Titus for Church Planters: Part 10
My previous post ended with the question ‘what does this wonderful life look like?’
Firstly, lets look at Titus 2:1-10 and notice what’s different about these exhortations. There are different instructions to different people categories. They assume different roles and different temptations.
What are the temptations facing older men? To be grumpy or to pick arguments or to be cynical, perhaps? So Paul says: ‘Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.’ (2:2)
They are to endure. Caleb is 85 and still wants to be in the midst of the action. He’s not retired from serving God. We’re going to talk about younger people following the example of older people. But that’s a two-way street. For that to happen older people need to be ‘worthy of respect’. You want people to look at you and think, ‘I want to be like them’. You don’t want them saying, ‘I hope I don’t lose my radical edge like that.’
What about older women? What are their temptations? Maybe to be a bit rebellious. Or to criticize other people, especially younger women: ‘they’re not the wives or mothers they should be, they don’t serve in the church as they should’. I do hear this from older women! What does Paul say? ‘Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good.’ (2:3)
What about younger women? ‘Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no-one will malign the word of God.’ (2:4-5) It’s not that younger women can’t have a career, but if they are wives and mothers that’s the primary place where they’re to serve – and to be content with that, even in a culture that often despises those activities. Last week in The Guardian there was a review of a new book by former Observer Political Editor and now full-time mother, Gaby Hinsliff. The review said:
If you do as Hinsliff has done, and hang up your working suits in exchange for a Cath Kidston apron, the danger is that the once-dynamic ‘career mother’ can suddenly, and overwhelmingly, be replaced by a woman who feels like a nobody. How very true this is. Hinsliff’s description of mums at the school gate who had once ‘been somebody and are now mainly somebody’s parent’ is spot on.[1]
Younger men? Only one word of exhortation for them: ‘encourage the young men to be self-controlled’ (2:6). But that does cover the temptations young men face! Lust, ambition,and impatience.
Then Paul has a word for Titus himself. Here’s a message for our gospel community leaders: ‘In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.’ (2:7-8)
And then a word for slaves or, in our day, employees: ‘Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Saviour attractive.’ (2:9-10)
What I want you to notice is that Paul has a different exhortation for different groups. Different people have different roles and face different temptations. Don’t assume other people should be like you. Don’t assume you should be like other people. ‘Act your age,’ really is good advice.
If you’re in your twenties, don’t live like a teenager – on your Xbox all the time. It’s time for you to take responsibility in your home, work and gospel community. If you’re in your forties or fifties don’t spend your time wishing you were still young and fit or young and beautiful. Live life in the present. Enjoy being the age you are.
In your gospel communities, home groups or bible studies you might want to work out what you would say to these different groups. What are the distinctive roles in which each group must be faithful? What are the distinctive temptations they face? How does Titus 2 speaks to these different roles and temptations?
Will you be my Facebook friend? Part 6
Many people struggle to do everything you want to do. But I can give an extra hour a day. I have the secret. Thank what you could with an extra hour: time with the children, doing mission, reading your Bible, learning a new skill. What is the answer? Stop using Facebook. On average Facebook users spend 20 hours a month on Facebook. That is the average which means getting on for 250 million people are spending an hour a day on Facebook. You could stop. Some people do not have a Facebook page and somehow life goes on. And you get a whole hour each day.
Some of you have little time for community and missional life because you are spending too much time on Facebook or watching television or surfing blogs. You are opting for disembodied life over embodied life.
Now disembodied life is easier. But it is less fulfilling, less real and less satisfying.
Embodied life is harder. But it is more fulfilling, more real, more satisfying. It is more substantial – you can touch it, feel it, embrace it!
One study found that over half of young women spend more time talking to people online than face-to-face. Another study found that for every hour we spend on our computers, face-to-face interaction falls by thirty minutes. The more people engage online, the less able they are to engage offline. Real world communication feels more threatening, less natural, less normal.
