1.19.2014 MARTYN LLOYD-JONES, the pastor's pastor

taken from martyn lloyd-jones: chosen by God, which has different long time acquaintances sharing
different aspects of his character and life. the one quoted form here is 'the pastor's pastor by rev. hywel jones,
principal of the london theological seminary, a training institute for preachers with the Doctor (lloyd-jones)
was instrumental in establishing. in the retrospective hywel jones is recounting the westminster fellowship,
a closed weekly meeting led by lloyd-jones that ended being a help to many men in the pastorate.

p214  ...the fact that the meeting was a private one was not allowed to breed exclusiveness in our thinking.
we were jolted out of our complacency on many occasions by questions which erupted or flashed,
such as 'what difference did being at the Westminster Fellowship make to us in our ministering
-that is, our preaching, our conduct of public worship and the prayer meeting
and in our dealing with people?
what difference did it make to us in our personal communion with God
-praying secretly for oneself and others and not publicly as a church official,
and reading the holy scriptures for food for our own souls and not for sermons for others?
further, were we aware of the need of the age,
the darkness of the hour which had deepened since we last met?
were we crying to God and urging our people to do so,
as well as calling on men and women to repent?
were we serious?
were we in earnest?

such questions were presented and re presented,
applied and re applied,
and many a time we were brought to lament our own condition, our prayerlessness and consequent powerlessness with God and men.
but never were we went away in despair.
while others were invited to open the sessions in prayer,
the Doctor always closed them and the Lord was always there in the closing prayer in the afternoon.
he drew near and was invoked not just as our Lord,
but as the Lord of our brothers, many of whom were in need;
the lord of our wives and children;
the Lord of our churches, their officers and members, at home and worldwide;
and the Lord of our nation and even the world,
who could again arise, shake terribly the great ones of the earth and revive His people.

the pattern usually followed in the meetings was quite open.
any member could raise a question for discussion
and it was the practice for a theological subject to be taken up in the morning
and a pastoral one in the afternoon.
such an arrangement had many benefits.
first, the need for ministers to be continuing students of theology was underlined,
yet the need to be truly pastoral was not minimised.
in addition, discussion imposed upon us the necessity
to do some work ourselves rather than just have information, as it were, doled out to us.
in this way we had to speak to each other,
listen to each other,
correct and be corrected by each other.
he made us learn how to cope with each other's adjustments to or even disagreements with our positions
without our feeling personally attacked.
he inspired us to submit our views to the scrutiny of the meeting and did this himself too..
the meeting was bigger than any of us.
we were there to confer.
he made many of us 'men'.

the chief benefit of such a pattern to the meeting, however, lay in having the Doctor's responses to the matters raised.
these would be given at the beginning, in the course of and at the end of the discussion.
they would vary in length according to their position and , of course,
in content in accord with the subject under discussion.
the Doctor's approach was, in its basic features, both scientific and spiritual.
the uniqueness of his methodology lay in the combination of these factors.
there was something of his mentor, the great jonathan edwards, about him.

there are people who, claiming to be scientific, are consequently at best agnostic about the spiritual world.
on the other hand there are those who feel that to be spiritual means of necessity they must be anti-scientific.
such a divide is but another indication of how far our nation has departed from God and his world.
who believes any longer that theology is the queen of the sciences?
the Doctor did and he taught us to do so too.
as he refused to believe in a necessary conflict between the two,
he refused to sacrifice either on the altar of the other.
to crown theology was to give science its proper place as well as theology.

therefore the spiritual was not to be discarded merely because it was denounced by someone
in the name of science.
an attempt had to be made to discover whether it was real science, ie. theory without facts.
similarly a false spirituality which consisted of an other worldliness coupled with asceticism
was to be opposed because it lacked the support of scripture.
the doctor, not only as the physio but also the theologian,
believed in the sanctity of facts and would not knowingly deny ONE for the sake of any theory.
all facts, whether in the world of in the Word, were true.
thy, therefor, stood in harmonious relationship with each other
because they all stemmed from the God who cannot lie.

