Paul

Silly small man, feet pattering,
Feet scurrying across the world:
Small silly man with message
Small and silly as the little man.
 
How can the macrocosm fit,
Becoming a microcosm in the heart?
How can one humanity contain
The supernatural power?
  
Peer into the little man, little heart.
Withdraw perplexed—afraid:
Fear pouring out to timeless reaches
At the dynamic full contained.
 
Here is the dynamic held in little man—
Power’s explosive to shatter worlds
Of even smaller men, and make
A new cosmos—nuclear wine.
 
Down in the little container surges
Exploding power and vibrant thrust
Aimed at destroying larger men and nations:
At most—destroying the darker world.
 
Silly small man, feet pattering,
Fussing across the fearful foam:
Carrying a message in his beating bosom
To blow us all to Kingdom Come!
  
 
 

From The Spirit of All Things, by Geoffrey Bingham, pp. 44-45

The Practics of Proclamation

KNOWING HOW TO GO AND PROCLAIM
The term ‘HOW’ is often one of the cleverest words a Christian can use. When we ask the question, ‘How?’ we are really saying, ‘I can’t do this work because I do not know how to.’ Learning ‘how’ can take many years, and waste time. It can encourage procrastination.

We saw that the church at Thessalonica immediately began to preach the Gospel which had gripped them. We saw Paul was converted m order to convert others. Churches can be so inverted, so preoccupied with themselves, or with teaching and training that they are constantly putting off the day of proclamation, in which cases they lose their nerve, and rarely, if ever, actually proclaim!

We have seen in our studies that the Gospel is of itself the power of God. It transforms persons who then wish to transform others. It thus has its own inner drive. Christians often suffer from guilt because they do not obey this inner drive, and tell the good news. When they tell it the sense of guilt vanishes!

The last chapter showed us that ‘word and deeds, the power of signs and wonders, and the power of the Holy Spirit’ are all present to every believer to enable him (or her) to preach the Gospel If we forget the ‘how to’ and get busy proclaiming the ‘how to’ will look after itself.

THE GOSPEL IS ALREADY RELEVANT
We have heard it said that we must make the Gospel relevant. It is already so. It is built specially for sinners and this we all are. Some try to make contact by certain formulae. In one sense man knows the truth since (i) he suppresses it in (acts of’) unrighteousness (Rom. 1: 18f.), and (ii) he has exchanged the truth of God for a lie (Rom.1:25). He knows the truth, hates it, tries to rationalise it away, and yet the Gospel immediately confronts him with the truth and so he is faced with the lie he is living. Doubtless, then, the Gospel is relevant. The Gospel does not need to be made relevant. It is relevant, which is what so angers many hearers.

WHAT OF ‘NEEDS’?
Some see the Gospel as fulfilling needs. In a general sense this is true, but man is more interested in his wants than his needs. Even so he generally realises he has needs. His greatest need may be said to be that of his emotional fulfilment. This emotional fulfilment would happen were he to fall in love with God (because of God’s love to him), and love Him with all his heart, soul, mind and strength. The Gospel is able to bring man to God, and–in this sense–fulfil his needs. However his greatest need is not even to be saved, but to become a son of God, sanctified and–ultimately–be glorified. We should be wary of a need-fulfilling kind of Gospel. We may just be giving welfare emotional hand-outs, and not getting to the heart of the matter, namely God acquitting human beings of their sin, sins, and the judgement which lies upon these.

THE FACILITIES WE MAY USE
These are innumerable. The human person is a great audio-video medium of communication. Most communication is a ‘gut’ one, i.e. ‘out of your belly [inner man] shall flow rivers of living water’. The human person is the greatest medium of the Gospel, but he may extend the faculties of the body by using the present media.

Writing, recordings, audio- and video- tapes, songs, music, records, films, art, printing, publishing, and the use of audio-visuals–amongst numerous others– are all aides to powerful proclamation. There is nothing ‘unspiritual’ about the use of media.

In using media and other facilities we must not be caught up in over- preoccupation with these means, for they can be attractive, and divert us from the Word of God itself. Thus constant reading of the Word, instruction in situations structured for such training are all worthwhile. We ought to remember Roland Allen’s warning that by certain kinds of training we can lose the local idiom, the local flavour and became exotic to it. If we all keep sane in our local situation, then we may be far more effective at long distances! If we keep in mind that God the Father is ever about His creation, that the Son is Head of the church and is ever directing and enabling it, and keep in mind that the Spirit of God always precedes us in any endeavour, then we will not think that all depends on us! When we remember the media that God has used, and continually employs such as the creation, the law, theophanies, angelic visitants, the Scriptures, the prophets, and a host of other–often hidden–means then we will not despair.

