit bolt upright. He intends to be provocative 'can that faith save him?!'

Faith is the root from which good works grow.

The links between the first half of the chapter and this bit:
- the domino link (mercy is an essential product of faith)
- the verbal link
- the doctrinal link
- the topical link

This great and eternal salvation we have is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. How very important, then, it is to know what a true and saving faith is! So much rests on it.

What makes faith real?

People sometimes say: 'Oh I'm a great believer!' but all it amounts to is a wishful thought that in fact everything will turn out for the best, and that it will do so if only one believes it!

To arrive at a correct definition of faith, James uses 4 illustrations:

1. The hungry believer
2. The believing but troubled demons
3. Abraham, the friend of God
4. Rahab who welcomed Joshua's spies

Each illustration ends with a summary statement of what James wants us to learn:

v17 - so faith by itself it it does not ave works, is dead.

v20 - faith apart from works is useless

v 24 - a person is justified by works and not by faith alone

v 26 - faith apart from works is dead

The first two illustrations are negative: what faith isn't

The second two illustrations are positive: what faith is

The first two are about the manward direction of faith: feeds hungry and welcomes spies

The second two are about the Godward evidence of a true faith: peace with God not terror, and a life of obedience to God's will.

What we say:

James begins by drawing a distinction between what someone may say and what the reality actually is. They may say that they have faith but it isn't faith unless it acts.

Works follow faith. Faith is the dominant partner. (The well wisher and Rahab)

Phrase: v16 the 'armchair philanthropist' contrasted with Rahab. Also contrasted is someone unwilling to help Christian brothers and sisters and someone willing to help her enemies.

The faith that only wishes a Christian brother well and isn't willing to act, isn't described as a half faith or a limited faith: it is dead.

A. Barnes:

There is as much necessity that faith and works should be united to constitute true religion, as there is that body and soul should be united to constitute a living man.

Owch. This is deeply challenging. How can we as Christians sit around with full fridges and do nothing about the need of the poor whether around us or around the globe. We really ought to do more, Motyer argues, in the form of lobbying those who can make a real difference:

Unless your faith issues in pressure, what does it profit? Unless your faith is willing to take personal risks, it does not come up to the test afforded by the faith of Rahab.

Spurgeon: If you want to give a hungry man a tract, wrap it up in a sandwich.

The heart of the matter - 2:18-24 (the demons and Abraham)

There is a faith productive only of fear and there is a faith productive of friendship.

J. H. Ropes: 'The demons fear stands in contrast to the peace of salvation.'

A. Barnes: 'If demons might hold such faith and remain in perdition, men might hold it and go to perdition...'

The primary works of faith, then, are the works of Abraham and Rahab and they apply to all without exception. 

What was the work of Abraham? He held nothing back from God. God said, 'I want your son' and Abraham 'rose early in the morning' in prompt obedience. What was the work of Rahab? She reached out and took into her own care those who were needy and helpless, regardless of the cost to herself.

The gospel:

The life of faith, then, is the life which respects the glory of Jesus, for in his obedience to God and his concern for nedy sinners he 'emptied himself... humbled himself... unto death, even death on a cross.' It is a life of obedience in particular to the royal law our obedience to the word of God seen in our concern for the needs of man. The life of faith is more than a private (long past) transaction of the heart with God. It is the life of active consecration seen in the obedience which holds nothing back from God, and the concern which holds nothing back from human need.

Quotes from Phil Moore's 'Straight to the Heart of James' on this section:

Anyone who truly believes that Jesus laid down his life for them will naturally begin to lay down their life for others. James makes it clear that Christian talk is no substitute for Christian walk.

Afraid of losing justification by faith alone we can sometimes reduce faith to something that nods its head to certain theological facts instead of something that stirs our hearts to change the whole direction of our lives.

James 5:13-20 - Prayer & care

James is much too practical to leave us with only the wearying ideas of patience and steadfastness as guides for life till Jesus comes again.

In 1:2-4 in mentioning trials he also called us to prayer: 'let him ask for wisdom.'

7 references to patience, waiting and steadfastness in (7-12) are matched by seven reference to prayer in verses 13-18:

The positive way forward in situations demanding endurance is the way of prayer.

prayer is mentioned in each verse of 13-18. James mentions:

- the praying individual Christian (13)
- the praying elders (14-15)
- the praying friends (16a)
- the praying prophet, Elijah (16b-18)

The individual at prayer:

Whether life is 'bad' or 'good' - pray. These two things, cheerfulness or suffering can have the same effect on us, to abandon spiritual practices.

Trouble can give rise to an attitude or surly rebellion against God and the abandonment of spiritual practices. Equally, times of ease and affluence beget complacency, laziness and the assumption that we are able of ourselves to cope with life, and God is forgotten.

We have a God for all seasons.

Our whole life, we might say, should be so angled towards God that whatever strikes upon us, whether sorrow or joy, should be deflected upwards at once into his presence. 

R. V. G. Tasker: notes that when Jesus was in spiritual agony, he prayed all the more:

Prayer may not remove the affliction but it most certainly can transform it. 

The individual at prayer, reflects all his life upward, acknowledging the sufficiency and sovereignty of God.

Elders at prayer:

Neither the sick person nor any of the elders is there to insist that his or her will be done, but to put the sick one within the total, eternal security of the unchangeable and unchangeably gracious will of God.

The friends at prayer:

We come away from verses 14-15 with at least this clear in our minds, that prayer is a very powerful thing.

'pray for one another,' - prayer is not the prerogative of the elders only.

James (along with Scripture) views sin as a sickness of the soul which needs to be healed.

The prophet at prayer: 

It is of such importance to James that we should believe all this: that prayer is the truest response to problems, even to the problem of serious illness, and that it has the power to heal the sin-sick sould and the sin-torn fellowship.

He states the fact:

(16b) The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

And the illustrates it from the story of Elijah (17-18)

Prayer:

- has great power (ischys): inherent strength, strength which makes a person sufficient for the task.
- potency or power waiting to be released.

Unpromising tracts of land hide rich deposits of minerals; grey seas cover a wealth of natural gas. Such is the picture suggested by the word - not the unpromising appearance but the hidden powers. 

Elijah's prayer carries a mighty punch.

The prayer of the 'righteous' (does that rule us out then?). It's for this reason James adds 'Elijah was a man of like nature to us' capable to rise to the great heights of faith and commitment and fall into the depths of despair and depression.

Pro:
faith and commitment: 1 K 18:36-38
brave an resolute: 1 K 18:17-19
selfless in his concern for others: 1 K 17:19-24

Con:
depths of despair and depression: 1 K 19:4
fly for his life at a whiff of danger: 1 K 19:3
filled with self-pity: 1 K 19:10

He was an 'ordinary person'.

Those who by grace have been given the status of righteousness in God's sight have been brought into the realm where effective prayer operates and have been given the right to exercise a ministry of prayer.

1) Power of prayer
2) Or God-given right to use this power
3) Prayer's supernatural results

Man prayed, God acted... it did not rain... he prayed again and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth its fruit.

Elijah is presented as the man of prayer.

17:3 - 'hide yourself' : Elijah's secret years of apprenticeship, during which the Lord prepared him for his future ministry by bringing him through three testing experiences of ascending severity.

In prayer, a mere man can move God 

18:1 'Show yourself' God moves Elijah into public ministry. Baal showdown takes place.

To this extent Elijah is supremely the man of prayer. He is ready to allow the whole issue of the reality of God to be decided by this one factor: there is a God who answers prayer. 

19: severe depression grips him:

but Elijah has learnt the lesson of prayer so that even in his depression he talks to God. Anyone who has experience depression, or who has sought to minister to those who suffer in this way, will pause here to marvel.

