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INDUCTION SERVICE OF MARK BOSCHOFF
St George’s Bluff 6th March 2010
Readings: Jeremiah 23: 1 – 4 30 – 32
2 Timothy 1: 1 – 14
Matthew 18: 15 – 19
Mark
The text that I want to give you today and I will give it to you from three different translations, comes from 2 Tim 1:7
First of all I will take it from the N.I.V.
“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, love and of self-discipline.”
The N.E.B. translates it this way;
“For the spirit that God gave us is no craven spirit, but one to inspire strength, love and self- discipline.”
But I suppose the translation that I still love best is the old Authorized Version;
“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
But none the less,
The words in one of the prayers of the induction service say, “amidst praise and blame, success and failure, may he in all things so fulfill his
ministry that, when his day’s work is done, he may stand before his Master, and enter into the joy of his Lord.” Interestingly, that part of the
prayer comes after the prayer in which we ask God to anoint the new minister with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, a recognition, that even
though we are empowered from on high, we will still experience highs and lows. I may add that I thought that that was a strange prayer,
until I had been in the ministry for a few years. Now, to me, those words are just about the most meaningful in the whole service. – “amidst
praise and blame, success and failure.”
And so I have brought you this text from 2 Tim as an encouragement to help you through those vacillating times, but also because of two
other issues that confront us. The first of which is the uncertain political times that this country is about to enter. As the ship of state, along
with peoples’ emotions, goes on its tumultuous and perilous way this year, we, as servants of the Most High God, are going to have to bring
our folk “a word from the Lord” to help them through these times. And the second issue that I see facing us is the perilous conditions of the
mainline historical churches, of which we are one. There is no doubt in my mind but that our church is going through a period of real
drought, and the real danger is that very few of our folk really see that. But, without looking very deeply at all into the life of the church to
find evidence of this sickness, simply look around at the average age of any Presbyterian congregation, and if you are not completely blind,
you have to ask, “where is the younger generation?”
Paul was encouraging young Timothy then when he gave Timothy the words “For God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of
love, and a sound mind. “And I have no doubt, but that we too need to be hearing those words of encouragement as well, in our own day
and age.
I chose as the Old Testament reading today some words from Jeremiah’s central prophecy, first of all because Jeremiah remains one of my
favourites, but also because I felt that his prophecies are relevant to our times.
Here was one of the great classical prophets, a man with a great and magnanimous spirit, but what an incredibly difficult situation he was
called to minister into.
Now, what I am about to say to you Mark, out of Jeremiah’s ministry, is to encourage you to stand firm, so as not to have this spirit of fear
that Paul speaks out against. We are needing ministers who are going to be bold in the things of God, if we are going to help our people
through these vacillating political times, but also if we are going to bring our churches back onto line, and if we are going to see the
Kingdom of God advance. We must never loose sight of the fact that we should be on the advance, and never the retreat, or remain static
for that matter.
None of the other prophets tell us as much about themselves, about their feelings, emotions, and personal struggles with God in prayer,
than this tragic figure of Jeremiah, so strangely compounded of intrepid boldness, able to brave the fierce animosity and hatred of people
and leaders alike, yet of shrinking diffidence at the task of pronouncing doom upon them, a task he would have abandoned if he could, -
but could not.
It was Jeremiah’s lot to stand in the way, over which his notion was rushing headlong to destruction; to make a heroic effort to arrest it, and
turn it back, AND TO FAIL – and to be compelled to see his own people, whom he loved with a woman’s tenderness, plunge over the
precipice into the wide, weltering ruin. “Someone has called Jeremiahs ministry “a magnificent ministry of failure.”
There we have it, “Amidst praise and blame, success and failure, may he so fulfill his ministry.
If you are involved in the work of the Lord, Mark, and if we are at all serious about establishing the Kingdom of God, then we are going to
face all these things.
The Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, and the Lord found him listening, or he would not have heard that Word.
Living his life before God in reverent familiarity and reticent boldness.
