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One of the many rewards of running our first Matthias Media USA conference last year was the time spent getting to know our hosts at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC—including Jonathan Leeman, who runs the always interesting 9Marks blog, and pulls together their eJournal.

Like all the 9Marks guys, Jonathan is sharp as a tack, has a generous gospel heart, and is blessed with a clear-eyed sense of where the issues lie.

His thoroughly thought-provoking piece in the July/August edition of Modern Reformation is a case in point. Titled ‘Individualism's Not the Problem—Community's Not the Solution’, Jonathan's article examines the increasingly common mantra that the traditional evangelical gospel is too ‘individualistic’, and that we need a more communitarian, relational gospel for the disengaged postmodern self.

While acknowledging and applauding what the communitarians get right, Jonathan insightfully points out that the individualism, consumerism, radical scepticism and alienation of the modern person are symptoms of a deeper problem:

The problem with the modern self is not merely that it's “unrelated”. It's rebellious. Not just disengaged, but defiant. Not just independent, but insubordinate. Where Yahweh, the maker of heaven and earth, described himself to Moses as the self-defining, predicate-less “I AM” (ego sum in the Vulgate), the ground of all reality, Descartes' method effectively shoved Yahweh aside, making his existence (and God's!) a predicate of his own thinking mind (cogito ergo sum) ... Descartes' move, like Adam's, did not merely break a relationship; it broke God's law or Word. The implications are not merely personal, but judicial. It's not just a friend who is cast off; it's a Lord and Judge. The philosophical methods we associate with modernity and postmodernity, in a sense, whisper the same line whispered by the snake in Garden. What the shift from pre-modernity to modernity signified, really, was that this satanic whisper gained a moral and philosophical credibility in the so-called Christian West (even if it had always been believed and practiced). In other words, the Enlightenment did not bring us radical free agency and contractualism. Genesis 3 did. The Enlightenment legitimised it.

Jonathan then proceeds to show how the communitarian/relational emphasis, by often failing to appreciate the deeply theological roots of our modern predicament, ends up re-orienting our doctrine of sin, and of Christ's work, and of church, and ultimately of God. He concludes:

Loneliness is not the problem. A refusal to live on anyone else's terms is. Another way to put all this: we're not dealing with a relationship problem, but a worship problem.

The solution then is not community; it's repentance. The solution is in changing of heart and direction—in the individual! This repentance includes joining a community and making relationships. But it's joining a particular kind of community where self is no longer sovereign and where one is called to obedience to the church as an expression of obedience to God. It's the joining of a community where God's Word and the worship of God are supreme in everything.

It's definitely worth a read (and you can do it here by taking out Modern Reformation's free 30-day trial).

Does any of this resonate with anyone as much as it did with me?

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In the most recent paper edition of our diocesan newspaper, Ross Cobb says, “We need to ask if our church music really is contemporary”. Ross is the music director at St Andrew's Cathedral here in Sydney, and is across any genre you care to throw at him, whether it's pipe organ or the credibility reducing Burt Bacharach. He says:

We have created a genre that doesn't exist anywhere else and called it Christian contemporary music. What contemporary band consists of a piano, clarinet, a guitar and three singers singing in unison?

However his real question is probably whether it works, rather than whether it's contemporary. Ross says about people who visit church:

They are just flummoxed by some of our contemporary Christian songs. They are tricky to pick up and the musical backing we are providing is quite thin.

and again:

There is barely a murmur during the contemporary songs. But when we play hymns the congregation almost blows the roof off ... The unchurched don't know our contemporary songs. Why would they? But they know our great hymns. Whether that's the legacy of singing at rugby games, I don't know, but there is a common cultural currency we need to tap into for the sake of the gospel.

If music is really about serving the people we love, Ross's observations raise two questions.

1. Do unchurched people who walk into our buildings enjoy what they hear?
2. Do musically untaught people in our meetings enjoy singing the music we serve up to them?

That second one is not a question, by the way, about whether they like standing there listening while the band and singers up front perform the song for them. Anyone can do that. But if we are going to ask them to sing loudly enough for the encouragement of others, then they should be able to do it without being educated past the stage where they can sing along with The Wiggles, which is just before the age when most kids learn that singing out loud is not really cool.

Any other random thoughts? Let's hear them, commenters, I'm up for a chat!

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We've recently had some American friends staying with us. They sing Hillsong music in their church back home, and so they wanted to check out the church.

So what did we make of the night? If you ignore the issue of whether it's an appropriate expression of coming together in church to listen to an excellent (and I mean excellent!) rock gig, then much of the night was fine. Although, it was a bit disturbing when the ‘altar call’ was given before the talk in response to the music.

