Straight to the Heart

How to Change Your City - Part 2 of 6

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:30:55 +0000

Last week I began a series of blogs which draw on the life and example of William Booth to help us understand how to change the cities we live in. Wherever we live and whatever our circumstances, we all have plenty to learn from the founder of the Salvation Army who transformed late-nineteenth-century London through his radical lifestyle. I’ve been studying many of the best biographies to come up with Ten Things William Booth Did Which Changed The Face of His City. I believe that they are the things which we can do to change our cities too.

In the first blog in this series, I looked at Factor #1: Radical Personal Commitment to Jesus. In this blog, I will look at factors #2 and #3.

FACTOR #2: FIERCE AMBITION FOR THE NAME OF JESUS.

Ambition gets a bad press in Christian circles, but William Booth’s example reminds us that our biggest danger is not too much ambition, but too little. Sure, the English translations of Philippians 2:3 warn us to “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit,” but they are actually a mistranslation of what Paul says in Greek. He doesn’t warn against ambition in such verses, but against strife. When he uses the Greek word for ambition, he does so positively, assuming that a Christian will naturally be ambitious for Jesus’ name. He writes in Romans 15:20 that “It has always been my ambition to preach the Gospel where Christ was not known.” What set William Booth apart from the other Christians of his era was a relentless ambition to see Jesus honoured as Lord.

Perhaps his best biographer, Roy Hattersely, writes that “William Booth believed in ‘active Christianity’ - the moral duty of God’s ministers to go out into the highways and byways and make them come in. His style of evangelism was a living reproach to every vicar in whose parish he preached and every minister whose circuit he invaded … ‘Go to the people with the message of salvation, instead of expecting them to come to you.’”

He confided to his wife Catherine that he could never be satisfied with preaching Jesus to a few faithful believers in church on Sunday. How could he, when the majority of Victorian Londoners did not honour Christ as Lord? He insisted, “The Saviour didn’t command His apostles to be preachers of sermons; He sent them forth as witnesses of their experience of saving grace. I must do no less.”

William Booth’s fierce ambition for Jesus’ name was easily misinterpreted by his enemies. They accused him of trying to build a name for himself, of interfering in their parishes, and of generally making an exhibition of himself. He retorted, “Some may find fault with me and say that I made an exhibition of myself. That is what I have been doing with myself for my Master’s sake all my life.”

If you are reading this, then it’s probably because you want to change your city like William Booth. Ask God, therefore, to give you a similar fierce, burning ambition to see the name of Jesus glorified in your city. Ask him to make you grieve over the way his name is dishonoured and used as a swear word, and ask him to show you ways to risk your own name for the sake of his. Be willing to look foolish so that he can look great. Ambition for Christ begins by seeing your city as it truly is. William Booth asks us: “How can anybody with spiritual eyesight talk of having no call when there are still multitudes around them who have never heard a word about God, and never intend to, who can never hear without the sort of preacher who can force himself upon them?!”

FACTOR #3: DEEP HUMILITY

Humility is the flip side of fierce ambition for the sake of Christ, since it is usually pride and a desire for self-preservation which prevents us from risking everything so that Jesus can be glorified. Booth was relatively unsuccessful in his first few months and years in London because the Lord wanted to teach him in no uncertain terms that he was just a frail man. He wanted to teach him to be still and know that God was God. It was only after Booth wrote to a friend that “I am waking up as from a dream and discovering that my hopes are vanity and that I literally know nothing” that God started using him in amazing ways.

Stripped of his pride and of his desire to be seen as someone great, William Booth was finally ready to be used by God. He booked one of the city’s worst brothels for a series of evangelistic meetings in order to proclaim Jesus’ name in the place where it was most defiled, and he immediately experienced an angry backlash from the city’s Christians. “Go there and you will lose your reputation at once and forever,” he was told. “It is the most disreputable den in the country, the worst slum in the city.” Booth simply shrugged his shoulders and declared, “Then that’s the place for us.” His evangelistic mission in the brothel made him one of the most hated and unpopular figures in the city, but it also reached thousands of prostitutes, gamblers and mixed-up sinners who gave their lives to God.

So let’s end this blog with a question: When did you last risk being hated so that Jesus would be loved? When did you last throw away your reputation so that Jesus would be held in high esteem?

It’s time to ask the Lord to give us a deep humility with regard to self, and to replace our pride with a fierce ambition to see Jesus glorified. It’s time for us to stop playing safe and to go on the offensive with the Gospel. It’s time for us to learn from William Booth how to change our cities.

The final four installments of “How to Change Your City” will follow over the next few days.

God Loves Kingston Too

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:52:32 +0000

When Queens Road Church ran a billboard campaign before Christmas claiming that “God Still Loves Southwest London”, we really meant it. But God meant it even more.

Even as we paid the price to proclaim the good news about Jesus to Wimbledon, God was busy behind the scenes to open up a door for us to proclaim it wider.

Several months ago, I spent an hour with the man who has masterminded Holy Trinity Brompton’s strategy of planting churches in the defunct buildings of dead Anglican churches. I left the seminar and went to Starbucks for a prearranged meeting with the pastor of Kingston Baptist Church. When he shared with me that his church was in terminal decline and about to close its doors for good, I urged him not to surrender the fight so easily. I encouraged him to remember his church’s history, and to use the blessings of the past to spur him on to fight for its future.

And what a past Kingston Baptist Church has. Planted in 1662 out of the Dissenter revival which gripped London after the English Civil War, God used it in amazing ways to transform seventeenth-century Kingston. When problems set in and the church entered a spiral of decline, it was replanted through a fresh revival when John Wesley came to Kingston in 1790. The church was very fruitful but hit internal problems and decline once again, so Charles Spurgeon replanted the church in 1864. “Fight for the church,” I urged the pastor, but he was weary. He said he had no fight left in him and was leaving in a few weeks’ time, but he urged me to step up and fight for the church in his stead. He asked me to email the church members offering help if Kingston Baptist Church were ever about to close its doors.

I sent the email but several months went by without an answer, so the rest of the Queens Road elders and I focused on God’s mission to Wimbledon and the surrounding area. Then suddenly, out of the blue, I was contacted by the Baptist Moderator who wanted to talk urgently about KBC. They had voted to close their Sunday services in December and to give the keys to Queens Road Church so that we could launch a fresh new chapter of fruitfulness. This triggered three months of meetings and discussions with lawyers, accountants, builders and prophets so that we could weigh up whether this was a distraction or a call from God.

God was really good to us in this period and gave us compelling direction whilst we analysed the detail. He arrested me one morning in my daily Bible readings by Jesus’ statement in Mark 1:38: “Let us go on to surrounding towns too, so that I can preach there also - that is the reason I have come.” He also spoke to us through a prophetic picture from Guy Miller (CityGate Church, Bournemouth) of two wells of living water. One well represented Queens Road Church and was pumping life-giving water to the area surrounding Wimbledon. The other well represented Kingston Baptist Church, but it was so full of rocks and mud and muck that it looked as if it had no water. Guy prophesied that it was an artesian well, and that we would find the same living water flowing under the muck if we simply rolled up our sleeves and started digging. We came to the conclusion as elders that God was behind this opportunity, and that he wanted to use us to reopen this disused well in Kingston.

Finally, following a series of miracles, we met with what was left of Kingston Baptist Church on Sunday 15th January. We told the church that we were willing to help them so long as they accepted the Queens Road elders as the new leaders of KBC, brought us into membership and then resigned themselves. They needed to give us the authority we needed to lead the church into all that God has for it in this fresh season. Remarkably, they voted us in as the new elders and membership of KBC before standing down en masse as members themselves. This remarkable remnant of one of Kingston’s oldest and most influential churches decided to sacrifice their present so that the future of KBC could be as glorious as its past.

There are many practical questions which are raised by this wonderful, God-given opportunity. You can find some answers by coming to our Pray For This City event from 6:30-8:00pm on Sunday 5th February at Queens Road Church, and from 6:30-8:00pm on Sunday 4th March at the Kingston Baptist Church building. There will be a tour of the building and a chance to celebrate its past as we lay hold of God in prayer for its magnificent future.

In the meantime, you can find some immediate answers by reading the Q&A sheet below. We have tried to keep it to two pages for the sake of brevity, but if your question isn’t included then any of the Queens Road leaders would be happy to give more in depth answers.

God still loves Southwest London. When you hear the rest of the amazing story of how he has entrusted us with Kingston Baptist Church, you’ll believe it even more than ever!

SOME ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS REGARDING KINGSTON BAPTIST CHURCH

Written by Phil Moore (QRC, Wimbledon) and Simon Virgo (King’s Church, Kingston)

Kingston Baptist Church has been declining in size for quite some time. At the request of its outgoing lead pastor, the elders of Queens Road Church began to offer help to the few people who were left. KBC decided to close its Sunday service in December and have made a historic decision with regards to their future.

1. What was agreed at the KBC Special Church Meeting on Sunday 15^th January?

The members of Kingston Baptist Church voted to close this chapter of their history and to open a new one with the help of Queens Road Church. The existing members all resigned their membership, and before they did so, they voted Phil Moore in as their lead pastor, the other QRC elders in as their assistant pastors and deacons, and the six QRC elders and their wives in as the new church membership.

2. So what will this mean for the future of KBC?

The QRC elders have committed to replanting a Sunday worship service in the KBC building as soon as possible. Given the current state of the church building, this will need to be after renovation works are completed, which probably means early in 2013.

