A light on the hill

On Monday we met at the Pastors Acadmy for our book group. This time the book was a local church history by a man called Caleb Morrell. Phil Heaps kindly provided with two sets of questions and a helpful outline.

1. “What Shall the Harvest Be?”: 1867–1878

2. “A Helper of the Downtrodden and Lowly”: 1878–1882  Joseph W. Parker – 1879-82 ~3yrs

3. “With Conscience Void of Offence toward God and Man”: 1882–1884 Wilbur M. Ingersoll – 1882-84 ~2yrs

4. “We Do Our Own Thinking in This Church”: 1885–1889 William H. Young – 1885-90 ~5yrs

5. “We Have a Leader of National Reputation”: 1890–1895 Green Clay Smith – 1890-95 ~5yrs

6. “The Future Is Bright with Promise”: 1896–1912 Granville S. Williams – 1895–1903 ~8yrs

7. “War, Fuel Famine, and Influenza Epidemics”: 1913–1918 John Compton Ball – 1903-44 ~41yrs

8. “No Modernism Will Be Tolerated at All in This Church”: 1919–1943 9. “Holding Forth the Word of Life”: 1944–1955 K. Owen White – 1944-49 ~5yrs Walter Carpenter – 1949-55 ~6yrs

10. “A Beachhead for Evangelical Christianity”: 1956–1960 Walter A. Pegg – 1956-61 ~5yrs

11. “Jesus Doesn’t Need a Parking Lot”: 1961–1980 R.B. Culbreth – 1961-66 ~5yrs John Stuckey – 1967-71 ~5yrs C. Wade Freeman Jr. – 1971-81 ~10yrs

12. “When a Christian Leader Falls”: 1981–1993 Walt Tomme Jr. – 1982-88 ~6yrs

Harry Kilbride – 1990-93 ~3yrs

13. “Preach, Pray, Love, and Stay”: 1994–2000 Mark Dever – 1994-present ~31yrs

14. “Doing Nothing and Church Planting”: 2001–Present

We all found the book helpful and interesting and there was a good discussion among the seven present on this occasion. Blaise Pascal next in May.

Example questions

1. What did you think of the book? Strengths / weaknesses?

2. Are there any incidents or characters that particularly lodged in your mind?

3. ch.1: What were Thomas Ustick Walter’s strengths & weaknesses, p10f? Do these things often go together? Have you ever had to change any strongly held and loudly trumpeted views, p16?

4. ch.3: What did Walter Ingersoll do wrong, and what can we learn from this episode, p59,62,65?

5. ch.4: How important are “youth, energy and enthusiasm”, p70 and “unyielding determination to succeed”, p73?

6. ch.5: Does it always feel like we are in a time of social decay and moral regress”, p82? (p90,95; p168)

7. In the early 1890s, 65% of MBC’s members were women, p98. How does that compare with our churches? etc.

Steady Blessings at Holbrooks

In the course of preparing last weekend I came across this tremendously encouraging article from Coventry on the FIEC website. I think we can all be encouraged by this. I know Ben Holmes to speak to. He's a lovely bloke. Steady Blessings.

10 Unpopular things that I believe in

It is easy to feel isolated and unpopular to some extent. I suppose some of us should expect this considering what we believe. Here are ten unpopular things that I basically line up with. Not many of you will agree with me on all ten, I guess.

 

1 The inerrancy of Scripture

2 Six day creation

3 The independency of the local church

4 The baptism only of believers

5 An educated ministry

6 The sanctitiy of the first day of the week

7 The priesthood of all believers

8 Male headship in the home and the church

9 The preferability of a republican state government

10 The disestablishment of the Church of England

Midweek Meeting December 23 2015

John Phelan, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>,
via Wikimedia Commons

We were about 12 last night, half of them family members. We sang three carols we have not sung yet and I spoke for the last time in the series on the three Rs (Revelation, Redemption and Regeneration). I spoke about church and about revival, which may seem rather ancillary but when a person is regenerated he ought to find fellowship with fellow believers and a revival is when many in one place and at one time are born again. I tried to give Christmas examples. I will share that in another post. We had a good time of prayer with nearly everyone praying. Lots to pray about as ever, including friends in Poland, France, Madagascar and the Philippines.

Midweek Meeting October 1 2014

Another good gathering (about 13 of us) for prayer and further studies on spiritual growth. We finished off what we had to say about family disciplines talking about the callings of spouses, parents and kids, moving on to public disciplines - hearing preaching, the sacraments, fellowship, the Lord's Day. I suppose I should have added worship too - be diligent in taking part in prayer, singing, etc. Perhaps I will next time. So it's all very practical at the moment. There was a good prayer time too, though some are understandably tired midweek.

