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We thought it would be good to introduce The Sola ‘Panellists’ in a little more detail than the brief introduction on our website allows—especially for the sake of those who don't know us personally. So over the next couple of months, I (Sandy) will interview them—one per week—with the same basic set of get-to-know-you questions.

Today we start with our convenor, Tony Payne. SG

Tony, how did you come to Christ?

I'm usually never asked to give my testimony at evangelistic events because it's so weird. Very briefly: I grew up as a fairly nominal Anglican in Lismore, NSW (Grafton Diocese, fairly high church), tagging along to church with Mum semi-regularly.

There were two main turning points. One was becoming heavily involved in a Catholic youth movement called YCS at school (having originally joined, somewhat predictably, to pursue a girl). I finished up as one of the diocesan leaders of YCS, even though I was about the only non-Catholic involved. By this stage (aged 16 or so), I was a confused God-fearer who knew that Christ was Very Important but had no idea what that meant or what the gospel really was.

Then came the second turning point—a spur of the moment decision by Mum for us to both catch the 12-hour overnight bus to Sydney in April 1979 to hear Billy Graham. I heard Dr Graham preach on Manasseh, the most evil king of Israel, who filled the streets of Jerusalem with blood, but who eventually repented in chains in Babylon, and was forgiven by God. I can still hear the call: “If Manasseh can be forgiven, YOU can be forgiven”. The clink of the pennies dropping was matched by the sound of my feet on the concrete stairs as I ran to the front.

How do you occupy your time?

Being a husband and father of five teenagers accounts for a reasonable swathe of it. The rest of the time, I work as the Publishing Director at Matthias Media (which means taking responsibility for everything we publish, as well doing some writing and editing).

Tell us a bit about your other interests.

I have too many interests and they are too varied. If, as Chappo¹ says, there will be plenty of time to pursue our interests in the new creation, I will have a ball playing and/or watching cricket and most forms of football (my teams: Sydney Swans, St George, Waratahs, Minnesota Vikings, Arsenal); I will finally get my golf handicap below 10 (lifelong dream); I will have time to play the guitar more (classical and steel-string), and to work on all the photos that I've taken but which sit on the computer waiting for ‘post-production’ and printing; I'd listen to more music (Bach, Mozart, Radiohead, U2, Coldplay, Yes, George Harrison, The Angels), and I would read!

¹ Chappo = John Chapman, retired Sydney-based evangelist, author and trainer of preachers.

What are you reading now?

• Blue at the Mizzen, which is Number 20 in the 20-volume Patrick O'Brian series of Aubrey-Maturin historical novels
• a really cheeky but helpful book about writing called Bird by Bird
• a modern edition of John Owen's Overcoming Sin and Temptation
• and Allan Bloom's quite amazing take on Western intellectual history The Closing of the American Mind.

Next on the shelf in fiction is Ian McEwan's Atonement or Helen Garner's The Spare Room.

What are five books that have really helped you grow as a Christian?

• The Fight by John White (remember when that was the book for new Christians?)
• Knowing God and Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God by Jim Packer
• The Everlasting God (now republished in The Selected Works of Broughton Knox (Volume 1) by Broughton Knox
• Resurrection and Moral Order by Oliver O'Donovan.

What are three books you'd recommend as must-reads right now?

My favourite book at the moment is Living in the Underworld by Peter Bolt. I think Bolty has done a brilliant job of examining a controversial and difficult subject with insight, humour and profundity. You have to read it. [SG: Actually, you'd think as Publishing Director, Tony would know the correct title is Living with the Underworld!] [KB: That's what sub-editors are for.]

For something that's written from a Reformed-Evangelical theological viewpoint but will get under your skin and challenge your assumptions about church, read Total Church by Steve Timmis and Tim Chester.

And for a brilliant big-picture analysis of how modernity and postmodernity have affected our culture and our churches, Above All Earthly Pow'rs by David F Wells.

What would your friends say are your hobby horses?

I can't help being an editor; I've been doing it for too long. So I bug my children endlessly by correcting them or other people (grammar, pronunciation, facts, biblical arguments, sermon structure, you name it!).

What is something that makes you angry?

I very rarely get angry, to be honest. ‘Phlegmatic’, I think, is the word. What does get me going is when my wife or kids suffer an injustice or are somehow mistreated, and I am powerless to do much about it.

Who is someone who inspires you?

Any time I chat with Phillip Jensen (which is much too rarely these days), I come away with new vigour for gospel ministry, and usually a new idea.

What is your ideal day off?

Sleeping in, followed by reading the paper over a full cooked breakfast, finishing just in time to roll into the lounge room for the start of a test cricket match, emerging at around 4 for a late afternoon stroll with Ali, with a family takeaway dinner and movie night to finish.

