Sermon on Matthew 18:15–20: Conflict resolution, church discipline, and Christian witness
Finn Chirnside, Associate Vicar at Sumner Redcliffs Church, preaches on Matthew 18:15–20.
Summary
Finn Chirnside delivers a sermon on Matthew 18:15–20, using Jesus' teaching on conflict resolution as a lens through which to examine how Christians handle disagreement, sin, and division within the church. He opens by identifying three common but inadequate Christian responses to conflict — avoidance, gossip, and weaponising scripture — and argues that all three produce disillusioned people and damage the church's witness. He draws on Dallas Willard's argument that Jesus is not merely an abstract salvation figure but the smartest human being who ever lived, whose practical wisdom deserves serious engagement. Chirnside walks through Jesus' step-by-step framework for resolving conflict, including one-on-one confrontation, bringing in mediators, and — as a last resort — exclusion from the community, arguing that even exclusion, when done rightly, is an act of love aimed at restoration. He closes with a call to enlarge one's vision and humble one's heart, citing C.S. Lewis on the eternal significance of every person, and challenging the congregation to pursue healing and reconciliation as a counter-cultural witness in a world increasingly defined by anger.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: The ex-vangelical critique and three bad Christian responses to conflict
Finn Chirnside: Hey, if we haven't met before, my name's Finn. I've already started a bit edgy — I apologise. It's been a fun morning. I hope we're all doing well. Hi, Graham. How you doing? Nice jumper.
There is a trend on the internet at the moment. I'm not young, but relatively young, and I have a problem with my phone. Basically, I'm hooked on it. And so I see things a lot of people don't see, because they aren't hooked on their phones — because you're normal people. But I'm one of those people who's hooked on their phone. So if I start making references and you're like, "Dude, I don't know what you're talking about," it's fine. Just pretend you understand and empathise with me as I make my point, okay?
There's a trend at the moment on the internet called "ex-vangelical." Anyone who knows about ex-vangelical? Alex definitely knows about it. The clue's in the title. It's basically a term that former evangelicals use to describe themselves. They might have come out of — usually it's quite an American thing — so they've come out of like IHOP or Bethel or something like that. And they often look at the evangelical movement with super levels of disdain, which can either be legitimate or it can be an excuse to justify rejecting Jesus. It's a bit fifty-fifty. Often they have a fundamentally mistaken understanding of evangelical theology and a really mistaken understanding of historical Christian theology. And they can create theological caricatures and post them online for likes. And when it becomes your job, you kind of have to keep finding reasons to dig out the evangelicals.
But one of the legitimate critiques from some people is how the church resolves conflict. In my observation, Christians can sometimes default to one of three following responses to conflict. We can either completely avoid it, because we don't want to hurt the person or because we just don't have the courage. Or — and this is the modern West in a nutshell — we just gossip behind their back. We don't want to cause the problem, but we'll just go, "Hey, did you hear what she's got on her phone?" or "Did you see what her husband said about her?" These are real things Christians do, right? Instead of going, "Hey, I feel like there's something going on here," we just kind of behind the scenes try and sow some discord, maybe hoping someone else will confront them for us.
Or, we slap a Bible verse on it, say "God said so," and completely shut the situation down — even if we know we've taken the Bible verse out of context to win the argument. My favourite example of this is from the film Kingdom of Heaven, if anyone's seen it — Ridley Scott, great movie. There's a scene where the Templars and Crusaders are sitting in the court of Jerusalem, and Saladin's army is coming for the city. The king is trying to have a civilised debate about what to do — maybe they should talk, because Saladin has some legitimate gripes with how they were treated when the Crusaders came in. Maybe some form of diplomacy. And then the Templars just go, "No, there must be war!" And they keep shouting, "God wills it!" So loud that the argument's over, because they don't stop shouting. And then everyone's just kind of like, "Well, okay, I guess that's settled then."