 His prayer is: take my life, but it is still prayer!

He is talking to God, not to himself. He does not contemplate suicide, but asks the Lord to act.

'Fervent prayer'? ? No. The Greek simply says: 'with prayer he prayed' not 'fervently'

James Adamson: Not that Elijah put up a particularly fervent prayer, but that praying was precisely what he did.'

We see from verses 16-18b that prayer is a thing of power, simplicity and confidence:

Elijah 'just prayed'. He simply mentioned it to the Lord. 

In a word:

James urges that all life should be lived with immediate reference to God (13).
bringing its joys to him in praise, and its sorrows to him in prayer.

There is not situation in which prayer is not the proper Christian response.

C.S. Lewis Quotes

On the purpose of man and real question we ought all to be asking:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9fR1vSxNEQ

On love:

C.S. Lewis's attempt at helping his British readers accept the idea of a jealous, holy God:

If God is Love, he is, by definition something more than mere kindness... He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense...

When we fall in love with a woman, do we cease to care whether she is clean or dirty, fair or foul? Do we not rather, then, first begin to care?

In awful and surprising ways, we are objects of his love. You asked for a loving God you have one... not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate... but the consuming fire himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artists's love for his work... providence and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes. It is certainly a burden of glory no only beyond our deserts bu also, except in rare moment of race, beyond our desiring.

On a love that creates and embraces that which harms it:

God who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that he may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing... the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a 'host' who deliberately creates his own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and 'take advantage of' him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of love himself, the inventor of all loves.

What we have comes from him:

It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realise for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us. 

Fight: Preston Sprinkle

1: Mountain of Skulls

The tree of life sculpture from Mozambique. http://goo.gl/7bN0PQ the sculpture stands as a beacon of hope on a mountain of skulls.

The tree of life is there in Eden and also in the New Jerusalem.

One survivor of the 1975-1992 civil war in Mozambique said:

The life here, the life in the world, is no good now, it has been broken by war. We eat suffering for dinner.

Nearly half of the 16m citizens were affected by the war. After the war there were millions of guns in the country so the government created a 'arms for tools' policy. People returned rifles and received an agricultural farming tool.

The returned weapons were turned into pieces of art, symbols of piece. They took the tools of violence and forged them into symbols of hope.

The violence of the twentieth century:

Most historians say that the past 100 years has been the most violent century in history.

Stats from past century:

• over 187m people (most civilians) have been killed in war
• around 170m have been killed by their own government 
• There have been at least 7 different genocides 
• Rwandan genocide: (1994) 800 000 slaughtered in ninety days (3 months) *E. Sussex = 527k, W. Sussex = 808k
• (& Rwanda was a Christian country - one of the most Christianised in the world)
• Currently there are 26k nuclear warheads in the world (each more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima & 100k people)

Questions to consider:

• What is the Christian response to warfare?
• Is it ever necessary to wage war to confront evil?
• Can you use violence toward someone attacking your family?
• What about capital punishment?
• Should Christians celebrate the death of a mass murderer? Or suicide bomber?
• How about killing to save a life?
• self-defence?
• Serving & killing in the military?
• Do we pray for dictators to meet Jesus or a sniper?
• Surely we could have killed Hitler?
• How should Christians behave toward the state?

Militarism: the belief or desire that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests. 

Hal Lindsey (one of Christianity's bestselling authors): The Bible supports building a powerful military force... the Bible is telling the US to become strong again... and to use our vast and superior technology to create the world's strongest military power.'

Wayne Grudem: America's superior military weaponry is a good thing for the world... genuine peace in the world comes through the strength of the US.

Preston Sprinkle: To date there have been approx. 500 civilians, including more than 150 children, killed by US drone strikes in the M East. Some call this collateral damage; others call it a war crime. It all depends on where you live.

But we must leave aside all this clutter and read the Bible afresh. We must invite God to challenge our presuppositions, and this is my challenge to all of us: despite your upbringing; despite what you've always been taught; despite what you already think about violence, self-defence, serving in the military, or capital punishment... consider with fresh eyes what the whole Bible says about this crucial topic.

Violence: Violence is destruction to a victim by means that overpower the victim's consent.

We'll get to the questions about defending your family or killing Hitler but first I want to see what the Bible has to say about war/violence.

4 chapters on OT since most people assume the NT condemns violence but think the OT is 'pro' it.
4 chapter on NT
1 on early church

in defence of 'biblical' or 'narrative' theology:

God didn't give us a dictionary on religious thought. He gave us a story.

The 'dos and don'ts' of how Christians should live are wrapped up within this story.

Three goals:

1. rethink what the Bible says about warfare
2. snuff out the militaristic spirit
3. help equip Christians to fight. Fight agains evil.

2. Was Israel a violent, genocidal, bloodthirsty nation?

Dawkins: 

The God of the OT is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

Shalom:

signifies the well-being of a human in all imaginable aspects. It stretches from the well-being of satisfaction and contentment about one's welfare, to security, to being unharmed including keeping healthy, to getting along with each other in every form of relationship.

Eden:

From the beginning God wanted shalom to permeate his creation on every level. In the end, God achieves this goal.

Enmity, strife and jealousy take the place of shalom early on in the story as when Cain kills Abel.

Interestingly God responds not by killing Cain - meeting violence with violence - but by placing a mark on Cain so that no one else will take vengeance on him. 

The story moves on. Cain feels shame at killing Abel but Cain's descendent Lamech 'boasts at killing a teenager' (Gen. 4:23). Just seven generations after killing Abel Cain's descendants are celebrating violence.

Gen. 6:11 - '...the earth was corrupt in God's sight and the earth was filled with violence.'

Put simply: the early chapters of Genesis celebrate peace while showing disdain for violence among humans.

The Patriarchs:

There are two ways established. The Edenic 'ideal' and the way of Cain. Isaac gives up wells he deserves rather than fight over them and Abram allows Lot to choose the land first to avoid strife.

The OT does not offer a blank check toward violence. Genesis shows that the patriarchs are not far from Eden. God's desire for nonviolent peace remains the ideal - even when confronted with injustice and enmity.

The Bible often just describes without also prescribing the same response from others. Sprinkle calls this the issue of: is, ought.

Moses' day:

The perceived strictness or violent nature of these biblical laws must be understood in light of other ancient cultures rather than our own.

The covenants of Old & New are different. Note: the Gods of old and new are not but the covenants are. We won't allow our kids to drive cars when they're 5 but when they're 18 we'd consider it...

The intention of the law:

The laws God gave his people were to set them on the path to recovering his ideal as expressed in Genesis.

God tolerated less than perfect cultural practises and critiqued them and directed them toward his ideal.

Polygamy for example: Abram takes Hagar to produce Ishmael. God didn't condemn Abram for it but instead he accommodated for the practise within the law. Genesis 2 made it clear: husband and wife, monogamy. But given that polygamy was widespread God gave a law (D21:15) to ensure the 'unloved' wife's kids weren't treated less harshly than the loved wife's.

Slavery. Was rife within ancient world and other cultures the slaves had no human rights. In Israel God gave laws that accommodated for the practise but that steered them toward a better ideal.

When Jesus appears he uses the phrase: 'from the beginning it was not so' with violence and marriage.

Paul makes this clear in Galatians: The law was a guardian until Christ came.

Paul Copan:

Mosaic times where indeed 'crude' and 'uncultured' in many ways. So Sinai legislation makes a number of moral improvements without completely over hauling ancient Near Eastern social structures ad assumptions. God works with Israel as he finds her. He meets his people where they are while seeking to show them a higher ideal in the context of ancient Near Eastern life.

