With each successive mass murder event, our society is left feeling more numb than stunned by these kinds of events.  And this might be the most frightening part of this whole situation.  None of us feel safe anymore. As a father of three sons who attend public school, I am terrified by the thought that this could happen at any moment in my community. We are left with one looming question, “who will be next?”  

On the other side of the news buzz is the partisan divide that quickly exposes itself after such tragedies befall our nation.  We are prone to run to our safe ideological corners where we begin to assess what we believe are the reasons why we keep dealing with these tragedies.  From one corner, we have the cry that we need stricter gun laws and in the other we need What we find ourselves in is one crazy mess.  

The reality is that ALL of these issues are challenges that need measured solutions.  Yet, I fear our banter and debate is far too one dimensional. I appreciate a quote from the American Journal of Public Health which states…

“Mass shootings represent national awakenings and moments when seeming political or social adversaries might come together to find common ground, whether guns are allowed, regulated, or banned. Doing so, however, means recognizing that gun crimes, mental illnesses, social networks, and gun access issues are complexly interrelated, and not reducible to simple cause and effect. Ultimately, the ways our society frames these connections reveal as much about our particular cultural politics, biases, and blind spots as it does about the acts of lone, and obviously troubled, individuals.”

If all of these issues are “complexly interrelated”, then where do we start the pursuit of healing and hope?  I want to suggest that for the Christian, we must first point ourselves back to the Law & the Gospel.  I fear that we can be so emotionally shaped by the latest media release that we easily jump from one quick witted judgment to another.  Christians, like most people, can easily forget the foundation of our faith.  We know these matters are far too complex and we cannot ignore them.

The church has a better framework on which to engage our hurting world if only we will use it.  Forming our thoughts and responses to these tragic events in historical confessional theology REQUIRES us to remember four LAW-GOSPEL fundamentals: 

THE LAW OF GOD GIVES FOUNDATIONAL ORDER TO THE WORLD

We need to remember that God has ordered the universe and it is therefore grounded in his nature as well as in his Law.  The Bible says in Romans 1:19 and 2:14 that this Law is written on the hearts of humanity, yet it has been suppressed. Genesis 3 chronicles how our first parents, Adam and Eve, broke God’s Law and rendered all humanity to be born as Law Breakers.  The curse was and still is pervasive and it poisons everything we know and see. The Law of God, written on the hearts of men, stands as only holy standard for the righteousness of God.

OUR OUTRAGE NEEDS TO BE LOCATED  IN HUMAN SIN AND REBELLION

Living in a sin cursed world inevitably leads to sin, suffering, death and tragedy.  These recent events are not the first tragedies in human history where we have been forced into these conversations and debates.  There is a place for grief and holy outrage but our grief and outrage do not start with secondary causes, but primary cause. When the extent of our reaction is relegated to secondary causes, we render our influence and help no better than our unbelieving co-sufferers.  We simply descend into the emotional dumpster fire of either outrage or utter despair. The outrage we see in our culture is a reflection of the world’s inability to properly grieve these tragedies.  As Christians, we need to give our restless and weary world a better way to grieve.

ONLY JESUS MEETS THE RIGHTEOUS STANDARD OF GOD

When the Law of God is clearly established, then we can offer a hope of the Gospel worth the world’s examination.  But the Gospel of grace cannot stand alone. It must stand on the Law of God. The Gospel is founded on the work of Jesus to atone for the sins of Law Breakers.  The hatred of the shooters is fundamentally rooted in their hatred of God. This innate lawlessness is the starting point.  This means that the only antidote and true help is found in a God who is working his plan to redeem his people and the world.  Simply put, our ultimate hope and help is God himself.  Paul tells us in Romans 3:21-26 that Jesus meets the righteous standard of the Law on our behalf and accomplishes the much needed redemption we all long for but can not attain.  Our God has promised to establish a new people who live under his rule and blessing once again. That promise cannot be found in the malaise of contemporary ideologies or the political spectrum. As Christian we need to help our world to see the Kingdom that is established above all worldly principalities.  

THE GOSPEL GIVES US OUR ONLY HOPE IN A BROKEN WORLD

When we preach a Law/Gospel vision, we give true hope to a desperate world.  Some will say we are being naive and offering an ethereal gospel. They will say that a Gospel that is not motivated to social action is not a helpful nor hopeful gospel at all.  But what actions does this God command us to engage in. Where do we start? Is limiting access to military grade firearms the place to start? Perhaps. If so, what about all the law abiding gun owners out there?  On the other end, what kind of help are ready and equipped to provide aid to the mentally ill in these tragic phenomena? Do we truly understand the totality of human psychology? Can we truly diagnose the complexity of the human heart?  In the midst of these questions, the Gospel helps us cling to the promise that our God is very much at work in the world and that our answers are not found in secondary causes but in the first cause… Christ our King!  As Christians, we need to help our weary unbelieving friends find hope in the strong arms of Christ our King!

Even so, Micah 6:8 gives us a description to “seek justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God” yet we must be careful with the extent to which we are to apply these texts in contexts like these.  The victims deserve justice.  The assailants deserve punishment for their heinous acts yet mercy is available for those who repent and turn to Christ.  The watching world needs the humility to depend upon God as they grieve these events together.  What if Christian’s led the way in this Micah 6:8 vision? Certainly, conscientious Christians will arrive at different conclusions on some of the secondary specifics but in the end, only the Gospel gives us the framework to  live in hope that things will not always be as they are now.  

So as we stumble forward seeking  answers for this complex cultural moment, the confessionally rooted church provides three fundamental helps that can be found nowhere outside of Christian faith.

1. A better way to grieve accurately and fully.  As people with outrage and despair try to grapple with their grief and fear, we can offer them a profound way to grief that is rooted in the human story itself as revealed in the Scriptures.
2. A better rest for the weary soul.  As people learn to rightly understand the nature of these tragic circumstances, we can offer them a Savior who is strong enough to bring rest to their weary souls.
3. A better hope that transcends the political and social spheres of our world.  In a world where the political pendulum swings sharply from moment to moment, the church offers a Gospel that is bigger than Washington or blue vs. red political platforms.

May the church in our day find the grace and gumption to lead with confidence from the Law and the Gospel and there provide true hope, help and healing for a weary and restless world.  

By now, you have no doubt heard about the article released by the Houston Chronicle regarding sexual abuse in Southern Baptist Churches. The article details sexual abuse that has plagued Southern Baptist churches over the past 20 years. If you are like me, you are disgusted with the revelation. The most infuriating truths that it reveals are the fact that some of the victimizers still have leadership or vocational posts in Southern Baptist churches as well as failed efforts by victims to call our denominational leaders to action. Thankfully, one of the priorities of our newly elected SBC president, J.D. Greear, is to organize a task force that will address how the SBC should deal with these leaders and churches. I wait to see if our leadership will truly follow through.

As you might imagine, responses have been varied. For some, this is a clarion call to throw the baby out with the bath water. For these folks, the Southern Baptist Convention is hardly worth wasting precious time and money on any longer. Additionally, some have used these revelations to call into question a myriad of conservative theological positions such as complementarianism. Secondly, some folks are sticking their heads in the sand and want to blame the “me too” movement and the media of bias. They believe this is a smear campaign from the liberal media. Third and lastly, there are those of whom all hope is not lost. Southern Baptists can grieve but also must respond by evaluating the nature of our association together. I would fall into this category with this caveat; there is an enormous amount of work to be done among our churches and if our leaders continue to put their heads in the sand, then we must evaluate the nature of our association with the SBC.

Local Church Polity and Practices

Unfortunately, there is a lot of red tape that needs to be unraveled if we are going to address this and the many other issues that face our denomination. There are two interrelated rubrics that must be considered: (1) understanding local Baptist church polity and (2) evaluating Southern Baptist associational standards.

Before we can discuss changing things in the SBC, we need to look at the local church first. As many of you know, the SBC is not a top-down denomination. Technically, the SBC only exists for 2 days per year to do business on our budgets and hear reports from our committees and task forces. The SBC is a voluntary association of local churches, therefore we must first discuss Baptist theology of local church polity. Drawing off of Tom Ascol’s helpful article that responds to this issue, the starting point in addressing the sexual abuse issue starts in the local church polity. We need to consider the confessions, membership and leadership practices of our Southern Baptist churches.

Confessional Identity

You might hear in some part of the Baptist life that we are not a “creedal” people. That is true in some respect. We are people of the Book. The Bible is the final authority and standard for life and witness for Southern Baptists. There are even some Baptists and other groups like Churches of Christ who cringe at the thought of even having a confessional statement like that of the Baptist Faith and Message, 2000. But this is a twisting of what it means to be confessional. Almost everyone who holds to a confessional standard believes that confessions are manmade. Rather, they understand the purpose of creeds and confessions as simply outlining what the church universal has believed and passed down since Christ ascended into heaven and established the church on Pentecost.

One of the greatest challenges we face in the SBC is a lack of confessional identity. In the SBC, we have the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 as our confession. It is a distant grandchild of the 2nd London Confession 1689 and the New Hampshire Confession, 1853. It is a solid yet broad confession of faith. It allows for generosity among Baptists who differ on some theological particularities. What’s mind-boggling is that a church can be Southern Baptist simply by voluntarily giving to the Cooperative Program, agreeing to not install a woman as pastor and not allowing practicing homosexuals into membership. Even an essential conviction such as regenerate church membership and believers baptism can be bypassed in some cases. I know of churches in the SBC who hold to a dual-mode approach to baptism but because they generously give to the Cooperative Program, they are welcomed in with open arms. (Don’t get me started about the money, ya’ll!) This is not to say that a Baptist & Presbyterian church cannot network together for the propagation of the Gospel. Our church also partners with the Acts 29 Network which is a multi-denominational network of reformed churches, but I am strictly thinking about getting our house in order in the SBC.

For Southern Baptist Churches, what is needed is a recovery of our confessional identity on the local church level and insist that our denomination holds to a meaningful confessional standard for admittance into membership of the SBC. The SBC should only admit thoroughly confessional churches that can agree with the BFM 2000. Yet, Confessionalism starts on the local church level first!

Meaningful Membership

On the basis of solid confessional identity, a church must then outline how that confession will be lived out in the church. This usually comes in the form of a Membership Covenant. Some folks get uncomfortable when you start requiring membership covenants for entry into church membership. I don’t have time to outline the history of the practice here, but suffice it to say, churches that don’t require a member covenant in Baptist life are a fairly new breed (about 100 years or so). Let me recommend the work of 9 Marks Ministries for further study.

The reason I argue for meaningful membership is that it strengthens discipleship and discipline in the church. This is not to say that the membership is led with an iron fist. Far from it. But a good membership covenant outlines how we agree as a body of Christ to live in light of what we have learned from our study of the Bible. It also empowers us to call one another to repentance when we fail to live in such a manner. When mutual brotherhood and sisterhood fails, then the process of church discipline is established for cases that require more thorough work in the life of an unrepentant brother or sister in Christ.

Hopefully, you can see how this helps the challenges we face like in the case of sexual abuse. If we train and expect churches and their members to live confessionally and in a disciplined manner, we can better weed out these wolves from within our fellowships. This would and should directly impact how we associate with other like-minded churches. Churches with strong confessional and membership standards will likely want stronger and more defined associational standards as well.

Leader Training and Eldership Standards

Lastly, we need to address the standard by which a man is called into pastoral ministry whether as a vocational or non-vocation pastor/elder and how he carries that call from church to church. Additionally, we need to address how men and women are trained for diaconate positions in the church. Our leadership training in the church is broader than the expectations for the offices of Elder or Deacon but it is never less than that. When we strengthen our process for training and installing Biblically and confessionally sound candidates for elder and deacon, we strengthen the rest of the leadership in the church in the process.

One of the struggles I have with the majority practice of “ministry calling” in the SBC is that it seems to be largely a “self-calling.” Brother Dan senses the Holy Spirit calling him to preach and brings that to his pastor. The pastor is pleased to hear that God is moving in Dan’s life so he has the church question and subsequently ordains him to gospel ministry where he might then be sent off to seminary. Once he leaves the church, there is no responsibility for that call. This was the pattern of my ordination in the church. I had an hour-long question and answer session with the pastor and the deacon board. The questions where more emotive than substantive. I cannot remember a meaningful question about my personal theology if I am honest. They then organized an installation service, laid hands on me and gave me a sheet of paper confirming my ordination. That single young man in 2001 was in need of so much more mentoring and training in the church than to simply be patted on the back and sent out into the world of ministry. I know that not all pastors in the SBC are ordained this way but I don’t think its a stretch to say that the vast majority are.

Thankfully, when I submitted to be assessed in the Acts 29 Network a few years later, I was thoroughly examined on a level that my ordination should have been. To be clear, Acts 29 does not ordain men to pastoral ministry but their process was thorough and helpful like what a good ordination process should look like. The men and their wives walked with Amanda and me for nearly 2 years before we were confirmed into membership of Acts 29. What if this was the pattern of ordination in the local church? What if this was the expectation of our local, state and national associations for admittance as a church? At the very least, there should associational standards that carry from church to church and a dismissal of the idea that ordination is not a lifetime call.

Associational Identity

A lot of what you will hear in this discussion surrounding what to do with the churches who have harbored sexual predators is that because each church is autonomous, nothing that can be done from a denominational perspective. You will remember that I stated earlier that the SBC is not a top-down denomination. It begins and ends with the churches. Frankly, this rings hollow to me.

It rings historically hollow. We can preserve meaningful local church autonomy while also bolstering associational standards without becoming a quasi-presbyterian denomination. If we were to examine the London Particular Baptist Association as well as the Philadelphia Baptist Association, you would find a strong confessional identity as well as other robust associational standards. Associational standards DO NOT nullify a local church’s autonomy. As I noted above, our church is also part of the Acts 29 which is a voluntary association of networked churches. That network expects our leadership at Grace to meet certain network standards and reaffirm them each year. If we choose not to, we can leave the network. We are autonomous as to whether we stay or go but if we stay, we must submit to the network standards. Southern Baptists need to recover this practice.

The real question is where do we start in such a large animal like the Southern Baptist Convention. As far as the immediate issue of sexual abuse predators in the local church, we can and should disfellowship or at least put on probation any church that empowers or harbors these leaders in their church if it is demonstrated that a restorative process has not been met to restore them to their leadership roles. Where do we get this power? Simple. In our confession. Article 6 on the Church states that only men may be installed into the office of pastor. Because of this article, many associations have disfellowshiped churches that had women as senior pastors because women are not scripturally qualified for service in that role. I would argue that on that basis, we can and should extend this to include disfellowshiping churches with other unqualified leaders as well.

About 5 years ago, the Acts 29 Network painfully but decisively disfellowshipped Mars Hill Church and their pastor Mark Driscoll because of abusive behavior that deemed Driscoll unqualified to be part of the network going forward. Why can we not do this in the SBC? Again, if we go back to the Philadephia Association, one can find churches that were disfellowshipped because their pastors did not meet the ordination standard of the association. It’s not an autonomy issue.

A Pathway Forward as a Church

Here are some ways we will seek to address this from our side of the tracks at Grace Church.

1. At Grace, the elders will examine the nature of our associations regularly and do our best to unite with groups that hold to our confessional standards.
2. At Grace, we will make sure our elders, deacons and other leaders are qualified and have a background church done regularly.
3. At Grace, we will examine our membership standards frequently and continue to grow in them together.
4. At Grace, we will continue to grow in our confessional identity through preaching and teaching in the life of the church.
5. At Grace, we currently require background checks on leaders and those who work with minors. This practice will be continually evaluated and the elders will work to have a response policy in place on how to deal with any issues that may arise in the safety of our children.
6. At Grace, we will immediately report any allegation of sexual abuse to the proper authorities.

A Pathway Forward for Southern Baptists

These suggestions are just that…suggestions. I don’t pretend to understand all the complexities of the internal workings of our denomination. But it is my conviction that none of these suggestions violate church autonomy.