That happens so much in church. It's just, "Well, God said so." And you go, "Hold up — did he? Really? If we actually measure it against scripture, did he really say that?" And it becomes a form of manipulation. If you've been in Pentecostal charismatic churches, this is a classic — someone has a prophecy, it's super non-biblical, but it becomes super manipulative.
The world's failure at conflict resolution
If we take any of these three routes, we shouldn't be surprised to find that we create disillusioned and hurt people, both inside and outside of the church, because we come across as hypocrites or fools. Why would people take us seriously when we don't seem to take Jesus very seriously? And if we don't let Jesus form our ability to resolve conflict, we will inevitably let the world shape it. And I'm seeing plenty of Christians getting suckered into this.
Do we really think modern society is any good at resolving conflict? No, of course not. Humans never have been good at it. True conflict resolution and healing rely on humility, and the ability to admit that you might be part of the problem, and seeing all people as beloved by God and responsible to God. Sometimes people have parts of this, but very rarely do they have all of it.
Is our planet really a happy, peace-filled place? I think we're angry. I think we're pretty cruel. I think we're dehumanising and self-absorbed. And for the sake of something non-controversial, let's talk about Gaza to illustrate my point — this is actually not me taking a side. There is an increasing movement of people online, on both the right and the left, who are not just fringe but quite populist mainstream figures, who justify the brutality of what Hamas did on October the 7th as a form of legitimate resistance. They frame it within a Marxist revolutionary framework. Classic Marx — God doesn't exist, nothing matters, so therefore you can do what you want to achieve your goals. So they look at something like that and they go, "You know what? They deserved it." Regardless of what you think, regardless of where you stand — that's crazy.
It reminds me, it's actually rooted in Marxian thought. The Russian Revolution — Lenin comes along, formed by Marx's whole idea of creating a utopia from the working class to defeat the elite. We'll create the socialist government and we can achieve it by any means necessary. Because if you don't have God — which is Marx's whole thing, get rid of God — you create this kind of system where anything can happen in order to achieve the goal. And that's what Lenin and the Russian Revolution ultimately produce. And then the logical conclusion of that is Stalin. Because if you have this thing that just keeps dragging on and on, where do you stop? You just keep going, because you have nothing to anchor it. And it turns out — in case you didn't know your history — Lenin's ideas didn't work. Ideologies that are birthed in violence are defined by violence. As Jesus said — and it turns out he was quite smart — "All who live by the sword will die by the sword."
That was a bit of a diatribe, but hopefully I'm painting a picture of our problem with anger. It's rooted partly in our souls, but also we've disassociated from a moral grounding in God. It becomes this point more and more of: we can justify anything, because God doesn't exist. And if God doesn't exist, then the main thing is the dream, or the progression, or whatever you want to call it.
But we have good news. Jesus has a better way. This conflict-ridden, anger-ridden life is not Jesus' heart for the church. His advice here comes from a heart for preserving the integrity, the holiness, the witness, and the health of the church.
Jesus as the smartest person who ever lived — Dallas Willard's premise
Before we dive into the text, I want to start with a single premise. This is Dallas Willard's idea. Dallas Willard was one of the great Christian philosophers of the twentieth century. Great dude. Read his books — they're dense, but they're worth it. He has this argument where he says that sometimes in the modern church we've reduced Jesus to just being Lord. When I say "just being Lord," he becomes like this abstract figure of salvation and wonderfulness. Now, that is one hundred percent true — he is that, he is a wonderful, extraordinary thing of salvation. But we don't attribute anything else really to him.
Here's my excuse to bring Dante into every sermon — I've found my excuse. In Dante's Inferno, he has Limbo, where all the virtuous pagans go. He has Saladin in there, actually, and then he has Aristotle there. And he says Aristotle is "the master of all who know." And if you see the split, he doesn't give that to God. So knowledge and wisdom and intellect — historically, sometimes we just don't seem to link that with Jesus.