There is no viable KBC congregation, so QRC will initially establish a new QRC service in Kingston. QRC currently has two Sunday morning services in Wimbledon and will move to having three Sunday morning services: two at Queens Road in Wimbledon and one at Kingston Baptist Church.

The long-term aim is for Kingston Baptist Church to stand on its own two feet again. However, this replant is such a large project that QRC has committed not to cut the church loose before it is ready. We want to build towards strength rather than weakness, and this may mean being linked together for quite some time.

3. Why didn’t KBC simply give their building to King’s Church Kingston?

Like most Baptist churches, the KBC building is held in trust by the Baptist Union. They were unable to give their building to King’s Church because it is not a Baptist church, but they were attracted to help from QRC because it is a Baptist-Newfrontiers church, which King’s Church is not. (Meanwhile, King’s Church has been in pursuit of a different building, which they feel God has been leading them towards.)

4. Isn’t it a bit strange to have two Newfrontiers churches in Kingston Borough?

Not at all. King’s Church currently gathers 0.1% of the borough on a Sunday morning, and KBC currently gathers 0.01% of the borough! Kingston borough is home to almost 200,000 people – more than double the size of Bedford where there are currently 4 Newfrontiers churches!

Given how unchurched most people who live in Kingston borough are, the strange thing to have done would have been to have said no to KBC and let a church with great potential die.

5. To what degree have the leaders of Queens Road Church and King’s Church worked together in this decision?

Phil Moore met with the King’s Church elders within a week of the members of KBC asking for help. Phil and Simon Virgo have been in regular meetings and phone contact throughout this decision.

The elders of both churches met together for a whole evening at the start of January in order to weigh this opportunity together. The meeting ended with the leaders of both churches feeling positive and beginning to talk about how we might reach Kingston Borough as two churches with a common goal.

6. How important will working together with King’s Church Kingston be for QRC & KBC?

Queens Road has a fantastic relationship with King’s Church. King’s was planted out of Queens Road 20 years ago and there are many deep friendships across the two churches which go back decades. Both churches are also firmly committed to the vision of Newfrontiers. Working together is therefore crucially important.

King’s Church has some fantastic momentum of its own, with a major building project likely and with Terry & Wendy Virgo having recently moved to become part of the church. The QRC elders want to reach Kingston for Christ alongside King’s Church without hanging onto the King’s Church coat-tails in an unhelpful way!

7. What is the history and background of Kingston Baptist Church?

KBC’s history dates back to the 1660s, when a church was planted by faith in reaction to King Charles II’s Act of Uniformity in 1662 which threatened to limit the spread of the Gospel. After many fruitful decades, it fell into decline and was replanted in 1790 by those who had been transformed by John Wesley’s revival. It met from 1790 onwards in a barn on the site of the current Kingston Baptist Church. After more fruitful decades, the church once more fell into decline and was replanted by one of Charles Spurgeon’s students in 1864. This student was friends with Charles Ingrem who planted Queens Road Church a few years later. It was this historic link which made the members of KBC want to turn to the leaders of QRC for help.

8. How will this development affect people at Queens Road Church?

Finance Although the membership of KBC was very small, the church has considerable assets. It already has a third of the estimated costs of refurbishment in the bank. The church has a claim to the remainder of the money from another charity, which we will pursue. If that is unsuccessful, then the Baptist Union has agreed to loan any outstanding funds to KBC at a discounted interest rate.

Staff Workload Like any of the church plants which Queens Road has been involved with over the years, this is going to require hard work from the Staff Team. However, there is money within KBC to pay for a six-month project manager to oversee this project for the elders. Talks are in progress – watch this space.

Vision Queens Road Church has had a vision from the time it was planted in 1872 to plant new churches across Southwest London. Charles Spurgeon instructed the first QRC pastor, Charles Ingrem, in 1880 that “Near to you at Wimbledon you will find [other places] all needing Gospel work. As soon as you have got your own little church in working order, start something at each of these places. I’ll help you – go and blaze away.” The elders of Queens Road are very excited that this is not a distraction from the church’s vision, but a chance to recommit to it.

9. If I am part of Queens Road Church but live in a KT postcode, will I be expected to become part of the third service at Kingston Baptist Church?

Not at all. The QRC elders let people choose whether to come to the 9:30am or 11:30am services in Wimbledon, and they will also let people choose whether or not they wish to become part of the service in Kingston.

As launch day approaches, there will be an opportunity for people to sign up to become part of the core team which will start the new service. The QRC elders expect there to be Kingston people who choose to remain at Queens Road, and Wimbledon people who choose to travel to Kingston for a pioneering adventure. Some may even choose to support the launch for the first year before returning to a service back at Queens Road.

10. Will Queens Road Church be looking for members of King’s Church Kingston to join, to help establish the new plant?

No. As QRC sets out to re-establish KBC, the ambition is not to re-distribute the Christians in Kingston, but to establish a work which will reach out to those who as yet don’t know Jesus. QRC is replanting KBC in order to build the Kingdom of God, not a Queens Road empire! The goal is to do the same thing in Kingston as in Wimbledon: helping unbelievers to come to salvation so that they can love Jesus and live his mission with us.

11. How can I find out more details about this development?

QRC will be hosting an event, called “Pray For This City”, where there will be news and an opportunity to pray into this development. This will be held from 6:30-8:00pm on Sunday 5^th February at Queens Road Church, and from 6:30-8:00pm on Sunday 4^th March at the Kingston Baptist Church building on Union Street.

12. Who can I talk to if I have questions in the meantime?

If you are part of Queens Road Church, then talk to one of the QRC elders. If you are part of King’s Church, then talk to one of the King’s elders. The leaders of either church will be very happy to answer your questions as best they can at this stage.

God is good and he has great plans for Southwest London. Thanks for partnering with us in Jesus’ mission!

Phil Moore & Simon Virgo

Lead Pastors, Queens Road Church & King’s Church

How to Change Your City - Part 1 of 6

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:34:20 +0000

A few weeks ago I posted the first part of a six-part series of blogs entitled “How to Change Your City”. I then got distracted - fittingly enough! - with plans to plant a new church in London. We heard a few days ago that the hard work had paid off and the church plant is going to be live by the end of this year. I can now focus on giving you the full series of blogs outlining “How to Change Your City”, and I am reposting the first blog to restart the series. The final five blogs will all be posted a few days at a time. Enjoy…

The cities of our world are in desperate need of the power of God. If you haven’t worked that out yet, then you must be living in a monastery. Last summer my own city, London, was on fire as rioters and looters roamed free. It’s time for Christians to get serious with God, and to find out how he tells us we can change our cities through his power.

A few months ago, I began looking for someone whom God had used to change my city in the past, and who might prove to be a model for a fresh move of God today. That led to me reading three biographies of William Booth, and over the next few weeks I’m going to blog Ten Things William Booth Did Which Changed The Face of His City. I believe that they are things which we can do to change our cities too.

William Booth was born in 1829, and converted as a 15-year-old in Nottingham. He moved to London in 1850, aged 21, but made little impact on the city which would one day be transformed through his godly example. The real breakthrough only came in 1865, when aged 36 he began to preach to the drunken inhabitants of London’s poor East End. In the three years leading up to 1868, he saw 4,000 converted and planted 13 preaching centres which held 140 services per week. After ten years more, this became 81 preaching stations which gathered 27,280 worshippers each week. By 1884 - less than two decades after his initial breakthrough - he had started 910 corps comprising 2,332 officers, who took revival across the city and to the nations of the world.

We are at a stage in history where God wants to transform not only London but all the other great cities of the world. The question is whether we will imitate the example of William Booth and others like him? In this blog post, let me start with the first factor through which he changed his city:-

FACTOR ONE: RADICAL PERSONAL COMMITMENT TO JESUS

William Booth’s revival began very simply with a personal revival in secret. Although he was only a 15-year-old boy when he was converted, he was determined that Jesus should have all there was of him. He was instantly convicted that some of his friends had given him a silver pencil case to say thank you for a favour he had done for them, but that he had actually only done them the favour because it was in his own interest to do so. He felt a fraud and agonised over the Holy Spirit’s conviction that he had sinned and must make amends. He remembered later:

“The entrance to the Heavenly Kingdom was closed against me by an evil act of the past which required restitution. In a boyish trading affair I had managed to make a profit out of my companions while giving them to suppose that what I did was all in the way of genuine fellowship. As a result of their gratitude, they gave me a silver pencil case. Merely to have returned the gift would have been easy, but to confess the deception I had practised upon them was a humiliation to which, for some days I could not bring myself … I remember, as it were but yesterday, the spot in the corner of the chapel [where God gave me strength], the resolution to end the matter rising up, the rushing forth, the finding of the young fellows I had chiefly wronged, the acknowledgement of my sin, the return of the pencil case – the instant rolling away from my heart of the guilty burden, the peace that came in its place, and the going forth to serve my God and my generation from that hour.”