Always shrinking when talking to God about his work.
Never shrinking when talking to men about his God.
Always trembling when in the Secret Place of the Most High when he waited for the Divine Voice.
Never trembling in public when he thundered out the words he had heard.
Only from such dependence, can the authority of the word of God come, and the authority is frightening. We balk at it. We forget the
authority of Jesus “to bind and to loose” – which is why I chose that reading from Matthew.
No Mark, we have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind, or self-discipline, if you like.
And it is to these three words that I now want to turn.
We have been given a spirit of power.
I don’t need to underline to you Mark, that the source of these three is of course the Holy Spirit Himself. I take that as axiomatic that you
understand that and believe that.
When we are preaching, that is, declaring the Word of the Lord, it is not so as to satisfy any selfish need that is in ourselves, but preaching
is the need of God to communicate with His people, that is what we are involved in. We have received a direct divine commission to preach
the gospel. That should remove all self-doubt, any ambiguity, or self-questioning, from our preaching. We do not preach because of some
inner impulsion that we may feel, but we preach because it is the Incarnate Lord’s own command that we should go and preach the gospel
of the Kingdom. Preaching, in one form or another, remains the obvious basic pivotal function of our ministry, because this lends power to
all other aspects of the ministry. Preaching is that divine saving activity in history, what began 2000 years ago in the advent of Christ. It is
not without significance that the Gospel record of Christ’s commission to His disciple’s put preaching first, and then the healing of the sick.
Our preaching is to call people into a personal relationship with Jesus, because it is in the preaching that God is actively probing us,
challenging our wills, calling on us for a decision, offering us His strength. A sermon is not an essay in which you give utterance to your
views and impressions of life, it is not a theological lecture, it is not a discussion of political and social and international matters. It is not
even instruction in Christian morals, though all those things will be present. But preaching is primarily God’s great activity of redemption
focusing itself in challenge and succour on those people before you, who listen to your words, and look into your eye. It was Don Enslin
who said “Don’t preach until you see the white of their eyes.” But first that sermon must penetrate your own soul. Deep within your
preaching must be the sense that here and now God’s saving activity in the world in Christ once again meets with the souls of men.
Everything depends on carrying with you a sense of the living, saving, present activity of God in Christ.
When we understand that, believe that, and behave like that, then we have the spirit of power, and not of fear. That God uses our
preaching as a means of His saving approach to the souls of men and women, that it pleases God ‘through the foolishness of preaching to
save those who believe’, entitles us to go on with our task with a confidence which does not come from within ourselves, but from God.
God may indeed use the foolishness of preaching, but we are under an obligation however to see that it is not more foolish than it needs to
be. We have to give our uttermost to it.
So, you must prepare your sermons, and preach them, with your mind filled with the thought that it is your supreme task to convey the truth
of God so that these people see it for themselves, and respond to it, because seeing it they can do no other. That also is the work of God’
s Spirit in peoples lives. And God does do that, when His Word goes out in His power.
So, we are given a spirit of power, but we are also given a spirit of love. Preaching is a pastoral activity. It is part of the pastoral
relationship. John Hawkridge said years ago, “It is “only to the extent of our pastoral care that we can earn the right to speak
prophetically.” It is because we love the people of God that there should be no note of judgment, or unjust, or false, or selfish criticism.
Preaching should always have a note of dignity about it, it never goes below the belt, because we speak on behalf of a High and Holy God.
There is a mediaeval handbook of preaching which asks the question, ”who can lawfully preach?” And the answer given is “Priests,
deacons and sub-deacons who have the care of souls.” We may not succumb to the temptation of trying to rely on our preaching to make
up for our deficiencies in pastoral work. This is what H.H. Farmer called “French-laquer “preaching – bright, interesting, but lacking depth
and tenderness.” You cannot love people only from the pulpit. You can only love them in concrete personal and pastoral situations. On
the other hand, our poor preaching can gain power and effectiveness if it comes to our people out of a true and deep pastoral and
personal relationship. In other words, just as Jesus is the Great Shepherd, so it is that by His Spirit He gives us a shepherd’s heart for our
people, and that is the spirit of love.
