Have we preached the word richly, but failed to let the word dwell richly among us?

Tony Payne provocatively argues that while evangelicalism has successfully recovered expository preaching and every-member ministry, we have not adequately recovered every-member word ministry. 

Tony argues that the Reformation remains unfinished, that we haven’t fully thought through the implications of the priesthood of all believers, and that passages like Ephesians 4, Hebrews and especially 1 Corinthians 11-14 may need to be read rather differently than many of us have assumed.

Tony asks, have we trained people to serve on teams, but not trained them to speak God’s word to one another?

It’s a challenge that reaches into some of our most fundamental assumptions about Christian ministry. 

We discuss prophecy, the ministry of women, the role of the pastor-teacher, preaching and discipleship, and what it would actually look like for the word of Christ to reverberate through a congregation rather than stopping at the pulpit.

To purchase: matthiasmedia.com.au/products/let-the-word-dwell-richly

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, it's Dominic Steele, and could you please go online to the pastorsheart.net slash support. Thank you so much to those who have donated so far to our appeal for support for the Pastors Heart Ministry. We're $7,000 down, $33,000 to go, as we look to raise $40,000 by the 30th of June. We would love particularly help from those within Australia who are able to give tax deductibly within this last few weeks of the Australian tax year before the 30th of June. We're attempting

Support The Pastor’s Heart Appeal

SPEAKER_00 0:30

on the Pastor's Heart to encourage pastors in our common task of reaching out to seek and save the lost and building up the saints. And look, a little gift from us. If you do give before the 30th of June, we'd love to send you a gift in return, a Pastor's Heart mug. Thanks so much. We have preached the Word richly, but we have not let the Word dwell richly among us. Tony Paine is with us. It's the Pastor's Heart, it's Dominic Steele, and a stack of provocative questions today challenging some of the key foundational ways that we think about Christian ministry. Tony Payne has this new book out. It's called Let the Word Dwell Richly. And as I read it, Tony has challenged some of my fundamental understandings in 1 Corinthians and Ephesians and how

Why The Word Must Dwell Among Us

SPEAKER_00 1:29

I and I suspect you think about pastoral practice. Tony says the Reformation is unfinished. In our thinking and our practice, we haven't rightly thought through the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. We need to let the word dwell richly among us. His large question is what kinds of word ministry the New Testament expects all Christians to engage in. He says the New Testament vision is not simply that the word is proclaimed from the front, but that it reverberates through the congregation as Christians speak God's word to each other. On the way, Tony gives us some fresh ways of understanding some of the most disputed passages in the New Testament regarding women and ministry. It's a substantial thesis from a substantial thinker. Tony led the editorial team at the influential Matthias Media for decades and now lectures in ethics at Sydney's Moore Theological College. Tony, let's start with the pastor's heart. And is it right to say some of the things in this book have been on your heart for decades, but it's taken until now for your thinking to catch up with your pastor's heart?

SPEAKER_01 2:43

It sometimes works that way, doesn't it? Sometimes we have an intuition and a sense of what is true and what should be the case, and it takes us a while to think it through. I think from the you mentioned Matthias Media, from the very earliest days of that ministry, we operated on the assumption that all Christians should be equipped and trained to share the word with one another, that small group Bible study was Christians sharing the word with each other, that evangelism was Christians getting out there and sharing the word, and that the word ministry of Christians was just a normal part of what it meant to be a Christian and to be equipped and trained as

The Missing Theology Of One Another

SPEAKER_01 3:14

a mature believer. But it's only in the last 10 years or so, especially after the trellis and the vine, where we kind of just rolled that idea out there in the book and were questioned about it quite a lot as we as we went around talking about it, um, that I decided it was worth actually digging into that question theologically and biblically in a more robust way, and to see, in fact, is that the case in the New Testament and in the Bible? And if so, in what manner, in what shape, and with what foundation. So, in a sense, it's bringing a theological argument and robustness to a kind of practice and intuition and assumption we've all been operating on for decades.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

