The importance of terminology

Posted at 1:18 AM

Words matter. Despite what literary deconstructionists say, we can communicate meaning with them. The words we use have an effect on what we think, and vice-versa. Using a word that isn’t quite right, or that someone else has a different understanding of, can lead to miscommunication, and sometimes to wrong thinking and practice.

We have to be careful that we have the right definition of words we use as Christians, because we can misunderstand what God is saying if we don’t. For example, if your understanding of the word “evangelism” includes living a distinctive life, not just telling people the gospel, you won’t feel the same urgency when being encouraged to evangelise. If your understanding of the word “doctrine” is that it is by definition dry and irrelevant, you’re going to think Paul was being boring when encouraging Titus to teach what is in accord with sound doctrine (Titus 2:1). If you think “faith” is by necessity “blind”, then half the New Testament is going to sound anti-intellectual. Words matter.

They matter in how we use them, too. If we always refer to where we meet as a church as “the church”, we’ll gradually – even if we wouldn’t say this! – begin to think of the church as something we attend, not something we’re part of. If we refer to the pastor as the minister, we may start thinking that ministry is something other people do. If we refer to the pastor as a priest, we slide into thinking he intercedes for us before God.

Now, referring to the pastor as a priest is actually a true statement! It’s just that we’re also priests, and the most perfect priest is Jesus. Using a correct statement nonetheless gives rise to a dangerous idea – that of someone other than Jesus as an intermediary between us and God.

During the course of New Word Alive, I came across a couple of words in very common use that I felt could be (or were already) prone to these kind of dangers. The first was “mission”, and the second was “worship”.

The word “mission”

I attended Krish Kandiah’s seminars on “Kinetic Christianity”. In the first session, his use of the word “mission” was different to how I use it. My use of mission is almost synonymous with evangelism – he was using it in a much broader sense, specifically “that which God sends the church into the world to do” (my paraphrase of Krish quoting John Stott). Mission, then, includes evangelism and social action. This was the first time I’d heard this formulated; I’ve been struggling to see how exactly to relate the two for a while.

As a result, we got talking about how using words in a way the Bible doesn’t can lead to wrong emphases in our practice. Redefining mission (from Latin “missio”, to send; “as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you” – John 20:21) as solely evangelism is to miss the message of parables like the good Samaritan (which Krish spoke on in a main meeting later in the week) and others like it. If we use mission to mean evangelism, then we’re never going to feel the real force of such passages, and we’re going to have a skewed practice that rejects the need for social action, all for the sake of being “faithful to the Bible”. We’re going to feel guilty about doing anything other than evangelism, and, at the extreme, we’re going to become uncaring! Using the wrong word (mission, not evangelism) distorts the biblical picture.

In passing, Krish mentioned the misuse of the word worship, and how equating it to just what we do when we meet together has led to a lessened view of worshipping God with our whole life. I agreed wholeheartedly, and (co-incidentally enough) happened to be going to a seminar on worship after his.

The word “worship”

Having just written about Marcus’ and Anna’s seminar, you can see that it challenged me deeply. There was only one thing that concerned me, and in some ways it was quite a minor thing. After all, the message of the seminar was something that I and others like me desperately needed to hear. As you might expect given the entry I’m currently writing, the issue was one of terminology: I felt that Marcus’ use of the word “worship” to describe what he was advocating didn’t follow the New Testament pattern, and I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with that. (The following section assumes you were at the seminar, have read my previous entry, or have at least glanced over the article much of his material came from.)

We talked about this after the seminar, and I expressed my concern as follows: given that much of the understanding of worship in the seminar seemed to come from the Old Testament, and the New Testament passages (Philippians 3:1, 4:4) didn’t use worship language, what evidence is there that what he’d described should be called worship? I said I wanted to make sure I was using biblical words in biblical ways, and wasn’t convinced this understanding of worship in the New Testament era was how the Bible used the word.

His response was taken from Revelation 4, where the word worship is used. Here we see the kind of worship which is specifically adoration in words or song – the Greek word itself meaning “to come towards to kiss”.

After a brief conversation, I left him to talk to another person with questions probably far more important than mine! Nevertheless, I remained unconvinced – my understanding of the Revelation passage is that we cannot extrapolate a whole definition of worship in the New Testament from it, as it’s in heaven, not on earth, and our worship in heaven will look different (though not completely) to our worship on earth. Romans 12:1 seems a more comprehensive definition of worship: “in view of God’s mercy” (it’s an emotional as well as rational response) “offer your bodies” (not just our minds and emotions) “as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God”. This will include what Marcus advocates in the above article and in his seminar – in fact, depending on how you interpret his definition, it might include it all to the exclusion of all else! (More on that later.) But just like referring to a pastor as a priest is technically accurate, it might not be the most helpful thing to define it as worship.

