Peace...

Yesterday afternoon we walked along the bank of the river Lune, (after all it was a Bank Holiday!). It was a beautiful day; bright sunshine with contrasting white clouds hovering over the hills. Ahead Ingleborough stood clear, but shaded; not the brooding presence it sometimes seems to be, rather the benign guardian at the head of the valley. A buzzard circled high above, and four swans moved leisurely upstream, dipping their heads under the water in unison. A crested grebe perched on a rock hidden just below the surface while another raced downstream to join it. Twice we saw a kingfisher skim across the water, just below the bank, out of sight of all except those walking quietly by the edge. Most of the people going up and down had dogs with them, or possibly it was the dogs that had people with them. We walked across grass and through woodland, returning the same way. In places the river was patterned and chattering as water ran over shallow rocky sections, in other places it appeared still and utterly calm. No wonder Isaiah speaks of ‘peace like a river’ (48:18; 66:12).

You set me thinking, Gary

Gary Benfold, on his blog, has bewailed the number of preachers going from Britain to the United States, mentioning Mark Johnston as the latest to do so. I commented that up here near Lancaster the cry usually is that preachers, or potential preachers, tend to go south. This is partly because young men go south (or southwest) to train, to LTS or WEST. They then preach in the south and get called to a church in the south. Gary has, I think, taken in good part my comment about him travelling south to Bournemouth. Of course we both know that we seek honestly to follow the guidance of the Lord in these matters.

Nevertheless, I think there are a number of problems. I know a church 30 to 40 miles from here, now happily settled with a South African pastor, that, during the inter-regnum, had several men preach from the south who ceased to show any interest as soon as they saw the town and the environs of the church building. I think there still is a need in the north. When we moved from Stoke-on-Trent to Dunstable I said at my induction: ‘From time to time it has been my privilege to minister in more northerly regions than North Staffordshire, and I almost feel a sense of guilt in coming so far south when the needs are so great in the north. I bow to the hand of the Lord in this, but trust I will remember to pray for the churches and brethren in the north of England.’

Gary was actually concerned about the situation in London, and I identify with that also. Our capital city, bursting with people from all over the world, is not well-served with evangelical Reformed churches. This is not to under-estimate the good work being done by some, but I think it must be a hard graft in many areas of London today. Sometimes I think that because of our Independency and fragmentation there is no overall strategy, though I would not want to deny that the Lord has a strategy. I sometimes think we focus too much on the soft targets: students and ‘nicer’ people in ‘nicer’ areas. I think there is also a problem about our understanding of the local church – but that must be for another occasion, as it requires me to do some more work on the biblical perspective. These are just almost random thoughts, but Gary has set me thinking on what I think is a rather important matter.

Education, education, education

Beginning to read Gresham Machen's 'Christianity and Liberalism' I was startled to read this paragraph, so I post it here:

A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument of tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective. Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them then to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist. Such a tyranny, supported as it is by a perverse technique used as the instrument in destroying human souls, is certainly far more dangerous than the crude tyrannies of the past, which despite their weapons of fire and sword permitted at least thought to be free.