Episode Details

One of my hopes for The Payneful Truth is that it will be an opportunity for the very thing I discussed in last week’s edition: for us to speak the truth in love with one another, for mutual instruction and encouragement.

So far so good! Thanks for the many emails and comments that have done just this. And in the coming weeks, I’ll be touching on some of the specific questions you’ve asked, including these two: 

* Does this view of overlapping ‘zones’ of speech in the Christian community also help us think about Christian speech to outsiders? Do we also have ‘preaching-teaching’ style evangelism and ‘one-another’ evangelism?

* Small groups are a good opportunity for ‘one-another speech’ but what about the main Sunday gathering? Shouldn’t it also be a place where we encourage and exhort each other? If so, how? 

Stay tuned for more on both of these questions.  But in the meantime … 

Neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son

As a number of Payneful Truth readers have pointed out, last week’s post on the importance of ‘one-another edifying speech’ takes on a particular relevance in the era of COVID19. 

In fact (as some others also reminded me), the final paragraphs of The Trellis and the Vine rather spookily made this connection. The following words were written in 2009, not long after the swine flu epidemic:

Try this mental experiment. Imagine that a swine flu pandemic swept through your part of the world, and that all public assemblies of more than three people were banned. And let’s say that, due to some catastrophic combination of local circumstances, this ban had to remain in place for 12 months.

How would your congregation of 120 members continue to function—with no regular church gatherings of any kind, and no small home groups (except for groups the size of three)?

If you were the pastor what would you do?

I guess you could send your people regular letters and emails. You could make phone calls, and maybe even do a podcast. [The idea of livestreaming services didn’t cross my mind in 2009! TP] But how would the regular work of teaching and preaching and pastoring take place? How would you encourage your congregation to persevere in love and good deeds, especially in such trying circumstances? And what about evangelism? How would new people be reached, contacted and followed up? There could be no men’s breakfasts, no coffee mornings, no evangelistic courses or outreach meetings. Nothing.

You could, of course, revert to the ancient practice of visiting your congregation house-to-house, and doorknocking the local area to contact new people. But how, as a pastor, could you possibly meet with and teach all 120 adults in your congregation, let alone their children, let alone doorknocking the entire suburb, let alone follow up the contacts that were made?

No, if it was to be done, you would need help. You would need to start with ten of your most mature Christian men, and meet intensively with them two at a time for the first two months (while keeping in touch with everyone else by phone and email). You would train these ten in how to read the Bible and pray with one or two other people, and with children. Their job would then be twofold: to ‘pastor’ their wives and families through regular Bible reading and prayer, and to each meet with four other men to train and encourage them to do the same. Assuming 80 per cent of your c