Sermon on Matthew 9:35–10:1 — Andrew Burgess preaches on prayer, mission, and the raising up of workers for God's harvest
A sermon delivered at Sumner Redcliffs Anglican Church by Andrew Burgess, principal of Bishopdale College in Nelson.
Summary
Andrew Burgess, who leads Bishopdale College alongside his wife Becca, delivers a sermon at Sumner Redcliffs Anglican Church — a congregation with deep personal significance, as it was the place where he came to faith as a teenager in the late 1980s, where he first preached, and from which he and Becca were sent out into ministry training in 1992. Drawing on Matthew 9:35–10:1, Burgess focuses on Jesus' declaration that "the harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few," and his instruction to pray for workers to be sent into the harvest. The sermon argues that this call is not merely passive — Jesus responds to the need he sees by actively forming and sending his twelve disciples — and that the church today must similarly care about how its leaders and missionaries are trained, what theology they carry, and what kind of people they are becoming. Burgess draws on the history of Canon Orange's discipleship legacy at Sumner Redcliffs, and on his own work at Bishopdale College, to illustrate what faithful formation of workers looks like in practice. He closes by announcing that he and Becca are beginning to raise their own personal support as local missionaries, and invites the congregation to consider partnering with them and with Bishopdale College.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening Greeting and Personal Connection to Sumner Redcliffs
Andrew Burgess: Tuatahi, ko te mihi Atua. E te Atua kaharaua whakapainga ki akui. First and foremost, just honouring God, the God of all power and might, and God of all possibility. Glory and praise to you, Lord God. E te whanau atakuraiti ki tenei whenua, people of God in this place. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
Am I coming through enough? I'm really slack about how I hold my microphone. Sorry. I'm used to a Madonna mic — those are big and fat. A Britney mic, okay. Taylor Swift. Somebody cool.
So it's really good to be here, and I will talk a little bit about some connection to this place because it kind of fits in with our theme this morning. What we're talking about today — I'm going to focus particularly on our passage from Matthew and that statement that Jesus makes, that instruction to his people, his church, that he gave 2,000 years ago but echoes for us: to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into the harvest. I think this fits really well also with you guys moving into mission month and thinking about missions and outreach and that kind of work. And lying underneath that is also this question that I ask myself often: where will the workers come from? How will the Lord raise them up, and where do we fit into that?
But first, some whakapapa — some history, some background. I'm married to Rebecca. She's sitting over there with Clinica. Come on, stand up. She's cool. So in the late 1980s, as a 17-year-old, I arrived in this parish. I'd spent my teenage years trying to get as far away from God as I possibly could, and I was quite successful. I was saying to the people at Redcliffs — I'm not sure I was particularly good at being bad. I did try, but I was mainly just stupid. And I'm really sorry, because Malcolm's my brother, and he remembers this all too well. Malcolm's eight years older than me. He's the good-looking one and all of that jazz, but he will remember these times. I did stupid really well, and somehow the Lord brought me back.
I don't actually know how I ended up at church in the old building on a Sunday evening when Derek Eaton had started ministering here back in those days. I came with my mum. I always thought she must have dragged me somehow. She says I asked to go. That sounds like a mother story to me. But I remember — I absolutely remember the first time I came — because I was there every week after. I arrived, and there was this lively environment, and lots of people, and there was this energy, and most of all there was this really great preaching of the Word of God. And I was home. It was just extraordinary. Spent four years trying to do everything different, and here I was.
So in this place, I learned to lead worship. I preached my first ever sermon at St. Andrews. And I met Becca. In 1992, Becca and I were sent out from here to go to Auckland. Becca went to the Bible College of New Zealand — what's now Laidlaw. I went to St. John's College, the Anglican Training College. We spent four years up there, did our studies, got married partway through, and were launched from this place into training and into ministry.
So that question of where will the workers come from, and pray to the Lord of the harvest to raise up the workers — this place really resonates for us. And it's quite bizarre: we left here in 1992 and went to Auckland, and the first time we were back here at worship was a few months ago when we came to visit Malcolm. So it's been a long time between drinks. But when we came in and were part of it, it just felt like home. Shout out to all the people who we know, because there's quite a lot of you. It's amazing how many are still here — in a good way. None of you should have gone. Just saying.
So I think that will feed, hopefully, a little bit into where we're going with this question of where the Lord is at in calling us to be involved in the raising up of leaders and workers and servants and missionaries for his harvest.