And I think you said you found 500 or more books on how the word of God and preaching relate to each other, and seven books on how one another ministry takes place. Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

It's it's that's true. And understandably, we're very interested in preaching, and preaching is so foundational and central, and in the history of Christian thought, there has been a stack of thinking, theological and practical, about how to preach and what preaching means and what its purpose is and what its theological nature is. But in terms of the word ministry of Christians, I was really surprised, I was genuinely surprised to discover that there's been almost no rigorous theological biblical reflection on that important subject. And it's all over the New Testament.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Yeah, you I think you said 26 or something references across the New Testament.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Depending on how you count them, roughly, yeah, 26, 27 instances where the apot the apostles or in the gospels um either reference the the existence of this one another word ministry between Christians, and most often, imperatively, urge people to practice it and engage in it.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

And that's speaking God's word to each other.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Speaking God's word to each other.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Yeah. And so, I mean, we're talking incidental conversations during the week. We're talking about what happens around the edges of the congregational gathering, we're talking about what happens from the platform, all those kind of things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

It's multimodal, multifaceted. We're talking about any instance in which a Christian, as a Christian, that is not as a set-apart teacher, preacher, elder with a designated speaking preaching ministry. Christians, as Christians, are speaking some word of Christ related to Christ and the gospel and its implications into the life of someone else for their spiritual benefit. And you could see that if that's that's the kind of that's what I mean by the one another word. And you can see that that could happen with my child at the bedtime, uh, as it does as the father teaches and instructs their children in Ephesians 6. It can happen as the older women instruct younger women and help them to love their husbands and be godly women. It can happen as we sing to one another, it can happen in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5. It can happen as we exhort one another daily to resist the hardening effects of sin and keep our trust in the faith of the gospel in Hebrews 3. It's it's multifaceted and happens in many different ways, but it's kind of quite a bedrock foundation of what the apostles thought the Christian life and Christian church was about.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Now, um, I'm gonna take you through some of the areas where you've kind of pushed me to change my mind as I've read the book. Um, one of them was just thinking about Ephesians 4 um 12 through 16. And um, I mean, I was aware of the debate about Ephesians 4, 12. And does God uh expect us to be doing the work or is he equipping the pastor teacher to but then you've got a whole new thesis?

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Well, it's not my not necessarily just my own.

Ephesians 4 Think Cosmic Act Local

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Um I've been influenced by this by by others who've been reading Ephesians 4 and thinking about it, Lionel Windsor in particular, and um and the work of Collins, John Collins, and others. Um I think the the main shift of emphasis, there's a there's a kind of a there's a debate about what's going on in Ephesians 4, and whether it's Paul just talking to the Ephesian congregation about what's happening in their church, you've got pastors, you've got teachers, and this is what the pastors and teachers do in your church, or whether he's talking more than that.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

And that's I think what I would say that's the traditional understanding is something in our tribe.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Oh, yeah, yeah, very much. And when um and whenever I talk about this subject, people say, Oh, you mean like Ephesians 4? Equipping the saints for the work of ministry.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Yeah. And I say, Well, yes, but and equipping the saints for the work of ministry, I'd kind of read it could include kind of being on the welcoming team. Exactly. Or being on the I mean, whatever you're doing that is promoting the ministry of the word, you team. Tech team, sound team, welcoming everything. Um accountant or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

You know, yeah. Exactly. Um, whereas I think what's going on in Ephesians 4, uh I I think it's talking about the way Christ's mission to the world was initiated and launched through the apostles and prophets and through the saints. And I think the saints here is talking about the Jewish Christians who launched the ministry of the word throughout the ancient world. It was the Jewish evangelists and pastors and teachers who went out and initiated the gospel even to the nations. Um, but however you kind of parse that and whether you agree with that reading of it or not, I think the really important thing in Ephesians 4 is that where it lands is not in 4, 11, and 12 for the preparation of the saints. It lands in verses 15 and 16.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

