This Sunday, October 23, St Matthew’s Anglican Church, Wanniassa, in Canberra, Australia’s Capital, is celebrating its 40th Anniversary. From small beginnings St Matthew’s has not only grown in maturity and in number, but has equipped and sent out many to serve the gospel in other places in Australia and overseas.
As I have been invited to preach at the anniversary service, let me take the opportunity to set out some thoughts about church planting from my experiences both in Canberra and in New York.
God’s plan. The establishment of churches is God’s expectation as people respond to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The ‘church’ in Jerusalem was formed in response to Peter’s preaching on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:42-47). And churches were established in every place where people responded to Paul the Apostle’s preaching (Acts 13ff).
But churches are not simply formed as an outcome of gospel proclamation. Setting up churches can be a strategic means of reaching into new communities or people groups. In Canberra, St Matthew’s Church was set up alongside the city’s expansion. Christ Church New York City was set up in the context of a crowded, long established city as a strategy to reach more people within the city.
The raising up of ministry workers and the development of churches is an application of Jesus’ words: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Luke 10:2).
Colleagues – ‘church planters’. Jesus is saying that because the news of the kingdom of God is for all people, the disciples would not be able to do the work by themselves. Even seventy (or, seventy-two) would not be enough. The work requires far more workers than his followers could have imagined. So, the first task in gospel work is to look, not for converts, but for colleagues. Indeed, the colleagues may form the nucleus of a church that will reach more people.
Prayer. We often forget the picture the Book of Revelation unveils: a vast multitude will inherit the kingdom of God. People, as countless in number as the stars in the sky, will be drawn from every nation and tribe and from every generation. A crowd of this size can’t be reached by a few. Thousands of people will be needed – people who are willing to leave their comfort zones and serve the cause of Jesus Christ. We need to pray to the Lord of the harvest for workers.
Challenges. Jesus is also realistic: ministry will not always be straightforward and acceptable. He warns his first followers that if they and their message are not welcome, they are to warn their hearers of the reality of God’s ultimate judgment (Luke 10:10-11). Ministry can be unpopular, even dangerous work.
Gratitude to God. Luke records the excitement of the seventy when they returned from their mission trip. Many lives had been changed through their ministry. But let’s notice Jesus’ sobering words. As well as alerting his young followers to times of gospel disappointment, he also warned them of the perils of missionary success.
Taking them aside he points out that the arrival of God’s kingdom heralds the downfall of Satan and all his hosts. Preachers of God’s good news will see signs of Jesus’ victory and consequently, changing lives. ‘But’ Jesus says, ‘don’t let this go to your head. Satan fell because of spiritual pride’. ‘Rejoice rather,’ he continues, ‘that your names are written in heaven’ (Luke 10:20).
St Matthew’s Wanniassa in Canberra city is a wonderful example of the way the Lord Jesus Christ works, fulfilling his promise that he will build his church notwithstanding challenges and opposition (Matthew 16:18).
The experience of the small group that came together in those early years verified what the Bible teaches: God uses churches which have effective gospel-centered ministries to reach more people.
Recent research suggests that seventeen percent of the non-churchgoing community would accept an invitation to go to church if invited. Further, thirty-four percent of that number would continue to go to church, many of them inviting others to join them.
Thanks be to the Lord who has mightily provided for St Matthew’s over the years. Despite the challenges and the difficulties at different times – no church is perfect – men and women have come to know the riches of God’s love in Christ. To God Alone be the Glory!
A question we rarely think about is this: ‘What does Jesus expect of everyone who believes?’
A third part of the prayer Jesus prayed on the night of his arrest provides a vital part of the answer. In John 17:21a we read: “I ask … that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me”.
The all in this verse suggests that he is including everyone who comes to believe in him, as well as his disciples.
In the flow of his prayer, it is important to notice that he is not praying for ‘unity’ as we often think of it – a structural unity – but rather a ‘confessional’ unity. He is praying for a unity of understanding amongst all his people: the acknowledgment that he is the unique Son of God, sent by the Father to rescue humanity.
