Remarks from Timothy Keller & Sinclair Ferguson

it's a great honor for us during our commencement activities to begin this day with a public discussion with our two wonderful honorees for our honorary doctorates we are grateful that Tim Keller and Sinclair Ferguson have returned to their Westminster connections for this celebration and we're going to have a marvelous opportunity to have a question-and-answer dialogue opportunity with both of these wonderful gentlemen who are both pastors and scholars renowned authors and leaders and the kingdom of God so we're so grateful that they're here we're welcome you today so we invite Tim Keller Sinclair Ferguson forward let's welcome them with a round of applause [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] alright as we begin I have some questions that have occurred to me there I actually gave them a softball opportunity said what question do you want me to ask you and they both said no just go for it Peter I needed to start we we were just talking and we actually don't have fifty five minutes of wisdom we think we have about ten minutes each and so you might have a long break there there might be a lot of filler dead time but I doubt yeah yeah okay I talk slowly so I'll try and help you out all right well here we go we're gonna start with dr. Keller I've heard it said that theological students need to learn to and exegete the culture as well as they exegete the scriptures do you agree with that disagree with that how would you respond no but it's a close second now I don't think you have to be very careful about saying something like that even though it's true that if you if you actually don't use the Bible to answer the questions that people are asking then they actually won't sit around to listen to hear you answer a lot of questions they ought to be asking that they don't I mean in other words every culture yeah first Corinthians one where you know Paul says you know the Greeks seek wisdom the Jews want power the cross is foolishness to the Greeks and weakness to the Jews but to those who are being saved the true wisdom true power of God well yeah you see there is to some degree he's agreeing that each culture is somewhat different one is more speculative one is more pragmatic that there's a sentient as part of the gospel that actually offends every culture but there's also part of that the gospel also fulfills certain things in every culture and so if you if you're not willing to engage with the questions that people are asking they're not going to sit around and listen to the bad news of the with things that the Bible said it offends them so an awful lot of people because they ignore the culture do nothing but offend when that's it's that's only part of what you're supposed to do when it comes to Gospel communication it's not supposed to that's not the whole thing and so so I would I would rather say obviously X you've gotta know the truth first but unless you understand the culture you're speaking to the truth won't be believed and if we we don't want to just be valiant for the truth we actually want to be persuasive dr. Ferguson I wanted to ask you this question what do you think are the forces that are most impacting the church today both as a pastor and a theologian as you look at your leadership in the church what are we facing that brings you the greatest concern while I think you can only speak locally about that Peter because I think you know different things are happening in different parts of the world in the parts of the world where I live I think we are seeing a the the complete collapse of the tail end of the earth what impact there was of Christendom and I would rather say of Christendom rather than the gospel the impact of Christendom on the culture and locally where I live I mean in the country at which I which I live one of the things I think that happens in our culture that has been christened demised and therefore has had the influence of the Ten Commandments is that when those Ten Commandments get shifted out it's it's springtime for lawyers because in order to be able to function without those basics being built in what you have to do is to create more and more laws in order to cope with the dysfunctions that arise and all of those laws because they don't have a proper foundation tend to go wrong and what I think we are finding in our culture in Scotland is a rather curious increase of totalitarianism so that things are being said and done that in in my parents generation horrified them because those were the things people were doing in Soviet Russia so that characteristic of secularism I think is a huge challenge for the church in Scotland for the church in Great Britain and doubtless for the church in Europe as well I mean you I think there are layers of it but that's a very significant thing and that has it's been very striking to me that governments especially have been trying to handle dysfunction just at the time where the church has been sitting on the edge of a cliff and the water has been coming in underneath for years and the National churches are collapsing theologically and ethically and statistically and so my local culture isn't a very perilous condition for that reason it has these new waves coming in and it has both lost and denied the substance underneath now you know my own feeling about all this and I you know I try and say often enough is but the really exciting thing about this is it feels much more like being a New Testament Christian and there are parts of the New Testament that we have not been able to appreciate because we've we've actually lived in a false culture and now there are sections of the New Testament that speak with such power and I think ought to create such exhilaration in us that we may be counted worthy to suffer for the gospel well dr. Keller that was a Scotland answer how would you say from an American and a New York centric answer well well now see again American New York we got to talk locally here I think they're actually just he laid down this is for the Western culture those are the rails were moving on and I think he's just rightly saying that some parts are further down the track surely are the North East New York City maybe the Northeast certainly is further down the track and we're in the Northeast here than the deep south New York City is actually more down the track than southeast Pennsylvania you know you could say Europe is more down the track than Canada Canada's a little further down than us and so on but he laid it out what you have is it used to be in the past your laws were based on some moral consensus that the people had because they had some shared understanding of moral absolutes and so on now the laws are proliferating because of the chaos and yet that they appear arbitrary to big parts of the population because they're not based on any kind of moral consensus and so there's a there's a crisis of legitimacy and it's the reason why you're having enormous polarization is you have political polarization because there is no the government can't speak can't tell you might say say something that everybody can agree on and and therefore another but but I just I had one thing it the good news is that we're we're closer to the New Testament church we're not living in Christendom anymore the bad news is we haven't figured out how not to that the church doesn't know how to do ministry not in Christendom so just a good example most the Reformed churches I have been in in the reform world they they rely on people already being Christians and then we're going to make you Calvinists basically the way the church grows is you you assume there's already kind of Christians out there and we're going to we're going to kind of make it more solid that's an assumption of Christendom basically far from what I can tell almost all the reformed dominations here assume Christians that we're going to kind of straighten up well who makes them Christian the Reformed churches doesn't know how to do it and now nobody does see so so even you make that you might say conservative confessional people a Pentecostal people the seeker-sensitive the Willow Creek people they all I think assumed Christendom they all assumed that there was a culture out there that at least gave people the furniture a religious consciousness some idea of sin some idea of right and wrong some idea there was a God and now those things are going away and even though the New Testament church didn't need in order to grow into and to preach the gospel it didn't need those things I don't know of any church in the West that hasn't become dependent on it so even though it's exciting to know we're gonna have to find new ways of doing it we I see us all flailing around yeah I had had a really kinda was an interesting experience when I I was a minister in Columbia and South Carolina which is south of New York City way south and I'd also been a minister in the center of Glasgow in a very kind of secular culture and we had used an evangelistic program called Christianity explored and we'd used it very very fruitfully in a culture where people understood they were not Christians and I had the unwise Castille idea that you know this might be a context in which we could use it and so I said you know this has been a very helpful evangelistic program for us to reach out to people or not Christians and I find some of the best people in the church saying to me we don't actually know any people who do not profess to be Christians and I I realized immediately it was what Tim was saying right at the beginning but I was actually using concepts that were inappropriate to the actual culture in in which we were engaged but actually we could have used all of the same material if I had encouraged people to use it within a different framework of communication and it was just uh I mean I made another mistake which kind of illustrates Tim's point again our church had two golf tournaments every year and those of you know South Carolina and northern is a very big University rivalry in South Carolina so I turned up at the first golf to him and having bought two new club head covers which those of you who watch golf will know these big club head covers the first was I was a Gamecock which was the South Carolina mascar and the other was a tiger which was the Clemson mascot and I thought this is a really shrewd pastoral move and then I realized I'd actually offended every man who was there and I you know I naively had no idea what the culture was really like there's a kind of foolish illustration but then that's magnified I think and years and years ago a man called Harry blame Myers wrote a book called the Christian mine yeah maybe in the 1950s and one of the things he said was because he saw what was happening in Western Europe he said you know that the church has lived with this