1. Establish a better confessional standard for association with Southern Baptists. This does not mean it has to be a uniformly Calvinist confession but it does need to be clear and convictional. The BFM 2000 is a sufficient confession to get us where we need to go. We must establish it’s centrality in our associational life in some way and do so immediately!
2. Establish a standard for the training and installation of pastors/elders and deacons. This does not mean that a church is not free to implement it as they see fit or that the church is not ultimately responsible for the training. That is will always be the church’s responsibility. What it means is that we should have a clear and centralized standard for who leads the churches that associate with us and our churches need to take that seriously.
3. Establish a covenantal agreement with churches that outline practices that will be expected to be lived out. This document will likely have to be updated regularly as the times change. It should outline expectations for safeguards with minors, expectations for general theological commitments as well as reasonable expectations for giving to associational causes.
4. Establish a medium whereby churches are required self report their adherence to associational standards and any violations of those standards especially the abusive behavior of a church leader. The ACP (Annual Church Profile) could be useful here instead of using it to brag about numbers. This could also be used to created a profile of vocational pastors who serve in our churches according to ordination standards. If those standards are breached, then establish a probationary standard and disfellowship process for churches that are not in line with these standards.

Some will say these suggestions are too strict. I disagree wholeheartedly. Every church has the freedom to associate with whatever denomination and partners they feel best advances their mission. No church is forced to remain in the Southern Baptist Convention if these expectations are too stringent.

Others may say these ideas are simply unrealistic. The size of the SBC will rule out the probability of this ever getting off the ground. That is probably true. But if Southern Baptists are going to be a global witness for Jesus Christ, then we have to try, even if the turning the Titanic called the SBC one degree at a time is what we have to settle for.

Other still will say that too much money is on the line if we put churches on probation. Why? Because severla of the churches mentioned in the article are the largest churches in our convention therefore, their giving is too important. This is detestable and I believe Jesus would agree. Jesus, help us repent of our idolatry to money as the means to real mission and ministry. What good are money and resources if they are tainted with our indifference to sin and folly? I believe the Holy Spirit will go with us if we stand on his Word and act decisively and boldly.

For the glory of Jesus and the advancement and growth of His Church, we must try. Sexual abuse (any form of abuse) and providing cover for abusers should be intolerable to any truly confessional and Jesus loving church. If homosexual practice is unacceptable for membership and if we deem women scripturally unqualified for pastoral office, then it is unthinkable that Southern Baptists cannot expect other moral or theological standards of the leaders in our churches.

May God be glorified through this article.

Today, is the second installment on my blog series on how the Law and Gospel call us to act justly. Today we discuss abortion.

On the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the state of New York passed one of the most aggressive Pro-Choice/Abortion provisions to date. It legalized abortion on demand through the third trimester, even into the delivery. Weeks before this bill was passed, Governor Andrew Cuomo could be seen begging, if not insisting, that the state legislature bring him a bill that would legalize the most progressive provisions for abortion in the state’s history. The state legislature acted posthaste. They quickly brought a bill to his desk and the Governor signed it without hesitation!

To say that we live in a sick and twisted world goes without saying. But it must be said clearly & plainly by the church of Jesus Christ that abortion in any form is a clear violation of God’s Law and God will not stand idly by and watch wicked magistrates abrogate their God-given role to protect ALL life. We don’t have to advocate for a “Christian” nation to say these things. We have clear teaching from God’s Word about murder and the value of life, in all its forms. We also have clear teaching from Romans 13 on the role of the magistrate. When we speak up on issues of morality and ethics in our world, let’s not presume that we are talking about politics. By and large, politics is bankrupt in most forms in our nation today. It seems that politics has devolved into a game played among elected men and women who want to protect their office. They pander to our bases rather than do what is right.

Sadly, I fear that New York State is but one of several states that will offer up this sacrificial offering to the god of the “what’s best for me” culture that the American Dream has evolved into as a nation. My own home state of Virginia, a once fairly conservative state on matters of both fiscal and ethical importance, put a bill of even more progressive nature on the floor of the legislature. Thankfully, that measure was defeated but by only one vote. [My heart breaks even writing that sentence.] In defense of the measure, the self-proclaimed moderate Democratic Governor of Virginia [a former trained medical doctor] described the gruesome reality of third-trimester abortions and what would happen if the abortion was botched and the child serviced. His description is nothing short of infanticide.

So what why do I bring this to your attention? Is there anything new here? Is this is just another politically conservative diatribe by an elitist white middle-class evangelical? No! It’s a desire to help us wake up as a church to the real issues that we are facing and call us to bring the Gospel to bear on them.

So here are three pastoral challenges that I hope you will join me in prayerfully considering.

LET’S REPENT…

Yes, that’s right. I believe we need to repent. Now repentance here is not merely to call unbelievers to repent. We need to consider the ongoing call to daily repentance and belief that Martin Luther said was central to the Christian life. Here are a couple areas that I am seeking repentance in lately

• Repent of our indifference to Abortion. I am decidedly pro-life and I am convinced that being pro-life in every biblical sense extends to more than just abortion. But in saying that, I recognize that I, too, have fallen into a kind of “avoidance” or “apathy” in regards to speaking about the issue of Abortion. Why? Because I, along with many other conservative evangelicals have been disillusioned with the way that many in the Republican Party have played fast and loose with this topic only to get the majority of the “evangelical vote.” The issue of Abortion stands on a mountain of complex issues such as poverty, opportunity, and education for many in minority communities. These are realities the church cannot ignore and in so doing, we might subvert the wickedness of the abortion industry in more ways than just politics. Yet, it must be clearly stated that the founding efforts for communal sterilization and legalization abortion were initially aimed at controlling the population of impoverished Black communities. I am not sure if this stat is true, but today more black people are killed in the womb than are born in the state of New York each year. We must fight abortion on all fronts. We must address poverty and equal opportunity in our nation where possible. On the other hand, we must speak up when our magistrates are acting wickedly no matter the cost to our wallets and our livelihood. This does mean, in my opinion, taking this value to the voting booth where possible. We face real issues regarding race, poverty, and education but we have real laws of the land that endorse murder that contradict the Laws of God. These wicked laws feed on the poor and oppressed to justify the ‘rights’ of other women to end the life of a child that is simply unwanted because he/she is an inconvenience to them. Infanticide is not driven by inconvenience. Infanticide is driven by a culture of radical autonomy and narcissism. The essence of narcissism is hate. Jesus was clear. “If you hate your brother, you committed murder.”  Join me in repenting of our indifference to this disheartening reality that threatens the real freedom of us all.
• Repent for our prayerlessness. If there was ever a time in the life of our nation to pray, it has to be now. This is not meant to be hyperbolic nor to incite anger and discord. This call is meant to incite us to petition our God to hear our cries and the cries of these innocent children whose lives are being taken simply because of deception and wickedness selfishness. Let these statistics sink in. (1.) Since 1970, there have been more than 61 million abortions performed. Currently, the U.S. population is around 325 Million. This means we have killed nearly 20% of our population since 1970. (2.) Since 1970, over 18 million black babies have been aborted, mostly through strategically placed and federally funded abortion clinics in poorer communities. The current population of African Americans in the U.S. is 47.5 Million. This means we have effectively killed off 27% of the black community due to abortion since 1970. (3.) Lastly, since its inception, Planned Parenthood has performed 8.8 million abortions. As noted above, Planned Parenthood primarily operates in poor inner city communities. If the reasoning behind abortion is a mother’s right and to primarily prevent young poor single women from throwing their life away, then riddle this. Why do the abortions of Planned Parenthood only represent only 13% of all abortions performed? The truth is that abortion is convenient and we use the poor and oppressed to justify our sick narcissistic endeavors. We need to pray diligently that God will bring swift justice for these babies and the innocent women who are preyed upon by elites disguised as friends.

LET’S PREACH…

Secondly, we need to preach the Good News of Jesus. He is the true King and Righteous Ruler of the World. When our magistrates fail to do what God has assigned them to do, God will be their judge. The Greek word Euangelion what originally used by riders who would sweep the kingdom countryside announcing the triumph of a new King and the Good News of his Reign. We may have small wins from time to time in American politics, but our God in heaven has established Jesus as the One True King of all things. Jesus wins!

We must announce this Good News regardless of how people respond to its message. We must implore people everywhere that Salvation is here and they must repent and believe in order to be part of the Jesus’ Kingdom. There is no other way. Yes, we must speak up about injustice in ALL its forms. Yes, we must call our magistrates to account for their wicked leadership, regardless of the cost. But above all, we must proclaim the Kingdom of Jesus and invite all who will enter to come and have true life. We call them to forsake their Kingdom of death and self-service. We announce that God’s grace is sufficient for all who will repent and believe!

Preaching the Gospel is the means of a Kingdom people to invoke change. The Spirit is active in our preaching of the Gospel and He will awaken the hearts of sinners of all stripes. Yes, at this time, many in our government are enemies of God, as were we all! But our heart is not to condemn them. They are condemned already. Our heart is to bring the power of the Good News to them that will bring resurrection to them.

LET’S HOPE…

Lastly, we long for Jesus’ coming. As we live in this world broken by sin, we know that none of God’s plans will fail! His true church will prevail and that none of the sufferings we face will be for naught. We have read the end of the good Book. Jesus is coming and He will come swiftly.

Why hope?

1.) It emboldens us to stand up and make known the ways of the Lord.

2.) It wakes us from our slumber of indifference.

3.) It grounds us in humility until Jesus returns!

4.) It calms our fears when life seems to be spinning off its axis.

COME, LORD JESUS, COME!

Over the past few months, there has been a considerable discussion concerning the role of social justice in the church.  So much so, that a group of pastors and theologians, most of whom within the reformed tribe,  gathered together to draft a statement called The Statement on Social Justice and The Gospel.  Considerable heat has been generated by this statement for a myriad of reasons, chief of which is our propensity toward outrage when someone challenges our values and beliefs and the quickness to which we assume more about our detractors intentions than we actually know.  I can’t help but wonder if we would be better served by drafting a statement called,  “Social Media & The Gospel” instead.  But I digress.

Nonetheless, as a pastor of a young church plant that seeks to take the Gospel seriously, I feel it is my responsibility to speak to this debate by thinking theologically about the relationship between Law and Gospel and how that might help us in our engagement in these social spheres.

Allow me to start with a couple of points of clarification before I dig into this topic in general in this post and with more specificity in future posts.  First, it is my deeply held belief that men and women on both sides of the current debate are good people who love Jesus and His Church.  We tend to promote “sides” in these matters and in doing so, ascribe caricatures of those with whom we disagree.  This is harmful to the church.

Second, I am still wading through the waters of this topic and trying to discern where I stand.  This is a work in progress for me and so I enter the waters of this debate slowly and humbly.  My chief concern is simply this: where does the Gospel come into play in areas of racial reconciliation, abortion, poverty, and sexuality and gender issues.  

LAW & GOSPEL THROUGH THE LENS OF MICAH 6:8

One verse that is often referenced in conjunction with the call to justice is Micah 6:8: “He has shown what is good, O’ man. And what doe the Lord require of you?  To act justly, to love mercy [faithfulness] and walk humbly with your God.”  This is a powerful verse indeed.  The Prophet Micah is confronting Israel for their unfaithfulness to their covenant keeping God.  Israel has yet again drifted into moral and spiritual bankruptcy that resulted in living unjustly and exploiting others as well as not living faithfully as God’s people in the world. 

What often goes unnoticed about this particular passage is the simplicity of it.  Micah 6:8 is simply directing Israel’s focus back to the Law of God.  In fact, Micah 6:8 might be best viewed as a summary of the Law.  All justice, mercy, and faithfulness flow from God’s Law which was first revealed in the Garden.  Therefore, Micah 6:8 must first be read through the lenses of Law and Gospel.  It is dangerous when it plucked out of that theological context.  We must be careful when we apply Micah 6:8 to any apparent injustice.  When we divorce justice from the Law of God, it no longer is true justice.  So let’s break down Micah 6:8 in light of the Law & Gospel.  

Law and Gospel and the Call to Act Justly

First, we must consider Micah’s call to “act justly”.  Some versions of the Bible translate this as “do justice.”  Both translations are helpful but only when we understand the proper foundation for justice.  The Law of God establishes true justice because the Law is given by God to Adam.  God is not only Adam’s Creator, but He is his Sovereign and Holy Lord as well.  Adam is made in the image of God and is called to submit and yield to the God’s lordship over his life.  When God directs Adam to “multiply and fill the earth” or “eat of any tree, but do not eat of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”, this was the establishment of a righteous relationship between God & Adam [all mankind].  When Adam and Eve rebel against, it was a rebellion against God’s good rule.  Thats called treason.  God’s justice and therefore acts of justice we pursue must first take this into account.  Not all things that are called unjust actually are unjust.  

Therefore, if we are going to talk about living justly in the world, as Christians, we must do so through the lenses of the Gospel.  Justice starts with the Gospel work of calling people to repentance and faith, moreover, the continuing work of faith and repentance of sinner/saints called the church. The Gospel is the good news that Jesus atones for the real sins of His people, therefore, biblical justice must start with repentance from real and tangible acts of sin toward God and others.  

The church, specifically the local confessional church, is the context where we must first live justly through faith and repentance.  It is in the covenant fellowship of a believing body of Christ followers that we repent and turn from our sins and turn in faith to Christ.  It is also here that we practice daily repentance, faith, and discipline when member remain unrepentant for their sins.  

This is one of the pieces of the puzzle that I think is often overlooked in our zeal to live justly in the world.  If we are not doing the work of disciplining ourselves in the church through our confessions of the faith, then what hope do we have to offer real justice when we enter the market place?  The Law of God gives us a standard for right and wrong as we engage what is truly a justice issue and what is cloaking as one.  For example, ethnocentric prejudice is a sin according to Scripture because it assaults the Imago Dei.  The church can and should call one another on any sinful ethnocentric views or behavior.  On the other hand, acknowledging the inalienable rights of same-sex couples to marry or the rights of the transgender community are not real justice issues according to Scripture.  The only right we have is to be treated with dignity because we are made in the image of God.

Law & Gospel and the call to Love Mercy

Depending on what English translation of the Bible you use, you either will read “love mercy” or “love faithfulness”.  Both mercy and faithfulness denote the idea of ‘loving kindness’. In the Old Testament, loving kindness is always related to God’s covenantal relationship with his people.  Mercy then is the commitment of God to love and keep His people in spite of their sin on the basis of His covenantal promise.  

Why is this so important to our work of justice and mercy in the world?  Everything!  First, when we love mercy, we love people in an uncommon way because we too were loved in an uncommon way.  In the Law that was given to Moses, God tells his people how to live in such a way.  In the books of Leviticus & Numbers, we find example after example of how God’s people are to show mercy.  Everything from the purification laws, types of offerings as well as cities of refuge were given as an act of mercy to sinful people.  Much more could be said of course, but this gives us the root for the proper place of mercy in our lives.  But that pales in comparison to the person and work of Jesus.  It is through His life, death, and resurrection that we find mercy infleshed.  

What does this mean for us?  First, we love mercy as we relish in God’s new mercies each day.  Second, we love mercy when we extend mercy to those who don’t deserve mercy such as was the case for us.  Third, we love mercy when we make the Gospel plain to those who feel lonely, trapped, & disenfranchised by their sin.  Additionally, we love mercy to people who have been the victims of others offenses toward them.  It is here that justice and mercy are inseparable.  

But lest we are careless, let’s speak to the danger of disconnecting justice and mercy for a moment.  When we disconnect justice and mercy, we risk endorsing sinful behavior rather than bring the hope of the Gospel.  For example, if we have a family member who struggles with substance abuse, we show them mercy in two ways.  First, we proclaim the Good News of the Gospel to them and second, we offer help to free them from their addiction.  In this way, we make room for another sinner right next to us in the pew on Sunday.  On the other hand, we are not showing mercy if we excuse the sin by deflecting from the sinful behavior to some other hurt that they may have experienced in the past.  To be clear, we find compassion in our hurt and pain. But we must always keep the Gospel in view and find our peace from the hurt and pain of this life in Jesus alone.  

