Doctrine for Life
If anyone would like to catch up on what God has been doing with us over the last year or so, you are welcome to read my pastoral newsletters.
Here is Newsletter 133 covering October 2011 to mid March, 2012.
Here is Newsletter 134 covering late March to early July, 2012, including my trips to Korea and London.
Here is Newsletter 135 covering mid to late July, including my trip to Mozambique.
Some of this material has already appeared on this blog in various posts.
Saturday, July 21st, was a huge scramble to get all my ducks in a row to leave for Marion, Indiana, where I was to speak five times—once each day, from July 22 to July 26, on living the Christian life at the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America’s RP International Conference, which approximately 2,300 people attended. The RPCNA holds this conference every four years. More than 1/3 of the denomination attends, along with RPs from other countries, including Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Japan, and Australia. I know of nothing else quite like this in any other North American denomination.
Preaching at the RPCNA Conference
On Sunday, Rev. Rich Holdeman preached on keeping the heart as a matter of life and death (Prov. 4:23), Rev. Dave Reese preached on “The Sabbath: Creation, Covenant, and Christology” (Gen. 2:1–3), and I spoke on “Cultivating Holiness” (1 Pet. 1:16). It was a good day.
Early Monday morning, my sister called to tell us that my dear mother finally went to be with her Lord. Our loss is her gain, and ultimately, ours as well. (I will post some reflections about my mother’s life soon, D.V.) A few hours later, I received a call from a family in our church just five minutes before I was scheduled to speak that their mother also had passed away.
My heart was full when I began to speak, but the Lord upheld me. I told the audience that it was providential that I was about to speak on “Prayerful Prayer” because I had just lost a mother who was the best prayer warrior I had ever known. I then gave a few examples of what we children experienced of her prayer life. I can truly say that the Lord helped me through this unprepared part of my address in a humbling and comforting way, and from the response afterward, it became apparent that God’s leading in this address and these deaths left a deep impression upon many.
How good God is! His strength is perfected in our weakness. How many times I have experienced in my life that the best thing for me to do when I feel weak, burdened, and overwhelmed, is not to run from the pulpit but to run to it. There is no better place on earth to be.
When I finished speaking, a minister came quickly to the pulpit, and spontaneously asked all the ministers and elders in the audience to come up and surround me, as he wanted to pray for me and my family. About 75 men then joined me behind the pulpit, and this brother prayed movingly for me. It was truly a touching moment.
Since family would not gather for the visitation until Thursday, and the funeral for my mother wouldn’t be until Saturday, we decided prayerfully to continue to fulfill our obligations in Indiana, which were scheduled to be completed on Thursday at 10:00 a.m. We knew my mother would want it that way, and I also felt the Lord’s favor on this decision when He gave an unusual degree of freedom to speak for the remaining days. That was particularly true of the address on coping with affliction in a Christ-centered way. The people were absolutely wonderful; they lifted me up on the wings of prayer and we felt bonded to each other. I also thoroughly enjoyed a Q&A time with about 300 young people.
During those days the conference attendees also showed their desire and hunger by buying $16,600 worth of books—the most we have ever sold at a conference in the history of Reformation Heritage Books.
Flight Home on a Private Jet
After my last address on Thursday morning, we rushed to the airport amid an overwhelming display of love from the Reformed Presbyterians. The private jet whisked to Grand Rapids in 40 minutes (a four-hour drive), where I conducted the funeral, visited with the family, did the committal service, and then joined my own family for my own mother’s visitation service. God is truly amazing how He coordinates our lives.
Woodcutter in Mozambique
In the next few posts I would like to return to the end of my trip to Africa, and update you as well on events since then.
The long trek home began in the back end of a large, bouncy truck, included a quick stop at a souvenir shop, where we watched three men carve figurines from beautiful, dark wood. They will spend an entire day on one piece and then be grateful to sell it for $5. The average full-time employee in Mozambique earns $4 a day or about $110 a month. Most of the shops are owned not by local people, but by the Chinese and other nationalities. You can imagine this may create some tensions.
Nampula has 400,000 people but no malls and no large stores. They did have a Shoprite Store for a few years, which was great, as the local people could then get almost everything they needed at one stop. But its owners in South Africa became suspicious that embezzlement was taking place, and before they could investigate the whole building burned to the ground.
