Reforming Baptist

Why the New Calvinism is not Revival

2012-01-26T23:16:00.000-08:00

In our community group last night that I was leading, one of the young men in our church asked me if I considered the resurgence of what has been called "The New Calvinism" or the "Young Restless and Reformed (YRR)" Movement as a revival. That's a good question depending on what one means by revival. If revival simply means a resurgence, then sure, it is a resurgence - its finding new life all over the place in the modern church. However, if what we mean by reivival is along the lines of what happened in Enfield and Northampton, CT in the 1740's or the Fulton St. revival that took place in New York in 1857, then..no, it's absolutely not even close. The resurgence of Reformed Theology today is definitely a hopeful step in the right direction for the possibility of real, genuine, Holy Ghost outpouring of revival. Believe it or not, Revivalis a Calvinistic doctrine; Arminianism is necessarily limited to “revivalism”. Read your church history. Calvinism teaches that revival (as well as salvation) is a sovereign act of God. It cannot be worked up, but must be prayed down. Almost all revivals from the Protestant Reformation, the Puritan era, and the revivals of the early colonies were poured out among almost a purely Calvinistic church, for the exception of the Methodists. It is only a totally God-dependent theology that can humble people to the point of begging God for it. Arminianism (and all its various forms) teaches that revival can be worked up by men's clever means and methods with the right conditions and atmosphere. Unfortunately, when there is any chatter of revival today, people automatically think of Charles Finney and D.L. Moody who were the most well known "revivalists" in the 1800's and nothing more because of their evangelistic efforts. From there, all kinds of strange and freak events such as the Toronto laughing revival and the Azusa St. Pentacostal revival have stolen the association and connotation of real revival in most people's minds. These are all Arminian and Palagean worldviews that dominate the idea of revival today in the church. So, a resurgence in Calvinism is hopeful, but it is not enough for us to experience real revival again today. Here's why the New Calvinism is not genuine revival:

1. So far as I can see, the "New Calvinism" is still very much in love with "Finneyism" or "Revivalism". They are content with using Arminian means of emotional manipulative methods in their worship and evangelism to grow their churches. God cannot and will not honor this because should He send revival, the man-centered methodology and the New Calvinist celebrity pastors will get all the glory for it. Look at the New Calvinists or the Young Restless and Reformed crowd...they are following after the Arminian methodology of theological Calvinists such as Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler and James MacDonald.

2. The second concern is that the YRR crowd is not even talking about Revival. I did find one small exception here, surprisingly. They probably don't even believe in it or care to pray for it. They are content with a rock concert that they call church full of people with some emotionalism and that is good enough. The focus is on church planting and evangelism through coalitions, church planting networks and all the other man-made means of organizing and growing Gods Kingdom. I'm all for doing those things...they are necessary, but they are no substitute for what God can do in a revival. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that God can do in five minutes what it has taken men 50 years to accomplish with all their crusades and evangelistic efforts. But we are content to keep on chopping away with Finney's blunt axe head!

3. Then there is the problem of indifference concerning personal holiness. Although it's encouraging to see so much interest in the Holiness of God coming from Ligonier Ministries, they are the only ones really talking about it. Even still, they don't do much to apply the doctrine of the Holiness of God to personal and practical holiness. To bring up anything about practical holiness will get you labeled as a legalist. Even if I start giving examples of what I'm talking about, it would only get me dismissed as being a cultural fundamentalist, legalistic Pharisee, so I won't go there. John MacArthur brought it up not long ago concerning the place of drinking alcohol in the lives of these pastors and they all but crucified him for daring to touch one of their idols.

4. Prayer is hardly a concern. There's not much being talked about concerning the most essential element of revival. Very little is being written on prayer and there are absolutely no conferences of any kind where prayer is the main focus. I wrote a little bit of a lament about this a few weeks ago. Without earnest prayer, revival won't come because it only shows a lack of dependence, desperation for or faith in God for revival.

The glimmers of hope for revival that I see in the New Calvinism does not come from the celebrity pastors fraternity.. IE John Piper, Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll or even John MacArthur. The most faithful young Calvinist preacher that pulls no punches, fears nobody and says what needs to be said in true Jonathan Edwards fashion is Paul Washer. He IS talking about revival, he IS putting a huge emphasis on prayer and personal holiness unlike the pop-Calvinists that get all the attention at venues like the Elephant Room. And if anyone still thinks that Calvinists don't care about evangelism, Paul Washer proves them wrong there too. He heads up Heart Cry Missionary Society and is a real "soul winner" in the right sense of the term.

I really hope God does use the resurgence of Reformed Theology to usher in one more real awakening in our generation, but I have a hunch that it will be enjoyed by the no-names who take revival seriously.

FIC Film Identifies the Problem, offers Wrong Solution

2012-01-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

I just watched a video that I found while researching the family integrated church movement. I watched it after writing the last post. This film gave me a clearer view of what this movement believes and what they are promoting. There are some big name guys who are behind this movement such as RC Sproul Jr., Voddie Baucham and Paul Washer whom I respect and admire. So, this movement should not be taken lightly. The film will definitely cause people who are not skilled at thinking critically to think twice about staying in their churches that have children's programs and youth groups. I am not the most skilled thinker out here on the blogosphere...I'd love to hear Bob Bixby's or Tom Pryde's thoughts on this video since they are much more skilled than I am. So, click on the image above and you can watch this film free on their website by signing up for their email newsletter, then come back and read the rest of this......

......No, I mean it! Go back and watch the video before reading the rest of this.....

Ah Shucks, you're gonna do what you want anyway, so here I go...

Where I agree and sympathize with the FIC movement:
1. Worldliness in the youth groups is a problem - At the beginning of the film, they go into some of the worst youth groups and youth ministry venues to show you Exhibit A about what's wrong with Christian youth today. I actually thought it wasn't a fair analysis however, because most of the FIC churches are reformed and the crazy rock concert youth groups are not. He compares apples with oranges. Notwithstanding, I agree that these youth groups are low on substance and high on style and structure. If I was in one of those churches, I would pull my kid out too. But if the youth group is worldly and shallow, where do you think that comes from? You can trace the problem back to the pulpit (or stool nowadays) where the lead pastor sets the direction for the church. If the youth group is a mess, I guarantee that the adult church is equally sinful, if not more so!

2. Children's ministries are full of fun and games - In the last church that I served in as a lay person, I remember being frustrated with the children's ministry when I would hear them singing the most idiotic, stupid, mind numbing songs that had nothing to do with God. Puppet shows and all kinds of other things meant to entertain the kids who are accustomed to being entertained by Sponge Bob on TV are normal for children's ministries. I don't imagine that Martin Luther taught his children that way when he taught his catechism to them. I agree that children's ministries are a circus meant to keep the kids happy, so their parents will want to return to the church and give their money. After all, I was taught in Bible College, that if you can make the kids happy, that is the bait to catch the parents.

3. Irresponsible parents who are not involved in their children's lives - One of the biggest arguments in the film is that the current structure of Sunday School and Youth Groups gives the parent the unhealthy option to let the church take responsibility for feeding them spiritually so they don't have to do it. I have seen this first hand! Actually experienced it first hand! My dad will admit that this was his mentality while I was growing up. He would send me to church and Christian School so they could better instill the Christian faith in me than he could. He readily admits that was the wrong way of thinking now, but I have to ask myself...If I didn't have a Christian school or Sunday School at the church where I grew up, would I have turned out any better? Probably not, because the entire church was saturated with shallow doctrine and man-centered theology. Sitting in every service, disconnected from the youth group would not have been any better for me considering what was coming from the pulpit. This brings me to the diagnosis and solutions that they offer in the film that I find problematic...

Problems I have with the film's diagnosis and solutions:
1. The structure of age segregated classes is the fundamental problem - I think this is an absurd diagnosis. It may aid the problem, but it is not fundamentally the problem. The kinds of churches that they caught on film with the crazy punk youth groups have a problem - age segregated classes are not it!!! Their # 1 problem is their watered down theology and watered down, false gospel of easy believism that they are being taught regularly. The problem doesn't go back to the institution of the Sunday School, the problem goes back to the false gospel of Charles Finney that breeds every kind of rotten means to lure people to make an unregenerate decision to become a false convert! Most of these FIC churches are Reformed people and they should know this! But it's easier to trash something tangible and concrete (youth groups and age segregated classes) than it is to trash ideas in the abstract (Palagianism, Finneyism, Arminianism). You can see with your own eyes if your church has a youth group, but if you're not theologically savvy, you can't see if your church is preaching Palagianism. Even though the film doesn't advocate for people to leave their churches if their churches have a youth group, they certainly leave that door wide open by introducing the Family Integrated Church as the other option. I see right through this as a divisive way to siphon off discontent people from these churches to make theirs grow. I have to give Paul Washer credit however for answering a guy who asked: "What should I do in my church if I do these things that I know are right? They'll kill me!" Washer answered: "Then Die."

2. That age segregated classes is part of a Satanic conspiratorial design starting with Plato and moving all the way through time to the modern educational system championed by John Dewey. I don't doubt that there may be a direct connection between Platonic philosophy and the Atheistic educational philosophy of the modern education system. But trying to make that connection to the church as if churches adopted evolutionary theory as a part of educating our kids is a stretch. Do you really think you're going to be able to put a 1rst Grade who is still learning his numbers in the same class with a 12th Grade Senior Calculus student? That's ridiculous. But this is what the FIC churches do when they make a third grader sit in a sermon where the pastor is doing an exegesis of scripture and the kid doesn't even have his vocabulary developed yet! That kid needs the milk of the Word dispensed to him in portions he can swallow! This is why we have the kids stay with us during the singing, offering, etc..to participate, and then dismiss them for teaching that is on a level they can understand. If you want to call that a pagan philosophy, then....I'll just bite my lip.

If age graded classes and youth groups are responsible for destroying families, and they have been the problem for over 200 years in the church, then why are we only now in this generation having a problem with kids leaving the faith in droves? I really think that attacking the form instead of the substance of the church is naive. This logic is the same as looking at the fracturing of the African American family in modern times and pointing back to the abolishment of slavery as the cause! You could argue that Black families were whole back then! They had a dad and mom in the home back in the Antebellum south! Logically, the FIC calling for the abolishment of youth groups is like calling for slavery again as a social structure to put Black families back together.

3. The historic timeline of educational philosophy that is shown in the film is THE leaven that must be purged out of the church. First of all, in that time line there were huge gaps like 1,700 year gaps!
This reminds me of the arguments by the KJV Only movement who string together a list of less than credible people who had their hands on the manuscript evidence and make the case that ALL Bibles translated from these texts are corrupt and the only alternative is the King James Bible (nevermind the corrupt people who had their hands in that manuscript family...but I digress.)

They portray the modern youth group culture as the only way that it can be done as opposed to the FIC model which is a false dichotomy and is ironically divisive! Is it utterly impossible for parents to disciple their kids at home if their kid is in a Sunday School class for one hour a week? C'mon! Get real! If dads are not discipling their kids, it's not the youth ministry's fault, it's the fault of the father for not manning up. I agree that the blame can be shared with the church that does not teach the parent to do this. But that is a substance problem not a structure problem. You could hash everyone together in the same room every Sunday and still have ungodly homes if the substance being given is as weak as Willow Creek!

So, in conclusion...I am not against my friends and fellow pastors who want to structure their churches this way. I wouldn't break fellowship over it, but I just think that it is an unnecessary movement that only further fractures the church. Mark my words, the FIC churches will end up becoming their own kind of denomination and they will see themselves as the elite in Christianity and as soon as they do, their pride will kill whatever good they're trying to accomplish. I have seen this in the IFB movement and this kind of elitism is a real temptation for whatever group that thinks they have found the silver bullet.

Thoughts on the Family Integrated Church Movement

2012-01-19T17:38:00.000-08:00

I have recently run into several ministries andpeople who come from churches that identify themselves as "Family Integrated Churche s". Like everything else, I have anopinion about it and my blog is my outlet for expressing that opinion andeducating others. So, first of all what is a FIC (Family Integrated Church)?

According to one FamilyIntegrated Site they state what they are:

We believe that the biblical partnership betweenchurch and home, which is offered in what is commonly called theFamily-Integrated Church model, affords a greater potential for a moreeffective implementation of the Great Commission ... The Church andthe Home are to be in partnership with one another, and act in complementaryroles to fulfill the Great Commission through both discipleship and evangelism.

Well, what's wrong with that? Nothing. I agreetotally. The family and the church are two divine institutions that Godordained that are inseparable from each other. The desires of thosein this movement are good and I believe biblical. But when I read a statementlike the one above, I have to ask...why do you need to start a movement, createa directory and wear a new label for something that church is supposed to beanyways? I come from the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement wherethe churches in this movement wear the IFB label with pride. The FIC movementreminds me of the IFB movement and makes me cringe. Here's why... For those whoidentify themselves with the IFB movement, it's not enough to be Independent in your church's polity. It's notenough to believe in the Fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith andit's not enough to be a Baptist.There are other criterion that accompany this label that you must adhere to ifyou want to have IFB credibility and be recognized by other IFB churches andinstitutions. Such as: Hairstyles, cannot listen to or play CCM music, mustonly use a KJV Bible, must have loyalties to a Fundamentalist Bible college aswell as many other things I could name. These distinctives have nothing todo with being Independent, Fundamental or Baptist, but to those in themovement, they're probably more important.

What does this have to do with the FIC movement?Well, I see the same kinds of trappings and extra-biblical requirements thatmake the IFB movement so distinct. For example, what I hear from people whocome from FIC churches is that there is no nursery, Sunday School classes,children's programs or youth groups. Not because they don't have the resources,but because they look down upon such programs and practices. All the kids sitin the entire service with their parents from beginning to end, even the oneswho dirty their diaper and the folks sitting next to them have to smell it.Some other distinctions are that the families are adamantly against any kind ofbirth control and have a strictly "home-school only" philosophy ofeducation.

DISCLAIMER! Let me make something clear - I amnot against the kids sitting in church with dad and mom. I remember growing upmost of my life sitting in church with dad and mom through the entire service.I even got saved in an adult service as a four year old little child! Iam not against home-schooling and I'm not against having as many kids as yourbody will allow you to crank out! We have all those kinds of people inour church and their birth control convictions are between them and God! Theirchoices on how to educate their kids are between them and God. They will answerto Him about those choices. And if they choose to teach their kids to sit inthe adult service from beginning to end, they are free to do that too.

