Paul writes in Ephesians 5:23-24: “For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour.” Paul is very clear here that in the marriage, the husband is to be the head in the relationship. In other words he is to lead his wife spiritually in the home. This is not a dictatorship, where the man runs around mad on his own power, but a loving leadership where the husband lays down his life to serve his wife. In a generation that moves towards honouring the independent woman, there has been a downplaying of the man’s role in leading his family. This is compounded by lazy men who would rather watch sport than look after the spiritual welfare of their families. The marriage is, of course, completely equal and based on mutual submission. However, the man is to be the spiritual head. Here are three things that I’ve found helpful as I’ve thought through this subject.

Firstly, as men we need to be looking after our own spiritual lives carefully. In Paul’s final speech to the elders of Ephesus in Acts 20:28 he says this: “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained for his own blood.” Paul charges the elders here to first and foremost to pay attention to their souls. This is so important. No man can lead anybody if he is not firstly tending to his own soul. We need to be investing quality time in reading God’s Word and applying the gospel to our own lives. Otherwise, our hearts become hardened, we become lazy, and we lose sight of the glory of the gospel. A leader looks after his soul because he prizes his walk with Christ more than anything else. We won’t be able to lead our families if we are not first looking after ourselves.

Secondly, as men we need to be reading God’s Word with our wives and children (if we have them). Paul says, ‘pay attention to yourselves and then to all the flock’. Although he is talking specifically to the elders of Ephesus, I think this verse can be applied to every man in the church. Are we taking time to read God’s Word with our wives? Is the Bible visible in the home? Is it the thing that directs our relationships? The reality, sadly, is that in most homes the television is the guiding tool rather then God’s Holy Word. In our sin and apathy we would rather put the footie on or watch our favourite soap than read God’s Word as a family. But, the Psalmist says, in Psalm 19:7,10: “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul…More to be desired are they than gold…sweeter also than honey.” God’s Word is precious and to be desired. It is sweeter than honey. My wife and I have a little book called Daily Light that we read before bed each night. It is a daily reading with a collection of scriptures under a theme and although short, it can be very powerful. It’s a rhythm that we have installed from the first day we got married. Is there something that you can place in your day to make sure you are reading God’s Word? It doesn’t have to be long but it does have to be regular. Maybe you need to get up a little earlier and read the Bible together or read God’s Word while you eat dinner together. It needs to be a priority in the home. We make time for what we think is our greatest need and as Christians one of our greatest needs is to have God’s Word spoken into our lives. We need to spend time reading and feeding on it.

Thirdly, we need to be asking each other good questions. It can be easy to spend time with your wife and not talk about the deeper issues of each other lives. We will go through life and talk about work, the weather, our friends and cut out the spiritual chat. How are you doing spiritually? How is your soul? These are questions we need to be asking each other. This is more time consuming because we have to explain how you are really doing, yet it is so important in order to challenge sin and apply the gospel. Too many couples have a date night and go to the cinema, or watch a film and don’t actually communicate properly. There are always things going on in our hearts and we must endeavour to share that with each other in order to have a healthy relationship. As the man are you taking time to ask questions of your wife? Are you being honest in how you are doing spiritually? Lead this and model it in your family. Don’t cut the corners so that you can selfishly watch the sport or your favourite movie. Be diligent and ask good, penetrating, spiritual questions.

Do you love your wife? Then listen to these words from Paul: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word…” Christ died to set us free from the bondage of sin and to begin to make us pure from sin. Men are you aiding in this process or being a hindrance? The most loving thing you can do for your wife is get yourself right with the Lord and lead your family sacrificially and biblically. Let God’s Word be a treasure in the home and make sure you are taking time to communicate with each other on a deeper level. Then you will be loving your wife as Christ loved the church.

Incarnational Living | Church Planting | Urban Youth Ministry | Missional Community| Urban Church

Proximity 2012 is a conference happening this May (25th-26th) in Salford, hosted by the Eden Network. It aims to bring these five streams above together in one place for two days of vision, conversation, inspiration and celebration. If you’re a leader or practitioner in any of these five overlapping areas of ministry Proximity could be of interest to you. Our tickets are being booked this week.

Proximity will be light-hearted and yet intelligent; fast-paced and yet reflective; boundary-pushing and yet affirming.