notion that Christendom is there and it's coming to us and since it's never actually communicated the gospel beyond its borders when christened on breaks down it's actually become incapable of being being a communicating agent and he I think he was really saying this this is a problem that has very deeper is and so if this problem is going to be solved you know we need to dig down a lot deeper than we've been doing our news regularly brings us stories of the scars of racism that continues to impact us in different ways to this day dr. keller how do we deal with America's original sin of racism and how it impacts the church today as you're asking a white man I mean in some ways obviously everybody needs to answer that question in other words if you're if you're an American white people black people but then also non-white people who are an African American all have to say what is my you know what is my role in in trying to heal that wound boy the I dunno what we shouldn't be doing right now and that is I think politicizing it seems like every time we try to have a conversation about race in the church it gets pulled into the Democrat Republican thing instead of us sitting down and saying what does the Bible have to say it is very discouraging right now to me so I'm gonna I'm not gonna speak to big broad brush because I'm not kidding about saying I'm not sure as a older white man I should be laying out the agenda that's should be listening more to younger non-white Christians about what they think the agenda should be that they need me I need them but I would say the thing that discourages me right now is that it immediately gets drawn into political lines it does remind me of mark mark Knowles great book the Civil War is a theological crisis what a great title it almost tells you what's what he's going to tell you in the title and he points out the fact that you might say the churches the American churches great Centon of the original sin was that it couldn't go to the Bible and leave its culture behind and really let the Bible critique the culture so if you were in Massachusetts and in a set 1840s you're a Christian and your economy was not based on slave labor you would look at the Bible and say oh you know you can't get slavery out of the Bible but if you lived in South Carolina and your economy would be devastated without slave labor you looked at the Bible says oh look slaves obey your masters it's it as long as you're nice to them it's okay and what Mark said was they they let the culture determine how they read the scripture is that let the scripture critique the culture I right now feel that the same thing happens as soon as it seems politically conservative people and they hear people talking about racism you feel like that sounds like Democrats talking and unfortunately a lot of people who in the Christian Church you are very very concerned about racial justice are being in some ways are feeling like I gotta go to the Democrats or they're not gonna you know you know in the church I'm just getting beaten up people are saying I'm not a racist I might you know I never owned slaves so I'm fine so that's my biggest concern right now is that we actually aren't coming together around the scripture the scripture actually speaks a lot about identity and does talk a lot about ethnicity there's it's you can't read it directly but there's no doubt that the Jew Gentile issue in the New Testament that is dealt with repeatedly has certainly has all sorts of you might say spillover implications for race relations now that takes careful exegesis and care you you can't just read it right in to where we are now but you also can't ignore it and say well that is not talking about what we're talking about now so I would say a we do need to come and listen to each other be we've got to be very careful that we're really not being that we're not we are not still letting our political culture filter out what the scripture is saying instead of letting the scripture actually could take it so there's a hard question yeah it is a so that was a rambling answer but I know that's my defense it was an authentic answer and we thank you for that would you like to add anything to that you were in Columbia well you know I I lived a long time with taxation without representation so that's why I never drink tea when I'm offered in the United States because it may have come out of the Boston Harbor for all I know yeah I mean I I have no solution I I do think is like so many other things it is a context in which at least if God granted in in a local church a church may shine as a beacon of what life is intended to look like and that includes those kinds of ethnic divisions and distinctions that are in a society and in some locations that's that's a lot easier than others and I my observation which may be completely wrong is that in terms of the big divide as Christians both sides of that divide however have a responsibility to one another because they have a responsibility to the gospel and I think what Tim says is you know as an outsider it's something that kind of strikes you almost immediately how so many spiritual things fall down alongside along political divides and you know we need to get way beyond that well dr. Ferguson what do you think is the greatest contribution reformed theology can make to our secular culture today why do we need reformed theology Wow because we need it because you know I think it's basically because it is such a holistic and beautiful expression of the gospel and because it it actually has a very big vision so looking at other kinds of theology the names that are given to them indicate that what they're interested in is a is a partial emphasis right or wrong it's a partial emphasis and I think one of the great there are so many great things about reformed theology one of the great things about reformed theology is its massive vision of what the Christian faith is another great thing about reformed theology I have I think found basically all my life and have tried to encourage students to see as well is it really gives you the Liberty to say I don't know what the answer to that question is and I think you know in some spheres that has been a great liberation for some people because they've been real to think that the Bible gives a simple answer to every complex question so I think one of the great things about reformed theology as a Christian is it gives you a place to stand and also remind you like those slaves they used to put into the chariots when Roman generals had triumphs saying homel heirs remember you're just a man and if if you can only give partial answers to questions that's okay that doesn't mean that the person who can give full answers to questions is necessarily right to me another huge thing about reformed theology is it is its doctrine of humanity and again looking at evangelicalism especially in the States from the outside one of the things I think I notice about the infirmity of the evangelical church in the in the gender and sexual crisis is for example that when it's looked at the first chapter of Genesis it has been neurotically interested in the length of days and it's at almost no interest in the fact that we are Genesis 1 is going as to 26 to 28 that God made man as his image male and female and that for the denial of God will inevitably lead to the loss of man and you know right from the days of of the Reformation reformed theology has always had a very strong doctrine of the of God and what it means to be the image of God therefore how glorious it is to be human and that opens up all kinds of helps to me and my Christian life when I see people whose lives are distorted I need to look at them with this background that they are they are made as the image of God and this is not only wrong and I condemn you this is the the more basic thing about it is this is tragic because this is someone who has fallen short of the glory of God and honestly 23 and that's always interested me if I were writing Romans 3:23 I think I would have written as a good Scottish Calvinist you know a part of the nation that invented golf so that Calvinists could have a good time without actually enjoying themselves I would have tended to write you know we have all sinned and we've broken the law of God but Paul is actually a bigger picture than that and that whole concept I think has been lost in evangelicalism and you know I think you just go on and on do you own anything to this year I'm glad that Sinclair I can go on and on right no please hello he left me for more for more aspects of reformed theology extremely important at the moment one is and it was everybody laughed last night one of your students said she wanted to raise she was gonna use her degree to raise epistemologically self conscious children and but actually that is a that I think that is exactly right because look if if you're trying to if you're a Christian in India Hindus know that you have your beliefs I have my beliefs and the Muslims know you have your beliefs I have my beliefs but secular people don't think they have beliefs it's the first culture that says no I'm just seeing things as they are and so they are the most epistemological unselfconscious culture in the history of the world and reformed theology because of its emphasis on presuppositional apologetics it's you know bobbing kuiper been to it if you immerse yourself in that you say oh I don't know of any other branch of theology at that it puts the emphasis on that and it helps you see what's going on a secular culture secondly grace I mean you know we talk about this all the time maybe maybe we don't show it in the Reformed churches but our theology pushes us away from Morel from either legalism or antinomianism into grace it's the it's so important since all secular people today think all Christianity is as legalism the reformed theology is clearer than anybody else third the emphasis on the covenant is an antidote to the individualism or culture I don't think general evangelicalism has that that idea I mean it's it's funny it's almost like when you ask a reformed person any question they say covenant so how does the old how does the Old Testament the New Testament covenant well why do we have to join a church why can't we do covenant so you mean you just do you know it's just like covenant but it's really the the you know it's the antidote to individualism and lastly what Sinclair already said the world and life view the vision that Christianity affects every part of life and I don't know how you talk to younger secular people without showing them that because they are so big on transformation they they have no idea what that means and they actually have a shallow view compared to the Christian view but if you take the world and life view the emphasis on grace the emphasis on the Covenant