What rubs me the wrong way is that the FICchurches are making some of these practices as their primary distinctiveidentity. If you are in the FIC movement, just because you have all the kids inthe service doesn't really mean you are accomplishing your stated purpose. Achurch with a youth group and an age divided Sunday School may be doing abetter job at partnering with one another to act in complementary rolesin fulfilling the Great Commission through both discipleship and evangelism.If you balk at that, then you're just as arrogant as the IFB church who thinksthat nobody else is as pure as they are for all of their myriads of rules,standards and taboos!

Like the IFB movement, I think that this new FICmovement is reactionary. They look at the typical shallowness of theevangelical seeker church model and realize that even with all of theirprograms and beautiful buildings, their families are just as fragmented,immoral and corrupt as the world. So, you're going to blame age-divided classesfor this? That's about as naive as the IFB's blaming the new Bible versions forthe moral decline in our country. Reactionary movements eventually fizzleout and die as a passing fad or they morph and retard into aweird separate subculture within the greater body of Christ like aningrown toenail. The obvious difficulties that I see in the FICchurch are these:

1. By eliminating classes for kids, there will bean elitism that is created as a result. The poor parents who are not skilledenough to teach their two year old to sit still and listen to the preachingwill eventually feel out of place and leave...or out of peer pressure, theywill try to please everyone else by sternly treating their two-year-old like alittle soldier in boot camp so the parents can appear as spiritually skilled inparenting like all the other good families. Before you know it, your ideal oflittle kids in the church service soon becomes a legalistic requirement andmeasure of spirituality.

2. Eventually, the children who grow up in thisenvironment may resent it, react against it and leave the FIC church in favorof the pragmatic, program-driven church which is what they were trying to avoidin the first place. Don't believe me? Just look at where most of the IFB kidsend up after growing up in that environment. Either totally out of church, orin the worldly, shallow seeker churches. The majority of the ones who don't buyin to their philosophy end up swinging the pendulum to the extremeopposite side of what the IFB church and family were trying so hard to prevent.

3. The next problem will be the inability togrow. These churches will stunt their own growth because they will only be ableto grow by reaching other like-minded FIC people. Oh, they will say that theyare all about evangelism, but when un-churched Joe and Jill show up with theirinfant, toddler, and 3rd grader, either they will have to cave into thepressure to buy in to the FIC cultural anomalies (as well as all the stuff inthe Bible that's hard enough for people to swallow) or they will not stay inyour church.

4. In trying to integrate the family and thechurch together so closely in services and activities, there will be no placefor singles to find a place to belong. One of the cultural distinctions that Isee in FIC churches is that they are encouraged to have huge families. Ifyou're a college aged kid walking into a church full of married people andlittle tykes, you might feel a little out of your element. All the pretty girlsare already married and pregnant. The church with a college and carrier groupwill appeal to them. So, off they go and your FIC church won't get the chanceto minister to them.

5. This model will actually inhibit spiritual growth by takingaway opportunities for others to develop and use their teaching skills. A ladywho would usually teach the teenage girls in a Sunday School class will not getto use her gifts as well as she could with a Sunday School Class or some kindof ladies Bible study.

Look, I sympathize with the FIC's disillusionment withthe program driven churches. I personally think that the less programs a churchhas the better. We are not supposed to be a religious Wal-Mart for people toshop at. At the same time, a church that is striving to be Biblical can stilldo so with age-graded classes. There should be a balance. I encourage ourparents who have kids that are 10 and up to stay and listen to the sermon. Kidsare smarter than you think! They can understand an exposition of scripture ifthe pastor is doing his job correctly. Same for teenagers. They ought to be inthe service with everyone else singing, taking the sacraments and listening tothe sermon! There's no need for "teen church" but at the same time,there's nothing wrong with a youth group Sunday School class or for teens toget together with their own age group to play miniature golf either!
Maybe the problem is not necessarily with these classes or groups, but rather the worldliness that is involved in them. Maybe the problem is the watered down easy believism that creates false converts, not youth groups.

Appreciating your Wife's Many Emotions

2012-01-06T18:03:00.000-08:00

Men are rational and women are emotional. I'm sure you've heard that one before. Recently I heard Ravi Zacharias say something that got me thinking concerning this. He said something like:

"perhaps we as men are intimidated by women's emotional intelligence because they make the connection between thought and feeling much faster and more accurately than we do."

So, instead of feeling superior to our wife's emotional responses, we ought to stop and ask ourselves: "what is it about this circumstance, or subject that is bringing out this emotion in her?" My wife and I had an intense discussion recently about a subject that I thought she was over-reacting to. After hearing Ravi say this, I reflected on my wife's reaction which exhibited a bit of frustration and fear and it began to make sense to me. Although the thing we were discussing was totally clear in my mind, and I have thought it out in detail well enough to win the argument from a logical standpoint; I had not been leading her or the others involved in the subject with the clearest direction. What was clear to me hasn't been made clear to everyone else. No wonder she expressed the emotion of fear. For me, fear is weakness. What really happened was that her fear exposed my weakness: Sub-par leadership! Her emotions were acutely tuned to the information she was getting and they were like idiot lights on a dashboard telling me that there is something that I needed to pay attention to. It wasn't the thing that we were talking about necessarily, it was something deeper that I had to figure out. If I had been leading her to understand what I had already clearly thought through, and demonstrated it adequately, her emotional response would have been more confident rather than fearful. Maybe it's really true...women are smarter than men, and we're just too dumb to see it, or too proud to admit it.

Prayerlesness, a pastor's achilles heel

2011-12-23T00:46:00.000-08:00

If you want to witness first hand the state of corruption in modern American Christianity, just take a visit to your local Christian bookstore. The kinds of books available, the music, and the Christian trinkets are all an obvious sign of the superficiality and shallowness of the church. What is perhaps most telling of the pathetically weak state of the our spiritual strength is in the picture above. Out of all the thousands of books in a large Christian bookstore in San Jose, CA this is all you will find on the subject of prayer. If you look closely at the photo you will find that almost two of the five rows of books are written by the same author who is a woman. In fact, I thought it was very interesting that most the authors represented on this shelf are women: Stormie Omartian, Beth Moore, Beverly Lewis and a guy with a really hideous old woman's hair-do, Philip Yancey. Is this the best on prayer that American Evangelicalism can produce? Are there no men of prayer who have anything to say about it or is it that only women understand their need and dependence on God? Unfortunately, this is the sad reality - Christian leaders don't pray and they don't know how to pray! They don't need to pray since they have all the means available to them to grow their churches without any need of God's help. After all, most of Evangelicalism and even Fundamentalism is a product of Charles Finney's heretical Palagianism:

" Revivals were formerly regarded as miracles...For a long time it was suppsed by the Church that a revival was a miracle, an interposition of Divine power, with which they had nothing to do, and which they had no more agency in producing than they had in producing thunder or an earthquake. It is only within a few years that ministers generally have supposed revivals to be promoted, by the use of means designed and adapted specially to that object..." -Charles Finney, (from Lectures on Revivals of Religion)

Well, if we have no need for a miracle of God, then why would we need to pray so hard for it? There are plenty of means at our human disposal that are designed to produce what we once thought only God could do. So, walk around the other side of the book shelf and you will find rows and rows full of books about church growth and leadership by Rick Warren, Bill Hybles, John Maxwell and George Barna!

If you think my assessment is inaccurate, I would contend that it is not. Whenever I have a guest preacher visit our church; or if I go out to lunch with a pastor; or if I am in the presence of a seasoned pastor from whom I can learn, I always ask him to teach me how I can improve my prayer life. I have not yet had one man give me any substantive advice on prayer except Steve Lawson who advised me to pray through the Scripture, especially the Psalms. What I usually hear from every other preacher is something like this:

(nervously squirming)
"Well, you know, that's not my strongest area. I pray here and there, in the car, while preparing sermons...uh, I wish I could say I had a better habit of prayer."
or
"Ya, um....um...I am not that good at focusing my attention in a dedicated time of prayer, so I just kinda...you know...pray during the day and try to maintain a spirit of prayer."

Praying through out the day in spirit of prayer? That goes without saying!....ya right, how spiritual you try to sound! If you are one of these guys and you're reading this, I love you and want to sincerely rebuke you for dereliction of duty. The last time I checked, the Apostles stated that their main work in the church was the ministry of prayer and the word:

Acts 6:4 But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.

You are not supposed to just try and pray here and there when the Lord puts something on your heart, you need to give yourself continually to prayer! How many members of our churches go un-prayed for because their pastor is too lazy or careless to figure out how to make prayer one of his "strong areas"?! These same guys somehow have the ability to concentrate when it comes to following their favorite football team. Prayer is supposed to be one of your strong areas, in fact, it's supposed to be your strongest area only to be matched by your skill in exegeting and preaching Scripture! Listen to the average sermon on any given church's website, and I guarantee that the preacher's prayer life is probably many times more pathetic than his little pep talk that he calls preaching.

Just the other day, I got together with some pastors who have a weekly prayer meeting and are a part of a larger network of churches that partner in mercy ministry. There were probably less than ten of us. Yet, at the annual free luncheon, somehow over a hundred of them come out of the wood work to get their free meal, but most of them never show up to the weekly prayer meetings. I appreciated one of the pastor's words of admonition by telling us that we are being hypocritical to talk about revival when we're not willing to pray for one hour a week with other pastors for it! He hit me too since I have not been as personally involved in that prayer meeting as I should. I could almost feel the Lord's holy frustration in his spirit:

Mark 14:37 Then He (Jesus) came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "Simon, are you sleeping? Could you not watch one hour?

None of us could ever claim that we pray as we ought, just like none of us could dare claim that we are as holy as we ought to be. But, there is such an apathy concerning prayer among pastors when there should at least be a deliberate, regular, exhausting exercise of prayer that at least makes an honest attempt to intercede for the membership and tap into the power of God.

Now, maybe the stone I've thrown has hit a dog who will bark at me and challenge my prayer life. Fair enough. In a nutshell, I'll share what I do and perhaps blog about it a little more so that I offer a solution instead of merely complaining about the problem - Everyday, the first thing I do is grab a cup of coffee, plug in my iPod and listen to Bach. I take out my Bible, a prayer book called "The Valley of Vision" and a notebook. After a reading in scripture and in the prayer book, I then proceed to write out a personal letter to God for the day. I follow the structure of the Lord's Model prayer found in Matthew 6:5-15 to give me some structure and to submit myself to the rights of God while approaching Him with my requests. This has been what has worked for me. I understand that I am like many of you - getting on my knees beside my bed and wearing grooves in my wood floor with my knees like "Praying Hyde" - is not going to happen. I'll fall asleep or my mind will quickly wonder in every other direction. The pen and paper are like harnesses on my attention that lead me to real communication with God. Perhaps this doesn't work for you. Fine, whatever...find something that does work for you and give yourself continually to it! I try to ignore all phone calls and I try to care less about all the urgent business that usually needs to be done before noon. I'd rather neglect emails, letter writing, returning phone calls, errands and other necessary demands on my time than to neglect what God has called me to do. You wouldn't ever neglect preparing your sermons would you? Of course not, because scores of people will know without a doubt that you were derelict of duty on Sunday morning if you get up there unprepared. Of course, if you're a charlatan of a pastor, you could always download pre-made TV dinner sermons from here so you can do more important things like improve your golf swing. If you were to go through the week having only prayed 5-10 minutes, how is anyone going to know? They won't, and that's why it's so easy to neglect prayer. Nobody is watching you, nobody is demanding you to punch a clock, nobody is looking over your shoulder. But God watches you waste your time on the internet, Facebooking and Twittering your every bowel movement for the world to read about while the people you are called to oversee never get a single mention in prayer on their behalf by their pastor for weeks, months or years.

Anyway, why don't you stop trying to figure out the hottest new trends from Willow Creek and get on your face before God so that you can have real revival in your church instead of the fake revivalism that prayerless men are trying to produce!? I may never pastor a mega church or get invited to big conferences, but when my ministry is over, I want my church and my family to be able to have tens of thousands of pages of my personal prayers as a testimony to my love for them and my time before the throne of God on their behalf!

Why Does Evil Exist?

2011-12-20T11:45:00.001-08:00

Why does evil exist? If God is good, then why is evil permitted to exist?

There are only three conclusions to why God allowed evil to exist.

1. When God created the world, He was able to foresee the sin and evil, yet he created man as a free agent knowing evil was going to happen apart from His control. He would set a plan in motion that would potentially save the world, but held no guarantees. However, since He is all knowing, He knew that although he would not be able to save all, he would be able to save some, and from the beginning made the decision to create the world knowing the consequences that would come. In this, God still takes responsibility for evil since He is the initiator of creation with the full knowledge of all the atrocities that would follow. Although, God does not create evil, or cause it, he still ordains that it should eventually come into being, because he would have been able to stop it by never creating man. This view is the usual and most popular view of how God allowed evil to come into being. The problem with this theory is that it leaves God impotent against circumstances that would follow once He put things into motion. He would be able to influence the creation in His favor, but not ultimately have full control over all things. Many believe that this is what gets God off the hook: He’s not responsible, because He is not in control over it, He can’t look at it or touch it. But this view still makes God responsible, because He could have prevented it.

2. God did not know that evil would happen, and with the best of intentions, He created the world and all there is in it. He was aware of the possible risk, since he was going to make man a free agent, and went along with it hoping that it would turn out right. Eventually sin did occur and God had to adjust His plans to plan B: The cross. As time goes by and God gains more information about His creation and the choices they make, He is able to improve upon Himself and the choices He makes until He is able to make all things come to pass as He promised. This is called “Open-Theism”. It is a desperate attempt to make God innocent of all the evil that occurs in the world by limiting his sovereignty, immutability, omnipotence, and omniscience. Both of these views are attempts to rescue Christianity from God.

3. The Third and final answer to why evil is allowed to co-exist with a good God is illustrated for us in Romans 11. This chapter talks about the Jewish nation finding mercy in God’s sight, and then turning against God in unbelief. God then turns to the Gentiles and shows mercy on them and judgment on the Jews. His Grace is shown in 11:5, His goodness and wrath are shown in verse 22, His mercy is shown in verse 30, and the conclusion to the totality of His glory is seen as the chief end of this whole redemptive story in verses 33-35.

11:36 For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.

Therefore, we find that God not only allowed evil to come into being but ordained it to be. He was not the creator or the cause of the evil, but evil was created by disobedience and disloyalty first from Satan to the angels and from Adam to all men. The reason that evil must exist by necessity is for God to display His attributes and receive glory for them. This could not happen any other way. How can God display goodness without there being an evil to compare it to? How could God fully express His infinite goodness without infinite “badness” to contrast it?

Wrath

How else could God have displayed mercy without wrath? Love without hate? And how can He display wrath without an object worthy of holy wrath? What would one need to do to merit God’s wrath? To disobey and be disloyal to Him, If there be objects worthy of holy wrath, they must by necessity be only those things that are infinitely wicked for God to utterly detest them. They must be something that have fallen short of His glory. Do we know of any objects that match this description?

