-You will enjoy Regent College’s recent online memorial service for Dr. JI Packer.
I commend to you my trilogy of articles on Dr. JI Packer recently published in the Light Magazine and Academia.edu
1) “Analyzing the Lasting Impact of the Late Dr JI Packer: Giant of the Faith”
2) Dr JI Packer & Richard Baxter: Essentials, Diversity, and Charity“
3) “Analyzing the Global Impact of Dr. JI Packer”
You are invited to read The Incalculable Impact of Dr JI Packer: Giant of the Faith
Ed & Janice Hird+
Light Magazine Columnists
P.s. In this time of Covid social distancing, you are encouraged to repost this memorial to others.
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
A recording of Dr. JI Packer’s service is now available online. The technical glitches were overcome.
By Rev. Dr. Ed Hird
Have you ever read Dr JI Packer’s classic Knowing God? Click to check out the Light Magazine article on Dr. JI Packer: Firestarter in Knowing God.
Analyzing the Global Impact of Dr. J.I. Packer
By Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird
-published in the April 2010 Light Magazine
Do you long for a reviving of your knowledge of God, not just intellectually but intimately? The late Dr. J.I. Packer wrote an unforgettable book Knowing God that has transformed and revived the hearts and minds of millions of readers, perhaps including yourself.[1] Christianity Today readers named him one of the most influential theological writers of the last hundred years, second only to CS Lewis.[2] Dr. Alister McGrath called Packer a theological and spiritual giant[3]: “Packer is a rare example of an original thinker with a genuine gift for teaching…”[4] His legacy includes writing thirty books and over three hundred major articles.[5] Timothy George commented that “his writings are so voluminous that it is hard to imagine that they have come from the pen of one person.”[6]
Packer never let his fame and success get to his head. Born on July 22nd 1926, he was raised in humble circumstances in the village of Twyning, near Gloucester, in southwest England. McGrath comments about Packer: “Even at an early age, he realized that he was something of a loner, a shy and awkward boy who found it difficult to relate to other children.”[7] While chased at age seven by a schoolyard bully, he was struck by a passing bread van, causing a serious head injury, requiring brain surgery.[8] The medical diagnosis was…’a depressed compound fracture of the frontal bone on the right-hand side of his forehead.’[9] This brain injury closed the door to his socializing through playing sports. Because of his fragile health, his parents wisely bought him a massive typewriter rather than a bicycle. During his long recovery, the naturally shy Packer read widely, typing his earliest essays. At age 17, Packer described himself as a Dostoevsky addict.[10] When asked in his eighties about his strongest childhood memories, he replied, “Solitariness.”[11] He was required to wear a black aluminum plate on his head, held in place by an elastic band. At age 15, he ‘went on strike’, refusing to wear the head plate any longer.[12]
Though raised Anglican, Packer did not know Christ personally. While attending Crypt High School, he read C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and Screwtape Letters.[13] CS Lewis’ two books, said Packer, ‘brought me, not indeed to faith in the full sense, but to mainstream Christian beliefs about God, man, and Jesus Christ, so that I was halfway there.”[14] Because of his head injury, Packer was exempted from World War II military service. He became one of the very few who attended Oxford University during that time. On October 22nd 1944, while attending an Oxford Christian Union meeting (IVCF), Packer was soundly converted, singing Just as I Am: “I had given my life to Christ…When I went out of the church, I knew that I was a Christian.”[15] Over fifty years later, he said “I remember the experience as if it were yesterday.”
