Still the Church's Greatest Task

“Primary: earliest, original, of the first rank, of first importance, chief.” So reads the entry in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1976).

What is the church’s primary task? Not what good things should the church be doing, since there are a number of good answers to that question. But rather, what is of first importance in the life of the church?

History shows that the Church of Jesus Christ is always in danger of spiritual amnesia. This danger seems even more evident at the beginning of 2007 than it has in many, many years. Today we argue about all kinds of church-related issues and needs. We even occasionally speak about revival and renewal. And we promote numerous causes—social, spiritual and political—but rarely do we address the need to restore the primary thing—the proclamation and place of Jesus Christ as Lord.

Simply put, we don’t see Christ as the end for which the Church exists in the world. He is, if we are concerned with him at all, seen by us as a means to an end but almost never as the end itself.

Listen to our conversations. Read our literature. Pay attention to our sermons and our popular speakers. Ask yourself: “Where is Christ in these orations and equations?” What really fires our imagination, moves our will, and strengthens our resolve? It doesn’t seem to be Christ, not if our words and actions are a true barometer.

GOD’S DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY
Recent years have witnessed a good deal of conversation about dysfunctional families in America. We even have Dr. Phil to remind us of this crisis on a daily basis. The problems of everyday life are deeply and systemically rooted in the life and structure of the family itself. Numerous case studies have revealed that human life is best nurtured within the family. In fact, when family structure breaks down, the results within the larger culture are clearly connected; social breakdown and rampant personal dysfunction happen everywhere. The connection that I am seeking to make here should be self-evident. But I use the family dysfunction category for a different context, namely, the church family. Our most basic problems in the Christian life begin within God’s family; i.e., inside the church.

Over the course of the last fifteen years, I have written a great deal about the need for healthier churches and stronger Christian leaders, including a book on the moral breakdown of ministers. God has called me to invest my life in the kinds of people and issues that touch on the health of the church. And I have suggested for these fifteen years, in public and private, that very few local churches in North America can be honestly described as robust and healthy. No one seems to take serious issue with my conclusion. I have come to think the reason is fairly obvious—we instinctively know that our congregations are not healthy.

My question then is really very simple: “If this observation is true, that our churches are not spiritually robust and healthy, then why aren’t we deeply concerned about the renewing of our dysfunctional congregations?” And if we are concerned, what should be primary in our effort for restoring the church’s health?

DYSFUNCTIONAL IN CORINTH
Plainly the most dysfunctional of all churches, at least on the pages of the New Testament, had to be the church in Corinth. From reading the Pauline letters to Corinth we discover that there were at least four different rival camps within this one church. Members lied to each other, cheated and stole from one another, and even took their fellow members to court to settle personal differences. Furthermore, these members engaged in the most ignominious sexual behavior within the life of the congregation. To top it off they routinely got drunk at their regular celebrations of the Lord’s Supper. The apostle informs us that God’s judgment against them resulted in some pretty direct discipline.

So then whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we were more discerning with regard to ourselves, we would not come under such judgment. (1 Corinthians 11:27-31 NIV)

Most church growth experts would have written this congregation off as a bad church plant and simply moved on, cutting their losses and planting a new, better, and more exciting local church with a bright young entrepreneurial pastor. I can hear such experts saying: “This church doesn’t deserve our support. It can only drain our energies and resources. Move on. Start fresh. Let this one die. New churches, with vision and hope, are always to be preferred to old ones with their huge problems and serious breakdown.” To quote the old gambler, “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em and you’ve got to know when to fold ‘em.”

Thankfully Paul didn’t follow this kind of worldly advice. Around A.D. 55 he wrote a letter to this flock. Eventually there were several epistles sent to the church in Corinth, perhaps four in all, though only two are included in the canon of the New Testament. These letters urged the Christians at Corinth to cut out the nonsense and correct their problems by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A careful reading of the first letter demonstrates a number of specific pastoral steps that should be followed to resolve specific problems in the Corinthian church, problems that were both ethical and doctrinal in nature.

TOWARD A HEALTHY CHURCH
Near the very beginning of Paul’s first letter we get an important insight into the primary thing needed in order to bring health back to this church. This insight had been missed in the Corinthian context. I want to suggest that it is too easily passed over, or simply assumed, in the contemporary church context. Paul wrote:

And I, when I came to you, brothers and sisters, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:1-5 NIV)

Put simply, Paul says that a healthy, balanced and prospering church is not a church focused upon size, budget or program. And church health is not about unique sectarian systems of doctrinal emphasis, or the promotion of special interest groups that promote the right issues. Furthermore, a healthy church does not make human wisdom, or even pulpit eloquence, the centerpiece of its ministry. The church is at its best, and thus is the healthiest, when it keeps “the main thing”—when it makes Christ primary. 