On the flight from Nampula to Johannesburg I sat next to a white woman who grew up in Zimbabwe. She looked much older than she was. She and her husband, who are Christians, have tried to start several businesses throughout their lifetime, but all to no avail. Customers often don’t pay for services rendered. Moreover, each time they acquired a few earthly possessions, thugs broke into their home and stole it all—even down to food from the cupboard and drinks from the fridge. They have been left “penniless many times,” she said. Now they are in dire straits and pray daily for God’s provision.
To go from the poverty of Nampula to the luxury of the Johannesburg airport is a bit of a culture shock. The 17-hour overnight flight from South Africa to Washington, D.C. (with one drop down in Senegal), went well despite my exhaustion. I enjoyed editing Dr. Andrew Woolsey’s doctoral dissertation on the development of covenant theology. What a ground-breaking book this is! I am so glad that Reformation Heritage Books is going to publish it.
My flight landed three hours late in Washington D.C., so I missed my flight to Chicago. That was the beginning of a strange 10-hour saga in which I tried to get tickets to Chicago and on to GR—first, successfully; then, unsuccessfully, as my boarding passes didn’t register after all. Meanwhile, Mary called me and told me that my dear mother was dying, which made getting home all the more urgent. Finally, I got on standby to Chicago. Because the plane stayed at the gate for an extra hour to take on additional customers, I then missed my Grand Rapids connection.
All the Chicago-Grand Rapids flights were full for the remainder of the day and evening, but in God’s kindness, I managed again to get on by standby. The fact that my mother was dying did not help at all, but having “Silver Elite” status as a “frequent flyer” did, as I was put at the head of the standby list on both occasions. Had that not been the case, I would not have been able to make it home at all that day. As it was, I didn’t arrive home until 8:00 p.m. It took me 39 hours to get from Mozambique to Grand Rapids—the longest airport trek of my life. One could fly around the world in that amount of time!
Our family went straight from the airport to Kalamazoo to see my dying mother. After praying, singing, and talking, we said a second tearful goodbye, telling her that we would meet her on the other side, God willing, to spend an eternity together praising Christ. We then drove up to Grand Rapids to see Johanna Mast, who was in the same condition as my mother. After visiting with them, and working our way through pre-arrangements for a potential funeral, I finally arrived home just before midnight.
As I write, I am staying at the home of Dr. Charles and Julie Woodrow, who have five children and a large home with an incredible maze of all kinds of little bedrooms. Close to two dozen people are staying in this home, which is quite ordinary I’m told. Wherever one turns, there is another bedroom or two, and another occupant or two—or three! Each bedroom has the name(s) of those who are sleeping in it that night posted on the door.
In fact, while just typing this last sentence, two young men just walked through my bedroom on the way to two other bedrooms beyond mine, one of which I didn’t know existed until just now. And now, while I was typing that sentence, a young man just walked in and said, “Hi, I’m Chris; by the way, you’re sleeping in my bed tonight, and I have my money stashed beneath the mattress—do you mind if I fetch it?”
When one arrives at the Woodrow home, there are eight German shepherd dogs—all friendly ones—waiting to greet you (and a cat or two) the moment you step out of the land rover, which somehow survives the incredibly bumpy roads. The conference site is only a few miles away but it takes half an hour to drive there due to the road conditions.
Julie Woodrow is remarkable; cheerful, easygoing, somehow she rolls with all the punches and enjoys ministering to her five home-schooled children and her large extended “family.” Dr. Woodrow, an able, well-known physician in the area, is of a perfectionist bent and holds the bar of expectation high.
The Woodrows’ local church in Nampula is quite Reformed. Attendance is from 25-30 each Sunday. Dr. Woodrow supervises the church and exhorts on Sundays quite frequently. He also is building a hospital for the needy local people. The hospital has been mostly built, but then funds ran out until a couple from Brazil recently donated $250,000 to complete it. So now, a South African couple, Mark and Hilda, who have great credentials for this kind of work, have volunteered to oversee the project to its completion by 2013, the Lord willing. This hospital still needs to be staffed, but hopefully will be a huge help to the local people in due course.
