Couldn't Help Noticing

And now that it’s the end of 2007 ...

A very merry Christ-centred Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you from us at Matthias Media!

10 great reasons for preachers to work at one-to-one ministry

With the help of The Reformed Pastor (written by Richard Baxter) and the Bible (written by God), and in no particular order, I have thought of 10 good reasons why preachers should work hard at one-to-one ministry:

1. In conversation with people, we can find out whether or not they have actually understood what they heard in our sermons and our other teaching. If we are interested in depressing (or confusing) ourselves ourselves with statistics, there are any number of studies which demonstrate how the average hearer retains very little of what is said from the average sermon.

   Among the many possible responses to this is the obvious observation that, scripturally speaking, the models of ministry that we have in the New Testament rely on all sorts of ways of speaking the gospel, not just pulpiteering. When we speak to people at an individual level, it's only a matter of moments until we are able to see whether or not our meaning is clear. If we haven't been clear, we can take all the time we want to explain further any of the basic questions that need to be worked on. If the person is not as sharp or as quick to pick up ideas as others, we can simply go over the basics again.

2. As we talk to people individually, our personal relationship with them becomes stronger, and our communication with them becomes more effective. If people like and respect us, they will be more likely to pay attention to what we say, and give our words due weight as an explanation and application of God's word.

   While we often hear about how hypocrisy in churches turns people away from the gospel, we are less likely to hear the corresponding truth—that, as people see and hear the good example of their minister, they are more likely to respond with trust and obedience in their heavenly Father. More than once the Apostle Paul points people to his own example and those of other Christian leaders as something which confirms the truth of the gospel and lends weight to his words (e.g. 2 Tim 3:10, cf. Phil 2:22; 1 Cor 4:15-17).

3. Personal contact with people also improves our public preaching. It enables us to pray for our hearers more specifically, and apply our public sermons more carefully, thoughtfully and thoroughly.

4. As we talk about individuals about spiritual matters, we ourselves will be more open to being challenged by God's word in our conversations and prayers. If we are dealing with someone about their lying or their gluttony, for example, we will read Scripture and hold conversations in which we ourselves are exposed to rebuke (and encouragement) in our areas of weakness.

   When we are in a personal conversation, there is far more opportunity for specific spiritual application to both ourselves and others. Many ministers know first-hand the joy of going to visit a member of their congregation, only to discover that they come away more strengthened by the conversation than possibly even the person they were speaking to!

5. We will be better able to minister to people during times of crisis. They will be more willing to seek us out, and we will be better able to help them, if we have a pre-existing strong relationship with them.

6. Getting to know people personally, reading the Bible and praying with them sets an example that they will be able to repeat with others—especially members of their own families. This can be particularly significant in men's ministry since the role of the man within a marriage is to work to help his wife and children to grow in godliness. The husband is to “love [his wife] as Christ loved the church” (Eph 5:25), which means doing whatever he can to help her grow in godliness. Likewise, the father has a responsibility not to provoke his children to anger, but to “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6:4).

7. People are more likely to support the work of ministry that they themselves have benefitted from, and one-to-one ministry has an obvious, immediate and direct benefit.

8. When people see and benefit from effective personal ministry first-hand, they are more likely to both do it themselves, and support and encourage others in doing it.

9. Personal ministry gives us the opportunity to assess more carefully and closely the state of someone's spiritual life, and so work out whether we should be encouraging them further in ministry and leadership.

10. Personal ministry reduces the opportunity for laziness and complacency on our part—particularly in a job that can tempt us into both sins by the fact that we are not observed at work by many people for most of the week. Of course, we should always “work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Col 3:23), but our regular contact with others who share our desire to see the gospel go out has great potential to help us in this area.

No doubt there are plenty of other reasons—both practical and theological—for ministering the gospel to others in this one-to-one way. Some of them are related to our concern for God's glory. Some of them are related to obeying the command to love our neighbours as ourselves. Some of them have to do with a right concern and fear for our own spiritual state—that we might live out what we teach “lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Cor 9:27). Some reasons will be more persuasive to us than others, and some will have more theological significance to us than others. Whatever the case, for us, the net result ought to be that we make this type of ministry a significant and regular part of our teaching in church, as well as encouraging others in our congregations to do likewise.

More Baxter on preaching and discipleship

Here's a little more from Richard Baxter on the subject of preaching and discipleship:

Let them that have taken most pains in public, examine their people, and try whether many of them are not nearly as ignorant and careless as if they had never heard the gospel. For my part, I study to speak as plainly and movingly as I can ... and yet I frequently meet with those that have been my hearers eight or ten years, who know not whether Christ be God or man, and wonder when I tell them the history of his birth and life and death as if they had never head it before ...

