A Call to a Bigger Vision for Being Together Planting Churches

Together for the City: How Collaborative Church Planting Leads to Citywide Movements is a delightful and inspiring read that tells the story of a group of churches in Birmingham who decided to work together in a way they had never done before. Their vision, known as 2020birmingham, was to plant 20 churches by 2020, now extended to 30 by 2030 and 100 in their lifetime.

But this is a story told with intent. It is Neil Powell & John James’ conviction that ‘the more willing we are to find ways to collaborate, the more effective we’ll be in reaching our city for Jesus’. As such, it also functions as a succinct textbook laying down principles and a pathway for others to follow.

An Effort Rivaling Dunkirk?

Firstly they make the case for localised collaborative church planting movements, both their necessity and definition. The authors use the analogy of Operation Dynamo in 1940, where a flotilla of fishing boats, steamers and yachts rescued 338,000 stranded British soldiers from Dunkirk: ’what if there is a way for faithful churches across denominations, ecclesial styles, and theological traditions to partner together in a rescue effort that would rival Dunkirk?’

Proper Collaboration

Secondly, they unpack the ‘how’, using the equation: core + cause + code = collaboration. Many of us will naturally identify with churches who either share a similar doctrinal ‘core’ or ministry patterns. However the authors argue this isn’t the same as collaboration. For the latter, one also needs a ‘cause’, i.e. a shared ministry goal for our shared context, as well as a ‘code’, meaning not a set of rules but a commitment to the gospel enfleshed in gospel values and postures.

The final section is a stirring call to action. The book is littered with inspiring and varied snapshot examples from Birmingham, but this section also features a number of international case-studies.

For many of us, the book’s challenge will likely lie in whether we’re truly willing to work with other churches for the sake of the lost. Powell and James both pastor FIEC churches and identify as reformed/conservative evangelicals, yet they offer our constituency a challenging call to a bigger vision. This is explicitly more than ‘just join your local gospel partnership’, and one that will test both our generosity and our humility. They make a strong and nuanced case. That said, they aren’t arguing that we plant churches together, but ‘to be together as we plant churches’, a subtle but liberating difference.

Relevant and Provocative

Any concerns that the book might seem a world away from my ‘small town’ context were soon dismissed and I was pleasantly surprised by how applicable it was for us here in Barrow. Whatever your situation, Powell & James’ worked-through principle of collaboration-leading-to-effectiveness remains.

As the authors acknowledge, this is a ‘provocative’ book, but this reviewer is persuaded such provocation is deftly argued, apt for our times, and stirring to boot.

More info about Together for the City is available at the book’s own site.

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This review first appeared in the February 2020 edition of Evangelicals Now.

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this book, but I hope it is a fair and honest review.

In the first chapter of Fresh Pathways on Prayer, pastor and author Julian Hardyman offers this delightful definition:

“Prayer is not writing ‘help’ on a piece of paper, putting it in a bottle and throwing it out to sea in the hope that someone will read it and do something. Prayer is talking to a heavenly Father in the total security of being in his family.”

Those are rich words, but the substance of this book is not spent simply on definitions, important as they are. The strength of this book lies in Hardyman’s practical and wise counsel on prayer. It’s not the work of some self-identifiying ‘prayer-expert’, but neither is it a book of formless theory that feels a million miles from everyday life. Rather, Hardyman effectively puts his arm round us and begins to share what he has found helpful in cultivating a prayer-full life.

The chapter titles give you a sense of how he does this: When I don’t know how to get (re-)started; When I don’t feel like praising him; When God seems invisible or distant. This is neither a biblical theology of prayer, nor a Bible-study on prayer. Instead Hardyman begins from the assumption that many of us struggle with prayer – and find it strange to talk about it. Some of us will find prayer unrewarding, and some of us just don’t really pray. As such, Hardyman begins from these issues or feelings that put us off prayer and aims to offer ‘ideas for going deeper in prayer, particularly prayer as the expression of our relationship with God and one of the main way we experience God.’

Talking about Prayer

I wonder if there is sometimes a reluctance to spell out the ‘practicalities’ of prayer. Maybe we’re nervous of imposing a particular way of praying? We certainly don’t want to be legalistic. And maybe some of us would say that the way to grow prayerfulness is to talk less about ‘prayer’ and more about Jesus and the gospel and how God is now our heavenly father. That’s what will lead to more prayer.