Ministering in a place like Nampula, Mozambique, can be overwhelming. The needs are so great, the perils so many, the challenges so daunting, and the opportunities so many, that one scarcely knows where to begin. Certainly for us we need to begin by praying the Lord of the harvest to send more reapers, workers, and volunteers into the harvest—especially into very needy places like this.
(I did have a few happy moments talking about PRTS with one of the Woodrow sons who is seriously contemplating if God is internally calling him to the pastoral ministry. Pray that God will call him, send him to PRTS, and that he may return to this needy area.)
Finally, let us not forget to bow humbly before God, thanking him for all the amazing freedoms and spiritual opportunities we have. We truly are blessed nearly beyond measure compared with most other areas in the world.
On Monday morning, we flew early to Nampula. The conference, which began on Monday evening and concluded on Thursday, had as its theme: “Growing in Grace: The Doctrine and Practice of Genuine Sanctification.”
The meetings took place under a large tent, where mosquitoes that produce malaria are not uncommon, so we speakers were advised to take malaria-fighting medication for twenty days—from two days before we came to Mozambique until a week or so after we return home. This is no idle threat as five million cases of malaria are contracted each year in Mozambique, and significant numbers die from it; moreover, visitors are especially prone to be infected, as our bodies have not built up any immunity against it. This does make one feel quite dependent on God, as it is hard not to wonder when a mosquito buzzes around your head: Is this one of the bad ones? You are also advised to give your body a good spray of insect repellant each morning.
Jaime Marcelino gave four addresses and I gave five to a group of 300 people, most of whom were pastors. Three of his addresses focused on the struggle for Christian virtues between brothers (Phil. 1:2–11) and one address was on the necessity of experiencing genuine holiness as a preparation for eternity (Phil. 1:9–11). Four of my addresses focused on various aspects of sanctification, and I was also asked to give one historical address on lessons we can learn today from John Calvin’s life. We both felt helped and the men were a joy to preach to and quite responsive.
Young People after a Q&A Session
A group of dedicated young people, who sat in the first rows just before the pulpit dressed in beautiful African garb, sang heartily for us periodically throughout the conference. All of these young people listened intensely and were great note-takers.
Unlike the conference in Maputo which was a first, this is the 13th year for this conference. The Protestant and evangelical church in Mozambique is still quite young in many parts, especially in the north part of the country where this conference is being held. In many places the church is only in its second generation. This is due in part to Mozambican Christians being severely persecuted for many years at the hands of a Marxist government.
Karl Peterson was on hand in the Maputo, Mozambique airport when I finally arrived—without my luggage. No surprise there.
Karl is a Westminster Seminary graduate who pastored a Presbyterian church in Philadelphia for four years, and then accepted a call to head up a Bible institute in Mozambique—a position he held for fifteen years. During those years, he also helped organize an annual ministers’ conference in Nampola (where I am to speak next week) and planted two churches. Recently, he moved to Cape Town, South Africa to teach and exercise leadership in a Bible institute there. You can feel almost immediately that he is an organized and competent brother who is gifted with leadership skills.
The following morning I had breakfast with three Brazilians, including Rick Denham, who has an important visionary and leadership role in the Brazilian FIEL organization. FIEL is opening a conference in Maputo (which begins in a few hours) for the first time. Two hundred have pre-registered which is all they have room for in this hotel. They come from a great variety of backgrounds. Most are not Reformed. Rick asked me to speak very simply—also for the ministers who are present, as they lack much theological background and training.
Please pray for this ground-breaking conference in Maputo—the first of its kind for this major urban center of Mozambique. Nine addresses are to be given in the next thirty hours. Each of the three speakers—Jaime Marcelino, Ronald Kalifungwa, and myself—will give three addresses. In God’s kind providence, I know both of these other brothers quite well. Jaime Marcelino is from the Amazon in Brazil, where he is a very effective pastor whose labors God is blessing (I hope to do a conference for him next year, D.V.). Ronald Kalifungwa is a powerful Zambian preacher, who speaks often at conferences throughout Africa and beyond. He is a dear brother whom I have known for years. We once shared each other’s conversion stories on an airplane in South Africa flying from one conference site to the next. He is also a long-distant student at PRTS.
