Family Worship
Andy Beard
Luke 5:1-11 Family Worship Ideas

The 100 years prayer meeting

FACT: The Moravian Community of Herrnhut in Saxony, in 1727, commenced a round-the-clock “prayer watch” that continued nonstop for over a hundred years.

FACT: By 1791, 65 years after commencement of that prayer vigil, the small Moravian community had sent 300 missionaries to the ends of the earth.

Could it be that there is some relationship between those two facts?

Is fervent intercession a basic component in world evangelization?

The answer to both questions is surely an unqualified “yes.” That heroic eighteenth-century evangelization thrust of the Moravians has not received the attention it deserves. But even less heralded than their missionary exploits is that hundred-year prayer meeting that sustained the fires of evangelism. During its first five years of existence the Herrnhut settlement showed few signs of spiritual power. By the beginning of 1727 the community of about three hundred people was wracked by dissension and bickering. An unlikely site for revival!

Zinzendorf and others, however, covenanted to prayer and labor for revival. On May 12 revival came. Christians were aglow with new life and power, dissension vanished and unbelievers were converted. Looking back to that day and the four glorious months that followed, Zinzendorf later recalled: “The whole place represented truly a visible habitation of God among men.” A spirit of prayer was immediately evident in the fellowship and continued throughout that “golden summer of 1727,” as the Moravians came to designate the period.

On August 27 of that year twenty-four men and twenty-four women covenanted to spend one hour each day in scheduled prayer. Some others enlisted in the “hourly intercession.” “For over a hundred years the members of the Moravian Church all shared in the ‘hourly intercession.’ At home and abroad, on land and sea, this prayer watch ascended unceasingly to the Lord,” stated historian A. J. Lewis.

The ‘Memorial Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren’, published in 1822, ninety-five years after the decision to initiate the prayer watch, quaintly describes the move in one sentence: “The thought struck some brethren and sisters that it might be well to set apart certain hours for the purpose of prayer, at which seasons all might be reminded of its excellency and be induced by the promises annexed to fervent, persevering prayer to pour out their hearts before the Lord … The sacred fire was never permitted to go out on the altar (Leviticus 6:13); so in a congregation is a temple of the living God, wherein he has his altar and fire, the intercession of his saints should incessantly rise up to him.”

That prayer watch was instituted by a community of believers whose average age was probably about thirty. Zinzendorf himself was twenty-seven. The prayer vigil by Zinzendorf and the Moravian community sensitized them to attempt the unheard-of mission to reach others for Christ. Six months after the beginning of the prayer watch the count suggested to his fellow Moravians the challenge of a bold evangelism aimed at the West Indies, Greenland, Turkey and Lapland. Some were skeptical, but Zinzendorf persisted. Twenty-six Moravians stepped forward the next day to volunteer for world missions wherever the Lord led. The exploits that followed are surely to be numbered among the high moments of Christian history. Nothing daunted Zinzendorf or his fellow heralds of Jesus Christ—prison, shipwreck, persecution, ridicule, plague, abject poverty, threats of death. His hymn reflected his conviction:

Ambassador of Christ, Know ye the way ye go?

It leads into the jaws of death, Is strewn with thorns and woe.

Church historians look to the eighteenth century and marvel at the Great Awakening in England and America which swept hundreds of thousands into God’s Kingdom. John Wesley figured largely in that mighty movement and much attention has centered on him. It is not possible that we have overlooked the place which that round-the-clock prayer watch had in reaching Wesley and, through him and his associates, in altering the course of history?

…taken from an article by Leslie K. Tarr, published at https://www.christianitytoday.com/

Open Doors Conference online

Standing Strong, Saturday 3rd October 2020, 7.45-9.30pm

register here: https://www.opendoorsuk.org/news/standing-strong-2020/standing-strong-online/

Open Doors’ annual Standing Strong events can’t take place in person this year – but we’re delighted to host an online evening gathering featuring the interviews, stories, praise and prayer that have made Standing Strong so memorable for many years.

At Standing Strong Online we will bring you the latest news on what’s happening to our brothers and sisters in Syria, Nigeria and China through interviews with church leaders and footage direct from our partners around the world.

So, join us on Saturday 3 October as we pray, learn and worship together with our persecuted family and find out how their courageous faith can strengthen us all.

