The Roaring Forties – Or Are They?

Mrs. Olive M. Wilkinson. Trowel & Sword. Nov. 1972

Preamble: Mrs. Olive Wilkinson, wife of Rev. Tom Wilkinson, Professor at RTC, was a Gem. She was a woman of grace, poise and intelligence who often gave lectures on counselling and marriage guidance to students at the college. I still find it hard to comprehend that this was frowned upon by certain sections of the student body on the grounds that she was – “a woman”. That said, in this article she demonstrates a profound understanding of many of the stages we go through in life’s journey; particularly for those of us more advanced in years. Her message is clear. Never stop. Keep looking forward to the next challenge in life.

The Roaring Forties – Or Are They?

So you have come to the time of life when they look doubtful about your age when you apply for a new job and when your adolescents think you have no pearls of wisdom to utter. What a short jump it is, from being one of the progressive younger ones to being one of the senior citizens.

How do you feel about the increasing number of grey hairs, the extra pounds appearing in the wrong places, the tiredness that overtakes at the end of the day, the ravages of time which despite all our arts of concealment will show themselves, the twinges of envy aroused by the sight of the younger generation enjoying so many more opportunities? Depressing thoughts are they not? But that is only one side of the picture. It is still true that for the many who have eyes to see, life begins at forty! It was true for the man who lay at the side of the Pool of Bethesda and for the man who was healed by Peter and John at the Gate called Beautiful and for many of the prophets of the Old Testament. Despite our modern technological age with its emphasis on youth and new knowledge, it is true for us today, although we might well have to search for that beginning a little more strenuously than our forebears did.

Not long ago it was my privilege to talk with a woman of eighty-two, a quite famous American social worker who avowed that the most creative and productive time of her life began after menopause. Moreover, she was a lady who had never married and might easily have become tempted to indulge herself in self-pity. At the time I met her, she was chairman of an Inter-Faith committee which was rehabilitating negroes from the ghetto area of Boston in what had previously been an all white area on the outskirts of that city, an exciting and demanding enterprise for one much younger, let alone a lady of that age.

To arrive at middle age can mean many things. It can be a threat because of loss of youth, but to balance and outweigh this, it can be a time of rich fulfilment, a time when we can draw upon a wealth of experience, a time when the characteristic of always looking forward and planning for the future can be replaced by the full creative use of the present moment. This is the time when we become increasingly aware that right now is important and what we are at this point in time is what we have to use. We cannot be like the man who is always dreaming of his plans for the future, as the travel advertisement on TV depicts.

What do you see as the important and urgent tasks awaiting the middle-aged group of people? It would be good to hear from readers who have thought about this. I am sure this is a time for reviewing and consolidating, for throwing out the unimportant and for concentrating on the things at the centre of life.

Here are some of the personal tasks which I see await those of us in the forties plus. A primary task is to pass on the faith.

It is a sad thing to come across someone who, in middle life, is coasting along on the worn-out faith of his or her youth. As middle-aged folk we are the link between the generations and what we are now does affect the next generation. It is the apathy and smugness, sometimes the disillusionment of the middle-aged that the younger generation mistrusts and rebels against. Young folk know whether our faith has become a habit rather than a vital, living thing underlying all our attitudes.

Our God knows how much we fail but here in this time for reviewing the past in the challenge of the present we have the chance for a new start. The sadness and rebuffs of life have taught us some lessons and hopefully, we have, like the fruitful tree, been pruned of the useless wood of second rate values. Now is the time to set aside a time alone with God to study His Word, to pray and meditate, to read devotional literature and Christian biography. It is amazing how discipline in this matter can help focus our thinking and increase our availability to the prompting of God’s spirit. We do not have to rush into activity but seek the place of His appointment for us, quietly and patiently. One thing it will do for us is improve our ability to communicate the faith to those around us, perhaps not always verbally, but certainly in attitudes. It will help us to listen, to understand, to reach out in honesty and to share our thinking and experience with others, especially the younger generation. Our young people want to experience our integrity in the sharing of ourselves with them. Some years ago, I attended a discussion group after church when the older and younger members of the church were evenly divided into smaller groups and there shared their feelings about the problems of the so-called Generation Gap. Parents found it easier to listen to other parent’s children and children found it easier to listen to other people’s parents! It was a most successful venture. Perhaps we need more opportunities to know our young people so that we can talk to them as friends whom we value, and so that we can talk with them of the things of the Kingdom. But first, we need a genuine faith to share.

A second task is to discover creativity in new spheres 

In the normal course of life in Australia, up to the present time anyway, most women fulfil a nurturing feminine role of caring for husband and family until well into the forties. Inevitably, with the emptying of the nest, the mother has to find other things to interest her. We hear a lot about the “empty-nest” syndrome; the feelings of restlessness, depression and meaninglessness which accompany it. It may well be complicated by menopause, and a feeling of being on the downward path. What a sad picture! But it need not be so. Up until now, a woman’s creativity has largely been concerned with the home. Now she can seek new spheres in which to postpone, or to take up the training that she has been wanting to do. Married women can now apply for training for certain jobs with the Commonwealth Job-Training scheme. A Dutch-born lady I know, at 53, is doing a typing and secretarial course, and incidentally is learning a lot about spelling and sentence construction! Many women find that going to work provides new spheres of interest. It’s not the money that is so important, it’s the new surroundings and opportunities for self-expression that are paramount. Again, many women take up volunteer service with spastic and retarded children’s organisations or with church organisations. There are many service opportunities in the community. Unfortunately, the younger middle-aged women are often missing from these service groups. Of course, there should be a chance to have fun at tennis and whatever else appeals, but eventually it is the work or service activity that really provides the chance for creative, satisfying expression.

I hear you say that husbands sometimes do not like you going to work! That is a pity, for husbands need interesting wives, not languishing, frustrated ones. Have you read Dr. Hilliard’s “A Woman Doctor looks at Love and Life”? It’s a most refreshing and challenging book from the pen of a 60 year old, and gives a message of hope to the middle-aged woman.

Perhaps the middle-aged man feels a little threatened by his wife’s new interest in the outside world, just as he is approaching the crest or perhaps beginning to go over the top! For him strenuous activity is beginning to wane. On the other hand, the less aggressive side of his nature, hitherto not fully developed in the active world of events, may well get a chance to be shown. Here is the opportunity for him to become more interested in the area of ideas, of service and of long cherished hopes of pursuing hobbies. If retirement is to be successful and not a sudden anti-climax, this is the time for the men-folk to lay the foundation for the developing of the more passive side of their natures. Some men as well as their wives take up counselling training courses such as the Marriage Guidance Councils, Life Line or Citizens Advice Bureau offer.

It is a great temptation for the middle-aged to retire or withdraw from the active life of the church. One doesn’t have to lead the Youth Club anymore but the church suffers seriously from the middle age gap. What about that Bible study group where one gets a chance to be enriched? What about that prayer group cell…  or must one not mention such things; “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of!”

A third task is to renew one’s marriage, if one has not been doing it continuously!

Many modern behavioural writers are suggesting that with the increase in our life expectation we cannot expect to remain content for a period of 30 40 50 years, in one marriage! Middle-life, they say, is the time to start a new marriage! To the Christian, this proposition is not only laughable but impossible. Nonetheless, it contains a warning, and underlines the need for constant renewal of our marriage relationship. There are many different stages in our married life and the circumstances of each period bring variety into the relationship. Middle-life brings the status of grand-parenthood and this can be a time of shared learning, for it takes thought and application to be a good grand-parent and a good “in-law”! Even with these special tasks as a common interest and bond, there is a need to find new companionship and closeness. Some questions we might well ask of ourselves include: How much do I really know about the well-being of my mate? Are there some matters we never talk about? Do I make it difficult for him/her to talk about these? Have I helped or hindered the spiritual life of my partner? How can I show I care and am interested in all that he or she does? How much is our home open to others? What can we do together to rediscover each other?

Be of good courage! Middle age is important, for here we lay the foundation for a happy and fruitful retirement. Here, we lay the foundation for the bond that lies between grandparents and their adolescent grandchildren. It is a time of reviewing, of sorting out the gold from the dross and of making a new start, assured that God will open a way for us to serve and honour Him, for ultimately, at any age, true fulfilment comes through willing obedience in the place of His appointment.

OLIVE M. WILKINSON

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‘Reconstruction’ Or ‘Destruction’ Of The Christian Faith

Trowel & Sword. Prof. K. Runia. April 1971

Preamble: You have most likely heard the expression: “We live in a fast changing world so we must learn to change with it.” In many areas of our lives this is undoubtedly true. But can the same be said of our beliefs; our theology? We worship an unchanging God who has revealed Himself to us through unchanging scriptures. So why is it that so many want to change or re-interpret what has been known about God through the ages? Ahh, but “modern man” is much more knowledgeable and wiser in these “modern times” than previous generations. NEWSFLASH! Every generation from Adam onward thought of themselves as living in “modern times”. In this article written 50+ years ago, Dr. Runia addresses the issue of the “reconstruction” of Christian doctrines based on the “modern” thinking of the time.

‘Reconstruction’ Or ‘Destruction’ Of The Christian Faith

There is so much confusion in the theological world of today that ordinary church people often are baffled and perplexed and ask themselves: What in the world is going on and where is it all leading to? Recently I read one of the most honest and outspoken statements on modern theology I have seen for a long time. It appeared in an English theological journal and was from the pen of Dr. Hick, professor of systematic theology in the University of Birmingham. He wrote two articles under the heading: ‘The Reconstruction of Christian Belief’.

Right at the beginning of the first article Dr. Hick mentions ten aspects of traditional theology which are, in the opinion of many theologians (including himself), either quite untenable or open to serious doubt. Dr. Hick speaks here of ‘traditional theology’. In reality most of these points are not a matter of ‘theology’, but of clear statements of the Bible itself! Here they follow:

1. There are divinely revealed truths (such as the doctrine of the Trinity, or of the two natures of Christ).

2. God created the physical universe out of nothing n years ago.

3. Man was originally brought into existence as a finitely perfect being, but rebelled against God, and the human condition has ever since been that of creatures who have fallen from grace.

