Personal – I was ordained forty years ago today

Today is an important day for me.  Forty years ago, 18th December, 1983, I was ordained, in Christ Church, Virginia Water. I made promises, and heard promises made, which have been my watchword for life.

Forgive me, therefore, a longer, and more personal article. To state the obvious, this is about me – although I cannot conceive of ‘me’ without the context of marriage and family. One mentor once said to me, that marriage would either halve my ministry, or double it.  He was wrong.  More than double. I don’t want spotlight my family more than this, but they need to be listed first.

Otherwise, of all the people who have had a decisive impact on my ministry, the towering influences has been John Stott.  I learnt what faithful, biblical exposition from him, as I devoured each Bible Speaks Today volume as it was published; a series he edited.  I learnt what engaging with contemporary culture meant from him, and cross-cultural communication, and having a breadth of fellowship, and a commitment to the deep bedrock of orthodox Anglicanism.  And it was a huge privilege to have him edit my first book, and contribute to that series Bible Speaks Today myself.

It was from Uncle John (certainly never, ‘John’, but never ‘Dr Stott’ either) that I learnt the habit of daily bible reading, covering the whole Bible in a year, and the Testament and Psalms, twice. Yes, fellow Anglicans, I could have found that in the lectionary but it was he who pointed me to the challenge and treasures in the M’Cheyne calendar of daily bible readings, and even this morning I used a photocopy of the old, now worn-out sheet I bought for 8p from the Banner of Truth.

I have kept all the bibles I have used over the years in that habit. Each one is marked up, highlighted, written in. Some have lost their spines, there are torn pages and coffee stains – all are old friends.  I don’t have a consistent pattern for keeping a track of my notes, because what is important is the daily, fresh engagement; a bible is replaced when it has too many grooves in it, to stop me from seeing something fresh.  And I developed the habit at some stage, of never using that bible for sermon prep.  Whatever else I am working on, if that bible hasn’t been opened, I know I haven’t read the bible for myself that day.

If I were writing to twenty-year-old me, I think the first thing I would say is: this is a good, substantial habit which never grows stale.  If God has kept me faithful, this is the primary tool he has used: sitting under his Word with 2 Timothy 3:16 as my prayer: Lord, Teach me, Rebuke me, Correct me, and Train me in Righteousness. That book keeps you on your knees as a permanently repentant believer.

Other preachers have left their marks on me.  Some I have copied for a season, many I have studied and watched.  Dick Lucas above all, but he is (and if you’ve ever heard him, you’ll know this) inimitable.  There’s something uniquely fresh about the way he handles the bible that I have never been able to capture.

With hindsight, the person with whom I seem to have had the greatest affinity was Tim Keller – although I say this admitting that I only ever met him once or twice, and I’m not trying to claim anything grand.  But as I read Collin Hansen’s recent biography of him, I was struck by how many similarities in source material there have been.  Like Keller, I was struck early on by Richard Lovelace, he in the classroom, me in Lovelace’s book, Spiritual Dynamics of Spiritual Life which I bought in my early twenties and have probably re-read more than any other I own. Like Keller, I was doused in Reformed and Puritan writings. I encountered the Biblical Counselling movement, and theologically informed church planting. And it is he who last year made me face up to the bracing challenge of reading Charles Taylor. Keller’s book Center Church expresses more eloquently and formidably a philosophy of ministry that I deeply adhere to but could never explain so well.  Again, my letter to younger me would say, read Lovelace, read Keller, and then read what they have read.

Because reading deep theology has also been a standard.  I was privileged to have had a rich and orthodox theological training at New College, Edinburgh, under Tom Torrance.  I say privileged, because I did crashingly badly at my A levels, and scraped into a Scottish university because their entrance criteria were more generous. I was so, so lucky/fortunate/blessed to get in. But what treasure! I was given Calvin, Augustine, Athanasius as primary texts, and early on. And both biblical languages. At that time, no English University gave the option of studying a coherent Systematic Theology, and doing so for four years was a uniquely Scottish experience.  I only realised how special that platform was when I saw my English-educated peers scrambling as they met the riches of the past for the first time, or came under the influence of better-formed American or Australian mentors.

