3 Shepherding heads and hearts

Today we look at an objection people have to preaching.  Some people find it boring.  They sometimes say, ok the church needs preaching, but sermons only engage the head, and what we need is for God to reach not just our heads but also our hearts.

Sometimes this works itself out in a church where a short slot is given to Bible-reading and the sermon and a very long period spent singing.  People will justify this by saying that 'worship' is very important.  We could usefully spend time correcting this notion that the sermon is separate from the 'worship', but for today I'd like to explore more of what our hearts really need.  Is it true that a sermon is for our heads and the singing is for our hearts?

Music has a huge power over our lives.  Imperialists have often used nationalistic anthems to inspire their people to go forth and conquer; they are duped into thinking of themselves as some sort of master race who have a license to oppress others in the name of progress.  But music can be harnessed for good in the life of the church.

God wants music to mould our hearts into a right approach to him, but as we look at the two twin passages in Ephesians and Colossians that command the church to sing we see that they do not conceive of singing as being an emotional engagement only.  Rather, the church's singing is actually a teaching ministry.

Ephesians 5:18-21
18 And don’t get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless living, but be filled by the Spirit: 19 speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music with your heart to the Lord, 20 giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another in the fear of Christ.

Notice that in our Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs we 'speak to one another'.  Some people think of singing as being a time when we tell God how we are feeling.  That is not entirely misguided.  It is right to tell the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that we adore him.  But we also speak to eachother.  Singing makes every member of the congregation into a preacher.

And in the parallel passage in Colossians, it is clear how much of an intellectual exercise singing should be:
Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you (not just the tune), in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another (Col 3:16)

To admonish means to warn.  When we sing to eachother we bring a stern message to one another.  We preach sermons across the church floor.  "O Church of Christ, arise and put your armour on". Clearly, we don't sing that modern hymn to God, but to one another.  We prepare eachother for battle.  It's going to be a hard fight against the Enemy of our souls.  But we have a glorious future to look forward to when the battle's done.

So, back to our theme tune: 'feed my lambs'.  A pastor feeds his lambs not just through sermons.  A large part of his teaching is done in song.

I recently expounded Psalm 100.  Only 2 Kurds were present in the gathering.  And I was deeply convicted that I should try to make a Kurdish song out of Psalm 100. That way it can ring out across villages and towns, in taxis and in olive groves.

If you are a pastor or leader in your local church, try to help your musicians to lead the people with songs that are rich in Scripture.  That is the good pasture that the lambs need.

2 But shepherds are also sheep...

My second meditation is an important qualification of the first one.

Yes, Jesus is raising up shepherds who will 'feed my lambs'. But we must realise that we too are sheep who need to be fed.

Jeremiah 15:16

"Your words were found, and I ate them.
Your words became a delight to me
and the joy of my heart,
for I bear your name,
Lord God of Armies."

There are two clear lessons I want us to learn from this verse:

Firstly, anyone who wants to teach God's word must be 'eating' God's words regularly and devotedly.
To 'eat' God's word is a kind of paradigm-busting thought.  We tend to think we receive God's word with our eyes, as we examine it carefully, or with our ears as we hear it read out, but here Jeremiah the prophet speaks of taking God's word into his stomach.  This means he tasted it - it made an impression on him experientially- and he digested it; he let the nutrients of God's words seep into every fibre of his being.

So, I must ask, do you have regular times of feeding on God's word?

I had the privilege of being pastored by Johnny Prime in London, and to this day he continues to pray for us regularly and offer advice to us. I grew to appreciate the way that he ministered to people. He used to say 'I read this in my quiet time this morning, and I wanted to share it with you'.

He was and is a shepherd who grazed daily on good pasture, and then in a very natural way, shared that good food with those he visited and spoke to on the phone.

Secondly, we must do that regular Bible reading with delight, not just out of duty.  

As with so much Hebrew poetry, the same truth is described in parellel ways: "Your words became a delight to me"

and - he emphasises the point in a slightly different way- "and the joy of my heart".

It's striking that maybe at first this wasn't his attitude to God's word.  "Your words became a delight". Many Christians, probably most of us, look at the contents of our Bibled and think "I know I ought to read Leviticus and Lamentations...but I'm not excited about it".  We get more excited about reading a novel, scrolling through social media or watching Netflix.  Let's resolve to read our Bibles with an expectation that God will delight us and make our hearts sing for joy.