What Jesus Has Been Doing in Matthew's Gospel
Let's get going. What I want to do is focus in on Matthew 9, as I've said, and Jesus and these workers for the harvest. We're going to spend a little bit of time building a picture of what's going on in this passage, what's going on in this bit of Matthew. It always helps to know what's going on. In the college that I lead, Becca is our senior lecturer in biblical studies. So I always have to behave myself around the Scripture when I'm near her. I'm going to do it right. I'm sure of it.
So Jesus has been going around — and we know this in the Gospels. If we're familiar with the Gospels at all, and this is Sumner Redcliffs, so you guys know your Bibles backwards, forwards, upside down. Jesus goes around and he's teaching. He's persuading people. Sometimes he's arguing with people. He's calmed a storm in the last couple of chapters in Matthew. He's been forgiving sins, which you're not supposed to do, and that leads to some of the arguing. He's called disciples. In the last two chapters of Matthew, he's actually called Matthew the tax collector, who we know wrote the Gospel. And he's been healing. I just want to emphasise: he's been healing, he's been healing, he's been healing. There's just a lot of healing. He's overdoing it a bit, to be honest. He needs to calm down. It's just a lot. It's going on.
In chapter 9 itself, he's encountered the paralysed man. You may remember the story — we won't spend any time on it — but he says to the paralysed guy, "Son, your sins are forgiven." And then the leaders are like, "You can't do that. Who are you, boy?" And Jesus says, "Well, just to demonstrate that I am who I am — get up, walk." And it happens. So we know that bit. He's forgiven his sins and he's healed him in his body.
He calls Matthew the tax collector and he heals him. He makes him part of Jesus' mission. He's an outsider. He's a tax collector. People don't like them. You guys all know this, but let me be boring and tell you things you already know. Tax collectors are looked down upon. They're seen as siding with the Roman oppressors. They're seen as dishonest and thieving. Jesus calls Matthew. He heals him.
He teaches about celebrating and fasting — that people can't fast when they're in his presence, but there are times to fast. He raises a girl from the dead. But it's that crazy story where he's on the way to raise a girl from the dead, which is cool enough all by itself, and he gets interrupted by the woman who's bleeding, who touches his cloak, and she's healed. He heals a couple of blind men along the way. He frees a man who's mute and oppressed by some sort of evil spirit. It's just building up this picture of extraordinary teaching and healing and the stuff going on.
The Kingdom of God on Display
It's the kingdom of God on display, isn't it? When we see Jesus walking and talking and moving and doing his stuff, he's not just playing some game. He doesn't just turn up and teach us things so that our heads get bigger. He's actually modelling. He's demonstrating. He's manifesting — and that can be a good word, just in case you're concerned. He's manifesting the presence of the kingdom of God and dealing with the manifestations of other stuff. It's the goodness and the mercy and the love of God on display, and it's in compassion and healing, but it's also in truth-telling and teaching so that there's challenge.
And this is key, isn't it? The challenge that accepting God's kingdom, accepting God's rule, will remake us — in every kind of corner, every department, every bit of our lives, we will be reformed. And that's good news. That challenge, that call, that thing we call discipleship that gets in to every bit of us under the power of God's Spirit — that's great stuff. It's good news.
I think back to that 17-year-old who turned up to All Saints Sumner back in the late 80s. Man, I needed reforming. I needed reshaping. One of the things that happened for me in that time — which I won't go into any detail about — was that Becca and I were fringing around each other. There was some tumult at music practices. We were both in the music team, and there was kind of a bit of argy-bargy coming and going of relationship. And I was being a prat. It's a technical term for a teenage boy, but I was being a dick. And the Lord actually put us in a place where he really spoke to me, and I spent a year just being remade, because God told me and taught me something I'd never been able to grasp, but it got right in — that he loved me and that he had me. And then God put us back together, and here we are.
God's lordship over us, God's demand that we be reformed, God's shaping of us is challenging but so, so good. It's part of the good news.
The Harvest Is Plentiful, But the Labourers Are Few
So this is a quote from our reading this morning:
"Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few.'"
This is like a summary of all that I've been talking about and all that's been going on in these previous two chapters. This is what he's been doing. But I love the way it summarises what's in his heart. He looks at the crowds and he sees their need and he's filled with compassion. This is the heart of God on display. This is the nature of the kingdom of God. What happens when God reigns, when God rules, when God's will is done, is on display here. He sees them and they're like sheep without a shepherd. They're harassed. And he cares for them.
And it's interesting, isn't it? He says the harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few. God's reign of grace calls us into transformation, and that involves teaching. So in front of us, we see this need — and that need is there today. The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. The work needs to be done. There's teaching to be done. There's compassion to be shown. There's proclamation of the gospel. There's healing. It all needs to be done inside the kingdom of God.