My trek by plane to Mozambique took 27 hours—from Grand Rapids to Chicago to Washington D.C. to Senegal to South Africa to Mozambique. On the Chicago to Washington flight, I evangelized a young man. After chatting about his family (married to a devout Roman Catholic, with whom he has two girls—6 and 2—and is expecting a third in two weeks) and work (a contractor) for a while, I asked him if he was a Christian.
“Sort of,” he said.
He went on tell me that his dad was a leader among the Gideons and flies all over the world to promote Bible distribution. His mother is a strong Pentecostal who is constantly telling him that he is on his way to hell because he doesn’t take his Christianity seriously.
“I struggle with lots of things,” he said. “I struggle with having Christianity crammed down my throat. I struggle with the idea that the Bible is inspired, though I do recognize that it is an amazing book. I struggle with the irrelevant messages I hear from the priest on the odd occasion when I do go to the Catholic church with my wife. I struggle with the idea that if you don’t know Jesus, you’re on your way to hell. I know a lot of good people who aren’t Christians who don’t deserve to go there.”
For the next hour, we dialogued about each of his concerns. He was receptive, but not easily persuaded. Todd is an outstanding conversationalist, a very likable guy, but he has no awareness of the gravity of sin. I tried hard to explain the basics of the gospel—why we all need Jesus Christ, why Christians in themselves are no better than non-Christians, how God looks on our hearts, our desperate need to be born again, and why no other religion can give us a Savior accepted by God.
Then I gave him a breather, but he kept asking questions. He wanted to know more about the Reformation. “What is the difference between Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism? How did Protestantism split up between the Lutherans and the Calvinists? Were there other groups involved as well? Just who are the Puritans? Are you a Puritan?”
So we had a basic church history lesson. He told me that he found it fascinating. I gave him my card and asked him if he would read a few books if I sent them to him.
“Sorry,” he said, “I’m not a reader.”
On the flight from Washington to Senegal, I sat next to another man, who is trying to promote “Green Energy” in a West African nation. He was on his way to meet with the president of that nation for the fourth time, hoping to seal a business deal this time around.
He describes himself as “a solid Lutheran.” He meets often for prayer with his closest friend. In fact, before the plane even taxied out, he called his friend and said, “You won’t believe this, but I’ve got a preacher guy sitting next to me who runs a seminary. I’m going to bend his ear for the next eight hours. The poor guy won’t be able to do any of his work.”
And bend my ear, he did. He is a non-stop talker; his conversation is a stream of consciousness, covering anywhere from one to five topics per minute. We covered a lot of ground, but I’m not sure how profitable it was. He seemed to be antinomian in some areas of his life and devout in other areas. He certainly loved to talk about Christianity. After three hours, I had to finally tell him that I needed some rest.
In Senegal, I stayed on board the plane, as our plane continued on to Johannesburg, South Africa, which is another eight hour flight (so I was on this plane for 17 hours in all). On this flight, I sat next to a 6’8” slender black fellow from Senegal (a former basketball player) who was working in South Africa, also in the field of energy.
When I asked about his religious beliefs, he said, “My father is Muslim and my mother is a strong Christian.”
“So where does that leave you?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, “I’m a Muslim because in Senegal it is a custom that the son takes over the religion of his father.”
As I pondered how to respond, a lady next to us, who was listening to our conversation, jumped in. “Religion is something you can’t take automatically from any parent,” she said incredulously. “You have to know what is right and true for yourself!”
The young man answered very shyly, so shyly that I couldn’t understand him. Clearly he didn’t want this conversation to proceed further.
On the way home from London last Thursday, I sat next to a Muslim mother and eight-year-old daughter. They grew up in Afghanistan, and migrated to Denmark twenty years ago. The girl chatted to her mother the entire trip—eight hours straight. She knows English, Danish, and a local dialect in Afghanistan equally fluently. I found that rather humbling.
When I arrived at customs in Chicago, I had a rather unusual conversation with the agent who looked like he was from India.
“What is your occupation?” he asked.
“I’m a preacher, teacher, and author, sir,” I said.
“How many books have you written?” he queried. When I told him, he just said, “Very interesting. What do you write about?”
I said, “All my books in one way or another are about Jesus Christ and what it means to be a Christian, sir.”