Law and Gospel & the call to Walk Humbly

In the garden, we see this beautiful picture of God and Adam in the garden together as God forms and teaches Adam how to live as his steward.  It’s magnificently beautiful.  Adam, as God’s created image bearer, walked with His God.  He clung to every word of His God.  He trusted his God.  This too is part of the Law of God.  The covenantal framework on which all of Scripture is built is this: “God’s people in God’s Place under God’s rule and blessing.  Walking humbly encompasses the entirety of the covenantal blessings that God held out for his people.  God ruled over Adam while in communion with him.  The transmission of His Law came in the midst of the Garden with Adam.  

Throughout the Bible, we see several people who “walked with God” but only on the basis of God’s rule and blessing, his covenant.  Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, and David are examples that we can look to as examples of “walking humbly” with God.  But they walked [imperfectly as they did] on the basis of faith in God’s covenant promises.  They walked by faith.  

The Gospel is reality and substance of all their hope in God.  They looked forward to God fulfilling his promises and it was on that basis that they walked humbly.  Today, the church can say with Paul in Galatians 2:20-21: “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who lives but Christ who lives in me.  The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.”  

Again, all of Micah 6:8 could be likened as a summary of the scope of the Law of God.  As believers living on the foundation of the New Covenant in Christ, we are now able to keep the Law in a new and better way.  What this means is that our acts of justice and mercy must be deeply rooted in the Gospel.  Why?  If not, we may find that our “helping” may, in the end, be “hurting” others instead of providing real and lasting justice and mercy.  

In the coming weeks, I hope to apply this “theology of Law and Gospel” to several hotbed issues that we are facing as the church in our day.  Abortion, racial reconciliation, sexuality, and gender issues are all areas in which the church must bring the Gospel to bear.  Justice and mercy are our tools for our witness and we must do so rightly.  Stay tuned.  

When I first entered the ministry, I fell for the allure of the “big” church.  You probably know what I am talking about.  The ‘big’ church measured everything by bodies in the building and butts in the seats on Sundays.  The impulse that lies behind this metric is that only ‘big’ churches are ‘real’ churches.  Every other church is just too backward or lacking in redemptive passion to be effective or serious about God’s mission.  I want to dispel that idea a bit with this post.  I have served in very large churches that were also short on vision and conversely I have served in smaller churches [250 or less -such as the one I pastor today at around 80-90 peoples] that have big visions.  It does not necessarily follow that ‘big‘ church = ‘big’ vision nor that ‘small’ church = ‘small’ vision.  Some of the most vibrant missional churches I have either led or visited were on the smaller side of the numerical equation.  Does that make the ‘small’ church better than the ‘big’ church?  By no means!

The reality is that NO TRUE CHURCH SHOULD BE SMALL MINDED!  People are quick to square up a church based on its numerical size but that would be a silly assumption to make.  For example, our little church of 80 organized a Thanksgiving Food Drive that provided 150 families at the local school where we meet with a full (and I mean FULL) meal, turkey and all.  The total retail cost of this drive came close to $10,000.  That was a bill our little church could not afford but God provided amazing partnerships with local community organizations and stores to make this vision come to fruition.  This was a God thing…not a Grace Church thing!

The value of a church should not first be on the numbers of people we see in the seats on Sundays or the even the baptisms we have each year.  Yes, people matter and we need to pursue them, but we need to do so in a better way.  This “better” way is to train and deploy our people and resources for the glory of God in the city.  I have said it often that we don’t have a value of becoming a “big” church but lest I be misunderstood, neither do we have a value to be a ‘small’ church!  Our goal is to be a large-hearted/ big vision church and avoid drifting into being a small-minded church.

MARKERS OF A SMALL-MINDED CHURCH

1. Lack of Redemptive Perspective: The Gospel of Jesus is the Good News that the God of the Universe who set all things into order in eternity has been working on our behalf to bring about the redemption, reconciliation, and restoration the world has been longing for since the garden.  When churches don’t set their minds and hearts on this central reality, they drift into small-mindedness and survival mode.
2. Lack of Relational Fortitude: A church is a family of redeemed believers in Jesus.  This idea of family is important.  It denotes interconnectedness and covenantal committedness.  This means that membership means something for a church that takes the Gospel seriously.  It also means that the vision and strength of the church lie in the pews, not in the eldership and diaconate.  Everyone pulls together so as to play our part in the mission of God for our particular context and space.
3. Lack of Participation in lieu of Consumerism: A church is a missionary organization that trains and deploys it’s people for the mission of God both through church ministries and beyond into the neighborhood and workplaces in which we live.  Sadly, many churches try to make such a good first impression so as to make the entrance into the church easy that many people never move forward into full participation in the leadership and mission of the church.

MARKS OF A LARGE-HEARTED/BIG VISION CHURCH

1. GOSPEL EMPOWERMENT: At Grace Church, our mission is to “PREACH Jesus and LIVE as a Spirit-filled Family of Missionaries.  However your church says it, the Gospel is of first importance to the church (1 Cor. 12).  Everything we do must roll downstream of a full-throated Gospel vision for congregational and community engagement.
2. MISSIONAL OWNERSHIP: Every believer is called to be a disciple-maker.  This is Jesus’ command and commision in Matthew 28.  To be a disciple-maker is to align your rhythms of life so as to invest and participate in the lives of the people God has sovereignly brought into your life.
3. RELATIONAL INTENTIONALITY: The relational strength of a church is not in its programming but in the covenantal commitment between the members (and even habitual non-members).  Each member at Grace Church has covenanted together to help his/her brothers and sisters to grow in Christ!  Typically, most churches need teachers for classes and group leaders.  But more than that, our homes are powerful tools to be deployed for the good of the church and our unbelieving neighbors.
4. SACRIFICIAL LIVING: The pathway forward for our young and for any church is the sacrificial commitment of the people in the pews on Sunday.  This means that programs, staff, and buildings cost money and need people to lead them.  Each person who covenants with a church must agree to carry the load in a sacrificial way so as to see the church continue to advance the Gospel.

So you see that none of these marks are unilaterally marks of a big or small church.  There are many big churches that lack a redemptive, relational and participatory culture.  Likewise, there are many small churches have hearts that stir up sacrificial living, missional ownership, and relational intentionality.

No church should ever be small-minded.  The Bible simply doesn’t lay out that option for us.  May God help us as we continue to press into multiplying churches that make disciples that make more disciples.

When I was 20 years old, I discovered something that shocked me.  As a clerk at the Baptist Book Store (Now Lifeway), I discovered that there were multiple translations of the Bible.  At first, this really startled me.  As a child, I grew up in and out of the church and the only church’s I was exposed were Fundamentalist Independent Baptist Churches.  You know the kind with signs outside that express their commitments of pre-tribulational and premillennial eschatology, a strict dress code and most importantly a strict commitment to the King Jame Version (KJV) of the Bible only.  Though I didn’t understand the implications of this at the time, I remember very vividly a guest speaker at one church meeting being rebuked by a deacon for his use of an “inferior translation” as he came to recruit kids for their summer camp. Like most kids my age, I grew believing that this was what real Christians did to preserve the integrity of the Bible. I didn’t know then what I know now that the King James Version was not the original version of the Bible but was the first in a long line of English translations.  What’s more, even the King James Version we have now is very different from the original KJV 1611.  That version would be barely readable to most of us today.

I start with this story because since then, I have come to believe in the immense value of soundly translated English versions today.  The first translation after the KJV that I began to use was  New American Standard Version (NASB).  For a long time, the NASB was the version of choice for most Biblical Scholars because of its wooden translation of the Greek and Hebrew.  I thought that the value of a good translation was how it translated each Greek word and word order so that we could read as closely as possible the very original intent of the original languages in which God sovereignly chose to relay His Word to us.  Other translations that fall into this category are the English Standard Version (ESV) and the Revised Standard Version (RSV) which are translated in the King James Tradition.  Today, my go-to translation is the ESV.

As a whole, I still stand with the long tradition of selecting Bible Translations that translate the original languages with a word for word translation philosophy.  Each of the translations mentioned above falls into this category but differ in some ways.  As mentioned, the NASB take a strictly wooden approach.  It doesn’t take into consideration some of the language rules of 1st Century Greek and Hebrew.  The RSV, KJV and especially the ESV do attempt to understand the grammatical rules of original context in which the Biblical texts were transmitted to us.

We need to understand the rules of language

One might ask, “Why is this important?”  The main reason this is important is that we all tend to live in culturally isolated silos whereby we apply only what we know of our American grammatical rules. Consider the various rules that exist just between a Southern dialect and a Northern dialect, then try to discern the difference between dominant American English rules and those that exist across the pond in London or even Scotland.  The differences are often greater than simply our accent differences.  There are rules that govern grammar.  Now consider the differences that span centuries and multiple languages.  It is here that sound and dependable translations become invaluable for us in the church today.

Understanding the 3 Types of English Translations

With all of that unpacked, whow do we discern which translation to trust?  If you go into a Christian Bookstore, you will find no less than 20 versions of the Bible so the choice can be difficult.  Are all of these versions worth reading?  The answer is found in understanding the 3 different types of English Versions.

1. The Formal Equivalent Translations (FET) 

The translation philosophy that we have been describing thus far what we would call a Formal Equivalent philosophy.  In simple terms, this method takes a “word for word” approach.  In my estimation, if one is not familiar with the original languages, choosing one of these translations is essential to serious textual and expositional study of God’s Word.  Any of the translations listed above would fall under this category.  Still, I would highly recommend the ESV for its reliability and readability as opposed to the KJV or the NASB.

2. The Dynamic Equivalent Translations (DET)

There are other translations available that are very helpful, reliable and even more readable than those covered thus far.  A Dynamic Equivalent Translations would be more concerned with the “though for thought” of the Bible text.  The goal is to transmit, as best as possible, the original intent of the original text by considering the grammatical rules of the original languages and making a fair and balanced correlation to our modern English language.  Versions like the Christian Standard Bible (CSB) and the New International Version (NIV) would fit nicely in this category.  Some would argue that the CSB is a bridge between the FET & DET philosophies.

3. The Paraphrase Versions

Notice here that I do not refer to this last category as a translation.  There exist English Versions that are simply paraphrased for easy reading.  These are not translated from the original texts rather they are simplified English versions of other English Translations.  The Message Bible or the New Living Translation (a deceptive designation) would fall into this category.  These versions can be helpful for basic devotional reading but should be seen as more of an easy to read Biblical commentary rather than a translation.  One must be on guard to the author of the paraphrase and his or her interpretative influence on the English Version.  It would be ill-advised to use one of these versions for the serious textual study of the Bible or even for new Believers who need to grow in their understanding of basic doctrine.  Because of the readability of a DET translation, I would rarely see the need for these English Versions except as a companion to the Bible reader.

So What Version Should I Use?  

This question is not as simple as it may seem.  I will make some suggestions but before I do, I want to reiterate a prior point.  I would not recommend a regular diet on a Paraphrase version of the Bible.  With the exception of children who do not read, it would be hard to justify exclusive use of a paraphrase. They may be good companions but are inferior to a real translation of the Bible.

1. For children who don’t read yet, good Children’s Bibles like the Jesus Story Book Bible or the Gospel Story Book Bible are great to help them understand the flow of the Bible Message.  These are not full Bibles but selected stories from the Bible to help piece together the overarching message of the Bible.
2. For children who can read, I would suggest a Dynamic Equivalent.  The CSB is my DET of choice.  It is a very readable version and there are several great Children’s Study Bibles in this version.  A Functional Equivalent can be hard to read for new readers since it takes a wooden approach and often times ignores grammatical rules in its translation into English.
3. For Everyday Reading, I would probably recommend the CSB or the NIV.  Both are reliable and readable.  But for more serious textual study, the ESV or the NASB would be advisable.
4. For Teachers & preachers, I would suggest using a Functional Equivalent for study but use whatever version seems to be easiest to teach from.  Recently, I have been using both the ESV and the CSB in preaching.  The new NIV is a great version as well.

What must be remembered here is that all these translations are done by committee…very large committees from various theological backgrounds who all love the Bible.  In many cases, some of the same people have worked on more than one of these translations.  What this should tell us is that faithful Biblical scholars obviously see the need and place for both Dynamic and Functional Equivalent translations in the life of the church.  As a whole, I will always defer to the ESV alongside the Biblical Languages for serious study.  In most cases, I preach from the ESV but I am now seeing the value in using the CSB and perhaps even the NIV for preaching purposes.  God’s people need the message of the Gospel given to us through the pages of Scripture.  Faithful men and women who teach the Word of God will always have this as their aim.

If you are interested in doing more research on Bible Translations, this debate linked here is a great start.  You will find these good and sound brothers debating this issue with charity and clarity.

May God richly bless the church as faithful men and women teach the powerful Word of God.

So over the past couple of blog articles, I have been unpacking 2 definitions:

1. What is a disciple?
2. What is discipleship?

Now I want to take some time to unpack how we will make disciples at Grace Church.  Before I do, I want to make sure I am clear that all programs, systems & processes are merely manmade.  There are virtually unlimited programs and processes we can employ so we hold this with an open hand.  As we grow, this will likely change and shift.

The following graphic is an updated version of a graphic we use in our Foundations’ Seminar Booklet.  It is helpful is seeing how we making disciples at Grace Church.

 First, you need to notice the VERTICAL AXIS.  On this axis is the varying “Word” based ministries of our church.  The top of the vertical axis is our weekly congregational worship time.  The centerpiece of that gathering is Word and Sacrament.  We believe the best discipleship tool we have is the steady diet of expositional preaching and observance of the Lord’s Supper and Baptism.  The bottom of that axis is balanced by the other “Word” ministries that are training based. These ministries are anything from our Sunday Morning Bible Studies for all ages to leadership development as well as pastoral care and counseling as needed.

If the Vertical Axis is Gospel-centered and Doctrinally sound, then it will give birth to the HORIZONTAL  AXIS.  You might say that this is the fruit of the Word & Sacrament Ministry of the church.  If we are preaching and teaching the Gospel faithfully, compellingly and powerfully then it will FORM community within the church and FUEL mission beyond the church.

Where many churches get turned upside down (ours included) is we often think that the pastors are to attend to both axis’. This is not what the Bible teaches us.  In Acts 6, the Apostles set a model for elders and pastors to attend to preaching & teaching and prayer.  Deacons were deployed to attend to the everyday Gospel needs of the church so they could fulfill their part of the work of ministry.  If members were suffering from a tangible need, they came alongside and met that need.  Every member in some way is a little “d” deacon.  The call to love and care for the flock is their God-given responsibility as they respond to God’s Word.  Additionally, Ephesians 4 tells that he gave the church “apostles, prophets,  evangelists, teachers & shepherds to EQUIP the saints for the work of ministry.  This means that we preach & teach, the church is called to reach out to each other and our neighbors as gospel witnesses.  We are to, by faith, do the work of ministry within and outside the church.  That is the call of every believer.

As we now see more clearly what the Bible teaches on how to make disciples and how we desire to deploy our disciple-making paradigm, it is our hope that everyone who calls Grace Church will take up their call and play their part in helping Grace become all that wants His church to be!

Jeff Vanderstelt defines discipleship as follows:

This definition is very helpful and serves as a great starting point to how we want to make disciples at Grace Church.  We are to live all of our lives under the Lordship of Jesus.  This is a counter-cultural ideal in a world that values radical autonomy on every level.  The result is a deeply wounded, selfish and broken world.  When the church lives differently, we display a healing, hope, and joy that is uncommon in the world.

In the last article, I outlined obedience to Jesus using the triad of Time, Talent and Treasure.  But our obedience and submission are not limited just this things.  Our world is suffering from a deep sexual brokenness.  Many men are suffering from a hidden addiction to pornography and feel trapped in it.  They don’t think they will be loved or accepted if they bring their addiction out into the light.  Additionally, our world is redefining sexuality at such as rapid pace that it is making our heads spin.  We need not only a sexual ethic, we need to find a sexuality that is rooted in the historic Christian witness.

