JESUS DRIVEN MINISTRY

Written by Ajith Fernando Reviewed By Richard S. Briggs

Interesting to review this book for Themelios, a journal aimed at the student of theology. Perhaps it is all a matter of context. Fernando is a Sri Lankan who is well known in some evangelical circles for an international speaking and preaching ministry, and who has worked over 25 years for Youth for Christ in his home country. This gives him a valuable perspective on the Western evangelical world, and he is worried. Worried that Christian ministry has sold its soul to success-orientated techniques for bigger, better, more efficient programmes, and has lost sight in the process of the Jesus of the Gospels. In response he offers 14 chapters of practically orientated reflections on how ministry can be shaped on the model of Jesus, loosely focused around points and incidents in the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel. Topics include ‘Identifying with People’, ‘Affirmed by God’, ‘Launching Disciples into Ministry’, ‘Visiting Homes’ (my personal pick of the best and most pointed of the chapters), ‘Praying’ and even ‘Facing Wild Animals’.

Fernando writes with grace and clarity, and says much that is helpful. Undoubtedly this book would be a tremendous step in the right direction for any who are indeed stuck with a ministry-by-numbers flipchart and calculator approach. When he worries that ‘a passion for Christ and the lost … seems to have been replaced by a passion for growth’ (85) one can only hope that many will hear what he has to say.

And yet. The suspicion lingers that the good things Fernando has to say are not all that much to do with Mark chapter 1, and that the ‘Jesus Driven Ministry’ of the title turns out to look a lot like good, conscientious evangelical ministry ever circling around the mysterious twin poles of ‘objective truth’ (which appears frequently here, but not in Mark 1) and ‘biblical principles’ (likewise). His explicit reflection on Scripture is not very reassuring: we are told that any ‘special word from God’ must be checked against Scripture, which God will never contradict (55). Surely it is not possible to suppose any longer that we have some kind of objective access to Scripture which simply allows us to weed out what fails to match it. Scripture itself includes all sorts of highly unlikely words from God. Secondly, the well-known ‘enlightenment prejudice against prejudice’ is alive and well here. We are advised to turn to the text and not to other books (128), as if we could or even should somehow by-pass the wisdom of those who have gone before us. Fernando seems instinctively to know this can’t be right (on the very next page we learn that it was when he read J. I. Packer that he got his thinking sorted out) but he has not factored it into what he wants to say about the Bible.

In the end the much-vaunted ‘biblical principles’ seem to leave us with a rather tame Jesus, a man you would be happy to have as your pastor, in fact, and not much like the extraordinary embodiment of the hopes and fears of Israel dragging his upside-down kingdom to the cross, preaching that the end is at hand, and telling parables about shrewd managers and foolish virgins. When the story of the temptations in the wilderness becomes the pretext for talking about the importance of having a retreat (ch. 4), one may be forgiven for thinking that serious theological engagement with the biblical narrative itself is sadly lacking.


Richard S. Briggs

Cranmer Hall, Durham