Do NOT read this book

In yesterday’s sermon I mentioned a book by the mighty Bible commentator Matthew Henry, A Method for Prayer. Quite few folk have expressed interest in it… so I thought I’d both encourage that, but also flag up one or two warnings so that we don’t get discouraged early on. The first thing to remember is that this is a book that was written 300 years ago. The use and style of language has changed a bit over those three centuries, which can make reading a book like this an aquired skill… in other words it can take a bit of time and effort to work out, and at times to ‘translate’ what Matthew Henry is saying. I remember the penny-drop moment when I realised that ‘divers’ equates to the modern word ‘diverse’ (as in: many or varied), and not to sub-aquatic swimmers (which never really made sense)! I think it’s worth the effort, but don’t get discouraged if it takes a bit of time - and if you are struggling, drop me an email…

Secondly - and this is much more significant - don’t try to read it ‘cover-to-cover’. It isn’t that kind of book. There are a few parts of the book you can just read. The opening letter to the Reader; and the sections at the end entitled ‘Directions for Daily Communion with God. But apart from those bits, it works much better as a kind of reference book. So, for example, if I wanted to pray for those who are struggling with mental health issues, I might turn up Chapter 6, section 22, and draw some help and inspiration from there. Or if I wanted to pray for our nation in a time of crisis, I’d start with Ch.5, section C ‘We must pray earnestly for national mercies’. Because this is the nature of the book, you have to use it for a while before you start to get an idea of what’s in there… In that sense it is a book to be prayed through rather than read through…

You might want to use it as part of your own devotional life so that you become familiar with it in this way. It certainly takes off the beaten tracks that our own prayers may have worn over the years. I regularly find myself thinking: I’d never have thought to pray that…

Thirdly, because it was written in a different time, it might not be ‘politically correct’. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing I’ll leave you to decide for yourself. I’m just alerting you to the possiblity that occasionally you’ll read something that will make you catch your breath and think ‘I’m not praying that!’. Sometimes it might be worth looking up the passages that Henry is basing his prayers on and deciding if you think he is being fair to the Bible’s teaching.

And finally, I’ve found over the years that books like this serve a primers for prayer. The first few lines might be all I need sometimes, before I’ve got a sense of how to pray for something, and I am able to put ‘A Method for Prayer’ down. I doubt Matthew Henry would begrudge me that!

With those qualification in place, I commend this book to you, and would encourage you to allow the Holy SPirit to expand our vision of prayer, and to discipline us to pray more fully and consciously in a way that is shaped by the will of God revelad by the Spirit through the Scriptures. Of course, this isn’t the final word on ‘prayer’, and some might not find it helpful - but I think the idea that shapes the book is one we all need to take on board.

so, don’t read this book, pray it…

And thanks to Graham Bricknell for pointing out to me that there is a free online version available at  https://www.matthewhenry.org

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Vision 2020, Bible Study 5, Prayer

The Question of Prayer

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.

                       (Eph.6:18)

Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith … pray continually.

(I Thess.3:10 & 5:17)

The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray.

(I Pet.4:7)

Nowhere in our life of Christian discipleship are we so exposed as in our life of prayer.  It is possible (though I hesitate to speak in such terms) that nowhere are we less like the Christ we follow than in our experience of prayer, or rather, our lack of…  Many Christians confess to finding prayer a difficult and frankly unfulfilling experience.  This is as true in our personal devotional life as it is in our corporate one.  We easily feel guilty when discussing ‘prayer’.  We are so acutely aware of the credibility gap between what we say we believe, and what we actually do.  There are glorious exceptions, but our experience of prayer is generally that it is unanswered, and makes no discernible difference.  Whilst we can justify it (sometimes God says ‘No’, sometimes ‘Wait’, sometimes ‘Yes’ – so God always answers prayer!), it feels like we’re playing games when we do.  In our better moments we know we are simply papering over a desperately inadequate experience that leaves an aching void no theological pedantry can fill.  We read of older saints getting up off their knees, knowing their prayers are heard and confident they would be answered – and there is little in our own experience that equates with that.

But imagine a Church where our prayer life was courageous, rich, and answered.  Where prayer was genuinely the foundation of all we did…  I’m old school enough to believe that the prayer meeting is the engine house of the Church.  Many of our frustrations, and the questions we try to answer by endlessly tampering with our various ministries would be better resolved through a wholesale return to prayer.  Perhaps our (and those we are seeking to reach with the Gospel) perceived lack of encounter with God isn’t so much about questions of style, or training, or even resources so much as it is about whether or not we gather to pray, and what happens when we do.  Perhaps our lack of effectiveness in evangelism isn’t so much to do with a lack of training, or the fact that we aren’t running the latest ‘trendy’ seeker-course, as it is to do with the fact that we don’t win the battle for souls on our knees. 