Paul was an intellectual giant. He was bi-lingual, if not tri-lingual. He had the equivalent education of a Ph.D. in religion and philosophy. He understood the major issues of his day and he could debate with the best Jewish and Greek minds. But it seems this brilliant man decided, as an act of sheer faithfulness to God, to keep that which is of first importance first, or primary.

That doesn’t mean that Paul was anti-intellectual. He did not head up the ancient “Know-Nothing Party.” Ignorance is never the mother of true piety. A careful study of Paul’s sermons and letters demonstrate his amazing literary and intellectual powers. These were used to great advantage as his letters show.

What Paul is saying is actually very plain—a healthy church is not established on human talent, conventional wisdom, or sociological/market-oriented insights. Why? Because “[T]he foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25). “For,” Paul adds, “what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5).

What Paul is teaching here is patently obvious—the healthiest church, a congregation at its very best, must revolve around the primacy of the person of Jesus Christ. We do not primarily proclaim a theology, though inevitably we must have one. We do not primarily embrace and promote a philosophy, though we must think deeply about the ultimate issues posed by various philosophical questions. And we do not make liturgy, institutional well-being, numerical growth, or denominational and special interests our raison d’etre. What we are called to do, if the church is to be healthy, is simple, really: We must unapologetically make Jesus Christ the centerpiece of everything we preach, everything we pray, and everything we seek to do in this world.

No other reading of the words of the apostle―“For I decided to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2)―makes any sense at all if we miss this point. Everything else, important as it may be, is secondary. This must be primary.

Martin Luther understood this text to be the very center of all true theology and faithful Bible reading. He wrote, “There is not a word in the Bible which is extra crucem, which can be understood without reference to the cross.” And the great English theologian P.T. Forsyth put the same truth this way: “You do not understand Christ until you understand his cross.”

If this reading of Paul is faithful, then our churches must not revolve around a pastor, as important as this office and ministry is for a healthy church. There are two extremes to be avoided by this observation. First, a healthy church will almost always have a healthy pastor, or several healthy pastors. But this is not the primary thing to focus the church’s ministry upon. Second, the company of elders and/or deacons is not the central thing in the life of your church either. It is important that you have godly and faithful leaders. Don’t misunderstand me. But some seem to think that if you get the right leaders and the right system of leadership in place you will have health, ipso facto. I have seen this emphasis fail time and time again over the past thirty-five years of ministry. But if the proper emphasis is not on our leaders, then it is not on us as the people either. We are not the center of attention, as shocking as that sounds to modern Christian ears.

THE CHURCH IS ABOUT JESUS
Jesus Christ is the important thing. To understand this point about what is truly primary would, I am convinced, lead to the true health of many Christians and thousands of local congregations. As Rick Warren reminds us, The church is not about you, it is about Him! Christ is Lord and you are not! Your strengths, your weaknesses, your opinions, your gifts, and your personal experiences are not what the church is about. The Church is about Jesus.

The ancient Jews thought that the idea of a Messiah, crucified on a cross, was totally obnoxious, patently ridiculous. The Greeks thought this business of the cross was foolishness. They held this idea in utter contempt. Paul ignored the entire spectrum of this kind of response and said, simply, that he preached Christ crucified, “whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness” (1 Corinthians 1:30). Why?

Because Jesus Christ had been raised from the dead!

This fact established Paul’s entire mission. John Calvin was right when he said, “The resurrection of Christ is the commencement of his reign” and added, “It is the most important article of our faith.” Christ risen from the dead meant that Christ was Lord over all. J. I. Packer has it right and concludes: “The victim of Calvary . . . is loose and at large.” Christ alone had authority to forgive sins. Christ alone is the fact of all facts, the truth of all truths. Christ alone and Christ above all else. That is Paul’s point. Like John the Baptist, he desired to decrease in order that Christ might increase as Lord. He must be primary!

TO MAKE CHRIST KNOWN
Finally, Paul understood what we have so easily forgotten. The church is the only organization, in reality the only organism, ordained by God to make Christ known to the world. The Bush administration doesn’t have this mandate. Your place of employment doesn’t have this mandate, even if it is a Christian institution. The school system doesn’t have this commission, public or Christian. Only the church, expressed in various and diverse local settings, has this commission from God to preach this message, to live out this story, and to make followers of the resurrected Messiah.

But preaching Christ as primary is much more than proclaiming good expositions from the Bible each Sunday. If this was all Paul desired he could have made this point and closed shop. But he spends chapter after chapter making a far more important point in 1 Corinthians. We simply cannot preach Christ as primary and be done with it. No, we must live what we proclaim and we must work it out within our family (the church) or we will become a dysfunctional family. We are to do this work, which is called by Paul “work[ing] out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).  We do not do the work to earn our salvation, but we dare not profess to possess God’s salvation without doing this work. This means that we must be reconciled one to another. It means we must seek the healing of our churches. And beyond all else it means that we must make Christ the primary goal of all we undertake in 2007. Health is not an option if we would be faithful to the call of Christ to make him primary. We must address our dysfunction with the only cure that will work.