In other words, Jesus is praying that the essential truth of his relationship with God the Father will be at the heart of Christian belief. As such, he prayed for a unity amongst his people that reflects the unity of relationship between God the Father and God the Son. The unity that Jesus is speaking of here, is that all his people would receive and respond to his teaching the same way.
CHRISTIAN UNITY AND FELLOWSHIP
Furthermore, there is to be a unity of profound love and fellowship between his people because of their fellowship with God the Father and God the Son. His prayer reflects his teaching that true worshippers will ‘worship God the Father in spirit and in truth’ (John 4:23).
And it is also important to notice that Jesus is praying for a ‘missional’ outcome to this unity: “That the world may believe that you have sent me”.
Division amongst men and women is the way of the world. True unity amongst the people of God for which Jesus prays facilitates gospel outreach – ‘so that the world may believe’.
Men and women in the wider world are in revolt against God and the Son he has sent. Yet God has loved, and continues to love, the world and is committed to drawing more and more people to the One he has sent. The unity in the faith of God’s people will be a sign that will draw many to faith.
Now, we need to note that Jesus is not praying here for the amalgamation of denominations. Joining like-minded Christians together might be desirable, especially where buildings and services are often duplicated with a loss of efficiency.
Jesus is not praying for this kind of structural unity. Rather he is praying for the essential union of hearts and minds that respond to the truth of Jesus. Ultimately he is praying that all his people – whether the first disciples, or you and me today – will be with him where he is: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am,…”(John 17:24).
JESUS’ PRAYER
So, the essence of this part of Jesus’ great prayer is that all his people throughout the ages will be with him where he is in the Kingdom of God. His intention for his people is that we all see the glory that the Father has given him, as God’s unique Son, because of God’s love for him. So Jesus continued: “That they may see my glory which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24b).
This prayer of Jesus that we have touched on over these three Wednesdays tells us so much about him – his glory, his suffering, and his passion. We see his commitment to glorify God. It tells us about the significant work of the disciples – if they had messed up, we would have no knowledge of God’s extraordinary love and the forgiveness he holds out to us. Further, Jesus’ prayer tells us about us, and our need to work at the unity that springs from a united confession of faith.
Jesus’ prayer is not a ‘God bless…’ prayer. It is a prayer that instructs our minds and touches our hearts with the riches of God’s love.
You might like to pray this prayer: Lord, may we come to love you more and more, with all our mind, with all our heart, and from our very soul, so that you may be glorified in the lives of all who are united in a common confession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.
How can we be sure about God? Christianity makes claims that can be hard to believe in the 21st century – for example, its exclusiveness, its supernaturalism and its age.
To say that Jesus is the only way to God appears to be very narrow-minded. Further, the story of Jesus is woven around miraculous events – a virgin birth and a resurrection. And it all happened more than two thousand years ago.
JESUS’ PRAYER
In John 17 we find the record of a prayer Jesus prayed on the night he was betrayed and arrested. The greater part of the prayer was for his disciples, revealing the unique role they were to play in building on the foundation that Jesus himself was laying.
In Jesus’ words to God the Father, we discern the importance of the disciples in God’s big plan: “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.
The disciples were to be the link between Jesus and the rest of humanity. Much will depend on their understanding of Jesus as the Christ – the Messiah – and their courage and loyalty to him.
In verses 2 and 3 Jesus had prayed: “Since you have given him (that is, he, Jesus) authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, so that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
The ministry of his disciples would be essential if men and women were to benefit from God’s gift of eternal life. If the disciples failed in their task, if they gave in to hostile pressures and denied the truth they had been given to speak to, Christianity would have been still-born.
So Jesus prays that the Father would give each of the disciples eternal life. He also prays that the Father would protect them (17:11), keep them from the powers of evil (17:15), and make them holy in the truth (17:17). He also prayed that the love that God the Father has for the Son, would be true for them as well (17:16).
Jesus knew the road the disciples would tread would not be easy. Yet he didn’t pray that they would be taken out of the world. Rather, he prayed that they would be kept faithful and guarded from the powers of the evil one.
Furthermore, Jesus went on to pray for everyone who would come to faith: “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, …” (John 17:20).