And then our preaching will be a true overflow of hearts that love the Saviour for his kindness and trustworthiness.  This morning I read John chapter 1 and was excited afresh by the drama of Jesus coming from heaven to be the lamb that takes away the sin of the world and yet the chief priests and Pharisees coming to John to check him out.  It encouraged me that there will always be opposition but Jesus is worth marvelling at despite the world's rejection of him.

1 Feed My Lambs

When we start to explore the Bible's teaching that Christ is raising up people from among the believers to lead the churches, people will often feel inadequate.  How can I possibly lead God's people? I can't even get my own Christian life in order, so how can I lead others?

Well, the NT does say there are qualifications.  Questions mainly of lifestyle.  If you are a drunkard, or dishonest in handling money, or you are hot-tempered, then you are not yet ready to be an elder in the church.

But, having said that, God is not calling perfect people to be leaders in the church.  If that were so, there would be no leaders for the church!

No, we see clearly in John 21 that the one Jesus appointed as the leader of the apostles was himself a notorious failure.

All church leaders are failures. The leader of the leaders was himself a failure.  But they're forgiven failures. 

John 21:15-19
Notice that Jesus asks Peter basically the same question, but three times.  This was no doubt a way of rubbing salt into Peter's mental wounds.  He had denied Christ three times.  And so Jesus asks him three times, do you love me more than the other apostles do?  Peter had proudly proclaimed that he would never deny Jesus: “Lord, I’m ready to go with You both to prison and to death!” (Luke 22:33)
He felt he was the bravest, the most loyal.  But in the heat of the moment, when the likelihood of persecution and death loomed before him, he denied Christ.  Even before a servant-girl.

So, that's the first lesson.  We don't begin with technique: 'Bible-handling skills'.  We begin with our own frailty and self-love.  None of us is 'cut out' to be a preacher.  We all love ourselves too much to be qualified as shepherds of the flock.  But if we confess that we are fearful and easily deceived- indeed that we have often denied our master by our words and our living- then we can start to be people Christ can use in his service.

Secondly, our task is very simple.  True- the Bible is a complex book in some ways.  It will take every fibre of our intellect to grapple with it and be able to teach it to others.  But our commission is so simple it can be said in three words. "Feed my lambs"

Let's take them one by one.
i) 'Feed' - we feed Jesus's lambs by teaching his word.  Exercising hospitality will be part of our task, so serving rice and lentils may actually be something we regularly do.  It may keep some poorer members alive.  But we are supremely to feed people's souls.
Isaiah 55:2 tells us that the eating that really counts is listening to God's word: "Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and you will enjoy the choicest of foods."
JOb declared: "I have not departed from the commands of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my daily food." (Job 23:12)

'My' - If lead a Bible study or plant a church I am not gathering together 'my' flock.  They are Jesus' lambs.  Or take Instagram: it tells you exactly the number of people who have viewed and Liked your posts.  Hopefully some reading this have many social media followers and tweet, instagram and Facebook to the benefit of many.  But those 5k, 50k, 500k followers: don't be deceived.  These are 'my' lambs, Jesus says.  Likewise, don't be discouraged if God chooses to grow someone else's church more than yours.  They're Jesus' lambs.

'Lambs'.  A lamb is a baby sheep. Obviosuly.  But Jesus chose that word, even though normally the Bible speaks of a shepherd and his sheep.  Jesus wanted to give Peter a clear vision for teaching fragile, young believers.  Praise God- he caught that vision and ministered tenderly to the least and weakest.  "Like newborn infants," he wrote,  "desire the pure milk of the word, so that you may grow up into your salvation." (1 Peter 2:2).  In the way we prepare our messages, we should always consider the one with least BIble knowlegde, the one who can't find his way round the Bible, the one who can't read at all.  The one who is so vulnerable to scandalous sins like drunkenness and sleeping around.  Feed my lambs, Jesus says.  By all means push the mature to think deeply, but include plenty of plain statements and stories in simple language so that there is food there for the simplest lamb with the shortest attention span.  Three words for a lifetime's ministry.  FEED MY LAMBS.