I want to be very brief on the last point, which the newer translations translate as “self-discipline. The older translations gives as sound
mind”. Let me put in a nut shell what I want to say about this, and that is that if we are going to fulfill the first two things that I have spoken
about, then we are going to have to be disciplined. You cannot hope to achieve anything in the ministry, particularly by preaching and
pastoral work if you are not self-disciplined. To be brief I will simply underline that need, the great need, for self-discipline in the work of the
Kingdom. I have heard a number of our older ministers say that the ministry is full of “stiffs, crooks, and comic singers.” If our generation is
to avoid that label, then we had better be self-disciplined.
Then just a word on the translation ‘sound mind.’ God is supremely the rational being of the universe. Sometimes when we look around
this world with its emphasis on power, and money, and position and wealth we wonder if we are on the right track when we preach the
“foolishness of the cross” But 1 Cor 1:21 “God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.” No,
we are not on the wrong track. We are absolutely on the right track, and God has given us a sound mind to believe these things, for “we
preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ the power of God and wisdom of God” Yes, we are indeed fortunate that He has given us a sound mind to believe these
things. We are involved in the rational activity of the world.
In closing, a word to the congregation.
You have heard what has been said to your minister, You see now if you did not know before, what a burden he is placed under, even
though Christ makes it light. As the people of God in this place you dare not make it any more difficult for him than it already is, as the
people did in Jeremiah’s time. You have the incredible privilege, and I say this in all humility and with no joke intended, of having a minister
of God to preach God’s Holy Word to you. It is your task to support him in every way possible. Too much of many a minister’s time is
taken up in smoothing ruffled feathers in his own congregation, so that he seldom gets the chance of taking the Kingdom of God out into
the world beyond. You heard, as I’ve said, the task that is laid upon your minister, but it is also a task that is given to the whole people of
God in this place.
May God Bless you all Amen
St George’s Bluff 6th March 2010
Readings: Jeremiah 23: 1 – 4 30 – 32
2 Timothy 1: 1 – 14
Matthew 18: 15 – 19
Mark
The text that I want to give you today and I will give it to you from three different translations, comes from 2 Tim 1:7
First of all I will take it from the N.I.V.
“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, love and of self-discipline.”
The N.E.B. translates it this way;
“For the spirit that God gave us is no craven spirit, but one to inspire strength, love and self- discipline.”
But I suppose the translation that I still love best is the old Authorized Version;
“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
But none the less,
The words in one of the prayers of the induction service say, “amidst praise and blame, success and failure, may he in all things so fulfill his
ministry that, when his day’s work is done, he may stand before his Master, and enter into the joy of his Lord.” Interestingly, that part of the
prayer comes after the prayer in which we ask God to anoint the new minister with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, a recognition, that even
though we are empowered from on high, we will still experience highs and lows. I may add that I thought that that was a strange prayer,
until I had been in the ministry for a few years. Now, to me, those words are just about the most meaningful in the whole service. – “amidst
praise and blame, success and failure.”
And so I have brought you this text from 2 Tim as an encouragement to help you through those vacillating times, but also because of two
other issues that confront us. The first of which is the uncertain political times that this country is about to enter. As the ship of state, along
with peoples’ emotions, goes on its tumultuous and perilous way this year, we, as servants of the Most High God, are going to have to bring
our folk “a word from the Lord” to help them through these times. And the second issue that I see facing us is the perilous conditions of the
mainline historical churches, of which we are one. There is no doubt in my mind but that our church is going through a period of real
drought, and the real danger is that very few of our folk really see that. But, without looking very deeply at all into the life of the church to
find evidence of this sickness, simply look around at the average age of any Presbyterian congregation, and if you are not completely blind,
you have to ask, “where is the younger generation?”
