Apprentice

My MAP Journal is now closed. I’ve finished my portfolio and I hand it all in tomorrow. There’ll be little if any changes around here because I plan to keep up blogging. MAP or no MAP, I’ll always be an apprentice.

Really busy this week, proper blogging will resume shortly.

Narrator : Previously on Apprentice: http://apprenticeblog.org/2008/04/22/re-rediscovering-the-gospel/

Keith McCrory has continued his great series “Rediscovering the Gospel” and so I’m going to continue responding on this blog. Here’s my response to his latest post:

I agree with Keith that the Pharisaical yeast of legalism has to go. If we want the church to rediscover the joy that it should have we have to tackle this legalism and fight against every attempt to add to the Gospel. The Gospel is perfect and any attempted addition to it is in fact a subtraction.

On a personal level I know that legalism creeps into my life through my pride. Acknowledging that I am saved only by the grace of God means that there is nothing in me that could earn me God’s love. God is the ultimate “guy who has everything” so what could I possibly have to offer Him? For a proud man like myself this is a hard pill to swallow.

We need to preach the Gospel boldly. Don’t make excuses for it, don’t dull the message out of fear of people getting the wrong idea. I think we worry too much about over-emphasising grace and people getting the wrong idea. Unless we all get it into our heads that we are saved by grace and grace alone, that we are accepted and loved by God, all the discipline and rules in the world will ultimately go to waste.

Never ever forget that you are not good enough to earn God’s love. Never ever ever forget that you don’t have to. Through faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for us we are God’s children, instead of the filthy rags of our own righteousness we have been given the royal robes of Christ’s righteousness to wear.

We must believe in God’s love for us, to doubt it is the end of joy and the beginning of legalism. This is why I still think we need to preach this Gospel to ourselves. In order to believe it we must remember it and focus on it. This is what I mean when I say “preach the Gospel to ourselves”.

Here’s what I want to do, or at least attempt to kick off:

It’s a community project with the community being Christians in Ireland. The aim is to create a free audio Bible that anyone can download and hear the Word of God read aloud in the voices and accents of the everyday Christians in Ireland. Christians in Ireland speaking the Word of God to Ireland (and the world).

How about starting off with the Psalms? 150 different voices from all over Ireland, united to praise and worship God and speak His word to whoever would hear it.

So what do you think? Any advice? Volunteers? Donations of recording/studio time?

Peter and I put up a new banner on the church on Thursday last week. The Easter banner was past due to come down and the first one we got (the non-seasonal one) was ripped off in a storm so I got to order a new banner. I was given the chance to choose this one on my own so it was a nice surprise for Peter when he first saw the banner last Monday.

The banner came from CPO, which is where we’ve gotten all our banners so far. Peter and I are both happy with how the banner looks but we wish that the sizes were a bit more standardised. The placement of the eyelets on the banners seems to be more of an art than a science which means the banners, while listed as the same size on the website, don’t always fit the hooks we put in for our first banner.

We do still think it looks nice though, and it’s the only bit of colour on an otherwise bare stone wall on a big stone building.

I like butterflies.

Keith McCrory from MCC has a brilliant blog and he’s currently doing a series on “Rediscovering the Gospel”. Here’s my response to his post about the decline in the Irish church:

Hi Keith,

Good post today, no sugar-coating.

I agree with you. Many in the church (and I’m guilty of this myself from time to time) have forgotten the Gospel. We no longer pursue God because we think the orthodoxy we possess is enough. This isn’t anything new though, A.W. Tozer wrote about it just over 50 years ago, I think he puts it well:

“Current evangelicalism has (to change the figure) laid the altar and divided the sacrifice into parts, but now seems satisfied to count the stones and rearrange the pieces with never a care that there is not a sign of fire upon the top of lofty Carmel.”

But what steals our joy? What turns Christians into Pharisees? Religion is good at teaching us we are sinners and it is good to be aware of our sinfulness but religion is not enough. Even the Pharisees, when left alone with their thoughts, must have been aware of their failure to always meet their many standards. We know we are sinners but we forget that we, as Christians, are forgiven and redeemed sinners, we forget the love of God. So we are left with religion but not the Gospel, with the knowledge of our sins but we forget the One who has freed us from the power of sin. Whether we realise it or not we live as though we have to handle sin ourselves. We end up experts at spotting sin in ourselves and in others and we use our morality and religion to try to manage it. We lose our joy and turn, without even realising it, into Pharisees.