Mercy

That brings us to the attribute of His mercy. How could God ever manifest mercy if there be no object that is in need of it? What doth consist of an object to bear necessity of mercy? Well, it would need to be worthy of wrath because of its un-holiness and failure to meet the standard of God’s glory. Such objects would be and could only be qualified for need of mercy if they are guilty of having set themselves up for Divine wrath. For this reason, God could only express mercy to those deserving of His wrath and must need evil to accomplish this end.

Hate

The description of this is the same as wrath. God has a holy hatred for that which is unholy. How can God express that hatred if there be none that are unholy? Think of it like this: What good is it to close your eyes when you are already in a completely dark room? The shutting of your eyes to shut out light is vain if there be no light to shut out. Therefore, God hates all that is unholy, and evil must exist and be permitted to exercise its vices so that God’s full measure of holy wrath may be manifested against all that are worthy of it.

Love

Again, how can God express such deep, unconditional, passionate love to someone and transfer the knowledge of the intensity of his love if that object of love has no way to measure the immensity of that love? He will come expect that love to be normal and nothing of any special value since there is no understanding of hatred in contrast to love. The capacity of love to a thing is only measured by the hatred of the opposite of that thing. God the Father loves His Son, but only as much as He hates all that is completely opposite of what His Son is. That is why God detests, repudiates and utterly hates sin that he was willing to create a place of eternal damnation and fiery torture against the objects of his hate. By that, you can begin to understand the measure of His love. What is so amazing about our salvation, is that God would pour out wrath on the One He loves in order to save those Whom deserved his hatred and wrath because of His love for them. The only way they could be worthy of God’s love is if they could measure up to His glory and holiness. The only way that could be possible is if they were made holy by someone else who is holy and bear the wrath of the unholy upon Himself.

Righteousness

This takes us to God’s righteousness. To be righteous is to be perfect and complete in regards to an obligation. How can God prove his righteousness if there be no obligation for him to meet with full and perfect completion? For this reason, evil must exist to create un-holiness in men, so that they will be worthy of wrath, so that God may meet His own obligation to punish those worthy of His wrath. But it doesn’t end there. In God’s unsearchable wisdom, He puts Himself under obligation to save those who are under His wrath when He is under obligation to destroy them. How could God get Himself out of this impossible obligation that He has placed Himself under? That’s where the cross comes in, He sacrifices the Just for the unjust, the Worthy for the unworthy as a Divine substitution so that He must fulfill the obligation of loving, showing mercy and saving those vessels of wrath whom He has chosen to become vessels of His mercy.

Justice

This is similar to righteousness. God is perfectly just. How can He exercise justice if there be something that has no need of it? Justice is giving what is deserved to someone who has earned it. If there be only a God of infinite good and holiness, then who will give Him what he deserves? Glory Honor and Praise! There must be someone else who will give Him this glory honor and praise so that justice can be served to Him! Since He is the only One Who is worthy of this kind of justice, there would be nobody to serve Him with it. Therefore, God had to create something that would be able to give Him this glory. This was the purpose of creating man: so they may glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. God must exercise justice against the unjust if He is to fully manifest His holy justice, therefore, there needs be an object worthy of Divine judgment. For this reason also, evil must exist so that someone who may come short of His glory, may be deserving of His wrath because they have done what He hates, and they finally are worthy of His Divine justice.

Finally, when God has demonstrated His attributes to all Whom He has created and will have created all those who are the recipients of His love, mercy, wrath, righteousness and justice will acknowledge with their own mouths that God’s choice to serve them with the results of His attributes was good and just, and God will thereby receive the glory due to His name.

What to do when faced with the reality of Spiritual deadness

2011-12-09T16:30:00.001-08:00

What do you do when you realize that you are spiritually cold toward God? Your answer reveals what you believe about the gospel. Here are your options:

1. Be Apathetic - "Oh well, I'll just have to wait for God to move me again. Everyone grows at different levels ya know. I'm one of those spiritual snails...nuthin' I can do about it. I'm just gonna let go and let God."

2. Be a Legalist - "Uh oh, I'm losing it...I better re-double my efforts: pray more, read more, witness more, listen to more sermons, stop watching TV, attend church more, listen to more Christian music!"

3. Be a Christian - "Have mercy upon me, O God, According to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned, And done this evil in Your sight... Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness...Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me... Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, ...then I will teach transgressors Your ways, And sinners shall be converted to You...O God, The God of my salvation, And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, And my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart -- These, O God, You will not despise. ....Then You shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness...". Psalm 51:1-19

Notice the difference between Psalm 51 and the Legalist. There is witness, singing, personal sacrifice (IE the duties such as prayer, study, witness, separation etc...) but before you get to that, you see brokenness, sorrow and complete dependence on God for restoration and usefulness again.

The apathetic person doesn't care because he's probably not saved. He apathetically took his ticket to heaven at an emotional altar call and when that wore off, he has to wait for another emotional experience to move him to do something "spiritual". This person doesn't believe or understand the gospel at all. He has no brokenness for his sin and has no delight in God.

The legalistic person realizes there is a problem, but doesn't understand the gospel correctly. Either he is a person who is not saved or a saved person who has been taught wrong. This person thinks that sanctification is accomplished in a different manner than salvation. Salvation is by grace through faith, but sanctification is purely by his own works of righteousness in order to make him more holy. Of course, the Holy Spirit's work in this is slightly helpful too.

Now, what happens when a whole church or movement of churches is faced with this question: What does the church do when it realizes that they are spiritually cold toward God? Here is one pastor's advice to his church in this case. Which answer does he give? Option 1,2 or 3? I think it will be obvious enough. The answers are the same. Fundamentalist churches often recognize the need for revival and talk about it often. They want it so badly, that it's almost as if they can't bear to face the reality that even in their churches, there is also the same spiritual deadness as there is in the evangelical churches that they love to criticize. How do we respond to the spiritual deadness? Make our people re-double their efforts, coerce them to all the works that result from real heart-change hoping that it will eventually take? In this article, another pastor laments the lack of spiritual strength that he knows is in our churches by saying:

"Why must we plead with God’s people to come to the house of the Lord? Why must invitations to church sound all too close to a sales pitch? “Will you please come to Sunday school? We have a special day planned!” I am certainly not opposed to planning special events and organizing campaigns in the ministry; yet we must realize how far removed we are from what the work of the ministry really is when we gauge the success of our service to the Lord by the number of church members who respond to our continuous begging and pleading to be on time to a service. Why must we plead with God’s people to come to the house of the Lord? It is a sad day when choir members must be urged to be faithful...It is a sad day when God’s people must be coerced into tithing in their New Testament local churches...It is a sad day when we preach prayer in church but do not practice it at home."

Yet, even though we know that there is a need for revival, too many of us are all too willing to manufacture a synthetic form of revival by turning to either modern or old fashioned church growth methods: mood music, coercive invitation methods, motivational preaching (as opposed to expositional preaching), and so on. Instead of fooling ourselves into thinking that God is moving among our man-made counterfeit revivals, we need to mourn over the spiritual condition, confess sin and beg God for a renewed spirit so that a real change can occur and God's name will be made known. God isn't impressed with our efforts, only a contrite heart and a broken spirit will get His attention.

Acts 3:19 "Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord"

Still going door to door

2011-12-07T21:26:00.001-08:00

Even though I wrote a post a few days ago that seems like I don't favor door to door evangelism, I still do it. In fact, in the past few weeks, I have been going out with one of our church members every day. It has been a joy to share the gospel with at least one person every day. We have been able to witness to Muslims, Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and totally un-churched people in the last few days. The approach we've been using that seems to be doing well is to tell the person at the door that we are there to find out if there is anything that we can pray for that they are concerned about. Most people are very skeptical when someone shows up at their door, but when I tell them them the church I'm from and then say:

"I'm just here to find out if there is anything that we can pray for you about, or if there is anything that concerns you about our community?"

Most, just look stunned with amazement that I'm not there to get something out of them and if they don't have anything they can think of, they thank me for the kind gesture and so far, 99% are willing to take a gospel tract. I carry a notebook to write down any requests and sometimes someone actually confesses that they or one of their loved ones is ill, lost a job or is in a difficult relationship. Most would otherwise just say they're not interested and bid you leave. When a person seems open to conversation, it opens up great opportunity to share the gospel. Every once in a while we come across another believer and we share some fellowship with them and often pray together. It's like finding a little oasis while traveling through the desert.

So here's the benefit of this approach:
1. I get fresh, first-hand contact with the people in my community
2. The church leaves the impression of a willingness to serve instead of looking for converts.
3. Sooner or later, I'm going to come across someone who is desperate at that moment who will recognize their need for Christ immediately.
4. It will set the pace for other's in the church to be actively witnessing to others.

What I don't intend to do is...
1. Create a means by which my members can artificially be "spiritual" by going "soul winning".
2. Use this method of evangelism as "the standard" that makes a person think they are superior to others who don't go door to door.
3. Free myself from the awareness of gospel sharing opportunities in every-day life because I have already checked off my evangelism requirement by having gone out door to door.

The Inevitable Convergence

2011-11-29T18:00:00.001-08:00

In this month's edition of The Baptist Bulletin, a GARBC publication, there were a couple of good articles on fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism, one of which, was an interview with both Kevin Bauder and Al Mohler. The interviews were prompted by a new book on the four perspectives of evangelicalism of which these two men were contributing authors.
One of the articles was written by Kevin Bauder, called "Defending the Idea of Fundamentalism" which was an excerpt from the book. He says:

"Some version of fundamentalism is necessary. Granted, it needs to be a chastened fundamentalism. It needs to become even more serious about worship, preaching, devotion and holiness. It needs to become more doctrinally careful. It desperately needs to distance itself from the excesses of its worst exemplars. If it cannot rid itself of hyper fundamentalism and revivalism, and if it cannot learn sobriety, then the fundamentalist movement probably does not deserve to survive."

I agree that some kind of fundamentalism is necessary because there has to be a standard bearing group of faithful believers who will hold the banner of truth at the front of the battle lines. But, the current movement we know as fundamentalism has failed to do so and in my opinion, the small fragment of fundamentalism that has any resemblance to historic fundamentalism has discovered its need to reform far too late. The cancer of hyper-fundamentalism was allowed to spread for far too long until it has taken over the majority of the movement. According to this book, there are about 13,000 Independent Fundamental Baptist Churches in America of every flavor. How many of those do you think are "hyper-fundamentalist" churches? It's hard to say, but if you pick any place on the map and look up Independent Fundamental Baptist Churches in the phone book, most likely, it will not be a historic, balanced, "doctrinally careful" kind of church. The reality, I believe, is that historic fundamentalism's days are numbered and the movement will inevitably be dominated (if it isn't already) by the hyper-fundamentalists.

Bauder goes on to say:

"The dissolution of the mainstream would give them (hyper-fundamentalists) clear title to whatever remains of the movement, though it would bear little resemblance to historic fundamentalism...Hyper fundamentalism is not fundamentalism. It is a parasite on the fundamentalist movement. For many years it was simply a nuisance, largely ignored by mainstream fundamentalists. Ignoring the problem, however, permitted it to grow."

Nobody has to officially pull the plug and dissolve what's left of historic fundamentalism. It's going to dissolve anyway as it continues to shrink and young fundamentalists continue to leave the movement. Ignoring cancer will kill you too. When you realize it has eaten up almost all of your body, it's too late to start treatment. Fundamentalism is dying and is being replaced by a mutation of the movement that has become the new mainstream. So, what do we do? Eject and go to mainstream or conservative evangelicalism? Don't they have problems too? Bauder says something that I think is helpful for an answer:

"More and more of fundamentalism is being co-opted by what I call hyper-fundamentalism. We're being slowly eroded by the hard right. That is forcing us to wake up to the fact that there were tough choices that we should have made a long time ago that we didn't. So our hands aren't entirely clean in the way we have conducted ourselves. Some of the blame that has been laid against us from outside fundamentalism has been merited. We deserved it...On the other hand, conservative evangelicals...have never seen what I would regard as a really robust, balanced Biblical fundamentalism. And because of that, they are working their way toward a more separatistic position from a less separatistic position. If we articulate our ideas well, I think we have the opportunity to persuade them to a better position that they might not otherwise come to."

Here's my diagnosis. The current movement of fundamentalism is going to die...within my lifetime. It will be forced to cooperate with the conservative evangelicals in order for its institutions to survive. So the usefulness of the current minority of "mainstream", historic fundamentalists will be in exactly what Bauder says will happen if we are careful to articulate our ideas well...it will move conservative evangelicals to a more biblical and healthy separatism and the two sides will be merged to form a new and improved fundamentalism, except we will lose the label (since it will already have been hijacked by the hyper-fundies). Some kind of "gospel-centric" tag will eventually evolve by those who oppose it and that name will stick as the new movement for orthodoxy and orthopraxy. It will look more like historic fundamentalism of the late 1800's in that it will consist of more than just Baptists. This is what I am looking forward to and will spend my years on this earth working toward, so that our church will have a solid movement to be a part of years after I am gone.

"Gravitas"

2011-11-25T12:39:00.001-08:00

After having hosted our second Expositors Conference at Mission Peak Baptist Church with Dr. Steve Lawson, I realized something that makes the difference between lightweights and heavyweights in ministry that I couldn't put my finger on before. It is a quality that Lawson identified as "gravitas".

The standard by which pragmatic American Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism puts their stamp of approval on someone is in the numbers that they bring in to their churches. As long as you have thousands coming in, you are considered a heavy weight. Anything you do or say becomes the new bar that the rest of us peons have to emulate in order to earn their status of success. The outlandish and outrageous becomes par for the course. Their actions are defended with the missional contextualization argument that makes it all good when attempting to reach certain subcultures in ways they can understand. What has bothered me about much of Evangelicalism is how they trivialize everything sacred and holy. What has bothered me about much of Fundamentalism is how they trivialize that which is sacred and holy while putting on a facade of taking the ministry seriously. Here's what I man by trivializing. On James MacDonald's blog, he announced the sessions at the Elephant Room and they are named after Beatles Songs. Not to mention having dialogue with a heretic as if he were one of their equals. In Evangelical churches, worship is trivialized by the markings of pop culture engraved in everything from the pastors clothes to the bandstand on the stage. The church is trivialized to be nothing more than a weekly pop rock concert and pep talk. In Fundamentalism, however, there is at least the appearance of seriousness by the use of hymn books, the pastor's suit and tie and the orderly service. Yet, when it comes to the preaching, it is often nothing more than a pep talk, story telling or sheep beating devoid of any theological substance or exegetical work.

