Stafford Carson : Presbyterian Pastor

A recent publication by The Good Book Company is a little gem by Christopher Ash, Director of the Cornhill Training Course in London, entitled Listen Up. It’s a very practical guide to listening to sermons.

This Sunday I’m back in my own pulpit after being away for 14 months. I am looking forward to being with my own congregation and to the task of ministering to them, in the pulpit and out of the pulpit. I am back to the discipline of preparing at least two sermons a week, and thankfully there are lots of resources to help preachers to preach good sermons. But there is virtually nothing in the last 200 years on helping people in the pews to listen to sermons. That’s why this wee book (available in our favourite local Faith Mission Bookshop in Portadown) is so helpful.

So here are Ash’s seven ingredients for healthy sermon listening:

1. Expect God to speak

2. Admit God knows better than you

3. Check the preacher says what the passage says

4. Hear the sermon in church

5. Be there week by week

6. Do what the Bible says

7. Do what the Bible says today - and rejoice!

He also has an interesting chapter on how to listen to bad sermons. How do you listen to a dull sermon? How do you listen to a biblically inadequate sermon? How do you listen to a heretical sermon? (The short answer to the last question is: Don’t!) How can we get better sermons? All great questions, with good answers provided.

I like this short book because it describes the relationship between the preacher and his congregation and encourages a relationship of “active listening” and feedback. That is essential if a pastor and his people are going to grow spiritually together. I need to improve as a preacher and as a person, and I know that will only happen as my congregation talks to me and responds to what I say in the pulpit. The days of being in the pulpit “six feet above contradiction” are long gone.

So I’m getting ready to preach on Sunday. I hope my people are ready to listen. And I hope I will have ears to hear what they are saying to me.

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In an interesting piece in the Daily Telegraph, Mick Brown tries to make some theological points about the World Cup. His most interesting conclusion is that Catholic countries fare much better than Protestant ones when it comes to the World Cup. Apparently it’s fourteen titles against four. It’s the sort of factoid that could cause a bit of heated debate in some Ulster pubs.

Brazil may be considered a Catholic country, (at the last census in 2000, 70% of the population described themselves as Catholic), but the Assembly of God Pentecostal denomination has more people worshipping in their churches in the greater Sao Paulo area than in the whole of the US. It is a country of mixed religious convictions.

One of Brazil’s most gifted players, Kaká, is an evangelical Christian. At the age of 18, he suffered a career-threatening and possibly paralysis-inducing spinal fracture as a result of a swimming pool accident, but remarkably made a full recovery. He attributes his recovery to God and has since tithed his income to his church. I thought his response to being given a very dubious red card in Brazil’s game against the Ivory Coast was very controlled, and in my humble estimation Brazil is the team to beat in this World Cup.

Some players attribute their performance on the field to divine help. The best known was Maradona in 1986, who made the important contribution that led to the exit of England from the competition. He was ready to take some credit himself: “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God”.

If that principle of the necessity for divine intervention is true then one might expect that there will be an upsurge in devotion all across England tonight. My Linfield-supporting friend’s favourite joke is “What’s the difference between praying in church and praying at Windsor Park? At Windsor Park, you really mean it!” English supporters will need to pray hard, and mean it. As Mick Brown says, their only hope is that God is, after all, an Englishman. I don’t think so.

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It’s almost too much for a Larne man like me to take in, but recent reports suggest that the Appalachian Trail, which runs for over 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine in the Eastern United States, is to be extended from America to Ireland, and may even reach my home town of Larne.

The organisers of the International Appalachian Trail have already lengthened the well-known route into Canada and Newfoundland, and they are now considering stretching it across the Atlantic into Greenland, Ireland and Scotland, and then on to Norway and North Africa.

The Irish section, which will rely on existing tracks, would run from Donegal and connect with the 625 mile long Ulster Way. Walkers could then take the ferry from Larne to Scotland to continue on a further leg of the trail.

The reasons given for making the link are largely geological. On the basis that before the Atlantic Ocean was formed, Europe and America were one large land mass, there are geographical and geological features that justify a link between the two continents.