4. Christ came to rescue man from his fallen plight, buying man’s (or some men’s) restoration to grace by his death on the cross.

5. Jesus was born of a virgin mother, without human paternity.

6. He performed miracles in which the regularities of the natural order were suspended by divine power.

7. His dead body rose from the grave and returned to earthly life.

8. All men must respond to God through Jesus Christ in order to be saved.

9. At death a person’s relationship to God is irrevocably fixed.

10. There are two human destinies, traditionally referred to under the symbols of heaven and hell.

This statement is very honest, even for a modern theologian. Most of them are still somewhat cautious, when it comes to a statement of what they no longer believe. Usually they say: We no longer believe it in the old traditional form, but we do believe it in a modern form. Dr. Hick is honest. He openly states: I can’t accept all these things any more.

In the first article he also tells us what he still believes with regard to Christ. “Jesus of Nazareth lived, taught and healed, died and then in some way encountered his followers after his death. In his presence people found themselves also in the presence of God and under the claim to love God and their neighbours”. Even today his person is remembered and “gives rise to a continuing faith-response”. That’s all. It is rather meagre, when one compares it, for instance, with the Apostles’ Creed, which itself is the shortest confession of the catholic (=universal) Christian faith. Dr. Hick’s own ‘creed’ would look somewhat like this:

I believe in God, but He is neither the Father in the trinitarian sense of the word, nor the Maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus of Nazareth, but he (with a small letter!) is not the only begotten Son of God.
He performed no miracles (although he did heal a few people).
He suffered and was crucified, but his cross was not the atonement for the sin of the world.
He did not rise on the third day.
He is not the one name given under heaven by which we must be saved but he is one of the many religious leaders in whom we can see something of God.
I believe in the Spirit, but he is not God Himself, but only the power of God.
I believe in the forgiveness of sin and eternal life for all men.
If people do not find God in this life, they will have a second chance after life. At any rate, there is not something like hell.

It is obvious that hardly anything, if anything at all, is left of the Christian faith. 

What is behind it all?

Why does Dr. Hick reject all these aspects of the Christian faith? This is an important question, for it would reveal the deepest motives of the new theology. Of course, one can say: Well, it’s a matter of pure unbelief. I would agree with this. But even so the question remains: Why? Unbelief has its reasons too! In his articles Dr. Hick himself mentions the two main factors that in his opinion bring about the transformation of Christian thought.

(a) The first is contemporary scientific knowledge. Modern science has taught us that the universe and man himself are products of an evolutionary process, a process that can be explained without any recourse to God as the Maker. This does not mean that there is no God, but it does mean that our idea of God’s relationship to the world and to man must change. God did not create the world ‘out of nothing’, nor did He create man in this way, but He made us by way of the evolutionary process. Moreover, He made man as a completely free being who in the way of gradual development must become aware of God. It is along this way that morality and religion have developed.

(b) The second factor is the encounter with the other world religions. In our modern world we have left the religious isolationism of the past behind us and are in increasing contact with other religions. It is no longer possible to regard the Christian faith as the only true faith. All religions are aspects of the religious life of mankind, which is a dynamic continuum, in which from time to time certain major disturbances have set up new fields of force. Thus Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions have arisen. It is impossible to call any of them true or false. They are nothing else than expressions of the diversities of human types and temperaments and thought forms. The great task of today is not to promote just one of them, but to construct theologies based upon the fullness of man’s religious awareness. 

A swing-back to Liberalism.

It is clear that this whole new theology is a full-cycle return to the old, 19th century liberalism. Again the starting point is man’s own religious experience instead of God’s revelation.

This experience is on the one hand limited by the discoveries of modern science. When modern science tells us that the universe is autonomous, that is, ruled by its own laws, then we must reject the whole idea of miracles, including not only the miracles which Jesus Himself performed according to the Gospels, but also the miracles in his own life (the Incarnation itself, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection and the Ascension). This will always be the result when so-called ‘pure’ science becomes the yardstick of revelation. The Bible will be submitted to an endless process of reduction and the final result will be that nothing is left of the Christian faith, apart from a few generalities.

On the other hand, the human religious experience has to include ALL world religions. They are all, each in its own way, expressions of man’s religious experience. The differences can be explained largely on psychological grounds. People in the East happen to be different from those in the West. And even within each group there are differences. Some represent the more optimistic, once-born type; others represent the more pessimistic twice-born type. In other words, psychology determines the truth of religion and the result is an endless process of relativism. All religions are equally valid.

The two articles of Dr. Hick are quite revealing in their frankness. They are also flashing red lights. They show us what will happen, once we accept other standards next to the Bible. As soon as we do this, these other standards begin to dominate and after a while they ‘devour’ the Christian Gospel.

Dr. Hick gave his articles the title: ‘The Reconstruction of Christian Belief’. It would certainly have been more to the point if he had called them: ‘The Destruction of the Christian Faith’. For this is what really happens. In this kind of theology Jesus Christ, the Saviour, disappears in the thick, impenetrable fog of human scientism and relativism, and man is left to himself and to his own ideas.

K. RUNIA

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Sowing

John Westendorp. Trowel & Sword, June 2000

Preamble: “Make disciples….” What does this mean? What is our responsibility and how should we go about it? It sounds simple – just like the Nike add used to say: “Just do it”. But what does that really mean? In this article John sets out some of the “do’s” and “dont’s of sharing the gospel message. 

Sowing

Scripture often compares the Word of God to seed that is sown.  This month’s Forum 2000 study is on ‘sowing’ and Rev. Ben Aldridge has provided us with two good studies on this theme.  You’ll find in this month’s lift-out a study of what Paul has to say about sowing, watering and growth in 1 Corinthians 3 and another study on Jesus’ Parable of the Sower. This concept of ‘sowing’ brings home a fascinating truth of Scripture that I want to tease out a little further in these paragraphs.  This: the idea of the Word of God as seed, opens up that profound area of the divine and human interrelationship.

God’s Role

Paul makes abundantly clear that it is God who gives the growth.  That’s an obvious lesson but one which we haven’t always taken to heart.

I still recall when I planted my first veggie patch in our backyard.  I was real keen to see some results and in my youthful enthusiasm lacked patience.  I had planted butter beans and after some days I noticed the ground cracking where I had planted the beans.  The next morning the little loops of the bean shoots were just appearing above the soil so I thought I’d give the Lord a hand and free the beans so that they would grow more quickly.  By the end of the exercise several shoots had broken off and several more were damaged.  That was a good lesson.  There are some things I must leave for the Lord to do.

At a spiritual level we make the same mistake when we think that we need to convert people.  Parents can fall into that trap by badgering their unconverted children with ‘sermons’, exhortations and pressure for them to conform to a Christian way of life.  When there is no change we try harder and apply more pressure.  In the process damage is often done and our sons and daughters rebel against the faith of their parents.  There are some things we must leave for the Lord to do.

Churches can make a similar mistake when they develop sure-fire plans for making converts, or when the latest evangelistic program is touted as the be all and end all of evangelistic endeavour.  When we rigidly apply a certain outreach plan or some new ‘you-beaut’ evangelistic program, as if that in itself will bring about results, then we set ourselves up for failure.  There are some things we must leave for the Lord to do.

As Reformed people we know that only God can change lives.  Faith is a gift.  Conversion is the work of God’s Spirit.  Only He can give life to those who are spiritually dead.  The lesson is that the seed grows of itself.  Here is the miracle of the seed that somehow has new life within the kernel.  However, there is nothing I can do to bring about that life except to entrust that grain of seed to the earth.  I place it prayerfully in a carefully prepared seedbed and wait for God to do His life-giving miracle with the seed.  The remarkable thing is that in due course I am then also privileged to reap a harvest – God indeed gives the growth.

Our Responsibility

Paul also makes abundantly clear that while God gives the growth that does not free us from exercising our responsibility towards the seed.  He speaks of the human element in both the planting and the watering – there is a sowing but also a nurturing of the sown seed.

The beans I bought would never have sprouted in a thousand years if I had merely left them in the cupboard.  I had to place them in the soil.  But I had to do more than that.  I could have planted those beans under half a meter of dirt… or for that matter under a centimetre of hard clay.  Either way the outcome would have been: no harvest.  I needed both to prepare and maintain a garden bed.  It is God who gives the growth, but if I want a harvest then there are some crucial things that I have to do.

Again, some of us have often not learnt that lesson very well either.  Some of the sons and daughters of believers grow up in families where little personal attention is given to faith nurture.  Children are sent to Sunday School in the expectation that a weekly dose of Bible stories is enough for them to embrace the faith of their fathers and mothers.  Teenagers are dragged along to church in the belief that they will grow up Christianly by a process of osmosis.  In all this it is easy for parents to forget that there are some crucial things that they have to do.

As churches we can make the same mistake when we believe that our programs and activities will be a sufficient witness for the cause of Christ.  So we run a soup kitchen, and we join the ‘Jesus March’, we organise a carol evening and we run a men’s breakfast.  We do all that in the hope that people will notice that we are different, that our actions will indeed speak louder than our words.  In all that busyness it is easy to overlook that there are some crucial things we have to do.

As Reformed people we understand that God has called us into partnership with Him.  We call that partnership a covenant.  In that partnership of grace He not only comes to us as our God but He also calls us to be His people to serve Him in this world.  As part of our mandate He has entrusted to us the work of outreach and evangelism, the task of missions and of sowing the seed.  In Romans 10 Paul stresses that faith comes by the hearing the Word.  But that is said in context of the million-dollar question: but how shall they hear without a preacher?  We need to busy ourselves with the sowing of the seed.  We need to do that carefully and thoughtfully so as to maximise the harvest.

Pentecost and Sowing

How then are we to conceive of these two sides coming together?  God gives the growth but we are called to plant and water.  Should we envisage that as a 50/50 partnership?  Half the responsibility is ours – the sowing and the preparation of the ground?  The other half is God’s responsibility – the giving of the growth.  I think that would be an oversimplification.  It’s more like a 100/100 partnership.