it is impossible to convey what relief this brought to many a mind troubled
by theories and conclusions ranged against scripture teaching,
and how it nerved the spirit for one's work of studying and preaching.
we had nothing to fear, quite literally.
as ALL truth was on God's side, our side,
we did not need to fear truth.
why then should we need to fear error, ignorance, scepticism and unbelief?
how foolish we had been!
 to demonstrate how foolish and arrogant scientists can sometimes be,
he quoted to us some words of j.s. haldane who in 1931 wrote in his book Philosophy of a Biologist,
'it is inconceivable that there should be a chemical compound with the properties of DNA.

but though urged to unbounded confidence in the veracity of the holy scriptures
and to the unreserved application of our minds to their study,
we were also repeatedly warned against the subtle danger of trusting our own reason and its ability.
the long history of the church of Jesus Christ, beginning in the new testament and continuing to our own day,
was too full of examples of believers, preachers and theologians (particularly the latter)
misinterpreting the Word, teaching error and leading others astray
for us to think of ourselves but with all our resources more highly than we ought to think.

when a question was raised, the Doctor would first of all set about opening it up for consideration.
this he used to do in one of two ways.
sometimes he would ask the questioner to say a little about the matter which he had raised,
for example, how he had met with it or why had he raised it.
by this means, some aspects of the subject might appear and some stimulus to discuss it might be provided.
on other occasions, he would himself take up the question and rephrase it
and in so doing broaden what otherwise
could never have provided sufficient basis for a morning's discussion.
it was not unknown for him to do more than rephrase the question;
he would on occasion provide us with one of his own about something which was pressing upon him.

both these approaches were instructive.
the first impressed on us the need to discover as much as we could about a subject
before proceeding to form views about it by analysis, and then conclusions.
the doctor would invite others to add information to this stage of the discussion
and try to keep suggestions as to how to respond to it out of the picture.
this was truly the scientific method
-observation and the gathering of data came first in the consideration of any question
and no fact which seemed to complicate was to be excluded.
how often we felt reproved at the slender and partial basis on which we made our judgments!

the second approach taught us the importance of the indirect method.
we were repeatedly reminded of the need to be general in one's approach to a subject
before concentrating more narrowly upon it.
the method followed in discovering what elements were present in a chemical was urged upon us,
\namely, one began with tests to discover which large category it fell into
before using more specific tests to determine its precise nature.
to rush at a problem and face it directly was dangerous folly.
this was (and is) particularly the case in the area of exegesis of biblical texts
where often they became pretexts for some hobby-horse
because they were not seen in their contexts.
similarly, areas of theology or eras of history with their predominating features,
were of immense importance in dealing with subjects.
it was also the case that one needed to bear in mind certain generalities
 regarding nature and humanness, male and female,
before concentrating on more narrow details.
in this way, what was complex and difficult in scripture, history and contemporary life
was almost half resolved.
perspective was crucial, but it had to be valid, ie. supported by data, to be truly helpful.

of special relevance in this whole area was the treatment of biblical texts.
the Doctor not only taught us the importance of being accurate in exegesis of words and terms,
but of discovering the PRINCIPLES of truth contained in them.
we were not to make connections between texts in terms of words used, concordance wise,
but in terms of those principles of truth which were enshrined and expressed in them.
this instruction was massive gain,
for one was taught to think doctrinally and biblically at one and the same time.
one's doctrines were not to be culled from a tome on dogmatics,
but were to arise from the words of scripture.
in this way the danger of being theoretical in one's doctrine was guarded against\
and also the danger of being inaccurate and contradictory in one's teaching from scripture.