The reason he moved to London in the first place, aged 21, was that he made another stand for what he saw as God’s call to serve the Lord with all his heart. He was working in a Nottingham pawnbroker’s and Saturday evening was the busiest time of the week, as factory workers pawned their possessions to pay for a night out on the town. William Booth was convicted that he should not work past midnight and therefore “labour on the Sabbath”. He understood the Sabbath to be an expression of Christian faith, where believers put down their tools and stopped working to express their faith that God was God and they were not. His boss might want to work into the early hours of Sunday because he did not trust the Lord to provide for him on the other six days of the week, but William Booth did not. When his friends at church advised him he was being too radical, and when his boss threatened to fire him and throw him out of his lodgings above the shop if he left work early, Booth decided to honour the Lord anyway. “I am willing to begin on Monday morning as soon as the clock strikes twelve and work until the clock strikes twelve on Saturday night, but not one hour or one minute of Sunday will I work for you or all your money,” he told his boss and was duly fired. The most common word which William Booth used for Jesus throughout his life was “the Master”, and he lived from his early Christian days as if he really meant it.

William Booth was asked in an interview towards the end of his life to describe the secret of his success. He replied: “I will tell you the secret. God has had all there was of me. There have been men with greater opportunities; but from the day I got the poor of London on my heart, and a vision of what Jesus Christ could do with the poor of London, I made up my mind that God would have all of William Booth there was. And if there is anything of power in The Salvation Army today, it is because God has all the adoration of my heart, all the power of my will, and all the influence of my life.” The interviewer commented that “I learned from William Booth that the greatness of a man’s power is the measure of his surrender. It is not a question of who you are or of what you are, but of whether God controls you.”

The question, of course, is will we do the same? Many people claim that they want God to revive their city, but few are willing to pay the price-tag of the personal revival which precedes Jesus using us like William Booth. We need to understand what he meant in his hymn, made famous by my friend Lex Loizides, when he wrote a revival prayer for his Salvation Army to sing together: “Oh, see us on Your altar lay, We give our lives to you today, So crown the offering now we pray: Send the fire today!”

Perhaps you are a church leader, longing for God to revive your city. Take note, then, of what happened to Miriam when she was one of the leaders of God’s People in Numbers 12. When she failed to deal with the sin of gossip and maligned someone to her brother privately in her tent - a seemingly innocuous sin - the Lord stopped the whole nation from advancing until she had repented. Verse 15 tells us that “the people did not move on till she was brought back.” Could it be that your church is not moving on because you view your secret sins as innocuous, but God views them as deadly?

Perhaps you are a Christian who is simply passionate to see God’s Kingdom come in your city. If so, you are just like William Booth, the student and the pawnbroker’s assistant. Learn from his life and from the experience of other men like him, such as the missionary CT Studd. He wrote that “What I would have you gather is that God does not deal with you until you are wholly given up to him, and then he will tell you what he would have you do.” If you want your city to turn to Christ through you, you must first turn to Christ in radical obedience yourself. If you want your city to know Jesus as Master, then you must first start living as if he is truly Master of your own life.

This is the first of ten factors from the life of William Booth which I will blog over the next few weeks, but it is the starting point from which the others flow. If you love Jesus and hate sin with the same radical devotion as William Booth, then you are embarking on God’s great training course in how to change your city.

A Third of a Ton of Christmas!

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:33:23 +0000

I was Ebenezer Scrooge this morning, and it felt fantastic.

Everybody knows the Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol”. Even my young children know it, because one of our family traditions is to watch the Muppets version of the story every year during the run-up to Christmas. It charts the conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge from an old miser to a repentant sinner during the short space of a solitary Christmas Eve. None of us want to be Ebenezer Scrooge in a bad way, but there’s nothing quite like being Ebenezer Scrooge in a good way.

Like Zacchaeus in Luke 19, Scrooge instinctively realises that genuine conversion affects how we treat one another. He sees that there is no point in claiming that we love Jesus and want to follow him unless our claim is matched with heartfelt love towards the people he has made. The story ends with Ebenezer Scrooge rushing around London on Christmas morning to give gifts to anybody he can find who is in need.

I’m so thrilled that Queens Road Church has acted like Ebenezer Scrooge in a good way this Christmas. We’ve challenged one another to put our love for Jesus into action by donating food for the Wimbledon Foodbank so that it can be put into food parcels and given out to some of the families in Southwest London who are most in need. So far (and we are still collecting donations for two more weeks) we have collected a third of a ton of food which I drove to the Foodbank this morning in time for Christmas. Marcus Bennett, who leads the Foodbank, tells me that this makes Queens Road Church the single biggest donor to the Wimbledon Foodbank since it was started. A lot of people are going to be helped through the generosity of many.

So if you are part of Queens Road Church and have been involved in this offering, then well done. You have been like Ebenezer Scrooge in a good way.

And if you’re not part of Queens Road Church, then enjoy this Christmas season and mark it by becoming like a converted Ebenezer Scrooge too. Jesus told us that the poor would be with us wherever we live. Look for ways to meet the needs of those around you in Jesus’ name this Christmas time.

And finally, in the words of Tiny Tim Cratchit in the last line of “A Christmas Carol” - “Merry Christmas, one and all!”

Christopher Hitchens Believes in God

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 23:27:51 +0000

Christopher Hitchens believes in God. He didn’t when he died last Friday.

One of the sharpest, wittiest, most intelligent modern British writers, Christopher Hitchens published his best-selling book “God Is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything” in 2007. He spent the last four years of his life promoting his book and its message before cancer of the oesophagus forced him to cancel his preaching tour. There may be more dangerous things for a person to do with their final four years of life, but I can’t think of any and it makes me feel great grief for a man who grieved so very little for himself.

Christopher Hitchens was superbly intelligent, but he failed to turn his intelligence into wisdom. When Psalm 14 tells us that “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God,’” it isn’t being rude to atheists. It is simply pointing out that when they rage against the idea of a divine creator they fail to notice their instinctive knowledge of who he is. Hitchens’ writing doesn’t rage against the Buddha, pagan idols or any vague sense of the divine. He is very clear about the God he doesn’t believe in. He instinctively rages against God as described in the Bible.

Christopher Hitchens was superbly inquisitive, but he failed to turn his curiosity into investigation. Although he admitted in his book that “Exceptional claims require exceptional evidence,” he failed to offer due diligence to the evidence for Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. American historian Professor William Hamblin reviewed his book and concluded that “It is quite clear that Hitchens’ understanding of biblical studies is flawed at best … Hitchens’ understanding of the Bible is at the level of a confused undergraduate.” God gave Christopher Hitchens a brain which could have delved as deep as any professor into the all of the exceptional evidence he was looking for in the life of Jesus. The great tragedy of his life is that he used God’s gift to resist the one who gave it to him.

Christopher Hitchens was articulate about what he thought of God, but very poor at listening to what God thought of him. God asks in Psalm 2, “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Messiah. ‘Let us break their chains and throw off their fetters,’ they say. But the One-Enthroned-In-Heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.” Even Christopher Hitchens, the king of the clever one-liner, had nothing in his arsenal to reply to God the Judge. It is destined for everyone to die and then face judgment. Hitchens’ book was loud and popular, but it was God who had the last word.

That’s why it gave me no pleasure whatsoever to hear that Christopher Hitchens had died as blinkered and deaf towards God as ever. It simply made me sad that he held his soul so cheaply that he gambled it away without self-analysis, detailed study or humble listening. He wrote in his book that “The Gospel story of the Garden of Gethsemane used to absorb me very much as a child, because its ‘break’ in the action and its human whimper made me wonder if some of the fantastic scenario might after all be true. Jesus asks, in effect, ‘Do I have to go through with this?’ It is an impressive and unforgetable question, and I long ago decided that I would cheerfully wager my own soul on the belief that the only right answer to it is ‘no.’”

It was a flippant wager, one which meant destruction for his soul, and one which warns us all not to let our clever rhetoric drown out the gracious voice of God. Christopher Hitchens’ died an atheist, but moments later - too late, tragically - he suddenly believed in God.

Straight to the Heart Series Now Available as eBooks and on Kindle

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 10:08:00 +0000

Great news. The first Kindle and eBook versions of the Straight To The Heart series of devotional commentaries are now out and available to download from Amazon and other good online retailers.

Just in time for Christmas. What could a husband or wife, son or daughter, mum or dad, and boyfriend or girlfriend possibly find a more romantic gift on Christmas morning?!

God Still Remembers What Happened in Colliers Wood

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 07:30:06 +0000

Colliers Wood is normally famous for the wrong reasons.

If you aren’t from the UK then you probably haven’t heard of Colliers Wood at all. If you are, then you probably know it as home to the office block which was voted “Britain’s ugliest building” or as the place where looters set fire to PC World and attacked police cars last summer. You may know it as one of Southwest London’s lesser-loved communities, but that’s only because you don’t remember the things that God does. And I got excited last night when he started to remind us.

Nine hundred years ago, a group of Christians built a monastery at the heart of the community which is now known as Colliers Wood. On 3rd May 1117AD they opened Merton Priory on the bank of the River Wandle and started praying that God would work in power in their community. Day after day and year after year, the monks of Merton Priory asked God to bless their part of England and use it to change the world. In the years which followed, that’s exactly what he did.

Merton Priory became a spiritual home to King John I, and it was from there that he was forced to sign the Magna Carta at nearby Runnymede in 1215AD. The document which gave birth to modern democracy was therefore bound up in the prayers of the monks at Merton Priory who gave King John guidance when his noblemen rebelled against him.

King Henry III also made the priory his spiritual home, and it was in the Chapter House of Merton Priory that he signed the Statutes of Merton in 1236AD, the first and founding documents of English Common Law. The dawn of the modern legal system can therefore also be linked to the monks’ faithful prayers.

