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Pilgramage to Metropolitan Tabernacle

Andrew recently took a trip to C H Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tablernacle.
He has pictures of Spurgeon’s pulpit and other interesting things in the church.
I was very intrigued by his thoughts on the trip…
After meeting the current pastor, Dr. Peter Masters:

I introduce myself and my baptist heritage, as well as my current interest in the emerging church. “The emerging church”, said Dr Masters, “from what I have heard, is so diverse that no one really knows what it is.” Thats exactly right, I said. Good to see he was on the right track.

And while the church sermons can be heard on podcasts:

Sermons here are old skool. No visual media. Just Bible reading and preaching. King James prayer language also. Its refreshing to sit there and imagine what it was like in the days of Charlie – not too different, I suppose.

On the church’s hymnal:

So has the ministry changed to meet the times at all? And where have those contextual changes taken place?
Probably in the hymnology. Peter Masters has written an excellently worded apology in the preface to their hymn book:
“Our Own Hymn Book has therefore served as a model for the present selection of hymns and their arrangement, but we have employed a degree of editorial intervention which Spurgeon would never have countenanced in his day.”
WHAT INTERVENTION?
“We feel that language has changed for more in the 125 years since Spurgeon’s hymnbook than during the 150 years which seperated Spurgeon from Watts. We are now confronted with numerous quaint and jarring words or phrases which ought to be edited. Editorial changes have aimed at achieving instant comprehension whenever possible, thus enabling worshippers to honour the apostolic principle – ‘”I will sing with the understanding also’ [Dr Peter Masters, Preface, Psalms and Hymns of Reformed Worship, 2003, Wakeman Trust]
Wow – If i had to explain the contextual approach to ministry for the emerging-missional church to Dr Masters, I would probably start with his own words here.

And of the church organ?

And I thank the kindly and informative ushers and elders (Chris Law) who answered all my questions, including the one that went… “what would Charlie think of the organ?”
Of course, he wouldnt approve. But sometimes you have to step out from nostalgia and into the real world with the timeless Christ.

The zone

So… apparently I was more in the zone last night than I thought.
We weren’t down one run last night when I went to bat. We were down three runs, with the bases loaded.
I hit three runs in, not one. All I saw was the guy standing on first – I didn’t see the other two runner.
Yeah. I had no idea we were down 7-10 when I went up to bat. And like I was telling Edward, I know someone was talking to me before I went up to bat, but yeah – no idea what they said.
So here’s my season record now: .333 with 3 RBI’s.
Weird.

Church goals

Mark Batterson blogs on Christ cursing the fig tree and what his church has set as their goals:

We have two goals for everybody who attends NCC: plug into a ministry & plug into a small group. It will never be more complicated than that. Ministry is where we get our spiritual exercise.Small group is where we get our spiritual food. We want to keep offering more and more small groups. So on one level we’re expanding exponentially. We have sixty-one groups this sememester. But we try to keep it simple. We want NCCers to do two things: get excercise via ministry and get discipled via small groups.

So many times I’ve seen churches do great at one or the other, but not both.
In further talking about the fig tree, Mark writes:

One of my favorite Jesus sayings is this one: “Wisdom is proved right by her children.” In other words, the proof is in the pudding. If you want to buzz you can’t just talk the talk. You’ve got to walk the walk.