In Dr. Lawson's teaching on the ministries of Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield and Charles Spurgeon, there was something that separated these men of God from almost all the well known Christian leaders today - that is Gravitas! Gravitas is Latin for seriousness, dignity, weightiness, substance and sobriety. The Reformers couldn't afford to be superficial, shallow, trifling and petty. The entire fate of Europe depended on how they taught, wrote, lived and influenced others with the truth of God. Unfortunately, the fate of western civilization also depends on today's pulpits just as much as it did back then. The difference is that there is nobody being killed in the process and today's leaders think that ministry is customer service. The Puritans also carried this kind of weightiness about them. They lived with eternity ever before them. They were not interested in being hip, stylish, current, popular or any of the other valueless preoccupations of modern Christian leaders. They saw their duties as having eternal import. They saw the lives of those under their care as always on the brink of eternal judgment . They lived Corum Deo "before the face of God" which sobered them up in everything that they did. It made them more aware of the preciousness of time, the reality of hell, the eternal destinies of their families and friends, and the consequences of ideas. After spending a few private hours with Dr. Lawson over lunch, dinner, coffee and just driving back and forth to the airport, I was immediately aware his laser focus on the task at hand. He was not casual about anything. He had very little interest in small talk. He didn't want to waste his breath on that which was of no mutual edification. We mostly talked about theology, history and ministry related subjects. It was no wonder that this man travels, preaches, writes and pastors like he does! He redeems the time, he doesn't waste time on internet chatter, he doesn't trifle with worthless entertainment and he doesn't even listen to music that is less serious than he is. He was not uptight, stuffy, boring or snobbish either. It was like spending a couple hours with John Owen, Richard Baxter or some other Puritan from another century. He modeled for me what it means to be in this world, but not of this world in just a few short hours and in the pulpit as he taught us about men whom he has spent years studying.

I was personally challenged to take my ministry, marriage, study, preaching, teaching, leisure, music, leadership, entertainment, time, prayer and personal holiness much more seriously than I have been by constantly keeping eternity before my sight! I want my ministry to be characterized by gravitas!

The Arrogance of Soul Winning Superiority

2011-11-09T18:12:00.000-08:00

I was listening to some lectures from some famous IFB preachers at a particular well known conference out here in California recently on my iPod. I like to listen to leadership lessons by these guys because they know a thing or two about organization that I can benefit from. As a young guy who is learning and growing my own ministry philosophy and not borrowing someone else's, there are a lot of areas of ministry that I am trying to develop for the long haul. One of the areas I have struggled with is missiology. How do I best go about carrying out the great commission? Fundamentalists like to call it "Soul Winning"; and to them it's a no-brainer - you go door to door to every house in your city and present the "Roman's Road" and try to secure as many decisions for Christ as you possibly can! It's easy and produces results if done persistently and systematically. You "win" souls to Christ with a sales pitch approach to evangelism aimed at getting them to willingly pray a sinner's prayer with the "soul winner". I'm not going to criticize the the method of sharing the good news door to door. I'm not against that at all. I think that can be one of many ways that we try to fulfill the great commission. But what is disheartening is the kind of rhetoric that I hear about people who question that method. The Fundamentalist defense is to attack the "critic" as someone who doesn't care about souls and is disobedient to the great commission. "People who don't win souls always have an excuse" one preacher said. Can a philosophy of evangelism be right if it produces such an arrogant spirit of superiority in the leaders who propagate it against those who do not agree with them? What I find interesting, is that on the right hand, door knocking house to house on Tuesday night is taught as THE WAY to "win souls", and then on the left hand, some other kinds of churches are touting a house to house community group method as THE WAY to be "on mission". The difference that I find however, is that the Fundamentalist method is promoted as the only way and I even heard one guy say that if we're not knocking on doors, then we're in direct disobedience to the Lord's command! I remember being proud of the fact that our church was "tearing up the woods" by being a soul winning church and that all the other neo-evangelical type churches were not doing anything for God. There was a self righteous pride in my heart about our "works" that we did as we compared ourselves with others who were "liberals".

What has amazed me in the past year or so that I have been re-discovering what it means to truly fulfill the great commission, is that there are all kinds of churches out there outside of the fundamentalist world who are bringing in loads of people to Christ through other methods other than door knocking and running buses. I have had my missionary, evangelistic, 'soul winning' zeal inspired more by the preaching of men like Tim Keller, Brad House, and John Piper than I ever had by those who reduced evangelism to a once a week event where we knock on doors.

What Does the Occupy Wall St. people and the Modern Church have in common?

2011-10-28T17:33:00.000-07:00

I just got done reading a book by Thom and JessRainer called "The Millenials: Connecting with America's Largest Generation". It was way too rosy colored about this generation of 20-somethings. I am in my mid-30's and even though I'm considered part of Generation X, I'm not too far off since I grew up in the 80's and 90's. Fortunately, my parents did not have too much of the Boomer's ethics and values. They were more old fashioned and carried with them more of the Greatest Generation of WWII values and they taught them to my sister and me. As I look at my generation, it is really hard to be patient with them. This book is way too positive about my youngster generation probably based on the kinds of questions that they used to interview them. You'll have to read it for yourself to see what I mean.

Anyway, as I look at the kids on Wall Street who have started the "Occupy" movement, it reminded me of many church members who have "occupied" old traditional churches for many years. What do they have in common? They both have a great need of a reality check. That's right. Reality is not their friend. They are delusional.

Millennials and Occupiers:

The current discontent being demonstrated/defecated in the streets of New York and elsewhere is a result of 20-somethings who think that the world owes them all the comforts that their mommies and daddies made sure that they were given as children. This is a generation of kids who were coddled, re-affirmed, praised and rewarded for just being average. They grew up in schools where red-ink was banned when they got an F on their tests. They were the kids who all won the little league games and all went home with a trophy because nobody kept score. These are the kids who grew up playing video games all day while their parents slaved away at work. This isn't their fault. Their parents, the Baby Boomer generation, did this to them because they were mostly divorced, guilt-ridden, ex-hippies who taught their children that they were special, exceptional and deserving in order to soothe their own consciences for their failures as parents! In reality it made them extra-sensitive and easily bruised. These kids grew up and now they can't find a job because they voted in a loser President who has squandered the country's future. So, instead of being like their grandfathers and great grandfathers of the WWII generation when they got hit with the Great Depression, this group goes to Wall Street, craps all over the streets and demands that the successful give them their money. It's kinda the way they demanded their way with their parents when they were kids. This generation needs a kick in the butt and a reality check that reality is going to give them. They have a choice: they can embrace reality or keep fighting it and end up as the greatest generation of losers.

Church Members:

Reality is, most churches in America are dying. They are not growing, they are not reaching their communities, they are not planting new churches and they are not sending new missionaries like they used to. However, if you talk to the average member, they think everything is fine and when you try to make changes that will revitalize a church, they whine, cry, complain and protest at business meetings about how they've never done "such and such" before. This past generation of Christians in America are the consumer church generation. They were taught by their pastors that the church was there to serve them. The buildings are designed for members' comforts and conveniences. They were given their preferences, whether it is the music they like, the color of the carpet or whatever. They were given a variety of choices of other churches that they could defect to if their current church didn't give them their way. Reality is not the friend of those who demand to have their way. It may not be possible in the world of reality. There may be restrictions, there may be changes that need to make or the church will die. So they have two choices - accept changes that need to be made or let their church buildings continue to die and in the end, they will drive by their old church that they loved to death and find out that they are now mosques or high density apartments.

Pop Goes the Church (Agreements) Part 2

2011-10-24T18:00:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, i wrote the first post as a review of this book that I bought after seeing it talked about on another website. In the first post, I pointed out the philosophy and ideas that I disagreed with and that I thought were not Biblically correct. Now, anyone can be a critic...right? Most of these guys who have big churches that are innovative think critics are just Pharisees or that we're jealous of their ministries...blah blah blah....

Well, I want to be fair and balanced, I want to take sides with some of the problems that Tim Stevens brought up in this book that I think he is spot on in recognizing.

In the first chapter, I can identify with the author's background. He grew up in a fundamentalist type church that forbad him from attending movies or reading any other version but the KJV. I feel his frustration with the traditionalist church...they are so often inward focused!

"the church was driven blindly and obsessively by two primary goals. First, protect ourselves from the culture at all costs. So rather than prepare children to engage, discern and make good choices, we put our hands over their eyes and our fingers in their ears. However, through the internet and new media, the culture was still able to invade our homes. Unfortunately, our kids were ill prepared to deal with it. Our second goal was to use our combined Christian power to legislate and pressure the culture to change to reflect our values." P.32

This is absolutely right! You either get cultural fundamentalism or the moral majority! The church thought that it had a grip on the culture since western culture had been shaped by the Reformation for over the last five hundred years, and it did not know how to deal with the cultural shift.

"In my years growing up, I only remember two truly lost adults coming to Christ at church....the church was a bunker. It was a shelter from the bad world out there. You didn't bring your irreligious friends to church, if by chance you had any....we had a visitorat church on Sunday; he was not with someone else...very unusual, but stranger yet, he was very unclean and had ratty tennis shoes on...As a teen trying to learn, I stood close by and listened to the ushers say, 'this is God's house, and he can't dress that way, we at least need to find him a different pair of shoes before the service starts.' I don't know what they eventually said to him, but I never saw him again." P.36-37

I could tell you all kinds of stories like that too! I remember two guys with long hair, earrings and tatoos and I think they might have been gay. They came to church for a few weeks in a row, but they were so different looking than the rest of us with short haircuts, clean shaved faces, in our suits and ties, that nobody bothered talking to them or befriending them. After about three weeks, I never saw them again. They knew they weren't welcomed. They had breached the walls of our bunker. We as cultural Christians became willfully ignorant about the cultural changes around us and became fearful of engaging the culture. As a result...

"We have a problem called 'the curse of knowledge'...Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has 'cursed' us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others because we can't readily re-create our listeners' state of mind." p. 46

This point totally hit me! I am more theologically educated than 99% of our church, so I end up assuming that newer people coming to our church understand "the glory of God","God-centeredness, Pauline Epistles, etc..." and I wrongly assume that they know more than they actually do or that they actually have the same goals and vision that I do! So what can we do to adjust? The big idea that he presents, is basically right...

"Leveraging the Culture: How can we leverage the culture to reach as many people as we possibly can without compromising our biblical message? How can we maximize an opportunity we may never have again to share the love of God?..." P.80
"...to keep our kids away from society, we send them to a Christian school with Christian teachers and Christian friends...we remove our influence from the world. Instead, of...being salt and light in a dark world, we spend our time intent on making sure none of the dirt of the world gets on us!...when we try to make our entire lives 'Christian' is that we fail to teach our kids how to be discerning. The mental muscle that helps us filter our response to what is good and bad is never exercised. So when we do interact with someone outside our Christian bubble, we come of as fanatical or weird-worse yet, as superior and judgmental." P.91-92

Instead of isolating ourselves from the culture, we need to leverage the culture. The fundamentalist automatically thinks letting the water into the boat when he hears this idea. But this doesn't HAVE TO be the case. The truth is, the world is asking questions and searching for answers through cultural expressions such as movies and popular music....

" We have a great opportunity to tune in and engage our communities in conversation and even leverage the culture to increase our impact through the local church. I would like to consider seven themes about which the culture is already talking.. They are writing songs, creating movies, broadcasting TV shoes on these seven topics...
1. A fascination with eternity and the supernatural
2. A longing for relationships
3. Love and sex
4. Honesty and authenticity
5.A desire for purpose
6. Bitterness and revenge
7. Justice and redemption
...The first step is tuning in to God's truth in the culture, wherever it appears. The next step is figuring out how to use that knowledge to have an impact on our community." p. 96,107

Every missionary would understand this to be the method of reaching his foreign field. He would study the culture through their arts, literature and history to understand how the people think and then find corresponding ways to communicate the gospel. This is what we must learn to do. However, what makes it awkward, is that we are natives to this culture, yet we reject much of the twisted cultural expressions and then separate from it. I find it very helpful to listen to Blink 182, Eminem, Green Day and others not for pleasure, but to listen to what they are saying, crying out for and trying to make sense of through their music. Only the gospel has the answers to these things and if the culture is asking the questions, then we need to be ready to give an answer in terms they will understand. Now, Tim Stevens recommends that we re-shape our entire church service by importing all the various changing pop culture trends in order to address them. In my last post, I expressed why I disagree that the church worship service is even supposed to do that! It's worship, not evangelism. Now, if you did a meeting on a Saturday night that was geared towards reaching unsaved people using a movie theme, or popular song in order to address the theme that only Jesus has the answer to...then that's something I would be willing to consider. Doing it on Sunday and calling it worship? I don't think that's what God intended. The great commission is what we're all concerned about, but the flawed "seeker-sensitive" philosophy tells the world to "come to us", but a biblical missional philosophy says to the Christian: "go to them!"

Pop Goes the Church - (Disagreements) Part 1

2011-10-13T17:38:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I read an article on Pyromaniacs where two books were mentioned. One of which I bought because I was curious. The book is titled "Pop Goes the Church" by Tim Stevens. Seeing that it has forwards and recommendations from the likes of Ed Young Jr. and Bill Hybles, I already knew the answer to the question in the subtitle. This book should be considered the seeker-sensitive church manifesto. It helps you understand why sleazy pastors like Perry Noble play "Highway to Hell" in their worship services. Tim does say that: "pushing the envelope or going over the edge is not the point (p. 145)", but who's really going to take that advice?