On the one hand it is all of God.  The seed of the Word is His.  He not only gives the growth but He also provides fertile soil – hearts that are receptive to the gospel.  He not only gives us opportunities to sow the seed but the very wisdom that is needed for wise sowing is a gift of His grace.

It seems appropriate that we deal with this theme of ‘sowing’ in the month in which we celebrate Pentecost – the outpouring of God’s Spirit upon the Church.  Significantly, we read of no evangelistic endeavours between Jesus’ resurrection and the feast of Pentecost.  The implementing of the Mission Mandate (Acts 1:8) had to wait for the empowering work of God’s Spirit.  Sowing is only possible with God’s enabling.  In stark contrast we suddenly have about 3000 converts on the day of Pentecost.

The recognition that the fruit of the gospel comes only at God’s initiative, at His time and through the working of His Spirit, ought to make us very prayerful about the sowing of the seed.  It will lead us to pray that the seed of the Word will sprout in the hearts of our children.  It will make us prayerful as churches for opportunities to sow the seed in the communities in which God has placed us.

The fact that the harvest of the gospel of Christ comes totally as a work of God is also a tremendously liberating reality.  I no longer need to be anxious whether my methods are effective.  I can be relaxed about the results knowing that God’s Word never returns to Him empty but that it always accomplishes the purpose for which He sends it out (Is.55:11).

At the same time we are also called to do our sowing task with total dedication.  Nor can we be content with some haphazard scattering of the seed.  I will always remember the man who regularly stood on the footpath outside our office in Melbourne during evening rush hour – Bible in hand, he thundered at the passing crowd, none of whom took the slightest notice.  Planting the seed is more than scattering a few throwaway gospel lines at an anonymous crowd.  It also means that I should indeed avail myself of the latest ‘you beaut’ evangelistic program – prayerfully and ensuring that both method and content are Biblically sound.  Planting takes a lot of care and effort and even after growth has begun the watering continues to be our responsibility.

Sowing is something we should all be involved in.  And we can do it!  To deny that is to deny the work of God’s Spirit in our lives.

John Westendorp

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What About The Pew Sitter (2)

Kieth V. Warren. Trowel & Sword. June 1981

Preamble: This is part two of last weeks article.

What About The Pew Sitter (2)

I read a story the other day of a theological student who had been asked to take a service somewhere. When he stepped into the pulpit a neatly lettered sign caught his eye. It was not just put there for him, the small wooden plaque was carefully screwed down. It must have been there for years.

On it were the words: “What are you trying to do to these people?”

That’s certainly a powerful question to face when a man is about to get up and preach. It really brings home the truth that preaching is an awesome task. For one thing: it asks of the preacher to give his very best. But what about the congregation? What is the input from their side?

Last month I suggested that people may have talked and written too often about poor preaching at the expense of focussing on poor listening.

One of the dearest wishes of a preacher must be: to bring God’s Word to a congregation which knows how to listen. And knows how to listen well. Listening obediently and responsively. Even aiming to become better listeners. Better partners in that beautiful and mysterious communication: the preaching of God’s Word.

How To Be A Good Listener

In our first article we looked at one suggestion that goes for good and effective listening.

It was: Have a truly Biblical outlook on preaching. It’s actually much more than a suggestion, for suggestions do still have a take-it-or-leave-it emphasis, and this one doesn’t! To have a proper Biblical understanding of what preaching is, would be an absolute must for every Christian, young and old. How vitally important for parents to teach their children that preaching is not some kind of spiritual entertainment, the congregation being the audience, and the minister the paid performer.

No, preaching is God’s gift to the church; by way of the gospel proclamation He does great things. And we regularly need to remind ourselves of this: Our minister is God’s ambassador. God has brought him to this congregation to tell us of Christ, to help us grow in grace. I may not expect to be pleasantly entertained; rather, I must praise God often for His wonderful gift to the church, His gift of preaching and a preacher. I must keenly expect the Holy Spirit to do great things through the sermons of this preacher. In my own life. In the lives of others.

The Holy Spirit

If you cannot produce that sort of mental attitude about preaching and preachers, it’s guaranteed you’re not a good listener. It’s impossible. For good listening begins with the mind, not with the ears. Sure, there’s much more, and we’ll look at some other aspects too. But first of all our thinking; that must be spot on! If it isn’t, if our thoughts about the place of preaching and about the function of the preacher are the wrong thoughts, there’s no doubt we will be poor listeners. Spiritually we will then impoverish ourselves, and our children. For our young people will very quickly take over much of our inability to handle properly this matter of preaching.

There’s something else too. The work of the Holy Spirit! What I mean is this: If we have a very ‘horizontal’ view of preaching, we do not give a rightful place to the Spirit of God. Not at all.

A ‘horizontal’ view of preaching means just that: horizontal. On the human level exclusively! Entertainment good or not so good. Being very concerned about calling a man who is a good preacher, while never realising that the work of the Holy Spirit is essential to make his preaching really good! Our confessional standards clearly emphasise that point. Says the Heidelberg Catechism: “Since then we are made partakers of Christ and all His benefits by faith only, from where does this faith come? From the Holy Spirit who works it in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel . . . ” (Q & A 65).

The Canons of Dort speak the same language: “What, therefore, neither the light of nature nor the law could do, that God performs by the operation of the Holy Spirit through the Word or ministry of reconciliation…” (III/IV, art. 6)  “….by His Word and Spirit He certainly and effectually renews them to repentance …” (V, art 7). 

Let me repeat it once more (it is so important). We must teach ourselves and our children that faithful preaching is used by God’s Spirit to lead to faith, to lead to spiritual growth.

But now we must hurry on to more suggestions. Do you feel the need to be a good listener, a better one? Read on. Suggestion number two:

Have A Foot In The Door

Don’t let go of any sermon, till you’ve got a foot in the door. The sermonic door, I mean.  In other words: whatever sermon you listen to, refuse to give it up. Refuse to allow that sermon to be a total waste. Even if it’s one of those days when things just don’t click between pew and pulpit, between you and the preacher. Mentally refuse to give up completely, and find at least one “foothold’ in that sermon. Then, to your amazement you will often find more!

What minister has not talked about his preaching with a few people in the congregation, eyeball to eyeball. And what minister has not heard from the kind lips of a parishioner: “Well, it was probably me.” Whenever there was a short-circuit in communication. Whenever much of it fell somehow flat. ‘Oh, it was probably me.’ The fault was with me, the listener.

May I suggest that the pew-sitter ought only to say that when it’s true. Do not say it out of kindness to your minister, for then your well-intended remark may do more harm than good. If it’s not you, but rather him, don’t twist the facts: there’s far too much at stake! But let’s assume that it was you. Suggestion number two says as much as: don’t let it be you, but find at least one relevant thing in this sermon. Listen keenly for the main point. Get a foot in the door. Mentally stay with that man in the pulpit till you can say: That is for me! That is for me! Right! I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed. In every sermon there must be a blessing for me.

I know the analogy is faulty, but I can’t help but think of Jacob wrestling with the heavenly warrior: ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’

If preaching is indeed God’s gracious way with people, then we may be sure that at least something of what is said is truly valuable. For me! For I set myself and say: ‘I am going to find that solid idea in this sermon.’ And the miracle is: if that’s our frame of mind, we will often find more than one solid idea. Maybe even three. Then we haven’t only got a foot in the door, but there’s much more involvement!

Maybe it’s comfort for you. For your family. Maybe a description of the glory of God that is lifting you up. Or an application that really fits your business life, or your marriage, or being single.

I am thinking now of a cute story I read ( or heard) long ago about a little old lady in Amsterdam, visited by her minister. It was still in the days of horse and cart and horse droppings in the streets were a common thing. The minister asked whether his sermons were helpful to her. A horse had just clippity-clopped by, and had felt the call of nature right in front of her house.’ Look’, she said, walking over to the window. See the sparrows going for it, to find at least one or two grains of wheat in it! Yes, your sermons are helpful!’

ANY DUST ON THE BIBLE?

Here’s suggestion number three: The better I know my Bible, the better sermon listener I will be. There’s little doubt about that. I suppose it can be checked out easily enough. Look around in any congregation, and it’s a fact that the people who shy away from Bible study groups, who spend far too many hours in front of the telly, who read no more Bible than the short bit after the evening meal, ah… they simply are not and cannot be good sermon listeners!

Care to think of a football match for a moment? Who are the people who can give expert comment on whether it was a good game, whether there was plenty of class, who were the outstanding players. Only those people who are well acquainted with the sport of football, who know the rules well, who know the variety of tactics and techniques, who once played themselves. Who makes for a good listener to the proclamation of the gospel?  Those who are well acquainted with the gospel. Who read the Bible and buy a good Christian book, and join a Bible study group.

And Then There’s The Body

Good listening can not be done without the use of energy. I read of an author describing as one of the characteristics of good listeners “increased heart action, faster circulation of the blood, and even slightly increased bodily temperature”. This author went on to say that the very word’ attention’ suggests a collection of tensions within the listener which are resolved only when the speaker’s message is communicated.

So the body is very much in the picture as regards good listening. If the preacher doesn’t have your attention, maybe the fault is with your own energy level. Possibly a late Saturday night? As a minister I have often been able to pick those who had been to the wedding breakfast the night before. Of course l had seen them there, and also from the pulpit it was quite plain they had been there!

Or family tension on Sunday morning before church. Like getting up too late. A fight who’s first in the bathroom. Burned toast, Junior wanting to wear thongs to church. Whatever it is, it means unnecessary expenditure of energy. The result is: poor listening, as a rule.

I don’t want to go all sentimental, and say: Ah, the old times were so much better. But it seems to be a fact that previous generations understood better than we do, what it means to prepare yourself for the Sunday, for the worship service, for listening to the sermon. Spiritual, mental, physical preparation. Already on the Saturday.

Now I’m sure that there are other suggestions. Possibly better ones to improve sermon listening. Feedback from the readers would be great!