But just before we get to 15, is it right to say if your thesis or Collins's thesis is right that the Ephesians 4.12 is about um equipping the Jewish Christians to the unity with the Gentiles, then that line about aiming for unity in the faith is not necessarily in the first place referring to unity of understanding in my congregation, but unity between the Jewish and the Gentile Christian.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

It may, it may well be. Um I think the whole big church is in is in um rather than my little congregation. Is in view. Yeah, that's what's certainly been in view right through chapters two and three, as Paul's been talking about what God has done to create one new man, one new humanity in himself. And that new humanity, Jew and Gentile, is a cosmic heavenly reality. It's the it's the great gathering of all Christians. And Paul's apostolic ministry is what is building that wonderful heavenly gathering. And I think in chapter four, he's talking about how it proceeds as Christ gifted, um gave gifts to the church for this great apostolic mission to proceed. It cascades out from the apostles and the prophets. Um, it it spreads throughout the world. And his point to the Ephesians is you are caught up in this. This is you now, and so it is your congregation now.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

In your congregation, because this is what God is doing everywhere, everywhere, therefore there's unity to be pursued at my own.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Absolutely, absolutely there is. And his call in Ephesians 4 and beyond is for the Ephesians to, in a sense, understand this extraordinary cosmic plan of God to build his body, the body of Christ, through the apostolic mission of the gospel. It's reached you and it's reached your congregation and your life. You're now part of this one new man, and you're being built up into the stature and fullness of that man, Jesus Christ. And the way you particularly do that is that you speak the truth one to another. That's what in verses 15 and 16 builds the body. The body builds itself as the word of God is spoken in love, that's the word of Christ today, um, one to another. And that's what builds this heavenly body. Uh, I think the chapter in the book that's about this is called Um Think Cosmic, Act Local, which is uh which is really, I think, what Paul is saying. His extraordinary apostolic mission ends up playing out in what you do with your neighbours and how you speak to one another in church and how you build the congregation where you are.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Whereas I think, and um I mean, I've just been reading your book and then but reflecting on my own teaching in the past. I think if you looked at a sermon that I'd done on Ephesians 4 in the past, the centre of gravity of my talk would have been verse 12-13. Um and I probably have glossed over 1516. Whereas I think you're saying um actually the real application for us today should be 1516.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

That's where it lands, it all cascades down and lands. And even if you don't want to go with my reading of um Ephesians 4, that is where the where the section lands. And the difference it makes is that instead of seeing the equipping of the saints for ministry as being just general every member service of some kind of miscellaneous or general form, um, the every member kind of ministry really is every member word ministry. That's that's where that's where the passage is.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Not just thinking, that's great, you're on the car parking team.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Exactly. What I'm what I'm doing with you now, I want you to do with each other. The word that you're hearing from me and that I'm establishing in your hearts and minds, I want you to take that word and I want it to be in your hearts and in your on your lips. And as you encounter and meet each other in all kinds of facets of our life together, I want that word to be the word that is the glue between us. We speak about all the time.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

So for me, I'm gonna have to have a conversation with our staff team about your Ephesians 4 chapter, and I'm gonna read this chapter again before I next preach on Ephesians. Um now let's go to 1 Corinthians, because you spent a lot of time on 1 Corinthians and particularly thinking about prophecy, and actually, I think you've reframed my thinking on prophecy as well.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Okay. Well, that's a twofer. So what makes that? What are you saying about prophecy? Um, prophecy in in 1 Corinthians um and in the New Testament generally, in 1 Corinthians where it's is where it's talked about most. Uh, it's talked about kind of embryonically in chapter 2, verses 6 to 16, I believe,

