‘Success’ within the Christian life and ministry mustn’t be measured in worldly terms. Re-reading the late John Stott’s The Message of two Timothy – Guard the Gospel has been a strong reminder of that.
The Anglican evangelical pastor and scholar wrote this 127-page gem when he was Rector of All Souls Langham Place in central London. I read it on the retreat before my ordination as a Church of England ‘priest’ (I now prefer ‘presbyter’ because the more biblical term for a Christian minister of the Word and Sacrament) in Chester Diocese in 1997.
2 Timothy is Paul’s final epistle before his martyrdom in Rome in probably AD 64 in the course of the Emperor Nero’s brutal persecution of Christians. The recipient was the younger Christian minister whom Paul had left answerable for the church in Ephesus in Roman Asia, now part of recent Turkey.
Stott wrote: “We are to assume the apostle, ‘Paul the aged’, languishing in some dark, dank dungeon in Rome, from which there may be to be no escape but death. His own apostolic labours are over. ‘I actually have finished the race,’ he can say. But now he must make provision for the religion after he has gone, and particularly for its transmission (uncontaminated, unalloyed) to future generations. So he sends Timothy this most solemn charge. He is to preserve what he has received, and handy it on to faithful men who of their turn will have the ability to show others also.”
What is striking about Paul’s situation at the tip of his life is how isolated he was. Ten years previously Paul had enjoyed phenomenal success in Ephesus and further afield in Asia. The Acts of the Apostles describes how Paul proclaimed the Christian message every day within the lecture hall of Tyrannus in Ephesus: “This continued for 2 years, so that every one the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, each Jews and Greeks” (Acts 19v10 – Revised Standard Version).
But now Paul writes to Timothy: “You are aware that every one who’re in Asia turned away from me” (2 Timothy 1v15). He also records that in the course of the first judicial hearing of his case in Rome “nobody took my part; all deserted me” (2 Timothy 4v16).
The list of fellow Christians he asks Timothy to greet at the tip of his letter shows that he had a small network of supporters. But this was a tiny band in comparison with the numbers of individuals he had influenced, particularly in the course of the ‘ministry explosion’ in Ephesus.
In worldly terms Paul was a loser. His predicament would probably not be one which a ‘thriving church’ in an affluent area within the 21st Century West would need to depict on its website.
But Paul didn’t allow his circumstances to depress his faith within the risen Lord Jesus Christ. He was confident that the Lord would in the future return to evaluate the world and vindicate his faithful servants: “For I’m already on the purpose of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come. I actually have fought the nice fight, I actually have finished the race, I actually have kept the religion. Henceforth there may be laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and never only to me, but additionally to all who’ve loved his appearing” (2 Timothy 4v6-8).
Stott commented on Paul’s statement that he had finished the race: “Some years previously, chatting with the elders of the very Ephesian church over which Timothy was now presiding, Paul had expressed his ambition to just do this. ‘I don’t account my lifetime of any value,’ he had declared. ‘nor as precious to myself, if only I could accomplish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus …’ (Acts 20:24). Now he’s in a position to say that he has done so. Both the verb and the noun he uses are the identical.”
My ordination in 1997 took place shortly after Tony Blair led New Labour to electoral victory over the Conservatives, enabling neo-Marxist ideology to turn out to be firmly entrenched in British society. The Conservatives refused to reverse the Blairite hegemony once they regained political power in 2010.
The established Christian denominations within the UK have fared very badly since 1997. The number of individuals attending Church of England churches has probably greater than halved if the decline in the course of the period between 1997 and 2003 is taken under consideration.
In 2003, the primary yr the central Church began collecting attendance data that permits for a statistical comparison with now, all-age average weekly attendance in C of E churches was 1,126,000. By 2023 that figure had declined to 685,000.
But nevertheless dire the situation could also be within the secular culture and within the visible Church, Paul’s attitude and example in 2 Timothy are inspirational. His exhortation to Timothy is definitely pressingly relevant to those called to proclaim the Christian message in all ages and generation:
“I charge you within the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who’s to evaluate the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, persuade, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For the time is coming when people is not going to endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they’ll accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their very own likings, and can turn away from listening to the reality and wander into myths. As for you, all the time be regular, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry” (2 Timothy 4v1-5).
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
