“It takes all sorts to be a minister’s wife”. That’s what Rachel Lawrence writes in ”The Minister’s Wife”. If that’s true, is it possible for one book to help every sort of minister’s wife? 

Well, this book does a pretty good job. This is due partly to the fact that eight different sorts of minister’s wives contribute from their own different experiences. This brings all sorts of styles and ways of approaching the topic.

I think it is also due to the way that it addresses the real cause of our issues as minister’s wives. No, I don’t mean our husbands or even our churches but our hearts. The book contains a very helpful chapter on maintaining our relationship with the Lord and one on humility and contentment. These remind us that dealing with the practicalities of being a minister’s wife requires more than a list of handy hints and recipes.

Having said that, there are also some very down to earth practical answers to the “How to…?” questions with a chapter particularly for those starting out in ministry. We are also reminded of the many privileges of being a minister’s wife.

This is a great book to dip into again and again whatever sort of minister’s wife you are. It will challenge you to think about your responsibilities and priorities as well as encourage you to keep on serving God as you serve your husband.

[Ed: boys, buy this for your wife, but here's a tip – don't make it your only Christmas present to her. She may not appreciate that.]

We tend to focus here on preaching, and are right to do so, but preaching has a context which is normally (narrowly) a worship service in church and (more broadly) a pastoral ministry exercised in the church. So, to answer the first context, here is an order of service I put together for last Sunday evening when I was preaching on "Gospel Encouragement" from 2 Corinthians 4 (more specifically, "therefore, we do not lose heart"). I'll try and explain what I was thinking:

Welcome – I always introduce myself, sometimes there will be new people there or people who don't know the church leadership team. I explain what we're going to do, and sometimes (though not this time) read a Scripture to call people to worship.

Sing: Great is the gospel of our glorious God. This great Vernon Higham hymn linked into the morning sermon which was about the glory and wonder of the new covenant foreshadowed in the promises made to David (2 Samuel 7). It provided a link for those who were there in the morning and information for those who were not. 

• Prayer: I led the congregation in prayer. I often write notes for my public prayers to keep them focused, correct (theologically) and Trinitiarian.
• Reading: 2 Corinthians 4. We were a bit radical at this stage and I asked the congregation to read to one another in twos and threes. All did. I did offer for some people to duck out as I know there are some who are not fond of reading aloud and others who cannot. Worked well, though wouldn't want to do it every time. We all said "Amen" together at the end (unscripted!)
• Sermon: yes, at the beginning. The sermon was about not losing heart when things don't seem so glorious. It was based on 2 Corinthians 4.
• Sing: We sung two songs in response to remind ourselves about the glory to come (which is the climax of the passage). This felt like we were singing the sermon in – very useful. We sung I will glory in my Redeemer followed by There is a higher throne.
• This service included the Lord's Supper so we then had a time of open prayer (we can do this because we are about 70 in the evening) when I asked people to pick up on themes from the sermon and then focus on the Lord's Supper. 
• Sing: in memory of the Saviour's Love. Beautiful 17th Century hymn about the Lord's Supper which we sung to a very slow version of Amazing Grace. New to us, but worked well.
• Lord's Supper: at this point led by our pastor (it's difficult for me to handle bread because I'm a coeliac and I easily get ill).
• Sing to close: In Christ alone – a bit anthemic, but described the points in the sermon and the Lord's Supper very well.

All takes about 75 mins which is what we plan for. What would I have done differently? There was not enough time for petition which was a weakness.

BTW, the picture is really us! Well, some of us anyway.

It's the standard evangelical application; worthy if a little predictable – read your Bible more; pray more. But what if we've got those two essential ingredients of our quiet times wrong? Tipped off by my pastor I've been thinking about the puritan view of personal devotions and, interestingly, they had three elements, not two. This is best explained by Richard Baxter in the Saints Everlasting Rest. He said that we have to have three ingredients:

• consideration – what we would call reading/understanding the text
• soliloquy – more of this in a moment
• prayer

The soliloquy is the "talking to yourself" part and the Puritans saw this as a key component of quiet times. The Bible exhorts us to meditate on God's word again and again and the Hebrew word means to chew over – to digest, if you like. How much of this do we actually do? How much of a discipline is it? No wonder our quiet times are sometimes turgid and difficult. We're quite possibly missing a piece of the puzzle. 

Interestingly, last week I was reading Eric Mataxas' bio of Bonhoeffer and noticed that when he set up his Confessing Church college he got his students to find a quiet place each day for one whole hour and chew over a small part of Scripture; to talk to themselves about it; to work it through in their minds over and over again; to let it sink into every fibre of their being. These students, coming from largely mechanical-Christianity backgrounds, hated it! But we, we believers should love it.