So if I said to you, "What do you think Jesus is like?" you'd probably say he's loving, he's my saviour, he's a political radical, he's a nutter. But how many of you would think that he was smart? A genius? This is Willard's point. He is, by definition, the smartest human being who has and will ever live, if he is who he says he is. And he has an understanding of all things that we must pay attention to. Willard says, "Jesus has a cognitive and practical mastery over every phase of reality — physical, moral, and spiritual. He is master only because he is maestro. Jesus as Lord can mean literally, for anyone in practice, who hesitates to say, 'Jesus is smart.'"
So I am setting up a baseline assumption: Jesus is smart. When he gives you advice on how to live your life, it might actually be good advice, because he's quite clever. He's not just the abstract salvation figure. He is someone who wants your life to be different and to live as a testimony to that salvation.
Walking through Jesus' framework: Matthew 18:15–20
So Jesus gives a simple framework to resolve conflict within the church community. Bear in mind, as with everything with Jesus, this isn't law. It's very easy to look at a text like this and go, "Well, Jesus said to do it like this," and out of reverence, feel that every time it has to be done exactly like this. It's not — because if someone is dangerous, if you're going to go and confront someone and they might stab you, Jesus isn't saying, "Well, you've still got to go talk to them." That would be silly. If we had to take everything Jesus says as ironclad law, most dudes would have no eyes, right? Jesus does that whole thing — men looking at a woman with lust, rip your eyes out. If we took him literally every time, basically every bloke and half the women in the room would have no eyes. Let's just be honest. So we have to treat him as wisdom — taking him seriously, but taking him seriously by asking, "Okay, what's he actually trying to do here?"
He's also assuming that you're framing this teaching within the wider teachings of what he's saying — the Sermon on the Mount, the Gospel itself, the Gospel of the Kingdom breaking through into now. And he's also assuming that you're doing this in community. But he offers this framework for a reason.
Step one: One-on-one
His first step is you do it one-on-one. Let's say you find yourself in a situation where you feel the need to have a conversation of this kind. From the outset — Jesus doesn't say this, but he definitely assumes it — the first thing to do is to check your own heart. Is your grievance valid? Are you going in with a bias? Do you actually just not like that person, and you've pounced on the first thing? Check yourself. If this is not done from a place of humility, it can easily become a way to persecute and demean someone you just don't like. Then you pray for wisdom — for yourself and for the other person. Because what's more important: you being right, or truth and healing coming?
Approaching someone one-on-one — the clue's in the title, it's slightly obvious. But of course you want to do that with wisdom and kindness. If it's a sensitive topic, don't go up to them after church and say, "I've noticed that you're doing blah blah blah on the internet." Not great. Not respectful. Not nice. Choose a moment. Don't come with ammunition. Don't come trying to get them and win. You're trying to provide restoration for both yourself and for that person.
Step two: Bringing in mediators
If this person doesn't listen, engage, or respond, then Jesus brings in this next framework — bringing in community. He starts with bringing in one or two people, which is a super Old Testament idea, and then he talks about bringing in the church if that doesn't work.
The assumption here, again, is that you are not choosing people who are biased towards you. If you're like, "Well, they didn't listen to me about my grievance, so I'm going to choose my best mate to be the mediator" — because you know they're going to back you — there's a high chance they're going to back you and be like, "Well, golly, you're really sinning this time, what are we going to do about this?" If you're not coming from a position of humility — and I have to keep saying it — you're stuffed from the outset. It's just not going to work. It's not a good witness to following Jesus.
And I have found, when doing things like this, that usually when I hit a point around here, I go, "Oh, I'm the problem." Or a little bit of, "Oh, that was a massive misunderstanding, and I totally misheard something you said." Usually what you'll find is that at the mediator stage, this is where it will get resolved. You'll find some kind of healing and resolve here.
