Video for January 23rd, 2025
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
When I was a vicar in Sussex one of my Evensong congregation who attended infrequently would tell me the length of my sermon at the Church door. I wondered whether he was concentrating. I did get great pleasure at his daughter’s wedding telling him exactly how long his father of the bride speech was. We Anglicans don’t like long sermons very much. I became a Christian in a non-conformist tradition where anything less than 25 minutes felt like you were being short-changed. Going on for more that 10-12 minutes in most places in our diocese gets people twitching. When people at the door say nice things about aforesaid sermon, I wonder whether they are grateful that I had re-enforced their existing prejudices in a well-argued and entertaining way, or just because it was short!
In that cultural context the second mark of mission: to teach, baptise and nurture new believers, seems a challenge. There is no shortcut to discipleship; the slow methodical formation in us of christian character that generates christian behaviour. Its a long obedience in the same direction as Eugene Peterson’s book put it. The Church where I was converted viewed infant baptism suspiciously. The stress on a conscious decision pushed all evangelistic sermons down a predictable path. It was a call to radical commitment, then to be marked by baptism by immersion with a testimony in the service beforehand. I have no quarrel with that in fact. Every Sunday we confess our sins and seek God’s forgiveness as part of our own recommitment in worship. However, I now think that focusing entirely on a decision in a moment can treat the Christian life as a sort of heavenly insurance policy entered by a signature. It also devalues the reality of the experience of the majority of Christians, where there was no clear crisis moment of conversion. Instead, there was the privilege of a Christian family and an ordinary local church where we learned to say our prayers and were encouraged to live Christianly. Even if our Christian lives did begin in a moment of radical commitment, as mine did, that is only the beginning of a life not a sort of passing out parade.
However, whatever the mode of entry, there is no escape from the primary calling of pastors in the church to nurture that faith and for all of us to take responsibility for our own growth in Christlikeness. I periodically dabble with improving my very limited foreign languages. I even have a book on my bedside table. Were I to engage with it even for a few minutes a day, there would be a marked improvement over a few months. As it is, it sits largely unread. In a similar way, the more we engage personally with the means of grace the more likely we will be transformed by them.
There has been a welcome re-engagement over the past few years in the teaching ministry of Jesus. He was after all primarily a Rabbi with disciples who sat at his feet, sought to emulate the way he did things, and took to heart his teaching – even if they frequently didn’t understand it. They realised that to live like citizens of the kingdom required attention, training and practice. They were apprentices to Jesus in the spiritual journey. You cannot separate the fruitfulness of our mission from the degree to which we live like Jesus would were he living in our context.
So as part of our year of engagement I would encourage all of us to engage more fully with the opportunities to be taught and nurtured on our journey. Take up invitations to join a small group for prayer or Bible study; make worship a priority, even if there isn’t a service on your parish church this week; read a Christian book; use an app like Lectio 365 or Pray as You go or say the office at home. This will no doubt be a discipline and challenge us at times, but the fruitfulness will be obvious to others. The more we look like Christ, the more others will be drawn to him. It is indeed one of the marks of mission.
+Richard