I was talking to the wife of one of leaders in The Crowded House. She was describing how many people struggle to keep up with old friends. They are often off pulled away from church and mission to visit people elsewhere in the country. And Facebook perpetuates this. The result is stress and thin relationships. In contrast she talked about as a couple they recognised that God has placed them in their city, in a physical place with physical bodies with all the limitations that involves. So their focus is on the people in their Christian community and their neighbourhood. They do not give a lot of time to “keeping up” with past relationships. They focus on their present time and their present place. As a result they have relationships that are deep and significant.
Facebook encourages you to live elsewhere. The gospel encourages you to live life here and now.
- You can tend your Farmville farm or you can get an allotment.
- You can catch up with friends on Facebook or you can go out on a cold, dark night to see real friends.
- You can catch up with “Friends” by watching the latest episode on the television or you can serve your neighbours.
- You can build a new city on Sims or you can be the city of God set on a hill with your Christian community.
Here is the test: Am I using Facebook to enhance real world friendships or to replace them?
Titus for Church Planters: Part 9
Titus 2 begins: ‘You, however must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine’ (2:1) or ‘But as for you teach what accords with sounddoctrine’ (ESV). Chapter two describes what Titus must do in contrast to the self-willed, self-righteous teachers of 1:10-16. In chapter one Titus must ‘silence’ false doctrine (1:11). In chapter two he must ‘teach … sound doctrine’. Look a chapter 2:1: ‘You, however, must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine.’ The word ‘sound’ means ‘healthy’. This is the truth that leads to spiritual and emotional health.
An invitation to a wonderful life
Cretan culture was characterised by drunkenness and promiscuity – a bit like my city of Sheffield. Paul’s message clearly involved turning from that way of life. But it wasn’t a message of abstinence. He wasn’t trying to persuade people to give up a life of fun for a life without fun.
Look at verse 10: ‘… so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Saviour attractive.’ If Christians live in the way Paul describes then their lives will be attractive.
Paul isn’t even trying to persuade Christians to see their new life as attractive. He’s saying that unbelievers will be attracted to this new life in Christ. It’s not some con-trick. It’s not Paul saying, ‘Pagan life might look like fun, but really they’re all miserable while we Christians have deep joy – so deep you can’t it see most of the time!’ No, Paul is saying unbelievers will find life in Christ attractive. This is the attractive life, the beautiful life – to us and to unbelievers. People will look at our lives as say, ‘I want to live like that,’ ‘I want to grow old like that’.
In the next few posts we’ll be answering the question ‘what does this wonderful life look like?’
Will you be my Facebook friend? Part 5
Facebook offers us the ability to redefine ourselves and construct our own world without being constrained by others. But our bodies remind us that this is not our world. We literally bump into people. We collide. You cannot look round this room and say, “This is my world and I’m at the centre.” Our bodies remind us that we live in a world created by the words of someone else, the words of God. And we live in a world created for someone else, for the glory of God.
It is the same with porn and online role play games by the way. They offer liberation from the body. You compensate for your real world inadequacies, fears, struggles with a fantasy world in which you are potent and successful with endless beautiful people offer themselves to you.
Cyberspace offers an escape from the limitations of the body. And this version of “salvation by Facebook” is the latest embodiment (pun intended) of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism. Gnosticism saw the spiritual or mental as good and the body as evil and limiting. So salvation was an escape from the constraints of the body.
Tim Challies talks about “digital disincarnation”.[1] The incarnation is the word we use to describe the event of God becoming man, of God taking on human flesh. But now in cyberspace we are trying to “disincarnate”, to throw off the limitations of human flesh. Challies says: “Here is the cyberworld I can be popular. I can be powerful. I can be somebody. And yet I do it all at the expense of who I really am.”[2]
In contrast, the gospel affirms the body. The gospel says that human beings were made by God with a body and God declared that to be good. We were made with bodies in his image to reflect his image in the world. More than that, God himself takes on human flesh when Jesus becomes a man. Christ “appeared in a body [and] was vindicated by the Spirit.” (1 Timothy 3:16) And more than that, the body of Jesus was physically raised from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus was not an escape from the body, but the redemption of the body. So the gospel encourages us to engage in embodied life and embodied relationships.