You may be saying “but it’s just words!” I hope that I’ve shown on the previous pages that it can never be “just words” – but I will try to engage specifically with why this particular area concerns me, and look at some other misuses of the word.

Pastoral implications

What might a misuse of the word worship lead to? The extreme is when “worship = singing”. Here we have a super-spiritual view of worship, that might lead to a divide between the Christian part of our lives and the secular stuff. Singing to God is worship, but what I do with myself on a Monday morning isn’t. We lose a whole-life view of Christian discipleship. That’s not how we’d say we think, but it’s what we end up doing, because of the power of the terms we use. I’ve seen this happen to people.

Less extreme but still worrying is when “worship = when we meet together”. There we have the same tendency to think of Monday morning as our time, not God’s time – but there’s also the temptation to see “attending church” as something we do for God. If going to church is how we worship God, then we’ll lose the biblical emphasis on us meeting together for our encouragement. We’ll become more individualistic, making church about “me and God”, not “me, my church family and God”.

If “worship = private devotional time, adoring and praising God” then there’s a temptation to distinguish too much between this time of devotions, and the rest of the Christian life. We need to be delighting to serve God in every area of life, praising him with all that we do, or we’ll still be limiting the breadth of worship. We might end up with a lesser view of how our lives lived for God are worship, and see the personal, individual time with God as “better”, or “more worshipful”. I think this is super-spiritual, and think our spirituality needs to affect our bodies and actions just as much as our heart, feelings and words.

Finally, Marcus’ definition:

Worship is delighting in, extolling, enjoying and making much of the object of your love

Looking at this in a more limited way, I think I’d say that that’s what rejoicing in God is, and argue that it’s an essential part of worship. Worship certainly isn’t emotionless duty! I think that this is crucial to worshipping God with the whole of life, but while it is worship, it isn’t worship to the exclusion of everything else. And referring to it as worship implies that.

However, if we take “delighting in” and “enjoying” in a fuller sense, that might result out of a Christian Hedonist understanding of Christian living, then maybe this does define worship after all. We’re to delight in God, the object of our love, in everything that we do. If delighting in God includes or implies a pursuit of God (see my previous entry, and Marcus’ article), then it’s going to include our whole lives. John Piper’s thesis in Desiring God is that our desire for God drives every area of our Christian life. If this is part of the definition, then perhaps it’s closer to Romans 12:1 than I thought initially. I’m still not certain I’m happy with the weighting of concepts, though, and would prefer to round out Romans 12:1 (“offer your bodies as living sacrifices”) with the joy apparent in Philippians and elsewhere, rather than the other way round.

The impression I got from Marcus, however – and bear in mind we only had a short conversation – was that he emphasised specific times of delighting and pursuing God. All well and good – as I’ve said, I need far more of these! – but I think here the issue with vocabulary is more apparent. If we’re referring to these specific times as worship, my instinct is that we lose the bigger picture of worship as a result. This might not be something that affects those who have a deeper or more rounded understanding of worship – but for those who don’t, it might subconsciously create the kind of views I mention next to “worship = private devotional time”. Yes, these times are worship – but so are our Christian meetings, or times of singing, and I hope I’ve shown the problems using worship terminology there can cause. This is why I think the words we use are important: we can all subconsciously take on slightly distorted attitudes about the Christian life. It might only affect things subtly, but the effect is still there, and will be more noticeable in younger Christians without a more rounded theological understanding.

I hope I’ve been fair to Marcus’ teaching on this, and if you feel I haven’t then please let me know (particularly if your name is Marcus Honeysett!). Marcus is far wiser than I am and I’ve learnt much from him, and so I hope that where I’ve disagreed with him, I’ve done it with an attitude of humility. However I do want to be concerned about using biblical words the way the Bible uses them, because I think the words we use can affect the way we live and view things. I’m trying not to be someone who merely “argues about words” (2 Timothy 2:14), by being someone who strives to “correctly handle the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).

I should also add that I think the lack of these times of delighting in God in conservative evangelical circles is a far greater problem than referring to them as worship! That’s not to say I don’t think there is an issue – just that there’s a more important one. Marcus mentioned during our conversation that he was emphasising certain things because our conservative evangelical culture urgently needs to rediscover these whole-hearted gospel affections – and to that I say amen!

So in summary, just as conservative evangelicals need to recapture the fullness of the word “mission”, I think we need to do the same with the word “worship”. Let’s get the fullness of the biblical picture, living the whole of our lives for Jesus as we delight in him and pursue him more. It shouldn’t surprise us that that’s where true joy, and true worship, can be found.