The monks continued to serve the community which is now known as Colliers Wood, holding daily intercession for their area and becoming known for their faith for miraculous healing. King Henry VI was crowned at Merton Priory, and thgere is considerable evidence that he played a part in its healing ministry.

But in 1538, King Henry VIII closed the priory by force, confiscated its land, and literally dismantled it stone by stone in order to build his own palace at nearby Nonsuch. Merton Priory and its monks were forgotten by the world, but they were not forgotten by God.

In the 1970s and 80s, the ruins of the Chapter House of Merton Priory were found and excavated. Although they are now situated underneath the A24 flyover and sandwiched between a Sainsbury’s hypermarket on one side and a Pizza Hutt on the other, the ruins can be accessed by a few groups each year. Last night a group from Queens Road Church were permitted to hold a carol service there, and its past began to be revived. Sixty people. Forty of them following in the footsteps of the monks, praying for God to work in their community and bless and use Colliers Wood beyond their wildest dreams. Twenty of them non-church guests who had been drawn by the venue and by the rumour that God still loves Colliers Wood.

As I took part in the carol service amidst the ancient ruins and heard Sean Hammond, leader of the Queens Road Colliers Wood Pastorate, sharing his vision for a fresh wave of prayer for the tens of thousands of people who now live within a mile of Merton Priory, I started to get very excited.

I felt God’s reminder that even if we think of Colliers Wood in terms of ugly office blocks or rioting, then he doesn’t at all. He still remembers what happened in Colliers Wood many generations ago, and he is still committed to answering those monks’ prayers. He is raising up a new generation who will continue to pray where they left off, and who will ask him to bless Southwest London and, through it, change the world.

How to Change Your City - part one

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:47:53 +0100

The cities of our world are in desperate need of the power of God. If you haven’t worked that out yet, then you must be living in a monastery. Last month my own city, London, was on fire as rioters and looters roamed free. It’s time for Christians to get serious with God, and to find out how he tells us we can change our cities through his power.

At the start of this year, I began looking for someone whom God had used to change my city in the past, and who might prove to be a model for a fresh move of God today. That led to me reading three biographies of William Booth, and over the next few weeks I’m going to blog Ten Things William Booth Did Which Changed The Face of His City. I believe that they are thrings which we can do to change our cities too.

We are at a stage in history where God wants to transform not only London but all the other great cities of the world. The question is whether we will imitate the example of William Booth and others like him? Let me start in this blog post with the first factor through which he changed his city:-

FACTOR ONE: RADICAL PERSONAL COMMITMENT TO JESUS

A Christian Response to the Rioting and Looting in London

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 17:00:42 +0100

As I write this, riot police are gathering outside Queens Road Church in response to a tip off that the rioting and looting is going to spread to Wimbledon tonight. I’ve just been walking amongst the gathered policemen and felt the strange sense of fear which has gripped London over recent nights.

News reporters and politicians have been shocked and surprised by the sudden outbreak of violence, arson and theft, but God hasn’t. He predicted in 2 Timothy 3 that “There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” Many of us are just waking up to what it looks like when a city turns its back on God in pursuit of self-worship and of greed. As far as God is concerned, London has been in riot for many years.

So many Christians are asking how they should respond, and many non-Christians are looking to the church for some answers. I would like to suggest three things which we all need to remember as we watch London burning and being looted on the news.

1. Remember that the Devil hates London.

If you remember this, it will help you make sense of the anarchy. When Jesus told us in John 10:10 that the Devil “comes only to steal and kill and destroy,” he really meant it. The Devil is like Professor Moriarty, the arch-criminal of London, as Sherlock Holmes describes him in the short story ‘The Final Problem’: “He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organiser of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them.” Most of the time, the Devil tries to hide in the shadows and work in secret across our city. When he steps out into the open, like this week, it need not be a bad thing if it stirs the People of God to wake up and to pray. It doesn’t matter if Satan does his worst if it stirs God’s People to do their best, and if it helps us…

2. Remember that God loves London

This is the city where the Gospel was rediscovered and championed by reformers in the sixteenth century. This is the city which sent more missionaries out to the nations of the world with the Gospel than virtually any other. This is the city of William Booth and his Salvation Army revival which spread all across the world. This is the city of the Alpha Course which God has used to reach hundreds of thousands across the world for Christ. You may look at burning London and assume God has finished with this city. I encourage you to look at this city’s history with God and to think again.

One historian of London in the early 1700s describes the situation in those days: “Robbers and murderers abounded. Gangs of drunken ruffians paraded the streets and subjected women to nameless outrages and defenceless men to abominable tortures … It seemed as if the whole population were given over to an orgy of drunkeness, which made the very name of Englishmen stink in the nostrils of other nations … Crimes of violence multiplied on every hand.” Yet when Christians began praying and imploring God to save their city, they discovered his great love for London all along. John Wesley was able to write in his letters in 1738: “In London … there is a general awakening and multitudes are crying out, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ … The word of the Lord runs and is glorified, and his work goes on and prospers. Great multitudes are everywhere awakened and cry out, ‘What must we do to be saved?’”

3. Remember that Jesus will save many in this city.

Psalm 2 describes a conversation between God the Father and Jesus the Son: “He said to me, ‘You are my Son … Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.” Jesus has decided to save many Londoners as part of his plan to save people from every nation, and he has asked God the Father to turn this city back to him - either willingly through gentle coaxing, or by shaking it out of its complacent sleep. God the Father has promised to answer Jesus’ prayer. Let’s not panic. Let’s keep adding our own prayers to those of Jesus.

At the end of Revelation 2, Jesus turns to his church and tells us that the promise of Psalm 2 belongs to us as well as him. He tells us to pray for London as it reels from rioting and looting - with a promise that will use the Devil’s worst to bring about his best plans for our city.

When Should a Christian Join the Revolution?!

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:04:31 +0100

“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.” (Romans 13:1)

Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not, so is the Gospel a call to political revolution? The fact that this question is so surprising to most of us is simply proof of how far from Paul’s message we have strayed. We treat “Jesus is Lord” as a spiritual pleasantry, while both his disciples and his enemies understood that it meant far more. How could the Christians at Rome continue to live under Caesar in the light of the fact that Jesus is the new King in town? Paul answers their question at the start of chapter 13, because if the Gospel doesn’t change our politics then we haven’t understood it.

In verses 1 to 6, Paul insists that the Gospel makes Christians the most loyal of subjects. Unlike unbelievers, who submit to their rulers out of fear, the Gospel teaches us to submit to them out of conscience towards God. It tells us that even the Emperor Nero’s reign did not begin with his mother’s murder of Claudius. It began with the Lord, who planned his accession and established him as Emperor to be “God’s servant to do you good.” Astonishingly, since Nero would order Paul’s beheading, Paul tells the Romans that Nero only “bears the sword” because God entrusted it to his hand. Perhaps inspired by David’s refusal to lay a hand on King Saul because he was the Lord’s anointed ruler, Paul tells his readers to honour their rulers and be more loyal to them than any of their unbelieving courtiers. Paul’s fellow martyr, Peter, gave similar instructions: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors … Fear God, honour the king.”

In verse 7, Paul adds that the Gospel makes Christians the most courageous of subjects. They pay their rulers honour and taxes and everything else that they are owed, but they are not afraid to point out where that obligation ends. The Hebrew midwives refused Pharaoh’s wicked command in Exodus 1:15-21. Peter did the same in Acts 4:19 and 5:29 when he saw rulers overstepping their God-given authority: “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God … We must obey God rather than men!” The Romans did as Paul commanded and were able to tell Caesar that “We pray without ceasing for all our emperors. We pray for long life, for security to the empire, for protection to the imperial house, for brave armies, a faithful senate, a virtuous people, the world at rest, whatever an emperor would wish … but we refuse to swear by the Caesars as gods.”

How you apply these two principles to the politics of your nation will vary depending on the country you live in. But to help you do so, let me tell you about three people who have tried to apply them under difficult conditions in Germany.

We have already seen that Martin Luther loved the book of Romans, so he was thrown hard against these verses when the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope commanded him to stop preaching its message. When they put him on trial at the Diet of Worms in 1521, he remembered verse 7 and told his rulers that “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason – I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other – my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me.”

Four years later, however, Martin Luther panicked. The German peasants had rebelled against the princes who had power to undo the Reformation and restore the Church to Rome. He grasped at the fact that Pilate found Jesus innocent of rebellion when he told him that “My kingdom is not of this world”, and used it to separate the world into two distinct realms: the spiritual Church and the secular State. So long as rulers didn’t meddle in spiritual affairs, he taught believers that Romans 13:1-6 meant silent submission towards political injustice. He wrote a pamphlet against the peasants in 1525, arguing that “Nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful or demonic than a rebel … Fine Christians they are! I think there is not a demon left in hell; they have all gone into the peasants!”