And so big books have been my friends, with a love of those from the past.  And that has helped navigate the cross-currents of ministry, because you can therefore access other people’s richer thoughts and experiences, their answers, expectations and assumptions. From older times, facing some identical, some different challenges. Once the bar has been set high for you at an early stage, it is just a matter of habit to keep it there.  And, as they say, reading earns compound interest.

Becoming an Anglican was therefore a theological choice.  I was brought up in the CofE, so in one sense it is my most natural home, but being theologically educated in a Presbyterian context made me much more aware of the questions and decisionsI would need to make if I were to be ordained.  So it was a deliberate decision to be ordained in the Church of England, and to do so becoming immersed in Cranmer and the thinking of the English Reformers.  If you cut deepest into me, to find my liturgy and prayers, you would find the 1662 Prayer Book.  That might surprise those who only know me in a contemporary context, but it remains true that the most soul-cleansing services I have ever encountered are in there.  Bear in mind that I was brought up with modern language services as I say this: every iteration of the Anglican liturgy that I have known has been thinner and yet more wordy than 1662. Do I love Tudor English for itself? No.  Could we do even better than Cranmer?  If we had giants, then yes.  But we have a long way to go, from a long way behind.

I learnt preaching from Stott – almost everything else in ministry I learnt, in its basics, on summer camps, from my key leader and friend, Andrew Cornes.  How to lead a bible study, do personal work, pray in public, organise yourself and others, deal with a crisis, keep your head, give and take criticism: everything was shaped in me at that stage.

And it was at one of those camps I made a critical choice.  My Edinburgh Systematics was historically Reformed, but in a contemporary way, not so – technically, I was being taught to be a Barthian, with a loose grip on the ultimate, verbal authority of scripture.  And I could not see why, if that were true, I should stay in the Reformed family at all.  If Scripture fell, everything fell, and I could not stop them.  I was facing a crisis, and probably my most profound: should I remain an Evangelical, or move away into something more accommodating, flexible, liberal?  It was my first year at Uni, and the future was wide open

I found myself at the bookstall at the camp, and picked up a book I had never heard of, by an author I barely knew. Focus on Christ.  The author looked at in Christ, with Christ, under Christ, living of Christ, with a theological rigour I recognised, but a scriptural certainty I craved. And as I read it, my conviction on being an evangelical were formed.  It was the missing piece of the Edinburgh jigsaw, that made the whole cohere.  The author, of course, was Stott.  After I was ordained I picked up the courage to write to him and thank him; kindly, he replied.

As I look round me, I can see many of my contemporaries who saw being an evangelical as a phase to grow through.  Being an evangelical is fine as a teen, but once you hit your twenties and thirties, and certainly once you are ordained, you need to encounter other (it is implied, better) theological and spiritual resources.  

I cannot comment on others’ journeys.  All I can say is, whenever I have read the spiritual writings that are supposed to nourish me outside a robust evangelical orthodoxy, I have not found them as refreshing as others suggest.  I’m not being an escapist when I say I treasure Calvin, Owen, Newton or Baxter – or Spurgeon, Packer, Bavinck, the list goes on, far more than the spirituality of elsewhere.  The idea that evangelicalism is jejune, seems itself a thin and shallow judgement, when you read the primary sources. And those primary sources take you back earlier, earlier to appreciate the theological  and spiritual fellowship of the past.

Have I grown out of being an evangelical?  How could I?  This is the richest, deepest, freshest, most soul-enriching spirituality I have encountered, and I cannot begin to think I have glimpsed its edges or touched bottom.

Others, have fallen. I have a mental list of people I once admired whose ministries are now marked by questions at best, guilt and shame for many.  My letter to a younger me will say, ‘Take heed lest you fall.’ ‘Watch your life and doctrine closely’

What has changed over the last forty years? Three matters have particular prominence, I think.