It isn’t uncommon at MIE for 1-2% (i.e. 6 or less) of our congregation to turn up to a prayer meeting.  Sometimes, not even that many.  It isn’t uncommon for prayer meetings to not run because no-one shows up.  I suggest there is a simple spiritual law at work here – a people who don’t pray together, don’t meet God when they worship together or when they do mission together.  By contrast, in Scripture and throughout Church history all the evidence suggests that corporate prayer is inseparable from the Church’s spiritual advance and blessing.

One such example is furnished by the last revival on English soil, just up the road in Lowestoft in 1921. ‘Every Sunday morning, from 6.30-9.30 a.m. there was a prayer meeting.  It was held in a net loft above a wash-house close to the sea … Ages ranged from 16 years to 60 years, and the spirit of prayer was tremendous.  One man who was there told of how these folks grasped the horns of the alter…’.  It’s entirely possible that we have little idea, and still less experience, of what a phrase like that means.  Contrary to what we might think is reasonable to expect, we read of incredible movements of prayer in Church history.  Words like ’overwhelmed’, ‘earnest’, ‘strong’, ‘bold’, and phrases like ‘taking hold of God’ are often used - not language we are used to hearing in association with prayer meetings.  We read of prayer meetings lasting through the night, or in some instances, for several days.  Such seasons are inevitably linked to, and often precede, significant moves of God.

‘Prayer’, as Charles Spurgeon said, ‘is the slender nerve that moves the muscle of omnipotence’.  Alas, the converse is also true: prayerlessness is the cause of all spiritual weakness, and ineffectiveness.  To fail here is to fail everywhere.

Questions

Can you share your experience of prayer honestly?  Are you satisfied with your life of prayer?  Assuming not, can you – with equal honesty – share why you don’t pray as you’d like to?  How can your Fellowship Group help you here?

Why do you think Prayer Meetings are often so boring?

Read Heb.4:14-5:10

What is the connection between Jesus’ being our High Priest (4:14), His ascension (4:14), His holiness (4:15) and our being able to approach God’s throne of grace with confidence (4:16)?

What is the ‘time of need’ this passage envisages us being in (4:16)?

Why is it so important to realise that Jesus did not take the honour of being our High Priest on Himself (5:4-5)?

Given Jesus’ deep commitment to prayer (5:7), how would you respond to a disciple of Jesus for whom prayer just isn’t that big a deal?

In Jesus’ experience of effective prayer ‘He was heard because of His reverent submission’ (5:7).  Do you think our experience of being ‘heard’ depends on our likewise being humbly submitted to the Father?   What did that mean for Jesus…  what does it mean for us?   

What do you think it means to speak of Jesus ‘learning obedience’ (5:8) … and being ‘made perfect’ (5:9)?  How do we reconcile this to our belief in the Deity of Christ?  How is such obedience learned through suffering?  How does this connect to Jesus’ life of prayer?  Does this have anything to say to our experiences of suffering?

Does it matter to you that Jesus was ‘designated by God to be High Priest in the order of Melchizedek (5:10)?  What difference would it make if He hadn’t been?  Why do you think Hebrews devotes an entire Chapter to exploring this (see Ch.7)?

Memory Passage:

With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith.  We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

II Thess.1:11-12

For further reflection:

We often think of prayer as a something that should be quite a natural thing for Christians to do.  Our spiritual forbears would have considered such an attitude naïve.  They speak of prayer as the most difficult thing a disciple of Jesus has to learn to do.  That in itself should give us pause for thought.  What has changed in our thinking about prayer that puts us so radically out of step with centuries of Christian experience? 

Rather than depressing us, such an observation can re-kindle hope.  Is it possible that a genuine life of prayer is something I could enjoy?  So many have given up hope.  But what if we have actually been barking up the proverbially wrong tree.  That could explain a lot.  It could also open for us the chance for a new direction of travel.  Recognising for example that different kinds of prayer belong in different contexts can bring a good deal of clarity.  How I pray at home (Matt.6:6-7); is different from how I pray for people when in my Fellowship Group; is different from how I pray when I’m leading the Church in prayer in a prayer meeting.  Leading Intercessions in a service is not the same as prayerful meditation on a passage of Scripture.  Prayer is a much richer and varied landscape than we are accustomed to thinking, or experiencing.