A weekend in Yorkshire

We spent last weekend in Yorkshire, leaving London on Friday morning and returning late Sunday evening. We stayed in a very nice guest house on Whitby itself.

The main reason for going up was to be at a wedding. Eleri's cousin's son was marrying a Whitby girl, the third wedding in three years for that family of five, so we will all be twiddling our thumbs rather next August. The wedding itself was in Whitby Evangelical Church, (see here especially) a former shop on Skinner Street that has been attractively converted. The sermon was given by John Perry the groom's brother-in-law and was a straight UCCF style gospel presentation. With several unbelievers present it was good to focus there. The whole service was God honouring and a joy to be involved with. That can be said  pretty much about the whole day, which continued with a cake reception at the church then a formal meal at the plush nearby Raithwaite Hotel and dancing 'til late (hopefully not too late). The several speeches were of a very high order, Daniel the groom singing unembarrassingly to his new bride and the seriously funny best man (Alex Passmore) making us all laugh but finding time to testify to God's goodness too, before rounding things off by being joined by a male voice choir to give a slightly amended rendition of Danny Boy. I'm not sure if I've been to a wedding where a wedding planner has been involved before but all sorts of things seem to have been thought of to add to the whole thing. We were sat on a table of 5 couples, most of whom, it turned out, were pastor's kids.

The following day we headed on to have lunch with friends in Carlton Minniot, attending the service at Hambleton Evangelical Church. The preacher that morning was David Owens from Milnrow Evangelical church. His sermon was evangelistic like John the day before but the two sermons could not have been more different. David used a score or more of anecdotes to back up his message, a call to repentance and faith. I guess D L Moody would have preached something like that. There was something decidedly old style evangelist in it.
It was goo to catch up with the Davies's but conscious of the long journey ahead we decided to go further south that afternoon and attend Wycliffe Independent Church, Sheffield. I have never been there before though I know one or two in the church, including the minister Ed Collier. Ed was preaching from James 1 on profiting from suffering. Not evangelistic this time, this was a careful and clear exposition of the passage and theme and for the third time a privilege to hear.
All three of these churches would be similar in that they are evangelical churches in the Lloyd-Jones tradition. They have all had Presbyterian ministers but are probably mostly made up of Baptists. Sheffield (founded 1908) is the oldest and largest with a nice airy building put up in 1994 and set in a busy part of the city. They currently have one minister and would like to increase their staffing back to the two they had until Spencer Cunnah headed this way. Hambleton (begun in 1969) is much smaller and is in the countryside. They have recently called Richard Wigham from Llantrisant, who will be inducted next month. The church in the seaside town of Whitby (formed in 1973) with its extensive refurbished property is probably somewhere in between size wise and is currently without a minister.
My knowledge of the Yorkshire Reformed scene is quite limited but it was good to get this little taste.

The gift the church hasn’t been given

My attention was drawn to this on the Amyand Park Chapel website for September 26.

The gift the church hasn’t been given.

We have a gift missing in our church which if it were present would do a great service to the saints of God. It’s not a gift found in the Bible. It is the gift of the raspberry blower. Just think of the possibilities. Here are two believers griping, complaining and spreading discouragement. From behind comes the sound of a particularly large, ripe, wet raspberry. They turn but no one is there. The conversation comes to an abrupt end and we all share in the blessing. Just a thought.

Weddings

We are not so often at weddings but this summer there are three or four. We're off to a family one in South Wales this week and last week the son of one of my deacons, Josef, was getting married to Emma in Meole Brace near Shrewsbury. I was reading and praying and the preacher was Paul Yeulett, Emma's pastor. It was also good to see Mark Stocker of Spring Road Evangelical, Southampton, there, where Josef has been studying enginneering for the last few years. For various reasons the service was conducted by Phil Cansdale, the vicar of Holy Trinity, Meole Brace.

One of the joy of the reception afterwards was seeing various people I knew and half knew. They were from various churches mostly in that broad Reformed evangelical stream, which I'm part of (Childs Hill Baptist, Shrewsbury Evangelical, Southampton, Wycliffe Independent Sheffield, Emmanuel in Cardiff, Durham Presbyterian, Alexandra Road Hemel, Hounslow West Evangelical, Milnrow Evangelical) though from other churches too. Josef and Emma first met on the CCIW camps in Tywyn.

LTS Inaugural

It was good to be at LTS on Tuesday. Much of the day was taken up with a board meeting and then in the evening there was an inaugural public lecture from the new principal Robert Strivens. This is the first time I remember such a thing being done and it was slightly odd to have a lecture in the context of public worship (we sang hymns and David Earle and I led in prayer, Irving Steggles the Board Chairman led). The lecture was provocatively entitled "The local church - a little heaven on earth?" Drawing on the work of Greg Beale, Mr Strivens sought to enthuse about the local church, not in a starry eyed but in a biblical manner, pointing out its centrality throughout God'sdealings with men. A seminary is a strange sort of beast in many ways and it was good to have the centrality of the local church underlined in this manner. About 70 were present I guess.