epistemological self-consciousness those are you add it to what Sinclair said it's maybe the Reformed Church doesn't have everything that we need because we are so so we are so we you know we just don't live up to our theology and we just need to start repenting about that we have more to repent of than maybe any other Church because our theology so grand but nevertheless the theology is is almost you know I mean I don't know of anything more important than that Christian's be reformed if they're going to make it in this secular late modern world but to both of you dr. Ferguson first what do you think is the greatest temptation facing a pastor today in this global post Christian culture we've been describing who can make it plural temptations if you want to think of it that way hmm yeah you know I would like to know who he was first you know I I I could be wrong about this I have to preface almost everything I say in this way except my name is Sinclair Ferguson and I'm sure over life but I I meet men I think many many young pastors who are very insecure in their maybe insecure in themselves and insecure in them in what the Ministry of the gospel is about and one could tell you some I mean almost amusing stories about they want to latch on to something and this is just a tiny segment of the answer but I what I've noticed is because you know if you get above your station in life in Scotland somebody will cut your feet off or knock your head off but there's something about the American culture that kind of encourages like guru ism and so Tim has to live with that okay and I what I notices and this may be because there's a lot of independency I think it's also because there are a lot of younger men have gone into the ministry and they've never been near enough a minister to smell his breath and so they they they may have the seminary education but they don't have the velcro strips and I've noticed may can I use Tim as an example I've noticed that when I hear them preach there they're quoting the books that Tim is quoting and you know I'm not wired to do this but I kind of want to go up to them afterwards and say you know you need to read the books that Tim read in order to be the Tim the quotes these books and so I think there's a tremendous tendency around to pluck the fruit without actually having built the route and I I do find that many younger men and it's also a function of the massive increase in evangelical scholarship that when you're going through Center you're reading all those books that give you a terrific framework of reference but they still don't do the transposition and you know I think one of the great temptations for younger man is looking at the fruit and mimicking it rather than looking at the fruit and digging down into it I don't know that I could that was deep well listen by the way I apologize Scotland hours apologize for using yours here they were so glad in Scotland Sinclair moved back they said now we can cut this guy down to size which they do very effective he's been in America so long he's got this big head and we're just gonna you know well you know when I did go back to the UK and past her church if anyone didn't like why I was suggesting even although I find it in the old Scottish tradition the best way to nix it was there he goes with another of his American ideas probably got it from hanging around a lot too much well that's no I don't think I get better that there is well I think we are we we're conformed to the world when we are to technique oriented and I do think that the younger Minister is a great temptation is to you know look at look at the superficial and and imitate it which is technique as opposed to say how do i how do i grow myself so that the fruit i bear someday probably won't be the same that's one of the great dangers a of imitation i guess if people have always tended to do that i I would say that the secret is the main temptation is to miss underestimate the importance of prayer and I don't just mean time in prayer I mean prayer and mortification i Sinclair knows certainly about that maybe I maybe you maybe did I mean there was a very prominent Scottish Minister a couple years ago who was found out to have been living a double life and he took his own life and he did leave some suicide notes evidently maybe I shouldn't know what's in it because it has been made public but there was one place where he said I've been preaching for many years about praying I know that that doesn't put the fear of God in you I don't know what will I do know that what happens is that the old the old well John Newton Edwards all the old writers used to talk about the difference in Grace and gifts and not mistaken gifts for grace we don't talk about that today anymore but what they would I know how this works I knew it I did know a man pretty well who had had an affair and though he was a it was a minister was a prominent minister he had an affair and he had a of course leave his church what he what he told me was that he would be having the fair feeling very guilty and sort of losing a sense of confidence and then what would happen virtually every Saturday is he'd get down on his knees and he'd say I'm gonna call her on Monday and and I'm gonna call it off and that would give him just enough confidence and he would usually preach extraordinarily well and then he would look at that and say see God's with me and that is what the old timers used to call the Miss mistaken gifts for grace the operation of your gifts if you've got a gift if you're got the knowledge you've got the chops to speak and preach the gifts can operate even when the grace is diminishing and an awful because we're so technique-driven and we're so oriented toward outward signs of success we get up in a day and where we want to be productive and we're frightened because we're behind and we just don't pray and we certainly don't do what Owen called mortification we just don't do that which isn't repenting it's getting to know your own heart and weakening your heart that those parts of the heart that produce the sentence its weakening your sin at the root that hole that world that we just younger people particularly just don't know they don't go there and in that sense they're really not becoming something different they are they're doing too much imitation so I'm agreeing completely with cinqo just adding it's the inner life that's being neglected Sinclair what is the heart of pastoral piety at its best what does the heart of pastoral piety at its best it's a beautiful question it's sort of excellent well it's a beautiful question I'm sure terms of it none of us you know I think the answer has got to be you know if you'd asked professor money he would have said the fear of God and I think that is the right answer properly exegete it i think i'll and the fear of God from the man who was my minister when I was a student because when I he was something he was a bachelor he was he was actually quite unusual in so many ways he kind of lived two days out of one he would have done a whole day's work by lunchtime he would have lunch with his sister he was a bachelor he would come home he would get into his pajamas and go to bed for two hours and then he would work another day and he he poured himself into me the the first time he gave me something and there was something quite trivial I I pulled his log leg and said he didn't have a wooden leg it so it wasn't a log I pulled his way I said you know it's the first thing you've actually given to me I need to get you to autograph it he said I don't want to put my autograph there I want to put my autograph in there and I thought what a thing to be able to say and sometimes when I left his his house I kind of ran down the street and I was never very sure whether I was running with joy or running away from the sense this man was passionate about me being the best I could possibly before the Lord and it was a the only back and display but was it was a kind of it was it was a delightful fear produced by a determined love and I think that is the I think that's the big thing and with that gauze I mean this is this is reformed practical theology isn't it with that goes living in the presence of God this God as a teenager I I mean I know it's a mixed book but their brother-in-law the title of brother Lawrence's book the practice of the presence of God just that title I think has just been one of the biggest things in my life to live in the fear of God before the face of God and everything else I mean I'm a great believer in thinking everything else flows from that because much of the impact of your ministry in most situations I mean there are situations where there are so many people people do not get to know you very well but the people who do have any kind of access to you it's it's it's the combination it's the integrity between the message of the gospel and and who you are I was talking to Bill and Barbara on the way up about Augustine's words and the confessions that I've just left a tremendous impression on me where he's he he has the support of izing of Ambrose the Bishop of Milan and Augustine wanted to be a great rhetorician and that's why he was in Milan and Ambrose was one of the great preachers of the early church and a man of tremendous elements and Augustine apostrophized some in this passage and they in their confessions where he says you know I it wasn't your great teaching because I didn't really expect to find that in the church but that you were kind to me and I think it is those and especially when you're a younger minister especially if you follow an older Minister good a miserable theological education and was a kind of average preacher you really need to under and that the fact that you have a superb education and you're actually a pretty good preacher is not the same as being doesn't equal being a decent creature and 25 years of loving people so you know I think those are well for the question was that's the answer is there further got along here term I think we're gonna so probably do it for we have a few more minutes yeah you know when I said that we only had about ten minutes to say each I lied well pastor piety I think the difficult the amount of theological knowledge the amount of biblical knowledge we have to turn that into prayer I mean here's Marie at one point John Murray actually talked about piety as intelligent mysticism meaning not not Catholic mysticism or Eastern mysticism where you get away from words but not just knowledge but turning the knowledge into prayer the the best place I've ever seen that happen is John Owens last work meditations of discourse in the glory of the rice where he he marches through the the doctrine of Christ in detail his humiliation his exaltation you know his office his incarnation and every case says he says I want to behold the glory of that