“Success” in Christian life and ministry shouldn’t be measured in worldly phrases. Re-reading the late John Stott Message to 2 Timothy – Defend the Gospel that was a robust reminder.
The Anglican evangelical pastor and scholar wrote this 127-page gem when he was rector of All Souls Langham Place in central London. I learn it on the workouts earlier than my ordination as a Church of England 'priest' (I now favor 'presbyter' as a extra biblical time period for a Christian minister of Phrase and Sacrament) within the Diocese of Chester in 1997.
2 Timothy is Paul's final epistle earlier than his martyrdom in Rome, most likely in AD 64 throughout Emperor Nero's brutal persecution of Christians. The recipient was a youthful Christian preacher whom Paul had entrusted with the administration of the church in Ephesus in Roman Asia, now a part of trendy Turkey.
Stott wrote: “We’re to think about the apostle, 'Previous Paul,' languishing in some darkish, dank dungeon in Rome, from which there is no such thing as a escape however dying. His personal apostolic labors are over. 'I’ve completed the race,'” he could say, however now he should to maintain the religion when he’s gone, and particularly to go it on (uncontaminated, unalloyed) to future generations, he accepted and handed it on to trustworthy males, who in flip would be capable to educate others.”
What’s hanging about Paul's state of affairs on the finish of his life is how remoted he was. Ten years in the past, Paul had phenomenal success in Ephesus after which in Asia. The Acts of the Apostles describe how Paul preached the Christian message day by day within the lecture corridor of Tyrannus in Ephesus: “This continued for 2 years, so that every one the inhabitants of Asia heard the phrase of the Lord, each Jews and Greeks” (Acts 19v10 – Revised Customary Model).
However now Paul writes to Timothy: ” that every one who’re in Asia have turned away from me” (2 Timothy 1v15). He additionally information that in the course of the first judicial listening to of his case in Rome, “nobody accepted my half, all of them forsook me” (2 Timothy 4v16).
The listing of fellow Christians he asks Timothy to greet on the finish of his letter reveals that he had a small community of supporters. However it was a small band in comparison with the variety of folks he influenced, particularly in the course of the “ministry explosion” in Ephesus.
In worldly phrases, Paul was defeated. His predicament would most likely not be such {that a} “affluent church” in an prosperous space of the twenty first century.road Century West wish to show on its web site.
However Paul didn’t enable his circumstances to weaken his religion within the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. He was certain that the Lord would sooner or later return to guage the world and vindicate his trustworthy servants: “For now I’m on the point of sacrifice; the time of my departure has come. I’ve fought the nice struggle, I’ve completed the race, I’ve saved the religion. Any more it’s laid upon me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous choose, will give me on that day, and never solely to me, but in addition to all who beloved his revelation” (2 Timothy 4v6-8).
Commenting on Paul's assertion that he had completed the race, Stott mentioned: “A couple of years in the past, when Paul was talking to the elders of the Ephesian church over which Timothy now presided, he expressed his ambition to do exactly this. 'I rely not my lifetime of any worth,' he declared, 'even valuable to myself, solely that I’ll end my journey and the service which I obtained of the Lord Jesus…' (Acts 20:24). that he did so, the verb and noun he makes use of are the identical.'
My ordination in 1997 got here shortly after Tony Blair led New Labor to an electoral victory over the Conservatives, permitting neo-Marxist ideology to grow to be firmly entrenched in British society. The Conservatives refused to overturn Blairite hegemony once they regained political energy in 2010.
Established Christian denominations within the UK have fared very poorly since 1997. The variety of folks attending Church of England church buildings is prone to have greater than halved, contemplating the decline between 1997 and 2003.
In 2003, the primary 12 months that the Central Church started amassing attendance knowledge that permits statistical comparability with the present common weekly attendance of all ages in C of E congregations, it was 1,126,000. By 2023, that quantity had dropped to 685,000.
However as dire because the state of affairs is in secular tradition and the seen church, Paul's perspective and instance in 2 Timothy is inspiring. His admonition to Timothy is definitely urgently related to those that are referred to as to evangelise the Christian message in all ages and each era:
“I adjure you earlier than God and earlier than Christ Jesus, who’s to guage the dwelling and the useless, and by his revelation and his kingdom: preach the phrase, be pressing in season and out of season, persuade, rebuke and exhort be steadfast in persistence and educating, for he’s coming a time when males can’t bear sound educating, however having itching ears, collect academics in accordance with their very own fancy, and switch away from listening to the reality, and wander into. myths, all the time be steadfast, endure struggling, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2 Timothy 4v1-5).
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist primarily based in Lancashire.