My own conviction is that we simply must learn to pray … as a Church.  What we enjoy elsewhere in the ministry and mission of MIE will be merely the outworking of what is achieved in our prayer meetings.  Failure here is failure everywhere.  My longing is that those who lead any aspect of our worship or mission have first lead us in prayer.  My desire is that we would see prayer as so integral and non-negotiable that we would do nothing as a Church until we knew we had secured God’s blessing on it through our prayer.

Vision 2020, Bible Study 4, Public Worship

 (4) The Question of Worship

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendour of his holiness.

                       (Ps.29:2)

Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.  Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God.  It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

(Ps.100:1-3)

Who will not fear you, Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.

(Rev.15:4)

We thought briefly in a previous study about the distinctions between worship and evangelism.  In one sense those aren't hard and fast distinctions – worship is intrinsically missional, and evangelism is a form of worship.  But in terms of centre of gravity, it has some traction.  Once evangelism becomes something that we do intentionally and deliberately elsewhere in the life of the Church, we liberate our Services of Divine Worship to be what they are supposed to be. 

Someone once said: there are no right answers to the wrong question.  ‘How do we make our services accessible to people who aren’t Christians?’ is the wrong question.  It can’t be done and shouldn’t be tried, and if you succeeded, it would no longer be Christian worship.  We might feel I Cor.14:24-25 challenges this.  But this passage says precisely nothing about the ‘accessibility’ or otherwise of the service to the unbeliever.  It speaks of the presence of God at work in the context of worship to convict an ‘unbeliever’ or ‘enquirer’ of their sin - perhaps the least culturally relevant thing we could ask for.

We’re not advocating, of course, deliberate irrelevance, or even cultivated non-relevance, as if idiosyncrasy is a virtue we should pursue.  Neither is it a mandate for traditionalism.  But it is to suggest that while a service of Divine Worship should be genuinely incarnational and therefore culturally authentic, its purpose, expression and (most importantly) content is not primarily shaped by that culture.  We don’t come to worship with a blank sheet of paper, free to design something that ‘fits’ us.  Worship should redeem and shape our culture, not be captivated and shaped by it.   There is ancient wisdom in thousands of years of Christian worship (seen in the Scriptures and since) that it is utter folly to disregard, and even more so in the name of anything as superficial, transitory and unstable as accessibility to our contemporary (unbelieving) culture.

Here is a series of propositions that seem radical to the point of incredulity; but which for centuries were the working assumption of every Church in the world.

  • The LORD’s day should be set aside (as far as possible given that many Christians over the generations have been slaves) for worship, prayer, fellowship, teaching and study of Scriptures and Christian service.  If there was no other time when the saints could gather, they would do so before sunrise and the beginning of the working day.  This gathering was preceded by prayer, teaching and worship on the Saturday evening (even today in the Russian Orthodox Church, if you do not attend Vespers on Saturday evening, you will not be given Communion on Sunday).

  • Liturgy is a powerful restorative and formational tool in our worship, not an inevitable mark of inauthenticity.  It can draw us into a deeper experience of worship than we would fashion left to our own devices. It’s worth bearing in mind that every revival in the history of the British Church took place in the context of liturgical worship - many in fact in Churches who knew only the BCP!!

  • God has revealed what is acceptable worship, and we aren’t free to re-design a worship service according to personal preference.  There are non-negotiable components, and worship is less authentically Christian if they are absent. 

  • The integrity of a worship service isn’t primarily dependent on my ‘really meaning it’, or giving voice to what is in ‘my’ heart (!).  Worship isn’t about me and my story, it is about God and His story.

  • The purpose of a service is not limited to my declaring the glory of God.  It also includes – amongst other dynamics - the Spirit’s work of breaking the power of sin and re-forming me; the renewal of covenant; my hearing and responding to God in word and sacrament; envisioning, training and investing me with the spiritual resources for life and mission as a disciple of Jesus; public confession; establishing Godly ritual as a foundation for personal holiness and devotion…

That all this and more is at stake should make us very careful about disregarding the wisdom of our spiritual forbears, still less, the Scriptures themselves.

Questions:

What would be the impact on the ministry and mission of MIE if we re-captured the Sabbath nature of the LORD’s Day?  Do you think the main act of a Church’s worship can be moved from Sunday?  Why / why not?