First, we (in the UK) are living in an increasingly post-christendom context, where we cannot assume a share language or story with anyone we meet.  That is refreshing, as an evangelist or an apologist, because we can have the excitement of sharing things with people for the first time. But it will mean our views will necessarily be out of step, and we need to take care to speak within our times so we are not misheard, even as we are countered or misunderstood. When I started out, most churches had a ‘fringe’, and we targetted our evangelism there.  No longer.  We start from scratch, in the Areopagus.

Letter to a younger me: keep fresh on the questions and answers of today.

Second, I have never been so aware of the delight of being a global Christian.  This is not just the delight of living in London, but that so many of the bright spots from the last forty years have occurred as I have encountered sisters and brothers from widely dispersed cultural contexts, but a deep, shared orthodoxy. They have been among the most moving events of my ministry, and it grieves me that the current splits and decisions within the Church of England have broken and torn this unity, within Anglicanism, at a most fundamental level.

Letter to a younger me: if you have to choose between global orthodoxy and local revisionism, choose global orthodoxy.

Third, we really should have seen this coming, but the current struggle over identity, rights, and sexual expression, headlined for me in my denomination, but in reality on every day’s news for everyone, is the defining struggle of our time.  Because how we see ourselves and others, whether autonomous or creatures, morally independent or sinners-to-be-saved, sets the course of an entirety of ministry and life-call.  

If you haven’t seen it yet, keep your eyes open: it will be labelled unChristian to call anyone (even oneself) a sinner, and to call for repentance. And that, to my mind, is the end of the gospel.

Letter to a younger me: even if people don’t express one, seek to understand their worldview and how it relates to the gospel.  To do this, you will need to understand them and yourself deeply; do so.

How have I changed, over forty years?

Probably in the ways you have too.  I hope I’m less self-confident, more Christ-confident. I hope I’m less impressed with myself. I hope I’m more aware of the wonderful coherence of Christian truth, even as I am aware of my partial grasp of it.

I believe, and hope, Im a better evangelist than I was.  There is only one book I have woken up at 3am to continue reading: John Pollock’s biography of Billy Graham,  I never met Graham, though I did hear him live, once. That man brought the gospel to bear on individual lives, globally. Praise Gd for him.  And to this day I ask of every sermon, If Billy Graham were preaching this, would it convert?

Stylistically, I hope I’ve stayed fresh. By which I mean, I hope I am not the preacher I was forty, or even ten years ago.  I hope I’m biblically richer and yet culturally sharper.  I hope I’ve kept listening and learning, and incorporating those thoughts into my feedback loop. I hope the sermon I preached yesterday was better than the one I could have preached five years ago.

Theologically, the game changer has been biblical theology, which was an unknown discipline when I was an undergrad. I freely confess – I had been ordained serval years and deep into my second post when I was challenged with the idea that biblically, the Exile was just as significant as the Exodus, and the scriptures had a thread running through from start to finish.  I still feel I’m catching up with that thought.

Letter to a younger me: keep a journal.

Would I do it again?  Without a heartbeat – I love the ministry God has given me: pastoring, preaching, writing and leading. I love the church I pastor now, as I loved the churches and college I was at before.  I have a rich skein of friendships stretching back decades, and crossing generations. And I love the ministry because I love the gospel, and I love the gospel because I love the Lord Jesus it lifts high.

Although it grieves me to say that a letter to a younger me would have a different set of concerns about the Church of England right now, and be significantly less confident about the future for evangelicals within it.

Actually, that understates my concern. I fear the CofE is embracing a series of changes which will ineluctably distance itself from the gospel. And God is not nostalgic or patriotic, so he won’t keep it going for old time’s sake.

But that’s not the question. 

Because God has not changed. He has been faithful, constant, turning up every time I open his Word, listening every time I pray. He has constant revealed more of himself, taking me deeper into his ever-faithful Word.

In the past God has brought about seasons of awakening, revival, renewal and reformation. Season both personal and corporate, built on deep repentance, faith and praise.

Lord, do it again.