Prophecy As Gospel Applied To Life

SPEAKER_01 12:55

um as a kind of spirit-given understanding and speech. Are you on your own in saying that? Or is it No, no, there are there are others who who um who think that as well. Yes, you guys Gillespie and others have made this argument that what's happening in chapter two is a kind of uh first pass, embryonic take of what he's going to come back to in chapters 12 to 14. That is, that the spirit imparts to the Christian an understanding of the gospel by which Christians make judgments about all things. They now understand by understanding Christ and the gospel, you have the mind of Christ and that allows you to speak and make judgments about things. And that's the nature of what the spirit does. He equips and strengthens you to impart the words of truth one to another in the midst of life. And I think that's a kind of a beginning, and he then goes on to other issues in 1 Corinthians, but when he comes back in chapters 12 to 14, the spirit-enabled or given speech of the community is his real topic. Uh, I think he's raised it in chapter two, and then he kind of brings it home in chapters 12 to 14, where he wants to say that the the the what the spirit gives you as a Christian is the ability to speak the word of God into situations, into the application of your of other people's lives, into into the context in which you live. And in many respects, prophecy is the kind of the ideal and highest form of that speech. It's where you take the gospel word of Christ and you intelligibly and edifyingly, uh comforting comfortingly, encouragingly bring it into the context of someone's life to apply that word to that person's life or to that group's life. And so prophecy is kind of like the contextual application of the gospel word into a particular place. And that means that um it's it's a privilege of every Christian in a sense, or it's in 1 Corinthians 14, it's the thing he wants every Christian to aspire to, to that kind of speech.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

So a talk that didn't land in people's lives would be a deficient talk, and a conversation that didn't land in someone's life.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

Um in one sense, yes. Um what do you mean by a talk? You mean uh any sort of body? I take it.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Maybe the challenge that you've put, I'm just checking now, is um prophecy is much broader than preaching. Yeah. I'm just reflective listening back, but you know, but it would include at least aspects of preaching.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Part of what part of what a good sermon does, especially you would say would be prophetic.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

And it's certainly going to say when you and I are talking, or an everyday congregation member is talking with each other about, well, what did the word what has God been teaching you today? We're talking about immediate application about how I live my life this week.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Yeah, yeah. And sometimes prophecy, I think, is kind of like seen as an ideal form to pursue, but it's not the only form of the word, of the one another word. It's kind of almost like the pristine ideal form uh in 1 Corinthians 14, I think. But there's lots of other words in 1 Corinthians 14 as well. He says, when you come to church, you know, and you bring a lesson or instruction or interpretation, you bring your sorts of stuff with you, all sorts of words with you to the congregation. The idea is that you come and you share those. Um, you share them in love, and love guides your your sharing of them, the edification of others, and good order and orderliness is as that's done. And so um I think the one another word generally, not totally, but generally focuses on the application and encouragement of the word and the exhortation of the word into someone's life, but it's always based on the content of the word as well. So it's not it's not disconnected from the truth of what the word says, but it brings that word into the life of the person you're speaking to, reminds them of it, maybe instructs them in it, perhaps encourages or exhorts them in it, urges them to practice it in their context. And prophecy is one word and one form of that of that contextual word, if I can put it like that.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Now, I just want to note um uh you did make a point that jumped out to me that 1 Corinthians 11 you said is not referring to congregational life, and yet 1 Corinthians 12 to 14 is referring to congregational life. Can you just give that to us?

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Oh, well, when I say congregational life, um church meeting. The gathered congregation.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Yes, right. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Sure. Um, and I think just as 1 Corinthians 2 is raising

Rethinking 1 Corinthians 11 And 14

SPEAKER_01 17:31

the prospect that spirit-enabled speech is something that Christians do, chapter 11 says prophecy is something that Christians do, that men and women do. They do in all kinds of contexts, and it says various things about when they do practice prayer or prophecy, how we are as men and women shapes the way that's done. But it just clothing, hair debates, kind of things. That sort of stuff. It just assumes that prophecy is something that men and women will practice. And this is one of the aspects of the one another word of the New Testament that's so striking that of those 26, 27 different references, uh, all but four of them are not gendered at all. Um, they're just general encouragements for all Christians, men, women, young, old, to speak the word of God to one another as they have opportunity. And it's really only in a few passages like 1 Corinthians 11, where it says how you do that as men and women will be affected by the fact that we're men and women together and relate to each other differently. But I don't think, as everyone always says, oh, 1 Corinthians 11 is obviously in church. I I actually think there's no indication at all in 1 Corinthians 11 that it's talking about a church gathering. I think it's simply saying that prophecy and prayer is something that men and women do. And when you do it, do it as men and women.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