From Proclaiming Christ's Gospel In Today's World, by Geoffrey C. Bingham, pp. 66-68.

Roland Allen's View of Paul's Apostolic Method

Apart from the early chapters of the Acts, we have little to go on as to the methods or modes used by the other apostles. Probably they were similar to those used by Paul. Modern missiologists seek to glean what they can from Paul’s methods, but suggest that his methods would not necessarily obtain now, the world having changed so much. Roland Allen—a famous missionary in China—wrote two books, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Christian Church and St. Paul’s Missionary Methods or Ours? These are two most stimulating works. Being written some 60 years ago they may appear to be dated, yet Allen asks questions which are still relevant.
 

 He first states that Paul in 10 years founded churches in Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia. His methods were not distinctive, nor peculiarly his own. He had no printing press, no New Testament. He would immediately baptise his converts (or, have them baptised), seemingly without any instruction as we today would call it instruction. He had only one desire, and that was to present the Gospel without it being a system of morality. What Allen points out is that Paul trusted the Gospel and the Holy Spirit to both work their work of grace in the new churches, without the supportive roles that missionary bodies take up today, and the tendency to turn churches into moralistic units.

 Allen also asked some questions in order to focus on what we would call modern differences. He asked: 

1. Did Paul deliberately select certain strategic points at which to establish his churches? 
2. Was his success due to a certain social class or caste of people to which he made an appeal? 
3. Did special conditions obtain in Paul’s day, i.e. were the social, moral, economic or religious patterns such as to render any comparison to today’s world innocuous?
4. Was there any particular virtue in the way in which the Apostle presented his Gospel, eg. the use of miracles, his finance, the substance of his teaching? 
5. Was there any particular virtue in his way of dealing with 'organised churches', i.e. means by which discipline was exercised and unity maintained?

1. Allen says that Paul did not have a deliberate policy in regard to the selection of strategic points, as such. No journey seems to have been planned, as the Acts’ account would indicate. The Spirit’s guidance seemed linked with various circumstances. For example, he simply touched Ephesus on his return to Jerusalem on his second journey, and found a good reception there on his next journey. II Corinthians 1:5-18 shows Paul in a state of uncertainty, and his further journey into Achaia was because of his love for the church. This leads us to the conclusion that he was led by the Spirit rather than that he held some principle of expansion.

 

2. Allen discounts any value to the suggestion that class or caste has much significance either in receiving or opposing the Gospel. Paul made no attempt to speak to any class of his day, as, say, missionaries in India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries addressed themselves to the Brahmins. Nor did Paul’s Gospel root itself in Jewish soil; to the contrary, Paul suffered much for preaching to Jews. Allen gives many examples of Paul’s universality in his contacts. He was ‘a man for all seasons’.
 

3. The suggestion that certain conditions are more conducive to Gospel proclamation than another has no encouragement from Paul. On the one hand there was a revulsion by some against the immorality and evils of the day, and in this sense a preparation for a pure Gospel, and on the other a desire for the promiscuous. It is ironic that so many years after Allen’s writings, conditions are more like those of the promiscuous society of Paul’s day, than perhaps they have ever been, in which case the matter is a non sequiter.

 

4. Allen spends most time on this fourth section, showing convincingly that all the aids which Paul used are just as available for the church today. The Gospel has not altered, the use of signs and wonders is still operative, and the word and deeds can be just as dynamic. He takes up the whole matter of mission finances very clearly, showing that in the early church all monetary help was for personal needs, and not for ecclesiastical support Indeed no such things existed. There was no property, no political power, nothing irking to any national feeling such as domination and paternalism by ‘foreign boards’. He then goes on to show that Paul preached the simple kerugma as it is found throughout the Acts, and that he had five elements to his mode of preaching, namely (a) an appeal to the past to win sympathy by a statement of the truth common to him and the hearers; (b) a statement of facts, an assertion of things which can be understood, apprehended, accepted, disputed or proved regarding Jesus the Messiah, his crucifixion and resurrection; (c) the answer to the inevitable objection that the most thoughtful and judicial minds have made to his claims; (d) the appeal to the spiritual needs of men, the craving for pardon, and the assurance of comfort, and (e) the final grace warning against rejection which involves serious danger. In other words, Paul does nothing which we could not do today with profit.