I don't want to just know it I want to behold the glory but I want to be reduced to weeping I want to see how if I believe this how should that affect my life it's it's the only place I know where you have somebody really praying through systematic theology and that's the challenge of pastoral piety they piety in general is is the word in prayer and meditation but for pastors we have all this theological knowledge and I feel like maybe 5% of it has been turned into character through prayer when you have Owen doing it in to me that's still like my quintessential to me that's the heart of pass for piety right there i I kind of must have been in the 1990s Peter I asked you came to me said there's a course missing in the catalog and I said well it's a thick Catalan quest missing he said there's no course in the seminary on prayer and you know I've always been defensive of institutions who I've been any part of I said oh there is and he said what as I said it's called the doctrine of God and after we'd finished the conversation I thought I I have a measure of eccentricity but not enough and I don't have the sense of self to be able to do this but I thought I wonder what it would be like actually teaching the doctrine of God which I personally find a very difficult course to teach I wonder what it'd be like for the students come in day after day and for me to begin by saying let us pray I'm just praying through the doctrine of God I'm sure it would be memorable but the thing that struck me was relatively speaking how yeah how easy it would be not in the sense that it is easy to pray but that this is what we should be doing all of the time turning it into you know I'm sure Tim and I would both say at the end of the day we will not regret that we did not preach twice as many sermons that we do feel that we have not we are beginners in the school of prayer what is the danger for reformed theologians and overlooking the ministry the Holy Spirit is that a danger for us is it a reality I'll ask you about that question didn't you teach the doctrine of the Holy Spirit you know we have a whole course on it yeah a whole course okay you first well the great thing is I can start and then Tim can give the answer it's like my marriage actually well she does fulfill your yes so that's where it's supposed to be for us always that big because we have this great theology it's always our danger to confuse the theology with the reality and this is true even all we have a great doctrine of the Holy Spirit but we can confuse the knowledge of the doctrine with what Oren to refer to him again used to say there's a difference between the knowledge of the truth and the knowledge of the power of the truth and so you were commanded to be filled not with redemptive history but with the Holy Spirit and one I think one of the dangers of of systematic theology in general although biblical scholars don't like you to say this is actually the same de jure resides in biblical theology as resides in systematic theology that you confuse the description with the reality and the knowledge of the description with the reality and you know they say Spurgeon when he got up those steps and the Metropolitan Tabernacle and every stat would say I believe in the Holy Ghost I believe in the Holy Ghost and as a minister I think one of the things you you you discover is that you know all you have is warrants you're like Hamlet you know words words words and only the Holy Spirit will turn those words into power and we we simply live in such daily need of walking in the spirit and and preaching in the power of the Spirit and I mean there's a whole discussion there about what does it mean to preach and the power of the Holy Spirit is there such a thing as unction what was the question yes the it is mmm you know they it's true that we some sometimes I actually have felt that the in the last say 20 years the it's right for so much emphasis in preaching I know we're probably talking more about this later so we've maybe we should keep our powder dry on this but there's so much emphasis for example at some of the a lot of the good training in the UK on expository preaching does seem to leave out the unction it does seem to be all about it's almost like if I get the text right there has been even in the past a alacra v on the application and on even the rhetoric of persuasion just just explain the text and as you know there are plenty places in the world where when they actually get up they would they introduce now so-and-so will come and explain the tax lien I'll even say preach a sermon I guess because we're Presbyterian and reformed we that spa doesn't happen so much in our circles but there's there's a tendency toward it so I yeah I think we have to say we actually probably reformed theology probably has the most powerful doctrine of the Holy Spirit but but we don't seem to be conscious of it we don't talk about it we're not we don't rely on it the only yeah I think I have a feeling we're gonna get into areas we could talk about later today but Kathy and I had a friend who we were in seminary with it gordon-conwell just a mentioned the dark side he was he was saved the Assemblies of God he was very very very Pentecostal and he but he was you know in classes taking courses we you know our professor was Roger Nicole who was reformed he struggled with it but he decided to go home one summer and just read the Institute's he came back he said I'm a Calvinist he said he said be why he says Calvin has the most penetrating powerful doctrine Holy Spirit he says I'm Pentecostal but I never believed I was never taught that you can't you can't even turn you can't repent you can't even want God unless Holy Spirit's work on your heart he says that's the most powerful doctor the Holy Spirit of any systems theology there is so he said it's kind of strange though because you never really talk about the Holy Spirit reform circles in my circle we talk about the Holy Spirit all the time but we don't give him anywhere near as much credit as you do so what's wrong with that picture I'm not sure but I've never forgotten that of course Catherine I've never forgotten that that Calvin's in in this brother's mind predestination everything that we think of as reformed theology says that's basically saying the Holy Spirit or does everything it without the Holy Spirit you can do nothing you know without me you can do nothing as always very so so it is bad that we don't we don't seem to be conscious of it don't talk much about it even though we actually give the Holy Spirit more credit than anything system of theology so there's something wrong with that picture you know and oh and again Owen has this work volume to on communion with God the Trinity and you know I think when you look down through the history of evangelicalism there's there's always a kind of lopsidedness somewhere you know people over violence onto one or other member of the trinity sometimes in the form of a reaction and what woman does to put it in a nutshell is he takes the doctrine of the trinity ok takes a lot in the Trinity and he also takes the old patristic doctrine of the notion of all of the operations of God outside of himself our operations in which all of the persons of the Trinity are engaged but he marries that to the patristic doctrine of what was called appropriations in which the father is noticed that in the scripture while that is true it's also true that in various dimensions of the work of the Divine Trinity one or other person of the Trinity seems to as it were feature prominently on Owen's thesis is therefore when you have communion with God it's not just communion with the block Trinity it's not like at a law firm you know it's not Father Son Holy Ghost law for him and you turn up at the door but the bad aspects of each person's work in which you have communion so to illustrate if you're if you're young associate minister begins to pray Heavenly Father and then two minutes later he's saying we thank you so much for dying on the cross you cut him some slack but if he keeps on doing it you have to say to him the father did not die did you know that's actually I had I say the father did not die on the cross so I can never I can never thank the father for dying on the cross for me but I can thank him for sending the son and I think it is significant a that what what that the forum theology ought to do for us is to help us keep the balance of our communion with God and to keep the emphasis on in what do we have communion with the Holy Spirit and if we get that foundation I mean I think it really does help us a very great deal and I suspect just from saying to people have you ever read or in on communion with God and receiving a blank answer but it is an aspect of our theology that we've kind of lost say oh that's good okay we're gonna take a break in about three minutes and so get your cards ready and we're gonna we're gonna actually come back because we don't think you've run out of things to say well I've got several blank cards that I'm filling in for dr. Keller so last question before we take a break unlike each to answer this is there any hope for a real revival well there's always hope I think I think God needs to bring us further down because to go back to something Tim said I I mean what we call revived was too you know trying to trace the connections can sometimes very difficult but I occasionally hear people pray and prayer meetings lord send a revival and and begin with us and I in my head I'm thinking you have no idea how absolutely ghastly a revival is and what it will do to us and I think you know in our own context I think God has got to bring us further down and I think I see that I see I think I actually see that in our in in the songs that tend to be written and the forms of worship that we tend to have that we are actually creating a culture that is antithetical to being brought further down and being frustrated but you know we pray on it repentance is the heart of revival and it's revived called revival because there's been a decline there's been some kind of cooling off or worldliness in the church that's what revival is that's the reason why you don't I mean people find revivals in the New Testament I do think revival is more of a modern phenomenon when you have churches that are in decline so and it's inkless absolutely right that the note of repentance is just not there in our in general in a lot of our popular evangelicalism so but I was just in Korea for the very first time I know the Koreans for example have they they do understand prayer and I think they are realizing after years of the church growing there in decline and you have to have an understanding that we're not doing this your pride has to be brought down and there's always a danger when a church is growing you're proud look at look what we've