Our world is also suffering from relational deprivation as well as a distorted vision of leisure.  First, our relational selves are suffering because we are basically living lives in isolation.  You may be married and have a flock of children running around, but the loneliness is still there.  Couples need other couples in Christ, men need other brothers in Christ and women need other sisters in Christ.  As for leisure, we live in a city that boasts some of the best options for leisure in the United States.  We have great music, arts, sports and outdoor leisure there is.  Sadly, most of that is done selfishly and not as a means to glorify Jesus in our rest.

Recently, our elders and deacons outlined a 5 step process by which we can begin to grade how disciples are being made in our church.

1. Knowing the Gospel (Gospel Fluency)
2. Caring for and from the church
3. Growing in the Word & Prayer
4. Discovering & Deploying our Gifts
5. Replicating this with others.

The reality is that EVERY person at Grace can learn to do this.  Would you join us as we seek to better equip and send out disciple-makers from within our church?

In the next article, I will outline a basic vision that we have been work operating off of since our inception.  It is not always readily apparent but we believe it is the vision God has for His church.  In the end, when the elders shepherd well through the Word & Worship, we will see true followers of Jesus moved toward meaningful Community and Mission on their own.

Stay Tuned.

I came to Christ as a young boy at around 8 years old. My mother was my Sunday school teacher at the time and one of the challenges we were working through in the class was to memorize the 10 Commandments. The reward for memorizing them was a brand new set of 50 markers. As a budding artist, I was intent on winning those markers so I set my heart to memorizing the Decalogue.

As I was working steadily through my memorization plan, I began to sense an uneasiness settling into my heart. I found my heart oddly discouraged. With each passing commandment I memorized, I became more concerned about my standing with God. “What if I don’t keep all the “rules?” What if I slip up? How much margin is there for error here? (words like margin were not in my 8-year-old vocabulary to be sure).

As I struggled through memorization goal, my mother was prompted by the Holy Spirit to share the Good News of the Gospel with me. She helped me understand that one of the main reasons the Law of God exists is to show us how much we need God and that we cannot do enough to overcome our sin. That day, I gave my life to Christ.

Yet, in spite of this wonderful moment in my life, I was never trained or taught what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. I thought that was for a select group of super Christians. I now know differently. All followers of Jesus are disciples. But what are the marks of a disciple of Jesus?

1.) A DISCIPLE WORSHIPS JESUS
To say that a disciple worships Jesus is to say that our affections are increasingly directed toward Jesus. The starting point of discipleship starts in the heart. Have we been captured by the magnificence of Jesus? So many things are warring for our hearts. The disciple of Jesus is always aware of this war and seeking to settle his/her on Christ as their supreme treasure.

So many followers of Jesus choose to not engage in his war and find themselves at the mercy of worldly affections like material gain, vocational upward mobility, sexual conquest, and physical fitness. Money, work, sex and our bodies are gifts given by God to his people. But often times these gifts are shaped into little idols that we hang on the mantles of our hearts and minds ruling everything about us.

To worship Jesus is to seek daily to see his preeminence and glory and see that all else fail by comparison.

2.) A DISCIPLE IS CHANGED BY JESUS
When we are true worshipers of Jesus, we will no doubt be changed by Him. Think about the close relationships you have in your life. Can you not see how they have affected you? Have you ever heard the old adage that pets and their owners start to look like one another over time? I am pretty sure that was the case with me and my bulldog, Jack. The answer is clear. If you are in a meaningful relationship with someone, you will begin to change over time. The closer the relationship, the more transformational impact that relationship has on us.

Amanda and I have been married for 13 years. There is no doubt that she has played an enormous role in my life for the good. The values I have now were no doubt shaped by her and visa versa. The Lord has designed us this way.

Meaningful discipleship assumes that we are in close relational proximity to Jesus. Are you? How is your prayer life? Are Bible reading and reflection part of your daily rhythms. These along with the church are the means of grace given by Jesus

3.) A DISCIPLE OBEYS JESUS
As we draw nearer and nearer to Jesus, our desire to leverage our lives for him increases. This means we start seeing every sphere of our lives as something that is being lived out under His rule and reign. As he now resides at the right hand of His Father in heaven, he wields his heavenly sceptor through person and work of the Holy Spirit in the church.

So how are we doing in this?

As Grace, we use the adage “Time”, “Talent” & “Treasure.” Is your time leveraged for Kingdom advancement? What would this look like? At work, do you do your best work you can with the goal of human flourishing? At home, do we take the necessary time to teach our kids sound doctrine and the Bible through catechism and Bible memory? Do you attend to your own self-care through Christ-centered brother or sisterhood, good nutrition, exercise, and sleep patterns are you do lazily waste away because you have burned your candle at both ends. I admit that this is me more often than I like to admit. As I press into meaningful brotherhood at Grace, God is changing that.

How about your talent? Are you using your gifts to help shape and grow the church OR are you waiting on someone else to do what you have been called & designed to do at Grace Church? Beyond the time needed, we often afraid that we don’t know enough to teach a class or we will fail on doing the task we are assigned to do. But God is patient with His people and the best teachers, leaders and servants are the ones who just do something. What do you need to do this week?

Lastly, our treasure is a sticky point. During the summer, people plan a vacation but in the process stop or delay giving because they have not planned better for their summer activities. It’s tough. We shouldn’t presume to know every circumstance that our brothers and sisters face but this is a common one. Perhaps you are in so much debt that giving to the church just seems impossible. Whatever your situation, giving is tough for many people. But there is a simple truth in Scripture that “to him who is faithful with little, God will make faithful over much.” If debt or poor planning are reasons why giving is strained, then ask God to help you reassess your situation, make a debt relief plan for 6-12 months. We did this a few years ago and 3 things happened. 1. We started seeing real progress in paying down debt. 2. We started actually giving consistently and generously to the church. 3. We began to be unyoked from our financial slavery to the “now” and became slaves to Christ.

There are many other things we can say about what a disciple is or is not. I hope this is a good start. As I close, let me share with you what a disciple is not in 4 quick one sentence thoughts:
1. Disciples are not super Christians
2. Disciples are not sinless or perfect but repentant followers of Jesus.
3. Disciples are not Bible experts but humble Bible explorers.
4. Disciples are not risk takers but faithful.

Selah!

As a church planter, there is a seemingly endless cornucopia of pressures that are forced upon my church.  One of those pressures is what to do with children during our worship gatherings.  Pastors are reminded constantly that there are 4 things guests will grade your church on when they visit.  One of those is the children’s program.

At Grace Church, we have chosen to simplify our vision for children’s ministry both by necessity and conviction.  We emphasize the corporate gathering of our church as a primary discipleship tool for raising-up a faithful generation of followers of Jesus.  Presently we do offer childcare for children 0-3 during our service as well as a family listening area for families who feel they must remove children during the worship time.   Our goal is to encourage parents to bring their kids into worship so that they can learn what proper worship looks like modeled by the most important earthly relationship they have…their parents.

My goal in this article is three-fold.  (1) I want to encourage church plants, smaller churches, and those that keep their children in worship. This work is hard but the reward is great.  (2) I want to share some of the oft-forgotten reasons and benefits of children remaining in worship with their parents.  (3) I want to encourage the parent who feels that they are ill-equipped to manage their children during worship.

From the outset, I want to say that I am in no way implying that like-minded churches cannot choose to do things differently than we do at Grace.  There is a myriad of different scenarios that may preclude children from worship.  Addressing them all is not the scope of this article.  I hope my tone is received as a gracious and encouraging.

1.)  The Biblical & historical witness regarding corporate worship gatherings has always included children.  To be clear, I am a confessional Reformed Baptist.  I am not suggesting this is an inclusion into the Believing household of God until they put their personal faith and trust in Jesus and follow Him in Baptism.  The point I want to make is that some might argue that we are neglecting the pedagogical needs of our children by keeping them in the Sunday gathering. Additionally, others will argue that our child simply cannot sit still for a 30-45 minute sermon.  All of these arguments have some weight to them but perhaps we can focus on other pedagogical opportunities than just the sermon.  Perhaps the best lesson we teach is reverence and right worship for the Lord.  Perhaps we can teach them the meaning of the Sacraments each week or take time to teach them a song we sing regularly at the church.  It is acceptable for parents to train and discipline children to give reverence to God and respect others who are there to worship Him.  Children will be noisy and inconvenient as we disciple them through this time but we can’t let that be a deterrent to goal in teaching them to love the church gatherings.  Maybe there is wisdom the historical practice teaching our children to participate in corporate worship.

2.) Keeping children in worship trains parents to be Disciple Makers.  God grows us best through difficulty NOT ease.  When we remove children from service we might assume that we are helping parents remove distractions, therefore, giving them unrestricted opportunity to learn from God’s Word. This may be helpful.  But children are not to be viewed as distractions, they are gifts from God under our stewardship and for our own growth in this life.  Parents are being trained in the difficulty to be the lead disciple-maker in their children’s lives when they suffer (yes I said it) through training a child to participate in a Sunday service.  Because I preach most Sundays, my wife has had to bear the weight of teaching our 3 boys (presently 12, 9, 6 years old) to participate in our worship gatherings.  She would testify that as tough as it was (still is, the tiny one still has his moments), she wouldn’t change that experience for the world.  She has noted wisely that children are coopted out to schools and sports all week, we don’t want the church to be another place that we limit our God-given parental influence over their lives.

3.) Children will replicate what their parents do. Children learn to value what we value.  Positively speaking, children will follow our example in singing, having our Bibles open and being expectant each Sunday, but it will take time. Negatively speaking, if the church serves at my convenience, then we may risk teaching our children that the church revolves around them and not God.  This does not mean that we don’t need pedagogically appropriate environments for children to teach them God’s Word.  At Grace Church, we have a fully staffed Sunday Morning Bible Study hour and we provide parents with some of the best catechizing resources available.

4.) Children are learning even if we think they are not. I have been amazed that when I think my kids are in Narnia on Sunday morning, how much they are hearing and learning after we leave Sunday morning worship.  My middle son recently wrote out his testimony during service completely unprompted.  Don’t get me wrong, children can be complete hellions and often do help realize our deepest fears as parents but the positives outweigh the negatives.

5) Your kids are not nearly as embarrassing as you think they are.  From an entire box of pencils spilling into the floor to the random fart noises that ring from your row, we are often mortified in embarrassment by our children’s behavior during worship.  Let me say this kindly.  Moms & Dads, we need to get over ourselves.  It’s not about us.  That’s a tough word and not meant to produce guilt or shame.  But let’s be honest, other’s eyes are not as locked on you when your kids act up as you may think.  But note is needed to my pastor friends. We need to work hard at creating a culture where it is normal to have noisy kids in the room.  Remember, our children are our stewardship from God. Stay in the game! Know that the Lord understands what you need and is using your strung-out Sunday Mornings for HIS glory and THEIR good…and yes, yours also.

Fight the good fight.  The Lord is with you!

THE DAY MY PHONE DIED

Like most of us, I have come to depend on my phone for a lot of daily utilities like sending/answering texts, phone calls, emails, and of course…checking social media.  That all came screeching to a halt recently when my phone decided it did not want charge any more. I took the phone to a local repair shop and I now will remain phoneless for the better part of the next week.

Because of my forced smartphone sabbatical, I thought I would use this occasion to think out loud about the potential impact that smartphones are having on our lives.  My goal is to share some random thoughts and observations about the impact my smartphone usage may be having on me…and you.  Here goes:

1.) I haven’t missed my phone.

There I said it. Isn’t it interesting how dependent we have become on our devices?  Perhaps we feel naked without them. I admit, the first couple hours without it, I felt a little naked.  Thoughts like “what if someone needs me?” or “what if I miss an important email?” or even worse “what if I miss something important on social media.”

We live in the tyranny of the immediate and smartphones feed that impulse.  You know what I have found instead?  The world gets along pretty well without me.  My church members are not pining for my attention.  Knowing that, I don’t miss my phone all that much and frankly it is freeing me to focus on other tasks with my whole heart and mind.  We may feel we need to respond to every email or text within minutes or the whole world will spin off its axis.  The truth is: The world does not need me as much as I think it does.

2.) I am less anxious.

Research shows that there is a direct correlation between anxiety and our usage of smartphones.  I am a naturally anxious person but I have noticed that my anxiety has increased over the past few years. Church planting is an anxious vocation but have felt a growth in anxiety over the past 3-5 years.  I perceive that my smartphone usage is contributing to the growth of anxiety in life.  I possess a device that assaults me potentially unending information.  As I sift through blog after blog about ministry, parenting, and marriage, all helpful, my mind cannot handle the information overload.  Often I am left with the sense that I am falling short compared to “that” other church plant or “that” other pastor and his family.  When we live with this constant anxiety, we are robbed of meaningful relational interaction in the present as we anxiously focus on the future.

How about you?  Do you feel like you fall short of measuring up to others you see through social media and the blogosphere?

3.) I am more clear minded.

As I noted above, I feel more focused and able to give my heart and mind to other tasks, like writing for this blog for example.  As I deliberately unplug from the never-ending barrage of information, my mind does not seem to race from one thing to the next as much.  Over the past couple of weeks, I have seen some of the benefits.  I have been resting better at night and have a better mental grasp on each day when I awake.

Most people know that I love to read books.  I have no research to back this up but I believe the more I use my phone, the less I read books.  I suspect this is due to the impact that screen time has on the brain.  The cycle is toxic: The more we use our phones, the more our brains are numbed.  The more our brains are numbed the more use our phones.  It will take deliberate action to change this cycle.

4.) I am more available (mentally, emotionally and physically) to those I love the most.

Over the past few weeks, I have been implementing a deliberate plan to put various spheres into their proper space in my daily life.  I need to put my ministry/vocational responsibilities & goals as well as personal and family responsibilities and goals in their proper place EVERY DAY!  Here is the kicker: my devices, especially my phone, play a big part in that.  When I am deliberate in putting my phone away at the end of my workday, for example, I feel more available emotionally, physically and mentally to my family.  When I put proper boundaries on when and how I respond to messages, emails and phone calls and when I look at social media, I am more available to focus on exercise and a good diet.

SOME HEALTHY RHYTHMS

I suspect some of us might need to consider reframing our smartphone usage.  I personally am considering dumping my smartphone in favor of a flip phone.  Even so, conscientious Christians need to be judicious in our liberty and mindful of the impact our phones are having on us.  Here are a few ways I am presently attempting to put boundaries on my smartphone and other devices.  I am not anywhere close to where I want to be in these areas, but I am giving it my best effort.

1. I am seeking to limit my phone (and other screen devices) usage between 5:00 am -8:30 am AND between 5-8:30 pm.  My best mental state is early in the day.  Knowing this, I am using 5-7 am for my sermon preparation and devoting 7-8:30 am to taking my boys to school, getting exercise, and eating a proper diet.  When I do this, I give my day a fighting chance before I am assaulted by all the chaos the world has to offer.  Additionally, I want to be available to enjoy my boys and wife in the evenings.  I don’t like feeling like I have other things that I need to attend to when I should be focused on being a dad and husband.  For me, this means deliberately keeping my phone in a room that is out of sight and out of mind.  I plug my phone in the kitchen and try to walk away from it.  This is a work in progress for me and it will be for you too.  Most of the calls or texts I receive in the evening are from my family or from my close friends. These are appropriate of course.  If it relates to ministry, then I will respond the next day unless it involves an emergency situation.  When my day flows like this during the workweek, I am finding that I am more faithfully available to all the spheres I am called to live within.
2. Absolutely NO phone after 8:30 pm.  No scrolling through social media and no reading blog articles at night.  My mind needs to rest.  If I fill it up with tons of information from 8:30-10:30pm then I risk winding my brain up and hindering the quality of my sleep.  This is still an area that is in process.  I don’t typically get good REM sleep and I hope in time that will change.  This is the hardest for me and Amanda.  The first thing we have trained ourselves to do after the kids are in bed and our tasks are done for the day is to plop down on the couch and start scrolling.  The result has been poor interaction with one another and less disciplined sleep patterns.  This fall, we are choosing to make Monday-Thursday nights basically “Screen Free” for our family.  Outside of watching a series on TV on some evenings as a couple if time allows, we are trying to be screen-free until Friday through Sunday Night.
3. Schedule times during the day to respond to texts and emails.  Because my job requires a good bit of study and reading, I am trying to respond to emails and texts only at the beginning of my day and at the end.  I will check briefly in the middle and if a message warrants my immediate attention, I will address it.  Otherwise, I have study/reading blocks that are screen-free throughout the week.  I know this does not work for all vocations but most of us probably need to put our phones out of sight so as to unhinge ourselves from social media.  Most companies now are blocking social media websites because of the effect it is having on workflow and productivity.
4. Take an extended social media break weekly, monthly and quarterly.  For me, this looks like no social media on weekends,  a monthly 3-4 day social media sabbatical.   It’s quite refreshing.  You should try it.
5. Remove social media apps from my phone.   I am forcing myself to use social media only on that archaic device I call a laptop.  I find that I have much more margin on my social media usage when using my computer and not my smartphone.