Last weekend 04

The Lord's Day was spent as ever in preaching here in Childs Hill. In the morning I preached on the famous first half of Ezekiel 37. It cries out for CGI. The above is a fairly tasteful though not particularly impressive rendition.

I spoke to the kids on Christology (person, nature, states, offices - we take no prisoners). We used a hymn I cobbled together from the catechism. (You can see it at my Psalms and hymns blog. Some sermons get to my sermon blog but it's all rather slow at present). My fourth son asked me if a zig-zag would be a better pattern for the states of Christ rather than the 'V' I suggested. That makes sense but the 'V' wins. When Christ comes again he will set up his kingdom here on earth, as it were. It is a coming down but not in the way he came before.

We are redecorating the dining room so only Rhodri's friend Sybil back for lunch and tea. In the evening I was in Psalm 10. The evening congregation is appreciably smaller than the morning one. Some people missing today. In the evening we also look at the 1689 Confession briefly - the Trinity this time. More theology!

I normally collect people from the after church fellowship around 10 pm but unusually I had a headache and so Eleri went. They had a puncture just over a quarter of a mile away. We found getting hold of the spare difficult and replacing the flat tyre impossible. A relief car took people home and we contacted the AA next day who dealt with things very well.

Archive 6c Chapel Names

Then there are the mountains: Ararat, Carmel, Hermon, Moriah, Nebo, Pisgah, Tabor, Zion, even Horeb or Sinai. Bethesda and Siloam were pools in Jerusalem connected with healing miracles of Jesus. Antioch is inspired by the New Testament church of that name. Of the seven churches mentioned in The Revelation, only Sardis and Smyrna are usually used, for obvious reasons. (Philadelphia is known as it means brotherly love). The story is told, however, of a church in the southern states of America that left a great deal to be desired and was a great discouragement to its faithful pastor. They decided they wanted to give a name to their chapel but could not fix on one until some mischievous or ignorant soul suggested Laodicea. When they came to the pastor for his opinion he had to admit that it was a most appropriate name for that particular church to choose! And so it was given the name Laodicea.
There is evidence that as the 19th Century wore on our Victorian fathers tired of this naming game. They would sometimes resort to the practice of calling chapels after influential figures of the near or distant past, as in Latimer Memorial, Chalmers Memorial, Martyrs Memorial, Carey Baptist or Kensit Evangelical. Others simply looked for more unusual names. Some went to Isaiah for Hephzibah and Beulah. Galeed means ‘Heap of witness’. Lebanon looks like a topographical reference but refers more to the cedar of Lebanon, symbolic of God’s strength. Similarly, Sharon refers to the Rose of Sharon mentioned in Song of Solomon and long accepted as a title for the Lord Jesus.

Some common names today among the more conservative are Grace and Christ Church. Trinity continues to be used too. Church on the rock is an attractive name.

Some people can get hot under the collar on this subject but it is not really one to get het up about. Provided we remember that the church and the building are two different things and that there is nothing in the New Testament about chapels as such, we should not go too far wrong. Meanwhile let us not forget this largely incidental but interesting part of evangelical and Nonconformist culture which has its own lessons to teach.
May each of our Bethels and Zions and Temples truly be the houses of God; may the prophets of Baal be challenged at Carmel; may we not forget the Lord’s past help at Ebenezer. And if your chapel does not have a specific name remember that he who walks among the candlesticks has a white stone with a secret new name for all who come to him. The names of all his churches are indelibly written on the palms of his hands.

Archive 6b Chapel Names

In some instances you learn something about a chapel from its name. Enon has to be a Baptist church. Enon you recall was where John the Baptist baptised because there was much water there. Tabernacles, like God’s house in the Old Testament, are relatively large as are the rarer Temples. Babell Apostolic in Aberdare, South Wales, gets its name from the Welsh word for tent not the place where the tower was built! Bethel means house of God and Zoar (meaning ‘Little place’) should be smaller, just as Rehoboth should be larger, or an extension work, as the name means ‘Room’. It was the name given to a well by Isaac following a time of strife. Perhaps in some instances that thought is in the background. Zoar is, of course, where Lot fled from Sodom and Gomorrah and so suggests a place of refuge from wickedness.
The idea of refuge is also there in the popular Elim, ‘Place of rest’, and the unusual Cave of Adullam, where all in distress, debt or despair resorted to David. The Ark clearly suggests a welcome for all creatures great and small. The name Lighthouse or Beacon, like The Bridge, though not directly from Scripture, make similar points. The name Hebron was probably selected with a similar thought. It was a city of refuge. City of Refuge spells out the point. Gilead, of course, is the place for soothing balm. Welsh Noddfa, like the French L’Abri (used by Francis Schaeffer), both mean shelter or refuge.
The name Elim, the name of an oasis where Israel stayed in the desert, is one of many examples where biblical place names have been adopted. Use has been made of Bethany, where Jesus loved to stay; Bethlehem, perhaps with the thought of its meaning, house of bread; Calvary, Latin for the place of the skull, where Christ died; Emmaus, where after his resurrection he broke bread and Jerusalem, Caersalem (in Wales) or Salem, which means peace. Galilee and Gethsemane also exist. Gilgal, interestingly, is where the Israelites rededicated themselves to God in Joshua’s time. Peniel is where Jacob met God face to face yet lived. Nazareth and Goshen are understandable choices too, as is Eden for there Adam and Eve met with God. Why Ramah or Shiloh should be chosen is not immediately clear, though the latter was where the Tabernacle used to be.