Over the next few weeks of being discipled, he stopped viewing the bible as just “a mixed bag of religious all-sorts, of which one could not accept more than the general outlines.”[16] Packer commented: “I can still remember the feeling of surprise -and gladness, as I left the meeting because I knew that I knew that the Bible is the Word of God.” Over the next sixty-six years, he took many courageous stands, drawing others back to the Lordship of Jesus and the authority of the Bible. Packer valued tradition and history when seen through the lense of Holy Scripture: Scripture must have the last word on all human attempts to state its meaning, and tradition, viewed as a series of such human attempts, has a ministerial rather than a magisterial role.”[17]
Reacting against the ‘victorious living’ emphasis of the Keswick movement, Packer turned to the spiritual wisdom of the largely forgotten Calvinist Puritans.[18] McGrath observed that “while an older generation looked back on Keswick Conventions for their fellowship and teaching, an emerging generation looked instead to the Puritans.”[19] George Whitefield (1714-1770) and the earlier John Owen (1616-1683) became significant mentors in Packer’s spiritual maturing.[20] He even did his Oxford doctorate on Richard Baxter, who symbolized the best of the Puritans.[21] Baxter (1615-1691) showed how to be a puritan without being puritanical in the negative sense.[22] Packer’s Knowing God, published in 1973, is a popularization of his doctoral thesis on Baxter.
Knowing God was originally written as a series of articles for the UK-based Evangelical Magazine. Packer said, “I wrote Knowing God over a period of years during which I was deeply concerned, as I still am, to help people realize God’s greatness.[23] Intervarsity Press UK (IVP) passed up the chance to publish it, because they wanted Packer instead to write a book about charismatic renewal. Hodder and Stoughton UK initially published it instead. It was in North America however that Knowing God would have its greatest impact, where IVP USA published it.[24] McGrath said that Packer’s personal opinion was that the book succeeded because it allowed its readers to find and experience the reality of God.[25] Best-selling author Dr. John RW Stott reviewed Knowing God, saying “The truth he handles fires the heart. At least it fired mine, and compelled me to turn aside to worship and to pray.”[26] Dr. Alister McGrath commented that reading Knowing God “is like going on a long walk along a forest trail, rich in flora and fauna, nestling under the shadow of the great Rocky mountains.”[27]
McGrath commented that Packer “greatly admired the preaching of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, particularly its expository thoroughness.”[28] Through the influence of Lloyd-Jones, Packer developed a passion for revival. In 1949, Packer and Lloyd-Jones birthed the very influential Puritan Conferences, which continued at Westminster Chapel in London until 1970.[29] McGrath commented that the ‘Puritan Studies Conference’ “offered a powerful and persuasive vision of the Christian life, in which theology, biblical exposition, spirituality and preaching were shown to be mutually indispensable and interrelated. It was a vision of the Christian life which possessed both intellectual rigour and pastoral relevance. It was a powerful antidote to the anti-intellectualism which had been rampant within British evangelical circles in the immediate post-war period.”[30]
In the foreword to Lloyd-Jones’ Revival book, Packer said, “No concern was dearer to his heart nor to mine.”[31] Packer observed, “Dr Lloyd-Jones hoped for revival until he died. He is gone. The prophets are gone, but we should still be hoping for revival. Revival is a sovereign work of God. He fixes the time table. The schedule is his, not ours.” As Calvinist puritans, both Lloyd-Jones and Packer taught that revival is a sovereign act of God.[32] We cannot produce it through our organizational skills.[33]
Before moving to Vancouver’s Regent College in 1979, Packer taught in several English theological settings including Oak Hill College, St. John’s Birmingham, Latimer House, Tyndale Hall, and Trinity College Bristol.[34] The pull of North America became stronger after Packer began lecturing during the summers in USA and Canada.[35] As McGrath put it, Packer liked Vancouver, and he liked Canada, which seemed to him to be halfway between Britain and the United States.[36] Regent offered Packer a much greater opportunity to write and to speak at North American conferences.[37] Leland Ryken noted that there has been no more famous teacher at Regent College through the years than Packer.[38] During Packer’s time at Regent, the student body has grown from 140 to over 800.[39]
Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, stated that “…this will be known as the Packer Era because J.I. Packer has been the towering figure of this era – defending truth, defending orthodoxy, and defending great preaching.”[40] In 1994, Packer was the chief architect of the Anglican Essentials movement in Canada which ultimately realigned many with the revival in the Global South.[41] The Montreal Essential Declaration is shaped by Richard Baxter’s maxim “In essentials, unity; In non-essentials, diversity, and in all things charity.”[42] In 2,000, he chaired the theological track at the World Conference on Evangelism convened by Billy Graham in Amsterdam.[43] He served for many years as general editor in producing the 2001 English Standard Version Bible.[44] Packer had a passion for the revival of catechism, for teaching how to live out biblical truth.[45] Revival, said Packer, means “power, constant sustained power from God’s Holy Spirit for life and service.”[46] Revival means struggle for truth.[47] Revival is about knowing God.[48] What might it take for us, like J.I. Packer, to long for the fire of revival?
Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird
Co-authors, Blue Sky novel
[1] Alistair McGrath, J.I. Packer: A Biography (Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, 1997), 179 “…one of the twentieth century’s most influential and admired Christian books –Knowing God.”; McGrath, 256 ”Packer’s bestseller Knowing God represented a classic statement and justification of the intimate relationship between knowing correct ideas about God and the relational activity of knowing God.”
[2]McGrath, xi “James Innell Packer is one of the best-known names in modern Christianity.”
[3] McGrath, xi “….one such person who has made a major long-term contribution to the shaping of Christianity in the modern world.”; J.I. Packer and the Evangelical Future: The Impact of His Life and Thought, edited by Timothy George (Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, USA, 2009), back cover “J.I. Packer is one of the most significant evangelical theologians of the last one hundred years.” (Timothy George is the Executive Editor for Christianity Today.)
[4] George, 20.
[5] McGrath, 290.
[6] George, 10.
[7] McGrath, 3.; 45 “His parents were poor, and he had no private means.”; Ryken, 20. “…J.I. Packer came from humble roots. …he has never lost his common touch.”
[8] McGrath, 1.
[9] Ryken, 23.
[10] Ryken, 24 In a Christianity Today polling of their contributors of the ten best religious books of the twentieth century, Packer chose the Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkien, saying “a classic for children from 9 to 90. Bears constant rereading.”; Ryken, 30 Packer said that at age 17, he became ‘a Dostoyevsky addict’, much impressed by how the Russian novelist ‘takes the skin off his characters and allows us to see what they are like.’
[11] McGrath, 11 “He was a solitary figure, who found greatest pleasure in reading and studying.”; Ryken, 21 “From his early years, Packer was a shy boy who did not mingle easily with his peers.”
[12] Ryken, 23.
[13] McGrath, 9.
[14] Ryken, 29.
[15] George, 10 “…It was in meetings of the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, a British version of Inter Varsity, that Packer found a living relationship with Jesus Christ and committed his life to Christian service.”
[16] Ryken, 39.
[17] George, 25. JI Packer, “The Comfort of Conservatism”, in Power Religion, ed. M Horton (Chicago, Moody, 1992), 288.; George, 20, McGrath commented: “Packer’s distinctive and, in my view, critically important insight that evangelical theology is both enriched and stabilized by attentiveness to the past.”; George, 26, McGrath commented, “Packer argues that attentiveness to the past liberates us from ‘chronological snobbery’ and alerts us to the riches of past readings of Scripture.”
[18] McGrath, 43 “Packer mentioned that he was a Puritan addict…”; McGrath, 55 Packer commented, “Without Owen, I might well have gone off my head or gotten boggled down in mystical fanaticism.”; McGrath, 77 “…the Keswick teaching had come to be seen as a distinctive article of evangelicalism. To criticize Keswick was thus to attack evangelicalism.”
[19] McGrath, 54.
[20] McGrath, 22, 24, 25, 26 “The discovery of Owens must be regarded as marking a turning point in Packer’s Christian life…”; McGrath, 43 “Packer explained that John Owen’s sixty pages on mortifying sin had helped him cope with ‘popular brand of holiness teaching, which was driving [him] around the bend’.”; McGrath, 56 “What do the Puritans have to offer modern evangelicalism? The answer for Packer can be summed up in a single word -maturity.”