This was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s view initially, as a Lutheran pastor in early-1930s Germany. Yet he came to believe that this Christian withdrawal from the political arena was effectively condoning Adolf Hitler. He led the Christian opposition to the Nazi regime, arguing that the Church must not just “bandage the victims under the wheel, but jam the spoke in the wheel itself.” He submitted to Hitler’s government but became its most vocal critic. This led to his being hanged naked, using piano wire, in one of the Nazi concentration camps in the last days of the war. The medic who witnessed his death testified later that “In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”

Christian Fuehrer drew inspiration from Bonhoeffer as pastor of the St Nicholas Church in Leipzig, East Germany. He was sickened by the injustice of his Communist rulers, and decided to apply Paul’s teaching in Romans 13. He refused to treat secular politics as a no-go area for Christians, and in 1982 started ‘peace prayers’ every Monday evening at his church. For seven years he led ever-growing numbers of East Germans in prayer that the Lord would save their land. Finally, on Monday 9th October 1989, a crowd of seventy thousand gathered at his church to demand that the injustice end. Their placards bore Christian Fuehrer’s message of “No Violence!” and, as the protest quickly spread to other cities, one month later the Berlin Wall came down. One protester was asked who had planned this revolution, and replied that “There was only one leadership: Monday, 5pm, St Nicholas Church.” Horst Sindermann, the former Prime Minister of East Germany, agreed: “We were prepared for everything. But not for candles and prayers.”

The political situations around the world are very different, but my prayer is that these three examples will help you to apply these seven verses to your own. Paul tells us in his first six verses that the Gospel means we are to be more loyal to our rulers than anyone else in the land. Then he tells us in his seventh verse that we must also be courageous enough to point it out whenever they overstep the line. If we render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, whilst remembering he is “God’s servant to do you good”, then we can be the best of citizens because Jesus is the new King in town.

This chapter is taken from Phil Moore’s new book “Straight to the Heart of Romans”, which is subtitled “There’s a New King in Town”.
To read more chapters, go to www.philmoorebooks.com

BREAKING NEWS: BOOK LAUNCH TODAY This morning sees the launch...

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 09:29:27 +0100

BREAKING NEWS: BOOK LAUNCH TODAY

This morning sees the launch of the sixth and seventh volumes in the “Straight to the Heart” series of devotional commentaries.

Romans is about the Gospel: What it is, what it does, how to live it and how to share it. It’s a revolutionary pamphlet, and it still makes dangerous reading.

Moses takes a trip through Exodus and the other three books which chart Israel’s journey through the desert. God still wants to be seen through his people, so this ancient story is more relevant than this morning’s newspaper.

Read the first chapters of both new books at www.philmoorebooks.com/books

God Wants to Be Seen Through His People

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 08:00:06 +0100

Yesterday I began to celebrate the launch of volumes 6 and 7 of the “Straight to the Heart” series of devotional commentaries on Friday 1st July. I posted the first chapter of “Straight to the Heart of Romans” to give you a sneak preview. Today I’m continuing by posting the opening chapter of “Straight to the Heart of Moses”. This is the volume which covers some of the most ancient books in the Bible - Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy - but as you’ll see, the message of those books is as relevant today as it ever was in the Egyptian desert.

INTRODUCTION: GOD WANTS TO BE SEEN THROUGH HIS PEOPLE

“Then the Lord said: ‘I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the Lord, will do for you.” (Exodus 34:10)

God is invisible. That’s a problem. It was a problem in ancient Egypt and it’s still a problem today. In a world where people tend to worship what they can see and feel and taste and touch, an invisible God is all too easy to ignore.

Take, for example, John Lennon’s boast to a reporter in March 1966 that “We’re more popular than Jesus now”. Although many Christians found his tactless comment quite offensive, it was difficult for them to deny the raw facts behind his claim. The Beatles had just held the largest music concert in human history, filling a New York City stadium with 55,000 screaming fans. In the nine days since the release of their new album they had sold 1.2 million copies in America alone. In contrast five weeks later, ‘Time Magazine’ ran a cover story which asked the provocative question “Is God Dead?” Quoting from a spoof obituary, it speculated from the shrinking congregations of most Western churches that: “God, creator of the universe, principal deity of the world’s Jews, ultimate reality of Christians and most eminent of all divinities, died late yesterday during major surgery undertaken to correct a massive diminishing influence.” That’s the basic problem: Even a visible human can draw more worship than an invisible God.

Got that? Then you are ready for the books which Moses wrote in the desert. The Pentateuch (the word is simply Greek for five-volumed story) recounts the invisible God’s master plan to make himself seen. More glorious than the gods of Egypt; more powerful than the gods of Canaan; more satisfying than the gods of the twenty-first-century Western world – the invisible God would be seen through his People.

Another book in this series covers volume one of the Pentateuch, Genesis, in which the Lord began to make himself visible. Paul reflects on those early chapters in Romans 1: “What may be known about God is plain to [all people], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” Yet because humans sin and close their eyes to this revelation, the Lord executes a plan which makes him impossible to ignore. He chooses Abraham and his family to make the rulers of the nations exclaim that “God is with you in everything you do”, and “Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the Spirit of God?” The great finale of Genesis sees him moving the seventy members of Abraham’s family to Egypt with a missionary calling to make him visible to greatest superpower nation of their day. Sure enough, many Egyptians are saved through Israel’s God, and the curtain falls for a three-hundred-year-long interval before the start of volume two.

Exodus chapter one therefore comes as a colossal disappointment. The Egyptians are still worshipping their idols as before, and have so oppressed Abraham’s family that their faith in Yahweh starts to fail. The distant promises of Israel’s patriarchal past are so at odds with the painful realities of the present that the Hebrews are either worshipping their invisible God in private or else giving up on him entirely to serve the bold, brash and visible gods of the Egyptians they were sent to save. By the time Moses challenges Pharaoh to let God’s People go, the Lord has become so invisible that Pharaoh sneers, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go.” The scene is set for the greatest showdown of the Old Testament. The invisible God is about to be seen through his People.

In Exodus 1 to 18 the Lord displays that he is God the Saviour, laughing at overwhelming odds to free his down-and-out Hebrews from the stranglehold of slavery. In Exodus 19 to 40 he reveals that he did this because he is God the Indweller, who brought them to Mount Sinai in order to camp among them in his Tabernacle home. This leads into the message of Leviticus that he is God the Holy One who wants to be seen through his Holy People and, when they refuse to live up to this calling in Numbers, into the revelation that he is God the Faithful One as he leads and protects them for forty years in the hostile desert. In Deuteronomy he displays that he is God the Covenant Keeper, who remains true to the promises he made to their fathers even when they fail him and provoke him to anger. The Lord wants to be seen through his People, and Moses tells us that nothing can thwart him in his plan.

I have written this book because God still pursues the same strategy with us as he did in the pages of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In a world where ‘The Beatles’ are still Googled more often than ‘Jesus’, God wants to be seen through his People. In a world which still echoes with the cry of Psalm 42 – “My foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’” – God wants to be seen through his People. In a world which largely ignores the true yet invisible God, we must not skim read these books as if they were written for somebody other than ourselves.

I want to bring the pages of the Pentateuch to life for you, so that you can be like the Hebrews who “saw the great power the Lord displayed … and put their trust in him.” I want to help you reveal the invisible God to those around you, so that they exclaim like the foreigners in the Pentateuch that “Now I know that the Lord is greater than all other gods”.

So let’s journey through the pages of the Pentateuch together, learning how the Lord wants to use us to capture the attention of the world. The same invisible God who was seen through the Israelites has not changed his strategy today. It is three and a half thousand years since Moses wrote the Pentateuch, but God still wants to be seen through his People.

You can read more sample chapters by visiting www.philmoorebooks.com

Books available at www.amazon.co.uk and all good book stockists!

There's a New King in Town

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:45:13 +0100

Friday 1st July sees the launch of volumes 6 and 7 of the “Straight to the Heart” series. It’s all very exciting.

For loyal blog-followers, I’m posting an insider’s sneak preview of the opening chapter of “Straight to the Heart of Romans”. I hope you enjoy this first chapter. I think I enjoyed writing this book more than any other in the series, and am more convinced than ever that the message of this most missional of letters holds the answer to so many of the questions facing us today. Enjoy!

INTRODUCTION: THERE’S A NEW KING IN TOWN

“Paul, a servant of … Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 1:1&4)

Paul’s letter to the Romans is not just the longest surviving letter from the ancient world. It was also the most dangerous. It was written to a city where a murderer built his reign on the corpses of his rivals. Ten years later, because of the message of Romans, Paul’s own corpse would be added to his ever-growing pile.

The Emperor Nero had come to the throne in October 54AD when his mother assassinated his step-father, the Emperor Claudius. She had heard rumours that Claudius was about to disinherit Nero in favour of his son from a previous marriage, so she persuaded court officials to poison him before he could. Nothing must stand in the way of her sixteen-year-old son’s aspirations to the throne.

Nero quickly followed his mother’s example and made murder the hallmark of his insecure reign. Only weeks after becoming the most powerful ruler in the world, he consolidated his position by poisoning his step-brother. In the years which followed, he murdered his mother, two of his wives, and any nobleman who posed a threat. The Roman historian Suetonius tells us that Nero “showed neither discrimination nor moderation in putting to death whoever he pleased on any pretext whatever.” That’s why when Paul wrote from Corinth to the Christians at Rome in the spring of 57AD, his letter was as dangerous as throwing a flaming torch into a room filled with gunpowder.

Paul claimed that there was one true King and that it wasn’t Nero. Many of us miss this because we skim over Paul’s choice of words in his opening verses, but three key words cannot have failed to capture the attention of his original Roman readers.

First, he used the Greek word euangelion, which means gospel. This was a technical word used by the Caesars themselves to proclaim the news that they had fathered an heir or had won a great victory on the battlefield. An inscription in the ruins of the Greek city Priene which dates back to 9BC declares that “When Caesar appeared he exceeded the hopes of all who received the gospel … The birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning of the gospel regarding him for the world.” Paul therefore uses the word euangelion as a deliberate challenge to Caesar’s vain boast. The real Gospel was not the good news of Rome regarding Nero, but “the gospel of God … regarding his Son.”