Some of you will likely disagree or feel that this is overreach.  Perhaps.  We all must search our own soul and see if what I am suggesting is the case.  In the end, there is no one way to address our phone usage.  Some may choose to depart from the smartphone world and some may choose to discipline their smartphone usage.  Whichever you choose, my hope is that you will do it with the intention to glorify Jesus and make him preeminent in your relationships and rhythms.  You might find that you have more time for God’s Word and prayer and perhaps more time for relationships outside your home.  This is my hope for myself, my family and my church!

I wanted to summarize some of my thoughts from last sunday’s Introduction to Acts and put a little more bite in the call to be disciple makers who teach.  I hope this both encourages you and challenges you.

I remember it like it was yesterday.  I was asked by the student minister of my home church to serve as a summer intern in the youth department.  First Baptist Roanoke was a huge church and the idea of working with youth was exciting. The churches I grew up in were tiny by comparison and the idea of even having a youth ministry was not even on the radar screen.  So here I was, fresh off a tough semester from college but ready to hang out with youth all summer at camps, mission trips and tons of socials.  Who wouldn’t want to do that?

Sitting across from Allie in his office in May 1998, we quickly reviewed the summer calendar…then it happened.  After assigning me some reading to aid me in discovering what fruitful ministry to youth looks like, he asked me what I was planning to teach the youth on Wednesdays for the summer. I swallowed my entire tongue in shock because he was serious.  I was going to teach an average crowd of 200 youth each Wednesdays during the summer. SAY WHAT?

So there I was, just 24 hours later, standing in front of an enormous crowd of youth.  I was woefully unprepared.  What happened next can only be described as an “emptying of every bible truth I could think of…10 points and all.”  Life seems like it has been in fast-forward mode ever since those days 20 years ago but I’m forever indebted to the lessons I learned that summer.  That lesson was this…

We learn to be disciples by doing not sitting & receiving! 

In other words, teaching is a mark of a true disciple.  My pastor at FBC, Charles Fuller, was a Baptist statesman and an able Bible teacher, to say the least, but one thing that Dr. Fuller instilled in his leadership and congregation was this: EVERY ONE WAS ABLE TO TEACH.  They just needed to obey Jesus, dig in and do the hard work. At Grace, I want to see our young church commit to becoming an equipping church.  That means we are training disciples to follow Jesus both to serve inside and outside the church…WHO TEACH.

In my 20 years of ministry, I am immensely grateful for the legacy of FBC Roanoke and Pastor Charles Fuller.  What I hated then has turned out to serve me over and over again.  Such a grace!

But there is a nagging frustration I have within my Reformed tribe.  I think sometimes we put teaching on such a high pedestal that we make it unattainable.  But what if being called to teach and NOT just be taught is the true mark of a disciple.  If so, when Jesus gathered that rag-tag, rough-around-the-edges group of men called the disciples and gave them the command to “go make disciples by teaching”, maybe he was on to something. Sadly many too are happy to do what I call, “sitting, soaking and souring.”

Why are we comfortable being taught and not obeying the Great Commission by growing into teachers ourselves?

Here are several reasons:

1. Teaching is demanding work. It requires effort. We often choose not to teach classes because they feel the work is too hard.  But in most cases, classes take no more than 2-4 hours per week to prepare for.  2-4 hours to impact another’s life.  Doesn’t seem like a huge sacrifice if you ask me.
2. We don’t think we know enough. But when did Peter know enough? Did Phillip know enough when he shared the Gospel with the Eunuch?  The reality is, we will never know enough when we do not teach because the information comes and goes.  But when we do teach, we retain the wonderful truths of scripture as we grow in God’s Word ACTIVELY.  Christ commanded us to go teach no only for others good but for our own as well.  Go teach!
3. We may find teaching requires us to give more time than we want to give. Frankly, we are either too selfish or lazy to teach.  I know this sounds harsh but with eternity hanging in the balance, can we afford to not call it what it is?  I get that life is busy.  Trust me…I live there.  Between jobs, school, sports and family demands, it is easy to assume someone else will do the work.  But that is not what Jesus commands us to do.  All of life is given to us under the Lordship of Jesus.   What if by not teaching, we are just enabling ourselves to be consumed with other activities rather the most holy of activities of attending to God’s Word daily.  When you are a teacher, you are more aware of your need to grow in God’s Word and stay locked in it.

It’s not surprising that we have created a low expectation, consumer culture in the American church. Many want to come, drop the kids, go to class, and repeat the next Sunday.  But friends, this is not discipleship.  This is not what we want for Grace Church.  Discipleship is costly.  “Disciple” is the root of the word discipline.  We are called to discipline ourselves for a life following Jesus. What is this life? It’s none other than to “Go therefore, and make disciples, teaching them…”

This fall, I will be starting a mentoring focus to help Grace Church members become effective disciple makers in our church and in our community.  This idea has been burning in our my heart and mind for a few months. But in recent days, it has been thrust into the nitty-gritty of Grace Church’s practical needs.  We need more teachers at Grace Church.  And yes, we need them primarily in our children’s ministry.  It’s that simple.  Whether it’s kids or adults, if you are a covenant member of Grace Church, your confession ensures you that you can and should step in and teach in our church.

Our mission depends NOT on money, NOT on programs and NOT on buildings.  It depends on a faithful people who hear the call of Christ and obey his commands to make disciples.

I love you Grace Church!  You are more dearly loved than you’ll ever know in Christ.  But as I read Ephesians 4:12-16 as an elder, I am commissioned to “equip the saints for the work of ministry.”  Your elders and deacons are working hard to lead us in a Gospel faithful direction.  Let us lovingly nudge you toward finding your “disciple-making role at Grace Church. What a difference it will make for many years to come.

Fair warning: This will likely be a longer post than I typically try to write.  You have been warned!

Last night, we wrapped up a very successful Spring Soccer Season for my 6 year-old’s team.  His little team continually amazes me.  I have coached them for 2 seasons and delighted in seeing each of them grow in so many ways.  As you might imagine, testosterone runs high even in the bodies of little 6-year-old boys.  There is something about sports that makes boys try to prove themselves.  They have to prove how tough, fast or skilled they are.  Trust me, we didn’t teach a class on hyper-masculinity at the beginning of the season. It’s deeply ingrained in them.

Perhaps, the same is true for all men.  I believe this stain of sin affects most men whether its in business, athletics, sexual prowess, marriage and yes…even in the church and its para-organizations.  I know this is not the sin of ALL men but I will go out on a limb here and say it is a sin ‘common’ to most men.  I am not excluded.

Social Media has been lit up lately with fascination regarding Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s [now] President Emeritus Paige Patterson’s views on women in abusive relationships.  Not only has his views been critiqued but information has been released regarding his specific counsel to women in abusive marriages [physically, sexually or otherwise] as well as to a female student regarding an alleged rape.  In both cases, he counseled the women to ignore the victimization and pray for their husbands and perpetrators

Much has already been written regarding the sickening reality of these kinds of views and counsel.  I will not add to that commentary except to say that this is a sin that lurks deep in the church and well beyond Paige Patterson and SWBTS.  It lurks in the corners of ‘good ol‘ boyism‘ hidden behind big words like “biblical fidelity”, “inerrancy” and “complementarianism.”  All of these words rightly reflect my own theological vision and method yet a stain grows within my conservative theological tribe is growing BUT I will go on record: I don’t believe what Patterson espouses as anything close to complementarianism much to the dismay of many detractors of this position.

If you are not familiar with who Paige Patterson is and why this has become a big deal in the SBC, let me take a minute to bring you up to speed.  Paige Patterson along with Judge Paul Pressler are considered the architects who led the conservative resurgence within the SBC in the 80’s.  In the late 50’s through the late 70’s, the Southern Baptist Convention was going the way of most mainline denominations like the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church, USA by accommodating Protestant Liberalism and denying of Biblical Inerrancy within its theological training institutions like The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and it’s five sister seminaries.  Even its main publishing house called “The Baptist Sunday School Board” [now known as Lifeway Christian Resources] was affected.  Grassroots leadership from guys like Patterson, Pressler and Adrian Rogers helped begin the process of returning accountability for the decisions made in our seminaries and publishing houses to the local churches.  This happened primarily through a power grab approach in which local churches slowly ousted trustees and administration for various SBC institutions and replaced them with conservatives like Patterson, Rogers, and others.   It was a long and hard fought battle and much relational blood was spilled on its battlefield.

I grew up in an independent & fundamentalist Baptist tradition and came to the Southern Baptist life in the mid 90’s after High School.  By this time, the resurgence had taken it’s full effect, at least institutionally speaking.  I was fortunate to be educated in two historic Baptist institutions.  I received my Bachelor of Arts in Religion & Philosophy from Carson Newman College.  This is where I was introduced to this recent SBC history under the dissenting voices of many of the professors who had been ousted from the six Southern Baptist Seminaries.  I went on to receive a Master of Divinity at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.  So you can see, I have a vested interest in this because I have been trained for ministry through a diverse Southern Baptist framework.  Obviously, I came to believe that Biblical fidelity mattered and I drew my line in the sand much to the chagrin of many of the professors that I loved and learned under at Carson Newman.

I share this because, like many of us, I am so prone to tribalism whether it’s being part of the ‘right tribe’ in SBC politics or now as part of the’reformed’ or ‘gospel-centered’ tribe that has formed within the SBC today.  The reality is, all tribes are prone to blind spots and failure and the test of a good tribe is its ability to call for accountability when that blind spot gets exposed.  More on that later.

If I am honest, for a long time the way I viewed my role in SBC life was about trying to rub elbows with the movers and shakers.  It was about serving on staff at the biggest Baptist churches I could find so I could be part of the inner circle.  This also meant wholesale and uncritical belief in certain theological positions in order to stay on the inside.  I held to then AND still hold today a complementarian position regarding the relationship between men and women in their roles in the family and church.  Here is a great video that explains the beauty of complementarianism.  Yet, I can say without reservation, my position has matured and changed over the past few years.  Sadly, that change has been painfully slow in some ways.  What many call complementarianism in guys like Patterson is really hierarchicalism or patriarchalism.  I made this mistake for a long time.  I have since changed and Gavin Ortland gives a good explanation here.

I have uncritically held to some of the very views that Patterson has espoused on the grounds of biblical fidelity.  Thankfully, I can also say with a clean heart that I have never counseled a woman personally to stay in an abusive marriage nor have I counseled a rape victim to keep quiet about her assault.  Yet, I have quietly held such views and have even had some conversations that are similar with men and (sadly) women.  I am deeply grieved that I held those positions.  For too long, I thought they reflected the heart of sound gospel-saturated thinking according to Scripture.

Additionally, I have victimized many women in the shadow of my heart.  Though I have never engaged in any inappropriate relationship outside of my marriage, I have done so in the recesses of my mind.  By viewing women primarily as objects to satisfy my sexual desire, I victimized countless women.  Even in my marriage, I have seen the stain of this grievous sin by not beholding my wife as first a beloved sister in Christ but rather measuring our relationship through the lens of our sex life.

Fortunately, God in his grace revealed to me that I am not alone in this a few years ago.  Through the gift of repentance, God opened up several grace-empowered relationships with men who had confessed to the same sin pattern.  I am fortunate to have several men in my life who have given each other mutual freedom to publically repent of this stain of sin and do so in an ongoing way.  I am also fortunate to have a Jesus loving wife with has been patient with me in this regard.  Yet I grieve that I all to often measured the value of a woman not because of her being made in the image of God and giftedness but rather what sexual threat or benefit she poses to me.  God have mercy on me a sinner!

Let me return to why I opened with the story about my soccer team.  On more than one occasion, I would remind my young men that it was more important “WHO YOU ARE” on the field than “WHAT YOU DO” on the field.  That has been sage advice given to me many times over the years in ministry.

Page Patterson and many of his contemporaries have served our denomination in helpful ways and I am one of the benefactors of that service.  But like the motto above, simply doing the work of fighting for Biblical Inerrancy and fidelity is only half the battle.  The larger and more significant work is ‘who we become’ through the witness of Scripture and the work of the Holy Spirit.  It does us no good to fight for the Bible if we do not live by the sufficiency of the Bible.  We need doctrine in WORD & DEED.  Sadly, power-grabbing seems to be the only way to right the ship in our denomination.  Even though this method allowed for the recovery of the Bible in the SBC, I do not believe the reformation has gone far enough. We need a reformation of the heart at the highest and lowest levels of leadership in the SBC.  We need more women in visible leadership using their gifts both in the church and in our denomination.  We need more than 3 women as trustees at SWBTS to the 30 men who serve in the same post.  If we do not humble ourselves, power-grabbing eventually corrupts because when we have it, we will ultimately feel entitled and untouchable and lift ourselves ABOVE who Scripture says we are.  We may even think we owe our heroes more than we actually do!  That is likely what is happening right now in our denomination and why guys like Patterson are not feeling the rightful heat he deserves for his inexcusable behavior.  I am thankful I am a ‘nobody’ in the church world.  Pastoring a church plant of 90-100 people is wonderfully freeing BUT I am not exempt from the temptation of feeling entitled or untouchable.

Let me conclude with an Acknowledgement, A Challenge and a Hope.

First, an Acknowledgement: I want to specifically admit and repent of being guilty of the very same uncritical ideology that Patterson espouses.  I stand condemned.  I beg for the forgiveness of anyone I may of have hurt in teaching or conversing in such a manner.  I have at times over-sexualized the value of women either through seeing them mentally as sexual conquests or threats to my holiness.  This ideology, feeds the over-sexualization of women and prevents us from seeing them as BOTH equals and complements to Christ’s mission.  We have effectively made women less valuable than men in the church.  THAT IS NOT GOOD COMPLEMENTARIANISM.  Thankfully, I am realizing, along with many of my own brother pastors in the church that I am my own threat to my holiness and my sisters in Christ are not the problem.

I have prayed often from the inception of Grace Church that any woman who sojourns with our church will feel empowered to use their giftedness and feel loved like a sister in Christ. We have a long way to go for sure but that being said, I have no desire to continue with the awkward relationships that we have created in the conservative American church [You know, The ‘Awkward Side Hug’ kind]. I pray that my example will lead men in our church [perhaps other churches] to repent of the same over-sexualization of women that is so prevalent in the American culture.  The church is NOT and should NOT be a boys club.

Second, a Plea: As one who has seen his theology mature over the past few years, I want to encourage my brothers and sisters in the ‘reformed’ or ‘gospel-centered’ crowd to beware of the power they wield, whatever that may be.  If you were trained in SBC seminaries like I have been, you have likely held to similar views as Patterson as well, so let’s come clean with it.  Additionally, all tribes are corruptible so if we are able to obtain any influence in these days, let’s do so humbly. Let’s be willing to speak out when one of our tribesmen or women steps out of line.  This includes even the most influential who have earned our love and trust through numerous books on our shelves.  Let’s learn from the failure we are seeing played out in front of us in the SBC and vow to apply the principles we are learning.