Step three: Exclusion — a last resort
So Jesus then moves on to the gnarly stuff. He says that they should very occasionally be excluded from church. And that's not the kind of thing where the church turns into a cult and kicks you out because you say, "Hold up, the pastor's making $400K a year, what's going on here?" It's not that. It's different.
The assumption here is that the person is committing some form of sin that they refuse to repent for, and it is doing damage to the lives of others. And once again, Jesus dives into Old Testament thought. This is a big thing for him, and particularly in Matthew's Gospel — he's constantly showing how Jesus is the fulfilment of the Israel story. What Israel was always hoping and aiming towards, and what the laws were always aiming towards, is fulfilled in Jesus. As the health of the community was important for Israel, so it is for the church.
To really reduce the Israel story down to bare bones: the problem in the Old Testament is they fail to remain a healthy community. That's actually it. They let sin infect and destroy them from the inside out. The reasons Israel gets exiled are mainly worship of other gods, oppression of the poor — which is a massive one — and child sacrifice, just at the end there. How did that happen? Because they let it in. Solomon is a perfect example — he starts off really well, then he gets seven hundred wives, and instead of getting them all to follow Yahweh, he goes, "Man, their gods seem pretty cool." And then before you know it, he's doing the things that God knows are slowly over time infecting the true community. If you read Kings and Chronicles and Samuel, that's what happens. You have these moments of just actually horrific things that you can really trace back to Solomon and the first mistakes he starts to make.
And Jesus knows the damage that can happen — because he was there, because Christians believe he's God. He knows how quickly sin can infect and destroy someone, and it breaks his heart. Jesus isn't sitting there going, "Look at those sinners, they've messed up." He's weeping. He weeps over Jerusalem. Do you know why he weeps over Jerusalem? Because he knows that in about forty years' time, they're going to get blasted by the Romans, because they didn't listen to him. He's offering a way of living differently, and he seems pretty confident that if they follow and listen to him, the Romans won't come and blast them. That's part of his teaching. They don't listen to him, they get blasted. This is why he weeps over them.
"Treat them like a pagan or a tax collector"
So then he says, treat them like a pagan or a tax collector. It's not getting easier, is it? How do you treat a pagan or a tax collector?
"Pagan" was usually a term used to describe those who did not confess outright allegiance to the God of Israel — probably Roman or Greek pagans who would have worshipped four hundred gods, had household gods, a whole bunch of different things. They might have even seen Yahweh as a God worthy of attention, but not a God worthy of upright devotion. Judaism and Christianity stood out because they made Yahweh supreme and said you don't actually worship other gods. So pagans were not allowed to participate in certain methods and ways of Jewish religion.
Tax collectors were kind of the same. They were ostracised because they basically betrayed their own people for a profit by working for Rome. The taxation system — I can't remember off the top of my head, but I think it was between about eighty to ninety percent of your income or produce that would be taxed.
But then Jesus is like, okay, how do you treat them? You love them and care for them. Jesus says, "Love your enemies." He gets a tax collector and his crew. But they're not meant to be considered believers and to partake in the unique moments of Christian life.
If you're not a Christian here, I'm not going for you on this. This is very clearly for people who say, "I'm a Christian," and then are doing things that are so profoundly un-Christian. And it would be weird for me to engage in Christian practice with people who, as the text assumes, are openly hostile, or are bringing serious conflict and division.
The Church of God International — a real-world example
Now, it doesn't sound inclusive, but to offer an extreme example that's actually happening: one of the problems churches in the West are having — and I don't know if you've heard about this — is that certain cults go into big churches where they won't be noticed, and they start turning up to life groups. And they go to life groups and they say, "Oh, God the Father, eh? Have you heard about God the Mother?" And if this group of people aren't very well discipled, they'll go, "Huh? Oh yeah, God the Mother — that must be a thing then." And then this is the spiel. It's a growing cult. I'm not doing some fringe thing. This is a real problem. They start cherry-picking verses from Revelation, and before you know it, you have a life group of people who are starting to confess just really, really weird stuff. And then over time, they get brought into this cult.