Second, Paul used the word kurios, or Lord. This was the word used by the translators of the Old Testament into Greek to translate God’s name Yahweh, but it was also a title which the Roman Emperors used of themselves. One of Nero’s officials illustrates this by referring to him as the Kurios in Acts 25:26, so Paul’s letter told the Romans a dangerously different story. He announced the reign of “Jesus Christ our Lord” and promised in Romans 10:9 that “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Kurios,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Third, Paul used the word christos, meaning Christ or Messiah. This was the word used in the Greek Old Testament to refer to King David’s heir who would one day take his throne and establish God’s Kingdom which would last forever. Daniel 7 had even prophesied that this Messiah would face up to the iron-toothed Roman Empire and destroy it along with its boastful ruler. Now Paul claimed that this Messiah had come: Jesus of Nazareth. He was telling the Romans there was a new King in town.

Stop for a moment and think how risky that was. Jesus had been dragged before a Roman judge under the charge that “he opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Christ, a king.” When the Roman judge hesitated, Jesus’ enemies reminded him that “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.” The judge had therefore ordered that Jesus be crucified by a team of Roman soldiers, wearing a mocking crown of thorns and under a sign which told everyone what Rome thought of his claim to be “the King of the Jews”. Now Paul was claiming that God had raised this same Jesus to life, and in doing so had revealed him as the true Lord and King of the universe.

Nero was Emperor because the Praetorian Guard had supported him when he stood over the dead body of his adoptive father. Paul responded that Jesus was the true King because God had supported him when he raised his dead body back to life. Nero’s first act as Emperor had been to deify Claudius and claim to be divi filius, Latin for the son of a god. Paul responded that it was actually Jesus who “through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God.” This threat was not lost on Paul’s enemies, who accused him of “defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.”

Paul begins his letter to the Romans by telling them that the new King saves, both objectively and in day-to-day experience (chapters 1 to 5 and 6 to 8). He then settles the conflict between Jewish and Gentile Christians by explaining to both groups that the new King has a plan (chapters 9 to 11). Next, in light of this, he gets specific about what it means for both groups to accept that the new King is Lord (12:1 to 15:13). Finally, he outlines his plans to preach the Gospel across the Western Mediterranean and warns his Roman readers that the new King is advancing (15:14 to 16:27).

That’s why we mustn’t view Romans as a theological treatise which calls people to make a private response to an offer of personal salvation. Nero’s ambassadors did not cross the Empire to encourage his subjects to experience the benefits of choosing him as their Lord. They simply announced that Nero was Emperor, whether their hearers liked it or not, and that they needed to submit to his rule or face the deadly consequences. In the same way, Paul wrote this letter and sent it into Nero’s backyard to proclaim that Jesus Christ was Lord, and they needed to surrender. Nero could execute Paul ten years later in Rome as one of the last desperate acts of his disintegrating reign, but he couldn’t resist his all-conquering message. Even today, when people read Romans, they discover that King Jesus really is Lord and that his plan to save all nations is nearing its grand finale.

So let’s get ready to experience the message of Romans for ourselves. Whatever the world may have told us and whatever false gospels we may have believed, it is time for us to experience God’s Gospel concerning his Son. It is time for us to wake up to what it means when Paul tells us that there is a new King in town.

You can read more sample chapters by visiting www.philmoorebooks.com

Books available at www.amazon.co.uk and all good book stockists!

What to Do When Church Lets You Down

Tue, 24 May 2011 16:07:39 +0100

Churches aren’t perfect. If you haven’t worked that out yet, then stick around church long enough and you will. Churches are only as perfect as the repentant sinners that Jesus uses to build them. And let you down they certainly will.

Don’t get me wrong. As a church leader, I’m anything but complacent about this. God saves people with messy lives and then starts ironing out the wrinkles and removing the mucky stains. He didn’t just send his Son to die and rise again to free us them the hellish penalty of sin, but also to deliver us from the enduring power of sin. He did it, in the words of Ephesians 5:26-27, “to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”

In the meantime, if you have been disappointed by people in your church, or if you know your actions have made you a disappointment to others, then I want to encourage you with a few words which were first published as the opening chapter to a book I dedicated to Queens Road Church, Wimbledon, when it was published at the end of last year. Whatever your own experience of the Church - God’s work in progress - I hope it helps you to see it with the same eyes as the apostle Paul. I hope it helps you to See God At Work Amidst The Mess:-

“I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Corinthians 1:4)

Two of my relatives are former church leaders who have stepped out of ministry and turned their backs on the Church. If you heard their stories, you probably wouldn’t blame them. They saw church life at its worst and the disappointment crushed their spirits. Someone once said, “To dwell above with saints we love, well that will be such glory; but to dwell below with saints we know, now that’s a different story!” If you have ever found hurt instead of healing as part of a local church, then you will know that it takes more than a sense of humour to survive.

That’s why the first verses of 1 Corinthians are so surprising and so challenging. Paul doesn’t begin his letter with complaint or rebuke or disappointed finger-pointing. Instead, he tells the wayward Corinthians that “I always thank God for you.”

Hold on a minute. Always thank God for you?! Always thank God for the sinful bunch of rebels who had betrayed his trust in Corinth? Thank God for the church which was riddled with division, pride and puffed-up human wisdom? Thank God for Christians who were suing one another in the law-courts and shocking even their non-Christian neighbours with their acts of sexual perversion? Who were disorderly in worship, dishonouring the gifts of the Spirit, and drunk at the Lord’s Supper? Who were led astray by false teachers and had started doubting the reality of Jesus’ resurrection? How on earth can Paul begin his letter by telling the Corinthians that “I always thank God for you”? He explains in the second half of the verse: “because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.”

I am not very good at Magic Eye pictures. Frankly, they look like a jumbled-up mess to me. My wife, on the other hand, can do strange things with her eyes and can always see a beautiful 3D picture hidden behind all the mess. Paul did the same when he looked at the sinful church at Corinth. Instead of feeling angry and giving up in disillusion, Paul saw God’s grace at work amidst the mess.

Paul wasn’t just a wishful thinker. He didn’t try to pretend that the Corinthians were doing better than they really were. “I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches,” he tells us in 2 Corinthians 11:28, and his intense concern is what makes these two letters so passionate. He looked sin full in the face within the messy church at Corinth, but then chose to focus his eyes on God’s gracious 3D picture. He learned to dwell on God’s grace more than he did on human failure, and he let the truth of the Gospel save his heart from disappointment.

The Gospel reminded Paul of God’s work in the past, and this more than offset the bitter pill of the present. Every single one of those believers had once been dead in their sins and enemies of God, until God’s grace sought them out and raised them to life through his Spirit. They had not become church members because Paul convinced them it might help them to pray a sinner’s prayer, as Paul stresses by filling these opening nine verses with a series of passive verbs. They had been called by God’s initiative, sanctified through the shed blood of Jesus, and given grace in spite of their sin. They may look like a sorry bunch of washed-up, has-been Christians, but in truth they had been enriched through the Gospel. Paul had learned to focus on God at work amidst the mess, and he refused to write off anyone whom the Lord had written in.

The Gospel also reminded Paul of God’s promises for the future. He must have felt punch-drunk when he listened to Chloe, Stephanas and a long line of other visitors with bad news from Corinth, but one great fact kept him buoyant through it all. “God, who has called you … is faithful,” he rejoices in verse 9, confident that this means “he will keep you strong to the end.” The same God who had called the Corinthians to follow him in the past would also keep them following him right until the end, because human unfaithfulness does not nullify God’s faithfulness. That’s what stopped Paul from giving up at the start of 55AD, from giving up in the spring when his emergency visit ended in heartbreak, and from giving up in the autumn when he wrote to them again. Ultimately, it was because Paul kept sight of God’s future grace for the Corinthians that he won them to repentance and helped them to see it too.

The Gospel also helped Paul to see God’s work in the present. Fault-finding is easy but grace-spotting requires faith. Paul needed it to see God’s fingerprints at Corinth, still at work amidst the mess. In spite of their sin, the Corinthians were still calling on the name of the Lord Jesus, and no one ever does that but for the working of God’s grace. Compared to their out-and-out paganism less than five years earlier, the changes to their speech and knowledge were living proof that the Gospel had saved them. Even the disorderly way in which they exercised the gifts of the Spirit bore testimony to the fact that God was present in their midst and had not given up on them. It is easy to focus on the negatives and disappointments, but those who understand the Gospel can see God at work in the midst of the mess.

Magic Eye pictures may not come naturally to you, but make sure that you see the 3D picture of God’s grace in the Church. If you don’t, you will find yourself complaining, church-hopping, and falling out of love with the Bride for whom Christ died. Your heart will eventually grow cold towards God’s People, and your joy in Christian ministry will begin to falter and die.

But if seeing God at work could give Paul strength to love, persevere and give thanks for the troublesome Corinthians in 55AD, then it is more than able to give us strength to cope with our own setbacks and disappointments today. I am amazed at how Paul won back the church at Corinth when they realised that he was more aware of God’s grace than he was of their failure. I am still amazed at the potential released in churches today whenever people learn to see God at work amidst the mess.

Hand Over Your Loaves and Fish! Last Sunday I shared with Queens...

Wed, 18 May 2011 14:41:46 +0100

Hand Over Your Loaves and Fish!