If we agree that our churches are not healthy, then we must do everything that we can to restore them to this biblical pattern of “Christ alone.” This pattern begins with making Christ the primary issue, not with us or with our building of sandcastles on the beach. A. W. Tozer was right when he said, “The cross of Christ is the most revolutionary thing ever to appear among men.”

A PRAYER FOR THE NEW YEAR
God make me an instrument of your peace. Let me sow love and allow me to be part of the healing of the church, not of its further division and dysfunction. Help me to keep the primary issue central—the supremacy of Christ and him crucified. Please do this Father, for the glory of Christ, Amen.

Dr. John H. Armstrong is the president of ACT 3, a ministry for advancing the Christian tradition in the third millennium. He is an author/editor of nine books, a professor of evangelism, an active blogger, and the editor of the ACT 3 Online Review: A Journal for Faith, Church and Culture. John has been married to his best friend, Anita, for thirty-six years and has two married children and two grandchildren. He lives in suburban Chicago.

Women Equipping Women

Worldview Church » April 2009

Women, God’s Secret Weapon boasts the title of Ed Silvoso’s recent book. In it the author posits how unleashing women for God will ultimately provide God’s victory over the evil one. However, I fear a title like this fuels the too-common perception of women as weapons—dangerous and in need of “management.” While the author intends the opposite, the word “weapon” supports this view of women held by too many in today’s churches.

Perceiving women as a weapon rather than a witness presents a problem not just here in America, but around the world. Over the past 10 years, I spent significant time in Russia involved in training and equipping Christian Russian women to minister to other women in that vast land of 11 time zones. Our Russian sisters consistently expressed serious doubt about their abilities and calling. Many experienced limits in their service in the church because of a very real fear that it is dangerous to unleash women to be trained and to serve.

Perhaps that very fear prompted the Apostle Paul’s clear command to Titus regarding women to be consistently overlooked in large measure by the church historically. Paul instructs this young pastor to delegate the training of younger women to older, mature women. To Paul the question was not whether the women should be trained—that was a given. Rather, the question was, and still is, who will do the training. In many ways, historically, both concepts have been lost.

ENLISTING AND ENTRUSTING WOMEN
In one of the first exercises in Women Serving Women, a course written for our mission, Entrust, we ask the question, “What comes to your mind when you hear of Women’s Ministries or Women in Ministry?” Take a moment and reflect on that question in your own experience. Likely thoughts ranging from tea parties to trouble to terrific, from gossips to good, flit across your mind.

Part of the difficulty in understanding God’s call to women, I am convinced, comes from confusion and debate about what roles women should take in ministry in the local church. Frequently lost in the debate about the role of women in leadership is the clear, biblical mandate to Titus to fully equip women to discover and embrace their giftedness. As a result the Church is denied the most effective ministry to and for her women.

Note Paul’s clear instruction regarding women in Titus 2:1-4. He understood the strategic importance of the equipping of women to the very honor and effectiveness of the Word of God.

Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. (NIV, emphasis added)

Is the Word of God being maligned today? A cursory observation of the rise of ardent atheists in mainstream media, with their best-selling books encouraging skeptics that there is a God Delusion and that God Is Not Great would remove any doubt. In our cultural decline, what part does the failure to take seriously this Titus mandate play?

EXEMPLARY WOMEN
And the kind of women called to train others is clearly spelled out in Titus as well. Paul contrasts the character of women called to train other women with two positives and two negatives. They are to be reverent in the way they live and they are to teach what is good. They are not to be gossips or drunks. You might say they are to be women who are satisfied not superficial, admirable not addicted.

I have suggested to many a young pastor that he seek out older, godly women of character in his church and invite them to work with him in developing a ministry of equipping other women. Pastors must ask, Are there godly women in my congregation whose lives I would desire to see replicated in others? These are pastors who take seriously Paul’s command to Titus.

Imagine what kind of impact our churches might enjoy if their women consistently modeled this kind of satisfied living in a watching world where women are commonly depicted as “desperate housewives” seeking distraction and instant gratification?

I’m convinced that when women, not unlike men, fail to be challenged to discover and exercise their spiritual gifts and enter into God’s purposes for them, they gravitate to other sources of superficial satisfaction—other addictions that distract them from the emptiness of life without the purpose for which God designed them.

On the other hand, when a woman is encouraged to become all that God intended, she becomes a role model for younger women of satisfied womanhood and fulfillment. She is personally satisfied and makes a significant difference in every part of her world.

ENCOUNTER WITH AN EQUIPPER
Such a woman made an impact in my own life with her passion for Christ and her example of godly womanhood. In 1952 a single woman by the name of A. Wetherell Johnson arrived in Southern California as a result of the communist takeover in China where she had been serving as a missionary, training women in a Bible seminary with the China Inland Mission.