For more information, you can download the programme here. Or visit www.eden-network.org/proximity

Since the Fall, the trajectory of unredeemed human history—the City of Man—is always in the Bible to judgment (the Flood, Babel, Canaan, Egypt, Jerusalem, Babylon, Rome & then Rev. 19). (Not quite as universal as gravity, but seemingly as inevitable in its overall tendency.)

For a comprehensive overview of the Pastor and his relation to his community, read his full article here.

Many churches, likewise, believe that the world is going to hell in a handcart and therefore our role is to preach Christ, rescue some and leave the rest to their own devices. Others believe that we have a role to play when God ultimately ushers in the renewal of all things at the end times.  The result for former group is slipping into a separatist approach to evangelism.  For the latter, it is slipping into a cultural accommodationalism.

Now, I can see how certain eschatological positions can lead us down both tracks when it comes to the relationship between the church and its immediate culture. In fact, I see their legacy in housing schemes up and down the country. It shows itself in two main ways.

1. Those who have historically fought for doctrinal and theological purity at the expense of cultural engagement (for fear of watering down the gospel) now find themselves on the fringes of schemes, with aged, dying congregations. They have a gospel with nobody to preach it to. It suits their worldview of “them against the world” and it is leaving generations with no clue about the good news of Jesus. On the other hand, those who have sought to adapt and engage with culture at the expense of biblical truths tend to be very socially aware but have the same aged, dying congregations. They are viewed as little more than a social work agency and people don;t come when evangelism is not practiced. Both sides are losing out with the real losers being the very people they are supposed to be reaching with the good news of Jesus Christ. Whilst the Christian world has been drawing their theological lines, real live souls have been perishing for lack of witness. In the words of some, old, dead dude: ‘A plague on both your houses’.

2. Because of this turn of events, much of the evangelism community development work is being carried out in schemes by a combination of government agencies (which is only right) and para-church organisations. Groups are visiting schools and doing RE classes, running clubs and trying to reach young people for Christ, but largely detached from any local congregation whatsoever, and without any real long-term aims and objectives to combat the ‘congregational crisis’ we now face. On the one hand, how can we blame them when the local church is either (a) dead or (b) not doing its job (either from a lack of heart or because it is just unable to).

The only way to reverse these trends is to plant new churches and/or renew existing ones. Spiritual Community renewal and development will not happen at a root level if the local church is not central to our plans. In Brasil when we founded our street children project, we did it with a church plant at the core. Why so? A number of reasons:

1. A localised congregation gives a solid, consistent thrust for concerted evangelistic efforts.

2. It offers a place for spiritual accountability for those working in the field. Many para-church workers I have met (particularly youth workers) have little or no spiritual accountability and have either been burned out or are in danger of burning out trying to deal with the rigours of a front line ministry such as ours.

3. It offers a context in which young converts and believers can grow in discipleship, in community, together. So, it avoids the hit and miss problem of people parachuting in, trying to reach out and then leaving people in the wind until the outsiders return again.

The local church has the responsibility to evangelise, disciple, nurture and prepare people to worship and serve the Living God in their respective communities. Surely, loving our neighbours shouldn’t be handed to those outside of our doors? Are we loving our communities? Are we serving our communities? If we love a community and seek to know it then ideas for outreach, evangelism, mission and development will naturally flow out of this. I think many churches struggle to make an impact on schemes because they do not love their communities enough to really know them at a deep and intimate level. We cannot love the Lord and the gospel if we do not love people. The gospel needs a conduit for it to do its powerful, transforming work. Too many churches are burying their treasure in a field and hanging on for the master to come again.

We recently received news from our church plant in Brasil – The Good News Church – which is an indigenous community that operates in the poorest neighbourhood in the poorest state in Brasil. It’s poor! The church is small (50ish people) and yet recently they clubbed together and built 6 new homes in the community for displaced families! That is gospel driven community development in action. Despite fears in some quarters, it does not water down the Word but rather offers a living example of the reality of the message that congregation is trying to bring to its community.

I appreciate the nuances of this debate, I really do. Christ above all, gospel before all, but when discipleship becomes indistinguishable from helping people deal with some of their life issues, then we have a duty of care. Let’s not protect the gospel to death. That would be a crime.

I am sure we’ll revisit this at some point.

In his book, Generous Justice, Tim Keller states:

“All I know is, if I don’t care about the poor, if my church doesn’t care about the poor, that’s evil.”