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At Easter, like many Christian pastors, I had the privilege of preaching the resurrection. I stated that Christianity was pointless without the true, historical, physical, bodily resurrection of Christ (download the mp3 of the sermon). Basing these comments on 1 Corinthians 15, I pointed out that Paul took great care to outline the early conviction that Christ had died, was buried, rose again and appeared to many witnesses—many of whom were still then alive for cross-examination 20-25 years later.

So imagine my sadness at the Easter message of the Dean of St George's Anglican Cathedral, Perth, Dr John Shepherd (download the text of his sermon [Word document]). Dr Shepherd said,

Well, what I do believe is that, to be a Christian, to be a member of the Christian Church, it is not necessary to believe that the resurrection of Jesus was an extraordinary physical event which restored to life Jesus’ original, earthly body. The resurrection of Jesus need not be understood as a restored physical reality, but as a new spiritual reality.

As Dr Shepherd continued, he taught that Christians need not believe that Jesus' resurrection involved his physical body, effectively making it an optional extra.

Dr Shepherd trades on a perceived opposition between ‘physical’ and ‘spiritual’ in 1 Corinthians 15—as if a ‘spiritual body’ must be non-physical. However, there is no direct opposition between the two. Rather, the distinction is between mortal and immortal, perishable and imperishable.

The ‘flesh and blood’ idiom of 1 Corinthians 15:50 might, at first, seem to support his non-physical idea, but a close look shows it should be seen for the clear parallel it is to ‘mortal’ in the second half of the verse—apparently also a common Jewish idiom to express mere mortality (in this current world of sin). There is bodily continuity in 1 Corinthians 15 as well as transformation, such that the spiritual will operate in the realm of the body. It is more than physical, but not less!

The physicality of Christ's body is clear in Luke 24 (where, in verse 39, Jesus says he has flesh and bones and proceeds to eat with the disciples) and in John 20 (where Thomas can touch Jesus' wounds). Such unambiguous comments contradict Dr Shepherd's claim that the Gospel writers' words were just meant to be symbolic of the overwhelming sense they felt of Christ's spiritual presence.

As an Anglican minister, I am concerned because Dr Shepherd's comments appear to deny the Apostles' Creed (a key part of section 1 of the Fundamental Declarations in the Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia). As readers may know, the Creed states that:

The third day he rose again from the dead [...]; and
I believe in [...] the resurrection of the body [...].

This latter line refers to our hope for the general resurrection at the end of the age. But this is, of course, patterned on Christ's resurrection. And so, by the wide catholic agreement represented in this Creed, Christ's resurrection is clearly bodily.

Furthermore, Dr Shepherd's comments totally contradict Article 4 of the Anglican Thirty Nine Articles of Religion, which state, of the Resurrection of Christ, that:

Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man's nature [...]

For the sake of many people who are disturbed by these comments, I wrote to the Archbishop of Perth to inquire whether Dr Shepherd's views are acceptable for a senior clergyman in the Anglican Church. I await his reply with interest, although you can guess my own opinion!

Friends, hold to the historical, physical, bodily resurrection with confidence, because, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1 Cor 15:17).

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To escape from drowning, you have to swim in what you are swallowing. Churches in the West are drowning in Western values, drinking deeply without being able to swim in the muck they are drinking, let alone being able to escape.

Imbibing Western values is easy. Just sit there. Watch the telly. Get educated in our schools and universities. Read the paper. Just sit there, open up, drink it in.

Western values are so easy. Every individual has the right to self-determination—to be who they want to be; to choose what they want to choose; to do what they want to do. Of course, the unwritten law that limits this potential anarchy is that in the exercise of my freedom, I shouldn't restrict the freedom of another or harm another in any way. This all sounds so good—so eminently ‘liberal’ —so free and freeing.

The Bible, on the other hand, is so difficult (so they say). It is so ancient. (How can first-century values still be useful for the 21st century?) It is so complicated. (How can it be true if you have to think for more than a TV news sound-bite?) It is so discriminatory. (How can it deem certain behaviours wrong?) And besides all that, you have to deliberately plan to read it, study it, inwardly digest it; it doesn't just come at you out of every pore as daily life is squeezed.

After a while, the rot sets in. The values imbibed from the world just seem so ‘natural’—so right. When the Bible is read, you feel the clash. (But why does it say that? In fact, how can it say that?) The issue is not simply that the conclusions are different; it is more than this. Western values are drip-feeding into us. We don't even have to think about them. The Bible, on the other hand, forces us to think about life, the universe and everything. And that is quite demanding.

The Bible once gave the West its values. Western values are no longer Christian. If so, can Western Christians even think ethically any more? It depends upon what they are drinking in.