accomplished it takes a number of years before you start to realize we are we're in decline and it's our fault and I American evangelicals are just not there at all not at all so and if if brother Ferguson says that they're not there in Scotland yet and that's they're pretty far down we are yeah I don't know what it's going to take but there's always hope I mean you got of course there's always hope my goodness nevertheless I don't the prospects don't look great to me right now actually they look better in Korea than they do here because I do see people there saying we are in decline and we need to pray and they're more likely to repent it just feels to me that they're closer to that than Americans or maybe than Europeans we have now some wonderful questions that have been offered and I'm going to offer this to both of you and as I don't know if that we call this unction or wisdom at work whoever answers first okay so here's the first question if you could go back in time to when you were 30 or in your 30s is there anything you would do differently with the wisdom you have now I've already in a sense given my answer is I certainly underestimated the importance of prayer and self-examination I would be mine yeah that's a good answer I'd you know there's one thing I would do I'm I I live I come out in order in an orderly fashion out of uh out of chaos and like Samuel Reliford I think I could say I'm made of extremes indeed I signed a book once for somebody and I said I hope you're not a handwriting analyst and she blushed and I said you are she said yes I said well the interesting of what you make up words and she went pink and I asked her what she saw I said you're surprised but I I think I may know what you've seen by have no idea how he said this is like the handwriting of two completely different people so if I have a and something to go back to Cinco Ferguson these twenties I think it would be that if I were to have threescore years and ten I actually should number my days from now on in terms of the general disciplines of my growth in understanding the gospel and I don't you know I think there's no point in having regrets about these things but I've been more haphazard than I really should have been in those things and and the the people I admire one of the things I've noticed you know when they die they they find the orderliness of their intercession and that to me is just the sheer busyness and the expected busyness of pastoral ministry in the modern church actually needs you to make very deliberate concrete decisions about how you're going to spend not just today but under the Providence of God look the whole of your life is I'm just often struck by Paul saying to Timothy make sure everyone sees your progress and I sometimes think I wonder how many of my friends the ministry I've ever had anyone in the congregation saying to them they may say lots of things to them but you know pastor we've really seen that you have growing in these and growth in the spiritual life doesn't happen accidentally would you speak about the role of women theologians in the church and as the wives of pastors and as singles as well if you are willing to do so one of the Cathy and I are so old that we the word complementarianism came later in our lives we heard it about about 15 years into our ministry and it did sound like a cult at first and then I realized oh that's kind of close to what I think but but the the idea that if you if you subscribe the idea that of male headship and you understand that as in the home and in the church that men have rule they they have the headship then inside that belief you've got this tremendous variations I the in the part of the church that is what's called a gala terian I'm not saying there aren't any differences I'm sure there must be but inside our circles there's this enormous amount of diversity as to what how people understand what headship means what submission means what authority means and and of course these various groups of course are extremely upset with other groups so everybody thinks people who are a little more you might say liberal think the Conservatives sold out to a to a misogyny and the people who are more conservative think that the more liberal ones have sold out the culture etc it's very awful I say that only because now I'm just going to give you my opinion and my opinion is that I do think that women can be writing theology they can be writing biblical studies they can be teaching it and do think that men can read it and men can be there my understanding is that if they're not doing authoritative ly as elders in a church or as ministers that have the power of discipline I don't see that that's my understanding they're not exercising rule and I think with my what some people would call my rather constrained understanding of what rule and authority means by saying no if you're not speaking as with the power to do discipline then you certainly can teach and speak sometimes that's that's too confined well that might be maybe I'm wrong on the other hand there's a danger in in being so expansive in your understanding that a lot of wisdom that the women have in it which is more than half the members of our church just it's not coming to us so I actually I do realize that there's a there's dangers in both directions but that might is I do think women acknowledge should be trained to write and to teach the Bible and theology to many people in the church not just to women I think that that's it needs to happen and that's the reason why I'm very glad you know I was very glad even to see last night the number of women who came up who are getting theology degrees and they actually want to be doing ministry out there and hopefully in my if they came to me and asked my opinion I would say here's what I think you should do and here's what I don't think you should do but the idea they have to get trained they have to be so that's it those are the sir they don't this does not represent even my own chair I'm not the pastor of a church anymore it doesn't represent the PCA there's a lot of diversity to be say but those are some of my reflections not really speak what's your foot in it but since it's expected don't tweet this now they you know I sometimes feel we've got this kind of underlying problem that has been created for us because you know everybody has a title nowadays and you see all over the place and there are actually very few people in any congregation who have a title you know and in any ordinary congregation the number of elders are fairly menu skill by comparison with the whole congregation and so everyone else in a sense is in the same boat and we're a community to encourage and minister to one another and I think some of the problems that arise are because we we often take applications of biblical principles and then turn them into a principle in themselves and don't understand that different kinds of societies sizes of societies will actually have to try and function in different ways without tunneling the applications they make into principles for everyone so for example there is a completely different dynamic takes place in a congregation of 70 people from a congregation of 700 people and I think we need to be just a wee bit careful but we don't create a single model beyond the model we are actually given in Scripture which seems to leave a lot of room for how do you apply these principles and in different situations and the idea that for that that is there are people in the congregation who may not teach me I mean I don't know where I would be as a Christian if I thought there's not you know you know I'm I'm the only person in this congregation with a PhD in theology there is no here to teach me it would actually be a tremendous form of arrogance and that that would go right down to the children so there is you know there is that mutuality and where where there is a willingness to serve I think in a congregation that is living space will open up for people to minister within the structure that set down for us in scripture in terms of what Tim's been saying about the leadership and the church and the authoritative ministry of the world but one author have you discovered in the last three years that you would recommend st. Clair Ferguson you know everybody kept telling me about his books and I said well I know the guy but I don't need to read I know everything is missing and then I started reading them and they're just great has Tim Keller written any books I mean besides each other you're free to answer as the spirit moves three years was it that we would recommend though is that the I do I actually do think that I as I've gotten older I've discovered a lot of great authors that I would not recommend I don't this is just maybe this isn't all that interesting to you but as I've gotten older I've your your mind is like a tree in that you know when you cut a tree there's rings to it and the old trees have lots of rings and the young trees have one or two in the beginning when you're still being formed it's actually you do have to be somewhat careful about what you read because it absolutely becomes part of you for a long time and as you get older the things you read don't don't sink in quite the same way because you're getting more more formed and as I've gotten older I have been I've profited a great deal from reading authors that that thirty or thirty percent of what they say is unbelievably great and you're not going to find it anywhere else but but more than two thirds of it is really not very good in some parts of you're toxic so as I gotten older I felt free and able to actually profit from people who I wouldn't recommend because and certainly not because I would say if you suddenly get excited get into there I wouldn't want them to come into the center of your tree I wouldn't mind it if some of what they say was one of the outer rings that would probably enhance but I wouldn't want there at the core so I mean I just give me an example that would be a guy named called Terry Eagleton do you know who Terry Eagleton is Irish Marxist ex-catholic who who who I have recently enjoyed Tom's Tom Nagel at NYU even John Gray and Terry Eagleton all of them don't like secularism even though they all say they're basically atheists or agnostics over it say they hate secularism they they see the Sham of it they can't they built they're looking for transcendence they can't quite bring themselves to to embrace God now what that means is that they're like what France refused call Co belligerents so when they when they when they could eke their own people their own secular society there it's gold I mean it gives you apologetic material it's just wonderful and and even their longings are - something very interesting because I say I could I'd love to talk to this person or I can I you're helping me