Rejoice in the Lord

Posted at 12:07 AM

One of the seminars I attended at New Word Alive was on the topic of worship, or what I think I’d call “rejoicing in the Lord” (from Philippians 3:1 and 4:4), or “delighting yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4). I’ve written on the topic before:

If I want to fight sin, I have to look to God for my joy. I have to delight myself in him, or put it another way, to find my delight and joy in him, rather than looking elsewhere. The more we look to God for our joy, the more sin’s attractions dim and fade. And the more we stop sinning and live God’s way, the more we experience life the way it should be – life depending on our awesome creator God, lived to his glory. It’s there we find our eternal joy. (Joy and sin, January 2008)

This is what Christian maturity looks like in this life: a desire to know more of Christ. We shouldn’t be stagnant in our desire to know him better; in fact, if we think we’ve arrived in the Christian life, that only goes to show we’ve missed the point of the Christian life. We are saved for a relationship with the God who made us, and if we stop building our relationship with him, we’ve missed the point of our salvation.

Paul wants to know Christ. It’s the one thing he does – pressing on to know him (3:8), gain him (3:8), and be found in him (3:9). If I ask myself “how much does this describe me?” the answer is “worryingly little”. I find it very easy to settle into a rut and go through the motions. I can very easily think of myself as mature, because I know more about God, about the Bible, about theology than other people. If I’m not wanting to know God more and more, and not just about him, then I’m showing that I’m not mature. I need to press on to know Christ more. He died so that I could know him; knowing him is what we were made for. (Maturity, March 2008)

The seminar took my thinking further, by looking at what this “rejoicing in the Lord” looks like – something I really should have done before, given the importance I’d ascribed to it! Marcus Honeysett, who was leading the seminar with Anna McCracken, took us to Psalm 27:

One thing I ask from the LORD,
this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple.
(Psalm 27:4, TNIV)

To gaze on the beauty of God, and to seek him where he may be found. To enjoy God, but also to pursue him. There’s the desire to know more of Christ, and there’s the delighting in God we need. Here is joy; here is Christian contentment; here is Christian growth. We enjoy God, and delight in him. We do this by praising him. Marcus commented that in praising God, our joy is somehow completed, like a husband telling his wife he loves her – yes, he loves her before he says so, but he delights to tell her! So it is with God. We also delight in him by meditating on his character, his love, and what he has done for us. As David says in Psalm 19:

The law of the LORD is perfect,
refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
The precepts of the LORD are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the LORD are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
(Psalm 19:7-8, TNIV)

We delight in him by reminding ourselves of all he has given us: answered prayer, good friends, our church family, the beautiful creation.

I was challenged. The fact is, I don’t do this anywhere near enough – in fact, barely at all! I need more of this in my life. And this is before we look at the second part, that of pursuing or seeking. The psalmist writes in Psalm 42:

As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
(Psalm 42:1-2a, TNIV)

Is that longing part of my life? If it’s not, what am I filling my life with, that the desire for God isn’t there? The longing for intimacy – why is it not driving me to God? Marcus’ had two phrases that talk about this: “you seek more of the one you enjoy. You pursue what you prize.” So why might this longing, this seeking, this pursuing, not be part of my life? Could it be that I’m not prizing Jesus as highly as I should? (The answer to that question, in case you were confused, is “yes”.)

No wonder Paul considers his religious credentials rubbish (Philippians 3): they prevent him from rejoicing, delighting in God, by tempting him to prize them and not Christ. I wrote about this last year, but haven’t truly taken it in.

So how do we pursue God? We seek to know him better, more deeply. How do we do that? By throwing ourselves entirely on the grace of Jesus Christ, and by depending on him for everything – there, we deepen our relationship as we grow to trust him more. We throw ourselves into the Bible, because it’s all about Jesus. We serve him, and as we go beyond our comfort zones we come to know his provision for us.

So my prayer is that this will increasingly describe me; that I will long to know God more and delight in him more; and that I will know God more as a result, and so delight in him still further. Writing this down now – well, I can’t wait!

A conservative evangelical conference?

Posted at 10:49 AM

Early on in the week we were given a copy of Evangelicals Now, where the lead article was about New Word Alive. The opening sentence reads:

New Word Alive has become the premier conference for conservative evangelicals in Britain.

It was interesting during the week to hear various speakers (don’t ask me which ones off the top of my head) refer to us all as “conservative evangelicals”. Now, in my mind, I heard this as “conservative rather than liberal”, but in common usage the term has the sense of “conservative rather than charismatic”, so I was somewhat surprised at the vocabulary.

