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“My good ministering brother, have you got an empty church? Do you want to fill it? I will give you a good recipe, and if you will follow it, you will, in all probability, have your chapel full to the doors.Burn all your manuscripts, that is No. 1. Give up your notes, that is No. 2. Read your Bible and preach it as you find it in the simplicity of its language. And give up all your Latinized English. Begin to tell the people what you have felt in your own heart, and beseech the Holy Spirit to make your heart as hot as a furnace for zeal. Then go out and talk to the people. Speak to them like their brother. Be a man amongst men. Tell them what you have felt and what you know, and tell it heartily with a good, bold face; and, my dear friend, I do not care who you are, you will get a congregation.
But if you say, “Now, to get a congregation, I must buy an organ.”
That will not serve you a bit.
“But we must have a good choir.”
I would not care to have a congregation that comes through a good choir.
“No,” says another, “but really I must a little alter my style of preaching.”
My dear friend, it is not the style of preaching, it is the style of feeling. People sometimes begin to mimic other preachers, because they are successful. Why, the worst preachers are those who mimic others, whom they look upon as standards preach naturally. Preach out of your hearts just what you feel to be true, and the old soul-stirring words of the gospel will soon draw a congregation. “Where the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.”
But if it ended there, what would be the good of it? If the congregation came and listened to the sound, and then went away unsaved, of what use would it be? But in the next place, Christ acts as a net to draw men unto him. The gospel ministry is, in God’s Word, compared to a fishery; God’s ministers are the fishermen, they go to catch souls, as fishermen go to catch fish.
How shall souls be caught? They shall be caught by preaching Christ. Just preach a sermon that is full of Christ, and throw it unto your congregation, as you throw a net into the sea; —you need not look where they are, nor try to fit your sermon to different cases; but, throw it in, and as sure as God’s Word is what it is, it shall not return to him void; it shall accomplish that which he pleases, and prosper in the thing whereto he hath sent it.
The gospel never was unsuccessful yet, when it was preached with the demonstration of the Spirit and of power. It is not fine orations upon the death of princes, or the movements of politics which will save souls. If we wish to have sinners saved and to have our churches increased; if we desire the spread of God’s kingdom, the only thing whereby we can hope to accomplish the end, is the lifting up of Christ; for, “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.”
Courtesy of http://theologica.blogspot.com/2007/03/spurgeons-recipe-for-church-growth.html
From the sermon ‘Christ Lifted Up’ : preached July 5, 1857.
The great examples of the Old Testament, the ones who were an example to the people of God are called ‘blameless’ (Noah; Gen 6:9, Abraham; Gen 17:1, David: 2 Sam 22:24, Ps 18:22-24, Job; Job 1:1). The people of God are called to be blameless as an outworking of the agenda setting ‘gathering’ at Sinai (Deut 18:13). It is those who are blameless who will dwell in the sanctuary of the Lord, who will inherit the land, which is inextricably tied to being part of God’s people (cf. Eph 5:5) (Ps 15:2, 37:18, 101:6; Proverbs 2:21, 20:7, 28:10).
As we come to the New Testament we inevitably find this theme continuing. In 1 Thessalonians 2:10 Paul talks about how he and the others who came with him were ‘holy, righteous and blameless’ among them. We know from Ephesians that this means they lived lives of love, forgiving and caring for each other. They modelled ‘church’ in front of these new Christians. Read the rest of this entry »
In the last post on this subject we saw that the Robinson-Knox view is that ‘church’ is to be understood primarily in terms of the ‘gathering’. Although Robinson and Knox then go in different directions from here it appears to be agreed, and is certainly taken on by others, that Church is primarily the gathering of God’s people around God’s Word.
The purpose of this paper is not so much to engage with Robinson or Knox per se, but rather to look at the idea that ‘church’ is principally about a more specified ‘gathering’.
It is my contention that although ‘church’ is not less than the gathering, it is in fact gloriously more than the gathering. In my view the ‘gathering’ is determinative of what it is to be ‘church’ rather than exhaustive of its meaning.
In this post I want to look at the issue of God’s people being holy and blameless and how that affects our understanding of what the church is.
In Ephesians 5:25-17 Paul tells us that Jesus loved the church and gave his life for her. It seems clear that ‘church’ here is synonymous with God’s people. Read the rest of this entry »
This weekend Jo and I went to a conference run by ‘Radstock’.
For those who don’t know Radstock is a mission organisation with a difference… It links churches with churches for global mission. Radstock itself does not raise money, send missionaries or anything like that. Instead it facilitates a network of churches that link together throughout the world seeking to plant churches. (http://www.radstock.org/whereweare.html – check out the map… it looks like a doomsday scenario… hopefully of course it is the complete opposite!)
The conference this year saw people from Russia, Albania, the USA, Mongolia, the UK and Ireland come together to discuss mission throughout the world. It was really fantastic to see how a church from Luton had linked with a church in Albania and were looking to plant together in Macedonia. And it isn’t just a case of ‘church twinning’, a nice, comfortable ‘buddy partnership’. There are very genuine relationships between churches with the aim of planting churches for Christ.
What was particuarly encouraging was to see how some churches had avoided the ‘big brother (West)/little brother (East) syndrom that we can be so prone to. There seems to be a very real and humble partnership between the church in Luton and that in Albania where they serve and love each other, and with the result being churches planted!
As a result we as a church are looking at how we can partner with other churches in the task of church planting. Two areas we
are looking at in particular are South Africa and France… So if your church has a passion to reach people in these areas, or you know of any churches that do, let us know…
The view that church in the New Testament is to be understood primarily as ‘gathering’ is known as the ‘Robinson-Knox’ view named after its chief proponents Donald Robinson and Boughton Knox. It has also been more recently pursued by Peter T. O’Brien. However the ‘Robinson-Knox’ view really refers to an approach, rather than a conclusion as it appears that both Robinson and Knox disagreed over what exactly this meant. The approach was one of looking at the usage of ‘ekklesia’ in the New Testament and drawing conclusions from there. Having said that there are some similarities, and it is these that I want to enagage with. One of these points of agreement is that ekklesia refers to the perpetual gathering of God’s people in heaven and earthly expressions of that in the ‘local church’.
So Knox writes;
“Since Christ is now in heaven, it is there that the New Testament thinks of him as building his church, because the church of Christ is the assembly which he calls into being around himself…”[1]
Church, as an earthly expression is to be understood as the local congregation, i.e. in terms of the people rather than a building according to Robinson.[2] Peter O’Brien clarifies this “…each of the various local churches are manifestations of that heavenly church, tangible expressions in time and space of what is heavenly and eternal.”[3]
This argument places the local church at the centre of what it is to manifest the heavenly church. It helpfully guards against the view that the denomination is the earthly expression of church, as Donald Allister puts forward.
However the question I want to ask is ‘when is the local church not a church?’ Read the rest of this entry »
Donald Robinson engages with the view that there are references in Acts to the ‘Church’ on earth beyond that of the local church, e.g. Acts 9:31. He argues that this reference does not negate the fact that primarily ‘church’ in the New Testament, when refering to a particular area rather than the heavenly gathering, means the local church.
I agree with this, but wonder whether this means it is restricted to the physical ‘event’ or rather does it mean the local body of believers, whether meeting as a whole group or not…
I’m planning on looking at this in more detail, but I wanted to Read the rest of this entry »