So Paul says to the Christian community in Thessalonica: “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.” (2:8) “But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavoured the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face.” (2:17 ESV) Not just words, but a shared life. Not just words, but face to face.
Professor Barry Wellman of Toronto University talks of “networked individualism”.[3] We can move from one online community to another. We can drop, forget, invite or ignore Facebook “friends” at will without consequences. We build our own worlds.
God has placed you together with the people in your congregation. You did not chose them; God chose them. And that diversity of personalities, backgrounds, social class, ethnicities is used by God to make you grow in Christ and to display the unifying power of the cross.
But in cyberspace you are god. You chose who will be in community with you. You create your own communities of convenience that mean you are never challenged. Or if you are challenged or relationships become costly you can just scuttle off to new relationships. As a result we never grow. We are permanently immature.
In cyberspace no relationship is meaningful and every relationship is expendable. The result is loneliness in the midst of many Facebook “friends”. I know people for whom Facebook is a place to hide. You can think of yourself surrounded by friends without ever having to engage with the challenges of real world relationships. You have a lot of friends, a “loose electronic Diaspora”,[4] without ever really being known. Your idolatries, your selfishness, your struggles are never seen. Instead a lot of people get the sanitised version of you. Moreover most of us praise in public and rebuke in private. So, because Facebook is a public medium, people are going to positive comments. Challenges to our behaviour are left unsaid. Facebook is a safe place to hide from real relationships.
[1][2] Tim Challies, The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion, Zondervan, Available here from amazon.co.uk.
[3] Cited in Tim Challies, The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion, Zondervan, forthcoming.
[4] James Harkin, “Living in Cyburbia,” The Daily Telegraph, 29 January 2011, telegraph.co.uk.
Can you help me think about prayer?
I am considering writing something on prayer and how people relate to God. I would love to know what people find helpful in this area and what they struggle with. So I’ve put together an online survey.
It would be a great help if you could fill this in and also pass on the link to other people.
The survey should only take a few minutes to complete and you can skip any of the questions.
All answers will be anonymous.
Thank you.
The link is http://prayerlife.questionpro.com/.
I’ll keep the survey open until the end of May.
Here’s a list of the break-out sessions for our Triniarian Life conference on 8-9 June in Sheffield
- Ascension or incarnation: Which shapes a biblical approach to mission?
- Reaching Muslims through gospel communities
- Reaching families through gospel communities
- Reaching rural areas through gospel communities
- Reaching the world through gospel communities
- Reaching the needy through gospel communities
You can find more information here.
Titus for Church Planters: Part 8
Titus 2:1-15
Let me tell you about John Miller. John led the church plant in London with which we were involved before we came to Sheffield. He was converted in his twenties after being in the merchant navy.
He played a huge role in my development as a leader, as a Christian, and as a man. I’d only been married three years and we’d just bought a house. So I went to John for advice on DIY, on cars, on life. One of the first things we did together was replace the guttering on our house.
He and I co-led the church, but he was ten years older than me and it was clearly a relationship in which he was the senior partner. When we disagreed I followed his lead. I trusted his wisdom more than my own.
He was a big influence on my preaching. He knew how to make an impact in a sermon. I learned from him a willingness to try new things and to change what we were doing for the sake of mission. We were both working full-time and saw him pouring himself into ministry. He used to prepare sermons on the train to and from work. He had a big vision for world mission. More than anything, he taught me how to pray. Prayer for John wasn’t a duty. He prayed as if everything depended on God.
I thank God for his influence on my life.
