If we are going to apply Scripture well to our congregations, then as well as being able to read God’s word and interpret it well, we also need to be “reading the room.” We need to have a good understanding of what it is that our congregations are facing. We need to be exegeting them and their context.
At one level, the issues people face are the same as what they have always faced. There are decisions to be made about work, school, housing, decisions that believers want to make in a godly way. They are looking for guidance. Part of our responsibility is to help them understand what true guidance looks like. It’s not going to be a case of them getting a dream or picture that prescribes what to do in every situation. Rather, primarily it is about thinking through what the whole of God’s word has to say about our values and priorities, that will then shape our decision making. We cannot cover every situation but we can help people to see how we make those decisions, we can model it.
Then, at any moment in church life, people will be facing joy and loss. Some will be celebrating milestone birthdays, an engagement, marriage, children. Others will be experiencing painful suffering through long term illness. Some are facing terminal illness and that means those around them will already be starting the bereavement process. The long goodbye is particularly pertinent for families with loved ones suffering from dementia.
A third area of challenge is around sexual purity. What does it mean to be faithful to your spouse and for single Christians there’s the question of faithfulness to God’s covenant in terms of your choices. Sexual temptation has increased significantly through the ready availability of online porn and its pushing the extreme boundaries. What do you do when your wife or husband is unfaithful? Sadly that may include abuse.
Fourthly, there are broader relationships and partnerships. We need to be addressing how we get on with others both inside and outside of the church. What are appropriate partnerships? Is “unequally yoked” just about marrying a non-Christian. What about those facing racism and discrimination? What about those convicted that they have discriminated against others.
Fifth, many in our churches will be facing mental health challenges including depression, anxiety, PTSD and various disorders. What should their attitude to counselling and medication be? What are the causes of their struggle? In some cases it will be the abuse and trauma they have suffered.
Christians aren’t just facing those issues individually in a vacuum. There’s what is happening in the wider culture. A big part and an underestimated part of that is the local culture at neighbourhood, town and city level. Do we as pastors take time to get to know that? This might mean reading local news. There still are local newspapers online but in fact, I think we discover more through reading the comments in social media forums. Then it can be helpful to anaylse census data that tells you about demographics, economic and educational circumstances. However, the census is carried out once a decade and so the current data is already probably out of date in many places. That’s why you can’t beat “boots on the ground”. Live in the community where your church gathers, put your kids into local schools, walk to the shops, do door knocking and one to one street-based evangelism. Take note of what you observe, learn to see well.
Finally, there’s the wider culture and that’s why its one of the things I spend time talking about on Faithroots including a look at political and cultural movements. This is important because the wider culture provides the worldview hermeneutic or lens through which people are viewing their own circumstances and making decisions. It’s this that has a significant impact on the day-to-day decisions Christians are making.
I would suggest that key pressures here include the liberal agenda. This means both the socially liberal agenda. The pressure to conform on issues around sexuality and gender as well as abortion and euthanasia. Then, there’s the theologically liberal agenda and here, as is often the case, theology is catching up with what was going on a few decades ago in literature, arts and philosophy, so theology seeks to promote a pluralist/post modern agenda at a time when the rest of the world is moving on. In the second half of the twentieth century, the world around us deconstructed art and literature. Now we are deconstructing our faith and ourselves.
Secondly, the growth of Islam presents a challenge. This is particularly true in our larger cities. What does it mean to engage with Islam as a proselyting ideology? What does it mean to know and love individual Muslim neighbours and are the two priorities in competition?
Thirdly, there’s a theological movement under an umbrella that wraps up things like Christian Nationalism, Theo nomism/Federal Vision and the New Apostolic Reformation. As well as being ideologies in their own right, these approaches that are distinct but related offer a hermeneutic through which to read Scripture and the World. We might also observe a connection here with prosperity teaching.
A pastor needs to know both what they are facing and how to face it together with the congregation. What that requires is that we learn to see people and the world around us through God’s eyes.
Faithroots 