With a heart heavy for her beloved Chinese, she reluctantly responded to a request by several American women to teach them the Bible. From that small beginning developed what is now an international Bible teaching and training ministry reaching over 200,000 people worldwide: Bible Study Fellowship, or BSF International. And what led “Miss J” (as we affectionately called her) to believe that women could be equipped to teach and train others?

She tells the story of her own experience as she labored to learn to speak and write Mandarin Chinese. She would prepare a brief message and deliver it in a few moments, but then her simple Chinese Bible woman who translated for her would speak for 30 to 45 minutes and women would respond in large numbers to the message.

She became persuaded that if Chinese Bible women trained in the Scripture and dependent upon the Spirit of God could teach other women, so could American women. I was one of her “simple Bible women” in America. For almost 25 years of my life, her confidence in me and her consistent training enabled me to discover the joy of being a part of God’s kingdom purposes in leading and training other women.

Miss J, herself seminary trained, was committed to serious equipping of women to be effective in leading other women. She resisted “spoon feeding” as she called it. Each week our discussion leaders prepared “homiletics” on the biblical passage being studied. When women complained about why they needed to do this extra work to simply facilitate their discussion groups, she would respond that God was always preparing them for future ministry and they needed to be ready.

Prior to encountering Miss J and her commitment to equipping me for God’s purposes, I was a typical, suburban housewife, confused about who I was and what my purpose was. I remember lounging in our family room in the avocado green easy chair, feet up, our daughter running around with a wet diaper, supper dishes stacked up in the sink, clothes falling out of the hamper, reading Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret and wondering why it didn’t work. I had all the right information, so I thought.

I’d read a lot about “let go and let God.” It sounded like a good idea to me, but He wasn’t doing such a great job with the housekeeping! Somehow I hadn’t connected practical living and spiritual thinking. I’d never seen it lived out in the life of an older woman. I was truly so heavenly minded that I was not much earthly good.

The model of godly womanhood and passion for Christ I saw in Miss J. and others motivated me to discover the truth of Titus 2. Seeing lives touched by yours is deeply, richly satisfying. There is no substitute for seeing God work in the lives of others as you make yourself available. When you think of it, about the time a woman completes her child-rearing days, God desires that she begin to invest in the next generation.

EMPOWERED TO EQUIP
I witnessed this same transformation repeated in our recent project in Russia, where we were able to teach 21 amazing Russian Women to train other women in ministry. They came to us with heads bowed, uncertain, lacking confidence. We watched them grow confident in God’s power in them, and their shoulders lifted and their heads raised as God transformed their character and confidence in Him. We saw them get excited to discover they could study the Bible for themselves and equip others as well.

Today these 21 women in teams of three have replicated their training of an additional 105 women in seven regional centers. Additionally their 105 women, now in new teams of three, have scattered to 23 new locations and will complete training an additional 360 women in 2009. In 2008, new teams from these trained women were already multiplying their impact in over 50 new centers. All of this in Russian, by Russian women applying the truth of God’s word in their own culture.

EXHORTING PASTORS
One morning at breakfast during our training in Moscow, Peter Mitskevich, vice president of the Baptist Union in Russia, asked me a provocative question: “What would you like for me to communicate to our Union pastors regarding women?” My answer to Peter and to all men who have asked me that question over the years is this, “I’m praying for Titus pastors . . . men who take to heart Paul’s exhortation to Titus regarding the serious equipping of older women to train and equip the younger women.

My passion, my concern, is that we get so distracted debating the limits or lack thereof of women in ministry that we miss almost completely the clear command and immense job God has entrusted to us. When you consider that at least 50 percent of most churches are women (in Russian 70 percent to 80 percent of churches are women), then the failure to fully train and utilize them makes women one of the most underutilized resources available to the kingdom.

What makes women dangerous is not that they are “God’s secret weapon” but rather that they are God’s neglected resource in a day when their beauty and giftedness are needed more than ever. Without a doubt, God’s love and plan for His women fits perfectly into His redemptive purposes for the world. Let’s join Him in affirming that by equipping, empowering, and entrusting our churches’ women to engage God’s kingdom purposes in their worlds.

Gwynne Johnson recently served as the senior director of women’s ministry at Stonebriar Community Church, is an accomplished Bible teacher, retreat speaker, and the co-author of Women Mentoring Women, published by Moody Press. She also writes for Bible.org and contributes to the Tapestry blog.

Rediscovering a Forgotten Poet Laureate of a Christian Worldview

In this series of articles, we are engaging in a recovery operation. Or it may be better termed a discovery operation instead. About two years ago, I made the discovery of the noted, but mostly forgotten, English poet and hymn writer, William Cowper (1731-1800). Now I am attempting to help others rediscover this “forgotten poet laureate of a biblical worldview,” as I have been calling him. His verse contains profound biblical insights and it helps us grasp the essentials of God’s larger story that explains the world and our place in it as believers. As we move forward in our explorations, we discuss the advent of sin into the world and human life and experience. Cowper knew its existential consequences first hand. His was no easy life, beset by multiple hardships and hang-ups, to put it bluntly. So as we rehearse some details of this aspect of the biblical drama, we will continue to use Cowper’s poetry to help us understand the catastrophe of the fall ,or what I and others like to call the “Uncreation.”