3. Israel's Bizarre warfare policy

The law of Moses was not a cul-de-sac but an on-ramp toward God's ideal ethic. 

God never sanctions 'militarism'. He allows warfare but never he never glories in it.

The other nations and the military:

Societal structure:

  - other nations - monarchical and feudal. The King owns the people and decrees what they do.
  - Israel - egalitarian. Equal rights. Families owned land and had equal access to gain wealth.

With regard the army. As a result of their governing structres:

  - other nations - the king owned people and conscripted/paid an army to protect the homeland security.
  - Israel - God owned the land and promised to be their army

To ensure Israel's trust in him rather than in a human king, God gives Israel an economic system that can't support a professional army.

Deut. 20:1-14, 19-20 a description of Israel's army. The main points of the passage:

• God not military might determines victory
• Israel's army is made up of volunteers
• When they go to war they must first offer peace to the city before fighting it
• Only if the city rejects peace can they fight 
• Noncombatants are not to be killed during war

God is Israel's king and even when they have a human king God sheds the king of military might so that their confidence and faith might have to be in God.

Another clear difference between Israel and their neighbours is that Israel was forbidden from glorifying violence. Eg: Babylonian law insisted that hand, ear, breast or foot be cut off for minor infractions. Egyptians also practised mutilation for certain crimes: cutting of hands, feet and even noses. 

The OT may document that a war happened but it doesn't glorify the violence like the nations around it did. 

The Assyrians would carve out eyes, tear tongues out, cut of lips, rip off testicles 'like the seeds of a cucumber in June' as one Assyrian author put it. 

King Sennacherib of the Assyrians describes the aftermath of his victory:

I cut their throats like lambs. I cut off their previous lives as one cuts a string. Like the many waters of a storm, I made the contents of the gullets and entrails run down upon the wide earth. My prancing steeds harnessed for my riding, plunged into the streams of their blood as into a river. The wheels of my war chariot, which brings low the wicked and the evil, were bespattered with blood and filth. With the bodies of their warriors I filled the plain, like grass. Their testicles I cut off and tore out their privates like the seeds of cucumbers.'

War is always 'hell' as William Sherman famously put it but the Old Testament doesn't relish the brutality as the other nations did.

If we were to use the Bible to create a strategy for warfare a country would look like this:

• enlistment would be by volunteer only (no conscriptions)
• the military would not be funded by taxes
• the military would not stockpile superior weapons (tanks, drones, F22s etc.)
• it would make sure all victories were the result of God's miraculous intervention
• it would deliberately fight outmanned and under-gunned to ensure God got the glory for any victory
• no training, no bootcamp

As it stands however, many Christians will be content to cut and paster selected verses that align with America's worldview to give the military some religious backing. Some call this bad hermeneutics; others call it syncretism. The Israelite prophets called it idolatry.

God's people should NEVER celebrate the use of military power and might.

4. Kill Everything That Breathes

April 3, 2003 Donald Rumsfield persuaded Bush to deploy more troops into Iraq by quoting Joshua 1:9.

Israel being commanded to take out those in Canaan was an act of cleansing, not ethnic but moral and for the sake of God's dwelling place on Earth.

Total annihilation: not the full picture.

After Joshua finished the conquest there was still many Canaanites left alive. It's not altogether lcear that God intended Israel to massacre every living thing.

• 'Drive out' : doesn't mean slaughter. Adam & Eve were driven out of Eden, Cain was driven into the wilderness. David was driven out by Saul. 

The language could be hyperbole as in: 'the Yankees slaughtered the Dodgers last night, I mean they absolutely annihilated them'

What about the killing of babies and children?

• The remaining Canaanites did indeed lead Israel astray and cause them all manner of harm.
• The phrase 'men, women, young and old' could be a stock phrase that means 'everyone' rather than an explicit command 'make sure you get the kids!'
• The towns where this is sanctioned in Canaan are likely military towns/barracks
• There is no record of a Canaanite woman or child being killed in these battles.

Appendix: What Is Just War Theory?

Arthur Holmes is not a pacifist. He is a Just War theorist. He said this:

War is evil, its causes are evil... Its consequences are evil... it orphans widows and horribly maims the innocent... it cheapens life and morality... wars that are intended to arrest violence and injustice seem only in the long run to breed further injustice and conflict. To call war anything less than evil, would be self-deception.

There are many different opinions on how to interpret just war theory.

Where did Just war come from?

Aristotle was the first to use the phrase (384-322 BC). Cicero (106-43 BC) also debated the issue of justice in war. It didn't originate in the church.

Ambrose and Augustine were the first Christians to discuss it (340-430AD)

Both believed that Christians shouldn't kill in self-defence:

I do not think that a Christian, ought to save his own life by the death of another; just as when he meets an armed robber he cannot return his blows, lest in defending his life he should stain his love toward his neighbour. -- Ambrose

Augustine felt the same however he argued that although Jesus taught nonviolence 'times change'. Augustine held that since the rulers of the day were now Christian the era of Jesus' words to the apostles had ended and things had to be thought through afresh. He admits that Jesus was an advocate of nonviolence and so drew upon Aristotle et al for help in developing his Just War theory.

Thomas Aquinas was the most significant contributor to the theory. It was Aquinas who hammered ought many of the criteria for Just War that is still in use today.

It wasn't only Christian thinkers however who took part in the theories development. Therefore it's worth bearing in mind that Just War is not a distinctively Christian discussion.

It is not a 'theory' but a 'tradition'. Just War proponent Daniel Bell concluded:

It is not as if Augustine drew up something called a just war theory or doctrine which was set in stone and to which the church has adhered without deviation or change ever since. Rather, Christians adopted a rudimentary vision of just war from the Romans and then began a long process of developing it that has not stopped to this day.

What makes a war just?

There are seven criteria used to evaluate the justice of a war.

1. Just Cause. Self defence for example. To stop oppression (Rwanda). Whether or not preemptive strikes are 'Just' is up for debate.
2. Right authority. Only a legitimate authority can go to war (no criminals or private militias)
3. Right intention. This rules out vengeance, economic gain, imperialistic advances etc.
4. Reasonable chance of success. Peace must be within reach of the warring party.
5. Last resort. All nonviolent avenues of reaching peace must be exhausted before a nation resorts to war.

Those 5 refer to a rational for going to war. The last 2 deal with how a war is to be waged:

6. Proportionate means. Using force beyond what is necessary for establishing peace is unjust.

7. Noncombatant immunity. Civilians must not be targeted in combat.

'History knows of no just wars.' Wrote just war advocate Oliver O'Donovan. The seven criteria does not sanctify war but rather limits the evil affects of war.

BUCKETS: Relationships

From the Zimzum of love:

Match.com gets around 17million unique visitors a month. 17m people a month holding out hope that that person is out there.

'Divorce is like a death, only the other person is still alive'

The Jagger Theory (Mick): monogamy isn't our natural inclination so why do we keep torturing ourselves with this outdated antiquated custom that shackles two people to the constricting notion that they must remain exclusively faithfully committed to each other with no other experiences of a similar sort until one of them is left standing over the grave of the other?

Another question: Has any institution/idea/arrangement cause so many people so much agnoy? Is there a greater ache than giving your heart (and life) to someone, only to have it collapse and fall apart on you?

wedding: a public ceremony in front of your friends and family with cake and an eighties cpver band.'

Emotional health: Be intentional about your own health since your marriage will only be as healthy as the least healthy one of you.

'As counterintuitive as it may seem, taking care of yourself is one of the best gifts you can give the person you are married to. this includes exercising, eating well, getting enough sleep, engaging in regular practises that feed your soul - these are essential to giving your best to the poerson you love.'