Paul was encouraging young Timothy then when he gave Timothy the words “For God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of
love, and a sound mind. “And I have no doubt, but that we too need to be hearing those words of encouragement as well, in our own day
and age.
I chose as the Old Testament reading today some words from Jeremiah’s central prophecy, first of all because Jeremiah remains one of my
favourites, but also because I felt that his prophecies are relevant to our times.
Here was one of the great classical prophets, a man with a great and magnanimous spirit, but what an incredibly difficult situation he was
called to minister into.
Now, what I am about to say to you Mark, out of Jeremiah’s ministry, is to encourage you to stand firm, so as not to have this spirit of fear
that Paul speaks out against. We are needing ministers who are going to be bold in the things of God, if we are going to help our people
through these vacillating political times, but also if we are going to bring our churches back onto line, and if we are going to see the
Kingdom of God advance. We must never loose sight of the fact that we should be on the advance, and never the retreat, or remain static
for that matter.
None of the other prophets tell us as much about themselves, about their feelings, emotions, and personal struggles with God in prayer,
than this tragic figure of Jeremiah, so strangely compounded of intrepid boldness, able to brave the fierce animosity and hatred of people
and leaders alike, yet of shrinking diffidence at the task of pronouncing doom upon them, a task he would have abandoned if he could, -
but could not.
It was Jeremiah’s lot to stand in the way, over which his notion was rushing headlong to destruction; to make a heroic effort to arrest it, and
turn it back, AND TO FAIL – and to be compelled to see his own people, whom he loved with a woman’s tenderness, plunge over the
precipice into the wide, weltering ruin. “Someone has called Jeremiahs ministry “a magnificent ministry of failure.”
There we have it, “Amidst praise and blame, success and failure, may he so fulfill his ministry.
If you are involved in the work of the Lord, Mark, and if we are at all serious about establishing the Kingdom of God, then we are going to
face all these things.
The Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, and the Lord found him listening, or he would not have heard that Word.
Living his life before God in reverent familiarity and reticent boldness.
Always shrinking when talking to God about his work.
Never shrinking when talking to men about his God.
Always trembling when in the Secret Place of the Most High when he waited for the Divine Voice.
Never trembling in public when he thundered out the words he had heard.
Only from such dependence, can the authority of the word of God come, and the authority is frightening. We balk at it. We forget the
authority of Jesus “to bind and to loose” – which is why I chose that reading from Matthew.
No Mark, we have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind, or self-discipline, if you like.
And it is to these three words that I now want to turn.
We have been given a spirit of power.
I don’t need to underline to you Mark, that the source of these three is of course the Holy Spirit Himself. I take that as axiomatic that you
understand that and believe that.
When we are preaching, that is, declaring the Word of the Lord, it is not so as to satisfy any selfish need that is in ourselves, but preaching
is the need of God to communicate with His people, that is what we are involved in. We have received a direct divine commission to preach
the gospel. That should remove all self-doubt, any ambiguity, or self-questioning, from our preaching. We do not preach because of some
inner impulsion that we may feel, but we preach because it is the Incarnate Lord’s own command that we should go and preach the gospel
of the Kingdom. Preaching, in one form or another, remains the obvious basic pivotal function of our ministry, because this lends power to
all other aspects of the ministry. Preaching is that divine saving activity in history, what began 2000 years ago in the advent of Christ. It is
not without significance that the Gospel record of Christ’s commission to His disciple’s put preaching first, and then the healing of the sick.
Our preaching is to call people into a personal relationship with Jesus, because it is in the preaching that God is actively probing us,
challenging our wills, calling on us for a decision, offering us His strength. A sermon is not an essay in which you give utterance to your
views and impressions of life, it is not a theological lecture, it is not a discussion of political and social and international matters. It is not
even instruction in Christian morals, though all those things will be present. But preaching is primarily God’s great activity of redemption
focusing itself in challenge and succour on those people before you, who listen to your words, and look into your eye. It was Don Enslin
who said “Don’t preach until you see the white of their eyes.” But first that sermon must penetrate your own soul. Deep within your
preaching must be the sense that here and now God’s saving activity in the world in Christ once again meets with the souls of men.