Feed My Lambs- Introduction

Duhok, 31 March 2020

Dear Friends,
Lockdown has given me the opportunity to blog some biblical meditations about preaching and preachers. Like the apostle Paul in prison, I am prevented from seeing people face to face but I have more opportunity to write.

This opportunity comes at an exciting time. Here in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Kurdish people have been coming to faith in Jesus as the Good Shepherd, the Saviour, and I have been trying to train them to faithfully teach the Bible for themselves, rather than be dependent on Westerners to be their teachers.

I remember vividly how this training material came into being. A couple of Kurdish believers came over to visit us at Christmas time 2018 and, sitting down on doushaks, we looked together at a series of verses I had hastily chalked up on a Google doc. They came to my mind from all over the Bible. But they came to have a certain shape to them and so I now give them the title ‘Feed My Lambs’. This, I will argue, is the commission Christ has given to teachers in his church.

I hope to somehow make this material available to the Arabic and Kurdish speakers in the churches here in Kurdistan, but I will try first to write up my thoughts in English- any feedback you can provide might sharpen my thinking and so make it more of a blessing to the fledgling churches in Kurdistan.

Praise God: a movement has gathered momentum to train people in this region how to do expository preaching.  These are valuable skills and I was delighted to be able to attend the Simeon Trust workshops in Dubai.  However, we need not just skills in exegesis, but we need to understand the bigger picture of why we give ourselves to preaching.  And we need to be ourselves changed if we are to be fruitful preachers.  As is sometimes said, it's not so much about examining the Bible; we need to let the Bible examine us.

If the church in Iraq can in this way somehow be a blessing to sister churches in the West, that would be sweet. As I so often say, we must not believe the narrative that the BBC and many secularist media outlets put out that the church in Iraq is gradually dying. To the contrary, the living church in Iraq is growing and people who had not heard of Christ are now hearing his wondrous good news announced to them in their own languages.

She who is in Babylon, we might say, greets you (see 1 Pet 5:13).

Kindle or pdf?

Training People to Treasure Good Books

We are just coming to the end of our 3-year dictionary project.  Now comes the exciting development where we can use all the research we've done into the Kurdish language to produce quality Christian resources in Kurdish.

But we're on the horns of a dilemma, and I want us to act wisely here.

We will aim to print and sell hard copies of God's Big Picture, but in addition...

Should we make books available as free pdf downloads, or rather sell them on Kindle?

In the West, Christian publishers generally sell e-books, so you might think this is a no-brainer. After all, it is often said that what people don't pay for they don't value. I agree.

However, there are other players, notably HeartCry and 9Marks, who put out their Arabic materials as free pdfs online, as well as selling them.  I respect their ministries; they have good reasons for making pdfs easy as pie to send from one device to another.

However, many book pdfs do the rounds here in Kurdistan and they are not really treasured.  Consider these factors:

1. It's not easy to bookmark on a pdf where you're up to.  Pdfs are great for skimming and searching, but less good for reading from cover-to-cover.
2. They look cheap and worthless.  They often come without a nice cover.

We have an opportunity to sell God's Big Picture for about $3 as a Kindle book.  It might be the first ever Kurdish book on Kindle to be published in Kurmanji, Behdini and Sorani in one volume.

There are some arguments against the Kindle approach though:

1. Some say Kurds don't use Kindle.  I don't think this is a clinching argument. In any case, we're dealing with a tiny community who would read Christian books, and they could easily be persuaded to start using Kindle on a tablet or phone if they're not already used to reading English or German books for example on Kindle.
2. How would they pay? There are many Kurds in the West- so they can use a credit card.  But even within the Kurdistan Region, the Fastpay app is now available and allows people to buy online.
3. Translated books are not ideal.  It might be better not to make a big splash by recommending God's Big Picture to all Kurds as if this was the must-read for all Kurdish believers.  I have noticed that the same story that is so well told in GBP can be much more powerfully told in terms that actually relate God's kingdom purposes to the Kurdish people.  For example, Abraham travelled through Kurdish territory; Jews were exiled by the Assyrians to what we now call Kurdistan; those Jews heard the gospel at the Day of Pentecost, coming from Media, Mesopotamia etc.  So there is a case for regarding GBP as a useful training tool for Bible teachers among the Kurds, best instantly accessible as a pdf, alongside the Arabic which will be available as a pdf- not least in establishing the spiritual language that is needed to teach the Old Testament.  Furthermore, we are not the publishers.  Heartcry are the publishers and they will probably post the Arabic pdf on their website; so it could make sense to go along with their policy for other languages.
   