Last Sunday I shared with Queens Road Church why we believe as a leadership team that God is calling us to hand over our loaves and fish, and to become like the little boy that Jesus used to feed five thousand hungry people.

We’re doing well as a church and God has already provided us with plenty of blessings. Now he invites us to refuse to be satisfied with a little lunchbox, and to surrender what he has given us for the sake of the hundreds of hungry people who don’t yet know the love of Jesus. The journey God has in store for us is far greater than we can imagine. This brief audio message explains what is happening in more detail…

Don't Give Up!

Wed, 04 May 2011 09:00:00 +0100

Last week I took a very special guest away on holiday with my family. I needed to be refreshed spiritually as well as physically, so I took the biography of one of Wimbledon’s most famous residents with me. Converted at his home on the south side of Wimbledon Common, walking distance from my own house, William Wilberforce took up the fight against slavery and persevered till it was abolished.

After he was elected as an MP, he brought his first bill to abolish the slave trade to the British House of Commons in 1789. He delivered what was hailed as one of the greatest speeches in parliamentary history, and looked poised to succeed, but his enemies regrouped and managed to sideline the bill into committee for two whole years. During that time, a general election returned a much more conservative House of Commons against the backdrop of the French Revolution, and by the time he finally forced a vote on his bill in 1791 he was defeated by 163 votes to 88.

Undeterred, William Wilberforce published a best-selling pamphlet exposing the horrors of slavery, and reintroduced his bill in 1792. His speech was hailed by colleagues as “the greatest eloquence ever displayed in the House”, and he managed to pass it by 230 votes to 85. However, his enemies inserted the word ‘gradually’ into the bill to make it toothless, and the House of Lords threw it into committee and refused to even vote on it. He was defeated again in 1793, 1794 and 1795, after which his closest ally died a broken man. William Wilberforce, however, resolved to persevere. John Wesley had written to him only days before his death to urge him: “Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils; but if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them stronger than God? Oh, be not weary of well-doing!”

In 1796, Wilberforce came very close to victory and had a big enough majority to outlaw the slave trade for good. However, on the evening of the vote a new Italian opera came to London, and five or six of his supporters ducked out of Parliament to watch it. When his bill was defeated by only four votes, he simply wrote in his diary: “Enough at the Opera to have carried it. Very much vexed and incensed at our opponents.” He was either a very patient man or else the master of understatement.

William Wilberforce was defeated in 1797, in 1798 and 1799, and was so discouraged that he didn’t even propose his annual bill for the few years which followed. He resumed in 1804 and got his law passed in the House of Commons, but the House of Lords refused to ratify it. In 1805 his bill fared even worse, and was defeated by a resurgence of his enemies within the House of Commons. Finally in 1807 he succeeded in passing his bill banning the British slave trade through both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The superpower which had led the way in the slave trade was now committed to eradicating its curse from the seven seas.

What was it that gave Wilberforce the courage to persevere against failure after failure in the face of bitter and determined opposition? He wrote in his diary that “I confess to you, so enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did its wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for the abolition … Let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.” He shared the secret of his dogged perseverance in one of his books in 1797: “Accustom yourself to look first to the dreadful consequences of failure; then fix your eye on the glorious prize which is before you; and when your strength begins to fail, and your spirits are well nigh exhausted, let the animating view rekindle your resolution, and call forth in renewed vigour the fainting energies of your soul.”

If you are part of Queens Road Church - the church I lead in south-west London - then join me in making William Wilberforce’s thoughts your own. We have many obstacles ahead as we love Jesus and live his mission in our sinful city, but God has called us, God has promised us, God empowers us, and God will give us the victory. The dreadful consequences of failure are so dire for our friends and neighbours in London, and for the nations we can reach together, that we must never, never, never give up.

And if you are a believer in Wilberforce’s God, but not in Wimbledon, then join us in making William Wilberforce’s thoughts your own too. Wherever you live, and whatever God has called you to, the God who saved and emboldened Wilberforce to push through to victory comes alongside you as you read this, and encourages you: “Don’t give up!”

You Look Beautiful

Mon, 02 May 2011 01:06:41 +0100

It’s been a fantastic weekend to live in London. Over a billion pairs of eyes all around the world have been fixed on the church a few miles from my house where Prince William married his long-term girlfriend Kate Middleton. After an incredible day of pomp, pageantry and parties, they are now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

The highlight of the whole royal wedding for me was the moment when Kate finished her walk down the aisle and stood next to William. He took one look at his bride and you leant over to encourage her. His words were easy to lip-read: “You look beautiful!” It was a touching moment.

After the wedding, I spent some time reading Psalm 45, the magnificent wedding song which describes the wedding between Jesus and the believers who make up his Church. Although originally written for the marriage of one of the kings of Judah and his foreign bride, the book of Hebrews quotes it in the New Testament and gives a commentary on what it truly conveys. We read in Hebrews 1:8-9 that it is a celebration of the holiness and perfection of Jesus the Bridegroom. It speaks not of the empty pomp and pageantry of a British constitutional monarch, but of the pure power and potency of the mighty King of the universe. It speaks not of a celebrity bride miles away on a television screen, but about you and about anyone else who says yes to Christ’s proposal.

There in Psalm 45 and verse 11, Jesus leans over to you and speaks the equivalent of William’s words to Kate. “The King is enthralled by your beauty,” the Psalmist writes. He declares: “The princess is all glorious on the inside; the clothing she wears is interwoven with gold.”

Jesus wants you to read those words today and to respond with the same evident delight as Kate did when she heard William’s. She didn’t refuse the compliment or try to please him by protesting that she was a commoner unworthy of his love. She didn’t point out her blemishes in a false show of humility. She just accepted his statement that he found her utterly beautiful, both inside and out.

You may protest that Kate is naturally beautiful, whereas there is little in your life which appears worthy of Jesus’ love. That sounds humble, but stop and think what that reaction implies about God’s message of salvation. It means that Sarah Burton, the chief designer at Alexander McQueen, is better at covering blemishes than God is through his Holy Spirit. It means that Sarah Burton’s pricey wedding dress does a better job than the priceless blood of Jesus.

No. When we close our mouths and simply listen to what Jesus tells us, we realise that the Gospel outclasses London’s fashion houses hands down. Because Jesus the Bridegroom has died for your sin and returned from the tomb to bring you new life through the Gospel, he can look at you right now and see the beauty of his holiness dwelling in you.

It’s time to stop protesting and it’s time to start listening. Jesus leans over to you as you read this and tells you, “You look beautiful!”

Now that’s what I call a royal wedding worth shouting about.

Happy Easter?

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 01:52:13 +0100

Easter was bad news for Mary’s son James. It meant his big brother had been right all along and he had been wrong. Nobody ever likes to admit that.

I’m a younger brother, so I know what it’s like to grow up in the shadow of a big brother, but it was nothing compared to James’ childhood as the younger half-brother of Jesus of Nazareth. Ever felt like you could never attain to the achievements of your brother or sister? Welcome to James’ everyday world. So it’s not all that surprising that James and his other brothers grew up resenting perfect Jesus. John 7:5 tells us that “even his own brothers did not believe in him.” Mark 3:21 tells us that they said “he is out of his mind” and did everything they could to distract him from his ministry.

All things considered, none of that was surprising. But what happened next was.

In the days immediately following the crucifixion of Jesus, his half-brother James performed a U-turn and became one of the most outspoken believers in Christianity. Acts 1:14 tells us that Jesus’ followers “all joined together constantly in prayer … with his brothers.” James had become so convinced that his half-brother was the Son of God that he had persuaded his other brothers to join him in worshipping Jesus as the Messiah. Something amazing had happened which made it very good news that his half-brother had been right and he had been wrong. For all the sudden turnaround, James couldn’t possibly have had a happier Easter.

Jesus had appeared to James after his death on the cross and after his body disappeared from a tomb guarded by a squad of soldiers. James’ close friend Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 15 - “What I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve … then he appeared to James.” The facts of Easter changed James’ life completely, and by God’s grace they can change ours too if we consider what he learned.

James found in Jesus’ resurrection complete proof that God had come to earth as a human being. James hadn’t been there in Matthew 12:38-42 when Jesus prophesied to his sceptics that he would die and rise again as irrefutable proof that his teachings were true. He simply heard what Jesus said and knew that all dead men stay dead unless God performs a mighty miracle. It’s really very silly when people say today that they don’t believe the Easter story because dead people don’t come back to life. James knew that as well as we do - but accepted God’s proof when he saw it.

James found in Jesus’ resurrection something worth living his whole life for. If his half-brother’s promises had been true that “I am the Life” and “I have come to give you life to the full”, then nothing in this world could compare to this New Life. James gave away his property to help the poor and became the overall leader of the church in Jerusalem. He led the church in that city for over twenty-five years, defying centuries of Jewish tradition because of his devotion to the risen Jesus. He led Sabbath worship services on Sunday instead of the Jewish Saturday, and stood up to the Jewish authorities by baptising new converts and serving communion as symbols of our death and resurrection with Christ. The rest of James’ life was dominated by one simple fact: He had seen the Lord Jesus risen again, and believed as a result that his Gospel was true.