talk to other people like other non-christians like you nevertheless I wouldn't want to dump any of those thinkers right now on younger people who ought to be reading they ought to be reading Bob Inc you know rather than waiting through all that yeah I think you you know I think you should come to a stage in growth where even in terms of commentaries few years there should always be one that you know that you will not disagree you'll not agree with this man theologically yeah because you will therefore be hopefully stimulated to think more creatively and I think that's actually I mean creativity can be a good thing and a bad thing but I I think often if you if you confine yourself to the people you know you will agree with you you dry up in terms of your creativity and what I would think of as your imaginative skills so I think that's important that said of course I've never read anything that was written after 1688 so what I in the last few years I've actually find myself going back to books I read and my my teens and an early twenties one book that has made a huge impression on me that I'm almost while I'm actually ashamed to confess I've never read it before is the biography of Alexander death it was a gray Scottish missionary in the first part of the 19th century and you know I think III think one of the things I've noticed in seminaries if you read for example David Calhoun's two volumes on Princeton seminary there's a whole era in Princeton seminary when the men were lining up to go to South Christ outside of the United States and they were dying and there more of them were lining up to do that and I was I was thinking in bed the other night because I was reading about nothing bad but I thought you know if I were if I had any influence on assembly now I would make I would make a required course to have a course in missionary biography and the other thing I've been doing has been going back to the the memoirs or biographies or autobiographies of men about whom we know now but who labored in very obscure parts of Scotland thinking particularly of Samuel Rutherford and Thomas Boston Boston's if you wanted to find the church where Thomas Boston was minister you need to leave the highway ton left go through a valley alongside a river into the mountains and eventually turn right and there's this little church there and he is such an illustration to me and I think ought to be an illustration to to anyone called into the ministry the end of the day it's not where you are that matters is who you become where you are you know I notice it's too you know I should get old and realize how little you've done it kind of puts even the little you have done and what are the most encouraging and discouraging aspects of the millennial generation in the church it's probably not different than what we were saying before about this culture in general which is that that there's advantages there one one of the definitions of Christendom is Christendom was a place where there were social benefits to going to church or being a Christian there was there was social benefit to it and that you might call that that's and then so christened amay which is early post Christendom would be that there's no more benefits there's no there's no pressure interesting Peter Peter Drucker who was a business management guru when he he was Austrian when he moved to Hoboken New Jersey because he got back in the 1930s he was appointed to his some to teach at NYU and he was trying to buy a house in Hoboken and the went to the bank to get a mortgage in the banker said where do you go to church he says why do you ask that for he said well why would we give a mortgage to somebody who didn't go to church okay so that's Christendom okay now you get rid of that post Krishna a there's no benefits Postgres and them be though deeper or post chrism is now there's social cost so my generation even here I even in New York there's not a social cost but what's going on amongst Millennials and the ones behind them which they call who knows Gen Z or I gen that there's real social cost of being a Christian they're the first thing that happens if you even identify yourself as a Christian you say so you're you're against gay people you're against this year's you know and the answer is real social cost so the the challenge for being a Christian if you're under 30 at least increasingly is that there's a huge social cost and I don't think I do feel like the challenges us older folks still I think probably even in Europe don't don't experience that cost quite the same way but the younger people do and so discipleship there is I'm only just coming to grips with it now it is more costly for them and yet we're in the same town but see they're connected to the world through social media no way I am NOT I live much more in my physical Geographic war environment and they live in a kind of global world and so the challenge is to help Christians who in those ages in that age group be disciples that's a big challenge another challenge is to make sure they don't get hollowed out that is that you have them for a couple hours a week and but they're they're getting the narratives of the I mean the narratives of secular culture are you got to be true to yourself no one has the right to tell anyone else what is right or wrong for them you should feel free to live any way you will you you wish as long as you don't harm somebody else you've got to do what makes you happy these are the narratives they come at them even though you're catechizing them you're you're doing your training but the narratives come at them constantly and they're getting hollowed out from the on the inside they have a veneer of Christianity they may even mentally profess it but their hearts have been more shaped by the narratives and so another challenge is not just for them to be able to face the social cost but even to really be formed as Christians so but the exciting thing I still think Sinclair is absolutely right i I was always happier when I got to New York where people knew that they weren't but most people knew they weren't believers it was just a lot easier than working in the south where you had to convince them that they weren't believers and-and-and with amongst Millennials you you you don't have that challenge so there's excitement but those are some of the challenges yeah we are in a we are a very interesting church our Minister David Robertson came about 25 years ago and I think he came either to bury it or to resurrect it there were a dozen people and God's grace that place has been resurrected but it's been resurrected in a in an interesting pattern so we've got a great cross-section from from young to old but the the core driving in the church would be youngsters the age of my daughter and her family she they were in the church before we went back to Scotland and they our peer group at college so here's a group of people in a college town and a good crowd of them stayed on and so what we don't have in the church is teenagers we've this pile of children and know teenagers and therefore no model of going through that period as a Christian that kind of comes to you by a form of osmosis and to me it's just a very interesting thing to look at the church and realize that the the big issue now for the folks who lead the churches how do we how do we shut these youngsters who have no models through this period when they will be facing issues that even their parents didn't face I mean in um not just in a well it gets worse in every generation but there's a there's been an an epochal chef yeah bigger rebel what did Gavin would call an ethical shift its massive it really is truly massive we're you know I think of like our daughter's oldest who's eight who she is all out here and I wait for the day when she'll put her hand up in school and say but please miss what you're talking about isn't the same as what my mom and dad have explained this to me and the teacher won't be able to explain it to her because it is not explicable because it's not the same and the question will be should ina be sent for re-education or what's the problem with these parents and this is a totally new scenario and it distresses my mind one of the most neglected books I would suspect among evangelicals in the Bible as the book of Proverbs and the book of Proverbs is full of this that is a narrative out there and in a godly narrative so how are you going to negotiate this ungodly narrative in a way that is fully godly but also preserves you from a form of falling so that for example you know how to answer a fool according to his folly you answer a fool according to his folly but then you don't answer a fool according to his folly and it's not been characteristic of a lot of evangelicalism to be able to tell the difference between these two things let's stay here for a moment can I keep going all right sure please please I like the way you say we're guessing well the I'm sure there are differences between Scotland here but you have to be local but I recently read a fairly just just the last few months a very deep study of a religious life of under 22 you're and basically 13 to 23 they call them gen Z because every every research group tries to try they tries to put their tag on the next generation and if it everybody picks it up then they can say hey we invented it but this particular point the things that stood out just to show that what Sinclair saying is actually kind of a this is a kind of a revolutionary change is coming so for example amongst Gen Z's for the last three generations boomers Gen X Millennials the number of atheists and agnostics was something like 3% this generation fourth percent said they're atheists which that they've nobody ever seen that before this is Americans now okay and here's the other one that's interesting boomers the Gen X and Millennials LBGT in other words a combination of people who say they're gay people who say they're bisexual and people say they're transgender total combination was always just around 3% 3.2 percent for each of those generations gen Z 12% say their LBGT 4 times that's also unprecedented so that the researchers are saying this is not just this isn't like state steps now there are some things it's just a little bit more but this is this is something else going on they're not sure maybe maybe it'll be a swing maybe and who knows how deep this is maybe but I don't think so it looks like there's a you're kind of going off the cliff the reason I also would agree about the importance of Proverbs what proverbs is James hunter a friend of mine is a sociologist talks about the fact that he would say a community that creates that morally forms people has to engage in moral discourse and he says moral discourse isn't the same as moral teaching moral teaching is the 10 commandments moral discourse is proverbs where