I have given four suggestions:

1.  A Biblical understanding of the place of preaching in the church; 

2.  An all-out attempt to discover one or more relevant points;

3.  An increasing familiarity with Scriptural and spiritual matters; 

4.  A body-and-soul preparation: good Sunday listening starts on Saturday!

God’s people do have a theological responsibility for good listening. And in good listening God’s people have an opportunity for spiritual growth which comes to them in no other way!

KEITH V. WARREN

We look forward to receiving feedback about any of our posts. We also encourage you to share our posts with family, friends and acquaintances; in fact anyone you think may appreciate and/or benefit from the knowledge and wisdom handed down to us from the past.   To view previous posts visit our website at www.tsrevisited.com

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What About The Pew-Sitter?

Kieth v. Warren. Trowel & Sword. May 1981

Preamble: Forty-four years have passed since Kieth Warren wrote this, the first of two articles on preaching. Has anything changed? We can confidently predict that there will be many sitting in the pews today who would answer “NO” to this question. Perhaps after this article was written things did change – for a while. But unless we are constantly reminded of our shortcomings, old habits have a tendency to reappear. If it were not so preachers would soon find themselves out of a job. So where does the responsibility for good preaching lie? This is not an easy question to answer, and Kieth has some interesting suggestions to make in our quest for possible solutions.

What About The Pew-Sitter?

What About Preaching?

It’s in for a lot of criticism. There are plenty of books on preaching and on the whole the diagnosis of present-day preaching is a rather grim one. Preaching is labelled as boring, dull, uninteresting. It is outmoded and quite inefficient as a tool for communication, it is said. Is there any other situation in the world where people are to sit still for 20 minutes, even 30, and simply listen to a mediocre – or even worse speaker, without a break?

An article in ‘Time’ magazine (Dec. 31,1979) was a spokesman for many disgruntled church goers, when it stated in an article on preaching: ‘Many preachers devote far too little time to research, reading and writing in sermon preparation. As a result their poorly-constructed, poorly thought-out addresses wander from point to point, and the minds of the listeners wander too.’

Then there is the competition of so many other things, edging out the sermon, or at least making it much shorter: films in the service, testimonies, choirs, dialogues, even sacred dance. Yes, preaching has fallen upon hard times, there’s no doubt. It’s striking though that hardly any book on preaching mentions the responsibility of the listener. The average approach seems to be: if the preacher can’t deliver the goods, well, that’s the end of the matter. But is that so?

What I Want My Minister To Be.

Imagine that there was a questionnaire to be filled in. About ministers, and what people would think to be essential qualities for a minister. Wouldn’t most people put on top of the list: He must be a good preacher? And why not? After all, it may be expected of a preacher that he is able to preach, that he knows how to do it reasonably well. Imagine that a painter wouldn’t have the skill to paint properly; or that a doctor does not know how to doctor. What misfits they would be! It’s then even quite improper to call such a man a painter, or a doctor.

A preacher must know how to preach. If he doesn’t and if he can’t, he ought not to be a preacher. Surely there will then be other areas in God’s Kingdom where he is better suited to serve; but not as a preacher. Actually, he isn’t one then, even though he may still carry the label of ‘preacher.

Of course, some are more gifted preachers than others. As there are painters who are doing a better job, and doctors who are tops in diagnosing. But every student for the ministry ought to have this basic gift, and the home-congregation should recognise it before encouraging a man to further develop that gift and take up theological studies. If there is no gift, all the academic work and preaching-class practices will bear no fruit. Then the student will be frustrated, the professor will be frustrated, but what is worse: the Holy Spirit will be grieved, for we are then attempting to have a man use a gift which the Spirit has not given him.

Developing the gift of preaching and teaching is an important part of the training for the ministry, and it stands to reason that the congregations expect that such a task will be tackled faithfully and competently. The churches have every right to demand of their ministers that a big and genuine effort has been put in, to develop that preaching gift and to keep on developing it!

What I Want My Congregation To Be

And what may the minister expect from the congregation? For surely, it is not a one-way affair with all the expectations coming from the side of the pew. Has not the preacher the right to expect certain things from his congregation? Most definitely he has! What is it? This: That the congregation knows how to listen. And knows how to listen well. Listen obediently, responsively, creatively. And also work at it so as to become better listeners, better partners in that beautiful and mysterious communication – the preaching of God’s Word.

Is the congregation preparing for the sermon? The preacher is. And the preacher’s wife and children, indirectly: Be quiet dad is still working on his sermon. Are you having coffee with us, dear, or do you want it in the study? Wish I could watch ‘Four Corners’ tonight, but I can’t afford the time, not quite finished yet for tomorrow night. On the whole, there’s much preparation going into the sermon. From the preacher’s side. How much? Many, many hours. One rule of thumb is to spend an hour in the study for each minute in the pulpit. But I don’t think many preachers will manage that.

Back to the question: How does the congregation’s preparation compare with the preacher’s preparation? Maybe people have talked and written too often about poor preaching at the expense of focussing on poor listening. I suggest it will be too easy a way out to say that poor listening is only the result of poor preaching; if there would be good preaching, that would naturally result in good listening. To reason like that is not only too simplistic, but it also puts all the burden back on the preacher. It also shows up a basic misunderstanding about the process of communication as it is going on in preaching.

The Entire Congregation Has A Responsibility. 

Must we not say that preaching is the responsibility of the entire congregation? The congregation is fully involved, bringing to the hearing of each sermon their needs, their hopes, their sins, their joys. Again and again we need to hear the reconciling, encouraging, exhorting Word of God. We place it all in the searchlight of God’s Word: our brokenness, our relationships, our family, our fears. And as the preacher brings his resources to the pulpit, so the listeners bring their resources to the task of listening. These resources are shaped by years of experiences, wisdom, insights, all sorts of ups and downs, information, personal likes and dislikes; all these things colour and enrich what we hear.

Perhaps the expectations which the congregation brings along have as much to do with the effectiveness of the preaching as anything else. It’s not terribly difficult to convince oneself before setting off for church that the sermon will probably be dull (again!), uninspiring, or whatever. Now if that is the conviction we come to church with, then we will not be disappointed. Most certainly the sermon will turn out to be dull and uninspiring. But let’s then not forget that it was very likely caused mainly by our preconceived ideas. Because of our wrong attitude the sermon was killed before it was even born. Call it a kind of sermonic abortion; we gave that sermon no chance to live, so as to do miracles in our life!

Some Suggestions For Greater Involvement

To prepare for sermon involvement means more than the Sunday morning breakfast prayer for the preacher and the service. It means more than the ‘silent prayer’ in church; much more.

The first suggestion: Have a truly Biblical outlook on preaching. To become a better listener should begin in our mind, the way we think about preaching, preachers, sermons. When our thinking about all this is the right kind of thinking, the battle is half won! We must reflect deeply on the total meaning of preaching in the context of our Christian faith, commitment growth.

This is one of God’s gifts to the church: preaching. The proclamation ‘of Christ. It was His idea in the first place. This is the way to faith, to maturity: ‘…. faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ’ (Rom. 10:17).

‘It was he who gave… “some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.” (Eph. 4:11, 12)

Indeed, preaching is a means of grace. Even the kind of preaching that does not draw a ‘full house’. Even the kind of preaching that is but a faint reflection of Whitefield, Spurgeon, Lloyd-Jones. There is of course never an excuse for poor preaching which is poor because it results from hasty and sloppy preparation, laziness, lack of conviction, an unspiritual attitude, and so on. No session, no congregation should be willing to put up with that kind of preaching, and no preacher who understands his high calling should fall into such sinful traps.

But what if the preacher is sincere and godly, and yet is not a 5-star proclaimer? What if the word’ spellbound’ is quite out of place when it comes to his delivery and the reaction to it? What if the ‘Amen’ is keenly welcomed and eagerly anticipated too often, by too many? What if it’s a reading service again? What then?

Remember that the mental attitude of the congregation is absolutely vital in this matter of preaching and listening. If I convince myself beforehand that it will be boring, boring it will be. But if I say to myself: Our preacher is only average. But he is God’s ambassador. God has brought him to this congregation to tell us of Christ to help us to grow. I may not expect to be pleasantly entertained, but I must thank God for His wonderful gift of preaching and a preacher. I must keenly expect the Holy Spirit to do great things through the sermons of this preacher. In my own life. In the lives of others.

It Depends So Much On How We Think

You see, it’s all in the mind. When our thoughts about the place of preaching and about the function of the preacher are the wrong ones, there’s no doubt we will be poor listeners. But what is worse then: we are impoverishing ourselves by not properly using this means of grace, the Word. We must teach ourselves and our children the truth that the proclamation of God’s Word is His way to faith, to spiritual growth.

Says John Calvin: ‘God breathes faith into us only by the instrument of his gospel… Although God’s power is not bound to outward means, he has nonetheless bound us to this ordinary manner of teaching… That we must hold to what we have quoted from Paul – that the Church is built up solely by outward preaching’ (Institutes IV.1.5)

Next month we will look at a few more suggestions so as to be better listeners. And I would very much appreciate suggestions from our readers. As for now: we must do more work on the way we think about these things. Yes, it is very much a matter of the mind. 

KEITH V. WARREN

We look forward to receiving feedback about any of our posts. We also encourage you to share our posts with family, friends and acquaintances; in fact anyone you think may appreciate and/or benefit from the knowledge and wisdom handed down to us from the past.   To view previous posts visit our website at www.tsrevisited.com

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‘And A Little Child Shall Lead Them’

Mrs. Jean Sietzema-Dickson. Trowel & Sword. March 1992

 Preamble: How often do we stop and actually think about what we do in our worship services? Is attendance just a part of our weekly activities where we turn up, go through the same routine week after week and then go home again. Has it become a habit with which we have become comfortable but not really inspired? Do we have a sense of coming into the presence of Almighty God with thankfulness in our hearts for what He has done for us, and continues to do day after day? In this article Jean Sietsma-Dickson reflects on some of her own experiences in the worship service. To what extent are her experiences comparable to your own?

