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Last Sunday morning our topic was ‘Power to Change Your Life’. Below are some videos of people talking about how God has changed their lives.
These first four - including the story of one man from a Muslim background in Iran - are taken from The Tron church in Glasgow:
The following video is from Musselburgh Baptist Church:
This final video describes the conversion in Glasgow in the 1960s of Allan MacLeod who is now the RP minister in Toronto:
This Easter will be particularly joyous for Christians in Scotland with churches having only just returned to worship after a further three months of lockdown restrictions. And yet it won’t be a case of ‘as you were’ before coronavirus hit.
While many will be ecstatic to be back, some will be apprehensive – and others may not come back at all. A leaked Church of England report suggested that a fifth of worshippers may not return post-Covid. North of the border, there will be similar concerns.
Others however will be watching on optimistically to see if the undoubted rise in spiritual interest there’s been during the pandemic will translate into people returning to church after decades – or starting to come for the first time.
In a recent New York Times opinion piece, the writer Leigh Stein spoke for many millennials when she admitted: ‘I have hardly prayed to God since I was a teenager, but the pandemic has cracked open inside me a profound yearning for reverence, humility and awe’.
In her article, entitled ‘The Empty Religions of Instagram’, Stein argues that while 22% of millennials (those like myself born between 1980 and 1995) would describe themselves as having no religion, they have simply swapped traditional religion for new moral authorities – namely, social media influencers. Televangelists like Billy Graham have been swapped for Instavangelists like Glennon Doyle and Gwyneth Paltrow, but ‘we’re still drawn to spiritual counsel’, such as ‘It’s ok not to be ok’.
However, writing as a ‘leading feminist’ (Washington Post), she says ‘the women we’ve chosen as our moral leaders aren’t challenging us to ask the fundamental questions that leaders of faith have been wrestling with for thousands of years: Why are we here? Why do we suffer? What should we believe in beyond the limits of our puny selfhood?’.
In fact, once we start asking those questions, the answers might surprise us. I was struck recently by a poignant interview that comedian Eddie Izzard did with the Guardian in 2017. Entitled ‘Everything I do in life is trying to get my mother back’, the following paragraph really stood out:
“I have a very strong sense that we are only on this planet for a short length of time,” he says. “And that is only growing. Religious people might think it goes on after death. My feeling is that if that is the case it would be nice if just one person came back and let us know it was all fine, all confirmed. Of all the billions of people who have died, if just one of them could come through the clouds and say, you know, ‘It’s me Jeanine, it’s brilliant…’”
Izzard’s words struck me because at the very centre of Christianity is the claim that of all the billions of people who have died, one did come back. In fact, in the words of the Apostle Paul it is of ‘first importance…that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day’ (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).
In the past year, we’ve been surrounded by death as never before in most of our lifetimes. And according to the materialist worldview, that is it. The end. Finito. And yet when we stand around the body of a loved one, everything in us screams no – that can’t be the end! Furthermore, we’re asked to believe that on an objective level, the death of a human being is no more tragic than the death of an animal.
Stein notes, ‘The whole economy of Instagram is based on our thinking about our selves, posting about our selves, working on our selves’. But deep down, we know that we’re made for something bigger than ourselves.
In fact, Stein puts her finger on it when she says: ‘There is a chasm between the vast scope of our needs and what influencers can provide. We’re looking for guidance in the wrong places. Instead of helping us to engage with our most important questions, our screens might be distracting us from them. Maybe we actually need to go to something like church?’
The challenge for churches is: what will people hear when they come? A recent survey said that 25% of British Christians don’t believe in the resurrection – unsurprisingly when it’s routinely denied or ‘spiritualised’ from the pulpit.
A new generation are asking questions they’ve never asked before. Are we equipped to give them the answers they so desperately need?
Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 1st April 2021
Good News magazine has begun a new series about how Christianity affects our jobs. The first article, from our own James Fraser, is about being a Christian in the medical field. You can read it below:
How James’s arrival in Stranraer was reported in the local paper in 2020
I work as a GP in Stranraer. GPs see patients who present with a wide array of health problems and most of the joys (and frustrations!) come from the wide variety of health problems that people attend their doctor about. Being a doctor is an immensely privileged position of trust: within moments of starting a consultation with a doctor (even if they have never met the doctor before), patients will candidly reveal deeply personal information about themselves, their relationships, their fears about the future or even worries about death. Being unwell (or fearing being unwell) is a time of particular vulnerability and it often exposes worries that would usually be masked by the trappings of “success”, as defined by the secular world. Many of the problems that people present to the doctor with are actually a form of spiritual (or existential) distress, either in part or in whole. Many people struggle with feeling “cheated” if they become unwell despite having taken steps to try and keep fit, eat well and avoid unhealthy behaviours. Many more struggle with trying to present an external image (even to those closest to them) of “having it all” in terms of material things, while they desperately struggle to find meaning in life.
Until relatively recently in history, the aims of medical science and Christian evangelism were seen as partners, whereas more recently, the medical world has tried to divorce itself from Christianity. This vigorous attempt to de-Christianise medicine has led to a yawning void in the “spiritual care” side of medicine. Modern medicine is increasingly good at answering the questions, “what”, “how” and “when” but doesn’t provide any answers to the biggest and most pertinent question that most unwell patients have: “Why?”. Being a Christian doctor allows me to frame that question in the context of an all-knowing, all-powerful God who does not perpetuate purposeless suffering on His people, but instead uses it to refine them and to make them realise their complete dependence on Him.
The secularisation of medicine has brought frustrating restrictions on the kinds of conversations that Christian doctors can have with people who are struggling with life in this way. We are largely prohibited from talking about God (at least in specific terms) unless this topic of conversation is initiated by the patient. However, some of the best interactions I have ever had with patients have been witnessing the peace of someone who has their faith in Christ, especially towards the end of life.
Being a Christian doctor enables me to view all of the suffering I witness in the light of a God who has foreordained every illness that will befall us. It is freeing as I know that despite all the wonderful medications and treatments at my disposal, it is only by God’s mercy and will that any of them will have an effect - my patients will not be cured by me, but by God in his mercy, if it is His Will.
Our minister, Rev. Stephen Steele, has contributed a historical introduction to the republication of a book by 19th century Reformed Presbyterian Thomas Houston. The book is on the subject of Adoption and has been described by Joel Beeke as ‘unduly neglected’ and superior to all other books on the topic written in the same century.
Originally published in 1872 (and then again in 1876), it has now been republished by Ettrick Press and is available to buy from their website. Stephen completed his MA thesis on Houston in 2009 and has previously contributed an article on him to the Reformed Theological Journal (2010), as well as the chapter about Houston in the 2016 book Preachers of the Covenants.
The new book also has a preface by Rev. Ian Macleod, originally from Scotland but currently ministering in Grand Rapids. You can download a sample of the book here.
Andrew & Heather Lytle, pictured with Sammy & Carol Foucachon (Eglise Réformée Evangélique de Paris)
We’ve been praying for the RP Church’s mission work in Nantes, France, recently - particularly in light of proposed new legislation targeting Islam, but which would also have severe repercussions for Bible-believing Christians. In fact, the French minister of the Interior recently said about evangelicals: ‘We cannot discuss with people who refuse to write on paper that the law of the Republic is superior to the law of God’.
A few months ago, Rev. Andy Lytle spoke about missionary life in France on the Generation Podcast. It’s well worth listening to, particularly as he describes what a Reformed approach to mission looks like:
Other helpful episodes of the podcast include interviews with Paul & Steve Levy and Rico Tice.