But most of them have an ungrounded trust in Christ, hoping that he will pardon, justify and save them, while the world hath their hearts, and they live to the flesh. And this trust they take for justifying faith. I have found by experience, that some ignorant persons, who have been so long unprofitable hearers, have got more knowledge and remorse in half an hour's close discourse, than they did from ten years' public preaching. I know that preaching the gospel publicly is the most excellent means, because we speak to many at once. But it is usually far more effectual to preach it privately to a particular sinner ...

(Richard Baxter, quoted by JI Packer in his ‘Introduction’ to The Reformed Pastor, p. 18.)

Remember, this is not a man who was against preaching. No, he was so much for preaching, he wanted the message to reach each one of his hearers with maximum effectiveness.

You can fill bottles (your hearers) by trying to line them up and spray water through a firehose into all of them. Or you can take the same bottles individually, and fill them under the tap. This is not a perfect analogy by any means, but it helps illustrate why both gospel preaching and one-to-one gospel work are worth attempting.

Sex, pets and robots

I do apologize to any CHN readers who will be offended by the nature of this CHN's subject matter. However, the questions raised by Farhad Manjoo in this article on Salon.com's Machinist blog seem to be becoming more and more relevant in our technology-driven society where the boundary between man and machine is becoming increasingly blurry. Manjoo reviews a recent book by David Levy called Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships which was adapted from Levy's PhD thesis on artificial intelligence. Levy makes the point that we're not far away from the day when humans will want to copulate with—and perhaps even marry—robots: the time is coming, says Levy, when “robots will conquer our hearts”.

Does this sound far-fetched, too sci-fi, or too much like an episode of Futurama? Perhaps. But consider Levy's argument. He starts by talking about pets:

Levy points out that like robots, cats and dogs first pushed into human lives by providing services to our ancestors—cats kept homes free of rats, dogs were guards and hunting partners and herders. Love was only a side benefit of such relationships, a feeling cooked up in human brains and exploited by the animals, who got shelter and food and safety from the deal.

But none of that matters anymore. The situation's evolved. Now we think of our pets as extensions of our family, as beings roughly on our level—they're not adults, but for many of us, they're comparable to children. We no longer put our pets to work, of course; their only purpose is love.

Why did our feelings for animals evolve? The human brain is unrelenting in its tendency to anthropomorphize, to subconsciously ascribe human feelings and thoughts to animals and inanimate objects. We began to treat our pets as people because we're given to thinking of them as people—see the Onion's “Vacationing Woman Thinks Cats Miss Her.”

Levy argues it's not such a big step to move from anthropomorphizing pets to anthropomorphizing—and even loving—machines. Though currently machines provide us with many valuable services (for example, my mobile remembers everyone's phone numbers so I don't have to), one day, like pets, we may see them as “beings roughly on our level”. He discusses several psychological studies which show that people have a tendency to treat computers like humans, even though they know perfectly well they're not talking to a human:

One of the most interesting such experiments involves what's known as “reciprocal self-disclosure.” We're usually reluctant to divulge our innermost feelings to strangers, but we often open up when the stranger discloses something about himself first. Would we treat computers the same way—if a computer tells you something about itself, would you respond with something about yourself?

Researchers Clifford Nass and Youngme Moon carried out an experiment to find out. Test subjects were made to chat with a machine that was either dishy or reticent about itself. Reserved machines asked straightforward questions, things like, “What has been your biggest disappointment in life?” or “What have you done in your life that you feel most guilty about?”

The more chatty machine posed queries like this:

This computer has been configured to run at speeds up to 266 MHz. But 90% of computer users don't use applications that require these speeds. So this computer rarely gets used to its full potential. What has been your biggest disappointment in life?

and

There are times when this computer crashes for reasons that are not apparent to its user. It usually does this at the most inopportune time, causing great inconvenience to the user. What have you done in your life that you feel most guilty about?

Guess what? People who chatted with the confessional computer became confessional themselves. They didn't do it on purpose; these folks knew they were talking to a mere machine. But they treated a device they knew was not human as being just slightly so, discussing their guilts and regrets as they would have with another person.

One day, argues Levy, technology will reach a point where machines can be built to look human (or better than human; robots don't get pimples or cellulite), and programmed to mimic human behaviour and respond to human desires in such a way that they will make us love them and—incredible though it may sound—even sleep with them. Levy doesn't just mean programmable in terms of sexual preferences; he also says robots could be programmed to like your taste in movies, books and music, to feign an adorable personality, and of course, to possess unconditional affection for you.

The existence of such robots will expand the range of entertainment technology by turning sex into a “video game”. It will allow those who cannot find anyone to love them to enjoy suitable companionship. It will even “reduce the incidence of infidelity between human couples (infidelity with other humans, that is; Levy thinks that people will come to think of having sex with a robot as not constituting cheating, though he says we'll take some time to adjust to this view)”. (Already there seems to be a market for this sort of thing, if this article about a Japanese man who prefers his dolls to dating is any indication.) It will halt the spread of sexually transmitted disease. It will revolutionize the sex industry (think Gigolo Joe and Gigolo Jane, the mechanical prostitutes in A.I. Artificial Intelligence), and it may even solve the problem of sex trafficking.