Jesus is saying to us — and this applies to us this morning — the mission of God, what God is all about, what God is doing, is actually wide open in front of us. God is at work. One of my kind of theological specialisms — the more you study and the higher the level of the study goes, the more specialised it gets — I happen to be a world expert on one theologian's thinking about Jesus being ascended. Which is very exciting, isn't it? But Jesus is ascended. He's not with us in the way that Thomas could put his hand in his wounds. He's not present in that way to kind of rock into the room. But it's not that he's not doing anything. He's so busy. He's on mission. And the mission of God is wide open in front of us.
God's compassion is moving. God is looking at the crowds and having compassion on them because they're like sheep without a shepherd. They need to hear from him. They need the healing that he brings, that only he can bring. The Spirit is at work. And all of this is so good, isn't it? When we pause and think about it, it's so good. We read about it in Ephesians 1 — and I don't have time to talk about that passage — but one of the things that Paul says in his prayer is that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work among us this morning, at work in the church and through the church out into the world in God's mission. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead. That's pretty impressive.
Where Will the Workers Come From?
But let's ask the question that I was starting off with. Where will the workers come from? Where are the missionaries being formed? It's a question for us to really care about. It matters because God is at work. We have a calling. And so we need to be about the stuff that he's calling us to. And if Jesus says, pray for the raising up of the workers, then we should be about that. But more than that, there are things that we should care about in the way that we do it. And this is kind of my wheelhouse, I suppose, in the work that I do leading a theological college and leading in training.
Let's think about how Jesus raised up leaders. Jesus looks at the crowds, he sees their need, he says they're like sheep needing a shepherd, they're needing compassion, they're needing leadership, they're needing guidance. But he doesn't just say, "Oh, so pray to the Lord of the harvest to raise up leaders, and that'll be that," because he actually does something. He sends out his twelve closest disciples for the first time. He responds to the need that's in front of him by acting to continue to raise up those leaders and to train them. He takes the next step with his disciples.
And when Jesus sets out to form leaders for his church, he makes disciples. We don't read about the twelve leaders, do we? Or even the twelve apprentices or something like that. We read about the twelve disciples. Because leaders are, first of all, disciples — people who follow Jesus, who've been with him, and who continue to be with him and to serve him, and who do things his way. So as he sends them out for the first time, he can only do that because they've already been with him all the way through. Which means they know him. They know how he lives. They know what he's like off duty. They know what his heart really is. They've experienced all of that. They've experienced his heart, his healing. They themselves have been healed. They themselves know his heart for them. But they've also been with him as he's blessed all these other people and brought in more.
He's taught them. He's shaped them. He might talk to the crowd, and then he'll take them aside. We know from the Gospels, and we know particularly from John's Gospel, Jesus will then gather his twelve and go, "Okay, let me explain a bit more clearly for you. You've been given this special blessing of being able to know a bit more because I'm training you up." He's shaped them. And really importantly — we mustn't downplay this bit — they have become obedient to him. They call him Master, Lord, Rabbi, and they do what he says. They know who he really is, the King.
So for us, as obedient followers here this morning, striving to be at least, caring about God's mission is important. God's mission is so good. I've been about this forever — ever since I was 17 and I turned up here, I was just pulled into being passionate about the mission of God and what God is up to, because it's so good. And I still am. I still get a bit overtaken by how good God is. Should have learned by now, but it's good. God's mission is so good because he is so good.
And we should care about the workers and the raising up of the leaders and the missionaries. We listen to God's call to come in and to be with him and to be fed and to gather in a setting like this and to gather in the other ways that we do. But we also listen to God's call to be sent out — whether that's down to the supermarket or the pub or whatever, and who we meet along the way, or whatever groups we're part of, or whether that's being sent right across the other side of the world. It doesn't really matter. We're sent out.
Theology, Character, and How Leaders Are Formed
But again, in my wheelhouse, in the work that I do, we should care about how our leaders are trained, how our workers are trained, how our missionaries are formed. The real question is: what will they teach? What have they been taught that they're going to pass on? Is it good? Is it fit? Is it right? And how will they lead? What kind of leaders will they be?
See, Jesus formed leaders by making disciples, which meant he was making people and forming them to be like him and to lead like him. But there's lots of modelling of leadership that's available to the church that doesn't fit the gospel. Christian workers and leaders who are like little petty kings and queens, who think they're the president of the United States, where it's all about power — pick any president, you don't have to choose the tangerine one, any president is available — that whole thing of power. Jesus himself said, didn't he, the kings of this world, the rulers of this world, lord it over their servants and they are the top dogs. But not so with you. The greatest among you serve. So how will our leaders lead? How will our workers serve? Will they be like Jesus, or will they be like the worldly models of leadership that we can imbibe?