Certainly, prayer flows from seeing the wonder of the gospel. If prayer is ‘the chief expression of faith’ (a la Calvin), then the way to grow it is to grow in faith, and we know ‘faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ’ (Romans 10:17). As Mike Reeves puts it in Enjoy Your Prayer Life (my review), ‘faith – and so prayer – is birthed by the gospel’.

But I don’t think that means we shouldn’t get practical and talk about the nuts and bolts – and my sense is that Hardyman agrees, hence the book. Of course, the aim isn’t to over-complicate prayer and turn it into a ‘thing’, but if we’re never talking about prayer, then we’re not really helping anyone imagine what prayerfulness could look like. And whilst we can model it on a Sunday at church, or in one-to-one meetings, or when people are invited into our homes, that seems to still be giving a fairly selective impression of prayer. In fact, this then works against our original thesis! Because we’re only demonstrating prayer in certain, typically public, situations, then we are communicating a model of prayer, but it’s a fairly limited model that sees prayer as something confined to gatherings of Christians.

And as well as talking about our prayer lives, maybe we also have to ask whether our culture of not-talking-about-prayer-and-just-talking-about-the-gospel really is breeding prayerful Christian lives and churches, or if it’s in fact inadvertently cultivating a prayerless culture. Hence, these are some of the reasons why I was so grateful for Handyman’s attempt to begin that ‘fuller’ conversation.

Listening into a Conversation

One of the tools Hardyman uses throughout the book is to imagine a dialogue about prayer between two Christians. These really help you work a question or challenge through (such as busyness or apathy), by opening up the issue and seeing the way our hearts often work. Inevitably such dialogue may seem unrealistic to some of us – after all, we’re all different – and there were a couple of times where I found myself thinking, ‘I’d put it differently to that bloke’.

But of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing: we’re all learning! And Hardyman is careful not to say that the counsel modelled in these fictional conversations is infallible. He instead gets the reader to reflect on what they found helpful or what they particularly identified with in the conversations.

Brimming with Ideas

Whilst the book unpacks a clear and understandable theology of prayer (as seen in the definition in the opening paragraph above), Hardyman is also full of ideas to help embed prayer into all of life. For example, he talks about having set times of the day where he uses particular ‘set’ words to pray, e.g. the Lord’s Prayer and the ‘Jesus Prayer’ (‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner‘). He helpfully points out that Jesus’ warning in Matthew 6:7-8 is not a command to never repeat oneself, but is instead against repeating oneself mindlessly in the hope that God will hear us if we so repeat. And so praying something over and over may legitimately be a way to ‘hide’ God’s word deep in our hearts (Psalm 119:11). Such prayers and truths are thus ‘closer to the surface of our active memory’. When unexpected situations occur or we’re left wondering about lift, these prayers are what’s in our heads and hearts. As Hardyman acknowledges, this is not dissimilar to memorising Bible verses in order that they ‘bubble’ up unexpectedly and helpfully when perhaps we might not expect them, or when we struggle to find words or to anchor our thoughts. This may seem unfamiliar to those of us who tend to just pray ‘off the cuff’, but it’s a really helpful challenge.

I also found his description of ‘drawing near to God’ (as in Hebrews 10:19-22) helpful to ponder as I think about my daily routines. Likewise Hardyman’s attempt at unpacking what the apostle Paul means when he describes contemplating the Lord’s glory (2 Cor 3:18) is worthy of further consideration. There’s also useful advice for extroverts and introverts in prayer.

Could-Do-Better Prayer

As well as being something we don’t often talk about, I can’t help observing that prayer is also a subject that evangelical Christians often feel guilty about. When asked about our prayer lives, we tend to think in terms of ‘could do better’, as if we were filling in a school report card. Maybe the problem is that we’re treating prayer like a Top Trumps attribute: ‘How are you at prayer?’ Think, for example, when was the last time you heard someone speaking positively about their experience or practice of prayer? When did you last hear someone delighting in private or corporate prayer? Perhaps sharing the joy or comfort they had found in entrusting something to God, or an awareness of his presence through speaking with God?

Yes, we need to challenge our own self-sufficiency and apathy to the things of God. Yes, prayerlessness is evidence of a heart that thinks it can ‘go it alone’. Yes, there’s always room for a relationship to grow in trust and intimacy and understanding. In other words, we all know that none of us have a ‘perfect prayer life’, but does that mean we can’t speak positively of the impact communing with God through prayer has upon our lives?

That’s part of what I really enjoyed about this book. It gives you a vision for what your prayer life could look like. It’s realistic about the challenges of busyness and tiredness and self-reliance, but it’s also positive and inspiring about the joy of prayer.