[21] McGrath, 46 “Packer’s growing interest in the theology of the Puritans had led him to explore the writings of Richard Baxter (1615-91).”; McGrath, 47 “Packer’s thesis The Redemption and Restoration of Man in the Thought of Richard Baxter was long; its 499 pages extend to nearly 150,000 words. (Oxford would later insist that doctoral theses should not exceed 100,000 words.) The work shows Packer as a scholar with a gift for rigorous analysis and clarity of expression.”
[22] Neil Bramble, “J.I. Packer”, Convivium, May 12, 2017, “The essence of Puritanism is not the public caricature often imposed upon them, but a lively, sincere, and devoted spirituality based on the Bible’s teachings translated into one’s personal life.” “https://www.convivium.ca/voices/124_j_i_packer/ (accessed Feb 28th 2020)
[23] . J.I. Packer, Knowing God Study Guide (Intervarsity Press, Madison, Wisconsin, USA, 1975), 7 “Packer…wrote Knowing God from the conviction that ignorance of God lies at the root of the contemporary church’s weakness.”
[24] David Virtue, “The (Knowing God) book, first published in 1973 and now translated into at least seven languages, has sold more than 2 million copies, an astounding number for what is essentially a textbook in basic theology. “It was a surprise,” he told me: “I wrote the first draft as a series of articles. It was essentially intended as a catechesis-a teaching book. At first I just hoped that it would go into a second printing.” https://virtueonline.org/patriarch-dr-j-i-packer http://www.worldmag.com/articles/16150 (accessed March 2nd 2020)
[25] McGrath, 191.; McGrath commented that …this was the right book for the right moment.
[26] McGrath, 191.; Ryken, 114 “Indeed, Stott and Packer were the two most prominent evangelical leaders in the Church of England during the 1960s and 1970s.”
[27] McGrath, 195.
[28] McGrath, 62, 161 “Packer had been one of the relatively few evangelicals of influence within the Church of England who had championed links with Lloyd-Jones.”
[29] McGrath, 157 “Lloyd-Jones…wrote to Packer to terminate the Puritan Conferences.” (in the context of the 1970 publication of the Growing into Union book by two evangelicals and two Anglo-Catholics.) (it became renamed the Westminster Conferences.)
[30] McGrath, 53.
[31] Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Revival (Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois, USA, 1987), foreword.
[32] Marks of Revival by J.I. Packer By GOL Revival (Grace Online Library) Awareness of God’s presence. The first and fundamental feature in revival is the sense that God has drawn awesomely near in his holiness, mercy, and might.
https://graceonlinelibrary.org/church-ministry/revival/marks-of-revival-by-j-i-packer/ (accessed 3/6/2020)
[33] Justin Taylor What Is Revival? | February 17, 2010 Here is how J. I. Packer answers that question in his essay, “The Glory of God and the Reviving of Religion” in A God-Entranced Vision of All Things (pp. 100-104): “Revival is God touching minds and hearts in an arresting, devastating, exalting way, to draw them to himself through working from the inside out rather than from the outside in. It is God accelerating, intensifying, and extending the work of grace that goes on in every Christian’s life, but is sometimes overshadowed and somewhat smothered by the impact of other forces. It is the near presence of God giving new power to the gospel of sin and grace. It is the Holy Spirit sensitizing souls to divine realities and so generating deep-level responses to God in the form of faith and repentance, praise and prayer, love and joy, works of benevolence and service and initiatives of outreach and sharing. What is the pattern of genuine revival? Packer suggests the following ten elements:
God comes down.
God’s Word pierces.
Man’s sin is seen.
Christ’s cross is valued.
Change goes deep.
Love breaks out.
Joy fills hearts.
Each church becomes itself—becomes, that is, the people of the divine presence in an experiential, as distinct from merely notional, sense.
The lost are found.