I mean, that's I think it was Carson in showing the spirit, I think that persuaded me that 1 Corinthians 11 was about church, but you're saying no.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

No, I don't think so. And I I interact with with Don on that. Um who am I to disagree with the great with the great mind you the Don, the Don Bradman, the Don occasionally had a duck. So every now and then, even the great ones might get it wrong. And so I I think his argument there isn't strong. Um, and I've I've explained why in the book. Um, and it means that when when we come to 1 Corinthians 14, we're not um forcing 1 Corinthians 14 through a grid that we've already established in 1 Corinthians 11, which I think has somehow in as often influenced the way we then read 1 Corinthians 14.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Yeah, and I said to you before we might um get you back to talk more about that in a couple of weeks' time.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

I'd love to, because it's a whole topic on its own.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Well, I just thought, wow, there's another there's a new understanding here for me on how to understand verses 33 and 34 of 1 Corinthians, but let's get you back in a couple of weeks to do that because I want to stay on the big picture today. Um if you're right, that um well really that pinnacle line you said about prophecy, um just help me on some of the great thinkers of the past. What did Luther say? What did Carson say? What did Bond Hoffer say about these kind of things? You mean Calvin? Yeah, it's Luther Calvin and give us some of those guys.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Well, interestingly, um Luther, as you know very strongly on the on the priesthood of all believers, and he saw the priesthood of all believers, um, and this is in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 1 Peter 2 and so on. Um priesthood, he said, consists of three things. It consists in teaching, a priest teaches the people, the teeth the priest

Priesthood Of All Believers Revisited

SPEAKER_01 20:31

prays for the people, and the priest sacrifices. And he said, and that's what Christ does as our great priest, and that's what we do as his brothers. We're priests. And so, as priests, as all being priests, we all teach and preach and proclaim the gospel, we all pray for one another, and we all lay down our lives and sacrifice for one another. Um, in other words, he saw the priesthood of all believers as not simply being about the fact that we all have access to God through through Jesus Christ on the one basis, but that as being God's priests, as brother priests to the Lord Jesus, as it were, priests in him, we have a role in bringing the word of God to the world in in preaching and speaking. Um, Calvin, not so much, didn't emphasize that so much. Um, but one of the interesting things about Luther and about his historical context, and Calvin's as well, is that they never really worked out the implications and consequences of that way of thinking um for the practice and life of believers. There were lots of stuff that they were dealing with at the Reformation and trying to change and and uh and improve.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