All of this highlights the problem with the objectification and commodification of sex. We've managed to divorce sex from reproduction; now we can divorce sex from any form of human relationship (though, arguably, that already happened with the invention of sex toys). But God did not create sex purely for human pleasure (though it is a testament to God's goodness that sex is pleasurable); God created sex to be the loving and emotionally intimate expression of the union of husband and wife in matrimony. Divorcing sex from human relationships—more particularly, the marriage relationship—robs sex of its richness. Instead of the happiness and satisfaction that Levy envisages robot sex partners will bring, I wouldn't be surprised if, instead, we see more unhappiness and dissatisfaction (and, perhaps, greater sexual perversity) as a result.

Let me finish with a few musings about pets, for the logic Levy employs has come out of his observations of certain pet-owners. Is it a good idea to let the pet you love so much eat at your table and sleep on your bed? Should you be giving it presents at Christmas and for birthdays? Should you be dressing it up in funny clothes, and sharing the photos on your Flickr account? Is creating (and updating) your pet's social networking profile on Dogster or Catbook really a good idea (even if it is fun)? Should you include your pet in the list of your children when talking about your family? Should you place your relationship with your pet above your relationship with other human beings? Those among us who are pet-lovers might want to consider all these questions in the light of Levy and his talk of sex with robots, and, as a result, relegate our pets to their proper place in the created order (Gen 1:26).

Preaching vs pulpiteering

I've never really agreed with the evangelical emphasis on preaching, and never quite understood how evangelicals can make so much more of this form rather than of other forms of teaching. It seems to me that the emphasis on public preaching (or, should I say, perhaps, ‘pulpiteering’, as opposed to private and personal ministry through, for example, conversation or Bible study groups) is quite unbiblical.

So I was heartened to pick up Richard Baxter’s old but still revolutionary work The Reformed Pastor recently to discover that he agrees with me. He makes this sharp and relevant observation about ministry through conversation (or, as he calls it, ‘interlocution’):

I hope there are none so silly as to think this conference is not preaching. What? doth the number we speak to make it preaching? Or doth interlocution make it none? Surely a man may as truly preach to one, as to a thousand. And ... if you examine, you will find that most of the preaching recorded in the New Testament, was by conference, and frequently interlocutory, and that with one or two, fewer or more, as opportunity served. Thus Christ himself did most commonly preach.

(Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, Banner of Truth, 1974 [1656] p. 228.)

Baxter gets around the difficulty I'm thinking about by redefining preaching, which is fair enough, I suppose. Here is an extract from RH Mounce's article on ‘Preaching’ in The New Bible Dictionary (InterVarsity Press, Leicester, 1962):

The choice of verbs in the Greek New Testament for the activity of preaching points us back to its original meaning. The most characteristic (occurring more than sixty times) is kerysso, to ‘proclaim as a herald’. In the ancient world the herald was a figure of considerable importance ... A man of integrity and character, he was employed by the king or State to make all public proclamations. Preaching is heralding; the message proclaimed is the glad tidings of salvation. While kerysso tells us something about the activity of preaching, euangelizomai, ‘to bring good news’ (from the primitive eus, ‘good’ and the verb angello ‘to announce’), a common verb, used over fifty times in the New Testament, emphasizes the quality of the message itself. It is worthy of note that the RV has not followed the AV in those places where it translates the verbs diangello, laleo, katangello and dialegomai by ‘to preach’. This helps to bring into sharper focus the basic meaning of preaching.

This excerpt assists us in seeing Richard Baxter's 1656 comment in its correct polemical context. It's almost certain that Baxter was working off the 1611 AV (Authorised Version) translation of the Bible when he spoke of ‘preaching’. However, the excerpt also highlights the wide New Testament vocabulary that revolves around the function of teaching: it's not just proclaiming (or ‘preaching’), but it also includes evangelizing, announcing, speaking, declaring, dialoguing (or possibly disputing, arguing, reasoning, or debating), not to mention plain old didasko—teaching. Each and every one of these teaching activities (and more) come with dominical and apostolic authority, and precedent, and therefore they should alert us to the wide range of possibilities for authoritatively communicating the divine and inerrant word of God to our hearers (which, incidentally, includes the humble task of being a writer—another piece of authoritative communication that the New Testament authors seem to have found time for!).

(I know that Klaas Runia makes a virtually identical point about the New Testament vocabulary of 'teaching' in his book The Sermon Under Attack which came out of his 1983 Moore College lectures. But do you think I could find it while I was writing this? At least my desk is just marginally tidier here in the Matthias Media office. But I just wasted 20 minutes of my life looking for the Runia book. No way would Richard Baxter approve of that. There's gospel ministry to be getting on with, and here am I trying to footnote!)