What makes an act of worship authentically ‘Christian’? 

What sort of things might mean that a worship service actually does more harm than good (the phrase is taken from I Cor.11:17, but can other things make a worship service damaging apart from what Paul is specifically addressing at Corinth)?  Do you think worship services at MIE do more harm or more good?  Why?

Read Heb.12:18-29

Do you think we should be more or less awe-struck in coming to Mount Zion rather than Mount Sinai?  How would that affect us as we come to an act of corporate worship?  How can we cultivate that?  What difference does it make that we join with the Church triumphant in worship (v.23)?

What does it mean to ‘refuse Him who speaks’ (v.25)?  What does this teach us about God?  What did it look like at Sinai?  What might it look like in our own experience?  Why is it such a serious danger?

What is the shaking spoken of in vv.26-27?  What is the connection between this, and God’s speaking? …and our worship?

What does it mean to ‘worship God acceptably with reverence and awe’ (v.28)?  How could we cultivate these characteristics in our own approach to worship?  What would it mean if they were absent from a service?  How could we tell?

How does the way God is described in this passage shape how we approach Him in worship (the Living God, Judge of all, Him who speaks, a consuming fire)?  Why is the role of Jesus as Mediator so important (v.24)?

Memory Passage:

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”  The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”  Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

John 4:23-26

For further reflection:

In our cultural context we tend to privatise and individualise the very concept of worship.  We think that the important part of our spiritual life is our ‘personal’ relationship with Jesus. We then struggle at times to know where the corporate worship of the Church fits in, if it does at all.  And even when we are at Church we can easily think of the fact that others are there as simply an accident of geography.  We don’t think of what God is doing in ‘us’; but still in terms of what God is doing in ‘me’ in this room in which there happens to be other people. 

It’s hard to convey how out of step this is with historic Christian thinking, which saw the public and corporate worship of the Church as the fountain head out of which all personal devotion and discipleship flows.  Perhaps the tension can be best exposed by considering a sermon preached by Rev. David Clarkson, a minister in London in 1680s.  One week he took as his text Ps. 87:2, The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the other dwellings of Jacob – and he entitled the sermon: ‘Public worship to be preferred before private’.

He argued that public worship is more central to the heart of God – and to our own  spirituality - than private, personal devotions.  It sounds strange, perhaps even incomprehensible to us.  But Clarkson develops 12 arguments from the Scriptures why he thinks this is the case,  including the idea that the LORD is more glorified in public worship than private; that there is more spiritual advantage in the use of public worship; that the Lord works his greatest works in public worship; that public worship is nearest resemblance to the worship of heaven…  After all, you don’t read of people in heaven heading off for their personal devotions! 

some wisdom on Mentoring from Melissa Kruger who has literally written a book on it!

here’s a post from the Gospel Coalition website by Melissa Kruger sharing some wisdom on Mentoring that she accrued through years of experience, and then reflecting on that while writing a book on the subject. I’ve copied and pasted the blog in its entirety…

3 Reasons You Can Say ‘Yes’ to Mentoring

“Will you be my mentor?”

You may hear that question from a younger woman and quickly glance around the room to see who she’s asking. You think to yourself: Surely, she’s not asking me! What exactly does she want me to do? I don’t know enough, and I’m afraid I’ll disappoint her.

Most of us still feel like we need mentoring ourselves, so it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking we have nothing to offer. In theory, we want to invest in the church and in a new generation of Christian women. We want to see our sisters in Christ equipped for service in his kingdom. But we can get cold feet when it comes to seeing ourselves as mentors.

I felt my own inadequacies rising to the surface earlier this spring when a friend from Bible study asked if I’d be willing to mentor her. Even though I’d spent the past two years writing a book about mentoring, my first thought was: She’s already mature in her faith; I don’t have anything to offer her. Why does she want me to be her mentor? 

In addition to our feelings of inadequacy, we may be unsure about what to do in a mentoring relationship. Many women have never been mentored, so it’s difficult to have a clear vision for what the time together should look like. While every mentoring relationship is different and there are many beneficial ways to invest in others, here are a few nuggets of wisdom I’ve gleaned from older women who have faithfully mentored me.

1. Mentoring involves you, but it’s not up to you.

As a little girl, I remember an afternoon I spent playing in the front yard while my dad was busy picking up sticks and weeding. At one point, he stopped his usual work and went into the garage. He came back with some tools and began doing something I’d never seen him do before. There was a young thin tree that was bent over, suffering from the damaging effects of a storm that had recently blown through. 