Jesse Johnson, writing an article for The Cripplegate Blog, has a somewhat different perspective. He writes:

…the fact of the matter is that nowhere does the Bible command the church to care for the poor of the world, to lower the poverty rates in society, or to care for the homeless in our community. There are zero verses that command this, and several that even argue against it.

The question of the role of the church in culture, particularly as it relates to matters of social justice, is popping up in all sorts of forums across the Christian spectrum and has been addressed in various blogs, articles and books from men like Mark Dever, John Piper, Tim Keller and Kevin DeYoung et al. I have no wish to further comment on issues I have already blogged about on this site and may do so again in the future (check out the topics section the left hand side of the home page).

My concern in this post is to ask the question of the role of the church as it relates within a poor community. That, to my mind, is a somewhat different concern than a ministry to the poor and oppressed. Reaching out to the poor and planting a church among them are two entirely different propositions. In spite of the reams being written and said, when I have visited many church’s in the UK and overseas, I haven’t exactly been trampled to death by the stampede of poor people attending their services!

I am not, unlike many, trying to build a church with a heart for the poor, I am seeking to build a church of God worshippers in the heart of a deprived scheme. That is a somewhat more complex task! Now, I am with Jesse (and others) when it comes to understanding that the commands to love the poor and care for the widow etc are there for the benefit of the Christian Community primarily (although by no means exclusively). He, I think correctly, gives voice to the concern of over emphasising the needs of the poor:

I am making the observation that when money is going to soup kitchens, it is not going to missions. To guard against that, the church is never commanded to show compassion to the poor as a means for expanding the kingdom. Simply put, you owe the poor the gospel; Jesus died to purchase for them the privilege of hearing the testimony of his death and resurrection (1 Tim 2:6).

Mark Dever is even more direct on this topic.

We, as a congregation, are not required to take responsibility for the physical needs in the unbelieving community around us. We do have a responsibility to care for the needs of those within our congregation (Matt. 25:34-40; Acts 6:1-6; Gal. 6:2, 10; James 2:15-16; I John 3:17-19) though even within the church, there were further qualifications (e.g., II Thess. 3:10; I Tim. 5:3-16). Paul’s counsel to Timothy (in I Tim. 5:3-16) about which widows to care for seems to indicate that the list was intended for Christian widows. One qualification seemed to be lack of alternative sources of support. Thus the instruction that family members should care for the needy first, if at all possible, shows the kind of prioritization of allowing for families—even of unbelievers—to provide support so that the church wouldn’t have to do it (I Tim. 5:16). We can extrapolate from this to conclude that support that could be provided from outside the church (for instance, from the state) should be preferred over using church funds, thus freeing church funds to be used elsewhere.

I couldn’t agree more in terms of the financial aspect of social action and/or community development (however you want to define it). At Niddrie we are not concerned with financial handouts (though we do have an interest free loan initiative in extreme emergencies for both members and non members). As I’ve said before, people here generally aren’t lacking financially, and the state, if anything, is a hindrance in many ways to community development, rather than an aid to it. Indeed, our concern has even less to do with changing the social structures around us and more to do with (1) evangelistic opportunities and (2) discipleship issues. Let me take our Bike project as an example of what I mean.

Niddrie has a huge criminal problem with stolen mountain bikes. Combine this with a huge interest in the sport on the scheme. In a more middle class area with an established youth work, and a solid Christian base, Bible studies may be an option. Here, they are not. So, we have an opportunity to contact people who would never darken the door of a Sunday meeting, go to an evangelistic event or meet a Christian of any shape or form. Our project then serves the purpose as a vehicle (it’s ultimate objective) for evangelism. A young person may then be saved and so can spend further time in the workshop fixing a bike whilst being discipled by one of our youth team. Getting into the Bible then ensues. It just so happens that this vehicle of our comes with a few added extras. Crime goes down (not massively, but it has an effect). Less bikes are being stolen in and around the church. The local police send us their stolen bikes to use as we report any stolen bikes to them. The local school uses our project to motivate struggling children educationally. And so on. There are other off spins. They are all secondary to the gospel’s primacy, but they are not insignificant in terms of community development and justice. Most of our outreach, projects and ideas have the same types of spin off in different areas and across different demographics within the scheme. So, what do we call this?