It's been a while since I visited Hillsong Church, and I've got to say the song lyrics are far more Christ-centred than I recall. The other big thing that has changed is that Hillsong now shows virtually no signs of its Pentecostal heritage. There is no tongue speaking, slaying, healings or ‘holy laughter’. In fact, in stark contrast to a typical Pentecostal church where you really don't know what's going to happen from one minute to the next, my strong impression was that someone was sitting up in a control box with a detailed running sheet down to the second! Anything that looked improvised seemed to me to be feigned.

At the end of the night, following the calls from the mosh pit for encores and some good old early-90s-style crowd surfing (I'm serious), one of the song leaders declared that “This was the best weekend we've ever had at Hillsong”.

So what was the message from God's word on this greatest ever weekend? Let me try to summarize Brian Houston's talk:

• The theme was given: “God's heart for your house”.
• He began with the Philippian jailer in Acts 16:25-31 whose “job it was to put people in the hold.”
• We then focused in on verse 31: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”
• Household. Hold: limiting, holding back, holding against. “You don't see what the house holds because of what holds the house back.”A house holds potential and opportunity. But that potential (what the house holds) is often not realized because of what holds the house back. “We mustn't live our lives under the power of the past.” Things have happened in the past in your family, but don't let that hold you back. Because, Galatians 6:10, you are now part of the “household of faith”.
• “My father could never see my potential. He always talked about my brother. He didn't see what his house held.”
• “90 years ago Nelson Mandela's mother couldn't see what her house held as that baby was born.”
• What is holding you and your household back from its potential? Rid yourself of the negativity and the past, and walk into what your house holds.
• Households can also be positive things. See Joshua 24:15: “[A]s for me and my household we will serve the Lord.”

My American friend described the sermon as “without a doubt the worst sermon he had ever heard” (read his thoughts ). And that was on a weekend which, we were told, was the best ever at Hillsong.

On top of the atrocious handling of Scripture, and the fact that Houston completely ignored the change agent in the passage (Jesus), the message itself was nothing more than Oprah/Robbins dressed up in (barely) Christian language. In fact, given a choice, I would rather listen to Oprah or Robbins. At least they are up-front about what they're doing.

In the week afterwards, I had two questions

1. Why do believers stay at a church that doesn't teach the Bible? If the sheep know Jesus' voice, does the fact they stay show that they are not sheep?
2. Why do believers at good Bible teaching churches often defend Hillsong so strongly? Is that just the pseudo-charitable tolerance fad, otherwise known as lack of discernment?

Can someone please help me with these questions?

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I'd like to report that in the two weeks since GAFCON, I've been carefully going over my notes, digesting my observations, mulling over what I saw and heard, and preparing to deliver myself of some devastating post-conference insights. Of course, the reality is that I have been stumbling through a haze of jet lag and exhaustion, attempting to locate my wife and kids in the fog, and emerging into brief moments of clarity to stare with horror at the mountainous backlog on the desk.

So in lieu of a piercing analysis, here are six random thoughts about GAFCON that have floated to the surface:

1. Even with the fading of the ‘conference’ effect, there's no doubt that the whole thing was much better than I expected it to be. It was encouraging, stimulating and heart-warming in a gospel way (and in a human way, too, come to think of it). Some great friendships were formed. And the final statement was clearer, stronger and wiser than most had dared hope, myself included.
2. It was good to discover that we aren't alone. I think it's easy for Sydney Anglican evangelicals to develop a touch of the Elijahs, thinking that in the house of Anglicanism we and we alone are left who have not bowed the knee to Baal (along with, perhaps, a hundred prophets hidden in a cave somewhere in the UK). But this was a big Anglican conference: 1,200 bishops, clergy and lay people from 25 countries around the world. And when the conference statement was read out, labelling the liberal revisionists as promoters of a false and different gospel which “undermines the authority of God's Word written and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the author of salvation from sin, death and judgement”, the whole room stood up and cheered!
3. It was also good to discover that, compared to most places, we have it pretty good. I'm sure someone will instantly correct me, but I think I'm right in saying that in Peter Jensen (Archbishop of Sydney), David Mulready (Bishop of North-west Australia) and Peter Brain (Bishop of Armidale), Australia has just about the only classically evangelical diocesan bishops in the western world. What's more, the constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia being what it is, there is very little that anyone can do to interfere with our pursuit of evangelical ministry. This unique position is something to be grateful to God for—something to guard and protect with all our diligence and strength.
4. Correspondingly, it was sobering and eye-opening to hear firsthand how difficult it is to be an evangelical Anglican in other places: I'm thinking of conversations with ministers from New Zealand, Ireland, the UK, the US, Canada and other dioceses in Australia. Imagine having a local bishop who is personally and ideologically opposed to pretty much everything you stand for, who keeps speaking publicly in a way that denies the gospel you are trying to preach, who wants you out, who will deny you anything that is in his or her power to deny (including funding and ordained assistants), and who, should you leave your congregation, will seek to have you replaced with someone more liberal. One of the great achievements of GAFCON, in my view, was to create a global fellowship of encouragement and support for beleaguered evangelicals in dioceses around the world. There is now someone big and friendly for them to turn to.
5. For all the encouragement and excitement of GAFCON, there were some headshaking moments too, when the breadth of practice and (one can only assume) belief about secondary matters stretched the limits of fellowship. The closing communion service, for example, was hard to swallow (so to speak), being heavily laced with Anglo-Catholic trappings and traditions. There was a lot of love in the room, and a great willingness to smile at the offensive bits, but it did make very clear that GAFCON is not a gathering of evangelicals, but of biblically orthodox, confessing Anglicans. The fellowship certainly includes some breadth. Using very large buckets to put people in, my impression is that GAFCON at present would consist of approximately 25% evangelicals and 10% Anglo-Catholics, with the remaining 65% being the Africans who sit somewhere in between. The Africans seem to be evangelical in heart and soul, but quite comfortable with many of the trappings of Anglo-Catholicism—especially the clothing!
6. Therein is the challenge and opportunity, it seems to me. The Diocese of Sydney may be a statistical pinprick (70,000 of us compared to, perhaps, 30 million Anglicans in Africa), but in the providence of God, we are in a position to make a contribution in those places where gospel-based Anglicanism is on the move. It is said that African Christianity is miles wide but only an inch thick. It's a caricature, but, like most caricatures, it captures a truth. The two main areas we can help, it seems to me, are in theological education for pastors (particularly in biblical theology), and in the doctrine and practice of ministry (how to get past clericalism, and how to mobilize all Christians for mutual edification and growth).

Of course, with my Matthias Media hat on, it also became obvious very quickly that there is a pressing need everywhere for good quality, Bible-based resources! My head is still spinning with ideas and possibilities.

These are six random thoughts. Others have started to form as I've been writing, but I might pop them in another post later this week. If you have any particular questions about GAFCON, stick them in a comment, and I'll do my best to answer them in my next post.

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Assumption: Godly Christian living in response to the gospel is a clear and unequivocal command in Scripture. It also commends the gospel to a watching world. For instance, 1 Peter 2:12: “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honourable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation”. However, I want to suggest that godly Christian living in response to the gospel is a completely inadequate mission strategy doomed to failure.

Godliness in itself cannot teach the gospel. In fact, without explanatory speech, it teaches precisely the opposite of the gospel. Godly living without accompanying speech teaches religion and not grace. Living a good life without speaking the Word of the gospel cannot possibly work.

God works by his word, and our part in God's plan is to speak. As Paul puts in 2 Corinthians 4:13, “we also believe, and so we also speak”. Do you believe? Then speak! The transforming gospel of Christ only goes out as believers speak. While the godly life is a vital support and confirmation for those listening, it is not the heart of mission. Of course, when that life is combined with speech, then those lives are amazingly powerful. But without words, the example achieves nothing.

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard the counsel that living out the gospel of grace before a watching world is our key evangelistic strategy. In terms of speaking the gospel, we are passive. We are to ‘speak when spoken to’. Sydney evangelist and teacher John Dickson writes,

Contrary to the conclusions of P.T. O'Brien [et al.] the proclamation of the gospel never appears as even a minor duty of Paul's converts. Paul usually portrayed believers as passive in relation to the preaching of the gospel: they were those who had merely ‘received’ the message and were now obliged to live in ‘faithfulness’ (ethically or confessionally) to it. (Mission Commitment in Ancient Judaism and in the Pauline Communities, p. 311.)

However, that ignores the reality of what unbelievers actually see when they observe a Christian life without any further explanation. Christian lives in themselves do not proclaim Jesus. In fact, without accompanying speech, all the unbeliever sees in our lives is religion. They assume that we are living such good lives because we are trying to get in God's good books. The profound problem with that is that religion and the gospel are opposites. Religion is us trying to do things to get to God; the gospel is God reaching down and saving us when we did not deserve it. The only way that someone will see the gospel in you rather than religion is if you speak it to them. If you don't speak, then all they will see is a moralist trying to earn their way to heaven.

The only thing that advances the kingdom of God in this world is the verbal proclamation of the message about Jesus Christ and him crucified. That is, the only way the gospel will be heard is through us. If we don't speak, we only communicate religion and death.

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