A thought about prayer

I was talking to my Jehovahs Witness friend at the station recently. He was rather enthusiastic about the fact that he saw me handing out tracts in Marrickville at the weekend. "It is always a good thing when people make the Bible more widely known," he told me.

We had a chat about being positive about others' efforts to reach out, but I had to go, as my train came in.

However, I said that I disagree with the JWs on many points -- obviously -- yet have to confess that they have played a positive part in some of the development of my own spiritual outlook. I would have liked to say more.

I am a convinced trinitarian. But, when I was converted, I knew, "God loves you, Jesus died for you, believe it and live as a believer." I didn't know if Baptists believed in the trinity or not.

Bill, where I worked, was not a trinitarian. He belonged to one of the cults which believe that God adopted Jesus as his "son" as a reward for his obedience, and we all may be adopted as sons if we are baptised, believe the tenets of this cult, and obey throughout our lives. Bill took me under his wing and tried to persuade me of his views.

The harder he tried, and the more he urged me to read the Bible, the more I read it and found exactly what he hoped I wouldn't find. A Christadelphian made a trinitarian of me. To cap it off, he tried to use Church History on me: "If you believe in the trinity, you side with the Catholics, and look at the dreadful things they did to Arians at Nicea." His account was so outrageous that I was sure he was wrong. So I found a great Church History text by a leading scholar, and read the story. Yes: both sides did some nasty things, but not what Bill alleged.

As I read Latourette's History further, I began to understand what the parties were saying, and why. It was the cap on my conversion to trinitarian faith.

With that in mind, I return to my Jehovahs Witness friend. He is a good-hearted man, with a generous spirit. Is he a saved man? I don't know -- but I know that salvation does not depend on accurate theology.

This takes me to the question of prayer.

For many years, our church has prayed for the other churches in Marrickville and beyond. We don't ask if they are Protestant, or if they are evangelical. It is part of our prayer for revival in our area. We need revival, and, no doubt, so do they. If they acknowledge Jesus as Lord, we pray for revival for them and for us. We pray that, wherever Jesus is proclaimed as Lord, there will be a God-honouring, Holy-Spirit led, Christ-focused revival.

This means that our prayers are for Anglicans, Catholics and Uniting Church as well as for our own Baptist brothers and sisters.

More recently we have added another group. If they earnestly seek Christ, even in a confused way, even if their beliefs about him are erroneous, we pray for them to find him and know him as he really is. I suppose we think this way about the Jehovahs Witnesses, but that doesn't seem, to me, a good reason not to pray for them.

I wonder what would happen if we really did start praying earnestly for each other, even if we don't like each other's ideas?

Church planting in Waterloo

I don't think of myself in church planting terms. Someone described me this morning as "...kind, patient and understanding... filled with useless facts." I'm a resource person and more inclined to encourage someone to do what he or she has already felt called to do than to direct a person into a project.

I like the Quaker idea of the "bundle of responsibility." We all have a duty to find and fulfil that responsibility in life. If I can help you find that, well and good; but I am unlikely to try to tell anyone what it is.

And, last night, I was involved in the first night of what, I pray, might be the launch of a Christian fellowship, maybe even a Baptist fellowship, at Waterloo, a southern inner suburb of Sydney.

In 1998, the denomination considered encouraging our little church at Marrickville to close down so that the money could be used to plant churches on the expanding periphery of Sydney.

I considered that a crazy idea, and my opinions were justified when I plotted the "reach" of existing churches onto a map and found a large wedge south of Sydney where there was little evangelical and no Baptist work. It also happened to cover the Green Square urban renewal project. I argued that opening gaps in inner city work to expand on the periphery was counter productive.

I approached this as a Town Planner (my former profession), not as a church planter.

After many discussions with different people, I concluded that it was unlikely that any outreach would commence here in a hurry. But I was pleased when a couple with church planting skills tried to start something, and saddened when it failed.

But I can see a glimmer of hope. It is a team effort. Jan, who moved into Waterloo, is a true evangelist, able to say, "I was lost, but now am found." She brings her neighbours and friends to church, and she saw the needs and found some on-the-ground opportunitites in Waterloo. She also arranged for us to use the Department of Housing meeting room, and organised refreshments.

Jay and Mouy picked up my suggestion that we take fellowship out to our people instead of expecting them to come in to us, and interpreted that in terms of a roster to go to different locations.

I put together a program; Nick suggested that this might be the time to roll it out.

So we got there, the same people who have met for over a year in Marrickville, but it's a start. We met some people and told them what our plans were. We waved to one or two who looked in but didn't come in. We smiled at the chap who ducked in for a biscuit and dashed off again.
It's all relationship-building.

Maybe we will eventually need a real church-planter. Meanwhile, we trust God and depend on your prayers!