However, when I read something that I already know that I'm going to probably disagree with, I try really hard to be objective and give the author a fair hearing. So, I am going to do two posts: this one will point out my disagreements and the next one will point out my agreements and raise questions about what we should do with this information. Tim Stevens mentioned that he came from a church that preached against movies, was KJV-Only and considered Steve Green's music to be sensual (p.37). The author must have been raised in the IFB! I can totally sympathize with his frustrations about traditional church. Being that I came from the same background as the author, I understand his mentality and his theological worldview. However, his theology seems to be very man-centered in its focus. For example:

"There is a growing percentage of people of faith in our communities who love God the best way they know how- they just see the church as completely irrelevant" (p.30)

Who are people of faith? What he means by this is that unconverted people are still "spiritual beings" and that they are "pursuing God through the culture subconsciously." (p.30-31) He straight out said: "People in our culture are searching for God." (p.62). Sorry, Paul would disagree:
Romans 3:11 There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God.
Immediately, I have to object with this premise because the Bible makes it clear that God isn't running from mankind and mankind is not pursuing God! God is pursuing man, while man is running from God! (Gen. 3:9; Rom.1)

The next thing he built his case on is the unsubstantiated claim that

"we feel God tugging at our heart through the culture...many of us were never given any context for God speaking to us through a secular song, a blockbuster movie, or a graphic novel. Is it possible? What do we do with it? How do we respond?" (p.61)

My question is: "Is that even a Biblical thought? My caution flags flew up all over page 61 when he went on to use a lot of subjective terms about "feeling" the presence and fervor of God at a rock concert; "experiencing" the power of movie magic". We do not have the right to ascribe the power, or speaking of God to things that God has not clearly taken the credit for! Tim Stevens gave all kinds of examples such as the TV Series "Saving Grace" and "Desperate Housewives" as examples of fallen screen artists who express truth in their art forms. Particularly, in pop culture, there are seven themes that keep coming up:

1. A fascination with eternity and the supernatural
2. A longing for relationships
3. Love and sex
4. Honesty and authenticity
5. A Desire for purpose
6. Bitterness and revenge
7. Justice and Redemption. (p. 96-97)

He rightly points out that these themes are predominant because fallen people are spiritual beings seeking the answers to understand these themes! Where he is wrong is at the crux of his theological understanding of the depravity of man. At this point in the book, I remembered another book, that I wish Tim Stevens would have read called "Meaning at the Movies" by Grant Horner. Professor Horner rightly nails the idea of truth being expressed in pop culture. It isn't because people are seeking God, but because people - made in the image of God - are suppressing truth that comes from God and it oozes out in all kinds of different distorted forms that we Christians immediately recognize in the culture.

His next major premise is that we as Christians should be reaching out to the lost by inviting them to a church they can understand and relate to:

"For us, church was a bunker. It was a place of shelter to protect Christians from the bad world out there. You didn't bring your irreligious friends to the church...no, you got them saved out there, and when they had been cleaned up, you brought them to the place of refuge...Why did we have to be won outside the doors of the church and only brought to the church after he had been cleaned up and was ready to grow?" (p.36-37)

He went on to explain about how to use themes that people are naturally drawn to such as money, sex, family, purpose, etc.. to draw them in...

"If you don't offer something people need, they won't come. If the people don't come, you can't teach them the truth. So, an effective church is busy identifying people's needs and letting the community know you have some help they should consider." (p.121)

This is the difference between being "Missional" and "Seeker Sensitive". The Seeker church begins with the premise that man is looking for God and if we make the church inviting and comfortable for them, they'll come so we can tell them the gospel.
Being Missional (Biblical) on the other hand, doesn't ask the sinner to "come", it tells the Christian to "go"! But, Tim Stevens makes the right assessment about why they do church the way they do:

"It all has to do with how you view your services." (p. 151)

That's exactly it! They view worship services as the primary tool for evangelism. This is where I disagree with him about bringing pop culture into the worship. What is the purpose of the worship service? It is never taught in Scripture to be an evangelistic event. It is to be focused on God, not man. Worship isn't worship if it's focused on anything other than beholding and enjoying the nature of God! This is something only Christians can do and that is why it's something that we can't expect unbelievers to understand and relate to. I once heard John MacArthur once say at a conference:

"I don't want unbelievers to relate to anything that goes on here on Sunday...I want them to look around and say to themselves..'what in the world is going on in here?'"

That idea is "Anathema" to the Seeker Sensitive crowd because they have little idea about the character of the God they say they worship, and they equally misunderstand the character of the people they're trying to reach.

More to come....

Think Differently - Thanks to Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T09:40:00.001-07:00

Like many of you who heard the news yesterday, I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Computer genius, Steve Jobs. Being from the Bay Area and having grown up in the Silicon Valley, he became a household name and his computers were many of our first introduction to computer technology when we were kids in a classroom. I remember the Apple 1 as an elementary student and later the Mac Plus when I was in high school. I remember in college when Apple made a comeback after Steve took over the company again by introducing the iMac and shortly thereafter the iPod. Was it just cool, sleek products that made him exceptional? No, it was something entirely different: Steve Jobs did not settle for status quo thinking. He thought outside of the box, he was creative and innovative. "Think Differently" became the Apple slogan when he began creating new products that broke away from trying to compete with Windows. Bill Gates had already won that segment of the industry and Steve knew there was no way he would overtake it. So, instead of trying to maintain a distant second place to Microsoft, he excelled in being #1 in an area of demand that did not even exist yet.

So, what can be learned from his life? For me personally, I thank God for the life of Steve Jobs because first, he was a man made in the image of God and he demonstrated the greatness of man's potential to improve the lives of millions of people even in his fallen and unredeemed condition.

Second, Steve inspired millions to "Think Differently" and to challenge status quo thinking which hinders so much good from being done when we get trapped into an archaic rut of non-creative, lazy thinking. Fear of man's disapproval often keeps us from venturing out into something that we believe in because we let other people set limits on us. Steve Jobs refused to be boxed in to mediocrity that Microsoft, IBM and the whole PC world would have gladly let him occupy. Instead, he excelled by looking at uses for technology that the PC world was barely even aware of.

In his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford, he said:

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heavendon't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share.No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is verylikely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clearsout the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday nottoo long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorryto be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someoneelse's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results ofother people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out yourown inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart andintuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everythingelse is secondary."

I would filter those statements through a Biblical grid and take what he said to inspire me to listen to the inner voice of God's Spirit by not letting the noise of others' opinions drown out what I come to understand as right.

Lastly, Jesus' words come to mind that are so profound and they ring louder than anything anyone could possibly say about Steve Jobs or any other great person who passes away in death. Jesus said to those who were faced with the choice of following their own way or following Him in Mark 8:36 "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?"

As far as we know, Steve Jobs' spiritual beliefs were rooted in New Age spiritualism and he probably died without Christ, thus having gained the whole world, he most likely lost his own soul. In his commencement speech he said something very profound, but got one thing wrong which will cost him eternity:

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most importanttool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Becausealmost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear ofembarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death,leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die isthe best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

Everything he said here is absolutely right and should lead you to follow Christ as your salvation! But he concluded, as most lost men do: "There is no reason not to follow your heart".

I disagree, there is a reason, and it's not other people's opinions or dreams, it's yourself that makes you "the other people" and the problem for other people. Following your heart will lead you to ruin:

Jeremiah 17:9-10 The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it? I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings.

Proverbs 28:26 He who trusts in his own heart is a fool.

Ironically, Steve Jobs' last words of advice to the Stanford crowd was "Stay hungry, stay foolish".

Stay hungry! Yes!! Find your satisfaction in the God who created you! Use your human potential for the good of millions of people governed by the Lordship of God!

Stay Foolish! No! Don't trust your heart and be a fool! Get a new heart that only God can create! Imagine what a redeemed Steve Jobs could have done.

Another Evangelistic Tool

2011-09-26T22:25:00.001-07:00

Here's another great film that will help confront the culture...

Pulpit Punks

2011-09-23T12:53:00.000-07:00

It has become cool in the new hipster mega churches to portray a total bad-boy punk image as somehow "spiritual" and "Christlike" because they are not quenching the Spirit by tradition and cultural taboos.

Does any of this rhetoric strike you as loving?

John 13:35 "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."
It seems to me that these two little boys were deeply hurt by their traditionalistic, fundamentalistic churches that they probably grew up in. I know for sure that Perry Noble grew up in one of those kinds of churches because he often mentions it with disdain. Now, I think I am qualified to comment accurately on this because that same kind of rebellious, in-your-face, chest-pounding, poke-you-in-the-eye lashing out is a monster that resides in my heart too. It is something that I have to constantly fight by looking at the incredible grace of Jesus who when He was reviled, did not revile in return (1 Peter 2:23). I have to constantly remember that the gospel has saved me from the legalistic, Phariseeism that these guys are lashing out against by bowing my head in shame at my own legalistic Phariseeism that comes out in trying to be a pulpit punk who measures spirituality by being as anti-traditional as possible.

Hard Questions about the Charisma

2011-09-21T20:05:00.000-07:00

A former church member who recently moved away really challenged my thinking about my position on some of the spiritual gifts that we would put in the category of "apostolic sign gifts" that ceased with the death of the apostolate. The passages that seem to be most used to teach the ending of such sign gifts are the following:

1 Corinthians 12:7-11 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. 8 For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; 9 To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; 10 To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: 11 But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.

1 Corinthians 13:8-10 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

2 Corinthians 12:12 Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.

From what I understand these verses to teach, there will be a time when the gift of tongues will cease (middle voice) from happening of itself. There is not going to be something from the outside to stop them, like some of the other gifts will "vanish away" (passive voice) when "the perfect" comes. So, clearly the gift of tongues is done! So whatever aberrations of "tongues" that modern Charismatics are practicing are NOT a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, if that practice is not of the Spirit of God, what spirit is producing it? The answer that I always give is that it is either man-made emotional hype or it's demonic activity. I'll usually give the former reason the benefit of the doubt for my Charismatic friends.

The signs of an apostle are vaguely described as wonders and mighty deeds. Which wonders and mighty deeds could these be? It is safe to assume that the kinds of healings, raising people from the dead and other Jesus-like miracles would fit in this description right? Are these kinds of miracles happening by people today? Not at all. People do pray in faith and God sovereignly heals...no doubt about that. But nobody can claim to have the gifts of the apostles and really prove it like Peter and Paul did.

But that leaves me with a couple other spiritual gifts that don't fall in the category of tongues, and yet don't fall in the category of wonders and mighty deeds, and I want to ask the question about the possibility of those gifts continuing! Is it possible that a "word of knowledge" which could be something that God reveals to a person without any possibility that he could have known it from another source gets the supernatural knowledge of an event or incident? Or is it possible that a person could be forewarned about something in a dream by God for a specific and immediate purpose? The word of knowledge and predictive prophecy cannot really be categorized as a sign, wonder and mighty deed can it? If so, what exegetical proof do we have that these gifts are a total impossibility today?

Lastly, let me ask something else: when someone (who claims to be a Christian and by all means bears the marks and fruits of true faith) has one of these experiences and it was actually true...how do we who are cessationists account for that? Can we really say that it was just a freak coincidence that they dreamed about something and it happened or that they knew about an event and that nobody else could have known? Or do we write off that person as being demonic and gaining that information by the Devil?
Or is it possible that there are some people whom God actually reveals things to as words of knowledge or prophecy? Mind you...I am not talking about adding to God's Word since the Canon is closed. We are not talking about God speaking audibly to people or anything of that nature. I am talking about real supernatural information that people obtain that can't be explained in human terms. Can that still happen? If not, why not? What scriptural proof do we really have?

What Bothers Me About Worship Leaders

2011-09-19T22:41:00.000-07:00

One of the new inventions of the modern church is the "Worship Leader". It kinda morphed out of the old fashioned invention of the "Song leader" who led the church in singing by waving his hands to the music tempo. Martyn Lloyd-Jones didn't even like that "new office in the church" as he mentioned in His book "Preaching and Preachers". He was on to something back then. Modern "Worship Leaders" bother me for several reasons:

1. Some don't even get what worship really is. They wouldn't even take that title if they did because it reduces the idea of worship to singing "prom songs to Jesus" as Mark Driscoll puts it. The church has given up so much ground, and now it seems that worship has been given up too. It used to be that the pastors were the expert Biblical counselors, yet most pastors today will say that counseling is something for professionals and they send God's people off to shrinks because they gave up true discipleship a long time ago. If they understood discipleship, they would never have given up on counseling. The same goes for worship: if pastors understood what worship is, they wouldn't hand it off to some starved for attention musician who thinks he's a worship expert because he can bang on a guitar. Although I don't like a lot of his music, Bob Kauflin's book "Worship Matters" has a good chapter at the beginning to help straighten out the worship leader's understanding of worship - it's not just singing: it's all we do in response to God's grace for His glory!

2. Some often have their own agenda. Dan Lucarini was a worship leader who led church music in the typical modern Christian Rock style of worship music. He wrote several books on his experiences and why he left the entire worship leader scene. In his book "It's Not About the Music" he mentions from his own experience that many worship leaders have aspirations that are not about building up the local church, but rather building up their own reputation as an effective showman who are hopeful of landing a record deal and producing their own albums. I have experienced a similar thing with some worship leaders. Some don't respect the authority of the pastor or elders they work with. They think that the music/worship is something that they have authority over and they will do with it whatever they feel is going to draw out the best response from the congregation.

3. Many try to create an artificial experience. Music is powerful and can be used to have tremendous power over people because it has the ability to move the emotions by bypassing the mind's rationale. This doesn't always have to be the case, but in modern worship music, it often is. I have to admit that I really enjoy a lot of the worship songs written by Matt Redman such as "Blessed be Your Name; This is How We Know; You Alone Can Rescue; Facedown" and others. But when I listen to one of his albums, I really hate it when he repeats the chorus or one line in the chorus endlessly for five minutes, while he gets louder, the drums beat harder, the guitars strum louder until it climaxes at the end after having put you in a trance. It is really an abuse of music when the worship leader tries to get people high on an emotional trip. Thus, the closing eyes, waving hands around, and gyrating body movements that are identical to what happens at a Lady Gaga concert. I wonder why people don't get that worked up when they hear the expositional preaching of God's living and active Word which we know has REAL Power! No, most of the people who demand 45 minutes of standing "worship" experience also demand to keep the sermon short and sweet so they can get home before the kickoff starts! Part of this artificial worship experience is this strange fascination with turning down the lights and turning on moving colored stage lighting. I really wonder how in the world the church worshiped for 2000 years without these things! It's all a show: man-made artificial moving of the Spirit so that people can feel that they were close to God while turning their brains off. (With the best of intentions of course...we're not allowed to judge their motives as we are so frequently reminded.)

4. Many lead by following fads. When a worship leader says: "Oh that song is soooo old!" even though it was written three years ago, you know you have a problem. Three years ago, he couldn't wait to rock that song out at the church the moment it was released on Skillet's newest album! They are so often led by passing fads that they have no sense of appreciating the songs of the past unless of course one of their favorite groups re-recorded an old song with a new spin thereby giving it new hipster creds.

The truth is, whether the modern church likes it or not, worship is to be elder-led! They lead everything! They don't just deliver a sermon. That doesn't mean they have to do the singing or play the music, but they need to be the ones who call the shots and set the agenda for the music and lead the church from the beginning of the service to the end in worship - worship in fellowship, worship in song, worship in giving, worship in service and worship in the preached Word. Even in Revelation 4, the worship in heaven is going to be "elder-led" worship. So, if you have a "Worship Leader", consider changing his title because it is not a good term. If you're a pastor, then YOU are the worship leader and your musicians need to be led by a man who knows how to theologically lead people in worship through music, not a man who is led by the latest CCM fads that he saw at the latest Hillsong video.