Third, a Hope: As grateful as I am for the men who afforded me the opportunity to be educated at a top shelf theological institution like Southern Seminary, I am asking those same men to display remorse for their sinful ideology and repent of their ‘good ol’ boy’ tribalism. You are not untouchable and God will make sure of that in his good time.  The world is watching and waiting to see what kind of Gospel we truly believe.  Your honest and forthright repentance will go along way in displaying that!  Remorse & repentance is nothing to fear.  Freedom is ours for the taking through Christ-exalting repentance.  This is what I am hoping for as I make my way to Dallas in a couple weeks.

With the annual SBC meeting looming, let’s all say at this meeting with solidarity that the Gospel Changes Everything and repentance is a gift to us not a strike against us.  The world waits for an answer. Let’s finish the reformation that was started in the 80’s with the reformation of our hearts through Gospel enflamed truth-telling and repentance.  Ecclesia semper reformanda. 

In the previous post, I began by sharing about all the books I have consulted to help me “create” community in the church.  This word is in quotes for a reason, namely because the idea that we can “create” community in the church is simply assinine.  If we all agree that the kind of community that exists in the church is first of all supernatural, who on earth would ever be able to “create” community besides the Holy Spirit Himself.

There is better a word.  “Cultivate.”  There is in the divine image of God stamped on mankind the call to cultivate.  Some may cry foul and say I am merely dealing in semantics.  But am I?  I think not. There is a difference between creating and cultivating.  God created the world and he created mankind.  Creation is God’s work.  On the other hand, mankind being made in the image of God is called to cultivate God’s creation as stewards.  So then “cultivating” is a necessary distinction and perhaps it will help us think better about how to pursue “compelling community” at Grace Church.

When we consider the call to cultivate a new community in the local church, we need to look at it from the pew and the pulpit.  Let’s start with the pew.  Each member of Grace Church signed a covenant with the other members of the church to pursue a peculiar (unique) community shaped by the supernatural work of the God through the preaching and teaching of God’s Word and Spirit indwelt relationships.  We signed this covenant not out of comfort but from commitment.  We know that as God’s people, it takes hard work coupled with supernatural love to see such a community emerge.  1 John 4:19 points the way for us:

We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (ESV)

Sadly, many churches start with comfort NOT commitment.  They work to address the felt needs of the person first rather than compel them with a counter-culture of Spirit indwelt church life.  The goal in a comfort-based church is that if you treat them like consumers maybe they will grow out of their consumeristic ways once they feel comfortable.  The converse actually happens in most cases.  We find that our sinful bent toward entitlement is not easily loosened but heightened.  Now, it is important to say here that treating a new guest with slow care and not as a number to be processed is not the same is comfort based commitment.  We certainly want to give people time to make an informed decision and at times, guests do come in with some baggage that needs time to heal.  But in most cases, a deep commitment-based community whoos people who are broken and isolated because they see that the relationships thrive from their commitment to each other and not so much their comfort with one another.

So the first level of cultivation is between one member to another.  We take the responsibilities to love each other seriously and we pursue it diligently, even if imperfectly. But what of the view from the Pulpit?  Well, pastors in a comfort based church can often times function like archetypical cupids trying to match people up in relationships through affinity-based processes.  May suggest that fear runs behind this style of leadership with the thinking that “if I don’t have people or subgroups that people can connect with then people will leave or not stay.  In a commitment-based church, however, the pastors teach and preach the Scriptures to spur the membership on to the vision outlined in the member covenant.  This can happen in a number of ways, but as we say a lot at Grace Church, our corporate gatherings on Sunday are the chief culture shaper of what we do as a church.

Of course, there are other mediums.  Great care should be pursued in what we choose to employ in shepherding our people into compelling Gospel community.  If the pastor assumes over-responsibility for each of his congregants, then he is might be working against their maturity in the faith.  I confess I am guilty of this at times.  Think about it.  If you are a parent, what is the process of helping your child achieve satisfactory marks in school?  Answer: you keep them accountable to do the work they are asked to do.  What if little Johnny is struggling with a subject at school?  Certainly, we come alongside him and help him.  But if I step in as a parent and do the work for him, I will only stunt his growth in the end.  As a parent with an emerging middle school student, Amanda and I have stuck to our guns of keeping our oldest son accountable to do his work and do it right.  No halfway work and no parachute parenting.  He will learn next year that he will step into a greater degree of self-management that hopefully, we have prepared him for over the past couple years.

So what if we decided that it was not first our responsibility to find a group for each member but cultivate an environment where groups develop organically and sustain themselves seasonally?  I am becoming more and more convinced that a mature church thinks this way.  So how do we do it?

1.  A steady diet of Biblical Preaching with application toward a “one another” vision of Scripture.  It’s amazing how so many of the passages of the Bible deal with inter-dealings of relationships in the church.
2. Equip our congregation to better read the Bible.  Certainly our conviction that expository preaching is the best medium of preaching impacts this.  But other mediums do as well such as the CBR Journal.  Each member can use this journal to better read and pray through the Scriptures IN COMMUNITY.  Just do it.  Grab some ladies in the church or some of the men you know and commit to a time to grab a coffee or your favorite adult beverage (cigars are ok too!) and discuss what God is teaching you.  Again, this must be a supernatural impulse.  If you are not making room for it, perhaps there are pockets of unbelief in our lives that must be confronted in repentance and faith.
3. Corporate and Communal Prayer.  Some of the most meaningful groups I have participated in are simply groups that made prayer central.  We prayed A LOT!  Honestly, the strength of my marriage’s spiritual vitality is rooted in prayer.  What if we cultivated congregational opportunities for prayer.  Our forthcoming Men’s and Women’s Gathering could cultivate that. Additionally, what if we were diligent to share prayer needs as a congregation in a more orderly way?  Frankly, we can do a better job at this.  As a pastor, I want to devote more energy as your shepherd to grow this in our family.
4. Advocate for simple and informal relationships.  Another aspect that we hope our new Men’s and Women’s Monthly gatherings will help us with is to help people form better relationships that carry on during the month.  We will be intentional about asking our church to schedule intentional times to grab dinner, have lunch or meet for coffee with other members of the church they don’t know well.  Sunday lunches are a great way to do this.  Be intentional and grab someone and ask them out to lunch right after church if you have the financial ability to do that.
5. Keep our Congregational Calendar Clear.  We do our best to keep our church streamlined so that you are free to pursue informal relational connection.  I hope we always will.  Additionally, let’s slow down on Sunday.  Your afternoon nap can wait.  Let’s not be in a hurry to run out the door unless it’s out to lunch with another member.  Perhaps, we should make Sunday Congregational lunches more frequent so that we don’t run out so quickly.  Just a thought!

I hope these posts on pursuing a compelling community have been helpful.  It is my heartfelt desire to see our church flourish in Gospel rich relationships that develop from the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.  Would you join me in praying and pursuing this together?

Looking at my bookshelf right now, one thing is glaringly obvious.  I have put a lot of time and resources into thinking of how to “create” community in the churches that I have served.  The question that seems to nag me, though, is has it helped?  I suppose it has on some levels.  I can look around me and see fruitful relationships between myself and others as well as among the fellowship at large.  But the question still haunts me.   “Is community more than simply organizing small groups?” “Are we getting it right?” “How will I know?”  “Is there any way to measure it besides counting the heads who attend worship on Sunday and who participate in a Grace Community?”  Alas, I don’t know.

Enter The Compelling Community by Jamie Dunlap and Mark Dever.  I quickly read this book about 2 years ago, but if I am honest, it didn’t make a huge impact on me at the time.  I think the stress of getting a church started forced me to dig into the old tool chest and pull out what I knew rather than really think about what kind of community I wanted to see develop at Grace Church.  This, of course, is not to say that God has not blessed us as a church in developing meaningful community.  In the past 2 years, we have seen much good in our small group environments and we certainly have seen our challenges.  Let me be clear, SMALL GROUPS ARE IMPORTANT.  They often foster an environment that we cannot create in a larger church program or gathering.  I’ll say it again, SMALL GROUPS ARE IMPORTANT and always will be in the life of our church.

I guess by now you feel a big ol’ BUT coming on.  You would be right!  Small groups are hugely helpful but what I have seen in my own experience is that churches are looking for a turnkey program to do ALL community in the church.  That is why so many books are written on how to do effective small group ministry.  But if that were true, then God would have commissioned community groups instead of the church.  No my friends, the local church should be a multifaceted tapestry organically shaped by a “gospel culture” that results in a COMPELLING community.  No ONE small group can do that in and of itself.

I am so grateful that I decided to pick up Dunlap and Dever’s book again and read it more intently this time.  The rich vision they cast that is saturated in Scripture has been an ointment to the nagging questions I have been wrestling with over the past couple years.  Over next couple posts, I want to share with you some of the nuggets I have gleaned from this wonderful book in hopes that it will help us continue to grow into a compelling community.  INDEED WE ALREADY ARE A COMPELLING COMMUNITY!  God has enrichened us with people from a variety of backgrounds and stages of life.  I am praying that we keep seeing it happen for many years to come.

In THE COMPELLING COMMUNITY, Dunlap exposes 2 types of visions that exist in evangelical churches today.  The first is a Gospel + community.  This is what I believe most churches are like today.  Their communities may very well be rooted in the biblical gospel but it is often built on other supplements as well.  These churches are built on the Gospel + “similar life experience“, “similar identity“, “similar cause“, “similar needs” or “similar social positions.”  If we look around us, we can all probably see how this is true of us as well.  A lot of the people we spend our time with are probably in similar seasons of life.  I know that is the case for me.  And that is not wrong in and of itself.  But I have heard more than a few people come to me over the years and say, “I need a new small group because I have nothing in common with the people that are in my group now” or they may even take it a step further and deduce that the whole church is the problem.

Juxtapose this against another vision.  This vision is the road less traveled for sure but it is the road most longed for when people come to the end of themselves.  This 2nd vision is called a “Gospel Revealing” community.  In this kind of community, it is clear that many of the relationships would not exist without the power and truth of the Gospel.  What if the job of the shepherds of the church is to help our sheep get out of their comfort zones and their daily ruts of life and help them engage in a supernatural community.  Isn’t this the purpose of the church?  Did not Jesus commission the church to make the Gospel visible both through proclamation AND through seeing enemies and strangers become brothers and sisters?  If not, then how do we explain Paul’s words in Ephesians 2?  I, for one, think this is indeed the mission Christ commissioned his church to pursue!

Here is the challenge that we must face as the church.  If our affinities are what really draws us together and not the supernatural work of the Gospel, then this community would likely exist even if the gospel did not.  Sadly, this is the case in many churches today.  Many churches have lost their zeal for mission and their spiritual vitality because they have drifted into “common bond” community rather than “spiritual bond” community.

In the next post, I will discuss how we (meaning Josh, Delon and the Deacons) are reassessing our goals AND our strategy for the community at Grace.  We will explore some of the ways we can Foster Compelling Community at Grace Church.  Stay tuned!

“Nothing will shake a man — or at any rate a man like me — out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.” – C.S Lewis

Lewis coined these words in his epic work, A Grief Observed.  In it, Lewis wrestles openly with the grief of losing his wife to a tragic death causing him to consider the meaning of life, death and faith in the midst of loss and tragedy.  It is pretty clear in our world today that we don’t know what to do with grief.  We usually stuff into one of two categories. (1) We ignore the grief and shove the feeling deep down so that no one knows we are hurting therefore isolating ourselves from others and God. (2) We give ourselves to complete unrestraint in our anger and sadness only to be ruled by our feelings and hurt others in the process.

The result is the emergence of a culture that either lacks the empathy to enter into the pain and suffering of others or one that overly responnds and tries fix the problems we cannot fix with performance, power or politics.  This is what I have observed in the recent national tragedies that have plagued our land.  It is obvious we are not a people comfortable with grieving.  Why should we be?  Healthly grief emerges only from a place of truth about ourselves, God and the world.

So what is the church’s unique role or voice in a culture that doesn’t know how to deal with mass tragedy and human suffering?

WE PRAY WITH THEM

This may sound overly simplistic but it’s not.  The tendency in times like these where 26 people are slain in a church in Texas is to provide answers.  What if we restrained that impulse?  There are no shortage of answers being thrown around.  We need more armed civilians!  We need stricter gun laws! In our social media happy world, we can barely get 15 minutes removed from an event before we forget about the grief and suffering of our fellow brothers and sisters and decend into politcal debauchery.  This is not to say that level heads do not need to consider the issues at hand nor does it mean that we cannot hold to deeply held personal values.  What it means is that our role as the church is NOT these things first or maybe even second or third.  We will either model our dependance upon God through prayer or we will model our fear and faithlessness through our over dependence on governments, personal strength and autonomy.

When we pray, we pray with open hearts seeking God to give us understanding in the midst of grief.  We pray with lament at the sin ravaged world we live in.  We pray with repentance as people who are ALSO ravaged by sin in our own ways.  Additionally, when we pray, we demonstrate that in the midst of our shaken confidence that God is the ultimate sovereign over the events that unfold.  His ways are not our ways!  His thoughts are not our thoughts!  But he is NOT standing idoly by indifferent to our need.

WE GRIEVE WITH THEM

When we pray like this, we are enabled to enter into the grief of others and simply sit with our suffering friends without feeling awkward.  We can resist the temptation to offer cheap temporary solutions that WILL NOT comfort them.  We also are able to not offer up cheap theological platitudes as well.  We become a griever with them, but one with confidence that God will reckon all things in his own time.  The world has no capacity to grieve in such a way.  They know not the one true God.  But this is not limited to just extreme cases like mass shootings.  It allows us to enter into grief of those who suffer from long term relational, emotional or physical pain, sin and suffering without reducing their suffering and grief or labeling them.  Sadly, the church has been guilty of turning away the grieving.  Whether its grief over broken relationships, grief over prolonged or even gross sin or grief over doubt and unbelief in God, people need safe spaces to deal with these matters.  Is not the church a hospital for sinners?   The church needs to develop an emotionally healthly and mature culture that walks with the greiving and suffering.

WE DELIGHT WITH THEM

When we pray and grieve as mature believers, we earn the right in time to turn our ‘mourning into dancing’ [Psalm 30:11].  In time, we can draw our fellow mourners to delight in an ALL GOOD GOD.  When we pray and submit to a Sovereign God, we can bring real Gospel hope into the utter dispair of the sufferer.  The believer can both grieve the reality and presence of sin, evil and suffering in the world YET delight and praise God that He will make all things new…in his own time.  He has promised to do so.  David, reflecting through Psalm 105, does just this at the end of his reign  His rule was being challenged once again and his safety was compromised by the evil intentions of his son but He reflected on God’s good work for His people since Abraham.  Friends, God remembers us even in the midst of our helplessness, hopelessness, famine, danger or sword.  He will not abandon us to Hades.  His Gospel promises began before eternity past and will be fulfilled and continue into eternity future.  Jesus is the great emmancipator for the those who grieve and mourn the brokenness, darkness and evil that exist in our world.   This is the only tool we have in our proverbial tool belt.

PERSONAL PERFORMANCE, POWER AND POLITICS…FAIL

The world will continue to try to address grief with utopian efforts rooted in the mistaken belief of human evolution and progress.  The belief is silly and lacks soundness: “Society will overcome as we continue evolve through intellectual and materialistic enlightenment.”  The church needs to guard itself from similar mistaken beliefs that pervade our fellowships.  Often times, we approach suffering with a list of self improvement projects unknowingly distancing ourselves from the Gospel of grace and the fellowship of the believing in the process.  “I need to work on myself for a season.”  “You need to read your bible and pray more.”  This may be true and even helpful but the means to Gospel wholeness is not the removing of an old behavior and replacing it with a new and improved behavior.  The means of Gospel wholeness is the removing of an old affection (usually revolving around our concept and belief in ourselves) and replacing it with a true and better affection.  This affection is for Jesus Christ who does not come to help us “do better, try harder” but to be our ‘yoke and burden’ [Matthew 11:30].  When we learn to be carried by Jesus and His grace alone, we will be free to obey and delight in God.  How is that for progress?!