And what direction will they lead in? Do they have a clear vision and call of where God is taking us? And so within all of that, theology matters. What we believe about God profoundly matters.
I'm going to take a little bit of licence to go slightly longer than I did at Redcliffs, so I hope that's okay. If you say no, Harry, I'm still going to do it.
An example of bad theology that's actually becoming increasingly common in parts of the church — and it damages people, because bad theology doesn't just mean we've got some bad ideas, naughty, get better ideas. It shapes how we act, how we think, how we respond to God and each other. Prosperity doctrine. It's floating around. It's this notion that if you are a Christian, you can only be healthy, wealthy, prosperous — no issues, no problems, no troubles. Wow, sounds fantastic. I want to get with some of that. And people are attracted to churches that promise that. And then you tie into it: well, you get that blessing because you are under the mantle of somebody who has that blessing. And the way that you fold into that is you give them your money. It's a pyramid scheme. And then the blessing will flow down through them to you.
Well, it all sounds great, except it's not in the gospel. It's not scriptural. Sure, God talks about blessing us, but not in the way that this tries to talk about it. God also talks to us about what it's going to be like when things are hard, when we're struggling, when we're persecuted, when we're poor, when it's a trial, and what that's going to be. But this way of thinking doesn't take any account of that.
Let me ask you a question, and I invite genuinely an answer. If we are in a space where that is the accepted view — that true disciples who are doing the right things are only ever healthy, wealthy, and prosperous — what's it like when your life is broken? Any thoughts? What's the message you're receiving?
You're alienated. Exactly. It's your fault. Right? There's this direct equation: do the right things and you will be blessed. Theologically, we call that a doctrine of works. You're earning your way with God. And if it's not going well, then obviously you're not doing that well enough, are you? So it can become incredibly lacking in compassion and incredibly judgmental, and you experience it that way. And so people leave churches like that as well, because they can't be there when they're struggling.
Now, that's just picking on some people in the body of Christ, maybe in an unfair way. I don't want to do that. But I do want to point out: it matters. Theology matters. So where are our leaders being trained? What theology are they gaining? That's just one example.
Character matters. What kind of leader? What kind of heart? What kind of uprightness and godliness is being modelled? Just as Jesus modelled uprightness, godliness, and truth to his disciples and continues to do so for us. So overall within that, being a disciple matters.
Canon Orange and the Legacy of Discipleship at Sumner Redcliffs
Okay, just change gear for a moment. Some other whakapapa. Way, way back in the day — some of you know this really well, some of you may not have heard this — there was an ordained leader here in Sumner Redcliffs called Canon William Orange. I think he's William. Maybe I'm just thinking of William of Orange. We'll just go with Canon Orange. That's safer.
Canon Orange was a legend. He was an amazing Bible teacher, an amazing discipler. And he discipled whole bunches of people. In those days, it tended to be young men. But young men from all over Christchurch would come out to Sumner for these Bible studies that Canon Orange would lead. And out of that, they were fired up into passion for the mission of God and desire to serve and to work. And so they got called Orange Pips, because they were kind of like the seeds from his mission that went out. And many of them became church leaders. They became leaders of missionary societies. They went out into overseas mission and so on. And you can actually trace a lineage. It's quite interesting.
So Becca's dad, Derek Eaton, is responsible for my initial discipling and for much of it since. But he was discipled by people like Harry Thompson, who was at St. John's Woolston, who was an Orange Pip. And there's this kind of thing of it going through — of this instilling in people of the way of God and of true discipleship and of depth in the Scripture and openness to the Spirit that passes on. And it's really beautiful.
It's similar for Becca and I at All Saints in Nelson, where we've been for the last 23 years, that there's this long history of the work and the shape of the work. And so here in Sumner Redcliffs, you've got this long history of people being raised up. I'm not talking to a bunch of people here where this hasn't been happening. It's been happening all the way through — of people being raised up and equipped and sent into mission in other places, and raised up into mission and work here. So take hold of that and be encouraged by it, because I think it's pretty cool.
Bishopdale College — Formation Over Degrees
A little bit about Bishopdale College, where Becca and I serve. We are an evangelical and charismatic Anglican college that actually serves lots of different people. So we have students from Presbyterian, New Life, other Pentecostal groups, Brethren, obviously plenty of Anglicans — no Methodists ever, they don't come to us. Well, in Nelson, there aren't any Methodists left, really. I'm not being mean, it's just factual, sorry. So we serve a wide range.