‘And A Little Child Shall Lead Them’

Scene1

Hands raised in the air, or clapping enthusiastically to the beat of the music, people crying in pain, people being prayed for. Was this a gathering of the Assemblies of God? No. Almost everybody there, belonged to one or another of the Reformed Churches of Australia. The setting was the Oasis (Mt.Evelyn, Victoria). I could hardly believe what I was experiencing! Was this the same denomination that I had joined almost thirty years ago where the most that people did in a church service was to sing lustily? They did not even know how to say ‘amen’ at the conclusion of a prayer. Here there were occasional interjections and a wholehearted ‘amen’ at the end.

***

Thirty years ago the Reformed Churches were small migrant groups who clung together fiercely. Church meetings could be rowdy affairs, as arguments reached their peak. A very different experience to the sedate Anglican meetings I had previously sat through. In some ways I found it exciting. But there were other ways in which I found Reformed worship unsatisfying.

For one thing there was no real quietness before the service started in which I could come into the presence of God and let my troubled, busy heart be stilled. People chattered all around me and, being a mimic, I gradually began to see the pre-service time as a chance to exchange greetings with my neighbour rather than take time out to prepare my heart, body and mind for worship of the Lord of heaven and earth.

Nowadays I have learned to seek that stillness elsewhere though I am still a (faithful) member of and worshipper in a Reformed church. To me, living in a world full of sound, quietness and stillness are essential ingredients of wholehearted worship.

In comparison Reformed worship generally is a busy business. The moment of silent prayer is rarely long enough to collect one’s wits, let alone focus one’s mind clearly on the majesty of the living God.

Who of us among Reformed families would come to the table at dinner time unwashed? And yet we think we can walk into the presence of God without a moment’s thought for confession! It is alright, we think, to leave that to the minister to lead us in the general prayer of confession. But who of us in that time really remembers the sins we have committed in the past week? I generally do not, and if I have confessed them along the way that is OK with God because He has then already put them in the rubbish basket. But there are times when we come to church burdened with unconfessed sins and if there is no stillness, no quiet, there is no time or space for God to speak to our hearts and draw us into the comfort of His presence so that we can make confession.

The reason that we so often live powerless, unsatisfying, unfulfilled lives is that we live in a perpetual state of guilt so that we believe ourselves unworthy to accept, appropriate and make use of the great blessings the Lord has in store for those who love Him. These blessings are never for ourselves alone but, like any biblical gift, are given for the building up of the body.

What was so good about the experience of worship that I mentioned at the beginning was that this was a time when there was time and space for full confession, for drawing closer to God, for being filled with His Spirit and His love. I came away feeling enriched, empowered for deeper service of God and my fellow human beings, believer or unbeliever. For the space of a few hours the barriers were down between us and God and between ourselves.

But my question is: What happens now? Can I maintain in my own life that sense of God’s nearness and love? Can I, by myself, find my way into the presence of the living God and go on worshipping Him and being filled by His Spirit? From past experience the answer is both yes and no. For a while I will remember this closeness, I will long for it and make time and space for it. But then, as in the parable, the cares and pleasures of the world will choke this new growth and I will find myself drifting away from that closeness, beginning to believe (again) that I can live for the Lord in my own strength.

Of course my mind knows this is not true. But my emotions can and do (sometimes) outweigh my thoughts. Not all of us have learned to let the Holy Spirit, rather than our minds, control our emotions. On the occasions when I have been willing to let the Spirit have control I have found that He can use my emotions like a musical instrument going up and down the scale in short sequence and enriching me in the process.

That was what happened last weekend. We sang our hearts out, we used our bodies to express our worship, we laughed together and we cared and cried for each other. And at the end we felt cleansed inside and out and invigorated. I believe that was the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst. And I am thankful for that.

At the same time there is a niggling little voice that says but what did you learn? I learned that Reformed people (some of them anyway) can let the barriers down. As we heard one speaker mention Revelation 3:20 my mind went back over thirty years to the night I was converted at a crusade in St.Paul’s Cathedral. I was reminded of what I had learned that night, that Jesus loved me and wanted a place in my heart. It was surprising that I did not fly out of the cathedral that night. I am sure my feet hardly touched the street as I danced my way home and lived the next few months in a state of euphoria. The trouble was that the euphoria did not last. When it went so did my erroneous assurance that I could constantly walk in the Spirit.

It was many years later, when I had already been a member of the Reformed churches for some years, that it dawned on me what had happened. I had given my heart to the Lord that night. And the Lord had blessed me and hung onto me. But there had been many hiccups on my journey. Much of this was because, although I had faith in Jesus as Saviour and had given Him my heart, I had not realised He also wanted to have control of my mind. I had not bowed to Him as the Lord of heaven and earth. Part of the trouble was also that I was woefully ignorant about the Christian faith, and there was so little real teaching in the churches I attended that when, after seven years as a Christian, I was offered a place for a year at a theological college in England I grasped this opportunity as if my salvation really depended on knowledge.

I have never regretted that year. For someone who had done a very practical diploma in Occupational Therapy it gave me an opportunity to rub shoulders with graduate teachers and ordained ministers of the churches (the college, though run on Anglican lines, was interdenominational). For the first time in my life I was forced to think, to really question what I believed and why. Some of my rather facile pietism dropped away and I was left with more knowledge but also with a pride in it that did me no good at all. On the other hand I did at least now have an idea of what God said in His Word though I still (because I was an evolutionist) reserved judgement on certain parts.

It was not until I had been sitting under Reformed preaching for several years (and how I soaked up that preaching with joy and thankfulness) that, through a book by Henry Morris, I was brought face to face with the fact that the Bible really was true. Then I began to grow because I started submitting my mind to the Word of God.

***

Scene 2

Reformed Church of Dandenong. Farewell to Harry Burggraaf. A far from traditional service, imaginatively planned by the Revd Martin de Graaf was an occasion for joyful worship. Slides and a shared reading gave us a new view of the wonder of creation. Prayer with laying on of hands was offered up to encourage Harry and Henny as they started a new phase of their lives.

An orchestra of people from different Reformed churches provided lively music and the farewell speeches were brief and entertaining. It is happening in various places around the Reformed churches that people are learning that worship can be offered in different ways.

***

Scene 3

Reformed Church of Box Hill. Annual Friendship Club service for participants and their families and friends. An atmosphere of expectancy and excitement among those present was picked up and expanded by Harry Burggraaf and Joanne van Wageningen. Simple choruses were sung. Short readings were given by members of the Doveton club. Short simple prayers were offered. The Box Hill group staged a Nativity scene while Luke’s gospel was read. Good use was made of the overhead projector to illustrate the brief address as well as to project words for singing. People clapped and sang, raised their hands in the air, made other movements to express what was being sung about. And I, freed from the normal restraint I feel in Box Hill, was able to worship with heart and soul and mind and body and to come away refreshed and recharged for service. I have a distinct impression that this was partly because those able-bodied people who attended did so because we care about those who are not able to gain much from our traditional style worship. We came not seeking something for ourselves but ready to participate for the sake of others. And the Lord blessed our openness and our giving.

Please do not misunderstand me. I love the lusty singing of traditional Reformed worship. I revel in the beauty of a choral Eucharist in an Anglican church, I enjoy Gregorian chant and find it stills my soul. I am uplifted by some of the new Roman Catholic music I have heard. I think worship should be God honouring and, where possible, aesthetically pleasing but I am sure that the Lord would rather have a service that is a little ragged at the edges than one that is stylistically perfect and cold.

Now let us go back to the beginning. In Genesis God commanded Adam to care for the creation and develop it. Adam and Eve needed to use their bodies, minds and hearts if they were to do this effectively. We all know they blew it. But we are still called to that same sort of service. We are called to go on exploring and developing the creation God set us in. And to do this we need to use minds and hearts and bodies in His service. Reformed Churches have always been strong on emphasising the mind, on feeding the mind. 

Sadly, it has too often been only the mind that was fed while the body and heart were badly undernourished.

We have spent years running away from Pentecostalism because we saw the abuses of it and we did not want ‘to be like them’; but I believe that in doing so we have missed a very important part of the gospel. I do not want to see the Reformed Churches reduced to mindlessness. I trust I have made that abundantly clear. What I do long to see is a combination of the vision of Abraham Kuyper (who after all took great account of the work of the Holy Spirit and could not have done what he did unless the Spirit was leading him) allied with the Pentecostal fervour of not only the Assemblies of God, but at least some branches of mainline churches. I was considerably impressed recently to find that Christian Heritage College in Brisbane, which has pipped us to the post in setting up a Christian teacher training course, is supported generously by a Pentecostal type church.

I pray for the time when we can learn to put aside the prejudices that have held us back from enjoying the full gifts of the Spirit in our churches. In fact I pray that the Spirit who descended at the first Pentecost will fill the Reformed Churches of Australia so that they may be enabled to perform the leading function I fully believed they were called to play when I first joined as a member. Let us remember Christ’s own words, ‘Unless you become like this little child you will not see the kingdom of heaven.’ We have just rejoiced again in the Saviour’s birth. May we follow the child that was born in Bethlehem joyfully into the 21st century.

Jean Sietzema-Dickson

We look forward to receiving feedback about any of our posts. We also encourage you to share our posts with family, friends and acquaintances; in fact anyone you think may appreciate and/or benefit from the knowledge and wisdom handed down to us from the past.   To view previous posts visit our website at www.tsrevisited.com

Comment from last week – I so enjoyed reading this article! When I found out about this book, years ago, Keith and I really liked it. Probably also because Keith was involved in the Resistance movement, and could identify with so many” happenings”in the book. That year we decided to buy all our children ( all eleven) a copy for their birthdays!
Keep up the good work, I do so appreciate it!

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“Things We Couldn’t Say” – Book Review

REV. J.W. Deenick. Trowel & Sword. May 1995.