This is the church’s unique voice in a world that suffers and grieves.  Let us embrace it for the glory of God and the good of all people.

Friends, Sunday is coming! That means we, as God’s people, will gather with joyful hearts this Sunday knowing that Jesus rose from the dead and conquered sin and death on our behalf. On Sunday, there will be nothing more appropriate to do than to celebrate. The shackles and chains have been loosed and the bondage to the power of darkness has been broken. We look eagerly to Sunday with great expectation!

Yet, the pathway to Sunday is through Good Friday and God has appointed no other way. Therefore, Christians set aside this day each year to reflect upon the cost of our resurrection. If Easter Sunday is a day filled with joy, Good Friday is a day filled with sorrow, contemplation, and longing. So today, let me call you to step back and consider the full weight of this Holy Weekend. Let’s us consider it through the lenses of the cup of wrath that is spoken of through out Scripture.

First, let us consider Isaiah 51:17-23:

Wake yourself, wake yourself,

                        stand up, O Jerusalem,

            you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD

                        the cup of his wrath,

            who have drunk to the dregs

                        the bowl, the cup of staggering.

            There is none to guide her

                        among all the sons she has borne;

            there is none to take her by the hand

                        among all the sons she has brought up.

            These two things have happened to you—

                        who will console you?—

            devastation and destruction, famine and sword;

                        who will comfort you?

            Your sons have fainted;

                        they lie at the head of every street

                        like an antelope in a net;

            they are full of the wrath of the LORD,

                        the rebuke of your God.

            Therefore hear this, you who are afflicted,

                        who are drunk, but not with wine:

            Thus says your Lord, the LORD,

                        your God who pleads the cause of his people:

            “Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering;

            the bowl of my wrath you shall drink no more;

            and I will put it into the hand of your tormentors,

                        who have said to you,

                        ‘Bow down, that we may pass over’;

            and you have made your back like the ground

                        and like the street for them to pass over.” (ESV)

Here we find a sobering reality not only for all of mankind, but especially true of those who have been called out to be God’s people. We have drunk the cup of wrath of our God. We, like all mankind, have given ourselves to sin and destruction and we have prostituted ourselves to other gods like money, sex, comfort, and power (just to name a few). Even this morning I couldn’t help but feel the grief and weight of my own sin this week. I am so “prone to wander” like the great hymn states and when I consider the weight of my own depravity, I am laid low from the sheer weight of the matter. I can so easily be drunk on my own sin.

But thanks be to God that this is not the end of the story. Even here in this passage, God sends word through Isaiah that though he has caught his bride in heinous sin, literally staggering from a long night of rebellious exploits, he is gracious to his people. Our God will plead our cause and take the cup of staggering and the bowl of wrath…we shall drink no more. There is so much beautiful imagery loaded in this passage but let us consider “how” God pleads our cause and removes the burden of his wrath from us. On the night before His death, Jesus retreated by Himself into the Garden of Gethsemane.

Matthew 26:36-46

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. Then he came to the disciples and said to them, “Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.” (ESV)

Here we see that Jesus is preparing Himself for the ultimate purpose for which He came. It was appointed to drink the cup of wrath on our behalf. By taking the cup of wrath “from our hands” and drinking it, He can now be our advocate and “plead” on our behalf before God the Father. No longer do we have to bear the just wrath of God, but Jesus stands as both the Just and the Justifier. He is just because He gave his sinless life for the sin debt of guilty sinners. Now, he becomes Justifier for all who receive Him by faith.

As fantastic as this story is, it gets even better. Isaiah 51:22-23 tells us that this bowl that he drinks for His people, He will return to the wicked in the last day. He will not pardon those who do not repent and bow their knee to receive his pardon. Consider Revelation 14:9-11, “And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.” (ESV)

As we consider the ramifications of Good Friday, let us feel both the weight and sorrow of our sin yet wait with eager longing for Sunday!  Let us grieve the lost state of so many of our friends and family.  Let us proclaim boldly the redeeming grace of God who desires to do good for sinners like you and like me.  

Sunday is coming!

I suspect that many reading this blog really don’t question why we need to have a plurality of elders in the church.  But some who come from a single “Senior Pastor” model so prevalent in our Southern Baptist tradition may bristle at the idea of multiple equal elder/pastors leading the local church.  (Note: The words elder, pastor and Overseer are all different words for the same office, so don’t get hung up on the usage of the world elder.  Pastor and elders are the same thing.)  Thus, we are choosing to answer that question via a blog post instead of devoting a sermon to this question.  Nonetheless, it is an important question to consider and if you are unclear on the issue, I want to begin the journey for you.  Just a reminder if you are a Grace Church member or attender, we are giving out 2 free resources where this topic is covered with more detail.

So why is a plurality of elders important in the life of the local church?…5 Reasons

1.  Historical Foundation for the Plurality of Elders: It was virtually universally practiced across all protestant denominations in some way or the other.  Whether Presbyterian, Lutheran or Congregationalist, this practice of a team of overseers leading the local church has strong support in the church history. Among Baptists, the practice of having multiple elders leading the congregation has significant historical precedent.  In fact, during the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention, many Southern Baptist Churches were led by a plurality of elders.  Of course, this practice was not universally held because of the diverse streams that flow into Baptist history.  Nonetheless Mark Dever writes,
   

   “Elders could be found in Baptist churches in America throughout the 18th century and into the 19th century, (e.g.,Robertson’s Life of Broadus,p. 34;O. L.Hailey, J. R.Graves, p. 40). W. B. Johnson, the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention, wrote a book on church life in which he strongly advocated the idea of a plurality of elders in one local church.” 

   It was also not uncommon for the topic of recovering the practice of elder plurality to be discussed in Baptist news outlets even up until the 1930’s.  In fact, there were then and are now virtually no publications supporting the practice of Single Elder Led churches even though this has been the mostly widely practiced position among Southern Baptist Churches for the past 100 years.  There are many reason why this is the case.  First, Southern Baptist Churches rapidly multiplied in the late 19th and early 20th Century.  Many believe that this exponential growth prevented churches from properly forming and developing good lay pastoral leadership.  Couple this with the relative short tenure of most pastors during that time, it’s not hard to see how many churches leaned on their deacons to lead and govern the church.  But this practice was purely pragmatic and lacks significant biblical foundation.

2. Healthier Churches are Led by a Plurality of Elders: Sheep need a shepherd.  Churches that distribute the work of the ministry among a qualified team of elders tend to be healthier and stay on the task of mission.  When the church learns to lean on one personality for its pastoral leadership, naturally there will be deficiencies because one man cannot be all a congregation needs in pastoral leadership. Another reason is when a there is a pastoral transition, the church has no pastoral structure to lean on for these times.   Additionally, the membership learns to venerate one personality as well as lean on individuality for their spiritual care.  There is nothing wrong with taking personal responsibility for one’s spiritual growth, in fact Scripture teaches it.  The problem comes when a pastor cannot know his sheep well thus his ability to speak personally and authoritatively into their lives is significantly limited.  Pastors are not only called to make home visits to the sick and homebound, pastors are to be involved in the active discipleship of every member charged to their care.  A single elder cannot do this work adequately.  Sheep tend to wander when the shepherd is distracted, in the same way, church members get distracted from the commands of Scripture on their lives without good pastoral leadership.  The reality is, elders are gifts from God to his people to guide, teach, protect and counsel them.
3. Churches Led By a Plurality of Elders Better Display and Execute Spiritual Gifting. Many Baptist churches depend on one man to do the whole of the pastoral work of the church.  The diversity of pastoral work and responsibility is simply not possible with one man.  This why some churches are better at growing big ministry systems/programs than pastoral care or why one church is better at evangelism than discipleship and training in the church.  Churches are not meant to be this diverse.  The marks of Gospel preaching, discipleship, evangelism, and pastoral care should be evident in every church.  When you train and deploy a team of elders who lead equally, you help the church grow up to it fullest potential of declaring a clear Gospel, caring for the the members well, growing the structure of the church, as well as reaching and serving the community well in the process.  Pastoral/Elder teams that better display the diversity of ministry gifting outlined in Ephesians 4:11-14 can only help the church, not hurt it.
4. A Plurality of Elders Better Protects the Integrity of Sound Doctrine and Wards off False Gospels.  When Titus was instructed to lead the Gospel effort in Crete, Paul writes to his young trainee and tells him to appoint “elders” (plural) in every “church” (singular).  Once of their tasks was to protect the doctrine of the church (Titus 1:9) by instructing the congregation in it.  The church is better served and protected by the effects of the world when it has a well trained team of elders installed to keep guard over their souls and keep watch for impending threats.
5. A Plurality of Elders Better Prevents the Sin of Power Mongering.  It is easy for us to fall into sin and in no place are we are more susceptible to this than in the area of unrestricted power.  A single pastor can develop an attitude that believes the congregation exists for him and his agenda.  A team of elders keeps this in check.  A plurality of elders can better prevent the congregation from experiencing pastoral failure.  Of course, it doesn’t guarantee it and recently history proves that no church is immune to pastoral failure.  Nonetheless, a team of elders/pastors is better equipped to be on guard for these challenges.  If such a pastoral failure were to occur, the foundation of faithful pastoral leadership is already in place to care for the congregation and lead it forward in it’s mission.

There is more I can say, but I think these represent the most important aspects of why elders are important to the local congregation.

I write this because I am saddened at how this foundation has been eroded by many in my beloved Southern Baptist tradition.  Pastors and churches (many in my state of Tennessee), who refuse to do even a small amount of research, are condemning God glorifying organizations like the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and the International Mission Board of the SBC for their support of religious liberty for Muslims in America.  Mind you, there has not been one dollar spent on the building of a mosque even though many people choose to believe the underbelly of “alternative facts.”  For crying out loud, “Religious Liberty” is the name of ERLC, a key Commission that Southern Baptists have historically seen as vital to our Mission.

I struggle with my Baptist friends who think there is nobility and sound judgment in neglecting the religious liberty of Muslims.  Hiding their fear behind cleverly calculated vernacular, I fear that some Baptists are justifying their racism and nationalism by reclassifying Islam as a “geopolitical movement.”  It saddens me that they are so blinded by their fear that they prove themselves to be what the world actually thinks they are…ignorant bigots.  I know that sounds harsh and believe me, I hate saying it.  But it does us no good to decry the revisionist attempts among liberal intellectuals to rewrite American and religious history if we are willing to do the same by believing “alternative facts” and “fake news” that justify our cultural bias.  All of this does a massive disservice to our rich history as Baptists and even more the Mission we are called to:  Declaring the hope of the Gospel of Jesus.

I pray we will confront this errant notion and push back this anti-Baptist, even anti-Christian notion of declining the religious freedom of any religious tradition.  This is NOT what Baptists are all about.  I’ll end this post by pointing us to a section of the SBC’s own Confession of Faith, the Baptist, Faith and Message, 2000 below:

XVII. Religious Liberty

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and He has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are contrary to His Word or not contained in it. Church and state should be separate. The state owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends. In providing for such freedom no ecclesiastical group or denomination should be favored by the state more than others. Civil government being ordained of God, it is the duty of Christians to render loyal obedience thereto in all things not contrary to the revealed will of God. The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work. The gospel of Christ contemplates spiritual means alone for the pursuit of its ends. The state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind. The state has no right to impose taxes for the support of any form of religion. A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal, and this implies the right of free and unhindered access to God on the part of all men, and the right to form and propagate opinions in the sphere of religion without interference by the civil power.

Genesis 1:27; 2:7; Matthew 6:6-7,24; 16:26; 22:21; John 8:36; Acts 4:19-20; Romans 6:1-2; 13:1-7; Galatians 5:1,13; Philippians 3:20; 1 Timothy 2:1-2; James 4:12; 1 Peter 2:12-17; 3:11-17; 4:12-19.

Some Resources for further Study:

The Gospel & Religious Liberty by Russell Moore and Andrew Walker

Religious Liberty – Baptist Faith & Message, Article 17 – Tom Nettles

Why I I am a Baptist – Tom Nettles and Russell Moore

So what exactly is a Baptist anyway? This question presents many challenges even from my own limited experience. As a child, I grew up, “got saved” and was baptized in an Independent Baptist Church.  From my experience, the idea of being Baptist meant fighting over the King James Version and the sin of using all other versions, women only being allowed to wear skirts below the knee (or pants when it snows!), fascination with the pre-tribulational eschatology and the peculiar tension between legalistic living and “once saved always saved.”  Southern Baptists, from this perspective were by and large liberal.  But before entering college, I started attending and eventually became a member of a large Southern Baptist Church.  It was at this point that I was introduced to the broader contours of historic Baptist polity.

In this blog post, I want to briefly unpack the most broad convictions of historic Baptist convictions.  These convictions are as follows: believer’s only baptism, regenerate church membership, and autonomous congregationalism.

The most obvious conviction that Baptists hold to is the idea of Believer’s Baptism.  Believer’s Baptism, or credobaptism as some call it, was recovered after the Protestant Reformation as further reforms that extended from the errors of Roman Catholicism and its practice of baptizing infants.  Baptists felt then and most feel now that Luther, Calvin and Zwingli did not go far enough in their reforms.  To be fair, Presbyterians, Lutherans and others do not see baptism as salvific like their predecessors in the Roman Catholic Church yet Baptists see padeobaptism as problematic. Sam Storms makes the case for believers baptism clear: “baptism is portrayed in the New Testament as a symbol of the beginning of spiritual life (Gal. 3:27; Rom. 6:3-4; Col. 2:12), as well as “an appeal to God for a good conscience” (1 Peter 3:21). Unless one is prepared to predicate salvation and spiritual life of unbelieving infants, or suggest that they are capable of making a conscious appeal to God for a good conscience, it would appear that baptism is restricted to those who consciously trust Christ…baptism is consistently portrayed as inextricably tied up with (conscious) faith and repentance (e.g., Acts 2:38,4).

By extension then, Baptists strongly believe that members of local churches should give credible evidence of conversion which is made visible in baptism.  In other words, Baptist believe in regenerate church membership.  The promise that we continually see through out the Old Testament is that the Holy Spirit will dwell in man once again in a new better way thus creating a new people of God.  It is not convincing to Baptists (I being one of them) that God’s visible people includes both believing and non-believing parties like that of Israel who were marked by circumcision.  The question that Baptists continue to ask is, “what is NEW about the NEW Covenant?”  This, at least for this Baptist preacher, is the lynchpin question concerning what constitutes a New Testament church.

Another key foundational conviction for Baptists is the call to autonomous congregationalism.  For Baptists, the strength in the church and its mission is the people NOT in the hierarchal structures the stand above or outside the church.   To be autonomous simply means that each church is called and equipped to advance the mission of God for their specific context and that no ecclesial authority that stands above the church has any authority over that mission.  There are many misunderstandings that have unfortunately distorted this idea.  First, Congregationalism does not mean that each church is led by democratic practices or a committee of the whole.  The church has been gifted with elders and deacons therefore a healthy local church understands the tensions that arise from scripture and seeks to live them out humbly.  Second, being autonomous does not mean a complete lack of theological and missional networking or relationship outside the church.  Denominations and networks can help keep theological and missiological guardrails in place so that local churches stay on course but they should have no true authority over the local church.  In fact, Baptists have historically done a strong job of partnering together to plant churches and do missions.  In the end, as Jonathan Leeman notes in Don’t Fire your Church Members, congregationalism is the attempt to strengthen another office in the church…the office of church member.”

There are other core convictions that have shaped Baptist life that I will refrain from elaborating on in this post.  We could mention “the Priesthood of Believers” and “Religious Liberty.” Baptists have championed these ideas through out their history in one way or the other.  But in the end, being convictional Baptist is far less about being morally or politically active as our most recent history seems to suggest.  It is much more about being people of the Word and displaying the confession of the Gospel through the commitment we have to each other in covenant to walk in faith and repentance together as a believing family of faith.