The scorecard analogy

Scorecards. We clutch onto them as we keep track of who's doing what. The scorecard makes you feel entitles - I'm the one making the money, I'm the one watching the kids all day, I'm the one looking after the house. You find yourself arguing your case for why you've racked up more points.

You brain has a number of different parts: One part reacts with lightning speed when it senses that you're vulnerable or under attack. it's not rational and its purpose is to protect you.

So many scorecard fights are irrational - whatever the fear is, is has activated the part of the brain that isn't rational.

Other parts of your brain:
- the seat of logical thinking (where you compare data and analyse options)
- another part of the brain is the seat of love and empathy and compassion

Here's why it's so important to act in love, not in fear: the primitive, protective, fearful, survival parts of your brain can't run at the same time as the other rational, loving parts. 

When you're angry or resentful, the most powerful thing you can do is to act in love and compassion. This literally shuts off the part of your brain that keeps you in the vortex

To get rid of your scorecard, someone has to move toward the other first. One of you has to tear up your scorecard first.

Sometimes this is as straightforward as sitting down and looking the other person in the eyes and saying: I am for you, I've got your back, I am committed to your best. Help me to understand things from your perspective. What can we do together to change things?

Love, if it's going to last always involves sacrifice.

Spark kind of love : adrenaline temporal insanity type of all-consuming love. Our bodies can sustain this for about 6-9 months. Eventually the high wears off and the passion is gone.
Substance kind of love : this is what happens when you realise 'this is my best friend'. Substance doesn't come and go like spark. Substance endures.
Sacrifice kind of love : doing this over time, back and forth eventually means that the scorecard begins to disappear.

In the ancient wisdom of the Christian tradition love always leads to sacrifice.

There's a great line in Song of Songs:

I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.
Does he belong to her or does she belong to him? Which is it? The answer it Yes. Both are true.

Tim Keller: Prayer

Tim Keller - Prayer

Notes & Quotes from Tim Keller’s book on prayer

Part 1: Desiring Prayer

ONE: The Necessity of Prayer

On the significance of prayer from Keller’s marriage.

Imagine you were diagnosed with such a lethal condition that the doctor told you that you would die within hours unless you took a particular medicine - a pill every night before going to sleep. Imagine that you were told that you could never miss it or you would die. Would you forget? Would you not get around to is some nights? No- it would be so crucial that you wouldn’t forget, you would never miss. Well, if we don;t pray together to God, we’re not going to make it because of all we are cain. I’m certainly not. We have to pray, we can’t let it just slip our minds.

12 years later and they’ve never once gone a day without praying together. 

Flannery O’Connor the Southern writer was 21 and studying in Iowa, she sought to deepen her prayer life. Over time O’Connor learned that: 

prayer is not simply the solitary exploration of your own subjectivity. You are with Another, and he is unique. God is the only person from whom you can hide nothing. Before him you will unavoidably come to see yourself in a new unique light. Prayer, therefore, leads to a self-knowledge that is impossible to achieve any other way.

What is prayer?

Prayer is the only entryway into genuine self-knowledge. It is also the main way we experience deep change - the reordering of our loves.

On the greatest gift of prayer:

It is remarkable that in all of his writings Paul’s prayers for his friends contain no appeals for changes in their circumstances. 

Why? Paul recognised that the thing his friends needed most, the best and most important thing God could give them - was to know God better:

To have the ‘eyes of the heart enlightened’ with a particular truth means to have it penetrate and grip us so deeply that it changes the whole person. In other words, we may know that God is holy, but when our hearts’ eyes are enlightened to that truth, then we not only understand it cognitively, but emotionally we find God’s holiness wondrous and beautiful, and volitionally we avoid attitudes and behaviour that would displease or dishonour him.

What we need:

Knowing God better is what we must have above all if we are to face life in any circumstances. 

The integrity of prayer:

If we give priority to the outer life, our inner life will be dark and scary. We will not know what to do with solitude. We will be deeply uncomfortable with self-examination, and we will have an increasingly short attention span for any kind of reflection. Even more seriously, our lives will lack integrity. Outwardly, we will need to project confidence, spiritual and emotional health and wholeness, while inwardly we may be filled with self-doubts, anxieties, self-pity, and old grudges. 

John Owen wrote to popular and successful ministers: 

A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.

Jesus on personal integrity:

The infallible test of spiritual integrity, Jesus says, is your private prayer life.

The Centrality of prayer

In Exodus, prayer was the way Moses secured the liberation of Israel from Egypt. The gift of prayer makes Israel great: ‘What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near is whenever we pray to him?’ Deut. 4:7

On failing to pray:

To fail to pray, then, is not to merely break some religious rule - it is a failure to treat God as God.

TWO: The Greatness of Prayer

Prayer’s greatness:

Prayer is so great that wherever you look in the Bible, it is there. Why? Everywhere God is, prayer is. Since God is everywhere and infinitely great, prayer must be all-pervasive in our lives. 

Prayer is:

Prayer is awe, intimacy, struggle - yet the way to reality. There is nothing more important, or harder, or richer, or more life-altering. there is absolutely nothing so great as prayer. 

Part 2 : Understanding Prayer

THREE: What is Prayer?

One 2004 study found that nearly 30% of atheists admitted they prayed ‘sometimes’ (bbc, 2004, feb) and another found that 17% of non-believers in God pray regularly (Pew Forum on Religion & Publich Life, Oct, 2012 ‘Nones on the Rise’). The frequency of prayer increases with age, even among those who do not return to church or identify with any institutional faith (pew forum, 2010).

Prayer’s global reach:

Efforts to find cultures, even very remote and isolated ones, without some form of religion and prayer have failed. There has always been some form of attempt to ‘communicate between human and divine realms.’ There seems to be a human instinct for prayer. Swiss theologian Karl Barth calls it our ‘incurable God-sickness.’

but how people pray varies:

Is prayer mystical or prophetic? Mystical prayer (often found in Eastern religions) is the sort of prayer that aims to become part of god, to discover the divine within ourselves.

German scholar Friedrich Heiler talks about the two types of prayer:

Mystical prayer emphasizes God as mor immanent than transcendent. He is within us and within all things. The main way then to connect to God is to go down into yourself and sense your continuity with the Divine.

Prophetic prayer by contrast emphasises that God is outside us, transcendent above us, holy, glorious and ‘other’. 

Mystical prayer climaxes in tranquility without words, while prophetic prayer finds its final expression in words of praise and an outburst of powerful emotions. While mystical prayer tends toward the loss of the boundary between the self and God, prophetic prayer leads to a much greater sense of the difference between the self and the majestic God - an awareness of sinfulness. 

Keller’s analysis:

Prayer is ultimately a verbal response of faith to a transcendent God’s Word and his grace, not an inward descent to discover we are one with all things and God.

On the global existence of prayer:

From the biblical point of view, the near-universal phenomenon of prayer is not surprising. All human beings are made in the ‘image of God’. Bearing God’s image means that we are designed to reflect and relate to God.

Jonathan Edwards:

God is sometimes pleased to answer the prayers of unbelievers.

Keller explains:

not because of any obligation but strictly out of his ‘pity’ and ‘sovereign mercy’, citing the biblical example of God hearing the cries of the Nineties in Jonah 3 and even of the wicked King Ahab.

A definition of prayer then:

We can define prayer as a personal. communicative response to the knowledge of God.

C.S. Lewis in ‘That Hideous Strength’ describes the change that occurs in one of the characters when they become a Christian and then returning home: The mould under the bushes, the moss on the path, and the little brick border were not visibly changed. But they were changed. A boundary had been crossed.