At the heart of the disciples’ ministry would be the ministry of ‘God’s Word’ – preaching and teaching. The content of their word would be Jesus the Messiah.
From the time of Pentecost the disciples, now apostles (sent ones), began preaching, urging their hearers to turn to Jesus as the Messiah in repentance and faith. Over the following fifty years, thousands turned to Christ through their word ministry.
Furthermore, it was during those years that the apostles and others who had been uniquely trained, equipped and commissioned by Jesus, wrote the Gospels and Letters for the churches.
In 2 Peter 1:16-18, we read: For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.
TRUSTWORTHINESS
Peter is saying that he and the other apostles did not pass on a cunningly invented myth. Jesus really is God in the flesh; he really did rise from the dead. ‘I have the evidence of my own eyes,’ Peter says. ‘Our testimony is true.’
Furthermore, in 2 Peter 3:15 we read: …Count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother, Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. Paul’s Letters also were acknowledged as God’s Word.
Significantly, in John 14:25 we read Jesus’ promise that he would send his Spirit to his disciples, to give them accurate recall and right interpretation of all he had said and done.
What we often overlook is that these men, and others with them, overturned the Roman world not by armed revolution, but by the example of their lives, their testimony, and teaching. Can you imagine that those disciples of Jesus constructed a monstrous lie? We can be confident that their testimony is true and trustworthy.
Our prayers say a great deal about us. Are your prayers like that of AA Milne’s, ‘Christopher Robin’ who, in the midst of his child-like reflections of the day, prayed that God would bless his parents as well as himself? Or do your prayers reflect the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, or the prayers people like Moses, David, and Daniel?
JESUS’ PRAYER
In John 17 we read the record of a significant prayer that Jesus prayed. It’s a prayer that tells us a great deal about him and his relationship with God, his concern for his disciples, and also his concern for all his people throughout time.
Today let me focus on the first part. In John 17:1 we read: After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, … “
Jesus knew that within hours he was going to die. Given the prayers of Moses, David and Daniel, as well as the ‘Lord’s Prayer’, it is significant there is no confession of sin. He alone is without sin. This prayer is sometimes called the great high priestly prayer, but this it is not. The central task of a high priest’s work was to pray for the removal of sin – his own as well as that of God’s people. But the focus of Jesus’ prayer is glory or honor: “Glorify your Son, so that the Son may glorify you…”
GLORY
Glory in the Bible usually is a reference to the outward manifestation of an inner, hidden reality. So in John 1:14, John speaks of beholding the glory of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Here in John 17, Jesus is praying that he will remain faithful to the end in implementing God’s long hidden plan. It was a plan which, contrary to human wisdom, would reveal the glory of God in the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
According to Dr. Ashley Null, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer grasped this profound truth: Null explains: ‘For Cranmer, the glory of God is to love the unworthy’. This, says Dr. Null, is ‘Cranmer’s central theological tenet…’ God’s gloryis supremely revealed in the gift of salvation achieved through the one and only sufficient sacrifice made by Jesus when he died for our sin.
With the first words of his prayer, Jesus was reflecting on the certainty of his arrest, trial, and death. Judas had just gone into the night to do his dark work of betrayal. Jesus is now praying that he himself will remain faithful, as he had been throughout his life, persevering to the end.
Indeed, in John 17:5, Jesus continues: “So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed”. Jesus is self-consciously divine, but he is also human and therefore vulnerable.
FINAL WORDS
One great work remained – his work of bearing the sin of the whole world, when he would be lifted up on the cross as he had predicted (John 3:14-15). His final words, in John 19:28 and 30, point to the completion of this work when he called out, “It is finished”.
As he began his prayer (John 17:1), Jesus knew that his arrest, trial, and crucifixion would be painful beyond belief. We can barely begin to comprehend what it meant for him to bear our sin and for his eternal perfect relationship with God the Father to be at breaking point. In that hour he felt totally alone.
Jesus knew that the only way he could remain faithful, passing through the deepest shadows of the valley of death and so glorifying God, would be in God’s strength. He would be treading the path of suffering in the midst of the extremes of human hostility and supernatural opposition.
