Archive for June, 2007

Appreciated this blog posting by my good friend Kirk Wellum: Here We Go Again.

Kirk rightly points out the end-term problems with allowing culture to drive theology. Of course, as we have seen in the past 100 years, Baptists are not immune to this. One thinks of the Down-grade controversy in the 1870s and 1880s, the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the 1920s, and the more recent struggles within the SBC. Of course, there is a tension here: how to be within a culture to have a credible witness yet not have one’s core values shaped by that context? There is the rub!

But it can be done, as numerous instances of faithful witness down through the centuries remind us. One solution to the problem is to know our history better. It is not the only solution. One thinks of prayer, for example. But knowing the past is a solution. The writer of Hebrews 11–or should I say, the preacher of Hebrews 11, for I think Hebrews a sermon–knew this truth.

And taking history seriously will itself be a counter-cultural act in a world that is fascinated with the present and adores the future, but loathes the past.

I have been thinking about ecclesial issues intentionally now for a number of years. In part it is a way of resisting the drift of North American Evangelicalism’s laxity when it comes to ecclesiological matters. One critical question for our day is: what is ministry according to the new covenant? What does it look like when “all shall know the Lord” and his Word is written on all of the hearts of the members of the community?

Surely, it entails the minister becoming a true shepherd of the sheep—guiding them and guarding them, being a custos animae. In his response to the award he was given last night at the Centre for Mentorship and Theological Reflection in Toronto (see previous blog entry), Dr. Packer spoke about the God of happy surprises. He described how, when he was called to be a pastor, he responded to the call by insisting that he was a bit of an “odd fish”—a good English expression—and really very shy. How was such a person to do the work of ministry, he asked himself and God. But he sensed God telling him to go forward and he would enable Dr. Packer.

What struck me afterwards as I reflected on this was that Dr. Packer hit the nail on the head regarding pastoral ministry. It is work among sheep, minding them, nurturing them, making sure that they do not fall into a thousand and one calamities. And to do all of this one must get among them.

In other words, the shepherd must smell of sheep! I am sure shepherds when they come home from their labours smell “sheepy.” So must true pastors. Here, Richard Baxter is the guide, is he not? For all of his oddities regarding certain soteriological issues, he laid out a true guidebook to pastoral work in his The Reformed Pastor. It is a very convicting book—but so necessary in our day for Reformed brothers whom God has called to pastoral ministry.

The task of the true pastor is a multi-faceted work: prayer and preaching, mentoring and discipleship, caring and loving. Please brothers who are called to this ministry, give your selves to this task: 1 Peter 5:2, shepherd the flock of God in all of its dimensions.

What follows is a small tribute I was asked to bring at the annual meeting of the Centre for Mentorship and Theological Reflection, Tyndale Seminary, Toronto, where Dr. Packer was given an award for his distinguished contributions to the Body of Christ as an historical theologian.

In the mid-1730s George Thomson (1698-1782), the Anglican vicar of St. Gennys, a windswept village in North Cornwall perched atop cliffs overlooking the Atlantic, wrote to the Nonconformist hymnwriter Isaac Watts (1674-1748) to let the latter know how much he appreciated his hymns and other writings.[1] In his letter, Thomson happened to remark about the way that he and Watts were “differently ordered,” a reflection on their ecclesial differences. Well, I find myself in a similar position to Thomson, though in this case it is the Nonconformist thanking the Anglican Evangelical for his writings.

A few years ago, Dr. Alister McGrath, who has written the biography of Dr. Packer,[2] drew up a short collection of what he called the “core theological writings” from Dr. Packer’s massive literary output between 1954 and 1998. It sought to give the reader interested in Dr. Packer’s work some guidance as to the central ideas of Dr. Packer’s thinking. The pieces included ranged across the entire breadth of Dr. Packer’s contribution to the life and thought of the church, from biblical inspiration to ecclesiological issues, from revival to the cross, from Reformed piety to the importance of recognizing our indebtedness to the past.[3] Reflecting recently on this valuable collection caused me to think about what works of Dr. Packer have been most instrumental in shaping my Christian life and thought.

Undoubtedly, the first would be his classic Knowing God (1973), which I read not long after I became a Christian in the mid-1970s and gave me a vision of the God of the Scriptures: holy and sovereign, Triune and a God of mercy and grace abounding to sinners. Then there would be his Keep In Step with the Spirit (1^st ed., 1984) that was of enormous help in making me realize that the central work of the Holy Spirit in this new covenant era is the glorification of the Lord Jesus (see John 16:14). This was of tremendous help to a believer struggling with the claims of the then-charismatic movement.

Then, Dr. Packer’s helpful essay “Steps to the Renewal of the Christian People” (1983) gave me a morphology for understanding revival that has stayed with me ever since I first came across it in the early 1980s. Fourth, Dr. Packer has helped establish me in the Reformed tradition through books like Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (1961) and his introductory essay to John Owen’s Death of Death in the Death of Christ, which convinced me of the true nature of the biblical gospel.

Finally, may I say that Dr. Packer’s numerous essays on figures of the past, ranging from Thomas Cranmer to Richard Baxter, from George Whitefield to Martyn Lloyd-Jones have been of enormous help to me in knowing how to read history as both a Christian and as an historian. In particular, Dr. Packer’s A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (1990) has been a major shaper in my thinking about that remarkable body of believers, the Puritans. Dr. Packer led me to see the Puritans as sure guides to many areas of the Christian life. Though we are “differently ordered”, I thank God for Dr. Packer: for his enormous contributions to the life and thought of the church—and for the help that he has given, by the grace of God, to this one sinner seeking to be a faithful Christian pilgrim.