Listening & Answering:

for all his complaints, Job never walks away from God or denies his existence - he processes all his pain and suffering through prayer.

Job:

The question of the book of Job is posed in its very beginning. Is it possible that a man or woman can come to love God for himself alone so that there is a fundamental contentment in life regardless of circumstances? By the end of the book we see the answer. Yes, this is possible, but only through prayer.

The power of our prayers then, lies not primarily in our effort and striving, or in any technique, but rather in our knowledge of God. 

Prayer is:

John Knox said - an earnest and familiar talking with God

John Calvin - an intimate conversation of believers with God or / a communion of men with God

Meeting a Personal God:

If God were impersonal, as the Eastern religions teach, then love - something that can happen only between two or more persons - would be an illusion. We can go further and say that even if God were only unipersonal then love could not have appeared until after God began to create other beings. That would mean God was more fundamentally power than he was love. Love would not be as important as power.

Meeting God through his Word:

We humans may say, ‘let there be light in this room,’ but then we may have to flick a switch or light a candle. Our words need deeds to back them up and can fail to achieve their purposes. God’s words, however, cannot fail to achieve their purposes because, for God, speaking and acting are the same thing. The God of the Bible is a God who ‘by his very nature, acts through speaking.’

Prayer through immersion in God’s word

Eugene Peterson:

Peterson reminds us that ‘because we learned language so early in our lives we have no memory of the process.’ and would therefor imagine that it was we who took the initiative to learn how to speak. However, that is not the case. ‘Language is spoken into us; we learn language only as we are spoken into us; we learn language only as we are spoken to. We are plunged at birth into a sea of language… Then slowly syllable by syllable we acquire the capacity to answer: mama, papa,bottle, blanket, yes, no. Not one of these words was a first word. … All speech is answering speech. We were all spoken to before we spoke.

On the role of the Bible in prayer:

If the goal of prayer is a real, personal connection with god, then it is only by immersion in the language of the Bible that we will learn to pray, perhaps just as slowly as a child learns to speak. This does not mean, of course, that we must literally read the Bible before each individualised prayer. A sponge needs to be saturated in water only periodically in order to do its work.

On relationship with God:

If you have a personal relationship with any real person, you will regularly be confused and infuriated by him or her. So, too, you will be regularly confounded by the God you meet in the Scriptures - as well as amazed and comforted.

Prayer:

Through the Spirit, prayer is faith become audible.

The Spirit of adoption:

This is no ‘emergency flare’ or desperate anxious gamble. The Spirit gives believers an existential, inward certainty that their relationship with God does not now depend on their performance as it does in the relationship between an employee and a supervisor. It depends on parental love.

Luther told any Christian to begin to pray by saying the following to the Lord:

Although… you could rightly and properly be a severe judge over us sinners… now through your mercy implant in our hearts a comforting trust in your fatherly love, and let us experience the sweet and pleasant savour of a childlike certainty that we may joyfully call you Father, knowing and loving you and calling on you in every trouble.

Prayer:

Prayer is the way to experience a powerful confidence that God is handling our lives well, that our bad things will turn out for good, our good things cannot be taken from us, and the best things are yet to come.

Aristotle said of the gap between man and the gods:

While it might be possible to venerate and appeases the gods, actual intimate friendship with a god was impossible. The philosopher reasoned that friendship requires that both parties share much in common as equals. They must be alike. But since God is infinitely greater than human beings, ‘the possibility of friendship ceases.’

God is ‘not only the God on the other side of the chasm, he is the bridge over the gap.’ 

Beautiful hymn containing some great gospel truth:

To see the law by Christ fulfilled,

And hear his pardoning voice

Transforms a slave into a child

and duty into choice

— William Cowper, Olney Hymns

The Cost of Prayer

Prayer turns theology into experience. Through it we sense his presence and receive his joy, his love, his peace and confidence, and thereby we are changed in attitude, behaviour and character. 

PART 3: Learning Prayer

SIX: Letters on Prayer

Augustine on prayer - 

Augustine however argues not only that we can grow in prayer inspire of these difficulties but because of them. He concludes the letter by asking his friend, ‘Now what makes this work [of prayer] specially suitable to widows but their bereaved and desolate condition?’ Should a widow not, he asked, ‘commit her widowhood, so to speak, to her God as her shield in continual and most fervent prayer?’ What a remarkable statement. Her sufferings were her ‘shield’ they defended her from the illusions of self-sufficiency and blindness that harden the heart, and they opened the way for the rich, passionate prayer life that could bring peace in any circumstance. He calls her to embrace her situation and learn to pray.

Luther on prayer - 

Peter Beskendorf was the barber who shaved Luther and cut his hair. One day Peter asked Luther to give him a simple way to pray. Peter was a devout though flawed man. While intoxicated at a family mean, he stabbed his own son-in-law to death. Partly through Luther’s intervention Peter was exiled rather than executed, but he endured difficult final years. However, he took with him one of the great texts on the subject of prayer in all of Christian history. Luther gave Peter a rich but practical set of guidelines for prayer. 

Luther to Peter: 

Cultivate prayer as a habit through regular discipline. Luther proposes we do it twice daily.

Focus your thoughts to warm and engage our affections in prayer. This balances the practice of prayer as duty. He advises ‘recitation to yourself’ of scripture as a way of focusing the mind. 

He then describes how to do Bible meditation. 

He uses metaphor of a garland. ‘I divide each biblical command into four parts, thereby fashioning a garland of four strands. That is I think of each commandment as first, instruction, which is really what it is intended to be, and consider what the Lord God demands of me so earnestly. Second, I turn it into thanksgiving; third, a confession; and fourth a prayer.’ 

After meditation are we ready to pray? 

We could do yes but Luther shares one more exercise… Spiritual ‘riffing’ on the Lord’s Prayer. 

‘Praying the Lord’s prayer focuses us to look for things to thank and praise God for in our dark times, and it presses us to repent and seek forgiveness during times of prosperity and success. It disciplines us to bring every part of our lives to God.’

Luther’s final piece of advice:

He calls believers to essentially keep a lookout for the Holy Spirit. If, as we are meditating on praying, ‘an abundance of good thoughts comes to us, we ought to disregard the other petitions, make room for such thoughts, listen in silence, and under no circumstances obstruct them. The Holy Spirit himself preaches here, and one word of his sermon is better than a thousand of our prayers. Many times I have learned more from one prayer than I might have learned from much reading and speculation. 

7: Rules for Prayer

John Calvin

Spiritual Insufficiency 

We need to be aware of our flaws and weaknesses. 

Counsellors will tell you that the only character flaws that can really destroy you are the ones you won’t admit. 

What if we ask for the wrong thing?

Ask with confidence and hope. Don’t be afraid that you will ask for the wrong thing. Of course you will! God ‘tempers the outcome’ with his incomprehensible wisdom. Cry, ask, and appeal - you will get many answers.

The Danger of Familiarity 

Imagine you are, for the first time, visiting someone who has a home or an apartment near train tracks. You are sitting there in conversation, when suddenly the train comes roaring by, just a few feet from where you are sitting, and you jump to your feet in alarm. ‘What’s that?’ you cry, Your friend, the resident of the house, responds, ‘What was what?’ you answer, ‘That sound! I thought something was coming through the wall.’ ‘Oh that,’ she says. ‘That’s just the train. You know, I guess I’ve gotten so used to it that I don’t even notice it anymore.’ With wide eyes you say, ‘I don’t see how that is possible.’ But it is.

It is the same with the Lord’s Prayer. The whole world is starving for spiritual experience, and Jesus gives us the means to it in a few word. Jesus is saying as it were ‘wouldn’t you like to be able to come face-to-face with the Father and king of the universe ever day, to pour out your heart to him, and to sense him listening to and loving you?’ We say, of course, yes. 

