Passion for the lost

A talk by Revd Bob Parker on 26th March 2003 as part of the Lent Course.

Introductory Talk.

"The Passions of Christ for the Church today" is the umbrella title that John has given each speaker in this course of Lent meetings. I have chosen to focus on Christ's passion for the lost.

My dictionary tells me that one meaning of passion is 'ardent devotion'. It involves, at a deep level, the emotions.

The Passions of Christ are not to be confused with the Passion of Christ which focuses on his agony in the garden of Gethsemane and his cruel painful death upon the cross at Calvary. Passions, having an ardent devotion for something.

One of my passions is cricket, a passion that I know others here also share. I like the story told by Brian Johnston, the former BBC cricket commentator who stated that on reaching the age of 80 two things happen to you. The first is that you lose your memory. The second thing is … the second thing is….oh I can't remember because I have lost my memory.!

A couple of weeks ago in the Times I read of a film director aged 63 who said he had reached that stage in life when he found himself checking whether his toothbrush was wet because he couldn't remember whether he had cleaned his teeth or not! He said 'moths have been making holes in my memory'.

How many of us have climbed the stairs and then wondered what it was that we had come up the stairs for! Never mind it is all good exercise!

Forgetfulness is all too common and this causes us to lose things Forgetting where we have put the car keys etc. It was because losing things is so common that we find Jesus telling parables about a shepherd who lost his sheep, a woman losing a coin, a father who felt he had lost his wayward son.

Our Lord's commission.:

St. Matthew 28 vv 18 & 19 (read)

St. Mark 16 v 15 (read) on Partnership House, London.

Acts of the Apostles sees the Christian church advance in remarkable fashion as a direct result of the Spirit inspired ministry of the first Apostles. St. Paul with Barnabas & other colleagues, Luke, Silas, Timothy, take the gospel to non-Jews ie: gentiles.

Down the centuries since NT times there have been remarkable advances followed by periods of what might be called stagnation.

18th & 19th Century Evangelism.

The 18th Century saw the established Church in England so moribund that evangelists like John & Charles Wesley & George Whitfield, broke free from the frustrations of the hierarchy of their day and started their own movements. Methodism was born. The 19th C saw a tremendous growth in missionary activity spearheaded mainly by evangelical Christians. Let me briefly tell you of one remarkable Church Leader of that era who became a Bishop. His name: George Augustus Selwyn. He was appointed to be Bishop of the fairly newly discovered Islands in the South Pacific - New Zealand. By a clerical error he was also asked to be Bishop of Melanesia. He set sail from England in 1842 - it took him six months by sailing ship to reach the antipodes. During that time he was taught the maori language so that on arrival in Auckland he could converse with the local native people. An outstanding man of his generation, a fine sportsman and scholar, Selwyn walked the length & breadth of New Zealand. He swam through rivers and allowed no difficulty to hinder him from establishing the Christian Church in this young & vibrant land. A visionary he used his knowledge of the land to set aside prime building sites where new churches could and should be built. He also designed them. In many parts of New Zealand, to this day you will see Selwyn churches on strategic sites where they can be easily seen. My first job on arriving in Auckland in December 1963 was to join the staff of St. Andrew's Church, Epsom - a fine Selwyn building.

Bishop Selwyn also took his responsibilities as Bishop of Melanesia seriously and sailed around the many Islands that make up that huge Province. The boat he used was called 'The Southern Cross'. Just to conclude his story, to his horror Queen Victoria ordered him to return to the UK in the late 1860's and he became Bishop of Lichfield. If you visit the fine cathedral at Lichfield you will find a small side chapel dedicated to Selwyn's ministry in New Zealand, or Aotearoa 'The land of the long white cloud' as the Maori people call it.

What of the Church's mission in the 20th Century - the most violent century in history?

At the end of the 2nd world war in June 1945 a best seller book was published. It was entitled "Towards the conversion of England.". It was the work of a commission set up by Archbishop William Temple and chaired by the then Bishop of Rochester Christopher Chavasse. The book was so popular it had run through five further printings by November 1945. It really stirred people up. It was critical of the clergy stating that many had little idea of how to share the faith and lead others into it. It stressed the importance of an active and mobilized laity. It spoke of the value of cells and small groups. It pointed to the need for the clergy to be trained for mission, and for the laity to attend training 'conventions' and 'schools of evangelism'. It suggested that the Church needed to look at what could be done through advertising campaigns. It was ahead of its time in calling for 'elasticity' in the conduct of church services to assist the 'gathering-in of non worshippers' The Report called for the appointment of Diocesan Missioners "to initiate and carry into effect diocesan plans for evangelism'

It made a plea for family prayers and personal bible reading in the home. It stressed the importance of preaching, and the need for more energy to be invested in religious education.

All good stuff, I hope you are saying, relevant to our own times.