you're actually talking about day in and day out what does it mean to live according to these these values in daily life in all these situations now that you get moral discourse I think even in the epistles to some degree but that proverbs is the place to do that and my understanding is that we're not unless we unless we create communities the church has to be a community where kids teenagers are getting moral discourse they're bringing their cases as it were because that's really what proverbs is it's basically case law it's taking taking the Ten Commandments and saying what is it how does it apply to the family how does it apply to this situation that situation leadership well race everything and you've got to let the kids come and bring what they're seeing and you've got to apply it there's gotta be moral discourse oh of course you have to model moral values but you also have to discourse and I don't think we're ready at all for it that's that's the challenge and there is something coming Sinclair he hinted at the fact that the government that we may be so out of step at a certain point that the government may say you need reeducation that's another subject that's just a question of how do you how do we live here but that's when it comes to the Millennials and the and the challenge of it and we're going below Millennials here we're going to teenagers Millennials are not teenagers however you define it we do see something coming below Millennials that is a bigger deal that's what we're saying how do we care for those who have been hurt by the church especially the hurts being brought forward in the church to hash tag movement the church to me to best thing if theoretically a Reformed churches because we believe in church discipline we we we should know that when a woman comes with a complaint about anyone in the church any man in the church or any certainly any leader in the church they you don't just say well you just need to forgive or you didn't need to you need to pray about it or please don't bring it up I mean we ought to know that no no no no this is a person who's got a complaint we're gonna listen this person has been hurt this person needs we need to respond to this as a person has been offended against we need to talk to the offender I mean I I'd the danger with the church to movement me to hash tag is I think we all know there's such a spectrum of of even when I read in the newspaper there's such a spectrum of people who say here's a man who's been drummed out of his job because it was constantly exposing himself to people you know just just in private with women just suddenly dropping his pants here's someone who actually literally raped someone here's someone over here who made them feel uncomfortable and it's a very very very very big spectrum but to me in the church if I'm an elder I'm a pastor and a woman comes to me with anything on that spectrum he's gotta be heard you can never be dismissed and I've always thought that the way the Reformed Church is understanding of discipline at certain points when I was a have to say when as a minister I always felt it almost privileged people it privileged complainers it privileged people sometimes I would say Oh white please don't bring this up please number I want to do other things and yet I realize over the years it privileges the little person it privileged the person without power and or at least it should so I actually think we have the theology and even the apparatus to deal with it though it's certainly been abused so anyway I I really think at this point the I don't think the church ought to be responding in a very defensive way I think it ought to be relief revival is repentance and if the church needs to repent over its treatment of women then it ought to do it and that's how revivals start but I that doesn't mean that every single obviously every you still have to do this on a case-by-case basis every church is different every woman is different every complaint is different every interaction is different so but in general we should be pretty quick to be repentant rather than be defensive my my my default mode ought to be to move in the direction of repentance first and not to immediately say not to get not to get defensive I think I'm sorry yeah that has a hashtag hasn't reached Scotland as far as I know partly because we have been so further down you mean the churches yeah his weaker yeah you know so I think like I think that that's one of the reasons and I think the other thing to see is you know whenever anyone comes to you with an issue as a as a minister as a pastor you're always thinking both about the person who has the issue and the issue that has the person and so you're you're dealing with two things and sometimes the issue can be handled well by well pastoring the person and the issue whatever it is will then be seen in its proper context but there are going to be issues certainly that our issues where you realize that this this is a situation where helping the person is insufficient in the light of the issue that the person has and then I think you know I think the biblical guidelines are fairly clear about how one does that in kinds of concentric circles that if you can handle private issues privately then they should be handled privately and it will not help the person to handle them publicly now there are issues where we have a social responsible in a legal responsibility and I'm not talking about that and I think also one of the sad facts of the matter is that we are often very bad at those issues because we are so bad at the issue of you know caring for one another and disciple and in the first instance and so our discipline discipline always has a negative connotation to it and we often do it badly because we we haven't really cared for the people in the first place you know and so there's a backstory to why that is a minor explosion I should just also repeat what I think I just said if there's a there's a the breaking of the law some churches have gotten into trouble I think rightly because when there actually was an illegality was it something that was against the law they tried to handle it with discipline rather than talking to civil authority it's now to me that is a I do think reformed theology says that's a that's mixing up church and state here it's not our job to deal with that sort of thing to decide whether a crime has been committed it's also never loving to make it easy for someone to sin against you just we ought to say that out there it's not loving ever to make it easy for someone to break the law or sin against you it's not loving one of the most loving things you can possibly do is confront is to help the person stop so we have to be careful about that and there are churches I know even in our own circles I think that have gotten in trouble when they thought that they could use discipline to deal with something that should be something the civil authorities should deal with doesn't mean that there might not be both in other words there may be relationships in the church at eff be dealt with through discipline but there's also the issue of the you know the debt to the debt to the the civil law I think well I think we've moved I mean I think probably people are more conscious now but I think we went through a period when people were not clear on the difference between sin and illegal yeah and that there are things that are sinful that are actually not illegal and there are things that are sinful that are illegal and we in the church tended to think of everything in terms of Sam sin yeah and and therefore you know I think in some situations I've read about I think I think people were just naive really and and because they also maybe were slightly antinomian somewhere underneath the you know really important thing is that we were the church and society could could go to the dogs and gray who didn't like some of the laws an away em okay what is the main thing that limits our evangelistic efforts and what can we do to change it you first system absolutely yeah I'll start because then that'll get Tim going he's one of the easiest people to stimulate I know doesn't take much let me go to kind of bargain basement level because that's an enormous question bargain basement level one of the things one of the things that intrigues me about our great text for apologetics you know always be ready to give a reason for the hope that's in you implies that people are asking the Christian questions and I don't know if we are through the season yet we are in our subculture we were the people who are asking non-christians questions sometimes I fell in a deceitful way standing in the street we you know we're just doing a survey here of what people believe which you know wasn't completely the truth of the matter and so absolutely bargain basement level I think the answer is and again I think this is one of the what's exciting things about being a Christian in our decayed culture is for the church for Christians I really believe like with the young families in our church this is happening and will happen more and more but we live in such a distinctively Christian way that non-christian people who may hate what they think we believe as Tim was hinting you know we believe all these ghastly things well they cannot deny that the reality that they see here actually looks like how things should be and that won't more prompt questions this is almost name dropping but I won't drop any news I I happened to spend the weekend with the wrong family once because I was preaching and I had a conversation with a member of the royal family and she asked me about my children and I I told her about my children most of humor most of whom are human and they're all wonderful and she turned to me and she said I could have fallen off my fishes and how do you do that and I thought you know all I've told you is what my family is like and and then I thought about her family and I thought you've actually you don't have a family remotely near you that is like that and I think about the you know these are young families in our church with their their children that the the the mother should be to the school gate the day is going to come when some of those mothers pluck up the courage to see how do you do it and I mean it's this interest in me that there isn't a great deal in the new testament of how to how you do it though there's a lot in the New Testament about how you be it now that said there's another whole dimension and this is where Tim comes only and no I just had what no I I liked the idea being very practical here recently I was talking to a an evangelist who basically changed my understanding last five years of how I would train a group of people in my church to do evangelism in as years ago I would probably try to show them what the gospel was and give them some