The only thing that can motivate us enough to live full Christian lives, loving God with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength and loving our neighbours as ourselves is the love God has for us. As conscious as we may be of our sin we must preach the Gospel to ourselves - our sins have been atoned for, we are forgiven and set free. God loves us! Nothing but the love of God can empower us to live the Gospel. This is such a great gift that it is hard to accept at times, especially for the religious who all too well know that they are sinners.

We must preach the Gospel to ourselves. We are more sinful than we could ever imagine, but Jesus Christ is greater than we could ever imagine. The love God has for us is greater than we could ever imagine. Even typing this out helps me to preach the Gospel to myself, to remind me of God’s love for me. My question for you is how do you preach the Gospel to yourself? How to you remind yourself of God’s love for you?

Keep blogging!

John.

This year I come to the end of my certificate course at the IBI. If you had asked me last year what I would do I would have probably said “continue on and get the degree” but to do that I’d have to switch to full-time studies (or else finish when I’m 30) and I couldn’t afford to take the extra time off of work. I need to start getting more experience in ministry so I decided to just graduate with the certificate this year and try to get a job/missionary work. I can continue on with education (I’m a nerd, you don’t really need to twist my arm to get me to study), but I really do need the experience now. I’m not sure where or in exactly what capacity but I do feel called to spend the rest of my life working with the church. Anyway, I’m afraid chipping spuds just doesn’t do it for me.

So I’ve been left with two choices: get a job in some missionary or church organisation, or volunteer as a missionary and rely on donations. Now I’m afraid the job avenue didn’t look too good when I peered down it. I haven’t got enough experience to get a job yet so that leaves me with volunteering to get this much needed experience. Again I ran up against a wall. Working for free is expensive! Somebody eventually has to pay for my upkeep for the year. This is usually paid for by a base of very kind supporters. While I have some very kind, loving and encouraging supporters at my church the number of people in my church is still in single digits. Yes, single digits. In a large church it would be easier to find enough people to pay a small sum of money so that it would all add up to be able to fund my missionary work for a year, but in a church where the congregation has at time been only two people this isn’t possible. It was all getting a bit depressing until my elder and mentor Peter handed me a note before church. The note contained the name and phone number of a contact in charge of PCI Youth and Children’s Ministry’s SWIM programme. SWIM seems perfect. I would go to a church and work full time with them for a year and my accommodation and ministry expenses would be provided by the church as well as £50/€80 a week spending money. At last a way to gain experience.

On Monday I posted off my application form to the Board of Youth and Children’s Ministry, I received confirmation of their receipt.

On Wednesday one of those things happened that simultaneously excites me and makes me very happy and also makes me very worried and unsure of how to progress. A friend of mine mentioned the possibility of me working as the SWIM worker at his church. Out of all the churches in this country if you were to ask me to pick which one I would like to work with it would be this church. I wouldn’t even have to think about it..

So why am I worried and unsure of how to progress? The great thing about the SWIM programme was how my expenses would be provided for by the church, in fact this wasn’t just a “great thing” - a point in SWIM’s favour - it was what made SWIM even possible for me. If I get the position at my friend’s church I would have to raise the funds myself, about €8,000.

I’ll be honest, I have no idea how I’m going to raise that money.

I might not find out whether or not I’ve been assigned to this dream position at my friends church for a few months. So by the time I find out whether or not I’ll have to raise any funds I could have as little as one month to raise them. Remember my base of potential supporters is in the single digits.

So maybe you can understand how I feel. Please pray. Also consider this a roundabout way of saying “dear stranger from the internet, would you like to support me?”.

As you may know, I tried for a long time to get up extra early in order to pray. It worked for a while but I had my off-days where, even if I forced myself by sheer act of will to pray, I found myself drifting in and out of consciousness. Even when I was awake I really wasn’t at my mental best.

Long story short - I am not a morning person, I tried to be a morning person but that just doesn’t seem to be the way I’m wired. To be honest my tendency to stay up late and the frequent bouts of insomnia when I was younger kind of tipped me off anyway.

