Opportunities For Full-time Bible Teaching (part 2)

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To depend on him for everything. And that means prayer is vital. We need to get praying that God would glorify his name in this country and extend his rule despite the hindrances we see.

Have you ever thought and read and prayed about what depending on God is going to look like? Depending on God sounds great. Depending on God actually is quite scary because God will do things his way, not ours. And that means that depending on God may mean that our plans get turned upside down halfway through. It means that we might find ourselves needing to be prepared to change everything we were looking to do halfway through.

It means, again, for people going into full-time Bible teaching, it will feel very risky and very uncertain. Depending on God is the way forward, and God will not let us down. God never promised that would be easy. Now, I’ve said a couple of times in the last 5 minutes or so that making the future happen— this quite exciting future, I think— will be quite risky and quite nerve-wracking for those actually going into Bible teaching full-time. So let me just pause on that and unpack that slightly.

What do we mean by that? What will it mean in practise for those going into full-time Bible teaching? Well, as I’ve said, people who go into full-time Bible teaching may need to go ahead with their training uncertain whether there will be jobs when they finish. And there will be times when there are no jobs. You will come out of theological college, you might get a job for a couple of years, and then there might be none, and you might need to go flip hamburgers.

And you might think, why did I bother? 2 years and I’m now flipping hamburgers.

Remember, we are depending on God, and that doesn’t mean there’s no job forever. It just means that at this stage in the process, he wants you to flip hamburgers.

And when we eventually get the jobs, they may not be the sort of jobs we planned on. As Lian is saying, it’s already the case for women. Who are in many ways pioneering this sort of ministry, having to go ahead without knowing that there are jobs out there. But I’m saying that that’s not just for some women, it’s going to be for many men and many women who need to go down the same sort of path, just going, not sure what’s going to happen, seeing what God turns up, breaking the mould.

All this is a far cry, isn’t it, from the security we think, of going into full-time Bible teaching with a mainline denomination. But as I hope you’re beginning to realise from what we’ve said over this weekend already, going to teach the Bible with a mainline denomination is not secure, not any longer.

The denominations are coming apart at the seams, particularly the Anglican one. If you go into the Anglican denomination to teach the Bible, there will be times that you will be forced to either compromise or lose your job. And if you’re not prepared to lose your job in those situations, don’t go.

We have had, I think, for too long people in the Anglican Church and the other churches who, when faced with that decision, have compromised. And that’s not what Bible teaching is all about, is it? We’re not going into it for a career. We’re not going into it for a pension. We’re not going into it for the nice Tudor house.

We’re going into it for the glory of God, to preach his word. And if that means we lose our jobs, so be it. Far worse things have happened in the history of the church to Christians who have been faithful. At least it seems unlikely that we will actually be burnt or fed to lions.

And again, just look back on what I said earlier. As you look back on the history of the advance of God’s gospel in this world, Many of the times when it has most advanced have been times when people have been prepared to take risks and put up with hardships. The early church Christians who were persecuted and fed to lions, the Reformers who were burnt and had to flee in exile to friendlier countries, the evangelical leaders in the 18th century like Wesley and Whitefield who were thrown out of society, thrown out of their churches, lost their livings, Missionaries like Hudson Taylor— I can’t remember what the figures were. I think he buried one wife and 7 children out in China because healthcare was so poor.

It’s not easy.

I hope, by the way, you read the biographies of some of these great Christians of the past. They are such an inspiration to us as to what it looks like to take up our crosses. And follow Jesus in practise.

But those risks, I think, don’t and must not simply face those who decide to go into full-time Bible teaching.

Being involved in spreading the gospel is not an exercise just to be left to the few who decide full-time Bible teaching is for them. It is a mandate placed on every single Christian in whatever role you are. We all have a part to play in this, as we’ve been saying all weekend. I just want to underline now that even when it comes to taking risks and making sacrifices, we all have a role to play. If you’re not going into full-time Christian ministry, you’re going to need to be involved in setting up those church plants, and there are going to be sacrifices as you move to parts of town which might be much less pleasant, as you leave your friends and go and set up new somewhere.

As you make considerable financial hardships to support the work that needs to be done there, as you make considerable personal sacrifices to support individuals who have gone into full-time Bible teaching.

The last 100 years have been a time when Christians in this country have made relatively few sacrifices and taken relatively few risks for the gospel. We have focused, I think, on security and acceptability, on being part of the system and not rocking the boat, on keeping our jobs and keeping being acceptable within society.

The last 100 years have been a time when the cause of Jesus Christ in this country has gone backwards.

Sharply. And it’s not a coincidence.

Far fewer people now than a century ago go to— would call themselves Christians or even are Christians proportionately in this country. Far fewer people come under the sound of the gospel. This is an infinitely less Christian a country than it was in 1902. And the reason for that is a century of not taking risks for the gospel, not making sacrifices for the gospel. I think for the sake of God’s glory and for his gospel, this cannot go on.