Satan keeps pace.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/what-is-revival/ (accessed 3/6/2020)”
[34] McGrath, 180 “In the eyes of many young evangelicals, Packer and Moyter together (at Trinity College, Bristol) represented a form of evangelicalism which possessed both intellectual rigour and spiritual integrity.”; McGrath, 237.
[35] McGrath, 181 “As Trinity settled down, Packer again found he had time and space for thinking, speaking, and writing. … Packer was able to negotiate an arrangement with the college Council, by which he would spend the autumn and spring terms teaching in Bristol, leaving the summer term free of commitments in order to allow him to spend time in North America…Increasingly, Packer became a well-known figure in North America – not simply through his books, but through his personal presence at seminaries as a teacher and lecturer.”
[36] McGrath, 233.; Bramble, “Packer could have had a number of other teaching positions in high profile seminaries in the United States, but he chose the fledgling Regent College, where 37 years later (2016) he is still involved—in his ninety-first year.”
[37] McGrath, 217 “Packer was by now regarded in North America as the best-known and most highly respected British evangelical theologian. …His book Knowing God had firmly established him as one of the most important writers in the area of spirituality…In short, Packer was being lionized in North America. In England, however, he was being marginalized.”; Ryken, 165 “…Mark Noll notes that the British posts (temporary teaching assignments) were Anglican; the North American posts have been Reformed and evangelical.”
[38] Ryken, 164.
[39] McGrath, 239. “By the end of the 1980s’, Regent was the largest graduate institution of theological education in the region with a new purpose-built home on a high-profile site on the university campus.”
[40] George, Charles Colson, 139.
[41] McGrath, 160 “Two major events of the 1990s – the Anglican Church of Canada’s Essentials ’94 congress…can be seen to rest on precisely the theological foundations developed by Packer in England during the 1970s…it represented the application of a coherent and historically and theologically justified approach, which had been set in place twenty years earlier.”; McGrath, 283 “Packer…was the chief architect of ‘Essentials 94.’”
[42] George, 11 “Packer has been ever mindful of the maxim of Richard Baxter, on whom he wrote his Oxford doctoral dissertation. In necessariis Unitas, in non-necessariis Libertas, in utrisque Caritas.” http://www.anglicancommunionalliance.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Montreal-Declaration-for-ACA-Website-PDF-FINAL.pdf (accessed March 8th 2020); Leland Ryken, J.I. Packer: an Evangelical Life (Crossway, Wheaton, Illinois, 2015), 12 “Packer is by nature a peacemaker and a gentle man, yet he has had a career of controversy…his stand on religious issues has often made him an object of criticism.”
[43] George, 10.
[44] Bramble, “The term collaborator may well describe Packer’s most telling leadership quality. He loved working as a member of a team, and he did so on numerous occasions. Perhaps the best example was his role as general editor in producing the English Standard Version of the Bible. Interestingly, Packer himself sees this as his most significant contribution.”
[45] Trinity School for Ministry talk “JI Packer: On Personal Holiness”: When I was eighteen years ago, I spoke to a conference “For the rest of my working life, I should be conducting a crusade for catechesis, that is, the revival of catechism type instruction in all evangelical churches. What is the essence of catechetical instruction? It is two things together, teaching the doctrines of the bible, teaching the truths that we are to live by, and teaching in direct connect with that, how to live by those truths, how to practice in fact what we called holiness.” “I want to campaign for a renewal of personal holiness…” “…culturally the West is coming apart…” “we don’t make as much of repentance as we should…” (accessed 2/23/2020)
[46] Marks of Revival, Revival Commentary, v. 1, n. 1. JI Packer: “Revival is the visitation of God which brings to life Christians who have been sleeping and restores a deep sense of God’s near presence and holiness. Thence springs a vivid sense of sin and a profound exercise of heart in repentance, praise, and love, with an evangelistic outflow.”