If anyone wants to talk with me it’s best to do it in the evening or at night. I just seem to liven up when the sun starts to go down. I’ll certainly be a better conversationalist late in the day, especially compared to my morning zombie state.

For some reason though, morning prayer just seems “holier” than evening prayer. The image of rising with the sun to praise your Maker is kind of romantic. But lets get this quite clear, the notion that morning prayer is better in itself than afternoon, evening, or night prayer is rubbish.

Maybe you’re a morning person and you’re in your best form at that time of day. In that case then your morning prayers are probably going to be your “best” prayers. I’m an evening/night person so it follows that my prayers said in the evening or night time would be my “best” prayers. By “best” prayers I mean those prayers where you can really unload your heart to God, praise Him, confess to Him, thank Him and bring your supplications to Him.

One of my teachers at the IBI said on Wednesday “if you’re not a morning person why would you give God you’re worst time of the day?”. This really struck me. If I wanted to talk to you, dear reader, I wouldn’t invite you around at seven in the morning for a chat, you’d only meet with Zombie John.

Zombie John no talk good.

I still pray in the morning when I wake up but it’s just a kind of “good morning” where I thank God for the day and ask for His blessings. I am really enjoying my prayer times more now that I’ve been reminded that it is an invitation to come before my Father and talk to Him not an obligation or opportunity to look as holy as I can.

I am constantly surprised at my ability to take some beautiful, free gift and turn it into work. The ever-present pride is at the bottom of this - I can’t accept gifts because I think I am good enough to earn them. This completely goes against the Gospel, a gift so great I could never earn it but a gift given to me by a loving Father nonetheless.

Tomorrow it will be two weeks since I posted the flyers in Cahir about the free Gospel outreach. So far I haven’t received one request, no letters, no phone calls or texts, no emails, nothing. I’m planning on going into Cahir tomorrow to check on the flyers. Could you please pray for this little project, that people will take an interest in reading the Gospel for themselves and take up this offer?

Related posts: Outreach, Outreach Update.

Colin Adams at Unashamed Workman has a short helpful post up about how he prepares a sermon. Like Colin, I prefer to type up a full manuscript. I fear being lost for words and it’s nice to have something prepared to fall back on but I do feel free to ad lib and paraphrase. Sticking to close to the script sounds… well… too scripted.

I haven’t preached much yet so my methods are still forming but I am very interested in seeing how other people prepare for preaching. My former pastor advised preparing for six to twelve hours for each sermon, which is something I’ve tried to stick to. While coming up with a good illustration can be hard, when you get a good one it really pays off. I think a good illustration, be it an analogy or an actual prop can be very helpful for getting the message across and getting people to remember what the sermon was all about. I know this blog doesn’t have (m)any readers but if you have experience preaching I would be very interested in your comments.

It occurred to me recently that I haven’t posted about my MAP Meetings with Peter in a while. Sorry. I forgot. The meetings are still going well but writing about them is basically just re-writing the notes that are already going into my MAP Journal so it’s not very productive. So unless anything unusual or special comes up at the meetings I’ll be leaving those updates out from now on.

With that said, lately Peter and I have been discussing my upcoming graduation from the IBI and what I could do afterwards. I don’t think going straight to seminary would be a good idea, and to be honest I’m still seeking God’s will on the whole ordained ministry thing. I do know that I am a man of books - it’s just like me to stick my head in a book, learn the facts, have the “right answers” and still not even know my neighbour’s name. I know that’s the way I’m inclined so I have to take measures against that. So I’m hoping to go into some sort of missionary work to get me to step out of the boat and get out there working with people. This is something that I absolutely love doing but I do need to push myself out of my natural comfort zone - books, classrooms, lectures, etc. - to do it.

I’m looking into a few different options. One of the major problems is that I need a job but all that’s available seems to be volunteer work. That sounds very materialistic but I don’t have a lot of funds and my support base (my church) is too small to support a year of volunteer work.

I’m looking at PCI’s SWIM scheme which is voluntary but accommodation and ministry expenses are provided as well as £50 a week and it does look very good. I’d get to work with a church for a year. I’m going to ask around to see if I could afford this but I’ve already started filling out the application form.