Ministry: doing things the right way

The road across the county of Rutland from Stamford to Leicester via Oakham and Melton Mowbray is one Mrs R and I know well.

She went to university in Cambridge and I attended Loughborough, so we were often travelling back and forth along it. The road winds past Rutland Water and through some pretty Leicestershire villages made from honey-coloured stone – including the village of Whitwell.

This one village made such an impression on us that our first house was named after it and, long ago, when the Internet was invented (yes, there was a ‘Before the Web’), we used it as a rudimentary password to many of our accounts (now changed, before you try and hack us).

However, the most astounding fact about this picturesque but tiny village (population less than 100) is surely this: it is twinned with Paris. That’s Paris, France. Not Paris, Missouri (population 1,220) or even Paris in Denmark (population 12, plus some dogs). Paris, France.

And this is how it came about. One night in the 1980s some friends from the village had been drinking in a local pub. They decided it was high time Whitwell was twinned with another place, just as the neighbouring town of Oakham shared a link with Barmstedt in Germany and Dodgeville in Wisconsin.

Why not aim high? Why not, indeed? And in a move that must have seemed wise after a few jars, they wrote to the then mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, inviting him to formally twin. But here comes the twist. They did so by saying, in effect: ‘If we don’t hear from you soon, we’ll assume everything is OK and we’ll go ahead with the link’. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they heard nothing from Monsieur Chirac. And so the friends erected some signs at the village boundaries

proudly announcing their new venture. When Rutland County Council eventually got around to upgrading the street furniture, they so liked the story that they made the signs permanent and now travellers along the A606 can see the signs and – if they know the story – quietly smile inside, just as I like to do.

We all know, however, that it counts for nothing. If a resident of Whitwell, even if it were one of the original friends, were to visit Paris, they could not claim bragging rights. They would not get free entry to the city’s museums, nor could they claim some free tickets to the Stade de France for the football internationals. The twinning wasn’t done the right way, and so it is nothing more than a few amusing column inches in a monthly newspaper.

Method matters

As evangelicals we sometimes convince ourselves that our message is everything. That is not quite true. Our message is primary, but is it not solitary. Or, to put it another way, method matters. An inappropriate method can invalidate the gospel; a godly method authenticates it. We can’t save anybody by method. Our message needs gospel content. But it must also be delivered in a gospel way to count.

We should not be surprised by this. After all, method matters to God. ‘He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created’ (James 1:18). So that is why we must join Paul in ensuring ‘we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God’ (2 Cor. 4:2).

We want to do things the right way, which means doing them God’s way. That is the ministry He is – in His sovereign goodness – ultimately pleased to bless. Let’s unashamedly pursue His method.