Preamble: It’s bizarre that today, eighty years after the horrors of WW2, the word “Nazi” is thrown around so casually, often as an accusation against someone we may disagree with. But the holocaust was no casual affair. Despite his obvious reluctance to again bring it to the fore, Bill Deenick obviously felt compelled to bring to our attention the heroism of those who opposed Nazism and risked, and often lost their lives in their efforts to rescue the victims of this evil regime as told by Diet Eman, one of the many who fought to rescue Dutch Jews. Although he doesn’t mention it, Bill was himself also deeply involved in the fight to save Jews in the Netherlands so one can only imagine the emotions he went through as he read this book. It is little wonder that he recommended it so highly.

“Things We Couldn’t Say“

Many T&S  readers, will have seen the film based on Thomas Keneally’s book, Schindler’s Ark. I saw it somewhere in Melbourne. It is both an important and a deeply moving film. Important, because it documents in an historically responsible manner the atrocities committed by the Third Reich; and deeply moving, because it portrays one man’s heroic efforts to save from the gas chambers as many Jewish men, women, and children as he was able. 

Yet, for most of us there is a saturation point where we begin to say: now I have heard and seen enough of the Second World War, the Nazis, and the holocaust.

Therefore, when in my Beacon Hill Books Catalogue I saw a notice that someone had written another book about the Nazi persecution of Dutch Jews, I might not have been as keenly interested as I should have been, had it not been for one name I recognised. It said that was all about a young woman, Diet (pronounced Deet) Eman, and about her fiance’, Hein Sietsma. And I happen to know a solicitor in Sydney of that name, a brother of the other Sietsmas, well known to many readers of this paper in NSW and Vic.

When I further discovered, that this Hein Sietsma was indeed a cousin of the Australian Sietsmas, and that like his uncle, Dr Kornelis Sietsma, this young man was apprehended by the Nazis and transported to the death camp of Dachau, I wanted to know more about that book.

Now that I have read it, I want to tell the readers of T&S more about it, because it is a very wonderful book; and it deserves place of honour on the book shelves of those who have come to love and serve the Lord Jesus in the Reformed tradition.

It is the story of two young people, in their early twenties, who became instruments in God’s hands for the hiding of hundreds of Jewish people on Dutch farms, mostly in the province of Gelderland, round the towns of Nykerk, Barneveld, Putten, Zwartebroek, and Terschuur.

At the start of WW II, Diet Eman, who lived with her parents on the Malakka Straat, in The Hague, was eighteen years old and worked as clerk at the Twentse Bank in the city centre. Already before the beginning of the war, she had come to know a young fellow from Holk, near Nykerk, where his father was headmaster of the Christian school. At the time, he too lived in The Hague and had his further training at Shell Oil Company. These two young people came to love each other very deeply.

When the German armies had occupied most of Western Europe, including Holland, and the Nazis began to make life difficult for Jews, people of the Reformed faith had to make some very fundamental decisions. Should the German authorities be accepted as the de facto government and as such be obeyed; or, should they be resisted both openly and underground? Should the German occupation be seen as an instrument in God’s hand for the punishment of the Western nations and be submitted to for that reason? Could Christians in the resistance movement live under false names with all the lying and deceit that would follow from that? How could Jews be hidden without creating a smokescreen of evasion and lies?

Diet Eman and Hein Sietsma were directly confronted with these dilemmas when a Jewish friend, Herman, with his Jewish girl friend, Ada, had to make the life or death decision: shall we do as the Nazis tell us to do? Shall we let ourselves be rounded up, together with all other Jews, in one designated section of the city of Amsterdam, or shall we hide? And whom can we ask to hide us? That was, writes Diet, how it started.

She writes: “This was how our (resistance) group was formed: we simply got together and talked about what the Germans were doing to the Jews”. They decided to seek a hiding place for Herman and Ada; and for Ada’s mother. But soon, Herman’s uncle came and said: “Can you help this one and that one too… and I have more.” Rosa, Herman’s sister, also needed a place. “The whole thing grew so fast that within two or three weeks we had over sixty people who wanted places out in the country, in the Veluwe. And that was just the beginning. Hein went out on his own to Holk, trying to find places; and he placed many Jews on farms round that little town. But the list kept growing.”

At first they did not realise what all of that would involve with regard to transport, identification cards (IDs), ration cards, correspondence, and finance. The one step had to lead to the other. They had to become better organised. In order to get ration cards and IDs, they sought the help of a gang that was active round Rotterdam and Zwyndrecht, raiding local council offices. Their own group, which they called HEIN (Help Each other In Need), was not involved in that; nor did they join the National Organisation of resistance groups, the LO. And the violent activities of some groups which were prepared to execute high-ranking German officers and traitors, they condemned.

When they became aware that the Secret Police was looking for them, Diet and Hein began to live under false names with forged ID cards, hiding at many different places, Hein mostly working in Friesland and Diet in Gelderland. They had never set out to do anything heroic, but they did believe that the Lord God had made them responsible for the Jewish people. They could not run away from that. In the process, they suffered enormous anxiety and loss. Although they were deeply in love, they had great trouble organising a day or a weekend for themselves. And always there was the threat of the Secret Police.

Diet mainly functioned as “postman”, on foot or on push-bike, from farm to farm all over that part of the country, passing on ration cards, messages, correspondence, money, and heaps of illegal material, constantly being in danger of being apprehended by the SS or the Gestapo. 

In April 1944, Hein, who travelled disguised as a Reformed pastor, was searched on the train in Friesland and, loaded with incriminating stuff, was apprehended and taken to the Leeuwarden prison. From there he was transported to the concentration camps of Amersfoort, Neuengamme, Ladelund, and Dachau.

Less than a month later, the same happened to Diet, who was taken to the infamous prison at Scheveningen, and later to Vught in Brabant, where she was briefly detained with Corrie ten Boom in the same barrack. Because she managed to make the Secret Police believe her fantastic story of innocence, she was released from Vught in August, 1944.

After the war, Diet Eman suffered deep distress and sorrow, because of the loss of the boy she loved. Why could she not have died also? For many, many years she refused to tell her story. She fled away from it all, to Venezuela, to the USA.

Finally, after she had heard Corrie ten Boom tell about her experiences and about God’s faithfulness, her conscience began to trouble her. Her children too insisted that she write a book. But she could not. Then finally, when Dr James Schaap, professor in English at Dordt College, Sioux Centre, Iowa, offered to write it with her, she gave in. And, praise God, she did.

This is a great book, for a good many reasons. First of all, because it is a truly honest book and a deeply religious one. It is written in the first person singular, and based on the diaries of both Diet and Hein and on their correspondence. There is no embellishment about it. It tells how two ordinary young people of the Reformed faith wrote things down, and talked to each other about what they believed to be their calling from God under these extremely taxing circumstances.

That the Lord God used them wonderfully is evident from the fact that all Jews they had hidden with Christian farm families made it; every single one. Yet, of their own group of underground workers, eight young men died at the hands of the Nazis. As followers of Jesus, they gave their lives in defence of their Jewish neighbours.

There is no doubt that they were indeed Reformed young people. On December 11, 1939, the then eighteen year old Diet Eman wrote in her diary: “Again, a conversation with the doctor. We always come back to the same point: ‘The church may not mix in politics’ he says. And I tell him that when you are a Christian and profess that God is almighty, there is no single area of life from which you can eliminate God.” If ever I have felt that I should wholeheartedly recommend a book, it is this one. Young people especially will love reading it. It will help them to understand, and to identify with, what so many of their (grand)parents went through at that time.

For New Zealand readers this final note. The author mentions as one of their co- workers, Adrian Schouten from Zwijndrecht. From what she tells about him, I would not be at all surprised if he was the same Adrian Schouten whom we later came to know as a member of the Hamilton church. And more importantly, the young Albert, the Jewish boy who on the farm where he found a hiding place came to know Jesus, whom he later confessed as the Messiah, and who eventually married a minister’s daughter, could he be Albert Van Gelder, one of Christchurch’s leading elders at the institution of the Reformed Church there?

J.W. Deenick 

“Things We Couldn’t Say” has been published by Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich

Footnote: “Things We Couldn’t Say” is still available from Koorong books for $39.99. Second hand books are also available from various suppliers. Enter the title in your search engine.

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Of The Making Of Many Bibles Will …. ?

Prof. G. van Groningen. Trowel & Sword. September 1974

Preamble: “Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). It has been said that one of the greatest inventions of the modern era is the printing press; although even that has now been surpassed by the digital age. Even so, it is hard for us to imagine that already 3000 years ago Solomon was lamenting the making of many books. In this article Prof V.G. has built on this theme by assessing the many versions of the Bible in existence in his time, 50 years ago; this in the light of the fact that the NIV was in the process of being the latest version to be published. It makes one wonder how many more versions have appeared since then. Why so many Bibles? Considering the Bible is still the No. 1 bestseller in the world today, we suspect that the making of much money may well be, in part at least, a motivator.

Of The Making Of Many Bibles Will… ?

The stack of Bibles before me on my desk is a high one. It could be even higher because the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Bible, (both Old and New Testament) are not included. Neither the latest Dutch Bible (De Nieuwe Vertaling). These are kept separate for specific usage. And let me add that the three cross reference Bibles (Thompson’s, Dickson’s and Monser’s) which are kept available as study aids, are not included either. Only a selected number of English translations of the Bible comprise the stack before me.

The venerated Authorised Version, The King James of 1611, is at the bottom. The English Revised Version and the American Revised Version, both having appeared at the turn of the past century to enable the readers of the first half of the twentieth century to read the Bible according to their own idiomatic style and choice, are on a nearby shelf, accessible for reference. On top of the Authorised version is the Revised Standard Version of the Bible which appeared in 1952. Then comes the Modern Language Bible, which is a revision (in part) of the Berkeley Bible. The original Berkeley appeared in 1959, the revision in 1969. The Jerusalem Bible is next; it was published as an English Bible in 1966. The New English Bible, the publication date of which is given as March 16, 1970 is next. The New American Standard Bible is next. And on top of the stack is the Holy Bible, New International Version, New Testament. The Old Testament of the N.I.V. will not be ready for publication for another three or four years.