Will you be my Facebook friend? Part 4
In this series of posts I want to highlight two potentially dangerous appeals of Facebook. The first was the way that Facebook purports to allow me to recreate my world through my words to gain approval. The second potentially dangerous appeal of Facebook is this: On Facebook I can escape the limitations of my body.
Our bodies limit us to a particular place and time. We can only be in one place at a time.
But Facebook promises to connect us with everyone everywhere at anytime. It promises omniscience (knowing everything) and omnipresence (being everywhere). But it cannot deliver – not if you want real relationships and real community.
We have already said that the internet encourages us to skim read everything. “Internet users skim text rather than read it. In fact, ‘skimming’ is now the dominant metaphor for reading.”[1] Facebook extends the same idea into personal relationships. We now do skim befriending, surface friendships
Facebook offers intimacy without responsibility. People say things on Facebook to people or about people that they would never say if they were physically in the room with them.
People say things about people they would not say in the flesh. A church planter friend told me Facebook has caused havoc on his neighbourhood because of the way it spreads of gossip. Seventeen percent of employees in large companies have been reprimanded for words they have written on Facebook.
People say things to people they would not say in the flesh. A recent newspaper article highlighted one lawyer who has dealt with 30 divorce cases in the last year and Facebook has been implicated in them all.[2] Online flirting is leading to real world relational breakdown.
Proverbs 10:19 says: “When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise.” Facebook does not cause sin, but it can accelerate it because it liberates it from the constraints of the body.
[1] Tim Challies, The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion, Zondervan, Available here from amazon.co.uk.
[2] Richard Alleyne, “Facebook Increasingly Implicated in Divorce,” The Daily Telegraph, 21 January 2011, www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8274601/Facebook-increasingly-implicated-in-divorce.html.
Titus for Church Planters: Part 7
Titus stresses the importance of the appointment of Elders. In my last post we looked at what, as church members we expect our leaders to be like. This post will look at the question, what should you expect leaders to do?
So, what do elders do? Verse 7 says ‘Since an overseer manages God’s household …’ In other words elders manage the church. They ‘oversee’ the life of the church. That involves a certain amount of organisation.
But their central role is described in verse 9: ‘He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.’ An elder has two tasks: (1) he is to encourage people by sound doctrine and (2) refute those who oppose it. John Calvin says: ‘A pastor needs two voices, one for gathering the sheep and the other for driving away wolves and thieves.’[1]
My family joke about the telephone voice that I use when making complaints or handling cold callers. I have this stern tone. Elders might not change their tone. But they need two voices: a voice that encourages and a voice that refutes.
This reflects Paul’s exhortation to Titus. Titus is both to appoint leaders and model leadership. What is Titus to do? Silence (1:11), rebuke sharply (1:13), teach (2:1, 2, 3, 9, 15), encourage (2:6), encourage and rebuke (2:15), remind (3:1), warn (3:10).
Silencing, rebuking, teaching, encouraging, warning. Don’t be surprised if elders rebuke and warn and silence! It’s our God-given job.
Encouragement we’re good with – we all like a bit of encouragement. But we don’t like the idea of silencing and rebuking. Our culture doesn’t like authority. ‘Personal freedom.’ ‘You’re not the boss of me.’ These are the great mottos of our age. We do not like authority. But then neither did the culture of Crete. They were rebellious, insubordinate (1:10). But leaders are to rebuke wrong behaviour and counter false teaching.
Why? Is Paul some kind of tyrant who just wants everything done he way? Look at verse 1. Paul’s concern is ‘the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness’. His aim is godliness, people who are like God, who commend God. But now look at verse 16: the rebellious people ‘claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him’. Instead of godly people, they are godless people, they deny God. Paul’s aim is people who ‘do what is good’ (2:14; 3:8, 15). But the rebellious people ‘are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.’
We’re not talking about differences of opinion. We’re talking about ‘the truth that leads to godliness’ (1:1) or a denial of God that leaves people ‘unfit for doing anything good’ (1:16).