My father took a rope and tethered the young tree to a much older tree—one that was sturdy and strong, standing straight. When I asked why he was tying the two trees together, he explained that the older tree could offer support and strength to prevent the younger one from growing askew. The older tree had withstood years of winds and storms. Just by standing beside the younger tree, it offered stability.

This image comes to mind whenever I think about discipleship. Essentially, a spiritual mentoring relationship is one where a younger believer is tethered to a more mature believer for a season so that he or she might grow stronger in faith and be equipped for ministry. This image calms my fears about my own inadequacies and reminds me to trust God.

A spiritual mentoring relationship is one where a younger believer is tethered to a more mature believer for a season so that he or she might grow stronger in faith and be equipped for ministry.

Just as the older tree doesn’t make the younger tree grow (the water and the sun do that), a mentor isn’t responsible for the spiritual growth of the person she’s mentoring (God does that). She’s simply standing beside the younger woman, offering the strength she’s gained as God has grown her through the years. 

It’s a reminder we all need: You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to have all the answers. You don’t have to say all the right things. Mentoring involves you, but it doesn’t depend on you. God is the one providing the spiritual growth. 

2. Setting clear expectations helps you both.

Communication is important in any relationship, especially in a mentoring relationship. After months of meeting with one younger woman, I realized we had completely different expectations of what mentoring should look like. In her mind, I wasn’t living up to what she had hoped for in a mentor. In my mind, she wasn’t putting the time and effort into our meetings. She was hoping to spend time together and hang out as friends; I was asking her to work through a Bible study curriculum and was frustrated that she never completed the homework. We didn’t have a regularly scheduled meeting time, and eventually our relationship fizzled into an awkward, “Hey, we should catch up sometime!”

I learned a lot from that relationship. Since then, I’ve changed the way I mentor in a few important ways. The first is to clarify from the beginning what we’re both hoping to accomplish. The goal of a mentoring relationship is to spend the time together purposefully pursuing spiritual growth. This can be accomplished through reading the Bible together, praying together, or working through a book together. (If you’re looking for a mentoring curriculum, that’s the content of my new book, Growing Together). Whatever you decide to do, it’s important to discuss the focus of your time together before you begin meeting.

Mentoring involves you, but it doesn’t depend on you. God is the one providing the spiritual growth.

Another important detail is to set an expected frequency and duration for time together. Set a specific date, time, and location. Will you meet once a month, twice a month, or once a week? Perhaps you’ll meet the first Tuesday of every month for breakfast or every other Thursday evening at the park. Figure out what day and time works best for you both—and commit to that time together. 

It’s also helpful to set a specific duration for how long you’ll plan to meet before reevaluating. It may be six months, a year, or until you finish a study, but it’s good to have a set time so that you’ll both look at your schedules and consider if you have time to keep meeting. Communicating clearly from the beginning helps foster healthy expectations for your time together. 

3. There’s never a better time to mentor.

You may not feel like you have the time to mentor—life feels too busy. But there’s never a perfectly convenient time. Each season has its own busyness. Instead, it’s helpful to consider natural ways to invite others into your life.

The goal of a mentoring relationship is to spend the time together purposefully pursuing spiritual growth.

Look around and think about your daily routine. Who’s a younger woman you enjoy being around? Perhaps you could invite her for dinner every Sunday evening or go for a walk together on Saturday mornings. Maybe you could serve together in the church nursery. What are you already doing on a regular basis that you could do together? 

As you invite her into your life, she will learn. She’ll grow in hospitality as she experiences hospitality from you. She’ll grow in affection for God as she hears of your love for him. She’ll grow in understanding as she learns how to apply the Word in her own life. She’ll learn to pray as she prays with you. 

You may not feel equipped, but if you’re walking with the Lord, you can share what you’ve learned with others. The wisdom you have is wisdom she needs. Pray with her. Memorize or read Scripture with her. Be a listening ear. Faithfully point her to Jesus. The effort is worth it, and the blessings will extend to you both—you’ll grow together as you learn together. 

Editors’ note: 

Melissa Kruger’s new book, Growing Together: Taking Mentoring Beyond Small Talk and Prayer Requests, is now available from TGC/Crossway.

Vision 2020 Bible Study 3, Discipeship

The Question of Discipleship

Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity ...  And God permitting, we will do so.