But thinking through not the implications because 400 years later it still took you 10 years to work it out.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Exactly. And Calvin, um, to his credit, he he certainly speaks in a couple of places uh that Peter Adam points out in his forward, um, where he encouraged he says, of course, people will edify one another and speak the word to one another. It's just not it's not a big theme for them. That they opened up the theological basis for it, um, they gave the grounding for it, um, but for very Reasons in their context, and that maybe historical reasons I suspect, it just never became a great theme of their work. And interestingly, post the Reformation, that's been the case. That we haven't teased out what it means for all believers to be bearers of and bringers of the word to one another. And that's something that you mentioned, Bonhoffer, uh, one of the few theologians who who did pick this up, and it's in life together. Um, it fits into the the overall scheme of of Bonhoeffer's theology, and I delve into that to some extent in the world. Very, very much so, because he essentially says that the nature of Christian community, uh and this is what life together is about, about being together, is that the word of God in Jesus Christ is what we have in common. It's Jesus stands in the center between us, and the word of God is which comes to us from outside from the Lord Jesus, is the word that therefore is on our lips and in which we encounter each other. And so he says that the essence of Christian community is to relate to one another through Jesus Christ and to come to one another with the word of Jesus Christ on our lips. And there's that lovely quote where he says that very often the word of God in my heart is uncertain and fragile, and I'm struggling, and that you come with the word of God on your lips, and you bring that word to me, and you re-energize and encourage and strengthen me by, because the word of Christ on your lips is um is clear, the word in my heart, I'm struggling. Um, and so he has this wonderful picture of this mutual free word, he calls it, the free word from brother to brother, um, that is the essence of being a Christian community and and a highest form of service in the Christian community, he says. Um, the one that all the other forms of practical service, like helping one another practically, forgiving each other, listening to one another, all these other important things we do, they culminate in us speaking to one another, bringing Christ to each other in all sorts of little ways, in little encouraging words and exhortations, in reminding one another and bringing one another a verse of scripture and so on.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Let's uh go to this diagram that you end up with. We'll put it up on the screen here. And for those uh who are um uh listening to us, it's worth popping over to thepastorsheart.net and finding this part of the talk and looking at the diagram that Tony uh has prepared and put, I think it's from chapter 21 of your book. Can you just explain then how you think, and I mean, and some of this is coming from O'Donovan, but how you think the whole application of what we should do is going to look like

Preaching Versus Practical Immediacy

SPEAKER_00 24:36

from your thesis? Because you are putting forth quite a substantial challenge.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Well, I'm I guess yes, what what the diagram is representing is that the what ministry of the word as you encounter it in the New Testament is broad and rich. Um, as Peter Adams says, it's not just the preaching of the Bible, there are all kinds of other word ministries, and what burden or purpose do those other ministries have? And what I've tried to, as I've examined all the different references to the one another word and looked at it in relation to preaching, um, the two are uh integrally linked. Um, that is, the the apostles often um in in their letters are basically saying, what I'm doing with you in preaching, I want you to do with one another, as you encourage. And what the diagram is representing is that the teaching and preaching ministry uh is high in comprehensive knowledge. That is, when we preach and teach and proclaim the gospel, we've spent hours in preparation. And you you frame a whole way of thinking in the disciple. You teach the disciple how to think by proclaiming and teaching the word. And part of that teaching will be to reach towards practical immediacy. That is to start to say, this is what it means for your life. Uh, this is what the word of Jesus Christ in all its facets, and I'm explaining from this passage means for you in practice. But you'll only be able to extend so far in that practical application because you're speaking to 150 people. You'll you'll have general applications. In fact, if you try to go too far towards practical immediacy, if you try to take over the whole zone as a preacher and say precisely to every person what they should exactly do, you kind of it's becoming legalistic sort of preaching that that lays down specific laws for everyone to as I as I was reading it, I was reflecting on what do I do?

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Yes. And I was thinking, ah, I mean, sorry, just for those listening, on the y-axis, he's got comprehensive knowledge, and on the x-axis, he's got practical immediacy. And um I was thinking when I get to that application end, often I'm saying, no, I'm just thinking about how this lands for me. Yes. You know, and so I'm not You're giving an example. I'm yeah, I'm being an example. So I am giving, attempting to give a role model of an area where I've felt challenged, corrected, rebuked, trained. Um but I'm not saying it's going to be exactly the same for you. Sometimes I say, I wonder if there's a similar thing for you.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Or in applications, we'll often say, good application, we'll often say, I wonder if it's like this for you. Or can you imagine it being something like this? You give a general application. Whereas the one another word does something that's that's integrally related and stems from that word and is generated and refreshed by that word, the preached word, it takes that word and it lives much more in the zone of practical immediacy. It's it's you and me meeting for coffee and I'd say, what do you think I should do in this situation? I've got this situation. How does the word of God help me in this situation? And I'm coming to you and encouraging, or maybe admonishing, or maybe reminding, or questioning, or helping helping you. Um in that sense, I'm more an advisor who is alongside you, bringing the word to you for your implications and applications for your moral action. Um, I'm less of a teacher who is outlining the whole meaning and and interconnected framework of the word and teaching you how to think about everything, giving you a moral teaching that frames your whole life, I'm bringing that teaching to the granular reality of what you're experiencing. And I'm saying, well, does it look like this for you? Let me help you. I'm walking next to you. Now, obviously, the preacher can't do that with 150 people. That's why we're there, that's why we're with each other.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