THE FALL OF HUMANITY INTO SIN, THE UNCREATION
Sometimes it is challenging to take the story of the fall seriously. Why? Here is one explanation: “Centuries of religious art and, in recent years, hundreds of cartoons of naked women, apples, and snakes have served to distract us from the meaning of the Fall in Genesis 3.” This is unfortunately true. There is some serious skepticism afloat about the historicity and trustworthiness of this account. How should we respond? I think in at least three ways.

First, we should note that nothing in the text itself suggests that the fall should be viewed merely as parable, myth, or saga. It is presented as straightforward history. External pressure from science and philosophy may pressure us to deny its veracity. But as it stands, the text expects to be taken as a face value description of what really happened. Second, the New Testament clearly affirms the content of this chapter by comparing it to the historical character of the person and work of Jesus Christ Himself (Romans 5:12-21; see also 2 Corinthians 11:3; 1 Timothy 2:8-15). This is the strongest reason for taking Genesis 3 on its own merits.

Finally, apologists have defended the historical character of this chapter by showing how it, and the whole of Genesis 1-11, is foundational to Scripture and to a biblical view of life. Francis Schaeffer’s work Genesis in Space and Time is a good example. Thus we proceed in confidence that Genesis 3 presents an historically accurate description of humanity’s fall. As philosopher Peter Kreeft has noted, “What happened in Eden may be hard to understand, but it makes everything else understandable.”

What this story helps us to understand is the problem of evil, and on an existential level, our devastating human brokenness, about which Bob Dylan sings mournfully in one of his classic songs, “Everything is Broken.”

Why the evil and brokenness? Because, as Genesis 3 informs us, we errantly sought autonomy and self-determination, if not self-deification, by an act of insubordination against God and His rightful authority. This pursuit of unchecked freedom was achieved by the willful violation of the divine commandment that banned the consumption of a forbidden fruit from an excluded tree. St. Augustine gives us a behind-the-scenes explanation of the pride that led to our revolt:

It was in secret that the first human beings began to be evil; and the result was that they slipped into open disobedience. For they would not have arrived at the evil act if an evil will had not preceded it. Now could anything but pride have been the start of the evil will? For “pride is the start of every kind of sin” (Ecclesiasticus 10: 13). And what is pride except a longing for a perverse kind of exaltation? . . . [However], by aiming at more, a man is diminished, when he elects to be self-sufficient and defects from the one who is really sufficient for him. . . . This then is the original evil: man regards himself as his own light, and turns away from that light which would make himself a light if he would set his heart on it. (The City of God, 14.13)

Like Dylan’s tune, the famous nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty” may be read as a parable about the shattering effects of the fall on humanity as well (notice, however, how it ends in despair, unlike a biblical worldview, which, thankfully, moves us to redemption):

As the narrative of Genesis 3 indicates, when we succumbed to the temptation and failed the test of covenant fidelity toward God, the big breakdown occurred and everything changed. We hid ourselves from God’s presence among the trees of the garden and were separated from Him spiritually. Upon being found out, we experienced great fear at the presence of God, shame over our nakedness, and guilt because of sin, and we became alienated from ourselves psychologically. Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, the man blamed the woman for his wrongdoing, fostering social alienation and the breakdown between the sexes. The serpent was cursed. The woman was cursed. The man and the whole creation were also cursed. Finally, we were sadly exiled from the splendor of the garden and barred from its tree of life. It was Paradise Lost, as John Milton indicates in the opening lines of his epic poem that bears this title:

Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit                    
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe . . .

The garden became a wilderness choked with brambles and briars. Existence itself was besmeared with blood, sweat, toil, and tears. Human life, in constant fear and danger of violent death, became solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan).

In this hellish transition from creation to uncreation, from a well-formed to a deformed world, from a cosmos back to chaos again, real moral guilt for sin ensued, spiritual and physical death followed, and the powers of evil were set free in the world. In short, the fall of humanity into sin resulted in the colossal vandalism of shalom.

COWPER ON THE FALL
William Cowper had first person familiarity with human heartache and struggle born of the fall. And his theological insights into the causes and effects of our “thorny” and “jarring” world, “where ev’ry drop of honey hides a sting” are impeccable. In an Augustinian kind of way, he knows that we are trapped in ignorance and falsehood, as he seeks to discover from his poetic muse, “By what unseen and unsuspected arts/The serpent error twines round human hearts” (“The Progress of Error,” Lines 3-4).

