Stop Apologising!
Andy Gemmill, Director of the Pastors’ Training Course, has many brilliant and helpful insights into ministry and the Christian life, and one of them I’ve found myself returning to often is the idea of acknowledging the elephant in the room, or text. The point is that the Bible quite often has difficult verses or moments, and quite often the temptation for the preacher or Christian is to swerve round these difficulties. We do this in a number of ways, either by literally ignoring them, by trying to argue our way round them, or by attempting to soften them and apologise for them being there at all. And it’s especially tempting to do this when preaching, because we don’t want to offend or alienate, or when we’re evangelising and speaking to our non-Christian families and friends, again because we don’t want to put people off!
So we end up ignoring the elephant in the room.
And this can be enormously frustrating. In fact, even though our intended purpose is NOT to alienate our friends and families, we can end up doing the very thing we were trying to avoid. Andy’s advice was to stop avoiding the elephants; stop apologising and instead go directly for them! In reality the Gospel of God and the Word of God and the Spirit of God do not need us to soften the edges. In fact, when we find ourselves in Babylon, surrounded by the culture and values of Babylon, the distinctive voice of God’s Gospel can act as the life-giving splash of cold water in the face so many people need. It is our distinctive message of the Messiah that the world needs, not our softened/apologetic-ridden equivalent. Which should be enormously encouraging to us, I hope! We don’t need to craft a complex web of western-centric liberal values in order to bring people to Jesus – the opposite is actually far more common – where people look around and are frustrated at the world they see – and what they want is a Saviour, to rescue them from the crumbling chaos of this world!
It is the elephants in the room/text that so often act as the primer for people to come to Christ for the answers this world cannot give.
This could be God’s clear voice on morality, that every human is made in His image and so every life is precious and endowed with dignity, value and worth, from conception to grave. And so, abortion and euthanasia are morally wrong. This is not something the church needs to apologise for but rather embrace. It’s the same with sexual ethics and gender identity. Even the complementary role of men and women, specifically within marriage and the church, isn’t something to be avoided but embraced. The list goes on. This letter isn’t intended to explore these issues but rather encourage us all to embrace the full counsel of the Word of God as the very antidote this world needs. Our distinctives matter. It’s why Paul is unashamed of the Gospel, because it saves people! … “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…” Romans 1:16. It is the Gospel of God found in the Word of God that makes people embrace Jesus as Saviour, through the illumination of Word and Spirit, which is why Paul exhorts Timothy not to abandon the things he was taught at a young age: … “from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
So don’t be afraid of the elephants, or even what some view as the “tricky” things Christians believe. Very often God uses these “tricky” things to open the eyes of the blind, and so we should never apologise for God, for His Word, His morality, His law or His Gospel, for it is the power of God to save.
Your minister and friend,
Nathan