This is Church of God International, the one I'm naming and shaming here. I will gladly name and shame them, because they're terrifying. They believe that some guy from Korea in the 1930s and 40s was Jesus Christ reincarnated, and that his wife was Mother God and a real person. He's dead, by the way. So Jesus came back as a Korean man, then died again — I don't really know how they explain that one away, but they're still growing.
The reason they're dangerous is because they have this belief that's away from truth, but also they have ideas around the Sabbath where if you're not within the temple — the building that's over in Shirley, if you've seen it — if you're not on those grounds on Saturdays, you might just get struck down because you're outside of God's mercy. And so if you're not giving extraordinary amounts and serving extraordinary amounts of labour to this church, and you're not in the building on Saturdays, you're outside of the mercy and love of God. That's not in the gospel. That's not Jesus.
And it would be odd of us if someone like that rocked up to our church, we went through the process, they didn't listen, and then Rev Harry Newton and I just said, "Eh, whatever." That would be doing a disservice to Jesus. If we just said, "You know what? That person's causing massive problems, they're clearly wrong, they're trying to draw people into a cult, they're manipulating people for money — that's fine." That would be weird. There are times where you have to practise those kinds of things. It would mean we wouldn't be taking Jesus seriously. And honestly, if we weren't taking Jesus seriously in that way, go find a church that is. It's not worth it. We're talking about your soul here, not about a club that just hangs out and sings songs. If that's all the church is, pish posh. But if it's about something more grand and wonderful, then it matters that we do these kinds of things.
And this is not me being like, Calvinism versus Arminianism — I'm not saying if we've got a Calvinist in the room, they need to go. We're talking in grand scale. It's like terrible things like that, right? Does that make sense? Do you hear my heart? I'm not trying to pick on people.
Paul's handling of conflict in Corinthians
When Paul has a similar situation in Corinthians, they practise a form of exclusion. The reason they do it is because someone is having sex with his dad's wife. And Paul makes this comment: "Not even the pagans will do that, and you're doing it." He even says they're celebrating it. So this bloke is having sex with his dad's wife, and instead of the church going, "I don't like it, but I'll just kind of leave it alone — you do you, modern West kind of thing" — they're going, "Dude, well done, good job." That's what Paul seems to indicate. Isn't that crazy?
So Paul points out their hypocrisy and says people aren't going to take you seriously. He says people from outside the church look at the church and will see something profoundly immoral or hypocritical because of the things we tolerate. I'm not going to name names, but that might just be a problem we have in the modern West — big leaders in the church, not the English church but wider evangelicalism, who we look at and go, "Eh, he's all right," but actually, no, they're not. People look at those people and they go, "What? Is this what Christianity is about?"
So Paul commands the Corinthians to fully expel the man from the church — so that, here's the catch, so that his soul will be saved, and he will realise the gravity of his error and come back into the community. It's not, "See ya, enjoy the fifth circle of hell." It's none of that. It seems to be this last resort of, "We want you to be part of the crew here, but what you're doing is not good, and you need to have this wake-up moment — this shake of, 'Oh heck, this is the gravity of the situation?'"
The end goal is not exclusion for exclusion's sake, but transformation of all parties. And in Jesus' thought, even exclusion, if done in partnership with Jesus, is done out of love. Not very modern West, but very Jesus.
Binding and loosing — and the dangers of bad theology
Jesus then very quickly speaks of these two ideas: binding and loosing. This is a rabbit hole, but here's a really quick overview, because it's part of the wider idea. The concept of binding in Jewish tradition refers to declaring something as unlawful. In rabbinic literature, rabbis had the authority to bind and loose, meaning they could interpret the law and make decisions on what was permissible or not. Here, Jesus extends that authority to his disciples, indicating their role in establishing church discipline and doctrine.