                       (Heb.6:1-2)

He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.

(Col.1:28)

One of the most sobering fields of study in the history of the Church is the demise of Christianity in North Africa in the 6th and 7th centuries.  What had been a thriving and virulent Church for centuries, giving rise to immense theologians whose writings continue to shape the Church even today (Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius, Augustine etc.), was in the end incapable of withstanding the corruption from within and the Caliphate from without.  The period stands as a warning against complacency and the presumption that the grace of God in Christ precludes His removing a Church’s ‘candlestick’ (Rev.2:5). 

Interestingly, one of the contributing factors was the gradual disappearance of the Catechumenate.  Church leaders were exhausted from generations of contending for the faith against Donatism (the debate about whether Christians - and especially Church leaders - could be re-admitted to Church life if they denied Christ in times of persecution) and Arianism (Arius taught that Jesus wasn’t ‘true Godf rom true God’, but was part of creation), and their ranks depleted by years of persecution and more recently invasion.   Feeling besieged, they lost their fiercely intentional programme of evangelism, initiation and discipleship that had been crafted over the centuries previous.  As the Catechumenate fell into disuse, the Church was weakened and expectations of discipleship were eroded.  People began to feel that it was OK to simply join Church, often without going through what had become known as ‘the awe-inspiring rites of initiation’.  As the foundations of discipleship were stripped away, the edifice of the Church slowly lost stability, and was unable to stand in the face of corrosive and unbiblical theology on the one hand, and in midst of a collapsing culture and the rise of Islam on the other.

Of course, it wasn’t just the initial process that had been lost.  It was the whole experience of being grafted meaningfully into the life and mission of the Church, it was the foundations of an informed faith, it was training in Christian living, the expectation and vision of growth.  It was the network of relationships and fellowship that was cultivated in those early years, and the scaffolding that would support and shape a lifetime of spiritual maturing that we can barely imagine at the moment.

Some of you know I spent a few days in North Africa a few summers ago.  I spent two of those days in the company of two Church leaders.  The conversations and time spent in prayer with them inspired and challenged me in equal measure.  This is where I first encountered the idea of such a rigorous start to Christian discipleship.  Intriguingly they had re-established a three year ‘induction programme’, and were breath-takingly realistic about its importance: ‘if you don’t complete that programme, we’ll lose you’.

One effect of such an enthusiastic start to the Christian life is that it creates a spirituality of expectation.  A trajectory is set which will continue to guide aspiration and hunger throughout our earthly race.  We end up with a clear vision for growth and the tools to pursue our heart’s desire for Christlikeness.  Discipleship becomes a life-long passion.  We don’t grind to a halt after a three-year induction…  that induction becomes a Launchpad into the rest of our Christian life.  Obviously, the Catechumenate can’t provide a context for that. 

The danger we must avoid is trying to force everything into our gathering on the Lord’s Day… unless we are willing to set aside the whole day!  But the agenda for the Service of Divine Worship is structured around preaching and sacrament.   Unfortunately, for over half of those involved in the life of MIE, Sunday is their only point of contact with the worshipping life of the Church.  And the stats suggest they don’t make that contact every Sunday.  This is the path to spiritual atrophy.  We can’t possibly learn everything we need to know, cultivate the fellowship, or receive the support and encouragement, example and incentive to live faithfully as a disciple of Christ simply by turning up to a service on Sunday.  We can’t expect a sermon to deliver everything we need.  It is the start of a conversation that must run beyond the Service.   Sunday is a great first step…  indeed a normally necessary one.  But the idea that this would be the extent of our involvement in the life of our church, and that we would have any real expectation of making spiritual progress is ludicrous, and has gone unchallenged for far too long in the British Church.

Questions:

What do you not understand about Church? Are things said/done in services, or elsewhere in our life together, and you’re not sure why, or what they mean? What are they?

What is there about being a Christian that you struggle to put into practice?  What help have you sought to address those places where you struggle?

If you had to explain to someone how living their life would have to change if they became a Christian, what would you say? 

Read Heb.10:19-39

What is the ‘hope we profess’ (v.23)?  What might distract us from it, or cause us it to slip from our grasp?

Can you share your experience of ‘spurring one another on towards love and good deeds’ (v.24)?  Where has this been welcomed / rejected?  Is this part of you experience of Fellowship Group?  How could it be more so?