the Doctor was not more concerned for principles than for people.
his sensitivity to them and their conditions was as keen as his perception of principles.
while ti is true that he refused to let personalities cloud his thinking,
whoever they were, he insisted on considering people, whoever they were,
in his expression of those principles.
in him there was but a single step between being a scientist and a theologian
and also between being a preacher and a pastor.
he grasped truth; declared it; but also sought us with it.

what we looked forward to was his summing up.
on so many occasions he would have the conclusion in mind before the discussion had really started
and he would be guiding it accordingly.
he would in concluding always have something to say which was both clarifying
after our meanderings and stimulating for further thought.
one occasion stands out clearly in my memory.
the question raised that morning was whether evangelicals could be fairly charged with being adolescent.
in the lively discussion which followed it was obvious that the Doctor saw substance in the charge.
the time came for him to sum up.
he did so by specifying the symptoms of adolescence which he saw around him.
these were that the 'evangelical adolescent'
1. does not think he needs to grow
2. tends to be easily impressed and credulous
3. confuses excitement with spiritual life
4. is prone to be unstable and go off at tangents
5. lays great value on the gregarious element
are not these worth pondering still?

so many subjects were raised at meetings at the fellowship.
they included;
apostasy and backsliding,
missionary societies and the church, 
the missionary and the church,
counselling,
visiting,
demon possession,
the supernatural,
mental illness,
healing,
acupuncture,
abortion,
euthanasia,
homosexuality,
cremation and burial,
marriage,
music,
tongues,
prophecy,
laying on of hands,
apostles,
the prayer of faith,
law and love,
tithing,
should an evangelical only be positive and not vegetative,
bible translation,
evangelism,
prayer, worldliness,
church discipline and
politics.

though the meetings covered a wide range of topics
-and the Doctor with his voluminous reading always had something to say on each
-he had certain major concerns to which he frequently returned.
he knew that ministers.
time was often threatened (he urged us to keep the mornings free, even on holidays if we could)
and that the pressures of modern life coupled with the perplexities
of the ecclesiastical and social scene could have a diverting as well as a disturbing effect.
he therefore repeatedly gave us our bearings and kept us to the main things
with regard to the work of the christian ministry.
we often left the Fellowship being able to say to ourselves with regard to some development
which was making us uneasy that we were right after all.
it was also often the case that we were, if only in our minds,
brought back on course again.

what were these emphases?
first and foremost was the importance of SPIRITUAL LIFE.
this was asserted in relation to the individual christian, the minister and the church.
the essential place of truth, ie. the truth of the written word of God,
 in spiritual life has already been stressed but to the Doctor life included more than truth.
meetings were given over to a consideration of the question
'what is wrong with us today?'
or, 'why is there a lack of life in our churches?'
the short and most serious answer which the Doctor urged on us
was our lack of realisation that God was a LIVING GOD.
this showed itself in our preoccupation with what he called 'our greatest enemy', namely religion
and our being immersed in our own plans and actions
which we then presumed to baptize by special prayer.
we praised the gospel instead of proclaiming it,
defended it by apologetics instead of declaring it by assertions
and we had become exhibitionist theologians instead of ambassadors with a message from the King.
we were more concerned with a horizontal plane, ie. man to man, us to people, the church to society,
than with the vertical dimension, ie. us and all and each one to God.
though repudiating and ridiculing the 'God is dead' theology,
evangelicals knew and spoke very little about the living God 'who deals familiarly with men'.
the Doctor said on this score, 'brethren, we are mad, mad!

the reality of the LIVING God, the Doctorf maintained,
was the centre and circumference of the bible.
God was living and revealed Himself.
He did so irrespective of the circumstances of time and place in the bible.
he could intervene and not be kept out;
He could overturn and set to rights again individuals and nations,
and do so by His own sovereignly chosen means or without any.
it was in relation to the greatness of the variety of his activity, but also its necessity, that the Doctor said:
'the study of the scriptures alone would have finished the church long ago'.