Everything depends on carrying with you a sense of the living, saving, present activity of God in Christ.
When we understand that, believe that, and behave like that, then we have the spirit of power, and not of fear. That God uses our
preaching as a means of His saving approach to the souls of men and women, that it pleases God ‘through the foolishness of preaching to
save those who believe’, entitles us to go on with our task with a confidence which does not come from within ourselves, but from God.
God may indeed use the foolishness of preaching, but we are under an obligation however to see that it is not more foolish than it needs to
be. We have to give our uttermost to it.
So, you must prepare your sermons, and preach them, with your mind filled with the thought that it is your supreme task to convey the truth
of God so that these people see it for themselves, and respond to it, because seeing it they can do no other. That also is the work of God’
s Spirit in peoples lives. And God does do that, when His Word goes out in His power.
So, we are given a spirit of power, but we are also given a spirit of love. Preaching is a pastoral activity. It is part of the pastoral
relationship. John Hawkridge said years ago, “It is “only to the extent of our pastoral care that we can earn the right to speak
prophetically.” It is because we love the people of God that there should be no note of judgment, or unjust, or false, or selfish criticism.
Preaching should always have a note of dignity about it, it never goes below the belt, because we speak on behalf of a High and Holy God.
There is a mediaeval handbook of preaching which asks the question, ”who can lawfully preach?” And the answer given is “Priests,
deacons and sub-deacons who have the care of souls.” We may not succumb to the temptation of trying to rely on our preaching to make
up for our deficiencies in pastoral work. This is what H.H. Farmer called “French-laquer “preaching – bright, interesting, but lacking depth
and tenderness.” You cannot love people only from the pulpit. You can only love them in concrete personal and pastoral situations. On
the other hand, our poor preaching can gain power and effectiveness if it comes to our people out of a true and deep pastoral and
personal relationship. In other words, just as Jesus is the Great Shepherd, so it is that by His Spirit He gives us a shepherd’s heart for our
people, and that is the spirit of love.
I want to be very brief on the last point, which the newer translations translate as “self-discipline. The older translations gives as sound
mind”. Let me put in a nut shell what I want to say about this, and that is that if we are going to fulfill the first two things that I have spoken
about, then we are going to have to be disciplined. You cannot hope to achieve anything in the ministry, particularly by preaching and
pastoral work if you are not self-disciplined. To be brief I will simply underline that need, the great need, for self-discipline in the work of the
Kingdom. I have heard a number of our older ministers say that the ministry is full of “stiffs, crooks, and comic singers.” If our generation is
to avoid that label, then we had better be self-disciplined.
Then just a word on the translation ‘sound mind.’ God is supremely the rational being of the universe. Sometimes when we look around
this world with its emphasis on power, and money, and position and wealth we wonder if we are on the right track when we preach the
“foolishness of the cross” But 1 Cor 1:21 “God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.” No,
we are not on the wrong track. We are absolutely on the right track, and God has given us a sound mind to believe these things, for “we
preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ the power of God and wisdom of God” Yes, we are indeed fortunate that He has given us a sound mind to believe these
things. We are involved in the rational activity of the world.
In closing, a word to the congregation.
You have heard what has been said to your minister, You see now if you did not know before, what a burden he is placed under, even
though Christ makes it light. As the people of God in this place you dare not make it any more difficult for him than it already is, as the
people did in Jeremiah’s time. You have the incredible privilege, and I say this in all humility and with no joke intended, of having a minister
of God to preach God’s Holy Word to you. It is your task to support him in every way possible. Too much of many a minister’s time is
taken up in smoothing ruffled feathers in his own congregation, so that he seldom gets the chance of taking the Kingdom of God out into
the world beyond. You heard, as I’ve said, the task that is laid upon your minister, but it is also a task that is given to the whole people of
God in this place.
May God Bless you all Amen