However, perhaps this is a sign that “conservative evangelicals” now regard “charismatic evangelicals” as part of their “crowd”. Nigel Beynon wrote most of the EN article (the first two sentences are an editorial addition), and he says this:

In the past there has often been a division between Word and Spirit, so that you are either a Bible Christian or a Spirit Christian. I get the impression that many now see that that is a false distinction. After all, ‘the sword of the Spirit is the word of God’ (Ephesians 6.17). If we want to experience the power of the Spirit we must let him use his sword on us!

Later on, describing the distinctives of the conference, he says that the first distinctive…

…is evangelical unity. It’s hard to read ‘history’ when you are in it, but there are some signs that we are witnessing a realignment of movements at the moment. The old markers of ‘conservatives’ and ‘charismatics’ don’t fit so well these days, as we find there are many from the ‘other camp’ with whom we have lots in common: the cross of Jesus, the authority of the Bible, the sovereignty of God and the urgency of evangelism – these things unite us.

Confronted with the wide range of opponents to the gospel we face today, we can ill afford to withdraw into fractured groups. Rather, we must find unity and strength together, and New Word Alive is a place to do that. We are unashamed of our core convictions and will give them the emphasis they should rightly have. Meanwhile, we might disagree over various secondary issues, but with a spirit of humility and generosity we can learn together and learn from each other.

Adrian Warnock wrote a few weeks ago:

…throughout most of my Christian life I was defined as clearly not belonging to that group [namely conservative evangelicals]. Conservatives were by definition it seemed not charismatic, and I would have held them in as much suspicion as they would no doubt have held me. But, as the bridges have been built, and the neoliberal assaults have unfolded, I do think that bible-believing people from many different backgrounds have been finding that we have more in common with each other than we previously realised. The internet and conferences such as Together For The Gospel, The Gospel Coalition, and New Word Alive have all been a major force for that discovery.

His post is titled “Is This A Conservative Evangelical Blog?” and is worth reading the whole thing. (He also defines what he means by neoliberals). It seems to me that people up front at New Word Alive are operating with this “conservative as opposed to liberal” definition¹.

This can only be a good thing! What are secondary issues doing attached to how we refer to ourselves as Christians? I don’t call myself a “credobaptist evangelical”, or a “Calvinist evangelical”. (There is such a thing as a Reformed evangelical, though I’ve never been absolutely sure whether that implies paedobaptism or not.) If I’m asked where I stand on something, I’ll say, but certain terms can pigeonhole us unhelpfully.

In fact, in many respects I’d happily describe myself as a charismatic. Adrian defines a charismatic as one who has a “belief in the continuation of spiritual gifts” – well, I’d go with that! I’m in a culturally “non-charismatic” church, but I’d be surprised to find that the leadership were cessationist, and I’m definitely not. On our feedback forms at the end, we were asked to tick boxes to describe our church. Two of the options were “Theologically conservative” and “Theologically charismatic”. I crossed out “theologically” on the first and wrote “culturally”, and then ticked both. Not a perfect description, but when summarising beliefs in boxes it’s never going to be.

Adrian writes elsewhere:

I genuinely believe that we have much to learn from each other. For too long different wings of the church have ignored each other.

Nigel has a related comment:

[W]e might disagree over various secondary issues, but with a spirit of humility and generosity we can learn together and learn from each other.

Amen to that! That’s one reason I love New Word Alive. This year I’ve been challenged by many “outside my constituency” as it were – and that’s great! More on this soon.

¹ Incidentally, I think the EN quote is referring to “conservatives as opposed to charismatics”, but in doing so is not implying that the conference is exclusively for conservatives – merely that for conservatives, it’s the “premier” choice.

Back from New Word Alive

Posted at 9:54 AM

This last week I’ve been at New Word Alive with people from the CU. There was so much good stuff going on during the week I could have been to almost twice as much as I did, but I had enough to take in as it was!

I travelled home with two friends, and our conversation went over a lot of what we’d been learning and thinking about, with many additions. Shortly after Birmingham I realised that we’d discussed so much I needed to get some of it written down as quickly as possible so I wouldn’t forget. So, I’m going to attempt a series of blog posts going through our topics of conversation – both what we’d been looking at during the week, and some of our own tangents (generally inspired by the former). There’ll be a pause for a couple of weeks as I’m away in South Africa visiting my parents, but I may well be on Twitter.

The starred entries need to be read in order, and non-linked entries are yet to be written.

• A conservative evangelical conference?
• Music and emotions revisited
• Rejoice in the Lord*
• The importance of terminology*
• Praise the good first*
• Reflections on Carson in conversation
• Pastoral theology
• The challenge of Christian celebrity

Photo taken recently by one of my parents. Hopefully some of mine will follow!