This might give some impetus to those who promote local tourism. It is estimated that up to 4 million people walk the Appalachian Trail every year, and if even just a small percentage of those hikers made it to Northern Ireland, it would be a great boost to the local economy.

I’m certain that those who live close to the Ulster Way, given the waves of emigration from these shores to the New World in the 18th and 19th centuries, could add a few local cultural events to help hikers make an even stronger connection between Ulster and the Eastern United States.

Mind you, I never thought when I was growing up in Larne that I was anywhere close to living on the Appalachian Trail. It makes me think of my home town in a whole new way.

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We have spent a few busy days visiting friends and fulfilling engagements in and around Philadelphia. With the volcanic ash cloud bringing all trans-atlantic air travel to a halt, we had hoped that our trip might have been lengthened a bit. But the aviation authorities decided to get things back to normal before we could extend our stay, and we got home on schedule.

It was a privilege to preach at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia on Sunday morning and to spend some time with my friend, Dr Phil Ryken, who is soon to become the President of Wheaton College, one of the premier Christian colleges in the US. Phil is a good scholar, a fine preacher, and a man of great integrity. He is well-qualified to take on the leadership responsibilities at Wheaton College. We wish him well as he and his family move to Wheaton to take up his new post on July 1st.

It was great to see the church so well-filled for the 9am service and full to capacity for the 11am service. The music was as excellent as ever, under the direction of the superbly-gifted Dr Paul Jones. For any Presbyterian visiting Philadelphia on a Sunday, attendance at Tenth is a must.

On Monday I was the guest of my former colleagues at Westminster Theological Seminary, and it was wonderful to be with them again. Westminster Seminary continues to attract students from all around the world and offers a superb theological education.

Dr Tim Witmer

Its main task is to prepare pastors for ministry in reformed and presbyterian churches, and my former colleague and good friend in the Practical Theology department, Dr Tim Witmer, has recently published an outstanding book on pastoral care, entitled The Shepherd Leader. I know that many ministers will benefit from the biblical and practical counsel which this volume contains. Already it is proving a popular book among north American pastors.

Dr Vern Poythress

Another excellent volume coming from the Westminster faculty is Dr Vern Poythress’s Redeeming Science. Dr Poythress has doctoral degrees in both mathematics and theology, and he applies his creative mind to key questions in the area of science and theology. I may have more to say on this book once I have finished reading it.

Dr Poythress is also one of the key members of the team of scholars responsible for the English Standard Version of the Bible, and we had a good conversation together about the way in which that translation is being received by Christians worldwide. Vern is the author of the article “A Survey of the History of Salvation” which is in the preface of the ESV Study Bible and which gives a wonderful summary of one of the great unifying threads of the Bible.

All in all, it was a stimulating week-end, not least because of the travel chaos. But I came home with a few new books in my bag, which will keep me going for the next couple of weeks.

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Patricia and I flew to the US on Wednesday just before the cloud of volcanic ash erupted and stopped all flights across the north Atlantic. So here we are in Philadelphia, on the other side of the cloud, with many trans-Atlantic air travellers unable to get to where they want to be. We are quite content to enjoy the beautiful spring weather in Pennsylvania, and we will see how things develop by the time we are due to return next week. Maybe we will have to stay longer? For others, to be on the wrong side of the cloud will be very disruptive.

I had lunch yesterday with Dr Paul Wells, who teaches at the Reformed Seminary in Aix-en-Provence in France, and he left us to get an Air France flight to Toronto and then to Paris. The Paris flight out of Toronto was cancelled, but I believe Paul made it safely across the Atlantic on an Air India flight to Barcelona.

The last time trans-Atlantic air travel was so disrupted was immediately following the 9/11 attacks. On that occasion, Patricia and our eldest daughter had just crossed the Atlantic on the evening of the 10th September and I was in Philadelphia with our younger daughter. But all flights were restored within a week and Patricia and I were reunited on schedule.

This disruption seems strangely apocalyptic. One (relatively small) volcanic event has a massive impact on human activity and travel. It is another reminder that in spite of our successes and achievements in many areas of life, we are still quite powerless in face of the natural phenomena in the earth. I think the biblical writers made that point many centuries ago.

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