But here's the catch. The authority is not arbitrary. It's not just, "Say what you want, mate." It's to be exercised in accordance with God's will and guidance. You can't just go around binding whatever you want. It must be discerned with scripture and prayer and humility. Without this context, God can so easily become a genie in a bottle that bows to our wills, and this can just be bad theology.
There was a video that went around a few years ago where, post-George Floyd, a bunch of charismatic leaders were at a massive conference. And this lady gets up and has this idea — she references that bit in Lord of the Rings where Gandalf gets out his staff and says, "You shall not pass!" to the Balrog, and the Balrog goes, "Oh heck, okay," and then goes down and they have a big fight. She's like, "Let's do that to racism." So she gets five or six of these very famous charismatic pastors and leaders up — and I think she throws them under the bus, I think they have no idea she's doing it, and you can tell they're panicking. And she's like, "We're going to decree, 'You shall not pass!' to racism." And they do this in the name of the apostolic decrees and the powers that they have. "We bind the power of racism," blah blah blah. And then they just kind of go, "Boom! You shall not pass!" She smacks the staff she's brought on the ground, and then everyone just kind of goes, "Yay, racism's over!"
But if you read a verse like that and just go, "Well, I can just do what I want" — that's well-meaning, it's actually well-meaning, but it's actually just bad theology. It's not a good understanding of humanity and what the gospel is trying to achieve.
Jesus is with us — the vision for the church
But then we get back to Jesus, and he's nice and lovely, and he says this wonderful thing: Jesus is with us. He is with us in the middle of the messiness, because his vision for you and for the church is utterly magnificent. The church is a city on a hill, a place that people can look to for refuge and safety — not because we're wonderful, but because Jesus is wonderful. The church is a new humanity in the midst of a divided humanity, representatives of a new earth in the middle of a dying world. And if you are a follower of Jesus, you are called to be, in your own way, a radically counter-cultural, transformational presence in your community.
I will die on this hill, and I will keep pumping it until I cork it, for whatever reason that I cork it: nothing has more potential to bring change to a community than a bunch of Spirit-filled Christians taking Jesus seriously. Like, actually taking him seriously. Hey, maybe he was right about this whole thing.
The challenge: enlarge your vision, humble your heart
So here's a challenge — and this is the part where you're going to get annoyed at me, or maybe you already are. Is there anything you can think of where a friend, a situation, yourself, is causing division, harm, gossip, or slander? Even if it's an anger that you harbour that you have not expressed, or a jealousy, or a pain — I believe there's an invitation for you today from the Spirit, who by the way is actually here with us, to process that. And where possible, begin to take the journey of healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
Because here's the thing — here's a fun fact for you. If you're a Christian and you believe the whole Jesus thing, you're actually going to be spending eternity with the people next to you, including the ones you don't like. That's what we believe. That's ultimately the idea. And the call together is to grow together with the power of the Spirit and healthy community towards your life in eternity. So even if you don't like the guy who says "dope" a lot, you can still love me as a brother, right? Even if you think my sense of humour is terrible and I talk about controversial things too much.
And the thing is, when you stand before God, you and the person in your life group who you don't like will stand next to each other. And I think this would be very classic Jesus — if there's someone you haven't liked your whole life, Jesus is going to put them right next to you. This is not biblical, this is just me being a bit conjectural. Jesus is going to put them right next to you, and then he's going to crown them with glory. And then he will do the same to you. And you're just going to have to deal with it.
So I say to you: enlarge the scope of your vision. You will find that if you slow your soul down and think with a bigger lens, and realise the stakes, that your problem with someone's theology, or the way they talk, or how they dress, or the fact that they drop too many F-bombs for your liking, or that they don't reply to you as quickly as you'd like — even if the problem might be legitimate — can all be seen as part of an eternal story, and an opportunity for healing and a testimony to the goodness and forgiveness and kindness of God. Because the health of your soul is an eternal gain. And you're dealing with humans, with immense potential for cruelty and for beauty. And to be part of the church of Jesus is to acknowledge that, and to love each other, our God, and our community in a way that transforms us, as Paul would say, from glory to glory.