And we need it. There is something profoundly wrong with a quiet time that reads/understands and prays without the soliloguy. We need to take the word of God into us and let it transform us. As Baxter puts it, we all need to find our Isaac place (somewhere away from the bustle of the day) and, basically, chew on God's word, preaching to ourselves.

A not-so-quiet time…

Had the privilege of sitting in on some Cornhill teaching last week as they embarked on a mammoth series in John's gospel. Christopher kicked off with this helpful Calvin quote.

A gospel is 'the glad and delightful message of the grace exhibited to us in Christ, in order to instruct us, by despising the world and it's fading riches and pleasures, to desire with our whole heart, and to embrace when offered to us, this invaluable blessing.' In the gospels, the evangelists do not just record the facts, 'but also explain for what purpose he was born, and died, and rose again, and what benefit we derive from those events.' John 'dwells more largely (than the Synoptics) on the doctrine by which the office of Christ, together with the power of his death and resurrection, is unfolded' or 'the power and benefit of the coming of Christ'. The Synoptics 'exhibit his body' but John 'exhibits his soul.' So, this gospel 'is a key to open the door for understanding the rest.'

Spent a day at a theological college this week and met up with some past Cornhill students. Delightful. One told me that, when it came to preaching, it was noticeable (even after three years) those who had done our Cornhill course and those who hadn't. We're convinced it still has an important part to play as an adjunct to a theological degree or further training – they complement one another nicely. The Cornhill course is able to do what college courses cannot do – that is focus entirely on public teaching and preaching ministry. It is its strength and the reason people still come. It's almost time to start thinking about applying for 2012/13. 

• Perhaps you are thinking about ministry and the Cornhill course (alongside a church placement) would be a great way to develop nascent gifts?
• Perhaps you are already in ministry and the Cornhill course will help sharpen your preaching and teaching?
• Perhaps you are approaching a change in life (children left home, redundancy etc) which frees you up to serve in the church and you would really like to develop your teaching ministry?

We have all these kinds of people doing Cornhill, and many more besides. There's more information here (including online application) and you can watch the PT Cornhill video here.

I'm not talking about the covenant of course!! I'm thinking about commentaries on 2 Corinthians. (What? You didn't spot that?) One of my favourite commentary sets is Eerdmans New International Old and New Testament commentary. I find that they have just the right mix of language, technical and application which enables me to study a book well.

The series used to be called The New London Commentary and volumes are gradually being replaced. That means that the original volumes are disappearing and in some cases that is a great shame. Take 2 Corinthians. The NICNT volume by Paul Barnett is majestic, thorough and well written and researched. I warmly commend it. It was punlished in 1997. But it replaces a volume written by Anglican scholar and later professor at Westminster Theological Seminary Philip Edgcumbe Hughes. A replacement was probably necessary to update the scholarly side of the book. However, Hughes' volume will be missed. It is in many respects superb. I might write to Eerdmans and ask them for the copyright! I don't want either/or but both/and. In the meantime, if you see a second hand copy of Hughes around, grab it while you can. 

BTW, Hughes also wrote one of the original Pillar commentaries on Revelation. I see that the Donster will be rewriting that (I eagerly anticipate….). I can't comment on the Revelaton volume as I haven't seen it, but I guess it's worth hunting down too.

Review of Why Good Arguments Often Fail by James Sire (IVP). This is one of those increasing rarities, an IVP US book that makes it onto the IVP  UK catagloue. We're richer for it though. It was published in 2006 and I remember reading it a few years ago and thinking, hmm, that should help my preaching. So this last week, I determined to read it again. It's both an incredibly strong book and an inherently weak one – both at the same time.

It's strength comes from the very careful analysis of argument (much of which can be applied to preaching) with the specific view of informing evangelism (in the author's case campus evangelism). But it also has an inherent weakness, namely, it's just not quite spiritual enough….. Let me explain before I return to its strengths.

There is, of course, a reaons why good arguments fail. Funnily enough, I'm preaching on it this Sunday:

the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (2 Cor 4.4)

Therefore, the answer to failing arguments is primarily spiritual and the remedy must be spiritual too – to preach God's word in the power of the Spirit, soaked with prayer. I am sure Sire would not disagree with this, but he says very little about it in the book. However, it is also true that in that same passage, the Apostle says: 

on the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God (2 Cor 4.2)

Perhaps I'm being pedantic? After all, what follows in Sire's book is superb. But I would not want anybody to read it (least of all impressionale young campus evangelists) and just think that we've got to make a good argument. However, proclamation is surely not less than that, and this is why the book is ultimately helpful. 