For Cowper, our intellects are wayward due to sin, for “such a veil/Hangs over mortal eyes, blind from birth/And dark in things divine” (“The Task,” Book III, The Garden, Lines, 233-35). Cowper is convinced, however, that we manufacture most of our mistakes by bending the truth to fit the character of our disordered lives and loves. “Thus men go wrong,” he says, “with an ingenious skill;/Bend the straight rule to their own crooked will.” He knows that whatever is in our lives eventually ends up in our minds, and whatever is in our minds eventually ends up in our lives in a give-and-take sort of way:

Faults in the life breed errors in the brain;
And these, reciprocally, those again.
The mind and conduct mutually imprint
And stamp their image in each other’s mint:
Each, sire and dam of an infernal race,
Begetting and conceiving all that’s base.

“The Progress of Error,” Lines 564-69.

To be sure, Cowper is aware of the fact that the inordinate things we think and do, and their nefarious interplay, are not aimless, but targeted, however wobbly, at the dream of happiness. Autonomous of God, we are sure to be disappointed.

The net effect of this madness of head, heart and hand is idolatry, and predictably our self-created gods are designed to serve our own desires and purposes. We invent for ourselves, as Cowper says, “Gods such as guilt makes welcome; gods that sleep/Or disregard our follies, or that sit/Amus’d spectators of this bustling stage” (“The Task,” Book V, The Winter Morning Walk, Lines 876-78). Cowper himself was not immune to this human tendency, and he does not exempt himself from it. His recognition of our ambition to create user friendly gods and religions may stand as the background for this stanza from one of his most recognized Olney hymns:

The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be;
Help me to tear it from thy throne,
And worship only thee.

“Walking with God,” Lines 17-20.

Cowper’s understanding of fallen human nature and the fallen human condition as a whole was quite dark, but it was nonetheless realistic. Bondage and blindness, idolatry and immorality, despair and death are central to his understanding, as we see in the following passage that ties the various strands of Cowper’s harmartiological thoughts together into a whole:

Chains are the portion of revolted man,
Stripes, and a dungeon; and his body serves
The triple purpose. In that sickly, foul,
Opprobrious residence he finds them all.
Propense his heart to idols, he is held
In silly dotage on created things,
Careless of their Creator. And that low
And sordid gravitation of his pow’rs
To a vile clod so draws him, with such force
Resistless from the centre he should seek,
That he at last forgets it. All his hopes
Tend downward; his ambition is to sink,
To reach a depth profounder still, and still
Profounder, in the fathomless abyss
Of folly, plunging in pursuit of death.

“The Task,” Book V, The Winter Morning Walk, Lines 581-95

If this is, indeed, our doleful situation, and the Scriptures and Cowper’s thoughts make it pretty clear that it is, then along with our poet we must confess that “without grace, the heart’s insanity admits no cure” (“The Task,” Book 6, lines 522-523).

ANTIDOTE TO THE FALL
The bulk of the narrative from Genesis 3 forward records the mighty deeds of God performed in love and justice to bring grace and redemption to the world. God formed all things. Sin deformed all things. Now God will reform all things through Jesus Christ. There has been good news in creation, bad news in the fall, but good news again in the New Testament gospel of the kingdom of God. A biblical worldview, ensconced in the total narrative of the Scriptures, proclaims joyfully who has ransom’d man, and where the cure for the heart’s insanity is to be found. This theme we will take up next time as we conclude our study of a biblical worldview and the poetry of Willliam Cowper.

David Naugle is a BreakPoint fellow and serves as chair and professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University. He is also the director of the Paideia College Society, an active, academic student group on campus that promotes the vision of student and cultural renewal through classic Christian liberal arts education. He is the author of Worldview: The History of a Concept, selected as 2003 book of the year in theology and ethics by Christianity Today magazine.

On the morning of May 23, 1498, after a period of public denunciation, degradation, and defrocking, Girolamo Savonarola, the fiery prophet of Florence, Italy, was hanged and burned in the main plaza of the city, together with two of his colleagues. Less than two years prior he had been the darling of the city, preaching to as many as 15,000 people at a time, defending the orthodox faith, pleading on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed, and championing a republican government in a time when rule by petty tyrants was everywhere the norm.

In his new book, Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Florence, Lauro Martines relates the story of the Dominican priest’s meteoric rise to prophetic leadership, and of his equally sudden decline and death. Savonarola actually served two stints as a preacher in Florence, first in 1482-1486, then again 1490-1498. While his first tour was uneventful, his second proved to be another shot across the bow of Rome, warning that the winds of reform were growing.

During the period following his first tour in Florence, Savonarola, always a serious scholar and profound mystic, learned to preach and discovered a prophetic voice. Upon his return to the culture capital of Renaissance Italy (home of Dante, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Pico della Mirandola, and others), Savonarola applied his considerable homiletical gifts to the task of ecclesiastical and civic reform. Always orthodox in his preaching, he consistently called for repentance from the moral laxity so common among wealthy Florentines and imitated by the rest of the population.