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Sharp-eyed Sola Panel readers will have noticed that the evil spam monster has, just once or twice, crept through our defences and left us inadvertently advertising the latest—well, less sharp eyed readers don't need to know. We've also had a rash of posts (from just a couple of people) that we had to delete, according to our 'be godly' and 'stay on topic' guidelines.

So while we continue to iron out the small wrinkles in our fresh new blog, we are enabling comment moderation. That means we will be moderating all comments in line with our guidelines, and you may experience some delay in seeing what you or others have posted.

As we do this, we're trying to strike a balance between highlighting the actual content of the posts, yet also allowing open and lively discussion (including disagreement!), while at the same time establishing a tone for our interaction that will, we trust, be of the most benefit to participants and readers.

So at the moment our Sola Panel ‘L’ plates (‘L’ for ‘learner driver’, in case you don't have them in your part of the world) are still firmly in place. Please be patient with us as we explore our options in this department! If we make mistakes, the easiest way to let us know is via the comments on this blog. Only please remember to mark them ‘Not for publication’ if you don't want your views spread throughout the blogosphere!

Please keep reading and commenting, and we, for our part, will keep you updated on where we're going and what we're thinking.

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The phrase ‘seeker sensitive’ has dropped out of fashion recently. For those who haven't heard the phrase, the idea of a ‘seeker sensitive service’ is a church gathering that focusses on the desires and needs of ‘spiritual seekers’—non-Christians with a thirst for knowing more about God. It aims to do everything possible to make it easy for them to come to church and enjoy the experience so that they come back and learn about God. Yet the Willow Creek Association, for example, once a champion of the ‘seeker sensitive’ model of church, has recently had a major rethink of some of its key values. In their book Reveal: Where Are You? by Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson, they speak frankly about the failures of an approach that was too heavily oriented towards growth in numbers rather than growth in maturity.

This post isn't meant to be a critique or discussion of the Willow Creek model, or of church growth in general. However, I do want to explore the idea of being ‘seeker sensitive’. And to do that, I want to look briefly at a story from Luke's Gospel—a passage that is all about a seeker:

And there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small of stature. (Luke 19:2-3 ESV)

Here is, in the Bible's words, a true seeker—a man who seeks to see Jesus. Like many seekers in our world, there are all sorts of cultural barriers in his way. Zacchaeus isn't a classic churchgoer. In fact, he's a man who couldn't show up in the synagogue without being despised. He's a rich tax-collector—a corrupt businessman who's betrayed his country. Besides, he's short. He's probably hurting and lonely. The only way for him to get to Jesus is through the unorthodox method of climbing a tree.

The question is, what does Jesus do for this seeker? Does Jesus show sensitivity to his needs and feelings? Does he create a comfortable and welcoming atmosphere for Zacchaeus? Does he allow him time to experience spiritual connectedness with God? Well ... not really. In fact, he seems to do the exact opposite. He draws attention to Zacchaeus by stopping and looking up at him. He commands him to come down. He tells Zacchaeus in no uncertain terms that he's going to stay with him that night. It's not quite the model of seeker sensitivity we're used to.

Yet Jesus' words and actions are strangely effective. Zacchaeus receives Jesus with joy (v. 7). And his life is radically changed that day: he turns away from his corrupt past, and promises to make amends immediately (v. 8). He is, in Jesus' words, a saved Son of Abraham (v. 9).

What has happened here? Why has salvation come to Zacchaeus? How did it happen? Jesus explains it in verse 10: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

The reason that salvation came to Zacchaeus was not because Jesus was being particularly sensitive to his needs. It's because Zacchaeus came face to face with Jesus, the one whose job it is to seek and save the lost. Indeed, by the end of the story, we see that the real seeker in this story is not Zacchaeus, but Jesus. Jesus is the one who seeks and saves: Jesus, the seeker, sought out Zacchaeus (even though Zacchaeus thought he was doing the seeking). He humbled him, he commanded him to come to him, and he brought about that joy and radical change of life that only Jesus can bring.

So, in short, I want to suggest that our church gatherings must be seeker-sensitive if they are to be truly effective. But by this, I mean that our church gatherings must be sensitive to the seeker of Luke 19:10. We must aim, in everything we do, to bring people face to face with the seeker—the Son of Man who came to seek and save the lost. In doing so, we will need to present the urgency of his demands and the need for radical repentance, as well as the joy of knowing him. Of course, we should also be sensitive to people, and seek to remove unnecessary distractions (e.g. strange clothing, music, jargon and traditions). But we do this not because we are trying to make lost people feel comfortable, but because we want lost people to focus upon the seeker of their souls, and so be saved.

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