What is Romantic?

2011-09-09T18:31:00.001-07:00

This post will have absolutely nothing to do with theology, but it was something interesting that I observed after having a conversation with my wife. We were discussing what we thought was romantic in terms of music. We were listening to music that had singers like Josh Groban, Andrea Bocelli and other Divos. I personally can't stand a bunch of pompous windbags like these guys contending with each other for glory and then watching women fawning after them. Yuck. This kind of music doesn't make me feel romantic, it makes me feel nauseous and annoyed. But my wife expressed to me that this kind of music actually communicates the feelings of romance. Here's a sample of what I'm talking about: When asked what I thought was romantic, I automatically thought of "Sweet Love" by Anita Baker: Is this just a matter of taste or is there something more to it? Why, when thinking of romance, my wife naturally gravitates to music sung by dudes in tux's and when I think of romance, I gravitate to music sung by a woman with a more sensual sound? It came down to the way men and women think. Men equate romance with that which leads to sex and women equate romance with....well, I don't know...I still don't get it. I guess it's complicated. Whatever makes them feel loved, wanted, cherished, treasured, thought about, etc...So, men...communicate to your wives the kind of stuff that SHE thinks is romantic and not what you naturally gravitate to or she will think that its insincere and all you really want is...well, you know...and so do we, just don't communicate that. So, put on Josh Groban music on the stereo after making a nice dinner for your wife expecting nothing in return and deal with it! Ladies, love your husbands in the way HE thinks is romantic...it's not that complicated. 'Nuff said.

How Not to Leave A Church

2011-09-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

How would you feel about a pastor who just didn't show up on Sunday? The whole church family is gathered for worship and someone gets up in the pulpit and announces that the pastor has resigned without saying goodbye or giving an explanation. He just abandoned his post. You would probably think that he didn't really care about the church. That he was irresponsible and hurtful for leaving that way. Perhaps you would call him a coward. You would feel abandoned!

Well, why in the world do church members think they can just leave the church like that and it be alright for them? Are they not being irresponsible, uncaring, and cowardly too? Shouldn't they at least say goodbye and give people some closure? Here's some thoughts on how NOT to leave a church:

1. Do not make a scene, a soapbox speech in front of everyone before storming out.
2. Do not gossip and talk to other members trying to influence them to leave with you.
3. Do not text or tweet the pastor and tell him you're leaving the church (that is so pathetic).
4. Do not just write a letter or email and then vanish.
5. Do not write an angry letter to a bunch of people and then not show up next Sunday.

Rather, have some dignity about it. Tell the pastor ahead of time that your next Sunday will be your last and tell him why. He needs to know what caused you to make the decision to leave. Maybe it was something he could have avoided or he could learn from to avoid losing other members over the same thing. Come to that last service, say goodbye to the pastor and to the people who will really notice your absence and give them a brief explanation without malice to let them know you're leaving. But that kind of action takes some guts to do because it's awkward. But, so what!? It's the loving thing to do for those you're leaving behind so they don't feel abandoned like the pastor mentioned at the beginning of this post. The bottom line is this - if you leave in the ways described in #'s 1-5 above, you are telling everyone in your old church that you don't really love them, no matter how good a reason you think you have for leaving a church. And in that case....your absence may be a blessing. The church should be full of people who love each other, even when it hurts.

Longevity + Off-Mission = Irrelevant

2011-08-29T18:36:00.000-07:00

As a young pastor it's easy to be a little intimidated by church members who have been in the church for longer than you've been alive. Seniority and long tenure are certainly worthy of respect in any venue whether it be a place of employment or membership in a church. Most people only stay in a church for two or three years before either moving out of the area or getting their feelings hurt about something and leaving to find another church. So, when a person has been faithful to the same church for DECADES, that really is something for the younger generation to take into consideration when making decisions.

But let me suggest to those veteran church members who have been on the role for decades that there is something they need to take into consideration too - the mission of the church is not to make church attenders who stick around for years. The mission is to make disciple-makers (2Tim. 23:2; Matt. 28:18-20). So, if a person is a long standing member of the church but has been off mission for years, what does his longevity amount to? If a long standing church member has not been active in discipling the younger people who come into the life of the church, what good is his tenure? There are a lot or church members in churches all over this country that have been warming the same pew for generations watching the new attenders and members come and go through the years. They make little or no effort to befriend them, understand them, love them or teach them. When something needs to change in a church, then all of a sudden, they stand up and get real passionate about keeping things the way they've always been, throwing their weight around as the senior, veteran church member who's opinion should be valued above everyone else's simply because their pew is worn out by their buttocks more than other people's pews! I want to suggest that if they have been off mission - not actively making disciples of people in the life of their church that they have been a part of for so many years - then their seniority and longevity is really irrelevant. It doesn't really matter that they've been there for years and years, when they checked out of the mission and have retired to let others do all the disciple making.

So, tenured church member...how have you been participating in the mission of making disciples? Who are you working with right now to make them into more mature believers? If the answer is nobody, then get on mission and put some real weight behind your longevity!

Common Myths about Plurality

2011-08-25T01:28:00.000-07:00

Concerning the subject of a plurality of elders to lead a church; I find that there are some objections and misconceptions that are often raised but they seem to be misnomers when you really understand the concept of Biblical plural eldership. Most of these misconceptions come from a mindset that is operating in a purely congregational or single-pastor led mentality that is unable to compute the possibility that all three models are able to function together in one essential, Biblical government. You don't have to choose between Congregational, Single Pastor or Plural Elder rule. It's a false dilemma. You can have a congregational church that is elder-led and has one lead pastor who casts vision and has the most leadership influence. You don't have to give up one for the sake of another. So, here are some myths concerning Biblical plural eldership that need to be busted.

Myth 1: Anything with more than one head is a monster.
The misconception is that you have three senior pastors all vying for supremacy and authority. This isn't the case in a plurality. Although there will be one pastor who does most of the preaching and teaching or is considered the lead pastor, the pastors are all equals who submit to each other and do not move forward on decisions without unanimity. None of them should be jockeying for preeminence. The single pastor led model can be argued against by looking at the one place where one pastor acted this way: 3 John 1:9-10 I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence among them, does not receive us. 10 Therefore, if I come, I will call to mind his deeds which he does, prating against us with malicious words. And not content with that, he himself does not receive the brethren, and forbids those who wish to, putting them out of the church.
This is a real danger of having one man rule! Do you know any senior pastors who fire staff members because they called him by his first name instead of by his title? Sorta Diotrophetic isn't it? If Diotrophes had a plurality, maybe they would have thrown HIM out of the church instead of those who followed the Apostle John.

Myth 2: The Necessity of a Plurality requires choosing unqualified and uncalled men to fill a position.
I understand that in the desire to raise up elders, a church could make the mistake of picking a couple of good guys and fill in the positions even though they don't measure up to all the qualifications. More often than not, the deacon led churches are guilty of doing this! They take men who are successful at business or have prominence in the community and make them deacons. Anyway, the truth is, elders must be called because it is the Holy Ghost that makes them overseers (Acts 20:28) not the pastor or the congregation. Furthermore, an overseer must measure up to the qualifications set out in I Timothy and Titus and be apt to teach. There is no such thing as ruling elders and teaching elders - if you are not apt to teach, you are not apt to rule either! Elders rule by shepherding the flock: this requires the gift of pastor-teacher (Eph. 4:11).

Myth 3: Small churches can't afford to pay for multiple pastors.
Who says you have to pay all the elders equally? This isn't the case in 1 Timothy 5:17 Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine.
Those who labor in the word and doctrine more than others are paid more. Others do not necessarily have to be full time paid pastors. If the church can afford it, more power to them!

Myth 4: A good deacon board is just as adequate as a a plurality of elders.
No it isn't. Deacons are not given authority in scripture. Deacons are not called to be overseers and may not be gifted with the pastoral gift of governing (1Cor.12:28). They may or may not be gifted to teach either. Elders are a different species from deacons. This isn't to say that there can't be deacons who have the gifts of an elder, in which case, he may find that the Holy Spirit is calling him into eldership. If he should desire that office, then he needs to be recognized by the church and moved into eldership. The deacon's role is to serve the church's more earthly needs like distributing funds, feeding widows, counting money and preparing other things that would take a pastor away from the ministry of the word and doctrine (Acts 6:2).

Myth 5: Congregationalism is forfeited with a plurality of elders.
There are some elder rule models that strip the congregation of their biblical role of choosing elders, choosing deacons, and making other church-wide decisions. This is a problem among some Reformed churches, but it does not have to be the case. You can still have a plurality of elders leading the church in the context of a congregational church government. As Baptists, we believe in the autonomy of the local church and that the final court of appeals is the congregation at large. We see in the early church, the Apostles, Elders and the Congregation making a decision together in harmony: Acts 15:22 Then it pleased the apostles and elders, with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas.
If the plurality of elders is leading the church, then the congregation needs to hold them accountable by making sure that what is taught is truly biblical and that they remain qualified in their character.

Myth 6: It's a Calvinist thing, and you'll drop the name "Baptist Church" to "Bible Church" next.
This is "guilt by association". Is it true that most Calvinist churches also have elders? Sure. But there are also non-Calvinist churches that also practice plurality of elders! Are there many "Bible Churches" that practice plurality? Yes, but There are also Baptist Churches that do so and have not dropped the Baptist name. Often times because something is associated primarily with another group that one may not agree with, the proverbial baby gets thrown out with the bathwater and thus plurality is rejected.

Myth 7: The elder's' (plural) of the "church" (singular) in Acts 20 was referring to "the various individual house churches" that all had one pastor in charge of each of them.
This scenario is definitely a possibility, but in the defense of "one pastor rule", the advocates of this position inadvertently are arguing for an Episcopalian Parish church government! The word "church" in Acts 20:17 no longer means a single local church, but now means a conglomerate of churches in a parish called "the church of Ephesus". I suppose a Bishop to oversee the parish would start making sense. Sorry, this argument doesn't cut it, especially when you look at Paul's practice in Acts 14:23 And when they had ordained them elders (plural) in every church (singular), and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed.
What I also find a bit humorous is that the same pastors that deny the "universal church" concept are OK with "the church" in Acts 20:17 meaning something other than the local church.

I have to close with this one: One guy who used to be a deacon in my old church objected to plural eldership because the Mormons call their leaders "Elders" and that would be unbiblical compromise! He actually used to teach Sunday School for a while! There's a great example of "rightly dividing the word of truth!" that drives a lot of our Baptist churches.

The Internet will Cripple Hysteric Fundamentalism

2011-08-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

This week, I had the joy of talking to a lady who used to be a member of the church that I grew up in. I went to high school with her daughter, but had not seen her in several years. She is attending a Bible Church in the area and her pastor spoke at our church the other night. I asked her how she ended up leaving the extreme IFB church we spent so many years in, and ended up in a somewhat-Reformed non-denominational church. Ultimately, it was the Holy Spirit that was making her hungry for more than extreme conservative Fundamentalist rhetoric that was being poured out of the pulpit every Sunday with no reference to Scripture's authority. It was the internet that exposed false claims that were made and false accusations against other "new-evangelical" ministries from the pulpit. With so much information and facts available at the fingertips of our rank and file church members, it is becoming almost impossible to pull the wool over the eyes of people in the congregation. If you give a statistic, or a factoid from the pulpit, our members can look it up instantly with their iPhone and know in 30 seconds or less if the preacher is full of hot air! The segments of fundamentalism that thrive on sheltering people from influences outside the village will not thrive for much longer. They will probably survive because there will always be people who want to be lied to and want to be controlled. But those will be the only kinds of people that will populate such churches. The internet will cripple hysteric fundamentalism much like the printing press crippled the Roman Catholic Church from their control of what the people could learn.

The Pattern of Plural Eldership in Scripture

2011-08-15T17:43:00.000-07:00

I am afraid that too often, our churches are influenced more by the philosophy of this world and the culture more than the Bible. Evidence of this is clear in the way we look at church government. Our culture already has a very wrong view of authority, so it is no wonder that the leadership in the church is either very weak or overbearing and heavy handed. There is such a preoccupation with one’s own personal rights and very little regard to one’s personal obligations and obedience.

In American culture, we love our constitution which was written to ensure the rights of “We the people”.

However, “In America, the government that now works to ensure their equal opportunity was the same government that in the past worked to make sure they had none. Perhaps our wrong idea of authority has to do with a vision of human nobility – the American optimism that believes people are so good that, if we merely leave them to themselves, “we the people” will be the best we can possibly be.”[1] Yet, it is not God’s will that everyone be in charge of everything. It is also not God’s will that everyone’s opinions be of equal validity. We find this true in Titus 1 where Paul tells Titus that there are some unruly fellows whose mouths must be stopped! There is much in Scripture that rubs against the American grain of popular thinking. The church’s government is not a democracy where we elect whoever we like to be our pastors. God calls elders and the church affirms that call and submits to it. The church’s government is not a dictatorship either. It is not to be ruled by the mandates of one man who has nobody to whom he is accountable except himself. The church’s government is not an aristocracy of a few elites who have appointed themselves to be better than the others and thus reign like a royal family. God’s pattern for authority in the church is in a plurality of God-called, qualified men who occupy the office of elder/pastor/bishop who oversee, lead and feed the church in mutual submission to one another and in mutual accountability to the congregation. I would like to show you from scripture, that there is a real pattern laid out in the Scripture for a plurality of elders to lead God’s people in the church; and this pattern is found as far back as the birth of the nation of Israel. So we will see this pattern first, in the Old Testament, the Apostolate, the early church and finally we will see this pattern in the book of Revelation in heaven!

1. In the Old Testament

Even in a state of slavery, the Israelites recognized certain men as their elders or leaders.

Exodus 3:16 ¹⁶ Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt.

Moses along with the elders issued commands to the people from the Law.

Deuteronomy 27:1 And Moses with the elders of Israel commanded the people, saying, Keep all the commandments which I command you this day.

Issues of discipline and accountability were to be carried out by the elders of Israel:

Deuteronomy 22:15-17 Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: ¹⁶ And the damsel's father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; ¹⁷ And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city.

In the time of the judges, before there was King in Israel, matters were settled in each town by a board of elders consisting of at least ten men who presided over the people in Bethlehem.