C.S. Lewis on the eternal significance of every person
C.S. Lewis says this — and he's not doing the Mormon thing here, quick disclaimer, he's talking about the process of becoming more like Jesus:
"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses. To remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption, such as you now meet only in nightmares. All day long, we are in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of all these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another — all friendships, all loves, all play, and all politics."
So I say again: enlarge your vision, humble your heart. Because I think this might be one of the most effective forms of witness in this decade.
Closing: the world's failed utopias and the church's calling
The heart that I have for this church is that it would be radically joy-filled, counter-culturally selfless — I said "selfish" at the 9am, I mean selfless — because here in Sumner and in Redcliffs, that we would take Jesus seriously. Because I think it's fair to say that our world isn't going to magically flip a peacemaking switch. That's probably a fair assumption by now. We're quite a few thousand years into this thing. We can probably draw the conclusion.
Henry Ford thought it would come through the assembly line — he wrote very utopianistic things about the assembly line. Lenin thought it would happen through Marxism. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs thought it would come through technology and the internet. Elon Musk and Sam Altman think that AI will somehow achieve this, and that somehow everything will just be fine, and peace will be achieved, and humans will go, "You know what? We're done fighting. Thanks, Sam. Good job, guys." I'm not trying to be a downer. I'm just trying to be realistic. And if we look at the patterns of world history and how angry everyone is, and when that anger is grounded in a godless worldview, the gloves start to come off. And you can't pretend you can't see that. Groups who once were claimed to be Christian-affiliated are doing things that are so unlike Jesus, it's unbelievable. And the groups that aren't Christian-affiliated are getting even more extreme. It's because the gloves have come off.
But I'm offering a way that Jesus seems to think is woven into the fabric of creation itself. And it's simple, but it's grounded in that redemptive story that Jesus fulfils and makes real in his life, his death, and his resurrection. And because those things happened, it can be utterly transformative. It's not a quick fix, but held in unity with wider Christian practice, it will make a serious difference. You'll be a different, more Spirit-filled, more loving kind of person.
Listen, that's what I want for you. This is why Rev Harry Newton and I are here. We don't get paid enough to come and get annoyed at people. Harry's got like four degrees — he could be making way more money than he is. This is not a profit game. This is a thing because we think it's legit and we think it works and we think Jesus is actually who he says he is. This is why we turn up. This is why a lot of you are here. And if we seriously risk being defined and formed by an angry world, and if we let the anger win, we've lost.
Invitation to prayer ministry
So while we're doing communion, I want to remind you of the opportunity of prayer ministry. If you can feel a nudge in your spirit right now — that classic Pentecostal moment — I would challenge you to engage with that. There are going to be people praying over in the corner. You don't have to come up the front and have everyone look at you. Go over there. It's going to be great.
Just a quick story. On Wednesday, we do a Wednesday service at St Andrews. And I went up for communion, and Denise — if you know Denise, roaring Pentecostal — I was feeling not great, just for a bunch of different reasons. And she just whacks me on the shoulder as I get the communion, and then just, boom — she starts praying for me. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh." I'm having this full Holy Spirit moment at a communion rail. Very not very Anglican, but super Pentecostal. It was great. And it was just this moment of, "Oh man, thank you, Lord." Just some stuff that had been going on for me — it was just so unexpected. It had been a while since I last had that.
So I would encourage you, if you're just kind of feeling dry, or feeling just like, "Oh heck" — or if you're not a Christian and you want to see if prayer works, rock on up, give it a go. What have you got to lose? God actually wants to meet you. He's not distant. Don't ignore him for the sake of convenience, and don't be afraid.