Source: Your Father Loves You, Shaw Publishing, 1986, Page for May 30.
http://christian-quotes.ochristian.com/christian-quotes_ochristian.cgi?find=Christian-quotes-by-J.I.+Packer-on-Revival (accessed 1/6/2020)
[47]McGrath, ix “…my Christian calling thus far has felt so much like me ‘and a few other blokes’ trying to stop specific falsehoods, nail specific sins, and further the new life that Satan tries to quench in his ongoing war with the God of creation, providence, and grace.”
[48] J.I. Packer, Revival #2, 02/18/24 A Southern Baptist conference at Grenville Seminary, South Carolina, USA 3:33 “In revival, God comes close, and thus sin is seen, and because sin is seen, the gospel is loved, as never before, and repentance goes deep, and godliness grows fast, and the church becomes itself, and the world feels the impact as an evangelistic overflow, and Satan keeps pace trying to spoil and corrupt what is going on.” 24:50 “Dr Lloyd-Jones hoped for revival until he died. He is gone. The prophets are gone, but we should still be hoping for revival. Revival is a sovereign work of God. He fixes the time table. The schedule is his, not ours. 49:43 “Revival means the overcoming of hostile spiritual forces, forces against which the people of God have thus far been impotent, forces which have run all over them, forces of secularity, forces of worldliness. There is always opposition when revival begins, and regularly there is opposition to the gospel before revival begins.” “And have you studied the East African revival of our own time? It broke in the 1930s. It’s still going on. It dies down and flairs up again like a forest fire…It prepared the people of God…for the appalling convulsions that they had to go through politically and in terms of persecution…The revival folks stood firm under persecution when the Mau-mau folk were trying to get them back to the tribal darkness of ethnic, witch doctor-type polytheism. They wouldn’t go. Many of them lost their lives at the time…If God hadn’t quickened his people by revival blessing in the 1930s and thereafter, where would the Church be in East Africa? 1:04:35 paraphrase: Revival is a rediscovery of the blessing (the central revival doctrine) of justification (by faith). 1:0513 revival is…the people of God pictured as a candle stick sustained and enabled to burn and burn and keep on burning through oil from heaven… revival means power, constant sustained power from God’s Holy Spirit for life and service. 1:09:29 Revival means the purging out of sin from the lives of saint through bringing them to repentance. (sins vomited up) 1:18:38 Revival shows God to be still on his throne, victorious…a demonstration of his sovereign Lordship and sovereign grace.
J.I. Packer, Revival: #3, 16:11, A Southern Baptist conference at Grenville Seminary, South Carolina,
USA : “The alternatives are always revival or judgement, and that is as true for us in North America today as it was in the bible times.” 19:43 “God is sovereign in revival. You cannot predict it, but also you cannot preclude it. There is no situation so grave and so grievous that God cannot move in it and restore it.” 20:15 “Spiritual revival is something to be sought, to be sought for one’s own soul, to be sought for one’s own church, to be sought for one’s own community. It is not for us to say all we can do is wait and twiddle our thumbs until God is pleased to act.” “We are to seek spiritual renewal, spiritual revival, and we are to seek it by petition…linked with self-examination.” 24:20 “Spiritual revival is something to be sought for and looked for. God does not play cat and mouse with us.” 25:00 “Pessimism about the possibility of revival is a form of unbelief of the Bible.” https://www.sermonaudio.com/saplayer/playpopup.asp?SID=2190484748 (accessed March 2nd 2020)
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
Three addresses were given at St. Paul’s Church, Bloor Street, Toronto, on May 1, 1999 at a special event organized by
by
More than ever, we need to discover afresh what it means to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will and given the power to carry out that will. As J. John at the Canterbury ‘98 Conference put it, “We only have enough time to do the will of God”. So many of us in the Church are like Martha whom Jesus said was distracted by many things, but missing the main one of sitting at Jesus’ feet.