And so when you say, Let the word dwell in you richly, or we haven't let the word dwell in us richly, you're saying we haven't had this practical immediacy encouraged in that same way.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

Yes, I think I think we've had it, obviously. People have always encouraged and helped each other, but we haven't thought through theologically, biblically, what that one another word does and means and how it fits with our preaching, and therefore what it means within our whole congregational life. We haven't we haven't had a thought-through model and understanding that says this is what the this is the burden that the one another word is bearing, and we need to make sure it bears that burden in our congregation, and we need to teach and encourage and equip and model that one another word as a vital aspect of what it means to be a Christian together in a community.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Okay, so complete the reformation for us.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

I don't like this complete the reformation riff you're going on.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

How do you hope congregation? I mean, you've you've put a challenge out there, you know, to churches and ministers everywhere. How do you think how do you hope church life might change?

SPEAKER_01 29:23

I guess I I hope that um we will do what we we um we always do, which is to keep coming back to the Bible and being shaped by it. And that as we do that in this instance and maybe rethink and re-look at a whole bunch of

Building A Culture Of Word Speaking

SPEAKER_01 29:37

passages, we'll realize that the apostles constantly taught and urged their congregations to do exactly this. The vast bulk of all the references to the one another word are imperatives. Do this, exhort one another, encourage one another with these words. And if you if you say there's a if there's one thing I'd like to see change, it's that um pastors, as they do the preaching that shapes the whole mind of the congregation, would teach and preach that this is a vital normal aspect of a Christian life, of who it what it means to be a mature Christian. It's a marker of just normal Christian maturity, and it's a marker of our life as a congregation. Um so one key thing is that we simply teach what the New Testament teaches about this uh and do it deliberately as we would with any other area. I suppose just as we would say prayer is a normal part of the Christian life, and we teach about it and preach on it and provide some practical help in what it means to pray, uh, do some Bible studies together on prayer, have a prayer. We we find ways of teaching and encouraging our congregations to pray in exactly the same way. I think this is just a part of the Christian life to be a speaker of the word one to another in all sorts of ways that we need to teach and encourage and equip for and train for and and have as part of our congregational culture.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

I mean, just looking at that chapter, you've got um implications for the Sunday gathering, implications for the everyday word, and implications for teaching and training. And so, I mean, uh, yeah, you you're you're actually calling for a reformation in the way we think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

I I think a a way of reframing the way we understand the ministry of every Christian and therefore the ministry of our whole church, and that will play out in multiple different ways in in the church gathering, in swing small groups and what small groups are, in our families and how we think about family life, in the ministry we think we are equipping every Christian to engage in, and so on.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Well, Tony, thanks so much for this. I found it super stimulating, and um, I'm looking forward to getting you back in a couple of weeks, and we'll talk about some of the gender implications of this book in more.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Well, I think it does, it reframes and and re-kind of constitutes how we think about that issue, I think, in a quite a helpful way.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Yeah, I was um uh white. I I wasn't expect I I I I started to read this and my head was not in gender at all. Do you know? And then I thought, oh, wow, there are

Next Conversation And Farewell

SPEAKER_00 32:04

some quite significant implications.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

It's one of the implications. It's by no means, as you say, it's by no means the main thing in the book, but reframing the way we think about the word reframes a lot of things. And one of them is the way we think men and women about how we think men and women minister to each other.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Thanks so much for coming in. Pleasure. Tony Payne has been my guest uh for decades. He was the uh editorial lead at Matthias Media, now lecturing in ethics at Sydney's Moore Theological College. Um, my name is Dominic Steele. You've been with us on The Pastor's Heart, and we will look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.