   Although God's Big Picture has sold well and been translated into about 30 languages, probably we shouldn't expect it to be the classic book that will grab the hearts of lots of Kurds.  Perhaps that book that we pray for- tailor-made for a Kurdish readership and taking into account the archaeology that is all around Duhok and Erbil- would take another 3 or 4 years to produce.  That will be the one to sell on KIndle and say Invest Your money in it: it's really worth owning and reading carefully!

The Shepherd Psalm, redacted by a Twenty-First Century editor in Babylon

A Psalm. A Lament.  To the tune of Please Do Not Destroy.

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing.

2     He makes me lie down in green plastic,
he leads me beside quiet, stagnant waters,

(yea so quiet because behold, the genius water-proof plastic bag witholds the bubbling brook like the mighty walls of Nineveh)
3 

He refreshes my soul with all manner of good things:

Beautifully rusted tins and broken glass to tear my feet, grocery bags in a full rainbow of colours.
He guides me between the bright baths -discarded
    for their name’s sake (for why take the bath to Trash Collection when you can hurl it from the motorway?).
4 Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
    for Mankind is with me;
their plastic spoon and their straw,
    they comfort me.

5 You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil (actually only the discarded bottle of sunflower oil);
    their landfill overflows.
6 Surely your garbage and litter will follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the heap of these Litter LORDS
    forever- or until that wretched aluminium can ring-pull* cuts a hole in my stomach and leaves me floating and lifeless in those quiet, stagnant waters.

* In the US, called a pull-tab.  Curiously, Iraqi drinks cans roll back the years to the dangerous, removable sharp ring-pulls that were phased out in Britain circa 1990.

Omri, Zimri and the Knives of Brexit Politics

I guess as Brits we pride ourselves on not being a country racked with warfare - we're a tolerant, laid-back and peaceable people, we like to think - but British politics has got very ugly recently.

I was wondering why David Cameron was keeping quiet for so long.  It appears he's been in his garden shed writing his memoirs.  And now the knives are out, for Boris Johnson and Michael Gove in particular.  Maybe his comments are fair.  But it's sad to see a former PM feel he needs to assassinate the character of the current PM - and both from the same party.

The Bible give us a worldview.  It helps us to deal with the grief of seeing those in government fight bitterly with one another.  And I have been helped by going back to a very grisly episode in the OT when there was a succession of leaders of the northern kingdom of Israel.

Of course, Cameron hasn't been brandishing a pistol or a knife, but words can devastate.  Only the Pharisee limits the sixth commandment to the actual shedding of blood.

So, here's my precis of 1 Kings 16: it all begins with a chap called 'Basher', whose name kind of sets the tone for the chapter.
Baasha's son Elah - while he was getting drunk - was struck down and killed by General Zimri, who took over in what we would call a military coup.

Then Israel declared 'Field Marshal' Omri king and he marched to Tirzah and surrounded the city- at which point Zimri committed suicide.

But that didn't settle matters.  v21: "At that time the people of Israel were divided" (ring any Brexit bells?)- half followed Tibni and half followed Omri.

Those who must have been crying out for 'stability' and 'unity' got it for the 12 years that Omni reigned.  But if he provided a measure of stability, he also promoted sin.  He was an evil king.  His son Ahab continued in his idolatrous ways.  He is justly infamous, and why? Because this truly tragic narrative now moves into more encouraging material as the historian reveals that there was at least a faithful remnant preaching the true and living God.  We remember Ahab because...well, Enter Elijah...and let's turn from the BBC headlines, get down on our knees and pray for Elijahs who call our nation back to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who offers grace and peace to all who come not brandishing the knife of character assassination but beating their own breasts and saying 'God be merciful to me, a sinner' (Luke 18:13)