Christmas is finally upon us and for some, this represents just another layer of stress on top of other stressful realities in our lives.  Others of us (I include myself in this category), Christmas stands as a kind of signal to step back and evaluate.  Admittedly, this is not always easy to do, in fact I feel the challenge this morning of making this transition only to keep running the rat race of life faster and faster.  This was my Christmas last year and I have to work to make sure that is not the case this year.  Take the time sucks in our daily and weekly routines and compound that with this idolatry that wars for our hearts and we can see why it is so easy to let yet another Christmas season pass quietly with little regard for the things that matter the most.

It is for the reason that I thankful for the pastors, friends and family who have encouraged and modeled for me the importance of observing Advent during this time of year.  Advent and Christmas are often considered one in the same.  In reality, they can be very different things.  I have listed several helpful resources below that will aid you in your pursuit of Christ this Christmas but more than that, my hope is that you will find that fullness of the incarnation is far more beautiful, nuanced, and mysterious that you could ever imagine.  Yes, let this be a season filled with wonder but let our be filled with the wonder of the coming of Jesus.  Let us celebrate with joy his first coming but also long for his coming again with power and might in the 2nd Advent.

Good Blog and Articles to Read:

What is Advent? – Mark Roberts

This History of Advent – Ryan Reeves

Christ-Centered Silence in the Noisy Advent Season – Gabriel Statom

Devotional Books and Guides

Dawning of Indestructible Joy – John Piper

Counting the Days, Lighting the Candles: A Christmas Advent Devotion – Elyse Fitzpatrick

The One True Light: Daily Advent Readings from Gospel of John – Tim Chester

Peace: Classic Readings for Christmas – Stephen Nichols

Inn Keeper – John Piper

We live in perilous times.  I don’t think many are willing to dispute this, but same may see it as alarmist.  What makes this season particularly difficult for many Christians is the sobering reality of having 2 presidential candidates who are not only problematic but are in the estimate of many, unfit for office.  This is producing angst in many churches where conscientious Christ followers differ (and at times, greatly differ) on the path forward for our country as well as our biblical responsibility with in it.  Couple this with the sad reality that many are approaching their privilege of voting with an “eyes closed tight” approach hoping that if they do so, they won’t have to deal with the grim reality of the situation.  Even in our young church with our meager 60-70 folks, we find our viewpoints to be passionately divergent.

Yet, I am hopeful.  Not that we will elect the right president in November or that an ideal candidate will emerge that will unify the American body of Christ. No, my hope lies in the reality that Satan has not only lost the war (as we all know) but he has lost this battle.  How so?

With the advent of the obvious implosion that has occurred in the Republican Party, the assumption that evangelicals will cast their obligatory vote with their lot is most assuredly in question.  Additionally, many Christians are finding themselves reexamining what it means to biblically engage in the political system of  a democratic society.  Here are some of the questions many are wrestling with:  Can a conscientious Christian who is pro-life cast his or her vote with the Democratic Party even when that party not only supports abortion rights but seemingly with an enthusiastic spirit?  Does pro-life mean unilaterally voting from a “one issue” perspective?  Is this even a viable reality anymore?  Does a commitment to pro-life issues transcend more than the unborn and are their other means provided for us in our society to fight for these values that are non-political in nature?  Does the Republican platforms of “free market capitalism, gun rights, and immigration really reflect essential Christian objectives and do they give us the best chance to advance the Gospel?  How about the traditional Democratic objectives of social justice in the areas of race, poverty, and educational initiatives?

Many are rightfully finding that the church and these parties make for odd bedfellows.  It is here that I find hope for our young church at Grace and other churches like us who are committed to the authority of the Bible and the centrality of the Gospel as the centerpiece of the Christian life and mission.  Christians are now forced to live in the world of theological nuance and engage in the complexity of a multitude cultural issues.  When we do this, our church like other churches are becoming beautiful tapestries of unity within diversity.  Is this not the hodgepodge make up of Jesus’ initial band of misfits?

In Psalm 133, we are reminded “how pleasant and good it is when God’s people dwell in unity.”  The unity that we find here is the unity of being God’s people…undeservedly finding His mercy, receiving His grace and being dearly loved.  The picture of God’s redemptive work is often pictured as a family feasting at a table filled with glorious provisions.  God declares through His Word that people of all cultures, colors and creeds find redemption in him at the table of His glorious grace.

It is here that the church, if we are willing to open our eyes, is called to be a colorful display of God’s grace as people from all walks of life, all political persuasions, diverse cultural backgrounds and marred moral make ups.  We endeavor and patiently bear with one another in the midst of our differences looking to Christ make strangers into family.

So Grace Church, what is my dream…my prayer for us?  It is that our Gospel family would be a family of sinners saved by grace who are rich and poor, conservative and liberal, Republican, Democrat and Libertarian, male and female, and black, white, and everyone in between.

So what does this mean for us in the everyday stuff of life?

1. Extending Grace when we differ on polarizing issues with brothers and sisters in Christ 

Trust that God is ultimately sovereign and that God loves the person with whom you differ and they love Jesus as deeply as you do.  Don’t assume that one political platform is endorsed by Scripture or that God is not working out good for the United States in a way we cannot see.

2. Strive to be balanced and informed

This is hard I know, but let’s not make haphazard assumptions about one candidate or another.  Seek to really know the facts of their platform.  Seek to understand their track records in life, government, business and everything.  Don’t assume you know what they will do rather try to determine what they are likely to do based on their policies, personal life and vocational track record.  Evaluate their policies throughly and refuse to let media reduce it to a sound byte.  Lastly, evaluate their policies humbly and biblically in an honest way.

3. Refuse to participate in ungodly and slanderous reductionism

Statements like “not voting for Trump is a vote for Hillary” are unhelpful and neglect the call to press into the rich theological tapestry we have in Christ and engage in the nuance of cultural complexity.  So don’t slanderously caricature followers of one candidate over another.  Choose to live above the mudslinging.  This also extends to the caricatures that are often created of the candidates themselves.  They are real people made in the image of God.  Try to construct honest biographical sketches based on facts and not on popular reductionistic caricatures.  If you find you have been misinformed.  Lay down your arms and repent.  This is not to say you cannot still differ on real issues and policies.  Lastly, refuse to believe that a vote for Hillary (or non-vote for Trump) is an endorsement for the pro-choice platform anymore than a vote for Trump is an endorsement for his mysogyny, racism, greed and his overall rudeness and pride.  We are called as Christians to be far more evolved than that.  Stay above the fray!

4. Choose to listen and take the posture of a student

You have to love the Peters of the world.  In some ways, I am one.  We have big mouths and are zealous for truth and righteousness.  God love them…only Jesus could I suppose.  How humbling must it have been for Peter when he would go off on one of his diatribes!  Jesus would patiently yet firmly tell him, “you are embarrassing yourself Peter.  Sit down and be quiet for a minute.”  We need more people who will try to truly listen before speaking.  We don’t listen well nor do we ask good questions anymore?  We just jump to sinful presumptuous conclusions.  Take the posture of a student and try to listen and understand. There is no shame in it and it doesn’t cost you anything.  It may even build bridges you are not expecting.

5. Yet continue to debate graciously and passionately

Yes, after all of that, I still suggest we talk it out.  Why?  Because healthy and robust discussion sharpens us as God’s people.  Additionally, we are not called to retreat into a realm defined by “to each his own.”  Yes, God will work it out but God has given us His Word and God’s Word is clear.  We may not read it clearly but the more we run to it as God’s people, the clearer we’ll see. That will likely take a lifetime to be sure.  We are called to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.  We don’t have it all together and God has given us His Word and His Church to humbly work these things out together day by day for all our lives.

Let’s show the world that we do have the corner on the market on unity.  Let’s show them that unity is not found in this world’s knot of stupidity but in the redeeming love of Christ to bare with ignorant and prideful people like you and me.  Let’s show the world that the church best displays the pathway to true unity.

I love you all!  May grace and peace be multiplied to you!

THE WORD OF THE DAY IS SIMPLE

Yesterday was a great day for our church.  It was a delight to my soul as I stood back and watched our young church taking another step towards becoming a whole family formed by a whole Gospel!  I truly love this church!  Our Sunday lunches are one of the best decisions we made in our early stages as a church.  They are easy ways to connect with each other and our new folks who visit.  It’s beautiful…simply beautiful!

Here’s something that might encourage you.  Since we started leaving a sign up over the past 3 weeks at Lancaster at the corner each week, we have seen 12 different families join us.  Six of them came in because they saw the sign and 1 came from doing an internet search and saw us on Facebook and the others were by invitation by members of our Grace family.  My take away is simple.  God will bring people to us if we will be faithful to love and lead them into becoming fully formed Christ followers.   Keep it up!

So what is our part?  Here are few missional discipleship points to consider:

1.) Don’t underestimate the power of hospitality.  If it works at our monthly lunch, it can work in your home as well!  Consider linking up with 1-2 families from Grace this Spring and Summer (before we launch formal Grace Communities) and hosting a regular grill out or something and invite your neighbors.  IT’S THAT SIMPLE.

2.) Don’t let me be the only follow up with our guests at Grace.  Honestly, I love hanging out with our guests but sociologically speaking, people who develop deeper relational roots with stick around.  So connect with one of our guests each week and invite them into your life in some way.  Make it simple…SIMPLE IS BEST!  I want our church to be known for extravagant hospitality and generosity!  Help us build that culture!  Trust Jesus, he’ll hell you do it.

3.) Have your ever discipled anyone 1-on-1?  If not, let me help you get started.  I can give you some SIMPLE tools to aid you in that process.  Discipleship happens best in relationship so when you are showing hospitality, you have already started the Discipleship process that Jesus often times utilized himself.  But of course, it doesn’t end there.  You want to get them into the Gospel.  This is where I and a couple other men and women in our church are gifted at helping you.  Ask and we can make this happen!

4.) PRAY FERVANTLY – You’ll hear this Wednesday night what our plans are for the next steps as a church.  Prayer is a major component this summer specifically.  When you sit down to review the catechism and scripture memory (NOT JUST FOR THE KIDS, IT’S FOR ALL OF US!), also pray together as a couple or family!  Let’s cry out to God to change the hearts of the people we have in our lives.  Not that other prayer requests are not important but the matters of the soul are way more important.  If you ask for prayer for someone who’s ill or sick, please seek God’s help in how YOU can lead them to wholeness in the Gospel not offer up an organ recital.  Let this be our SIMPLE vision to pray for a spiritual harvest in people’s lives!    If you are available at 9:15 each Sunday, please join us for prayer as a church family while our kids are in Kid’s Blitz.  Please be on time as guests typically show up around 9:45-9:55.

There are a lot of opinions floating out there about whether or not someone can “love Jesus” and not “like the church.”  The problem with that idea is that it strikes against the whole idea of the Gospel itself.  From the garden of Eden, it has been God’s plan to have a people for Himself.  That’s right…a people (plural), not autonomous individuals.  The Greek word used in the New Testament for church is “ekklesia” which means “call out ones” or “assembly.” The idea is simple.  The Gospel is about calling out a people for God’s own possession.

1 Peter 2:9-10 may give the clearest defense of this truth:

“You (plural) are a chosen race (plural), a royal priesthood (plural), a people (plural) for His own possession, that you (plural) may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you (plural) out of darkness into His glorious light.  Once you (plural) were not a people (plural) but now you (plural) are God’s people (plural).  Once you (plural) had not received mercy, now you (plural) have received mercy.”

So it is impossible to separate God’s work of salvation and his gracious love from the body of Christ…the church.

Not only do we error when we dislike the church but the Bible makes it clear we NEED the church.

Consider how many times the New Testament uses the phrase “one another.”  To be exact, “one another” is used 93 times in the Epistles alone, not counting the 4 Gospels and Acts!  Here are few:

“But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” – Hebrews 3:13

“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” – Hebrews 10:24-25

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. – 1 John 1:7

For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.  1 John 3:11

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:11-12

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace” – 1 Peter 4:10

Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 1 Peter 5:5

In the end, it is simply impossible to ignore the importance of the church when the Bible puts so much weight on it.  The church is THE expression and display of the Gospel to the world!

Here are 2 videos that I have found that also help get a bigger picture of what it means to be the church.   Enjoy!

Days 1-3 have been bringing us to ask perhaps the most important question of all, “Do I believe this matters for my life?”  This God, this Jesus, this broken, sinful man in need of righteousness, does it matter for me?  If God is not who says He is, if you are not who God says you are, and if Jesus is not who the Bible says He is, then no.  None of it matters.

However, let us look at Romans 5:8

“but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

This one verse speaks volumes.  From it we see that God is loving, yet standing in judgment over His creation.  We see man captive to sin unable to break its chains.  We see Jesus dying for man who could not help himself.  Yes, it matters.  All of it–God, man, sin, Jesus–matters.

Why?  Romans 5:9-11

 “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.  For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.  More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

From this passage we learn:

1. God acts as righteous Judge over His creation
2. Because of sin, we are seperated from and, in fact, enemies of God.
3. Jesus was who the Bible says He was.  He was able to reconcile sinful man to a holy, righteous God through his life, death, and resurrection.
4. There is joy to be found in our righteous standing before God.  Jesus did not give His life for us to have a guilt-riddled relationship with God, constantly worrying when He is going to tell us we’re still not good enough.

Through Jesus’ death, we can enjoy a relationship with God in which we are confident in His love for us and joyful.  That, my friends, is a very good why!

So, what now?

After the Apostle Peter’s famous proclamation of the Gospel in Acts 2, we see this response from his listeners:

“Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

We see TWO aspects of how we should respond to this Good News.

WE MUST REPENT OF OUR SIN

To repent means to turn away from sin. When we turn from our sin, we recognize that all of sin’s promises are empty and cannot satisfy. They only lead us more disappointment, frustration and emptiness.

WE MUST IDENTIFY WITH JESUS

There is more to believing the Gospel than just repenting of our sin. It’s not enough to just turn “away” from sin, we must also turn “to” someone. Peter instructs his audience to be “baptized.” This is not suggesting that baptism saves us but rather we must completely identify with Jesus’s life, death and resurrection for our complete identity.

The question we all must ultimately consider is, “Does this matter to my life?”

What is stopping you from trusting and following Jesus right now?

Yesterday, we saw how sin shattered man’s perfect relationship with God. Like Adam, each day we believe the same lies of the serpent that promise that we are better off with out God, that God does not truly love us, or God is holding back on us, and that we can be better rulers of our life that God. This is the result of sin for each of us.

Also, we learned that God never intended for us to live in isolation from Him forever.

In Genesis 3:15 God tells the serpent:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

God promises that even though the sting of sin would felt by Eve and all her offspring, there would be one in her line who would come and put at end of sin’s curse on mankind and crush the head of the serpent.

This serpent crusher is Jesus!

This is not the only place the Old Testament foretells the coming of Jesus to destroy sin. Consider the words of the Prophet Isaiah

Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
(Isaiah 53:10-11)

God reaffirms his promise that he declared in the Garden to send perfect redeemer. Jesus would suffer and die offering his life for the guilt of mankind. He would be our substitute. 1st Corinthians 5:21 says,

“For our sake he [God] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

In the Gospel of John, we see Jesus refer to himself several time as “I am.”(John 8:58) He is demonstrating that He is the same God who spoke to Moses from the burning bush who freed His people from the bondage of their slavery in Egypt. In the same way, Jesus has come to free us from the slavery from our sin.

Jesus says of Himself:

“I am the light of the world.” – (8:12)
“I am the bread of life.” (6:48)
“I am He who will dies for your sins.” (8:25)
“I am the door of the sheep.” (10:7)
“I am the good shepherd” (10:11)
“I am the resurrection and the life.” (11:25)
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” (14:6)

All of these “I am” statements show how Jesus meets every need we have to be reconciled to God. In 1 Peter 2:24 we find these words: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”

This is JESUS…This is the GOSPEL!

Questions to Ponder:

Why is it important that Jesus committed no sin?

Did Jesus deserve to die?

What was accomplished by Jesus’ death?

What does Jesus’ death mean for your life?

Is Jesus who the Bible says He is?