Jesus responds, ‘It’s all in the Lord’s Prayer,’ and we say, ‘In the what?’ It’s so familiar we can no longer hear it. Yet everything we need is within it. 

Simple Church: Thom Rainer

Chapter one: The Simple Revolution Has Begun
Out of complexity, find simplicity. Einstein

Because of the complexity of modern life people are wanting simplicity. See Apple, google, graphic designers, successful airliners and interior designers for proof of this.

Papa John's pizza company:

at Papa John's we have a simple formula for success: Focus on one thing and try to do it better than anyone else. By keeping the Papa John's menu simple, we are able to focus on the quality of our product by using only superior-quality ingredients.

 In research surveys conducted across 400 churches of various sizes they found evidence that the vibrant churches were much more simple than the comparison churches. The difference was so big that the probability of the results occurring with one church by chance is less than one in a thousand. 

In general simple churches are growing and vibrant. Churches with a simple process for reaching and maturing people are expanding the kingdom.

The converse is true as well. Complex churches are struggling. Sadly the busy complex church is the norm. 

What the book isn't saying:

1) Simple is not a change in doctrine or conviction
2) Simple shouldn't be done because it's hip or on trend (actually the world is busy busy complex)
3) Churches shouldn't become simple just because it works
4) Simple is easy. Ministry will always be messy and difficult because people are messy and difficult.

Jesus, the revolutionary knew the importance of simple.

He wasn't pulled around by the complex religious factions. He settled on the simple and 'straightforward' 'love sinners and love God' idea.

In stark contrast to the heavy yoke of the religious leaders Jesus offered an easy yoke and a light burden.

Jesus and Clutter:

As a simple revolutionary, Jesus was bothered by meaningless and distracting clutter. 

Jesus' behaviour in the temple gives us amazing insight into the heart of God. Jesus is adamantly opposed to anything that gets in the way of people encountering him. 

Ministry schizophrenia. This is not a clinical disease. You will not find it in a psychology book, but it is present in many churches. You have noticed it before, but maybe you did not diagnose it as ministry schizophrenia. It is plaguing local churches.

When ministry philosophies collide, schizophrenia happens.

Like many churches, success at pastor Rush's church is measured by how well a particular program goes. Parts are evaluated but not the whole.

Story of the Bird Road rapist. Jose Diaz worked to set his father freed from prison. He did so by making them test the DNA of victims and the DNA of his wrongly imprisoned father. For 26 years the man was locked up until they did these DNA tests. Jose Diaz saw the whole picture. He saw the forest and not just the trees in the case of his father. Like Jose Diaz church leaders are called to free prisoners. Not from physical jail cells but from spiritual ones. 

Leaders of simple churches are designers. They design opportunities for spiritual growth. Complex church leaders are programmers. They run ministry programs.

To have a simple church you must have a simple discipleship process. This process must be:

Clear.

It must move people toward:

Maturity.

It must be integrated into church life and we must get rid of clutter.

Chapter 2: The Simple (and not so simple) Church in Action

A very helpful church that contrasts two real life churches of similar sizes, one that is streamlined around a clear vision and strategy and another that is more of a 'whoever shouts the loudest', over complicated programming type church.

Helpful for seeing the need for us/the church to get 'simple' and clear about what we're aiming at and how we're going to do it.

Chapter 3: Simple Church and extreme makeover

Clarity, movement, alignment, focus

Church leaders are builders and architects of a community. In 1 Cor. 3 believers are called God's children, God's field and God's building:

Children, fields and buildings grow in process. They do not mature overnight. They are not built in a day. They are constantly redecorated. 

Children, fields and buildings need the right environments to facilitate the process of growth. Children need nurturing, touch, food, and love. Fields need water, care and farming. Buildings need workers, materials, and someone like Ty (home makeovers, US style)

 Defining a simple church:

A simple church is a congregation designed around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth.

It's 'designed' - the ministry doesn't just happen.

'around' - it centres on something.

That something is a 'straightforward' - it is not confusing. The leaders know it and the people understand it.

It 'moves' people - programs are used as tools to promote this movement.

The authors conducted a survey (the Process Design Survey) in which they asked hundreds of churches questions relating to their church process strategies.

They assessed how well each church did on the four key elements of: clarity, movement, alignment and focus.

The results showed statistically that if churches wanted to grow/be vibrant then they needed to be simple. On average the growing churches scored 85 out of 100 whilst the 'comparison' churches scored an average of 69 points. The statiticians said: there is a highly significant relationship between a simple church design and the growth and vitality of a local church.

In short: a simple church strategy is effective.

The survey showed that simple and growing churches were also quite strategically focused around the four elements: clarity, movement, alignment and focus.

The above four elements ought to be at the forefront of ones mind as they seek to build a Simple system.

Clarity - Movement - Alignment - Focus

This is also true of projects generally. The chapter illustration is the design team in Extreme Makeover. They start by defining a clear vision, with blurprints to show it. They then get moving and implementing the plans, next they align every part of the job around the clear goal and finally they stay focused and 'on task' throughout the project.

Clarity

The ability of the process to be communicated and understood by the people. For a church to be simple it must have a high degree of clarity. Clarity and simplicity go hand in hand, they are close friends.

Without understanding, commitment wanes

If people are to embrace and participate in the ministry process, they must be able to internalise it. To be able to internalise it they must first grasp it. 

Movement

The sequential steps in the process that cause people to move to greater areas of commitment. This is about flow, assimilation. In a relay race the crucial stage is the handoff from one person to the next. This is what the 'movement' section is all about. It's about the handoffs, the bits in between the programs.

Sadly most churches are like poor relay teams. Instead of caring about the handoffs they care too much about the programs.

Simple churches pay attention to the handoffs. They have grasped the truth that assimilation effectiveness is more important than programmatic effectiveness.

To implement the movement element, church leaders must take a fresh look at the weekly church calendar and the regularly scheduled programs. All programs must be placed in sequential order along the ministry process. 

Alignment

The arrangement of all ministries and staff around the same simple process. Alignment to the process means that all ministry departments submit and attach themselves to the same overarching process.

Alignment ensures the entire church body is moving in the same direction and in the same manner.

When a church is fully aligned all ministries are operating from the same ministry blueprint. The ministries not only embrace the simple process, but they are engaged in it... without alignment the church can be a multitude of subministries.

All churches naturally drift away from alignment.

When misalignment on a car is not address, the results are damaging. Tires can blow out while driving. Damage to the wheels can occur. The same is true for a church. When misalignment is not addressed, there is damage.

Focus

The commitment to abandon everything that falls outside of the simple ministry process.

Focus most often requires saying 'no'. It involves saying yes to the best and no to everything else.

If movement is the most difficult element to understand then focus is the most difficult element to implement.

The church needs more Hezekiahs

Hezekiah called God's people back to worshipping the true God. He was also willing to break the things that had become obstacles to their growth. He broke the golden snake of Moses' day because it had become an idol. He went beyond just destroying the high places, he also removed the things that had had their day and needed to be done away with.

Church leaders need to do the same. We need to stop the things in church life that have had their day and are now a distraction.

Hans Hofmann

Born in Bavaria in the late 1800s. He became an artist and a teacher of other great artists. He once indicated that if you want the necessary to stand out, you have to get rid of the unnecessary.

Churches need to learn to do the same.

Chapter 4: Three simple stories

Three Simple churches.

Story 1 - Immanuel Church, Glasgow, Kentucky

Bible belt territory, small 'city' of 16k residents. Immanuel has grown from 150-300 in just two years.
Tony Cecil is the Senior Pastor. He was 29 when he started (he's now 34). 