so, when this element of spiritual life which was the result of the working of the Holy Spirit
was under consideration,
the Doctor could become a critic of orthodoxy, even reformed orthodoxy.
he did so not only because of the heady effect which the (re)discovery of reformed theology was having,
but also because some exponents of that theology
were overlooking or excluding the immediate works of the Spirit in addition to regeneration,
viz. the baptism of the Spirit, the bestowal of spiritual gifts and revival.
he pointed out repeatedly that charles hodge omitted
any reference to revival in his three volumned  Systematic Theology
and the b.b.warfield regarded the gifts referred to in i corinthians 12-4
as having ceased with the age of the apostles.
this the Doctor described as 'a new form of dispensationalism'.
for him, jonathan edwards was right when he distinguished between excesses and the spiritual,
though the latter would have varying, even striking, physical phenomena.
he declared:'we must learn to draw the line between the essential and the indifferent on the one hand
and on the other between the indifferent and the wrong'.

the Doctor was interested in anything which appeared to display signs of spiritual vitality,
wanting all the information about it and urging us to have the same interest.
in the fellowship he would ring details of incidents which he had heard about
and members would raise matters related to house church groups
and the charismatic movement in their areas.
we discussed tongues, prophecy, miracles, healing, music and dancing
and the use of the body in worship.
in all these, the Doctor was most careful.
he would not dismiss all such phenomena as psychological or demonic
as some would have preferred.
but he did not hesitate to say that those elements could be present.
on the other hand, he would not and did not endorse the charismatic movement.
he urged careful observation and evaluation in the light of
what the bible taught of the spiritual effects on an experience of God
-awe and reverence, a sense of personal sin and unworthiness, love to the saviour and the brethren ,
concern for the perishing and a spirit of prayer.
his most emphatic charge directed against us was,
'why do we not have problems associated with spiritual life?'
the answer was obvious.

he did not urge us to adopt the practices of the charismatics.
rather he called on us to seek the lord
without setting limits to what he might do
or what we would allow Him to do,
asking Him to turn to us and visit us in gracious revival.
meanwhile, we were not to follow any human methods
for obtaining the Spirit because none were laid down in scripture.
God gives the Spirit in the name of Jesus Christ to those who ask him.

the second feature is the primacy and importance of preaching.
his views on this have rightly been published and need not be repeated,
but two or three things can be said.
the first is that the Doctor's own story is one of a commitment to preaching.
what could he have become in the medical world?
in aberavon he could have become involved in politics, locally and from there even on the national level.
he could have become a theological teacher in the calvinistic methodist church
-the church which he loved for all the right reasons.
if howel harris, daniel rowland and william williams could, as some said,
have ruled a kingdom between them, what might have been the upper limit of the doctor's abilities?
but having been called to be a preacher of the glorious gospel of the ever blessed God,
he would not stoop to be a king.

by what he did as well as what he said he underlined to us
the importance of the calling which he and we shared.
to continue to give ourselves to the work of preaching in an age of
counsellors, mass evangelists, guitarists, song leaders, film operators, overhead projectionists
and story tellers was not easy.
he provided us with the support we needed.
h would come to preach for us and refer to us as his friend.
at times he would come to listen to us, concealing himself if he could in the back row
and would go away happy if he had been given a sense of God.

he was apprehensive about the effect which the various gifts practised by charismatics would have upon preachers and preaching.
while urging the restoration of meetings like the society meeting of the 18th century,
he contended for the retention of public worship in the nonconformist pattern,
led from the front by the minister in a raised pulpit who integrated the service.
he did not regard this as either grieving or quenching the Spirit.
he gave himself to the preaching of the word,
'the highest and the greatest and the most glorious calling to which anyone can ever be called',
and God exalted preaching through him.