The book starts with a chapter borrowed from another, namely Love is a fallacy from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis by Max Shulman (1951 –  collection of short stories which later became a TV series). You can read the chapter here (quicker) or even watch it on youtube (keep going to the end for the punchline….).

The first half of the book is then dedicated to explaining the various logical fallacies people use and then showing how they can be avoided. I think this is a rich vein for preachers (and I even wonder whether the short story should be required reading on Cornhill!). For example, we have:

• unqualified generalisations: "statements that contain a grain of truth but are so unqualified that they almost succeed in being false" – e.g. "Christians know the truth about God."
• hasty generalisations: statements that contain truth but extrapolate too far. "Church is a wonderful place." Listeners are going to see through that!
• false cause: arguments that simply claim too much. "Everything that is great about the UK comes from our Christian heritage" – just not true, but I've heard preachers use similar arguments.
• contrary hypotheses: arguments that are not internally consistent. We once tried to hire a church for a conference but were told by the vicar that we could not as "they were an inclusive church" – think about it!
• hypotheses contrary to fact: something that expresses what we wished were true, but may well not be. "If only you would read the gospels you would see clearly that Jesus is the Son of God."
• false analogy: drawing distinctions between wrong things. Perhaps this is where many of our illustrations suffer?
• poisoning the well: perjorative statements up front that simply turn some people off. "the new atheists don't understand anything about Christianity" Really?
• non sequitur: an argument where the conclusion doesn't really follow the points made. 

All of these are very cleverely illustrated in the Love is a fallacy short story…..

I find this sort of challenge really helpful. My preaching has got to stack up. And it's easy when you're in monologue to abuse the audience and not argue carefully. Of course, the type of preaching we espouse guards against this – mostly because we're using the logic and argument of the text to make our case (although that presupposes we've done the careful work to understand the logic of the text).

The remainder of the book deals with other reasons why arguments fail: attitude, misreading the audience, gaps in worldviews between us (important one that), moral blindness – and ends with a worked example through Paul's Athens address, plus loads of recommendations for resources.

I don't think this book will transform your preaching, but I do think it will help it.

Now, I'm off to see Christopher to tell him about Love is a fallacy….

There's a new online journal out called Credo. OK, so it is written by baptists (hoorah!) but it looks very serious and thoughtful and I've enjoyed the one or two articles I've read so far. Contributors include Bruce Ware, John Frame (so not all baptists…), Timothy George and Tim Challies. Free, and worth a few moments of your time – especially this launch issue on the doctrine of Scripture. 

A one page article interested me (and made me smile). It was a series of short one line interviews asking a variety of men how difficult it is to interpret Old Testament Scripture. I love Walt Kaiser's entry "2 (on a scale of 1-10) relatively easy"!! 

The front page headline in this month's Christianity Today caught my eye

Why leading evangelical scholars are arguing for a new way to interpret Scripture

Got me worried! Novelty is not necessarily wrong, but we are right to be wary of new things. It turns out that this "new" way to read Scripture "turns out to be not so new and will deepen our life in Christ." So, not so new. And, without wanting to go all "I told you so" what we've been advocating for years. It's a long article and addresses some particular American problems with reading the Scriptures, but they are problems that appear to be more and more prevalent over here. So, here is the breakout box on 1 Samuel 17. It's worth repeating in full and if you can get access to CT, then go read the article. 

I recently had the privilege of attending the West London Ministry Meeting at Duke Street Church in Richmond. Mike Reeves of UCCF was speaking to us about Richard Sibbes’ book originally titled Bowels Opened but soon to be re-published by the Banner of Truth with a title more appropriate for the 21^st Century, namely The Love of Christ.

It was a glorious afternoon as Reeves opened up Sibbes’ book which is an exposition of The Song of Songs. Sibbes sees The Song of Songs as “nothing else but a plain demonstration and setting forth of the love of Christ to his church, and of love of the church to Christ.” One of the many things that struck me was how both Solomon and Sibbes are fetching for the highest language to describe the excellencies of  Him who is “distinguished among ten thousand” (Song of Songs 5:12), our magnificent Lord Jesus. It reminded me of that line in the hymn ‘O sacred head once wounded’ which says, ‘What language shall I borrow to praise you, dearest Friend?’ What a great question! We live in a time when everything is ‘great’ and ‘wonderful’ and ‘brilliant’. And yet if we use superlatives to describe the mundane, how do we describe the One who is altogether lovely? So here’s something I am trying to do: reserve my superlatives for the Saviour. That is to keep the utmost language for my utmost Treasure. And to borrow whatever language I can to praise Him who is. The Puritans were good at doing that. So I am looking forward to reading Sibbes’, The Love of Christ.

Mike Reeves is one of the speakers at next year’s EMA. Book online here.