Ruth 4:1-4 Then went Boaz up to the gate, and sat him down there: and, behold, the kinsman of whom Boaz spake came by; unto whom he said, Ho, such a one! turn aside, sit down here. And he turned aside, and sat down. ² And he took ten men of the elders of the city, and said, Sit ye down here. And they sat down. ³ And he said unto the kinsman, Naomi, that is come again out of the country of Moab, selleth a parcel of land, which was our brother Elimelech's: ⁴ And I thought to advertise thee, saying, Buy it before the inhabitants, and before the elders of my people. If thou wilt redeem it, redeem it: but if thou wilt not redeem it, then tell me, that I may know: for there is none to redeem it beside thee; and I am after thee. And he said, I will redeem it.

The elders of Israel make a grave mistake by demanding a king. They rejected God as King. Many churches also want a “king pastor” also so they can be like the government or a business model.

1 Samuel 8:4-7 Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, ⁵ And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. ⁶ But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD. ⁷ And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

God went on to warn them about what it would look like to have a king over them and it would be more difficult. He would treat them like slaves. We also see through Israel’s history that Israel only did well when they had a good king, but when they had evil kings, the nation suffered. The same can be observed in our churches today who have a king-pastor. The church suffers under bad pastors and flourishes under good ones.

2. In the Apostolate

Matthew 10:2-4 Now the names of the twelve apostles are these; The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; ³ Philip, and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the publican; James the son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus; ⁴ Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.

The early church was led by a plurality of Apostles who then turned over the churches to a plurality of elders. Although Peter seemed to be the leader who stood out among the other Apostles, they were all equally appointed by Jesus. Eventually, Paul became the most prominent and influential of the Apostles, even though he saw himself as least of them. There were no Popes established by Christ to lead His church. From the beginning, Jesus established a plurality of leadership and authority.

The Pattern in the New Testament

3. The church of Antioch sent relief funds to the church of Jerusalem and delivered it to the elders (plural) by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.

Acts 11:25-30 Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul: ²⁶ And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. ²⁷ And in these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch. ²⁸ And there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world: which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar. ²⁹ Then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt in Judaea: ³⁰ Which also they did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.

When Paul started churches, he did not leave them until he had ordained a plurality of elders in every church (singular).

Acts 14:21-23 And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch, ²² Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God. ²³ And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed.

When a theological question was to be settled, the Apostles and elders came together to consider the matter.

Acts 15:1-6 And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved. ² When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question. ³ And being brought on their way by the church, they passed through Phenice and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles: and they caused great joy unto all the brethren. ⁴ And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them. ⁵ But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses. ⁶ And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter.

Verse 13,20-23 We see that the elders and the Apostles decided on a theological issue for the church in Antioch since they were not able to do it themselves. The church also agreed with the elders in verse 23, thus the congregation’s voice is heard on such matters.

Again we see a plurality of elders in the church of Ephesus in: Acts 20:16-18 For Paul had determined to sail by Ephesus, because he would not spend the time in Asia: for he hasted, if it were possible for him, to be at Jerusalem the day of Pentecost. And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church.

Here we see James (the writer of the book of James, the half brother of Jesus) mentioned specifically along with the elders. It is safe to assume that James was the leader among leaders, but he is never referred to as “THE Pastor” as if his authority was more than the other elders.

Acts 21:17-20 And when we were come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly. ¹⁸ And the day following Paul went in with us unto James; and all the elders were present. ¹⁹ And when he had saluted them, he declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry. ²⁰ And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands

of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law:

The church of Philipi had a plurality of “Overseers / bishops” as well as deacons. These are not multiple churches bringing their multiple single pastors, this is one church with several pastors.

Philippians 1:1 Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:

Commands given to the church and its elders:

1 Timothy 5:17-22 Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine. ¹⁸ For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward. ¹⁹ Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. ²⁰ Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear. ²¹ I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality. ²² Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men's sins: keep thyself pure.

Paul left Titus to set in order the things that were lacking, first among them was the lack of elders in every city. This is more than church planting, this is also appointing of plurality of elders in a church in each city.

Titus 1:5 For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee:

The congregation is commanded to call the elders (plural) of the church (singular) when they are sick.

James 5:13-15 Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. ¹⁴ Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: ¹⁵ And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

We also see that the elders are identified by the Apostle Peter to be equals on all levels of pastoral ministry – they are overseers, rulers and shepherds who lead by example:

1 Peter 5:1-4 The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder (equality), and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: ² Feed (verb for pastor) the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight (bishoping) thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; ³ Neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being examples to the flock. ⁴ And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.

4. In Heaven

Revelation 4:4,10-11 ⁴ And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold… ¹⁰ The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, ¹¹ Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

Revelation 5:8-10 ESV And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. ⁹ And they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, ¹⁰ and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth."

Even in heaven, the church is represented by a plurality of elders and worship of Christ is led by elders!

It is concluded after examining all the passages which mention local church leadership on the pastoral level, that the NT presents a united teaching on this subject and that it is on the side of plurality. This is based on the evidence of the seven clear passages which teach the existence of plural elders in single local assemblies. These passages should be allowed to carry hermeneutical weight over the eight other plural passages which teach neither singularity or plurality. This is a case where the clear passages must be permitted to set the interpretation for the obscure. Thus, of the eighteen passages which speak of church leadership, fifteen of them are plural. Of these fifteen, seven of them most definitely speak of a single congregation. Only three passages talk about church leadership in singular terms, and in each passage the singular may be seen as fully compatible with plurality. In all these passages, there is not one passage which describes a church being governed by one pastor. [2]

[1] Mark Dever, 9 Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 220

[2]Alexander Strauch, Biblical Eldership p. 38

Deacons

2011-08-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I loved watching the Friday night sit-com called "Amen!" staring the cranky old man from "The Jeffersons". Sherman Hemsley played "Deacon Earnest Frye" who was always at odds with Rev. Gregory. The whole plot of each show was the failed attempts of Deacon Frye to undermine the Pastor. What made things even more interesting was when Rev. Gregory married Deacon Frye's daughter and then they became family! What made the show so funny, was that it reflected the reality of what the office of deacon had become in so many churches: a position to counter balance the power of the pastor. In other cases the deacons have become "Yes men" for a very heavy handed pastor. A sit com about that kind of situation would not have been so interesting. A tragedy drama could be more appropriate.

Where in the world did we get the idea that deacons were supposed to be elected representatives of the people to influence the pastor to do their will? What has happened in American churches is that the political system has had more influence on people's thinking than the Bible. We recently changed our constitution to remove "term limits" on deacons. Where do we get a need for term limits? We get it from the US House of Representatives to ensure that nobody stays in power too long. However, the deacons are not supposed to be in power at all! The word 'Deacon' in Greek is 'diakonos' which means 'a servant, one who waits on tables'. That doesn't sound very authoritative to me. Because deacons have wrongly been put in places of authority, then women have been excluded from this office, since they are not to be leading men in the church.

Romans 16:1-2 I commend unto you Phebe our sister, which is a servant (diakonos) of the church which is at Cenchrea: That ye receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you: for she hath been a helper of many, and of myself also.

Our early church sister, Phebe was called a deacon and her duties seem to match that of a deacon. She is called a "diakonos (deacon) of the church in Cenchrea" and Paul commands people to assist her in the business that she needs to take care of. Very clearly, she was operating in an official manner on behalf of this local church as a deaconess.

However, the objection that may arise will come from the qualifications for deacon in 1 Timothy 3:12 Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well.
In reference to male deacons, they should be husbands of one wife and rule their homes well. But this passage does not prohibit female deacons, especially since we see one named as such in Romans 16. Scripture cannot be at odds with itself especially when both passages were written by the same Apostle.

The whole point of this post is to call the church back to a Biblical position on deacons. There is no place in the New Testament where we find deacons ruling in the church. Their authority is delegated such as was the case in Acts 16 when the Apostles appointed them to take charge of the church finances. The authority in the church rests with the elders who "rule" or preside over the congregation (1Timothy 5:17).

"The Bible says..." Isn't good enough

2011-08-01T15:17:00.000-07:00

This is going to get me in trouble, but here I go anyway...

When teaching the Bible to people whether it is our kids, our Sunday School classes or our church members; it is not enough to tell them: "The Bible says so."

Why is homosexuality a sin? Because the Bible says so.

Why is fornication a sin? Because the Bible says so.

Why should I love my wife? Because the Bible says so.

Why is the husband the head of the wife? Because the Bible says so.

Why should the wife submit to her husband? Because the Bible says so.

Why should you give tithes and offerings? Because the Bible says so.

Even if you believe steadfastly in the authority of Scripture and you are somewhat of a thinking person; something inside of you isn't satisfied with that answer. We need to explain why the Bible says so, not just point to where the chapter and verse is. People need to understand the theological reasons behind WHY the Bible says WHAT it says. They need to understand how the character of God and the story of redemption informs what is right and wrong and why God commanded or prohibited certain things.

Gospel Driven or Guilt Driven Ministry

2011-07-22T12:48:00.000-07:00

Recently, I heard a sermon that really reminded me of how the gospel is void in so many ministries and Christian lives. In the sermon, the preacher exhorted us to do the usual Christian duties - evangelism, tithing, serving, faithfulness to church etc... All of which I can totally say "Amen" to. But what I noticed in the exhortation was a motivation driven by guilt more than gospel.

For example:
We should be soul winners because...
Guilt: "people will die and go to hell if you don't!"
rather than...
Gospel: "Jesus paid such an incredibly high price to be preeminent among many brethren!"

We should be faithful to church attendance because...
Guilt: "if you don't, you're a lazy bum with no character who makes lame excuses! You'll never amount to anything for God!"
rather than...
Gospel: "we need more grace and the public preaching and fellowship is a means of grace to make us more Christ-like for the Glory of God."

We should tithe or give offerings generously because...
Guilt: "You are neglecting your duty and the church suffers as a result of your greediness! Imagine all the missionaries we could send if every Christian would just obey and tithe!"
rather than....
Gospel: "God has not withheld any good thing from you, He gave you His Son! Let us worship Him by giving the first and best of our material goods back to Him as an act of thanks and a demonstration of our dependence and trust in Him."

Get the picture? I could go on and on. It is so easy to use guilt instead of Gospel as the power in our preaching because it appeals to the flesh which naturally wants to lord over God's heritage (I Pet. 5:3). The guilt driven sermon is evidence of self-righteousness, judgmentalism and anger in the heart of a pastor and maybe even guilt over the violation of the same things that he himself is preaching.

We are an Independent, yet interdependent and sometimes dependent Baptist Church

2011-07-15T12:53:00.000-07:00

This month, and part of next month, we have Pastor Bob Bixby and his family with us at Mission Peak Baptist Church where I pastor serving us in an unusual function that is meant to form a relationship with his church for our mutual benefit, but mostly for our benefit. It's kind of difficult to explain what we want to accomplish together in a soundbite, so I thought I'd express it here.

First, a little history about our church: Our church began as Calvary Baptist Church in 1955 and the church was in its zenith during the 1960's and 70's. However, there was a steady decline from the 80's until the early 2000's until there was almost nothing left. I became the pastor back in 2008 and God has been teaching me and slowly re-growing the church. But late last year and earlier this year, I came to realize that I could not do this alone if the church was to fully recover and become a healthy revitalized church. I don't have the giftedness and we as a church lack many vital gifts that we simply cannot create. First of all, I have always taught since I started here, that the single pastor-led model was less than ideal if not totally unbiblical. The Bible models a plurality of elders who are equals..period. You will not ever find a single pastor-led church in the New Testament which is the MO of virtually all IFB churches. That doesn't mean that there is not a pastor who is "a greater among equals"; it just means that there is no place in the New Testament that identifies one guy as "THE Pastor" of any particular church. Even Paul's church plants were not left unattended until there was a plurality of elders in them. Furthermore, the pastor and staff model is not a plurality of elders because "The Pastor" can fire the other guys as employees. So, if you're reading this and saying: "that's the way our church operates", then I'll just shoot straight with you - it's unbiblical and your church is suffering as a result of it whether you are aware of it or not.

So, if our church was not going to be led by the single despotic pastor model, and I am not going to lead that way personally, then we have a major disconnect in our philosophy and reality. I am the only qualified elder in the church and we are still too small to pool from others to fill in the gap. This is the first problem that needs to be solved - we need a Biblical leadership structure before we can really go forward. The problem we face is this - in the circles of Fundamental Baptists, we are way out of their mainstream - we are no longer King James Only, We don't identify ourselves with or hold any loyalty to GSBC, WCBC, BJU, PCC or some other Baptist Bible college and its church that would gladly lend their support and resources to us. If I was to go that route we would not be allowed to be true to ourselves - we would have to capitulate to to all the standards of music, dress, the KJVO legalism, association politics and we would be expected to send young people to one of the colleges as a token of loyalty that would assure an ongoing relationship and support. In other words, I'd have to become a sell-out and a man-pleaser because I would not really be following what I believe, I'd be conforming to what they believe in order to get what I need. That is unethical and unfair to them and the people in our church. In addition to that, most people from those circles don't believe in nor understand biblical eldership. Other churches and colleges that have resources that could help us like Masters Seminary don't know us, and most of their grads are far better equipped to be Senior pastors than I am and they would not want to take a non-paid position to be an elder with a guy who has a Bachelors from GSBC. I wouldn't blame them. All people that are associated with the above institutions are not really as independent as they would like to imagine themselves to be. They are taught how to walk the line that is expected of them and then they are kept in line by their annual conferences. I'm not saying that it's wrong - it is what it is and most of us need it because we were never meant to be totally independent: we as the body of Christ are meant to be interdependent upon each other. That means churches too. Most churches are connected to other churches of like faith and practice in similar fellowships and associations.

Thankfully, Pastor Bob Bixby knows where I come from because he practically came out of the same background that I did and is now walking a path that I have been trying to get myself and our church on for the past few years. What path is that? Well it's somewhere between Fundamentalism and mainstream Evangelicalism. Bob tried to define it a few years ago when he called it "The Emerging Middle".

Hard-core Fundamentalists call it "compromise"...whatever (thought dismissed with a wave of the hand).

New Evangelicals would call it "irrelevant"...ditto (go pass out your surveys that you got from Willow Creek and get another tatoo).

Back when Bob was here in April, we talked about this and we decided to do a partnership where our churches would enter into a relationship of cooperation and discussion so that we might be able to be under the supervision of their elders and myself (since we don't have any other elders yet) as a part of the Morning Star pastoral team. They would advise us, and even send human resources to California to help us build a strong, cohesive pastoral team that will be able to work together in casting vision, implementing direction and overseeing the church which will result in real healthy growth that God can give under a Biblical leadership structure. Does this mean we are no longer independent? No, we could unplug and maintain the status-quo of slow death or stunted growth any time we want. Or we could humble ourselves, admit our need and be willing to follow the lead of another church that knows what it is doing until we are in a position to know what we are doing! This is true fellowship, cooperation and unity that Jesus envisioned and prayed for in John 17 on an ecclesiastical level. This isn't something you see done all the time because most churches are either too afraid or proud to submit to another church's wisdom and help or a church is willing to submit with total thoughtless, blind loyalty.