as the Spirit gave birth to the church by means of the word
and by the same instrument sustained, protected and promoted its life,
the Doctor saw the preaching of the word as crucial to the church's wellbeing.
nothing was more important than that the Lord would call men to preach and equip them for that ministry.
this was why he took the lead in the formation of the london theological seminary and became the first chairman of the board.
while not denying that prediction may still occur,
he regarded the prophecy referred to in I corinthians 14
as the kind of thing which can happen in preaching when new thoughts and unprepared words are given from above.
he urged us always to be open to that dimension in preaching
and never to adhere to our prepared sermons so rigidly as to refuse to follow such leading.

the third feature was his concern for the church.
while thankful for the good work which had been done by organizations, societies and movements,
it was the church which had been done by organisations, societies and movement,
 it was the church which he found to be at the centre of the outworking of the purposes of God
and His chosen instrument for the furtherance of the gospel.
it was the Doctor's complaint that prior to 1966 he had found great difficulty in getting evangelicals to discuss the doctrine of the church.
further, at a time when non-evangelicals
were eager to take a fresh look at the church and the churches,
evangelicals were to be found defending their denominations with the same fervour as they engaged in evangelistic work.
this saddened him because he believed that, of all people,
evangelicals should be ready to examine everything in the light of scripture
and that included the church.
but he saw more than this.
he saw that:
1. whatever creed or confession the had on paper,
they were fostering a denial of the gospel and evangelicals
were unconcerned about their church involvement in such sin.
2. evangelicals were guilty of the sin of schism
because they were joined to people on matters of secondary importance
and separated church wise from people who believed the same gospel as they did.
he maintained that non christians could not actually be guilty of schism
though they spoke much and lamented greatly that the church was in schism.
TO BE GUILTY OF SCHISM PEOPLE HAD TO BE IN CHRIST.
(note: ie. as true christian should never separate from another true christian even though they have differences on doctrines that are outside doctrines concerning the person of Christ.)

in the national assembly of evangelicals in 1966 all this came to the fore in the Doctor's address
and he called on evangelicals to leave their denominations
and form a loose fellowship of evangelical churches for the defence and confirmation of the gospel.
the rightness of this call was confirmed by subsequent events
in anglicanism and baptist nonconformity.
the keele congress and the publication of Growing into Union showed that
evangelicals to be in the church and accepting the role assigned to them of being a wing in it.
at the baptist union assembly the same position was in fact taken
by not disciplining the rev michael taylor who denied the deity of the Lord.
the Doctor knew that the situation was such that heretics could not be disciplined
and for evangelicals to say they would leave only when excommunicated
was to stipulate an impossibility, so alien is it to the spirit of the time.

after the westminster fellowship was re formed,
we were often required by the Doctor to do two things.
the first was to look at the situation to see if there was any material change in it.
nothing was further removed from the truth than the claim that
having retreated into  am isolationist ghetto,
continuing to persuade ourselves that we needed to stay there to give credibility,
in one's own eyes at least,
to the step already taken.
frequently we looked around and not only saw no reason to change our mind or repent of the act,
but were confirmed in the step, the costly, agonizing step, many others had taken
-and the Doctor in particular.

but the issues of principle remained.
the questions 'what is a christian?
what is the church?'
were still not being answered univocally in the churches and by their leaders.

the second requirement presented to us was to look at ourselves and to face the question,
'were we closer-and closer to each other as churches?'
was there a church fellowship in existence outside the church groupings to which we belonged?
were we committed to the british evangelical council?
SECESSION WAS THE ROAD TO UNITY, the Doctor taught us,
AND NOT THE PATH TO ISOLATIONISM AND EXCLUSIVISM.
we saw that we could not go back without denying principles of truth
which could not be more closely bound up with the gospel,
but i wonder whether we saw as clearly that we must go on.
the Doctor impressed on us that we had been brought out in order to be brought in.
unless we went on to show the glory of the gospel in the churches, how could we expect any to join us?

...the Westminster Fellowship..was FELLOWSHIP between him and us and we felt the bond.
the same relationship existed even over the telephone and better still in our homes.
he listened to us and soon one knew one was talking to
a valued, trusted and beloved friend.
now that is over-for a little while....