The Fellowship Meeting
The Fellowship or Question Meeting has long been associated with communion seasons, as well as being held at other times in some congregations. It is a public and more regulated form of that speaking one with another which should characterise those who fear the Lord and think upon His name when they meet in a private way (Mal 3:16). Christian fellowship is Christian to the extent to which Christ and the things of God and His revelation are central to it.
That the Fellowship meeting as we know it is generally during the communion season and on the day when the emphasis is on self-examination means that the aim of this particular meeting is to throw light upon the reality or otherwise of our experience of the grace of God. Modern work patterns and the reduced number of men available to speak to the Question and of people free to attend are factors understandably contributing to the widespread decline of the Fellowship Meeting. We should also reflect on whether there are other factors depriving it of its attractiveness to many, either in the conduct of the Fellowship Meeting itself or in the expectation of those who might otherwise attend.
One’s experience of speaking to the Question from time to time decades ago and of endeavouring in more recent times to open or close the Question makes one very much aware that public engagement in this meeting is no easy exercise. Those who attend these meetings for edification should be seeking the Lord’s enabling for those thus engaged. Those who engage in them also require alertness as to what their specific responsibility is. We may briefly note the historical and ideal way in which these responsibilities have been undertaken.
The brother who “gives out” the Question should have been exercised in his mind regarding a portion of truth which is suitable as a basis for discussing the existence or otherwise of marks of grace in the soul and in the life. His work has been mainly in secret. In public he only gives out the passage which has been on his mind and asks that the brethren would speak in the light of that passage, and of their own experience, regarding the way in which grace or its counterfeits manifest themselves.
If the presiding minister considers the passage suitable for the purpose of the meeting he “opens” the Question, which means that he gives a brief exposition of it in its context and opens up its content in a way that may indicate its usefulness for the purpose of self-examination. He himself does not endeavour to pre-empt the work of the men who are going to speak and give marks.
Ideally the men called to “speak to the Question” have experience of the Christian life over some years, though at a time when older Christians are not so numerous among us, younger men can also convey something of the freshness and hopefulness and modesty of youth in Christ. The Question has already been opened and the men do not regard it as their function to give an exposition of the passage under discussion. Neither do they take the Meeting as an opportunity to talk directly about themselves, whatever illustrative material they may occasionally bring in from their own lives. They endeavour, drawing upon their own experience, to use the passage given out to throw some light upon one or two marks of Christian experience and may contrast these with the refuges of lies to which hypocrites may resort, acquainted as they are with the power of hypocrisy in themselves. Those who speak first do not feel that they have to say everything that could be said and they consider that there are others to speak after them. Those who speak later do not feel that they have to repeat what has already been said, whether with or without acknowledgment. In this way freshness is maintained, and with that the interest of the hearers.
Another minister “closes” the Question. He gathers together the main points that have been made and, if anything has been said which was erroneous or, more likely, could be misinterpreted or misapplied, he more or less tactfully puts it right. The brother who gave out the Question is then called on to engage in prayer and this he does, usually briefly, not in a general prayer but with specific reference to the exercise in which the company has been engaged.
The above remarks indicate something like the ideal at which we aim. We know these things but, as in all areas of life, we come short, and repetition of the familiar does not go amiss, according to the principle of the inspired Apostle: “To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe” (Phil 3:1). We trust that, with the Lord’s blessing, as all aim at the ideal, the Fellowship Meeting may retain or recover its useful place in the edification of the body of Christ among us. HMC
Reason Followed Rather than Revelation
In a letter to The Times, Bishop Sinclair of Birkenhead states, “When the Church [of England] endorsed the principle of ‘irretrievable breakdown’ as the ground for divorce in preparation for the reform of the divorce laws in the 1960s, she did so paying more attention to reason and experience than revelation” (emphasis ours). He mentions that belittling of Scripture in response to an article in The Times which advocated a liberalising of the Church’s stance on civil partnerships. He evidently fears that the Church may lift its ban on civil-partnership ceremonies being conducted by its clergy or in its buildings. He therefore states, “Civil partnerships give legal expression to a relationship not known in the Scriptures”, and adds, “The Church’s call is to hear what the Spirit is saying through Scripture . . .”.
While one could not agree with all of the Bishop’s views, it is gratifying that he states the need to heed the Word of God. Diverging from Scripture by individuals, churches or nations results in numerous evils and much misery, and is at the root of such social ills as immorality, sinful liaisons, ruptured relationships, and family breakdown.
Disgracefully, it is the professing Christian Church itself in which departure from biblical truth originated long ago when liberal theologians subtly questioned the authenticity of Scripture. Today much of the Church has in practice demoted the Bible to just another reference book. For all its claims to be guided by Scripture, the Church of Scotland, for example, has strayed so far from this light that it officially allows a minister to remain in office although unashamedly in a homosexual relationship.
