Faith

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Every square inch

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Every square inch

This afternoon found me in a series of massive barns praying over chickens. Let no one say a pastor’s job is boring.

And yes, I am serious. My friend Mat raises chickens. A lot of them. In fact, he has eight barns with forty thousand chickens in each barn. They run free and look quite content.

The problem was this. A mysterious bacteria had invaded the barns. In spite of every possible precaution being taken and the vet pronouncing the barns to be in outstanding shape, chickens were dying. And antibiotics are not an option for this business.

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The inconvenient truth about truth

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The inconvenient truth about truth

I want to declare an inconvenient truth. Very inconvenient, in fact.

No, I am not wading into the climate change debate.

But Al Gore posed an interesting question when he titled his movie this way. Why I find it interesting is that (in my educated guess) neither Al Gore nor many of the people who watched his movie actually believe that truth even exists, at least in an absolute sense.

What people really believe is summed up in Oprah Winfrey’s recent speech: “Speaking your truth is the most powerful weapon you have.” She borrowed a phrase heavily used in today’s culture.

In the school of ministry I am currently leading in the USA, and in my “big book of doctrine” titled Landmarks, which has just come off the press, I start not with the doctrine of God, but with the issue of truth. And in particular, the truth of the Bible.

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The doorway to divine power

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The doorway to divine power

Thirty-seven years ago, with the help of a brave band of a dozen university students, I started a church in the cathedral city of Durham in northern England. At the time, the situation looked totally bleak. Everything was ranged against us. We had no money. Hardly anyone even had a job. I had been falsely accused of being involved in a cult. The university launched an inquiry, and I was nearly thrown out of my PhD programme. All the pastors of the town were upset with me for overturning the ecclesiastical applecart, fearing that my new church would steal their members, which was never my intention.

I had given up my scholarship, funded by the Canadian government, in an act of faith that God would provide. I felt he had called me to do something significant in England, yet I had arrived at a place of desperation where it seemed I had hit a brick wall. There were moments when it looked pretty dark.

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"The gates are open!"

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"The gates are open!"

Retracing some steps this week unlocked a remarkable memory.

Elaine and I were visiting our friends James and Libby, who pastor a church in northern Indiana I have preached in from time to time.

James’ dad was a fine Christian gentleman who used to take me out for breakfast when I visited. His first name was Moses, but his brothers had teased him over it so he went by his middle name, which I always thought was Jay. In reality it was simply J. He had been born Amish and that’s how his birth certificate (if he had one) came out.

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The main thing

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The main thing

How many times do churches descend into disagreements over petty issues? How many times do we disagree and divide over peripheral matters? Differences are inevitable, but it’s tragic when we lose our fellowship over them. A church I knew of split over where the flower arrangements were placed.

There are in fact many things that divide us as Christians, even though we all assume and accept the authority of Scripture.

Some of the things that divide us are not petty at all. They are in fact big, at least from a theological viewpoint. Baptism, church government, gender roles, perspectives on the sovereignty of God, eschatology (end-times), styles of worship and preaching are a few that come to mind.