Fresh Pathways on Prayer will be a breath of fresh air for Christians who wish their lives to be more marked and shaped by a trust in our good, good Father, the Sovereign Lord who invites us to come to him through Christ.

You can pick up a copy of the book from the publisher here.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of the book from the publisher, but I hope this is still a fair and honest review. 

Jason Roach is a pastor and former medical doctor from South London, and his new book, Swipe Up: A Better Way to do Love, Sex and Relationships has just released. He kindly took the time to answer some questions about the vision behind the book…

– Jason, in Swipe Up, you describe how in many ways we’re all on a search for the “exhilarating, terrifying waves of intimacy”. Can you give us a snapshot of what led you to write this book?

A couple of years ago now, I picked up a copy of a book called A Better Story: God, Sex and Human Flourishing, written by Professor Glynn Harrison, a Professor of Psychiatry in Bristol. I was blown away by it. It was really honest about how powerful the stories our culture tells about sex are. Rather than merely writing them off, he dug into how they tapped into something God given. I wanted to unpack this in a way that I would have appreciated when I was discovering Christ but also trying to navigate relationships too. So something shorter, that was strong on showing that it understood the kind of emotional rollercoaster the struggle for intimacy can put us on.

– You mentioned how you were inspired by Glynn Harrison’s book, and Glynn has obviously enjoyed reading Swipe Up, writing the foreword. In it he says this is a ‘big book’ because it’s ‘real’. Who is this book aimed at, and what are you hoping for from it?

I really do hope people in all kind of different situations would read it and be refreshed by it. If there was one group I would pray in particular would read it, it would be Christians who want to follow the bible’s teachings about sex but struggle to either understand it or to be excited by it. I hope that this book starts to show that God’s way is actually good news.

– It can be easy for Christians to feel on the back-foot when it comes to explaining what the Bible teaches about relationships. How can we change that?

Three things. First take time to listen. Truth is, if in today’s culture we’re anywhere near someone being willing to engage with us on our views about sex, we are in a privileged place. We should cherish and respect that. I’ve found that taking time to understand where people are coming from dispels a lot of misunderstandings about how they might expect me to react. Secondly, be passionate about God. God is love, He invented sex and He did it to point us to the being in the universe who can give us the most pleasure. This isn’t necessarily where people want to start, but I’d prefer someone left a conversation frustrated that I was so excited about God than frustrated that I didn’t seem to care what they thought! Thirdly, agreeing that we want to be who we are. It’s just that our most basic reality is being made in the image of God, so to reflect what he is like. I go into this more in the book.

– In what ways do you think the church has misrepresented God’s vision for sex and relationships?

One of the big weaknesses has sometimes been a neglect of single people. By neglect I mean that their singleness is not celebrated or supported. Some women came into our church the other day and spontaneously offered to pray for some of us. They quickly started praying for our wives or the wives that God had in store for us! Jesus and Paul were single, and yet the culture of our churches at so many levels often makes it seem like being single is stage to pass through as quickly as possible. We also need to highlight and nurture friendship so that celebrate again the range of relationships God gives us to enjoy as we travel on the journey of life.

– How might the message of Swipe Up help us as we think evangelistically about engaging our neighbours and the culture around us with the gospel?

A few weeks ago I gave the book to someone in the office that I happened to be working in and asked them if they would read it and tell me what they thought. I actually had assumed that they were a practising Christian but after they had read it, they told me they weren’t. But they loved reading the book! So give copies away! I hope that it helps us both have language that makes it easier to explain what we believe about sex but also a way of approaching conversations that is both humble and more focused on the bigger Christian story that makes sex makes sense.

– You’re involved in leading and pastoring a church. How would you recommend churches engage with these issues? Any wisdom for those in pastoral ministry on helping people in this area?

Over the years it’s become increasingly clear to me that to not teach on something is effectively to say “it’s best if my congregation simply agree with what the world says this issue.” Not only do they not hear what the bible says, but get all kinds of distorted views of what Christians think too. When your bread and butter is working through books of the bible in preaching series this takes a lot of intentionality. So teach more on it. I’ve found midweek groups are a great setting because it allows for qualifications and questions that are so important. It’s also a real opportunity to interact with popular culture to show just how common the influences of the sexual revolution are.

If you have parents who read with their children, encourage them to start doing that around these issues sooner than they think. Again, when we don’t do this we are essentially saying “I’ll let the playground and the playstation be their teachers.”

You can pick up a copy of Swipe Up from the publisher here.