So what happened to that Report "Towards the Conversion of England"? Sadly nothing. It simply gathered dust. If the Anglican Church in 1945 had a passion for souls surely this was just the right report to kick start the Church into action after the horror of World War 2. Why did it founder? It did so for several reasons. In 1945 the number of evangelical Anglican clergy was few. Much of what the Report said did not appeal to the majority of clergy.

2ndly the Church was preoccupied, not with evangelism, but with building new church buildings on bomb sites. This took all the energy and money available

Thirdly Archbishop William Temple, a social prophet, visionary and evangelist only occupied the see of Canterbury for 2 years before he tragically died in October 1944. He was succeeded by Geoffrey Fisher who was a very different man. He focussed on the need to revise canon law and did not mobilise the Church of England to embrace the Report.

Fortunately a few fine Christian leaders seized the opportunities for evangelism once peace was established and people like Tom Rees held great rallies in the Royal Albert Hall.

In the 1950's the American evangelist, Dr. Billy Graham, took the nation by storm with his Crusades at Earls Court. The people were hungry for the gospel. The response was staggering. Many evangelical clergy received their call to the ministry under the preaching of Dr.Graham. I shall never forget travelling on the London Underground at that time, and joining with hundreds of people who sang quite spontaneously that great hymn "Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine, O what a foretaste of glory divine."

Many of you will know Archbishop George Carey. When Bishop of Bath & Wells he laid the foundation stone of this building. At the beginning to 1991 he became Archbishop of Canterbury. At that time church leaders of all the major denominations began to feel that the final decade of the millennium should be called a Decade of Evangelism. The initial idea had come from African Bishops in 1988 and General Synod had backed the idea before George Carey took up his appointment. It wasn't meant to be a nationwide campaign. The main aim of the Decade was to achieve a change in attitude & priorities in a basically pastoral Church. To change the mind set of the Church from maintenance to mission. Sadly not a great deal was achieved.

Two reasons: in November 1992 General Synod voted in favour of the ordination of women to the priesthood. The Church was preoccupied with the task of trying to deal with those clergy & others who disagreed with this action. It took time and money.

Then soon afterwards the Church Commissioners announced that they had lost some £800 million. Such a catastrophe tends to concentrate the mind on matters other than evangelism and mission.

Thirdly the Church in its wisdom got launched on the liturgical process that has given us, for better or for worse, the book of Common Worship. It took enormous time and energy and consequently obscured the vision of a Decade of Evangelism.

Church historians in the future might well describe the 1990's as a Decade of Theological controversy, a decade of financial anxiety, and a decade of liturgical revision. Some good pieces of evangelism did take place. The Archbishop set up Springboard which stimulated all sorts of evangelistic activity in many Dioceses. Our own former Bath & Wells Diocesan Registrar, Martin Cavender, has masterminded this project for several years.

Perhaps the most effective work of evangelism during the past decade has been the ALPHA Courses that have been held up and down the country and in many other parts of the world. Started by the staff of Holy Trinity, Brompton, London, Alpha, with its emphasis on sharing a meal and basic teaching of the Christian gospel, has been used by God to change thousands of lives.

In my last parish - a spiritual desert in so many respects - we held four such courses and lives were touched for good and for God. I know Alpha has been used here some years ago. I have to say it was very disappointing that plans to launch an Alpha Course here last Autumn never got off the ground. We need to examine the reasons why not. Did we promote it strongly enough? - clearly not. Were church members encouraged to approach friends and neighbours with an invitation to come to an Alpha Supper evening? If we think that the Alpha approach doesn't work here what other scheme should we be concentrating on?

21st Century challenges:

Simon Jenkins - Times article states. The Church has fewer than a million Sunday worshippers - one third the size of the National Trust.

It has lost 30% in 20 years.

There were 223,000 children in Anglican churches in 1991.

There are some 80,000 today.

It is often quoted that the Church is only one generation away from extinction. The fact is that this has always been so. If the present generation of believers do not pass on the gospel to the up and coming generation they will have no understanding of the gospel and will be unable to pass it on. The disciples in N.T. times were in precisely the same position. Jesus said "Go and make disciples of all nations". What are we doing about it?

Let me share some quotable quotes:

Archbishop William Temple: "The Church is the only organisation that exists for those who are not its members."

Archbishop Michael Ramsey: "The Church that lives to itself dies by itself."

D.T. Niles : Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where he can find bread.

God had only one Son and He was a missionary.

Jesus said of Himself: "The Son of Man came to seek and to save the Lost" (Luke 19 v 10)

Questions for discussion:

1. Has the local church a passion for souls? If so, what is our strategy for evangelism?

2. What specific things are we doing to attract people into our fellowship?

3. What impact are we making on the wider community in Street & Walton?

4. What difference will the reordering of the Parish Church make in extending God's kingdom?