Last part to follow.

Archive 6a Chapel Names

[This article originally appeared in Grace Magazine]

Amazingly Apt Alliteration

What’s in a name?

If your church meets in a chapel, does it have a name? I have belonged to two or three Baptist churches in my time, each named after its location. However, many chapels do have names, especially where there is more than one in a town. Some have quietly dropped these names in recent times, feeling their work is not helped by issuing invitations to ‘Come to Ebenezer’ or ‘Join us at Zion’. Most, however, continue to use these ancient, and often well loved, names. Some new churches have even incorporated a name into the title of the church itself, such as Cornerstone, Immanuel, Gateway, Grace, Lifeline, Trinity, Vineyard or Church of the Good Shepherd. Meanwhile, Rehoboths, Hopes and Providences continue to abound.

Until 1689 Baptists had no chapels as such. Before the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 they had made use of parish churches and other public buildings where possible and then, under threat of persecution, had resorted to using private homes. This arrangement created its own difficulties and so where possible, like other Nonconformists, they built or bought chapels in which to meet. Sometimes congregations would share facilities but more often each church became identified with one specific building. From the 1740s at least the practice began of identifying these buildings with names. As Nonconformity flourished in the 19th Century so each new chapel erected often bore a particular name to distinguish it from others. Soon potentially confusing phrases such as ‘I belong to Hope’ or ‘I’m going to Emmaus’ became common place.
Parish churches have for long ages been traditionally connected with the names of saints, as in St Luke’s, St Philip and St James’s St Michael and All Angels or All Saints. At least one church in Wales bears Peter’s Aramaic name (Cephas) but most Nonconformists in England and Wales eschewed this practice and struck out on different paths. In America they, unimaginatively, speak usually of First Baptist, Second Baptist, Ninth Presbyterian, Tenth. Here names were chosen, mainly from the Bible, for usually obvious reasons. Bethel is ‘House of God’; Emmanuel, ‘God with us’. Providence acknowledges God’s provision of a meeting place, Jireh is ‘The Lord will provide’ and Ebenezer ‘Up until now the Lord has helped us’.

To be continued

Annual Church Meeting

We had our annual church meeting here last night - a quite simple affair of just five items. We were only 9 of the 29 present (two at university, one in Jamaica, one ill, some looking after kids, some rather elderly, etc). We began with prayer and Psalm 103 then received two reports -one general (from the secretary) one financial (from the treasurer). One feels as though we're standing still at times and so it is good to be reminded that is not so.

Members have left and joined, meetings and attempts at outreach have continued, we have had visitors and adherents from various parts of the world. There have been deaths, though not of members, and illnesses; academic endeavours and successes; engagements, a wedding and a silver wedding; special birthdays and anniversaries. We have been able to employ an assistant since last summer. Various practical works on the building have been done. A big change in the year is the beginning of a close relationship with a Presbyterian Korean Church that is using our building on Sunday afternoons. I am now in my 23rd year at Childs Hill. I have preached this year from Exodus, Judges, Ezekiel, 1 John, 1 Peter 1 and the Apostles Creed, etc. Others have also preached for us in my absences. On Wednesdays we have mainly looked at the 1689 Confession.

We continue to give 17.5 % of our general fund to missionary work and similar endeavours and so we also briefly surveyed these works and other broader interests including the camps, conferences, missions, etc, that various members have been involved in.

Financially we do struggle a little but we endeavour to be generous. Even though we are only a small church we gave between £10 and £1500 to around 40 other individuals and societies over the course of last year. Even a small church like ours can have an impact on the lives of many.

We also reaffirmed our three excellent deacons by secret election, which we do annually and took opportunity to thank the various people who teach and accompany and record and cook and clean and do crafts and garden and labour and do all sorts of other mostly practical things to maintain the work that we do.

The local church - that's where it's at today in terms of Christian work. How good is the God we adore.