Three of the professors of the Reformed Theological Seminary at which I work, are participating in the translation of the N.I.V., Old Testament. The question can quite legitimately be asked: Why do these professors spend time on this project, considering the fact that there is such a big stack of modern translations available already? A few words on the specific characteristics of each recent translation should place the above question in proper focus.

The Authorised Version based on the venerated ‘Textus Receptus’, (the Hebrew & Greek Bible of 1400) will not be replaced as the dearly loved Bible for many people. It need not be either, if readers prefer to read in the English style of 1611 and are not specifically concerned to have recently discovered factors (regarding ancient languages, literature, historical setting) aid them in their reading. However, the English and American Revisions appearing at the turn of the century indicate that there was a call for updating the translation of the Bible by previous generations.

The Revised Standard Version has not really met the need of the modern age. It is a revision of the Authorised Version; it is not a new translation. However, many changes have been included in the R.S.V. on the basis of what revisers found in the various manuscripts in the original languages. But the revisers worked with the dubious assumption that the Bible developed through various discernible stages. A few words on this problem will be included later in this article.

The Modern Language Bible has been hailed by some scholars as an outstanding achievement in evangelical Biblical scholarship. But many scholars have been critical. Added to this is the fact that this Bible has not been received with a great deal of general public enthusiasm. Among the assets of the “Berkeley”, one can mention its faithfulness to the original texts and its effort to employ the language of the average modern reader. The legitimate criticisms which are voiced include reference to its specific American (U.S.) terminology and the idiosyncrasies largely due to the original one-man effort on the New Testament, and the comparatively small team effort on the Old Testament as well as on the recent revision of the New Testament.

The Jerusalem Bible (J.B.) has been hailed as a scholars’ Bible. This is because of the extensive explanatory materials, both textual and theological, found in the notes. These notes present a definite problem for many readers because they were added, as the general editor states in the foreword, for the deepening of theological thought. He adds that these notes are not intended to be sectarian or superficial.  They are not superficial; but they do reflect the theological bias of the translators. The actual translation is intended to keep the readers “abreast of the times” so that what was “crystallised in antiquity” may be shown not to have been “fossilised” in time. The J.B. translation team, of Roman Catholic heritage, guided by French and Jerusalem scholarship, relying on English publication requirements, have not produced a translation which can be satisfactorily designated as international, interdenominational and of general public appeal.

The New English Bible is a strictly English production. It is also based on unwarranted textually critical assumptions. J.A. Sanders, concluded his comparison of the N.E.B. with the R.S.V. and J.B., in The Christian Century (March 18, ’70) by quoting Ps. 118:23 “This is the Lord’s doing, it is marvellous in our eyes; this is the day on which the Lord has acted: let us exult and rejoice in it.” He thus indicated his exuberance as well as his theological bias. The N.E.B. is said to expose the richness and the majesty of the English language. Very well! However, it also exposes the conjectures of critical scholarship much more than the R.S.V. does. At this point, it may be feasible to say a few words in explanation.

The translators of the N.E.B., the revisers of the R.S.V. by and large, and some authors of the notes in the J.B. reveal their critical conviction concerning the original texts. Let it be understood that these men seek to be men of integrity. However, they follow the assumptions of scholars who believe that the “Bible grew”, i.e., it developed through successive stages. The stages referred to are not those, e.g., of the Pentateuch, the pre-exilic prophets, the post exilic prophets, etc. Rather, they believe the actual text of the Bible was written, edited, rewritten and re-edited. J.A. Sanders points out that the translators of the N.E.B. believed that there are four or more, successive stages to be discerned in the transmission of the text. The last stages for the Old Testament are: 1) the Massoretic era, 1000 AD; the last stage;  2) the post Jerusalem era; after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the text passed through its second to last stage;  3) the temple era of Jesus’ day represents the third to last stage, and  4) the Ezra to Maccabee period, 400-200 B.C., represents the fourth to the last stage. N.E.B. translators have tried to reflect what they believe to be the earlier stages, second or third to the last stage. Hence, e.g., a reader will find certain sections of the Bible in places other than the traditional place.

Back to the stack before me. The New American Standard Bible has been warmly received in various evangelical circles. It reflects a definite degree of scholarship. However, it does not communicate well.

In the interest of an exact translation of the Massoretic text, smoothness and beauty of expression were sacrificed. Some have referred to it quite correctly as the modern students’ proof text Bible and the “pony for the beginning Hebrew and Greek students”.

Some readers may wonder why The Living Bible is not included in the stack on my desk. The answer is threefold: 

1) The Living Bible is not really the Bible; it is a brief commentary on the Bible (the author readily acknowledges this by adding the term “paraphrased”).    

2) The author’s theological bias pervades throughout. Compare e.g., Acts 13:48; Rom. 8:28,29; 9:13; Eph. 2:1 as found in The Living Bible with that found in a reliable translation.

3) In the interest of simple language, many simplistic renditions are offered which do not convey the profundity of the truths revealed in God’s Word.

In view of the criticisms of the various recent translations, can one now expect the N.I.V., New International Version, to be acceptable? So far only the New Testament has been published.

It has been enthusiastically received. A few initial comments read as follows: “At last!  A worthy successor to the King James”, balanced scholarly, dedicated translation…  and “the breadth of evangelical scholarship is impressive. .”  “the sensitive word choices keep large truths from being watered down by over-simplicity.” It is fervently/ hoped and trusted that the Old Testament will be received in the same way. (see also Harry L. Hoving in earlier issues of T & S).

The editorial board and the translators of the N.I.V. have followed two specific patterns. The first pattern is in reference to the mechanics of translation. Briefly, the pattern followed is as follows: Step one: a portion is assigned to two translators who work together. Step two: the initial translation is sent to two consultants who, individually, provide suggested improvements in marginal notes. Step three: a committee of five (the Intermediate Editorial Committee), minutely, painstakingly reviews and revises the offered translation and notes. Step four: Another committee of five (The General Editorial Committee) reviews and revises the translation and marginal notes. Step five: the committee on Bible Translation, composed of 20 or more scholars, make a final review and prepare the text for publication. Literary stylists are on hand to advise all the committees working at steps three, four and five.

The second pattern is in reference to the actual work of translation. Three specific terms indicate what is expected of the translators. 1) integrity. 2) dignity, and 3) felicity. A few comments about each of these follows in reverse order as stated above.

Felicity refers especially to a combination of simplicity and beauty. Both of these are very necessary if one wishes to communicate effectively. One who has his readers in mind particularly, when translating, works to attain a high degree of felicity.

Dignity refers particularly to a combination of solemnity and profundity in a positive relationship with felicity. These aspects are very essential if a translator is to convey the reality of God speaking in the past and in the present. God’s voice must be heard, God’s character must be sensed, God’s intentions, will, desires must be discerned as one reads. The translators must so efface themselves that, in no manner whatsoever, a veil will be placed over God’s face.

Integrity has to do with faithfulness to the text and the honesty of the scholar-translator. The translator may not work, not even try or suppose he can, contrary to his convictions, his faith, his love for God and His Word. The translator may not deal with the text, the original Hebrew and Greek, other than what he believes to be true about that text. All the N.I.V. translation staff members have expressed their faith in and love for God according to what is known as the historic, evangelic Biblical confession. This confession includes the belief that the Bible books were written by men who were inspired by the Spirit of God. It also includes the belief that these books have been preserved, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in such a manner that the original message, as given by God to the original authors, is at hand in the Hebrew and Greek texts.

Evangelical scholars firmly believe that it is not permissible to consider, or to deal with, the original text in the manner of the critical scholars referred to above. Rather, they have sought out the earliest reliable texts which are considered to be faithful copies of the original.

It is with a great deal of pleasure that the translators of the N.I.V.N.T. can read in the enthusiastic reviews such comments as these, “…. the latest in textual sources have been used,. . .’ and “fresh translation from the early Greek texts”. Discerning readers sense the facts of the matter.

It is the earnest desire and the fond hope of many that the N.I.V. will include all the combined assets of the Bibles stacked on my desk but avoid their weaknesses and errors.

GEORGE VAN GRONINGEN

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Tempting, Isn’t It?

Robert Meischke. Trowel & Sword, July 1993

Preamble: When we think, and ministers/pastors preach about the Easter story, one aspect that may be overlooked is that of the temptation of Jesus. In this article Robert brings it to the fore, reminding us that we have a saviour who knows what we experience because He too has been there and done that. Many books have been written on the subject, but in this short article Robert absolutely nails it.

Tempting, Isn’t It?

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. Let us approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.’  (Hebrews 4:14-16) 

The bite happens.
It happens when you see someone drop a twenty dollar note.
It happens when you walk past an empty car with its engine running.
It happens when you see the plastic covered magazines on the top shelf in the news agency.
It happens when you realise that sticking to the speed limit will make you ten minutes late.
It happens when someone asks you if you have heard the latest gossip.
It happens every time you start wanting something that know you shouldn't have. In fact, when we really sit down and think about it, it happens quite a lot.
We are tempted.

I have just given a few examples of how some of us might be tempted. You probably have a few things in your own mind that could replace some items on this list or even add to it.

The problem is that we seem to run into all sorts of temptations practically every day. Sometimes they are sexual. Sometimes they are financial. Sometimes they come at a time when our relationship or family life is at a low point. They come from many different sides and they vary in subtlety from a tickling feather to train smash.

We need to remember, though, that each and every temptation we face is spiritual. They all tease and hassle our relationship with God.

Mind you, most of us already know this. How many times have you said in your mind, ‘Don’t look now God, I’m about to give in again.’

Every time we struggle with a temptation, we are actually struggling with whether or not our relationship with God is the most important thing in our lives. No matter how big or how small the temptation might be, it all boils down to saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to God Himself. That is why James said, ‘whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it’ (James 2:10).

Dealing with temptation is a serious matter. In fact, without the grace of God in Christ, the ‘Hungry Jacks’ slogan, “Resistance is Useless,” would be true. Without the grace of God we simply would not be able to resist or fight any temptation at all, not even the little ones.