Methodist missionary to India put it, “there can be no great spiritual awakening either in the individual or in the group unless and until the individual or the group give themselves to prayer.”3 Dr. Jones goes on to say: “When we feel that there is something wrong and that it is all ending in futility, instead of giving ourselves to prayer, we appoint a committee! If a monument”, says Dr. Jones, “were erected over the dead situations in Christendom, we might inscribe on it ‘Committeed to Death’. We call a committee instead of calling to prayer.” It has been said that the 16th century Reformation began in Luther’s prayer closet. The truth is that all reformation, all renewal, all restoration begins in someone’s prayer closet. Quoting Dr. Jones again, “we find sooner or later that in prayer we either abandon ourselves or we abandon prayer. Prayer will keep us from self-withholding or self-withholding will keep us from prayer.”4
Paul is writing here to a formerly great and flourishing city that had been in a recession for the last three to four hundred years. Colossae, whose name means “Monstrosity”, had become a backwater no-name town that had been left behind in the busy pace of 1st century Greek life. Its neighbouring towns, Laodicea and Hierapolis were well-known respectively for their financial and administrative prowess, and for their burgeoning tourist and hot springs industry. They, like Colossae, were located on the River Lycus, a river famous for overlaying its surrounding river banks with thick deposits of chalk. As Bishop J.B. Lightfoot put it, “Ancient monuments are buried; fertile land is overlaid; river beds choked up and streams diverted; fantastic grottoes and cascades and archways of stone are formed, by this strange, capricious power, at once destructive and creative, working silently throughout the ages. Fatal to vegetation, these incrustations spread like a stony shroud over the ground. Gleaming like glaciers on the hillside, they attract the eye of the traveller at a distance of twenty miles, and form a singularly striking feature in scenery of more than common beauty and impressiveness.”5 In some ways, Bishop Lightfoot’s description seems like a parable of the Canadian Church … beautiful, impressive, but calcified and choked up by double-mindedness and fear.
tells us that Paul was thankful because of the great triad of Christian graces: faith, hope, and love. So often when Paul prays, he prays according to the three-fold pattern of the only things that will remain in the end. Faith: their faith in Christ Jesus; Hope: hope stored up for us in heaven; and Love: love for all the saints. As Bishop J.B. Lightfoot put it, “faith rests on the past; love works in the present; hope looks to the future”.7 Does the Prayer Book Society, indeed does the Anglican Church have a future as we celebrate the 450th Anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer? I believe that the answer to both questions is yes, if we will ground our Christian life more and more on the three-fold graces of faith, hope and love.
Lambeth ‘98 was a powerful reminder of that truth with the hundreds of Asian, African, and South American bishops making their presence felt in unforgettable ways. The gospel, as Bishop Lewis Radford put it, is both a transforming force and a travelling fire.9 It is a fire that cannot be stamped out no matter how hard secularists and revisionists may try. Verse 7 tells us about Epaphras, the founder of the Church at Colossae. Some early church traditions make him the first bishop of Colossae.10 Verse 7 describes him as “our dearly loved fellow servant”, as a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf. Both Paul and Epaphras were passionate that the Colossians should be filled with the knowledge of God’s will. Epaphras was so passionate about this that Paul commented in Colossians chapter 4, verse 2 that Epaphras was “always wrestling in prayer for you that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.” The Greek word for wrestling is agonizomenos which means to agonize. It is God’s will that each of us agonize in prayer for the restoration of faithful Anglicanism in Canada. Wrestling in prayer is the key to being filled with the knowledge of God’s will.
That is why the Rev. Samuel Shoemaker, the Anglican priest who wrote the “12 Steps” and helped to found Alcoholics Anonymous, quoted Colossians Chapter 1 in writing step 11. What does Step 11 encourage us to pray for: “… the knowledge of His will for us and power to carry that out.”