Ahead of his time, he capitalized on the new printing technology to give double mileage to his sermons, which were widely distributed and read. When, ahead of a visit from the army of the French King Charles VIII, the hereditary tyrant Piero de Medici fled the city, Savonarola saw an opportunity to establish a true republic, in which the people would have a real voice in their own political concerns. He led the way to the creation of a model democracy and staunchly defended it against its critics and detractors.

Now his program of reform took off. Secular festivals were transformed into religious holy days. Savonarola enlisted thousands of young people in calling for repentance from lewd and immoral pleasures. The city of Florence began to take on the appearance more of a monastery than a brothel.

Savonarola did not hesitate to call for reform in the highest courts of the Roman Church. He indicted the doctrine and manners of priests, cardinals, and the pope, and, in the process, incurred the anger of the incumbent Pontiff, Alexander VI, resulting in a bull of excommunication in 1496. This began his downfall. Weakened by being removed from his pulpit, Savonarola came under withering attack by enemies, who worked to undo his reforms and scandalize his ministry. His monastery came under siege and he was taken into custody in the spring of 1498. Charged with treason and heresy, he confessed under torture, and was martyred on May 23.

Martines’ account is respectable, if not admiring, and shows the dangers and pitfalls involved in assuming the role of prophet in a corrupt age. Savonarola’s story deserves careful consideration by those inclined to a reformist approach to ministry, as, indeed, every pastor should, in some manner, be.

T. M. Moore is the editor of the Worldview Church. He is dean of the Centurions program of BreakPoint/PFM and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic tradition. Visit his website on Wednesdays to see how you can begin to participate in a movement of praying for revival. T. M.’s latest book is The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet Publications). He and his wife and editor, Susie, live in Concord, Tenn.

I used to believe that “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so” was a great summary of the Gospel, but after reading Renewal as a Way of Life by Richard Lovelace I’m not so sure. Don’t hit that mouse button too quickly, though. The reason for my change of mind should be clear by the end of this review.

Some of you may recognize Richard Lovelace, Professor Emeritus at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, as the author of the 435-page classic Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal (IVP, 1979). Indeed he is, and Renewal as a Way of Life is his two-hundred-page version of Dynamics aimed at “students and lay readers with a more modest theological background” which includes “seven years of further reflection on the related themes of personal spiritual growth and church renewal” (page 9). The book offers study questions at the end of each chapter along with recommended supplemental readings from the Scriptures and Dynamics of Spiritual Life.

I savored each page of this rich little book, taking my time, reading it over several months, slowly digesting its wisdom. I can measure the magnitude by which a book has marked me by the multitude of marks I’ve made in its margins. My margins runneth over. Therefore, I only have space to give you just a taste of Lovelace’s wisdom along with a quick look at the rest of the book.

In chapters 1 and 2, Lovelace begins by defining the essence of what he calls “the normal Christian life” as one that is God-centered and Kingdom-centered. A God-centered disciple fears the Lord, having an increasing awareness of God’s holiness which leads to an awareness of the depth of sin in oneself and the world. These are the “preconditions of personal renewal” (pp. 20-21). But “beyond the presence of a healthy reverence for God and a heart set to imitate His holiness in thought, will and emotional response, there is something more that characterizes fully renewed spirituality: a strong love for God kindled by an inner vision of the heart” (page 27). This God-centeredness is what Jesus called “loving the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength” (Matthew 22:36-40; Mark 12:28-31).

The Kingdom-centered life encompasses the second great commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. “Love for neighbors…involves God’s reaching out in us and through us to build a kingdom, a sphere of rulership, in which his will is done in the fallen world as it is in the sinless heavens; in which cruelty and disorder and the distortion caused by sin are supplanted by love, order and righteousness. Loving obedience to God produces much more than individual goodness, respectability and the alleviation of suffering. It builds the kingdom of heaven” (page 40).

This “normal Christian life” of loving God and loving others for His sake is what Lovelace claims is “the goal of authentic spirituality . . . a life which escapes from the closed circle of spiritual self-indulgence, or even self-improvement, to become absorbed in the love of God and other persons . . . the substance of real spirituality is love” (page 18).

The middle section of the book goes into the same depth to describe the “dynamics of spiritual death” that war against our pursuit of the God-and-Kingdom-centered life; namely the world, the flesh, and the devil. The final three chapters focus on what makes the normal Christian life possible. Lovelace first proposes four primary elements of renewal (justification, sanctification, the Holy Spirit within, and authority in spiritual conflict) that are at work in every individual who embraces the Gospel by faith.