Now, perhaps you think that no other Christian struggles with a particular temptation as much as you do. Sometimes you might feel very lonely and guilty because your sin is too big or horrible to talk about with somebody else.

Or perhaps you think that your sin is one that God will not forgive you for or help you to overcome because it is too bad.

Every now and then we need to remember just how much our God understands our sinfulness and our need for His love and grace. We need to realise this so that we may have the confidence to trust Him when we really need Him to help us deal with temptation.

Our Lord, Jesus Christ, the one high priest who stands in the presence of almighty God on our behalf, understands us better than we understand ourselves. He knows our thoughts. He knows our feelings and our struggles. He knows how strong and how subtle Satan’s temptations really are. He knows that Satan will try to lead us to hell and make us think that we are going to heaven.

Jesus knows that Satan will try to convince us that bad is good and that good is bad. Each temptation is designed to make us think that hell is really not such a bad place after all, if it really exists.

Jesus knows all this because He has experienced it. Every possible type of temptation that you could think of, Jesus has faced it. That is what this passage is saying. There is no temptation to sin that we face that Jesus has not already faced.

Have a look at the story of Jesus’ temptation by Satan in the desert in Luke 4. Satan wanted Jesus to turn His back on God and His own mission. He wanted Jesus to believe that if He did what Satan suggested then He would be doing the right thing. He even had the audacity to say, ‘If you worship me, it will all (the kingdoms of the world) be yours.’

Our Lord Jesus has been hit by every temptation in the book and He has defeated all of them. Not once did He give in and take what looked like the easy path, not even when He was called to come down from the cross to save Himself. He stayed on the cross and died so that we might be saved. He beat the power of the devil into a powerless pulp. Our Lord Jesus knows what we go through when we are tempted.

That is why we are now able to trust Him completely. What would be the point of turning to Jesus if we could not be sure that He could actually strengthen us to resist temptation. We know that He can because He has already done it.

So why not take God at His word? Why not stand and be counted as one who trusts God to give all the help and grace you need right now, no matter how trivial or how terrible your situation might be?

God is calling on us to approach Him with confidence and boldness because of what Jesus Christ has done. He is calling on us to pray, ‘Lead us not into temptation’, and really mean it. The devil is tempting us not to pray, trying to convince us that Jesus is not worth trusting. But thanks to Jesus, even that temptation has no power over us.

Rob Meischke

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A Parent’s Mission Field

Margeeske Davies. Faith in Focus. May 2024

Preamble: While our stated purpose is to reprint past articles from Trowel and Sword, we have made the occasional exception, reprinting articles from other sources. Speaking of other sources, we have also stated that we are willing to publish previously unpublished articles submitted by Reformed Church members. Following on from last week’s post on “Faith in Focus”, a random search through their archives revealed the following article from May last year by Mrs. Margeeske Davies of the Pukekohe Reformed Church in New Zealand which “Blew me away” and cried out to be shared. With the permission of the editor Walter Walraven it makes up this week’s post in TSR.

A Parent’s Mission Field

What does discipleship mean? We know the great Commission that Christ gave us in Matt. 28: 19-20. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” This easily gives us the impression that we need to ‘go’ somewhere.

When I was a young mom, with a houseful of little kids, I went through a period where I grew rapidly in thankfulness for God’s grace. I felt a strong desire to share the good news with others. At the same time I felt heavily burdened by this house full of needy children. I was not able to stand in a ProLife rally, or travel to the capital to help set up a display. I couldn’t volunteer in a soup kitchen, or travel to other countries to help build Christian schools or church buildings. I felt I was being ‘held back’ by these kids. I felt they hampered my ability to witness and minister to others, to disciple those who had not heard the good news. That was until a dear older woman laid her hand on my arm and gently stated, ”but that IS your witness. Your children, your family, is your mission field!” It was a life altering realisation.

However, many do realise that they are the ones who need to teach their offspring, and yet the idea that the gospel is for little children as well as for adults, doesn’t even dawn on them.

AS WE INTRODUCE OUR CHILDREN TO THEIR HEAVENLY FATHER, WE NEED TO IMPRESS ON THEM THAT HE IS THE KING OF KINGS. AS SUCH, BEING HIS CHILDREN, THEY ARE ROYALTY.

I grew up in a faithful Christian family. My parents modelled Christian behaviour, love, forgiveness, gentleness, self-control etc. All the fruit of the Spirit was clearly modelled by them. Yet looking back at my growing-up years, I do not see that I was being discipled. I once asked my Mum why she did not teach me to ask for God’s help when, as a young child, I was struggling with various issues. She told me she had never thought about the fact that God was for little children as well. Subconsciously, she believed that a child’s problems were not worthy of God’s time. Even though she would have stated that Christ had made abundantly clear that children were indeed important to Him. Somehow she had never realised little ones needed discipling as much as any adult. It struck me as an especially unexpected revelation since she had spent her entire career as a Christian primary school teacher and principal. And yet I don’t think this is an uncommon misconception.

There are other subconscious misconceptions that can lead us to miss this calling. We may easily miss our children as a mission field because we profess that our children are ‘children of the covenant’ and in that sense they do not need to be brought to the LORD since He has claimed them as His own. Our baptismal forms clearly state that our children are His. But what we do not do is explain the Lord to them. We need to explain to them what He has done for them and how that knowledge ought to have an effect on how they live their lives. So we are discipling, not in the sense that we are looking to convert them, but that we alert them to their privileges and responsibilities.

As we introduce our children to their Heavenly Father, we need to impress on them that He is the King of kings. As such, being His children, they are royalty. They need to know that they are being raised with many privileges. They have insight and peace that those who are not God’s children do not know. By being born under the covenant, that is their birthright. They have many advantages over those who are growing up without Christ. Through the communion of saints our children have a shortcut into understanding human nature, and insight into how nature has been designed. Many of them even have an easier time looking for work and looking for friends and spouses. But there are also limits and responsibilities placed on them in these areas because of their privileged status. We also teach them that there is much required of our children. There are behaviours that are expected and forbidden them. That too is part of their birthright.

I think Prince William and Prince Harry are a great analogy for us to use in speaking about this. From before they were born, these two were royalty. Born into privilege and responsibility. They both were given many privileges as they were growing up. Privileges that were theirs by right of birth. But there was also much required of both of these men. Specific behaviour was expected of them in certain circumstances and yet other behaviour was not permitted for them. Many advantages were granted them regarding careers and marriage, but there were also many restrictions placed on them. Both regarding careers and marriage. And their birth also placed a calling on their lives. A calling that people not born into royalty do not have. Both these young men, through birth were called to lead through service. They are expected to treat others, those that have been raised with less, with humility and patience, no matter how they are confronted by them.

And just like William and Harry, our children can respond in two different ways. Like Prince William has done, they can accept and rejoice in their privileges. They can take on their responsibilities as laid out for them by their birthright. And in doing so they will be a blessing to those around them, to those whom they serve and lead. And in doing so they become a blessing to their parents. On the other hand, like Prince Harry, they can reject their responsibilities. They can dwell on the sins of those around them and focus on things they believe they ought to have received. They reject their privileged status and so also lose many of their privileges. They live lives outside of the world where they were raised, no longer able to enjoy the privileges that were intended for them. And like Prince Harry, they often find they are out of step with that world.

So God has given these princes and princesses parents to disciple them. We can disciple them by reading His Word with them. By taking them to church, and if we have the opportunity, to Sunday school as well. But the greatest witness our children will ever get is the testimony of our lives. We teach our children about the goodness of our God through our own behaviour. As they see us react to trials and to blessings, we disciple them. We teach them who God is. It is infinitely beneficial for our children to hear us speak openly of our own struggles with trials or sin. We disciple them when we speak in specifics of God’s patience with ourselves. When we speak words of thankfulness knowing that, though we again come to Him with a repeated sin, we show that we know and trust that He is not annoyed at having to forgive us once again. In doing so we teach them about God’s character. We can live the example of a life of those caught by “His net of grace.” When our children see us asking the LORD for help, when they see our trust in the outcome of difficulties, they gain a better understanding of His care for us and them. And we teach them about His trustworthiness. That is how we disciple them. We teach them by example that we know He does not judge us but neither does He shield us from the consequences of our actions. Indeed, we know that hardship is the workshop of God’s grace.

And over time we will present them with what our own responses are. We disciple them in explaining to them what is a good and right response. And we teach them and show them the results of the wrong response. And we explain to them how their choice in response will affect them and then we have to leave it to them to choose. This is a critical stage. We need to acknowledge that we are not our children’s saviour. Only God can grow the seed He has called us to plant in them. And then, as we too allow them the freedom to choose we remain there for them. And we prepare to show them the grace God shows His people Himself. Then, when, if they DO choose the wrong response we can be their “safety net of grace.” We may be there to catch them. We get to give them the opportunity to discuss the result of their choices. We allow them to work through the outcome of their choices, so they can see how and why they ended up in trouble. And like disciples, we do that without judgement, in the same manner as God does it with us. We do not shield them from their consequences, because these are put in place by God to teach them. But we do support them. Time after time we get to steer them back to the comfort of His Word.

I have heard discipleship described as follows: “It is intentional and deliberate – it doesn’t just happen. It requires you deciding, with God’s help, to work to be a conduit for pouring spiritual blessing into the life of another person – as one aspect of your personal obedience to Christ.” I love this definition because it relays the intentionality that is required in parenting. As parents we carry the great responsibility of teaching our children about the Lord. We are called to introduce them to who He is and what He has done for us and for them. But that responsibility is also a great privilege, because in doing so, we develop a closer relationship with Him ourselves. Indeed, studies have shown that teaching is the best way to gain a deeper understanding of something yourself. It is called the ‘protégé effect’, and in raising up children to carry that torch of discipleship for the next generation, in teaching our children, we ourselves are blessed. We ourselves are being drawn closer to Christ. Isn’t it mind boggling that God worked that into our nature as well? It’s a thrilling task.

Margeeske Davies is a member of the Pukekohe Reformed Church.

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