Why is the ‘habit of meeting together’ (v.25) so difficult to sustain? 

How can we have any spiritual confidence after reading vv.26-31?  How would you counsel someone at MIE who was afraid they had sinned deliberately? 

What does it means to ‘trample the Son of God underfoot’ or to ‘treat as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant’ (v.29)?  …and that ‘the Lord will judge His people (v.30)?  Does it change how you think about being a Christian?

Would you be willing to have your home confiscated because of your identification with and involvement with the Church (v.32-34)?  If you knew this was a possibility, how would it change your relationship with others at MIE?

What would it look like to ‘shrink back’ (vv.38-39)?  Does this passage leave you feeling unsure about whether you are a Christian?  Do you think that this the purpose of the passage?

Memory Passage:

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand.  In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!  Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness.  But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Heb.5:11-14

For further reflection:

So where does such long-term disciple-making take place, if not (exclusively) in the Sunday service?  It occurs within a matrix of relationships that is focussed on our Fellowship Groups.  We must resist the temptation to marginalise Fellowship Groups, or to see them as optional extras.  Part of that temptation is rooted in our feeling that if people are only coming on a Sunday, we have to cram everything into Sunday – but as we’ve seen, this is dangerous reasoning.  We also need to stop trying to fit our discipleship in around the rest of our life.  Our tendency to see ‘Church’ as something that must be contained and limited so that ‘we don’t spend too much time on Church things’ is equally dangerous.

To be fair, we tend to think of Church in terms of meetings.  But what if ‘Church’ was actually about people and relationships, a means of grace through which we grew, and were instrumental in helping others grow?  What if our fellowship groups were actually that: groups in which we experienced the outworking of the fellowship of the Church?  Fellowship isn’t just about being with people we like.  It is about relationships that are focussed on Jesus, and that are used by the Holy Spirit to draw us into our relationship with Him.  So yes, prayer and Bible Study will feature large in the life of a Fellowship Group, but the agenda will spill out into the love and support that we so desperately need if we are going to confront the Hydra that is our sin; if we are to be faithful to Christ in the often challenging and painful circumstances of life; if we are to actually change and grow.  That requires involvement in each other’s lives.  Fellowship Groups are never less than Prayer and Bible Study, but they have to be more.

ouch!

Not directly related to our series, but I stumbled across this - a direct quote - in a blog (the link is to an article in the Guardian), and it gave me pause for thought!

In Mexico, worship mattered to large enough groups of people that clandestine lockdown services were organised, their times and locations passed on by word of mouth like illegal raves. But in Britain, faith is not considered worth the risk of illness — even by the church itself.

pause for thought.jpg

A totally Anglican thing...

Back in 2010, the Anglican Church in North America set up the snappily named ‘Catechesis Task Force’ to advise the House of Bishops of the ACNA on the ‘training and instruction of the faithful and, most especially, the making of disciples of Jesus Christ … The Task Force understands the critical role of catechesis in the ministry of the Church and aims to strengthen ACNA’s commitment to calling, forming, equipping and sending followers of Jesus.’

The Task Force was charged with (among other things) developing ‘a comprehensive catechumenal vision and framework…’. Why did the ACNA set up this Task Force? In it’s own words, ‘the contemporary Church has failed to train up her children in the admonition of the Lord … Moreover the Church as done a very poor job of teaching, training and forming disciples of adult converts. Many people live for years without noticeable growth in their doctrinal understanding, and the implications of that doctrine lived out - and so with little victory over the sin and brokenness of their lives. A consistent and focussed path has not been provided for them to learn, grow and mature as Christians, so that the contemporary Church is often filled with believers more formed by the culture of the world than by the Church and the Holy Scriptures she treasures and teaches. This is a fundamental lack of the Gospel transformation everyone needs’ (Vision doc, pp.2-3)

‘The ancient Church had a model for raising up believers and helping them to mature in their faith. Though actual practice may have varied through the centuries, catechesis always included training in the three areas of believing, praying and living (or to put it another way: Doctrine, Worship and holy living).’ (p.3).

The Vision Paper finishes with the rather remarkable claim: ‘The Church of God will never be preserved without Catechesis’.

Whether that is the case or not, I though you might appreciate knowing that as we pursue this agenda, we are in fact in step with the wider Anglican Church - or at least aspects of it.

the full documents (including a PDF of the Approved Anglican Catechism) can be found at https://anglicanchurch.net/catechism/