Why does this matter? Look at verse 11: ‘They must be silenced, because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach.’ Remember first century churches all met in homes. In verse 7 Paul refers to the church as ‘God’s household’. So ‘disrupting whole households’ was Paul’s way of referring to the groups who met in ‘every town’ in verse 5. Really and truly Paul is talking about what we call ‘gospel communities’. So he’s not talking about some crazy heretics away in Athens or London. He’s talking about people disrupting gospel communities here in Crete and in Sheffield.
Trust me. When I have to rebuke someone I don’t think, ‘Great, I love confrontation.’ It’s the job we all hate doing. But what I think about is the other people in the church whose walk with God is being disrupted. It’s my love for them than makes me go through with it.
I want us to appreciate and enjoy the structures God has given us in the church. Trust those structures. Rest in them. They provide a safe place to grow as a Christian.
Hebrews 13:17 says: ‘Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account.’ [Which, by the way, is the sobering word to leaders!] ‘Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.’
‘Obey your leaders and submit to their authority.’ We’ll look more at what that means – and doesn’t mean – when we look at chapter three. But for know, let me change the question. ‘Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden,’ says Hebrews. Instead of asking, ‘What does it mean to obey?’ or ‘What are the limits of our submission?’ let’s ask, ‘How can I make my leaders’ work a joy?’ Ask your leader: ‘How can I make your work a joy?’
[1] Cited in John Stott, The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus, BST, IVP, 1996, 179.
Will you be my Facebook friend? Part 3
In the previous post in this series we saw one potentially dangerous appeal of Facebook is the way it allows me to recreate my image and my world through my words to gain approval. Does this work? Does self-creation or self-justification through Facebook work?
Alex Jordan of Stanford University found people often feel depressed after spending time on Facebook.[1]
To understand why you have got to remember that the medium is the message. How we communicate shapes what we communicate. And Facebook is geared to project positivity.
You upload pictures of people having a good time, not pictures of you feeling bored or miserable. Even the jokey, early morning shots of people looking rough are really saying, “Look me after I’ve had a good time.” Compared to all these photos, the day I have just had at work seems dull or sad.
People can “Like” something you have written. But there is no option to “Dislike”. So to get a response you have to phrase things in positive terms. No-one is going to click “Like” to “Had a miserable day at work.” So instead you put, “Looking forward to watching a movie with a tub of ice cream.” “Like”! No-one is going click “Like” to “My rabbit died yesterday.” So instead you put, “Fluffy was a brave little bunny until the very end.” “Like”!
So everyone’s Facebook’s face wears a smile – whatever the reality behind the mask. We are all spin doctors, presenting upbeat, propaganda versions of our lives. (The exceptions are those with disorders like anorexia who often compete at misery.)
So what the research found was this: You are feeling miserable. You go onto Facebook. Everyone you know appears happy. So you feel a loser. All the time you forget that somewhere someone else is looking at your upbeat, unreal Facebook page and feeling like they are missing out.
Here is the test of whether you are facing this danger: Is your Facebook self more attractive than your real world self?
The real question is: Am I trying to do self-identity or am I finding identity in Christ? Or, Am I looking for approval from others through my words or approval from God through his gospel word?
The gospel of Jesus says that Jesus recreates me in the image of God and Jesus is recreating the world. God’s kingdom is extended as his word is proclaimed.
- Jesus recreates me – not me
- Jesus recreate me in God’s image – not my image
- Jesus recreates the world – not me
- Jesus recreates God’s world – not my world
- Jesus creates God’s world with God at the centre – not me at the centre
- What creates and recreates are God’s word – not my words
It is these truths that enable me to be truly human, fit for the purpose for which I was created. And this is what liberates me from self-obsession to enjoy the goodness and grace of God. Knowing the real God is better than Facebook.
[1] Alex Jordan, “Misery Has More Company Than People Think,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, cited in Libby Copeland, “The Anti-Social Network,” Slate, 26 January 2011, slate.com/id/2282620.