Yet throughout this first part of his prayer Jesus reveals that his central concern is the glory of God. As we can now benefit from the events that perfectly reveal the glory of God – the sacrifice of Christ and his resurrection – surely we too will want to glorify God in everything.
Jesus did not just pray for himself and the dark hours he faced. He prayed for his disciples, and he prayed for all his people – including you and me today.
In understanding what God in Christ has done for us, we will surely want to glorify God in our own lives by praying for people we know and by praying for ways to draw them to Jesus.
How often have you asked, ‘How long, O Lord?’ David asked it in Psalm 13. Daniel asked it when God’s people were in exile.
DANIEL’S PRAYER
In Daniel 9 we read one of the great prayers of the Bible. In fulfillment of the words of prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar had defeated the people of Judea, destroyed its city and its temple, and had taken its people into exile.
But Jeremiah had also spoken of the restoration of God’s people: ‘Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and will bring you back from captivity’ Jeremiah (29:12).
Daniel knew these words and was certain God would not forget his promise. But he didn’t just sit around, enjoying life, waiting for God’s promises to come true. He prayed for God to act.
God’s sovereignty doesn’t take away our responsibility to pray. God’s rule is not simply a fatalistic determinism. He invites us to partner with him in the implementation of his plans.
Daniel understood this and knew that the secret to addressing concerns and fears in life is found in prayer. Confession and petition are two themes that stand out.
CONFESSION
At the heart of his confession Daniel prays, ‘O God, we have turned away from your commands and your laws’ (9:5); ‘we have not listened to your servants the prophets; we have not obeyed the laws you gave’ (9:10); ‘we have broken your law’ (9:11); ‘we have not looked for your mercy by turning away from our sins and paying attention to your truth’ (9:13).
Significantly, Daniel identifies himself with the sin of God’s people. It was not just some people or some leaders who had sinned. Rather, all Israel had sinned – including Daniel.
Throughout the prayer, Daniel acknowledged the personal relationship that existed between God and the nation. A covenant existed between them – a covenant with commands and laws.
It’s easy to think of God’s judgment simply falling on the godless and the perpetrators of evil. But Daniel’s prayer is primarily for the people of God. There is a principle here that applies to God’s people today. We need to ask: ‘Is God pleased with the church?’ Each of us needs to ask: ‘Am I living as God expects, or am I compromised by the spirit of the age?’
We cannot truly pray for our church and the success of God’s gospel without first confessing our own sin. It’s a reason we need a prayer of confession when we meet as God’s people.
PETITION
Daniel’s confession turns to petition with: Lord, in view of all your righteous acts, let your anger and wrath, we pray, turn away…
Daniel didn’t ask God to set aside his righteousness and overlook the sins of his people. Instead, he asked God to act because of his righteousness. Paradoxically this was Israel’s only hope.
Like Moses, Daniel appealed to God on the basis of God’s character: Now, therefore,… Incline your ear, O my God, and hear… We do not present our supplication before you on the ground of our righteousness, but on the ground of your great mercies.
At the heart of Daniel’s petition is the glory of God’s name. He did not hesitate to remind God of what he’d already revealed in his Word and urged him to roll up his sleeves and act.
Daniel was not presumptuous. Rather, he was humble, honest and contrite about his own sin and the sin of God’s people. But this didn’t prevent him from praying on the basis of God’s character and God’s promises.
At the center of Daniel’s prayer is confidence that God is a God of mercy. The glorious and gracious thing about God is that he is always willing to receive people back when they repent and are committed to start afresh with him.
The New Testament knows of this type of faith and prayer. We see it in the faith of four men that brought forgiveness of sin and healing when they lowered their paralyzed friend through a roof.
With the coming of Jesus Christ and his commitment to build his church, how much more should we speak frankly and humbly to God, asking him to honor and glorify his name by acting with mercy towards our sinful world?
Do you regularly ask for God’s forgiveness, not just for your own sin, but the sin of others? Do you pray that for the sake of God’s name and reputation, he will act with mercy, opening the eyes of the blind, awakening them to the truth of his good news? God has promised!