Clarity: Connecting, Growing, Serving

Movement: 

Sundays are for connecting believers. The worship service brings people into connection with God and other Christians.

Midweek Bible studies are for growing believers.

After the Bible study group people are encouraged to go to a smaller group which are deisgned ot help people become 'serving' believers.

Alignment: 

Everyone and every age specific group uses the same terminology. Connect. Grow. Serve. Simple. 

Focus: 

They don't do many special events and programs, choosing instead to focus their attention on moving people with various levels of commitment to deeper levels of commitment: 'we havea ctually grown spiritually and numerically by doing this' Tony said.

Tony's perceived benefits for being a simple church:

• Increased Morale. Telling people how they're going to make disciples rather then just urging them to 'do it' has really helped them.
• Urgency. People feel the need to move and grow in their Christian life.
• Spiritual Growth. 
• Conversions. From 2 baptisms in 18months to 40 a year!
• Stewardship. By cutting things that were peripheral, they had more money to spend on what really mattered.
• Unity.

Story 2: Christ Fellowship Church, Miami

Clarity

Like many established long running churches they had vision, purpose, strategy ad mission statements. They stripped back to one statement that would feature their single process. The purpose at the church is also a process: connect to God, connect to others, minister to people, witness to the lost.

Movement

From worship service to small group to ministry area and to witnessing to the lost. Everything serves their clearly defined purpose.

This is good:

Since the lat step in the process is not a program, people are challenged to do three things a week at Christ Fellowship. Come to a worship service, be in a small group, and serve in a ministry. Simple. These expectations are stated clear to people in the church.

Alignment

The vision is the same in every dept. : connect to God, others, ministry and the lost.

Focus

Extra programs are what business consultants refer to as nonvalue-adding work.

Story 3: Northpoint

Andy Stanley: complexity dilutes your potential for impact.

Clarity

From the foyer to the living room, to the kitchen. That's their process. They seek to move people into increasing levels of intimacy and relationship.

Movement

There is constant movement at NP. Even when people reach the kitchen it's not over. Small groups must start new small groups.

Alignment

Every ministry understands their process. It's so simple it can be drawn on a napkin. The process can be drawn with three circles. The first circle is the largest. It is the foyer environment for each ministry. The second circle is smaller it's the living room and the third circle is the smallest, it's the kitchen.

Focus

Everything is executed with excellence. The reason for this is because they have chosen to not do very much but to do what they do really well.

Simple Church: Part II Becoming a Simple Church

Chapter 5:

Why would you try to build spiritual lives/buildings without clear blue prints? We wouldn’t do that with physical buildings…

Define:

Vibrant churches are more than twice as likely than comparison churches to have a clearly defined process.

The starting point then is define your process. Without definition, people are uncertain about how the church is making disciples. 

Where there is ambiguity there is often confusion.

How’s your how?

Church leaders must define more than the purpose (the what); they must also  define the process (the how).

Thom discovered in some research that: evangelistically effective churches have leaders who are clear about the purpose of the church. 

Michael Hammer (business consultant) believes that the process is more important than the purpose of a company. It is the process that makes everything work.

Three concepts to wrestle with as we develop a ministry process:

Determine what kind of disciple you wish to produce in your church. 

Describe your purpose as a process. 

Decide how each weekly program is part of the process.

2. Illustrate:

Illustrating your process is vital. If you want your church members to see your simple process clearly, you must illustrate it.

People are more likely to experience the reality of the process if they can recall it.

3. Measure: 

The cliche is true: What gets evaluated, gets done.

If you do not measure the process people will think it does not matter. It will be just another statement on the wall of in the bulletin.

To learn to measure you must learn to think differently in two critical ways:

Learn to view your numbers horizontally and not vertically.

Most churches measure vertically. They look at any given program to see how many people are in it in order to decide how successful that program is. To look at the numbers horizontally means to look at each program alongside the previous and next set of programs for a persons development. 

Measure attendance at each level/stage in your process.

4. Discuss:

Clarity is not realised without consistency. To be a simple church with a simple process the new idea can’t become just another banner on a wall or vision statement in a drawer. It mustn’t be forgotten or dropped. Everything must be discussed relating to it and around it.

Michael Hammer: The leaders of an organisation must be the pioneers and the overseers of an organisation’s process. Ownership begins with leaders.

Pace yourself. This process takes time. The discussion is ongoing. It takes time for understanding and ownership to develop.

Four ways to surface and resurface the simple process in discussions among the leadership:

View everything through the lens of your simple process.

Surface the process in meetings.

Test the leaders on it.

Brainstorm new ways to communicate it.

5. Increase Understanding: 

Understanding does not come easily. It does not occur with a one-time magical act of communication. 

Three ways to increase the level of process understanding in your church.

Articulate the process corporately. 

‘Leaders you must talke about the process to the church as a whole. When you are tired of talking about it, people will just be in the first stages of understanding… you are just one voice in their lives.’

Max Depree said: Leadership is like third grade: it means repeating the significant things

2. Share the process interpersonally. 

Preachers note: it means more to people and people pay greater attention when they can see your heart off the stage.

3. Live the process personally.

If you are asking people to move from a worship service to a small group, you must be in a small group. If you are asking people to progress to a place of service, you must serve in a tangible way… off the stage.

If you are asking people to connect to people relationally who do not know God, you must meet your neighbours and the person who cuts your hair. 

Don’t be a spiritual travel agent, telling people to go where you’ve never been.

Please, no more travel agents

There is a major difference between a travel agent and a tour guide. 

Think of the difference between someone who sends you brochures for white water rafting and the guide who gets in the most with you and takes you down the river. People need spiritual tour guides. They have had plenty of spiritual travel agents. Take people on a journey with you.

Chapter 6: Movement: Removing congestion

Congestion is very frustrating. No one likes rush-hour traffice. Many churches are congested. 

People are stuck, not changed, unmoved. 

God is transforming us all the time, moving us on, growing us, sanctifying us. 

Our part in the process: Discover the place God wants you to be and place yourself there.

Strategic Programming

You must begin with the process and not the programs. If you begin with the programs you will have a tendency to build a process around the programs.

There should be one program for each phase of your process. The temptation is to attach all of your existing programs to one aspect of your process. 

2. Sequential Programming

In the rafting illustration used the experience gradually builds toward the level 4 rapids, you don’t start at level 4. 

Designate a clear entry point to your process. 

Commitment should increase with each level of programming. Therefore attendance at the subsequent levels of programming will decrease as commitment increases. 

3. Intentional Movement

Simple church leaders are designers. They design opportunities for people to be transformed. Complex church leaders are programmers. Programmers focus on one program at a time. Designers focus on the movement between the programs. 

‘Without movement programs are an end in themselves. Without movement you are just running ministry programs.’

Create short-term steps. Saddleback’s 40-day focus at various points in the year is a helpful way of encouraging people to buy in because the commitment and expectation is low and for a set period of time.

Short-term challenges engage people.

Capitalise on relationships

‘People to not progress through the simple process because they hear it from the pulpit. People do not move through the process because they see a purpose statement on the wall. As helpful as these things can be, people move because someone else brings them through the process.’

Consider the ‘now what?’

As people move through the process always co sider what the ‘now what?’ questions might be that a person asks. 

Connect people to groups

4. Clear Next Step

According to the research, offering a clear next step for new believers is essential. New believers are the greatest resource your church has to influence the community. 

Next steps for new believers:

some use groups for new believers: either a new believers group or an existing group they fit into.

some use mentors. Two people meet for several weeks in an informal setting to go through some type of curriculum. 

‘discipleship of new believers doesn’t just happen it must be intentional. 