Under God, we must be prepared to make sacrifices, to get the gospel out, to tell people about God, to tell people that he rules this world. And the fact they don’t like it doesn’t mean they can’t worship— they mustn’t worship him, don’t need to worship him. To tell people that ahead of them lies judgement with the prospect of heaven and hell the other side, and they’ve got to do something about that. And that won’t be comfortable whether we do it full-time or part-time— sorry, in a paid capacity, full-time Bible teaching, or in a full-time capacity out in a secular job supporting the work with our money and our evenings and our weekends. And our prayers.

What does Jesus say? Mark 8: If anyone would come after me, he must take up his cross and follow me. And I think we need to learn again to take up our crosses and to tread the path of sacrifice for the kingdom that Jesus trod.

So I think that’s a challenge that faces us. Any questions?

Yeah. What do you mean by that, Grace?

No, it may not. But I think the other constraint we have is just the importance of being trained because of what we said this morning, that the way to being effective and productive in Christian ministry is to have these qualities and to have them in increasing measure. And that will involve training. So we may not want to train through the established system, but training we have to have. And actually, even the system is not traditional.

So Oak Hill College is the first college we have had for a long time that is seriously teaching people how to study and to teach the Bible and to have good doctrine. Something like the Apprenticeship Associate Scheme is new in this country. So these are new things that we’re being involved with. The traditional system was you went to a fairly daft college that William and I went to and Nigel went to and weren’t trained at all. What we’re doing in setting up good colleges and apprentice and associate schemes is to begin to think outside the box and think, well, that isn’t training people for ministry.

How do we? So we are in a box-breaking phase in our training already. Any other questions? Yeah. Yeah, Michael, you said that people should go and look to get trained first and then look for a job.

And Paul was saying it costs in the region of £40,000 to get trained. Yeah. How do you envision people to fund themselves through that training? That’s the sort of thing we need to think about, I think. You can begin the process with something like the associate scheme with much less money than that.

I think I would want to say that if you have been doing ministry before you start as an associate, and then you do ministry as an apprentice or an associate, you ought to have begun to develop people, grown people, in those 4 or 5 years— say 3 years before you become an associate, 2 years after— who, if you’ve really done a good job of teaching the Bible, if you’re worth supporting, In that period of time, you should have people who would be prepared to fund you through college. Now, I think that’s already the case. I’m not sure the details, but I think there’s somebody going from TBT who is being funded by the people he has worked with over the years. I think that’s a good model. If you’re— if you’ve not done a good enough job teaching the Bible to people for them to fund you through college, why would they fund you afterwards?

Just a caveat, I suppose there are a lot of churches where there simply isn’t the money to fund an individual, and if you were working in a church in the East End, for example, it might be very difficult. I think that’s exactly right, and there are plans afoot, and that’s still too early to say much more about, to actually set up trusts to fund people. But again, that’s going to place a burden on rich churches like us. We’re not just going to have to fund the people we send. Who’s going to fund the poor people— good but poor people from other poor churches?

It’s going to be us again, isn’t it?

Other questions?

Yes, absolutely. As I said, the system may not allow us to do what we’d like to do, but we’d be silly not to make use of the system and to try to see what we can do within it as much as we can. We mustn’t stop where it tells us to stop, but that doesn’t mean we, we don’t make use of it as much as we can.

Yeah.

Who knows what God can do? And the answer is he can do anything. It’s right to pray for it. I think one of the things— one of the biggest mistakes of the last 50 years or so has been attempting to change the system from within. So one of the biggest errors, I think, in this country in the last 50 years have been Anglicans saying, let’s stay within the system, play the game, and and become bishops, and then we will change the system from within.

All that’s happened is we’ve produced compromised bishops.

So we must never limit what God can do. Let’s pray for it, but let us be careful that we, in our attempt to make that happen, we’re not compromising. And also, whilst we’re waiting for that happening, we’re not stopping doing other things. So again, one of the things that has happened over the last 50 years, people have been saying, look, don’t rock the boat, just give us another few years and we’ll produce some good converted bishops and it’ll all be okay. And it hasn’t been, and we’ve just lost those 50 years.

Right, if there are no more questions, let’s stop there. I think we’ve got 15 minutes before lunch. I think the best way by far of using those 15 minutes would be for us to all go away individually and just think through and pray through some of the things we have learned over this weekend. I think it’s very easy for us to hear lots and to write lots down and then to go away and in the business of London to immediately forget about it. So why don’t we just go— extensive grounds, it’s a nice day— let’s just go and pray and think about what we’ve learned.

Let me just pray for us before we go.

Father God, thank you so much for the gospel you have given us, for the fact you have involved us in this fantastic task of rescuing a people to be with you in all eternity, for the privilege you’ve given us, Father, of being involved with that. Help us, Father, in dependence and trust on you to work hard at this job you have given us to do. Help us, Father, to be mindful of the difficulties but thrilled by the excitement and the challenge and the prospect to realise what a fantastic job it is you have given us so that we will really put our shoulder to the wheel and make it happen. Help us, Father, each one individually, to see how best we can serve in this great project. In Jesus’ name.

Amen.