Biblestudies - Preachers becoming Diplomatists and Strategists

The fundamental problem with evangelical diplomacy and strategy is this: the living God has not called his servants to put consequences before truth, but truth before consequences. Certainly we are never (and I mean never) to preach God's truth arrogantly and pompously, far less coldly and clinically. But we are always to preach it faithfully, always allowing God's holy Word to lead us into God's holy ways. Ah, you may by now be thinking, but this is a counsel of suffering! Our churches will hang us out to dry, cast us out into a harsh world. How will we then live? How will we provide for our families and care for Christ's vulnerable flock? The answer to that not unimportant question was given by our Lord Jesus himself: 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it' (Luke 9:23). Beware of becoming diplomatists and strategists and not heralds. The God who calls us to serve in the fellowship of his Son, is the God who is able to set a table in the wilderness (even an ecclesiastical wilderness) for his servants.

This year, many Christians are remembering with much thankfulness to God the life and ministry of John Calvin. Five hundred years after his birth, while many in reformed churches celebrate his remarkable ministry, how many of us are as willing and ready, as he was, to lay down our lives for the truth of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ? It is a remarkable fact that little Geneva (its population was around 20,000) sent out probably hundreds of missionaries to preach Christ throughout Europe (some men even went to Brazil). Many of those men knew they were going to their death and yet they pleaded for the privilege of being Christ's heralds. In Scotland, Patrick Hamilton (what I would give to have him in my family tree!) was burned at the stake in 1528 in St Andrews. What was his crime? He believed and preached the gospel of justification through faith alone in Christ alone. For this he was burned to death. John Knox actually dates the beginning of the Reformation in Scotland from Patrick's burning. Patrick little knew what his martyrdom would accomplish in the mercy and purpose of God. Yet, he laid down his life; he put truth before consequences.

I know we live in different times, but is our calling as ministers of the Crucified One to be any less faithful than Hamilton's, or Calvin's, or the 2000 Puritan ministers who were ejected from the Church of England in 1662 because they would not conform to the liturgy of the prayer book? They had wives and children. They had homes and flocks to shepherd. And yet, they put truth before consequences.

I did not leave the Church of Scotland and then come to Cambridge Presbyterian Church in 1999. I am not a principal secessionist. I have never told anyone to leave the Church of Scotland or Church of England. I admire and love the men in those Churches who are seeking to be faithful ministers of Jesus Christ. I am not calling any of them to leave their churches; that would be presumptuous of me. But, perhaps I can say this to my fellow pastors: put truth before consequences. Go where God's truth leads. That may mean suffering, but like Patrick Hamilton’s suffering, it may be a divine precursor to a better day for Christ’s cause in Scotland. Shepherds don’t abandon their sheep; but they do lead their flock away from wolves and into the green pastures of God's favour, which is always found in the pathway of obedience to his holy Word.

May the Lord give us all his grace, so that we might stand, and having done everything else, continue to stand.

Ian Hamilton is Pastor of the Cambridge Presbyterian Church.