[1]For a good study of Thomson’s ministry, see G. C. B. Davies, The Early Cornish Evangelicals 1735-1760. A Study of Walker of Truro and Others (London: S.P.C.K., 1951), 30-34, 37-52. For the letter, see Donald Davie, The Eighteenth-Century Hymn in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 49.

[2] J.I. Packer: A Biography (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997).

[3] The J.I. Packer Collection (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1999).

I am constantly amazed that far too many good preachers who love the doctrines of grace and who are assiduous in their reading of the Scriptures fail to notice one critical aspect about ministry in the New Covenant: it is intimately linked to bulding community and relationships. There is, I suspect, among some of these brothers, a mistaken view of what constituted faithful ministry in the past—among the Reformers, for example, or the Puritans.

Those brothers in the faith from those bygone eras are seen as great expositors and nothing more. Now, there is no doubt that they were preeminentely preachers. And there is no doubt that the Word was central in their ministries. But, without friendships (is not Calvin the great model of friendship here with his passionate friendships with Farel and Viret? Or the spiritual brotherhood among the Puritans, a logical result of which was Baptist ecclesiology) and mentoring relationships (look at the remarkable Baxter in Kidderminister) the Word does not have a context in which to bear fruit.

When I first read the life of that quintessential Reformed loner, A.W. Pink, I thanked God for his great insights into the Word in a day when Reformed truth was not in high demand. But I was horrified (and I do not say that word lightly) by his isolationism and lack of concern for friendship and fellowship. Surely, the love of the truth should lead to a walking in the light with fellow lovers!

Or to put all of this more colloquially: if we think we are being faithful to the New Testament and are not passionately concerned about building Christian community, we are whistling Dixie!

F. W. Boreham (1871-1959) has long been one of my favourite authors. I am not sure where I first encountered his writings. Most likely I came across them in what was then the library at Central Baptist Seminary,Toronto, the first school where I had full-time employment as a teacher. But I took an immediate liking to this author who was the final student C. H. Spurgeon ever accepted into his Pastor’s College. The books I first read were his unique topical sermons on Bible texts that he preached in Baptist Churches in New Zealand and Australia and that summed up the lives of various figures in church history. Boreham’s A Bunch of Everlastings (1920) and A Casket of Cameos (1924) are gems in this regard.

It was with great interest, then, that I picked up this slim study—F. W. Boreham, Lover of Life: F. W. Boreham’s Tribute to His Mentor (Eureka, California: John Broadbanks Publishing, 2007)—by Boreham on the man who was his mentor, Joseph John Doke (1861–1913). Doke was a Devonian from the West Country in England who came out to New Zealand when Boreham had just arrived at his first pastoral charge. The two became close friends and in the matrix of their friendship there was what proved to be a rich experience for Boreham, namely that of being mentored by Doke. It was Doke who helped make Boreham into a voracious reader when Boreham had come to recognize the limitations of his theological training. The solution Doke suggested was reading: “Read my dear man,” he once told Boreham, “Read; and read systematically; and keep on reading; never give up” (p. 8)!

It was also Doke who challenged Boreham to reflect deeply on how to walk with God. On one occasion, by role-playing, he helped Boreham learn how to minister to the sick and dying. As Geoff Pound states in the introduction, this small work is “a helpful vision of what a mentoring relationship might become” (p. x).

Though a frail man physically, Doke was cut from heroic cloth, as his later years well reveal when he helped Mahatma Gandhi in his struggle for human rights in South Africa. On one occasion he even saved Gandhi’s life.

This is the first of a series of Boreham’s books that are being reprinted by the newly-formed John Broadbanks Publishing. It is attractively produced and augurs well for future reprints.

Note: “Chuddigh” on p. 6 should be “Chudleigh.”

To learn more about Boreham, visit: “The Official F W Boreham Blog Site” (http://fwboreham.blogspot.com/). For a brief biography, see Geoff Pound, “F. W. Boreham: Australia’s Greatest Baptist Preacher Ever”, The Baptist Studies Bulletin, 6, No.1 (January 2007) (http://www.centerforbaptiststudies.org/bulletin/2007/january.htm#Worlds%20Greatest ).

This summer, DV, I hope to do some serious writing on one of my favourite Baptists, Samuel Pearce (1766-1799). It is long overdue. I had intended years ago to do a biography by 1999, the bicentennial of his death. Then it was to be 2000, the bicentennial of the appearance of the first biography of him by Andrew Fuller, his close friend. His is a great story and crosses the pathways of some of the great figures of that era.

One of them is John Newton, the bicentennial of whose death is this year, 1807-2007. He wrote to Pearce on one occasion in 1797. The letter begins thus: “My dear sir, I stiled you…Reverend in my last [letter], and you stiled me Honoured–I like the epithet Dear better than either. Let us substitute it for the others if you please should we have correspondence in future.” Typical Newton, ever the loving mentor.

Please pray for this. I know I have asked for prayer about this before. Please pray that all of the Pearce “stuff” that I need to write will get done!

Thank you.