5. New members class

New members classes are extremely important: ‘The relationship between assimilation effectiveness and a new members class is amazing. Churches that require potential members to attend a new members class have a much higher retention rate than those who do not.’

At membership classes: 

teach the simple process

ask for commitment to the process

Back to Jesus

Jesus approach to discipleship:

• the calling (Luke 5-6) 
• the building (Luke 7-8) 
• the sending (Luke 9)

Chapter 7: Alignment

U.S. gold medal winning hockey team. All of the players had to disregard the team’s they’d previously played for and instead recognise that they played for the United States. they had to all be aligned in their commitment that team and that time.

People are attracted to unity. Jesus wants unity, Paul encouraged the same. Unity is powerful. It is magnetic and its impact is great.

Alignment is the arrangement of all ministries and staff around the same simple process.

We need to be united around the same what (purpose) but also around the same how (process).

Herb Brooks’ hockey team: I’m not looking for the best hockey players, I’m looking for the right ones.

Recruit to the process 

Key leaders must be aligned to the same philosophy of ministry. If not the church will move in a multiplicity of directions.

Offer Accountability 

Without accountability people naturally drift away from the declared ministry process.

Avoid the two extremes of micro-management and neglect.

‘Micromanagement stifles creativity and hampers shared leadership. Neglect fosters complacency and leads to a fragmented team.’

The balance needed is good leadership. Leaders should outline the simple process but then allow ministry leaders to implement with freedom and creativity. 

A tool for accountability:

Ministry Action Plans (MAPs) are based on Peter Drucker’s concept of Management by Objectives in the 1950s. Leaders and those they lead agree on measurable goals up front and their agreement becomes the basis for evaluation. Each person sets his or her own goals based on the direction of the organisation. 

At the beginning of each year the senior leader sits down with his staff members individually to discuss their MAP. The MAP includes how that specific ministry reflects the vision and process of the church, how the programs are designed to move people through the process, the organisational structure of the ministry and a present evaluation of the ministry.  

Then from these considerations each staff member sets five to seven measurable goals for the new ministry year. They also outline how these goals will be achieved. 

Throughout the year the status and progress of the goals is evaluated. 

Each staff member then presents his goals to the entire staff. They also pray for the individual for his or her goals for the year. 

On unity: In reality it isn’t normally differences in theology or the Bible that splits churches, it is in the realm of ministry approach and philosophy. 

Remind people of the process:

People need to be reminded more than instructed

Connect every decision in your church to the direction of your church.

‘At your church, all of the important details such as hiring, budgeting, facility changes, and building projects must be connected to the process God has given your church.

Management expert Edward Deming coined the term: MBWA ‘Management By Walking Around’

On new ministries: It is vital you make sure new ministries fit into the simple process before they begin, Afterwards it is too late.

Chapter 8: Saying Not to Almost Everything

Like McDonalds and other fast food chains churches keep expanding their menus to keep up with the expanding spiritual appetites of the people in them.

Focus and being single-minded is advocated in the Bible by the references to pursue God and God alone…

To get focused…

eliminate

‘Going Google’ however is hard .Other search engines can’t do it, they can’t get simpler. Too many companies/people are share holders and personally invested in being on their home page that Yahoo or MSN or… simply can’t get simpler on their homepage. That is, according to Marissa Mayer, the person in charge of Google’s homepage.

Be a wise steward of people’s time

Be a wise steward of people’s money

2. Limit Adding

Travis Bradshaw at the University of Florida thought that the more services a church offered the more the church would grow. After he tested his hypothesis he realised he was wrong. His research proved the opposite. Less, is more.

Less programs means you can make more impact.

Add more options, not more programs.

3. Reduce Special Events

Michael Jordan’s focus! He once asked to borrow a jacket from a friend (Fred Whitfield) who had in his wardrobe a mixture of Nike & Puma clothes. Jordan took all of the Puma clothes out of the wardrobe, laid them on the floor, grabbed a knife from the kitchen and then proceeded to cut up all of the Puma clothes, literally butcher them to shreds. He then said to his friend ‘don’t ever let me see you in anything other than Nike. You can’t ride the fence.’

4. Easily Communicated

Communication is key. If key leaders do not grasp the process in the midst of change, division is certain. As programs are eliminated and special events reduced, you must point people to the simple process. You must communicate.

5. Simple to Understand

Choose simple language. Any word that has to be parsed or explained should not be used to describe your process. 

Be Brief. 

‘The amount of information people are confronted with today is overwhelming. And it is increasing. It has been estimated that the world produced five exabytes of information in 2002. That is the same amount of information produced from the beginning of time through the year 2000.’ — Linda Tischler ‘Google’s Secret Weapon.’

Focus & Greatness

Proctor & Gamble. From 1996-98 they reduced their products by 20% by selling or ‘burying’ them. Yet doing so didn’t just reduce costs it also bolstered sales. Market share increased by five points. Reducing clutter produced big results.

Chapter 9: Becoming Simple

On impacting generations:

‘In Super-Size Me Morgan Spurlock is seeking to prove how effectively McDonalds impacts upcoming generations. So, he meets with schoolchildren and shows them pictures of famous people. Most of the children recognise a depiction of George Washington. All recognise a depiction of Ronald McDonald. None of them recognise a common depiction of Jesus Christ.’

Change is hard

90% of heart transplant patients do not change their lifestyle. People find change hard even in a ‘change or die’ situation like that one.

Leadership expert Tom Peters once commented: It is easier to kill an organisation than it is to change it.

Experts disagree on how to implement change: all at once, or bit by bit? 

Complexity is often synonymous with mediocrity. 

Steps to change:

Design a  simple process (clarity)

Place your key programs along the process (movement)

Unite all ministries around the process (alignment)

Begin to eliminate things outside the process (focus)

Post-Script

Five years on from the book’s first print 6 things they’ve observed.

Churches drift. Inevitably vision drifts and churches drift toward complexity. Churches drift off mission.

Stat: multi-tasking means your focus on any given task drops by an average of 10 IQ points. Compare this to smoking weed. Smoking weed lowers your IQ by 4 points. Smoking weed is better for your attention span than multi-tasking. 

Process is a big mind-shift

There is a good section where the authors explain that they are not trying to create another model for churches. The first chapter begins with the words ‘this is not a church model’. They intentionally don’t address issues that a book presenting a church model would do. 

‘The proclivity of leaders to look for another church model is a sign of the church’s shallowness and not its maturity.’

The original title of the book was going to be: Process-Centered Ministry since the key idea of the book is about the importance of process.

They also make the point that out of Wesley & Whitfield, it was Wesley who left the bigger legacy because he was more concerned with process than Whitfield. He administrated the move of God.

Big idea of the book: 

View discipleship as the whole process

Be careful not to over-program early in your discipleship process

Mission must be deeply embedded in your process:

We are concerned that some church processes end with the church. In other words, the end result of some discipleship processes in the church is the church itself. We believe that mission must be deeply embedded in a discipleship process that is truly reflective of the type of disciple Jesus makes. If your church discipleship process sounds like, ‘Come to our church, get connected and help us do church better.’ you need to repent of too shallow a vision for discipleship. 

Live the Vision: Personally as leaders.

John Kotter of Harvard Business School wrote: Behaviour from important people in the organisation that is contrary to the vision overwhelms all other forms of communication.

Quote: In other words if the leaders do not live what they are asking people to live, time was wasted on the new logo, money was squandered on the new banner, and the statement in the bulletin is worthless. 

On Multi-site:

When a pastor asks if his church should consider launching another campus, there are two essential questions that must be answered. 1) is your church healthy? 2) Is your church reproducible?