Ultimately, James found in Jesus’ resurrection something worth dying for. In 62AD the Roman governor Festus died suddenly in office, only weeks after preventing the Jewish high priest from murdering Paul. The priest seized his chance and arrested the leader of the church in Jerusalem, ordering James on pain of death to deny the resurrection of his Lord. When James refused and preferred to be brutally decapitated with a sword, he shouted a testimony to the world which still echoes throughout history. Blaise Pascal attributed his own conversion to Christ to the fact that “I believe witnesses who get their throats cut.” James’ willingness to die in 62AD is still compelling proof that the resurrection accounts are all true.

So if you are not an active follower of Jesus, I want to encourage you this week to have a Happy Easter. Have courage, like James, to perform a U-turn in order to follow the one who died, was buried and rose from the dead as the ultimate proof that he is God in human form.

And if you are a follower of Jesus, I want to encourage you this week to have a Happy Easter too. You will have one by having the same courage as James to live every day of your life in full obedience to the Lord Jesus. As James’ friend Paul puts it at the start of his letter to the Romans:

“Jesus Christ our Lord was declared with power thorugh the Holy Spirit to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead … And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.”

Have a truly Happy Easter!

Thank God for Brian Cox

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:07:00 +0100

It doesn’t matter whatever else you think about the BBC. You’ve got to admit they know how to make great documentaries. I thought that David Attenborough’s nature programmes were unbeatable until I watched Professor Brian Cox’s “Wonders of the Universe”.

If you don’t know who Professor Brian Cox is, then imagine that somebody took Patrick Moore’s brain and transplanted it into Vernon Kay’s body. He isn’t just intelligent, having worked at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, but he’s also very cool, having been the keyboard player in the band D:Ream. If you don’t know your music, they’re the band who sang “Things Can Only Get Better”. If you really don’t know your music, you’ll know it as the theme tune which Tony Blair used in his election campaign to become Prime Minister in 1997.

Brian Cox is a worshipper. He may be a humanist, but he’s a better worship leader than most of the people you will find on ”Songs of Praise” on the other channel. He enthuses over the wonders of the universe, captivated by what he sees and infectious in his call for us to praise. “We are all children of the stars,” he enthuses with glistening eyes. “All this was created billions of years ago,” he raves, using a word which would make David Attenborough splutter his coffee. It’s no wonder that Brian Cox worships this way, when the images of space which he presents are completely unrivalled in their pioneering celestial photography. But here’s the really funny thing: The images are state-of-the-art, but the gods he worships are very primitive.

Ur of the Chaldees, perhaps the world’s first great civilisation, was a city which worshipped the moon-god Nanna. Its citizens looked up at the great celestial orb which ruled the night-time and they bowed down in worship to the object which they saw.

Ancient Egypt, the greatest civilisation of the second millennium BC, was a kingdom which worshipped the sun-god Ra. The Egyptians also worshipped the moon but they reserved their greatest praise for the light which ruled the daytime. They were fascinated by the burning, Middle Eastern sun, and built temples and wrote hymns to the flaming star which lies at the heart of our solar system.

The Ancient Greeks, in similar fashion, worshipped the earth-goddess Gaia from whom they believed all terrestrial life flowed. This was simply what people did right across the BC era. They looked at the wonders of the universe and worshipped in wide-eyed wonder. Brian Cox. BC. They’ve got more in common than just their initials.

Yet there was one group of people during the BC era who saw past the wonders of the universe to the wonderful Creator about whom those created bodies testified. The Israelite king David wrote in about 1000BC that “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heart. Their voice goes out into all the earth.” (Psalm 19:1-4). The Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans dubbed the Jews and the Christians atheists because they refused to worship the created things which they themselves worshipped as the wonders of the universe. The Christians said those things were not gods at all. They saw past the the wonders of the universe to worship the God who made them all.

When you spend much of your life looking down a microscope, it’s difficult not to become a bit shortsighted, but the best scientists have always managed to maintain their longer vision. Francis Bacon wrote in the sixteenth century that “It is true that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.”

I love the images Brian Cox has gathered, and I find them making me want to join him in worship, but we mustn’t let him infect us with his forgetfulness towards Francis Bacon’s bigger picture. We must remember what Albert Einstein said that science was truly all about: “I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details.”

So let’s enjoy Professor Brian Cox, and thank God for providing us with such an excited worship leader. But let’s not settle for his worship of sun-gods and moon-gods and earth-goddesses like short-sighted BC men and women. Let’s remember that all of these wonders of the universe are mere details which point to the even more wonderful God who put them to proclaim his glory.

You don’t need to be Albert Einstein to watch your television and find reason after reason to fall down before the Lord in worship.

Why Queens Road Church has Gone Local

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 10:38:30 +0000

Last night and the night before, Queens Road Church exploded and then caught fire. Sound pretty dangerous? I think it really is.

If you are part of the church I lead in Wimbledon, south-west London, then you will already know some of the background behind this week’s controlled explosion. If you are not, then you will enjoy this blog anyway, because I’m setting out why we have scattered across south-west London. Although what I share is specific to Queens Road Church, its challenge should resonate far beyond the limits of our city.

We have scattered across south-west London because it is the vision which Jesus set for any local church. He commissioned the first church in Jerusalem by saying in Acts 1:8 that “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Queens Road Church has long been famous in the UK as a place to come and encounter the Holy Spirit. It hasn’t always been as famous as a place from which to scatter as his witnesses.

We have scattered across south-west London because it is the vision upon which Queens Road Church was originally founded. Charles Spurgeon sent one of his students to Wimbledon in 1880 in the midst of a London revival with a challenge that “Near to you at Wimbledon you will find Mitcham and Merton and Morden all needing Gospel work. As soon as you have got your own little church in working order, start something at each of these places … Go and blaze away!” As we establish QRC Local meetings across the London borough of Merton - Wimbledon Village in the north, Morden in the south, Raynes Park in the west and Colliers Wood in the east - we are simply continuing a 131-year-old vision. These little bands of seventy missionaries are each carrying on the great commission which birthed Queens Road Church as part of one of England’s most significant revivals.

We have scattered across south-west London because it is the way that Christians become wholehearted lovers of Jesus. The Christian life was never meant to be a spectator sport, but it all too often is, as people desperately in need of spiritual exercise sit back and watch a handful of tired players. By setting up four QRC Local meetings, everybody gets to play. Last night I was at the Colour House Theatre in Colliers Wood to see this dynamic in play as believers were set on fire. As someone who doesn’t lead worship on a Sunday led worship brilliantly, as people who rarely share publicly prayed out and prophesied, as someone who doesn’t preach on Sundays shared his heart for unreached Londoners, and as people who love the Christian Church in general started loving one another in particular - I saw what the Church was always meant to be. A community of believers who love Jesus and live his mission.

We have scattered across south-west London because it is the best way to care for one another. George Whitefield was probably the most gifted evangelist of the eighteenth century, and saw hundreds of thousands of Englishmen and women converted. However, he didn’t know how to care for them and disciple them, and confessed towards the end of his life that “The seed has fallen by the highwayside. There is scarce any fruit remaining.” John Wesley was less gifted but was far more effective, because he organised his converts into classes (akin to our Life Groups), into societies (larger groups akin to our QRC Locals), and into bands (friendship groups to promote accountability, akin to our Connect Evenings). They were dubbed ‘Methodists’ because of their passion for these organised meetings, but William Beckham observes that these three meetings “turned out to be the primary means of bringing millions of England’s most desperate people into the liberating discipline of Christian faith … Wesley’s effectiveness in harvest was not just at the point of winning converts. After Wesley added his classes, his movement was able to assimilate the converts that were won. This assimilation accounts for the uniqueness of Wesley’s movement.” Queens Road Church has grown by almost 40% across the past year. We have gone local because we want to steward this growth like Wesleys, not like Whitefields.

We have scattered across south-west London because it gives God more glory. We produce some fairly good Sunday meetings, but few of us feel scared or on-the-edge as we do so. Like most Christians, we can find it easy to do church without relying on God. QRC Local meetings aren’t like that at all. Each one of us carries the deep consciousness that what we are doing is destined for failure unless God springs to our aid. As we go, we display the same attitude as Esther when she threw caution to wind for the sake of saving God’s chosen People. We glorify God when we say with her in Esther 4:16, that “If we perish, we perish.” We glorify him when we set out to do what only he can do, because we truly believe that the Holy Spirit gives us power to be God’s witnesses.

Finally, we have scattered across south-west London because it will lead to many more people being saved. Only 7% of Londoners go to church on any given Sunday, and this number drops to 4% for Londoners in their twenties. Simply put, the reason we must scatter across south-west London is that nine out of ten Londoners currently don’t choose to gather to any Christian meetings being held centrally. Last night I was thrilled at the Colliers Wood QRC Local to see a guest who had been dragged there by one of the believers. Whilst he cut her hair in his salon in Tooting, she had told him about Jesus and invited him to come and see Jesus in action on her doorstep. He was the first guest on the first night of QRC Local, but he offers us a taster of what is yet to come. Christianity was never meant to be lived in a quiet corner behind closed doors. We’re scattering across south-west London to make the name of Jesus known.

So if you are part of Queens Road Church, I encourage you to give yourself fully to your QRC Local and to the Life Groups we are establishing in homes across the city. Give yourself to the Connect Evenings in a few days’ time, and to the friendship and accountability which turns steady believers into red-hot disciples.

If you are not part of Queens Road Church, please pray for us on our mission. Don’t copy us in your own church, but seek God for yourself. How can your church explode and catch fire too?

John Wesley saw the equivalent of our QRC Locals and exclaimed: “This is the thing, the very thing we have wanted so long!”