Then he unpacks four secondary elements of renewal (mission, prayer, community, and theological integration) that give shape to every true Gospel-believing community. “As secondary colors are derived from primary colors, these secondary elements of renewal draw out the larger, corporate implications of the primary elements. Primary responses of faith are centered in individual Christians, as they appropriate the fruits of His redemptive work. Secondary responses of faith move beyond individual growth to encompass the world, the church and the whole of life and thought” (pp. 162-163).

Throughout the book Lovelace makes it clear that the Gospel is not merely about a “personal relationship with Jesus” but also about a transformed life that transforms other lives who together transform their world. Renewal as a Way of Life was written “as an antidote to egocentric spirituality,” and its author argues that we who continually respond to the Gospel by faith will not “attain the fullness of the Spirit without being turned inside out so that our central focus is no longer our own growth, but the glory of God and the growth of Christ’s kingdom” (page 10).

So, “Jesus loves me, this I know” is a critical component of spiritual renewal, but the song must not end with Jesus and me. True knowledge of and dependence on the love of Jesus as He is offered in the Gospel will also have us singing “Jesus loves me this I show.” Allow me to add a new verse to complete an old classic:

Jesus loves me this I show
When the Spirit overflows
Loving God and Loving Man
With my head, my heart, my hands
Yes, Jesus loves me
Yes, Jesus loves me
Yes, Jesus loves me
My life is sure to show
Yes, Jesus loves me
The world will surely know.

Jimmy Davis is an associate pastor at Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church (EPC) in Knoxville, Tenn. This spring he and his wife, Christine, begin a new project of church planting in the historic Hardin Valley community of Knox County.

In Case You Missed It

Jonathan Edwards’ classic 1746 plea for revival achieves more accessible form in this recent number in the series, Jonathan Edwards for Today’s Reader from P & R. Sensing that the fire of the recent Great Awakening had begun to die down, and challenged by a call for revival issuing from the church in Scotland, Edwards penned his own plea to the churches in New England and beyond to begin seeking the Lord in extraordinary, united prayer, that He might once again send His Spirit for the reviving of His churches and the advance of His kingdom.

This new edition from P & R—edited by yours truly, I must hasten to admit—makes Edwards’ eighteenth-century prose more accessible to contemporary readers by dividing the work into chapters, adding headings and sub-headings, and providing discussion questions designed to lead readers to take up Edwards’ call for prayer for themselves.

The book will challenge and encourage us as readers of Scripture and as preachers. Few exegetes get as much out of a text as Jonathan Edwards. His study of Zechariah 8:20-22 becomes a tour de force of Scripture as Edwards plunders both the Old and New Testaments for the treasure-trove of teaching on revival and prayer they provide. He argues that only God can revive His people, but that He only does so when they unite in extraordinary seasons of revival to plead with Him to send His Spirit in fresh ways upon them.

Edwards knew that the time was right for revival—he had come to that “sense of awareness” Bob Lynn writes about. And he also understood Asaph’s direction in Psalm 80 that the next step was repentance and crying out to God to send revival again. Edwards summarizes his sense of this text as follows:

From the representation made in the prophecy, it appears rational to suppose that it will be fulfilled something after this manner: There shall be given much of a spirit of prayer to God’s people in many places, disposing them to come into an express agreement, unitedly to pray to God in an extraordinary manner that he would appear for the help of his church, and in mercy to mankind, and pour out his Spirit, revive his work, and advance his spiritual kingdom in the world, as he has promised. This disposition to prayer, and union in it, will gradually spread more and more, and increase to greater degrees; with which at length will gradually be introduced a revival of religion, and a disposition to greater engagedness in the worship and service of God, amongst his professing people. This being observed, will be the means of awakening others, making them sensible of the want of their souls, and exciting in them a great concern for their spiritual and everlasting good, and putting them upon earnestly crying to God for spiritual mercies, and disposing them to join in that extraordinary seeking and serving of God. (pp. 21, 22)

The tone of Edwards’ work is hopeful, excited, and resolute. He calls readers to commit to seven years of extraordinary praying, and, if that doesn’t produce the revival they seek, to pray for seven more. He fully believed that God wants to revive His people, and that, as history and Scripture showed, He is well capable of doing so. But His great pre-condition is that His people must admit their need, cry out for mercy, and seek Him in an extraordinary way, together, until the refreshing rains of revival begin to fall again.

If you haven’t read this book, or it’s been a while, here’s an opportunity to take it up once again in a way that will focus your reading on the “So what?” of praying for revival. We need revival today, and God is still willing and able to bring it. But, as in Zechariah’s and Edwards’ day, God calls His people to seek Him in prayer. Praying Together for True Revival can be the tool to lead your church to take its place in this extraordinary and much-needed effort.

T. M. Moore is the editor of the Worldview Church. He is dean of the Centurions program of BreakPoint/PFM and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic tradition. Visit his website on Wednesdays to see how you can begin to participate in a movement of praying for revival. T. M.’s latest book is The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet Publications). He and his wife and editor, Susie, live in Concord, Tenn.