Holy Spirit. If only they had just prayed for the bishop to be filled afresh or anew, the Dean might have kept his job. Why do all of us need to be filled with the Spirit again and again? (Eph. 5:18). The reason, as D.L. Moody put it, is that we leak. It is always touchy to pray for one’s bishop without sounding like one is trying to give his bishop advice. It is so easy for us to dump all our unmet dreams and frustrations on the back of our bishops. Yet God calls us to bless and not curse. God calls us in verse 9 to never give up praying for each other, and that certainly includes our bishops. Verse 9 is a wonderful way to pray for your bishop, your rector, and your wardens in a way that none of them could possibly object to. Just pray that God will fill them with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. All of us need to be filled up, to be more full of God’s grace, peace, joy, hope, and faith so that we will be more full, more grace-full, more peace-full, more joy-full, more faith-full. The point of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22) is to fill us up inside with more of the character of Jesus Christ.
says that “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you shall be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth.”. That is why Colossians chapter 1 verse 11 talks about our being strengthened with all power: in the Greek, “being powered with all power”, with all dunamis, all dynamite. There are logjams in Anglicanism that nothing but the power, the dynamite, of the Holy Spirit can possibly remove. All of us know many faithful Anglicans who have given up in despair and left our church, perhaps returning occasionally for their Communion “fixes”. When we think of the mother/father God/Goddess apostasy that the new ACC “Common Praise” hymn book is leading us into, only the power of the Holy Spirit will be able to lead us out of that syncretistic swamp. Yet with God, nothing is impossible! Would anyone like to become the founders of a Blue Hymn Book Society of Canada?
Bible are rivers. The new Common Praise hymn book in contrast is a gracious and kindly swamp. The river that is the Holy Spirit confines Himself to His central purpose, which is to fill us with the knowledge of the Father’s will and to give us the power to carry that out. The Colossian Christians were a tiny, faithful minority living in a “new-age” spiritual scene. As with the original Colossian church, one of the greatest challenges facing our Anglican Church is well-meaning interfaith syncretism. In our worship of newness and inclusiveness, we are rushing to replace the riverbanks of our BCP with the neo-gnostic swamp of centering prayer/mantra yoga, enneagram workshops, labyrinths, Jungian-based MBTI personality tests, and invocations of “God our Father and our Mother”.13 Lord, forgive us for our naïve worship of the seemingly new and trendy, and for our disrespect for the wisdom of our Anglican forebears. Genuine renewal is actually about renewing the riches of our inheritance in Christ Jesus, not about uncovering secret “new revelations”. (Eph. 1:18)
As Dr. Bard Thompson put it, “It was the way of John Wesley to espouse extempore prayer, yet esteem the prayer book; to give free expression to evangelical power, yet prize the structures of the church …”18 Yet sadly Wesley’s wisdom was largely ignored. His followers decided that they could pray better and with more devotion when their eyes were shut, than they could with their eyes open, praying from a book.19 So they cast aside the Prayer Book and produced the United Church of Canada instead. Wesley drew the balance between the stability of tradition and the dynamism of the Spirit. His followers, however, became progressively less rooted generation after generation. It is so easy to cast aside “the riches of our inheritance”. It is much harder to humble ourselves enough to go back home and start afresh. I remember how hard I tried to convince my Grandma Allen to “get with it” and give up on the Book of Common Prayer. But she was so “stubborn and inflexible” that she died with the Bible and the Prayer Book by her bedside.
But God’s will for us as clergy is not merely for us to preserve the peace or to be keepers of ecclesiastical aquariums, but rather to be fishers of men and women. Our greatest desire as Anglican leaders must be our desire to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will and to have the power of the Holy Spirit to carry it out. Why else do we pray every day “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done”. What is God’s will? The Bible is clear that God’s will, among other things, is that we go into all the world, preaching the gospel to all creation, and that we make disciples of all nations (Mark 16:15, Matthew 28:19). 1 Timothy chapter 2, verses 4 and 5 tells us clearly that God’s will is that all people be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth, and that there is only one mediator, one bridge between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.
those raised in the church or in the west, we will not have the power to carry out this great and lasting commission. As Dr. John Stott put it at an Vancouver Anglican Essentials gathering, we claim uniqueness and finality in Christ alone.Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
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