And when I say evangelical, we're strongly evangelical in the sense that we are all about the Scripture. I'm not particularly interested in party politics between different groups in the church — sometimes the church can be divided up into evangelicals, or this is these people and then there's those people — and I don't really do that so much. But that's what we are.
We are deeply committed to the relationships that form disciples. So our model — the way that we are as a college — we're trying to do something that looks like what Jesus was doing. We are committed to discipling and forming our students. So we teach degrees. Becca and I and a number of our staff have got doctorates in theology. We're a very small college, but we've got quite a high-powered bunch of teachers. But that's just not the point. I mean, that's good. That's part of the toolkit. It's really helpful. But the point is forming people to be like Jesus, and to try and do that under his leadership. So discipleship is absolutely at the core. We try and leverage people's studies into how they're being shaped. The goal isn't the studies. The goal is the shaping, and the studies are part of the toolkit.
We're independent, which is actually quite important, because it's very easy to be cowed and kind of ruled over by larger powers, and we mostly aren't. And the main reason for that is we're kind of really marginal. We live on the edges, and we're really joyful in that space, and we're really poor all at the same time. There's no money. This year, I don't know what's going to happen, but that's okay. And that's where we've been for ages. We just kind of live on the rag ends of funding that we can gain. The government — some of that is related to government funding — and the government is shrinking funding for Christian training. And that's not surprising. Part of me thinks, well, why on earth would the government want to do that? Fair enough. But it does affect us, so our kind of world is shrinking all the time.
For our college, just a few more bits explaining who we are and what we're about. We have this commitment to biblical faith and orthodox faith that's been passed down from Jesus himself through his disciples and in the Scripture and down through the history of the church. This focus on formation and growth as disciples. And as I said, study is a tool for discipleship and equipping, not a goal in its own right. So people come to us and they gain degrees and they gain diplomas, and that's fantastic, but that's not really the goal. It's just kind of part of what we need to do.
All of that has to do with what we've been talking about today — this belief and expectation and vision that God is at work, that God's on a mission, that the church is cool because God's in it even when it's uncool because we're stupid, and we want to be about it and we want to serve it. That's what drives us.
A Closing Call to Mission
This is a new thing for me, so I don't know if this is cool or not, but we'll give it a go. Becca and I are in a space where we're on this mission and we've been on this mission for quite a long time with Bishopdale and the team, and we're looking now at starting to raise our own support. So we're seeing ourselves as kind of local missionaries, because that's a way that we can really help support the work that we are involved in and see what's going on with it. So that's something we're up to. We're looking to see: are there people that the Lord might call to support us in this work?
But for Becca and I, we're just deeply passionate about the good news of Jesus the King. We've got all this training, we've worked hard to get it, and I think we've got some great skills. But the method is the message. Just as Jesus trained people by gathering them and living with them, teaching them, discipling them — all kinds of intentional stuff — but really it was how he was living and what he was doing with them as he taught them and as he modelled it that was the formation they needed. And that's kind of where we live.
Back to the more important stuff. I want to leave you this morning just with this — and you know this already, I'm not telling you anything you don't know, that's for sure — to worship this beautiful King who is our Saviour. The one who will lay down his life for the sheep. The one who has risen and ascended and is on this mission and at work. The one who meets us in our need, but through us and beyond us is reaching out to meet the world around us, and really is doing that. And so the calling for us is to recommit — I imagine, for you guys — to the work and the mission. To be, I hope, a little bit re-inspired to go, yeah, actually what God is about is the real deal, this is what matters. And a calling that I think will flow into your mission's time: to care about where the workers will come from, and to care about how they're trained, and to care about what kind of people we're raising up. And for some of you, to maybe sense a call to get with it, maybe do some study.
One thing about our college that I do need to mention is that we have students all over the place. We've got students in Christchurch, we've got students in the North Island. We're actually partnering directly with Wellington Diocese, who said, "Bishopdale, we think you're cool, we want to work with you," which is really nice. So we are available. It doesn't mean everyone should or has to study with us, but if you're interested, chat to me or Becca. It'd be really great.
All of this is just this great vision, isn't it, of who God is, how good he is, and what he's doing.
Closing Prayer
So let's pray. Living God, praise you and thank you that your faithfulness to us never ends. Your faithfulness to us goes on and on and on. And it's not just that you don't stop, that it goes for a long time. God, thank you that your faithfulness is so deep that there's no end to it, and there's no part of us that you aren't working to bring healing to. There's no part of us that you aren't transforming and reshaping. And more than that, there's no part of the world that you are not already there at work. So that when we go from here, we go and you're already present.
We thank you, Lord, that you are raising up the leaders to serve, the workers, the missionaries. And we pray that we would be about your business. Glory to you, Lord. Amen.