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Can I start off with some history as an introduction?

I started here in 1973. So my first Sabbatical was in 1979. That was when the PCC very generously enabled me to audit the D Min programme in “Church Growth” in the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary in California. Among many other things, there I learnt the truth of the Reformed 16th century Anglican theologian, Richard Hooker, when he said:

The Church is a Society and a Society Supernatural.

What does that mean? It means because it is a divine organization it doesn’t cease to be a human organization. So church management and leadership can be studied as, for example, secular business management and leadership can be studied. A fairly recent book on Church Management is by Al Mohler, an American Theological College President, entitled Conviction to Lead; and the last chapter of which is entitled The Leader’s Legacy. Writing in 2012 he said this:

Rupert Murdoch is reported to have claimed that he aspires to no legacy. In the face of his critics, Murdoch said, ‘I’m not looking for a legacy’.

And Mohler’s comment is this:

If the leader’s concern is merely financial gain [money] and organizational aggrandizement [power], legacy will not matter much. This is what distinguishes convictional leaders from all others. The convictional leader strives to the end to see fundamental beliefs taken up by others, who will then join in the mission that grows out of those convictions. The failure of leaders to develop a legacy is everywhere around us.

That was a lesson Evangelical Christians needed to learn in the earlier part of the 20th century, with not least as examples, Wycliffe Hall, a theological college in Oxford (where I was teaching just before coming here) and Jesmond Parish Church itself. Their “legacies” had been ignored of forgotten. Take Wycliffe Hall. Wikipedia has this small item in its long account of Wycliffe Hall which was founded by, among others, J. C. Ryle (a leading nineteen century evangelical bishop) as an Evangelical College in 1877. It goes through its history, and then it says:

Religious liberalism influenced Wycliffe Hall in the 1950s and '60s. F. J. Taylor (principal 1956–1962) was editor of the liberal-Catholic Parish and People magazine, whilst David Anderson (principal 1962–1969) was a contributor to the Modern Churchmen's Union.The evangelical churches lost confidence in the Hall and student numbers fell dramatically [from 69 in 1958 to 27 in 1969] …… Eventually, the Hall’s Council asked for Anderson's resignation in 1969 and instead sought clearer evangelical leadership, even inviting John Stott to take up the post. Stott declined, but other well-known evangelicals were found to get the Hall back onto a firmer footing, including Peter Southwell, David Holloway, Oliver O'Donovan [who succeeded me] and Roger Beckwith.

However, in 1971-72 David Anderson (the theological sacked ex Principal) was also chairman of the Patrons of Jesmond Parish Church (Patrons being the people responsible for finding a successor as vicar). And the Parish had been vacant for many, many months. And at the end of 1972 if an appointment had not been made within two weeks, the living would revert to the Bishop for him freely to appoint. However, then, as if by a miracle, the new Principal of Wycliffe Hall, who God used to mastermind the come back to spiritual health of Wycliffe Hall, Jim Hickinbotham, suggested that Anderson write to me asking if I would be willing to look at JPC – a church which I knew nothing about. All the other applicants had decided they couldn’t come, or, had been turned down by Raymond Johnson (a contemporary of J I Packer and soul-mate at the University) and one of the two Jesmond PCC reps who have to approve the appointment. So Anderson wrote to me in December 1972; and the rest as they say is the history of exactly 50 years this Sunday.

But how do institutions like theological colleges and parishes such as Jesmond Parish decline, or recovery, like Jesmond was beginning to recover under my predecessor Roger Frith? The simple spiritual answer re decline involves sin and Satan and lack of prayer. And the simple answer re recovery involves prayer and James 4.7:

resist the devil and he will flee from you!

However, also a simple church management answer involves four things, relevant to decline and recovery:

one, a unified vision; two, competent leaders; three, enabling structures; and, four, social sensitivity (or awareness of the people you are working for, or with, or against).

But number one is non-negotiable; 'a unified vision.' And a unified vision is Al Mohler’s 'legacy'. That’s why Anderson couldn’t get students either to train in Oxford or someone to fill a vacancy in Jesmond. His legacy had been opposed, ignored or forgotten. However, our legacy I have found very helpful. It was discovered after I’d been here a few years, thanks to Alan Munden who found these words tucked away in 19th century papers. These are the words. After saying that Jesmond Parish Church was founded in 1861 in honour of Richard Clayton, the Evangelical vicar who died young, the church was to be a central point for – and these words:

…the maintenance and promulgation of Sound, Scriptural and Evangelical truth.

And I have treated these words as a legacy that I’ve tried to honour and preserve. They are virtual instructions to determine what guided my “cure of souls” and now are to guide Jonathan’s. They are what indeed we are morally and probably legally obliged to honour and obey. Well, so much by way of some historical introduction. Let me now try to unpack these words in our legacy, 'The maintenance and promulgation of sound, scriptural and evangelical truth' and taking the words in the reverse order. For those words are so relevant in 2023 as they were in 1861.

First the TRUTH.

There is currently a battle raging in Western culture at large, and it impacts the Church. A number of people I’m in touch with I think are right when they say:

“But it’s not over a vast array of individual issues –as much as it may seem otherwise. It’s a battle over authority. Who gets to decide what’s true about the nature of reality? What’s right or wrong? What’s good or bad? What’s harmful or beneficial? How we should live? What it means to love others? Are the answers to these questions a matter of opinion, or has God already spoken?”

Our founders were so clear. So I and we need to be so clear. There is such a thing as truth.

But, secondly, our legacy is not for the ‘Maintenance and Promulgation of any truth’ but for EVANGELICAL Truth.

And ‘Evangelical’ is the transliteration of Greek for ‘Good News’, so the ‘Gospel’. So it’s the truth is about Jesus. For Hebrews 1.1-2 say:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son, through whom also he created the world.