 

5.  Allen’s point regarding discipline and unity relates to the training of converts. Allen says churches flourished because Paul established churches and not missions. He had no eye for paternalism, but taught as thoroughly as possible, and left the churches to work out their own matters. Baptism was virtually without instruction, and converts were not trained for a professional ministry. We have much valuable material in the Pastoral Epistles in regard to the life and unity of the church, but certainly the church is not organised or promoted. Professionalism was absent, and Allen points out that those who would be pastors and elders were not sent to some other situation for training. Training—if it can be called that—happened in the local church, and so the congregation understood God’s will for their pastors and elders, and in that sense would be subject to them.
 

 In regard to the moral life of the church, Allen sees Paul’s authority as proper and functional but suggests that the apostolic authority finished at the death of the Apostle, and normal local church ministry would prove sufficient. Teaching on proper living (cf. Eph. 4:20-32), would be given through the local ministry and would not be moralistic, especially in the light of the liberating and motivating power of the Gospel. Thus the life and unity of the church did not derive from an organisation but within the organism of the church. This, of course, accords with the New Testament. that the church is the Body of Christ, and he its Head. He gives it life, and through the Holy Spirit directs what we today would call ‘strategy of mission’. The local church as functional could not be directed from another country!

From Proclaiming Christ's Gospel In Today's World, by Geoffrey C. Bingham, pp. 31–34.

Where Lay His Head?

Safe in their nests the snuggling birds, 

Deep in its lair, protected in its hole, 

The fox cub often hunts, or hunted is; 

But on the broad face of his own created earth 

Christ roams without a place to lay his head.

 
To lay his head?! But Martha’s house was his, 

And Peter’s, too, and others loved him fair. 

How say we then he has no lair, no nest, 

No place secure, no love from friends?
He walked on earth as love embodied!
 

They loved with passionate love who lived so close, 

Who heard the rich voice cry out the truth 

And saw the dear body break and bleed 

On the cross of cruel strain; they loved
Until their hearts of pain wept tears.

And yet it’s true—the cruelty of men 

Bound in Adamic hate and fear, they cannot cry 

‘Come gracious Lord and dwell in me!’ 

They turn upon their lusts of life 

And spurn the Holy One who loves.
 

I, too, know somewhat of the fear. 

I know the rejection of the words I speak, 

And in my nightly dreams I feel 

The sadness of the hostile hearts 

That scorn the love I long to give.
  

This is the fellowship of ours, 

The walking in the lonely place with him, 

But yet secure in compassionate pain, 

Knowing rejection does not condemn

But helps to make me one with him.


From All Things of the Spirit, by Geoffrey C. Bingham, p.79-80.

A Meditation On Motivation

The word motivation technically relates to energy or force. Gradually it has come to mean ‘that which impels one to take a certain line of action’.

Paul, of course, does not use such a word. The closest he and others come to this is the word ‘constraint’ (e.g. II Cor. 5:14). We know that the energy or life force– especially for Christian service–is the Holy Spirit. In another sense love is the motivating force. On the practical level, what was it that drove the early Christians to proclaim the Gospel, even to martyrdom?

The answer must be that their own experience of salvation, of being redeemed from the bondage of sin and evil, of having their sins forgiven, of being justified, sanctified and adopted, mast have been so dynamic as to fully liberate them. This was how they knew the love of God in action. In fact their hearts were flooded with love by the Holy Spirit who also came to live in them and empower them.

We can see it also from a slightly different viewpoint. What must have been the effect of seeing Christ risen from the dead? Because he has not, just now– at this point of time in our age–risen, and appeared to us, we are not so deeply affected. Yet today the Spirit has to make that resurrection and triumph over death and sin just as immediate and total to us, as he did to the early believers. The reality of Christ, and his presence by the Holy Spirit was so vivid that they could not but talk about it.

Were we to listen hear, meditate, and realise, then we would be just as motivated or constrained as they were. If we were to know dynamically the new birth by the word of truth (James 1:18; I Pet. 1:22-23), the ‘washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit’ (Titus 3:5-7), then we too would be greatly motivated. As it is we need–time and again–to come back to the overwhelming grace and love of God in order to receive fresh constraint and (thus) driving power.



From Proclaiming Christ's Gospel In Today's World, by Geoffrey C. Bingham, p.25.