idea of how you would explain the gospel of somebody that's really not a good idea that's probably not the best use of time if I've got two hours one is I think most people actually even in most well taught can certainly put together in their own words which probably is better in their own words the gospel is your not your say about what Jesus did on the cross we're separated from God you know because of Christ's death I'm saved not by what I do but what Jesus has done it's all of grace and I think they could get that across he said I think he's right he says the reason why they're afraid to identify as Christians even if they are living great lives they're not identifying as Christians because they're afraid of two or three questions they may get asked and they don't know how to answer it that's why they're afraid to identify and open their mouths and he says that's why they're afraid so what you do is if you've got 20 people in a room you say what are the two or three questions that you're most scared of being asked if somebody fights all you go to church and so you find out what those are they're probably they're probably gonna agree on what they are if they live in the same place because different cultures will be different different ages will be different but if they're similar they'll find those two and then you spend the whole two hours after you've done that brainstorming good answers they'll let them work on it themselves you can add your own and at the end if everybody in that room says okay that really helps i if somebody asked my question haven't really got something he says that would make an enormous difference in their willingness to speak up because it's not so much getting the gospel presentation across this and it's more and more in our culture people are afraid of being asked tough questions and so that would be the more cognitive side the more you know I think actually Sinclair's right you start with the behavior but then if you're going to ask don't give them gospel presentations find out what they are afraid of being asked and then help them know how to answer it which is always be ready to give a reason be anabolism universe Peter 3:15 one last question for Tim and then one for both of you and we have not run out of your wisdom but we've run out of our time so Tim you are known for championing urban ministry what advice would you give to those graduating heading to rural small town or suburban contexts well yeah I mean the the I'll tell you what I would say I would say that that that small town and rural context have changed see what one of the things I found when I went to the city was one of the reasons why I been ministry so hard as the cities are always changing so fast the countryside doesn't seem to change that much for the cities are changing so fast and so the church the church sir most always unless most churches had trouble I mean when I when I moved to the place I live with two miles the area I was living in was all Greek and now it's more Hispanic the poor churches I mean a lot of them just have not adapted and they just wait a minute so but we always tend to think of rural and suburban small town places as as different they're not as you know the the right now the last election was based more than anything else on what on density population though let the fewer people in in a place or a county the more likely was to vote Republican the more people now be more likely to vote Democrat and the reason for that is because there's a lot of stuff happening away in the countryside and in the small towns in the rural areas we heard some it was mentioned last night there's drug addiction there's poverty there's hopelessness there's broken families all this stuff oh all the stuff that we used to think we're only in when I was at new when I was here thirty years ago at Westminster seminary that was the stuff of the inner city but now it's out where you are and I'll bet you this the churches out there are not ready generally it'll be older people whose lives are more intact this is the way it always is when changes happen the church is always a time capsule the local church is a time capsule of what the town looked like 20 years ago that's who the people are there are older people there in there they've been there a long time the younger people the newer people in town you know you're not reaching and so actually I actually think that even though I still think cities are growing they're still so important they actually are still probably per capita under resourced by the church nevertheless there's need for new kinds of ministry out in the in the country and probably new churches because unfortunately a lot of the churches won't make the changes so just like in a city you need new churches to kind of the older churches make the changes you need older churches that get renewed with a new vision for reaching their community so I actually think it's a lot more an exciting and challenging place to do ministry than it was say 30 years ago okay last question PC a epc ARP OPC Reformed Baptist how can the reformed church and the church in general have more unity where was the Church of Scotland and the Church of Scotland I misread that sorry is it well I think of those churches ARP is the oldest and there seems to be an inherent logic among the reformed people that we should go back to our origins so I'm still an ARP Minister and you're all welcome the final question was if the point is what can we do as the church in general for more unity and specifically the Reformed churches both I think can Reformed churches come together and maybe more generally the church in general is there how can we find greater unity you know I think and so far in Scotland I've seen a measure of that locally and I think that you know dictates from above you know the lawn of our works grace but there are things we can we can do locally to indicate that though we are different congregations and we have slightly different names those slightly different names are far less significant and what unites us and you know our danger has always been that we are far more concerned about maintaining our distinctives and maintaining the things that are central together and you know I think I mean I know in our situation more and more I've seen that desire in a sinking church to at least go down together singing and so I think it's you know this may tell you something about the kind of Presbyterian I am but I think it's very important that that begins at local level and then phanpy you know I think people learn things a lot more by seeing feeling and smelling them than they do by you know great master plans of how we do things better together mm-hmm I do I do find that the hardest question you asked today I'm glad I'm glad we're going out on this I'm not gonna feel good about my answer I can tell already I do like what Sinclair said about the local that they were it does feel to me that the I think the easiest thing possible to work on unity would be in a given metro area or regional area that all the various congregations in those connections there that we ought to be there ought to be a lot of a lot of unity a lot of fellowship a lot of ability to do some things together at least at the at the level of fellowship in a particular area so I do what Sinclair saying is the Scotland as the church is gonna calm down some of the denominations that used to not have anything to do with each other being much more friendly locally they're doing more things together they're not as tribal and I think that's possible locally the trouble I think is that most of our denominations in America are are do not probably feel like they're in decline and and I do think therefore there's a pride and and so what's happening is inside most of these denominations there's battles going on so how can we become more unified with the other denominations when there are are there struggles going on inside the denomination for various groups trying to get more power so if we stop struggling inside that I think as largely I don't know that still happening I mean in in Scotland some of that's gone away too right that the odors inside the denominations there's not as much internal internecine fighting so I don't know how we're gonna work together as nominations if we actually are more unified inside and the bigger ones I mean I you know I certainly the PCA doesn't have a great deal of inner in inward unit doesn't mean some years are better than others as we know some General Assemblies are better than others but I don't know how we work together denominationally when we're still struggling inside locally there's a lot of hope there could be you might if your PCA you might be only for PCA churches nearby but if you put a EPC and AARP and OPC if you put that all together you may have enough for a kind of like small informal regionals scented you can actually start doing some things the eligible education for example you could do I think most ministers need continuing ed it's a it's a complicated world out there you could bring them all together to say let's bring somebody in from some local seminary who would just give us a day on a particular person we're gonna read we're gonna read the confessions in the City of God this year you know the next year so there's 20 ministers got they we're gonna read it together we're gonna meet together four times a year you bring somebody in from Westminster or whatever seminary is nearby to kind of help us there's all sorts of things you could do locally and to me that's where the hope is last chance to speak to us before we whisk you off for your lunch and let your risk well thanks for having both of us together yeah I love doing this with Sinclair and I and we but we we both feel I look we feel inadequate to the task even the danger with being here we are up here maybe because we're so old there's nothing else to do with us and because of the books or something like that but I'm honestly the danger with being asked being interviewed publicly on subjects is is I think he was assumed we're experts we don't feel like it we really really don't and and I don't know that the the challenges in front of the church I just we have not cracked the code we have got we've done a good job of talking about the this is the the culture that the church is facing and we are in decline everywhere but we haven't cracked the code and neither of us have you actually given you the code today but I hope you're a little more aware of what we ought to be looking for because we spent this time say well let's take our special guest you [Applause] you

Channel: Westminster Theological Seminary

Views: 110,149

Rating: 4.7096772 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: L7q_Aa4BJLE

Length: 107min 36sec (6456 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 20 2018