A wholehearted return to Scripture by our national Churches is the crying need of the hour. The words of another bishop, J C Ryle (who laboured in Liverpool, across the Mersey from Birkenhead), are appropriate. In defining Evangelical religion, he said, “Show us anything, as religion, which is contrary to that Book, and, however specious, plausible, beautiful, apparently desirable, we will not have it at any price. . . . If the thing is not in the Bible, deducible from the Bible, or in manifest harmony with the Bible, we will have none of it.”
It is indeed the light of Scripture that we all need constantly and must follow faithfully. “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Is 8:20). NMR
“Our Values”
A Muslim internet blogger, who was jailed for 12 years at the Bristol Crown Court for soliciting the murder of MPs who had voted for the Iraq war, was told by the judge: “You purport to be a British citizen, but what you stand for is totally alien to what we stand for in our country”. The judge’s statement was surprising, and calls for comment. The man holds a UK passport and therefore not only “purports to be” but is a British citizen, just as much as the judge. We quote the UK Borders Agency: “The most acceptable evidence of British citizenship is a British passport”. The man in fact also holds a Pakistani passport but, leaving that aside, Britain is legally as much “his country” as it is the judge’s. He therefore could equally have said to the judge: “What you stand for is totally alien to what I stand for in my country (that is, Britain)”.
The point that we are making is that the judge’s appeal to a supposed consensus of values is illogical and worthless when addressed to a fellow-citizen who holds different values. Politicians such as Mr Blair have been talking about “our values” in recent years, but all the while the moral values of our nation have been changing, under the influence of these same politicians. “Clause 28” on the promotion of homosexuality in schools, enacted in 1988 and repealed in 2000 in Scotland, is a case in point. What might another 12 years bring? A swing to Muslim values, perhaps?
What the Bristol judge should have appealed to is the Word of God, and its established position in the Treaty of Union of 1707, which brought the United Kingdom into existence. The Word of God condemns murder and “whatsoever . . . tends to the destruction of life” (Larger Catechism, 136) and says that “no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him” (1 Jn 3:15); and the judge could have put the man in mind of these truths. An appeal to Christian principles would have been (1) logical because Christian principles are well-defined and do not change with time, unlike the idea of “what we stand for in our country”; (2) historically appropriate because if there is anything of value in present British culture it derives from Britain’s Christian heritage; (3) legally valid because of the place given to the Christian religion in the Treaty of Union; and (4) morally powerful because the Word of God is “quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb 4:12). The Word of God may yet bring the man to repentance, which humanistic reproofs will never do.
The truth is that those who seek to withhold the Word of God from others are also murderers – murderers of souls – and there are many such murderers among the politicians and judges of Britain at present. There is a Judge who is greater than all and, if they do not repent, He will tell them at the last day that all that they have lived for is contrary to His law and deserves, not 12 years in jail, but eternity. “Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire” (Mt 25:41). DWBS
Riots
Four nights of rioting, looting and arson in English cities, causing tens of millions of pounds of damage, were mercifully brought to an end by heavy rain. The Prime Minister, stressing the “sheer criminality” involved, promised a society with a clearer code of values, a focus on better parenting and more personal responsibility. But where is this clearer code of values to come from? There is no need to repeat the comments in the previous note, just to stress that any code of values must be firmly based on the Ten Commandments.
People also need to realise that a sense of personal responsibility depends on a sense of being under authority. A sense that the government and the justice system have authority is helpful, but what really matters is a sense of the supreme authority of the true God. And that sense is very much lacking today in Britain and elsewhere. It is evident that a lack of respect for authority lay behind the disorder that began in London and was later replicated in various other parts of England.
Authority needs a solid foundation but, in the godless atmosphere that generally prevails in Britain today, the true foundation – God’s revelation in Scripture – is ignored. Yet, given the godlessness of the age, the degree of order that normally prevails in society is amazing. On the other hand, if it was recognised that “the powers that be are ordained of God”, then “every soul” would feel a responsibility to “be subject unto the higher powers” in the state (Rom 13:1).
Successive governments have much to answer for, given the extent to which they have allowed the overall ethos of the education system to become increasingly secular. It is at least a symbol of this problem that the first person to appear before Highbury Magistrates’ Court, in connection with the rioting and its aftermath, was a teaching assistant in a London school who pleaded guilty to burglary with intent to steal.
Two girls who took part in Monday night’s riots in Croydon, products of the current education system, boasted that they were showing police that “we can do what we want”. They were clearly showing that they had no respect for authority, either human or divine. Not that the criminality was confined to the younger generation; significant numbers of older people were seen carrying away armfuls of goods from the shops which mobs had broken into. The words of Hosea 8:7 are being fulfilled: “They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind”.
It may well be that the rioting has ceased in answer to prayer. May God’s children be given the spirit of prayer to cry earnestly to the Lord, not only for permanent calm to be restored in the cities, but also for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit so that society would be characterised by true godliness!