God has spoken in his Son, Jesus (God having already spoken for nearly 2000 years to his special people the Jews by the prophets as recorded in the Scriptures).

But our Founders had problems as we have. There’s was the age of new science. Some were denying God outright. Richard Clayton, in memory of whom JPC was founded, went to University College Oxford only a few years after Shelly, the poet, had been expelled from the same college for Atheism and decadence. And two years before the founding of this church in 1861, Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859 and that led to problems for believers. So how do you solve these problems? Wisely many in their day were saying, “Listen to Jesus and his answers”. But what Jesus and what answers? Where do you find an account of him you can trust? So our founders said, “it’s not any Jesus but the Jesus’ of the Bible”.

For we are not only to 'Maintain and Promulgate Evangelical Truth' but, thirdly, SCRIPTURAL and Evangelical Truth.

It’s the truth about Jesus found in the Scriptures – the Jesus as recorded by the Apostles and so as witnessed to in the New Testament. But since the so called European Enlightenment, in the 18th century, not least in Germany, bizarre ways of reading the New Testament have made it stand on it’s head!

So, fourthly, our founders insisted that it is SOUND Scriptual and Evangelical Truth.

But what is 'Sound' Scriptural and Evangelical truth? Well, the Church of England’s Canon A5 (which is the Canon of Canons for the Church of England doctrine at law) spells it out well and proves why, in the current debate, there must be discipline in the Church of England over sexual morals. For Canon A5 says:

The doctrine of the Church of the Church of England is grounded in the Holy Scriptures and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. Such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal.

And Article XX of the Thirty-nine, named, Of the Authority of the Church, says clearly:

The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and the authority in Controversies of Faith: And yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.

Also, and this is simple and straight forward, you have Sound Scriptural and Evangelical Truth when you have, BALANCED BIBLICAL CHRISTIANITY - BBC!!

And the best short answer to what is BBC (Balanced Biblical Christianity) is in Colossians 1.28-29, we heard read earlier in the service:

Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

In 1982 when I had been here and had settled down after my first Sabbatical, I found myself in London with a spare hour or two in the Westminster Central Hall celebrating John Stott’s 60 birthday. I remembered little of what Stott said, but know he said this. What he found helpful as a spiritual health check was periodically to see if he had taken heed of Paul’s example in Colossians 1.28-29. And since then I’ve tried to do that and do that corporately as well. So are we proclaiming Jesus in a balanced way? The word has nuances of a Royal Proclamation...

... Him we proclaim

Then we are to be

... warning everyone

No! We don’t make up rules of right-and-wrong. God does, and that gets harder and harder - warning people.

'Modernism' is, as one famous sociologist defines things, characterized by the inability to say 'No'.

Then we are to be...

teaching everyone with all wisdom.

It’s not everyone with 'some' wisdom.

It’s not 'some' people with all wisdom.

And not 'some' people with 'some' wisdom.

It’s teaching everyone with all wisdom.

And praise God for all age and stages teaching in this church. But this side of heaven we call always do better. And we must be balanced. So, we need the Cross and the Resurrection. We need Grace and the Gratitude of Good Works. How we need Anglican Article 11 Of the Justification of Man followed by 12 of Good Works - not to save us (see 13 of Works before Justification) but to prove the Holy Spirit is working in our lives. For we need to teach justification and sanctification and not just personally.

I must thank Katie for making way musically for John Newton’s Amazing Grace. When I was instituted 1973 it was the Celebration of Amazing Grace’s 200th birthday. So this year is its 250th celebration of the hymn. Newton knew all about Grace, but he knew of the Gratitude of Good Works. For Newton in 1787 helped Wilberforce found the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade – commonly called the Anti-Slavery Society. And when Wilberforce had his Parliamentary defeat he was there to make sure he didn’t give up as Wilberforce was minded to do. And what does Paul see as the purpose of our ministry, teaching everyone with all wisdom? It’s that Paul says (Colossians 1.28):

that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

The New Testament scholar Donald Guthrie’s helpful comment is:

It is Paul’s deep conviction that only true believers in Christ are really mature people, and this because he thinks of all those outside Christ’s influence in a state of spiritual incompleteness.

And as the one we are proclaiming is none other than (Colossians 1.15-20):

…the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities - all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

It is no wonder he finishes with 1 Colossians 1.29:

For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

So obedience to Christ is not all sweetness and light. It involves toil and struggling. You will come into conflict – not by choice. But it’s amazing how the Holy Spirit strengthens you and gives just the right words to say or strength to endure when that happens. I must conclude. Well that is something of what being committed to Sound Scriptural and Evangelical Truth means. But we don’t want just to have a legacy of correct and interesting biblical truths. Our legacy is not just maintaining it is also promulgating Sound Scriptural and Evangelical Truth.

So final word on 'promulgating' or promoting the truth. And I close with one word; and one story. One word is 'electronics' – for microphones, public address systems, streaming, quality mixing and so on are vital for getting the Good News out in the 21st century. And the one story is related. Soon after I came in 1973, John Stott was visiting and preaching from this very pulpit. We were a much smaller congregation but I had invited other churches as it was a Sunday evening service. In those days the galleries were not working but the pews downstairs went to the back. But when John Stott got into the pulpit his microphone failed completely. So only the first few pews on the North side could hear. That helped me learn the truth of Paul (in Ephesians 4.15-16) of another fundamental lesson about church growth which is that:

“speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

So how we need to thank God for every member who by their prayers, and every ministry by its work, in JPC that together fulfils our legacy of 'maintaining and promulgating Sound Scriptural and Evangelical Truth' in our City and Region and that in turn leads to Godly Living, Church Growth and Changing Britain. Amen.