“Very, very interesting,” he said, as he put my passport into his machine.
I leaned forward, and said, as respectfully as I could, “What about you, sir? Are you a Christian?”
“Well, not really,” he said, “I’m too much of a free spirit, but I like to write, too. I wish I could write what I knew was true, though.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “that is the joy of writing Christian truth because you know what you write can truly help people.”
“Well,” he said, “I certainly respect you for that. May God bless your books.”
“Thank you, sir. May God bless you as well.”
My Chicago-Grand Rapids plane was delayed for several hours, so I took another flight to Lansing. But then we sat on the runway for 1.5 hours while we were being refueled and waiting for paperwork. Mary picked me up in Lansing, and we finally arrived home at 1:30 a.m. on Friday.
Standing in the Pulpit of Richard Sibbes
The Met Tab School of Theology met Tuesday afternoon through Thursday afternoon, offering nineteen plenary addresses. About 850 people came to the conference during the days and close to 1,000 for the evening sessions. The general theme was on living and walking in the Holy Spirit. Five speakers gave two messages each. John Thackway spoke on the Holy Spirit “In Troubles and Distresses” and “In Personal Relationships.” Chris Hand spoke twice on “Weighing Christian Rap/Hip-Hop” and Ted Williams provided two messages through a reader (he was recouping from surgery) on “Who are the New Calvinists?” Chris Buss spoke on the Holy Spirit “In Christ-Centered Speech” and “In Sensitivity and Usefulness.” Jack Seaton spoke twice on “The Holy Spirit’s Objectives for Us.” Roland Burrows gave a message on “The Personal Spiritual Walk of Notable Preachers.”
Dr. Masters and I gave four addresses each. He preached twice on “The Indwelling Spirit” and twice on “Worship and Witness in the Spirit.” I spoke on sanctification: “The Great Calling of Sanctification: Cultivating Holiness,” “The Great End of Sanctification: Knowing the Love of God”; “The Great Progress of Sanctification: Living Submissively by Faith”; and “The Great Obstacle of Sanctification: Fighting Unbelief.”
Between addresses someone was always available to speak to, ranging from young men who are interested in coming to our seminary (one young man hopes to come in January and seems to have considerable promise) and people with counseling problems seeking help. I also kept five appointments with various people who had asked me ahead of time if they could spend some time with me. Spending time with the speakers, eating with friends, and keeping up with e-mail became such a whirl of activity that there was little time to sleep. In the midst of it all, someone hacked my e-mail password. In two hours I received over 300 e-mails from people, all thinking they might be the first to tell me that I was hacked.
Richard Sibbes (1577-1635)
A highlight was a London lawyer (here they are called barristers) taking me to Gray’s Inn court, where law school and the entire profession is still carried out in formal ways, harking back to medieval times. One of my favorite Puritans, Richard Sibbes, served as a preacher for the lawyers here back in the early seventeenth century. The chapel at Gray’s Inn still prominently displays his name. I then sat in with my lawyer friend on a high court session. The case we listened to involved two dogs biting each other! The lawyers were dressed in their finery—old-fashioned robes and $750 wigs. Every lawyer is still required to buy such a wig.
The Metropolitan Tabernacle
Sunday, I preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle (also frequently called, Spurgeon’s church) about the basics of justification in the morning (Rom. 3:23–28) and an evangelistic sermon on how God saves sinners in the evening (Mark 10:46–52). The church has grown since my last visit here of two years ago, due in part to each sermon now being translated into four languages simultaneously, so a number of people have on headsets as they listen to the Word coming to them in their own language. Approximately 900 people attended in the morning and 800 in the evening. Before both services, I visited with Dr. Peter Masters, senior pastor of Met Tab for over 40 years. About a year ago, his health was declining and many thought his work as pastor was coming to an end, but he is now feeling better and is working as hard as ever.
Today I finished proofing the last chapters of a new book and studied for the four addresses I need to give over the next three days at the Met Tab School of Theology Conference which begins tomorrow at noon. I’m scheduled to give the two addresses tomorrow evening (7:15–8:45 London time), 2:15–3:45 p.m. EST. I covet your prayers for divine blessing on this entire week.