Again, returning to Dever’s assertion that helping the needy is primarily an in house job for the church. But what about the many community people who we see daily on the scheme? They may not become members, but they certainly become an intimate part of our lives. Surely, we have a biblical responsibility to them? Let’s remember that Galatians 6:10 says, So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. Many reformed pastors will emphasis the last three words as a proof text for Dever’s position, but the text appears to indicate helping all regardless of affiliation.

I agree, the answer to our community sin problem (its greatest need) is salvation though Christ. But, sooner or later, discipleship kicks in. So, yes, we can strengthen their Christology and biblical doctrine, but we still have to walk them through abusive relationships, sexual dysfunction, threats from drug dealers, mental health problems etc. That becomes about loving them and practically seeking, where possible, to help them relieve some of their (often) self-imposed troubles. Fighting the macro causes of their issues doesn’t even get put on the table. We just haven’t got the time here even if we had the inclination!

Reformed Churches in the UK have generally operated out of a separatist mindset in housing schemes (if they have ever really operated at all). Many have gone down the ‘Word only’ route. This has left us with some serious problems which my generation of pastors has now been handed. I want to continue this article tomorrow and look at some key issues and why I think the local church must be the centre for change in housing schemes.

It is noticeable in Niddrie that there are many housing association groups and various other social agencies, largely staffed by outsiders, who impose their ideas and ideals on to the community without much prior discussion. It is taken for granted that the ‘professionals’ know what we need. Often, many church plants can be guilty of the same attitudes. A team can move in to a scheme with a cunning plan and yet their strategy have very little impact on the ground due to lack of research and cultural understanding. In fact, a great danger of only researching the facts and figures about an area  from government websites is that it skews our understanding of what a community needs in order to change.  A good church planter must not only research and observe, he must also listen. There are questions to be asked. For instance, who are the main players in the community? What community groups are there? Which are staffed by local people and which by outsiders? What do local people think that some of the biggest needs of the community are? As I’ve stated, it is easy to think ‘scheme’ and then come with a whole set of presuppositions which can often bare little relation to life on the inside. What do people dream about? What are their ambitions (those that have them)? What do they think that the community needs in order for it to improve? Where would they start? Here’s one of the most important ones. What could they contribute to all of these things? Robert Lupton, notes:

This is often referred to as the felt needs concept. Listening is most important, as the people of the community are the vested treasures of the future. It is important not to focus on the weaknesses or needs of a community.

That last line is interesting. Why does he emphasise this? Well, he advocates an approach to community development that helps us to try to focus on the desires of community residents, what gift sets they have, and then to think of these individuals as ‘community assets’ upon which we can focus our energies. Of course, his context is in reference to community development, but I think we can use the principle in planting.

As a planter the question becomes how we harness some of the talents of local people in tandem with the great commission. Again, it is easy to look at a scheme like Niddrie and point to 10 things that need fixing. But what we think may need fixing from the outside may not even be on the agenda of an insider. What do they think? Certainly the church can help in alleviating some of the great needs of the community but we do it a disservice if we take the burdens solely upon ourselves. In fact, we can be as guilty of weakening the community if we try to solve every problem for them. Many times in my pastoral ministry over the last decade I have had to deal with people disgruntled with ‘institutional church‘. People wanting to leave and move somewhere else, somewhere ‘better’. My answer to these individuals has always been consistent.

“You cannot change a thing by moving on from it. You can only effect real and lasting change from within. Now, what do you think needs to happen and how are you going to help me make it happen?”

I know it is not the most powerful argument ever, but if we’re going to be staying in a community and listening to it then we need to be prepared to hear a lot of talk defeatist about ‘things never changing’. We need to be helping local people see that they, under the Lordship of Christ, are the answer to their community’s problems, not solely outside agencies, and not even the church.

Of course, spiritual regeneration is the ultimate aim, but we need to be developing our listening skills in order to inform our evangelism, alongside discipleship methods that enable people not only to take responsibility for themselves and their community but empower them to get involved. We must constantly assess what we are doing and questioning whether we are moving people toward or away from dependency on anything other than Jesus Christ.

If we are going to bring about lasting change on housing schemes then everything we do must be sustainable. That’s why, as we listen, we ought to be developing ministries that will harness people in their gifting and encourage them to stay put for the benefit of all. This is hugely difficult stuff in our individualistic society. That’s why it must start within the body of Christ. If we are moving in, using our gifts, serving one another for the benefit of the whole and all the while, listening, then this is a great, living model for local people.

Listening to people. Not as easy as it sounds is it?