So, here we are! We need one or two more elders who are gifted at administration, teaching and pastoral care; we need people who can help us with worship music. If you're out there, there's a church in Fremont California that needs you and you need the rest of us.

Driving a Camaro for the Sake of the Gospel

2011-07-12T12:35:00.000-07:00

How in the world is that possible? Don't worry, I'm not going to go all prosperity gospel on you! A couple months ago, I bought a used 2010 Chevy Camaro that was designed as a retro 1968 throwback to bring back the muscle car glory that Chevrolet lost to the Ford Mustang several years ago. I got a great deal on it from a guy who was trying to get rid of it and on top of that, I got top dollar for the last car that I sold. So, it all worked out very nicely. Ever since 2007 when the concept car was first released in car magazines and in the Transformers movie, it was a vehicle that I thought was so beautiful, I have never gotten tired of admiring it's contour lines, wheels, and aggressive monster look on the front of the grill! Most other cars lose their appeal after seeing them on the road for about a year, but not the new Camaro.

Anyway, how is the gospel connected to a Camaro? Pastors shouldn't drive those kinds of cars, right? Isn't that considered materialistic and worldly? Well, it could be, but the gospel frees us from the guilt of worldliness and greed when Christ is our supreme treasure. So, why should we live as if we are under the yoke of the guilt of materialism by withholding ourselves from the legitimate pleasures of this life? It has always been generally accepted among all religions, that there is intrinsic, sanctifying power for holiness associated with various forms of asceticism. Somehow, inflicting pain upon one's self or intentionally avoiding something that would bring pleasure is associated with deeper piety. The truth is, that kind of thinking is more in line with Buddhism than Christianity.

The gospel frees us from feeling the guilt of enjoying legitimate earthly pleasures according to:

Colossians 2:20-23 Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations -- 21 "Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle," 22 which all concern things which perish with the using -- according to the commandments and doctrines of men? 23 These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.

The gospel frees us from legalistic prohibitions that appear to have a sense of wisdom, but in reality is bondage. We can actually enjoy God's temporal, tangible, material blessings as a gift from God if our hearts are not set on those things and become idols from which we get our sense of self-worth, identity and significance. If we are honest with our hearts before God, and He gives opportunity to enjoy something in this world, then why would you refuse to enjoy it? I am not rich, but if you are, there is nothing to be ashamed of as long as you are not trusting in your riches in place of God. Your riches are God's gift for enjoyment: 1 Timothy 6:17 Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy.

Likewise, Solomon gives us a sober assessment of earthly gifts since he had them all:

Ecclesiastes 3:13 ...every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.

Ecclesiastes 9:7-9 Go, eat your bread with joy, And drink your wine with a merry heart; For God has already accepted your works. 8 Let your garments always be white, And let your head lack no oil. 9 Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life which He has given you under the sun, all your days of vanity; for that is your portion in life, and in the labor which you perform under the sun.

This giving of God is what we call "GRACE". Spiritual gifts are not all that grace is limited to. Why would we refuse God's material grace, unless we are legalists who want to create our own righteousness through asceticism. What if the objection arises in the mind - "ya, but you have to be an example of self-denial and take the high road of poverty as the pastor or else your members will engage in self indulgence!"

Again, this is the same legalism that we are warned of in Colossians 2:20-23. I wouldn't be modeling anything but false humility and self-imposed religion. That will only further teach people not to enjoy grace. As a pastor, this new Camaro is a means by which I can demonstrate how to live as one who enjoys the things of this world but does not live for them. I can demonstrate the fruits of meekness and temperance by driving responsibly and in accordance to the law and not making every Mustang I come across eat my exhaust. I can demonstrate love and sharing by letting some of the (responsible) men in our church borrow it to take their wives out on a date. I can demonstrate humility and love to my wife by letting her drive it to work most of the time at her pleasure! No man should buy a new car and assign his old junker to his wife! So, in the spirit of 1 Corinthians 10:31 Therefore, whether you eat or drink, (drive) or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

Let the Holy Spirit be the Holy Spirit

2011-06-27T14:28:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, we had a camp out with some of the families of our church. It was fun to talk about the Bible around a campfire, but it was even more enjoyable to hear testimonies of our people talking about how God has been working in their lives. What I really enjoyed was hearing them say things that God has been convicting them about things that I have been praying about. It was great to watch the Holy Spirit do His work in conjunction with my work of preaching and prayer. I thought to myself: "I'm glad that I didn't try to be the Holy Spirit for these people". It seems to be our tendency as pastors to tell people how they should dress, what music they should listen to and not listen to, and get them to conform into our image instead of letting the Holy Spirit tell them how to conform into the image of Christ! Now, we may not like exactly how fast or how drastic the Holy Spirit changes our people because we would like to put them in a spiritual microwave and have them "matured" in short order. But, that only reveals our lack of faith in God's work on the people He has called us to shepherd. As shepherds, we simply feed them and protect them from wolves, God causes their wool to grow; He causes them to grow and multiply. Trying to be the Holy Spirit for them is only to produce hypocrites and man-pleasers. I know that this will take faith, patience and a little bit of frustration of our own goals for them. But they are not our people, they are God's people and He will change them as He uses His preached Word (our job as pastors) to form them. Each person is different and will grow at different paces. It's not our job to clone them into our image. Let the Holy Spirit be the Holy Spirit.

Idols and Functional Saviors

2011-06-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

Last night before preaching our evening message, the Lord brought these verses (Psalm 73:25-26) to my mind as a great way to illustrate or test whether or not we are engaged in idolatry. I ended up using it as a big part of the sermon. Don't you love it when the Lord gives you great material for sermons that you didn't plan on using during your preparation? Only a preacher can understand this kind of a thrill.

Anyway, I am leaving some of the words blank. Of course, we know what words are supposed to be filled in the blanks, but we need to ask ourselves what do we really insert in the blanks?

Psalm 73:25-26
Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is ___________upon earth that I desire besides You.
My flesh and my heart fail; But ____________is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

What could we really insert into those blanks? The answers are telling - they are our idols and functional saviors. Let's try a few....

Psalm 73:25-26
Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is control upon earth that I desire besides You.
My flesh and my heart fail; But the pulpit / my congregation is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Psalm 73:25-26 Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is a spouse upon earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart fail; But marriage is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Psalm 73:25-26 Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is pleasure upon earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart fail; But sex is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Psalm 73:25-26 Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is security upon earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart fail; But money is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Psalm 73:25-26 Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is recognition and attention upon earth that I desire besides You. 26 My flesh and my heart fail; But My Facebook page is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Get the picture? Our heart and flesh will fail, what will we turn to for the strength of our hearts? What is really the chief desire of our hearts? If the answer is not "none" in the first blank, and "God" in the second blank, then we are committing idolatry. I hope this little exercise will help expose idols in your heart like it has helped me.

The Calvinist Straight Jacket

2011-06-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

I think it was Bob Bixby who told me that when a young person is awakened to the doctrines of Grace: (IE: Calvinism or Reformed Theology), he needs to be zipped up in a straight jacket and put in a cage for about five years. I think he told me this about my third year into discovering and studying these doctrines. I wonder if that was his kind way of telling me I was the one he was talking about. Anyway, in my journey of reforming my theology and philosophy of ministry, I can see why young Calvinists need to be locked up for a while. When you first get your eyes opened to the truth of God's choice of you before you chose Him, and how that one single doctrine opens your eyes to so many fresh understandings of the gospel, God's eternal purposes, evangelism, preaching, sanctification and so on, it is almost like being blinded by light after walking out of a dark room. It takes some time for your eyes to adjust and see everything around you more clearly. Comparatively, one is almost as visually impaired in the light as he was in the darkness. Remember, the man who Jesus gave back his sight? At first, he could only see men walking about as trees. He could see, but not clearly. I think this is something that we experience as we grow in our knowledge of God's Word, especially when we are suddenly awakened to a doctrine we were clueless about. It then seems that everything you look at is about that one particular doctrine that you are so thrilled about.

I am not back-peddling away from what I've learned or defended - I am absolutely convinced of God's foreknowledge, election, effectual calling and preserving grace. I've never been convinced of Limited Atonement as explained by traditional Calvinists though. However, I needed my new found theology to be tempered and cross-examined. One of my friends and mentors, Dr. Paul Henebury has written some well thought-out posts about TULIP in light of a Dispensational Hermeneutic. I had to admit that when I first started reading some of these posts, I wanted to immediately defend some of the Reformed positions, but I was not dealing with the mindless rantings of the Sword of the Lord; this is a guy who takes the Bible very seriously, so it made me take the defenses down and hear him out. I would encourage you to read these...your Calvinist straight jacket may start loosening up a little.

T - Total Depravity

U -Unconditional Election

L - Limited Atonement

I - Irresistible Grace

P - Perseverance of the Saints

What I have been pleasantly happy to discover is that it is the Gospel, not Calvinism that is so glorious. Granted, most Calvinists preach and teach the gospel better than others in my opinion because of their understanding of God's sovereignty in salvation. However, it is the Gospel that really transforms us. Calvinism is about how the Gospel works, but it is not the Gospel.

So, now I understand why Bob said that I (and other young Reformed guys) need to be locked up in a straight jacket for five years. It takes that long to see the centrality of the Gospel and not the theological system. The system helps us understand the gospel better, but during those five years, we will tend to try to make converts to a system about the Gospel instead of trying to make disciples formed by that very Gospel.

God's Unlikely Mercies

2011-06-16T15:03:00.000-07:00

Since late last year, I have been attending a NANC certification class in Biblical Counseling at Northcreek Church. It has been such an eye-opening experience. It has been humbling to realize how much I have lacked a functioning, working understanding of Scripture. A limited understanding of Theology at a theoretical level is enough to make a person "puffed up" in the head, and bankrupt in the heart. As I look back at some of the counseling situations that I have encountered in the past few years as a pastor, I have been amazed at how gracious God was to keep me from really leading people in the wrong direction by giving unbiblical advice. The other night when I was in class, a thought crossed my mind that really shook me:

"In my ignorance, thank God I have not been able to influence too many people these past few years. There is a stricter judgment for those who teach. Maybe it is by God's mercy, that He has prevented me from the stricter judgment that I would have deservingly incurred!"

It has been this very thing that has frustrated me the most - so few people have been added to the church. What if God, in His goodness, has prevented this for their sake and for mine until He has better prepared me for shepherding more of His people? It just made me bow down before Him and thank Him for the good He has allowed me to do and the damage that He has prevented me from doing.

A Sacred Trust

2011-06-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

A pastor who has influence over people's lives is a sacred trust. Few people can handle it because influence is power over people's lives. When I think about how vulnerable I was to the teaching and influence of a pastor, it makes me fear what I can do to influence people for good or bad. In the average church member's mind, there is a little bit of fear of the pastor because he has more training and knowledge in Scripture than they do. So, when they have a question, they approach him with caution out of fear of looking ignorant and not wanting to be looked at as a trouble maker. It's really a difficult position to be in as one of the sheep. The Pastor needs to make sure that he carries himself in such a way as to break down those inhibitions that naturally accompany the church member's inquiry.

Also, keep in mind that most of us, by human nature, want to be told what to do and what to think because it's easier than wrestling with truth and how its implications inform how we should live our lives. This is why religion is so pervasive. Religion simply tells people the do's and don'ts and legalism is much easier to follow than real authentic faith based on God's knowledge. So, as a pastor, I must be careful not to just tell a person what they should think or what they should do, but it is my job to help them understand what their real problem is behind their inquiry, and then use the truth of Scripture to help them arrive on their own to the answer to their problem or question. It could be a lot easier for me to use such an opportunity to control someone by using my influence and position as the authority of my answer.

When someone has a question about something they don't understand in Scripture, I will not just give them: "well, the Bible says...." and give them my interpretation as if it was the final word. I will tell them what the Bible says, where I stand on the issue and why, but also will let them know of other differing possible interpretations or positions on the matter so that they know I am dealing with them objectively and honestly. I don't want to just rattle off the standard Baptist answer because in the information age, our members will inevitably be exposed to other theologies and ideas out there.

So, in closing, if you're a pastor, don't let the inquiries of the unlearned be a source of pride to pump up your ego. You're not that smart anyway, and they can still find the right answer without you. Use those inquiries as opportunities to really shepherd people, not control them.

Not all church visitors are alike

2011-06-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

When people come to your church, it's easy to think that there is a magic formula to get them to come back, integrate them and make them fruitful. I read some of the Nelson Searcy books on church growth and management which were quite helpful in many regards, but they can mislead you into thinking that the formula is the key to success when it comes to dealing with people. There is some great stuff to learn about being a good steward of the people resources that God sends your way, don't get me wrong, but these strategies are not iron clad.

Not everyone responds the same way and not everyone is looking for the same things when they come to church. You may have the system down: parking lot attendants, greeters, guest info cards and pen with the church name on it, a special gift for them before they leave, the hand written follow up letter with a $5.00 Starbucks gift card, the second week follow up letter, the Church 101 class, etc... but that doesn't mean that when someone visits your church once or twice that they are ready to join the class, join the church, join the small group, get involved, and so on. I find that most people come to church and want to keep their distance for as long as possible.

You can open up all kinds of opportunity to get to know them by inviting them to this or that, but most likely, they won't take you up on it. Not everyone who comes to your church is looking for the place that faithfully preaches God's Word so that they can grow in community and become sold-out disciples of Jesus. Each person is coming with their own baggage, hurts, sins and damage. We can't treat them like clones who need to be shuffled along with the others to the right program. They need relationships, not process. They need to know that they're loved even when they're not responsive to it for months and they haven't joined the new members class yet. Some of them will never join no matter how much you try to reach out to them and give them their space at the same time.

Yes, be diligent in follow up, communication, making a good impression and all that - but remember that people are people: unique individuals who need to be loved where they are and brought along in the gospel gently. The church is not like a field with rows of corn, it's more like a house full of potted plants. Each one needs his own individual care.

What I've been learning these past months...

2011-06-10T17:55:00.000-07:00

Since I have put blogging on the shelf for the last seven months, I have been learning some things that I needed to be quiet and learn. So, I'll share them with those of you who have waited to see if I'd ever come back.

Originally, this blog was born out of my increased exposure to theology and ministry philosophy that was more God-centered than what I was accustomed to. So, I wanted to express what I was learning and kind of think through some issues in a public way in order to interact with others out there about it. However, I was very much a frustrated young man who was still struggling in my cocoon. As most of you know, I grew up in the Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) environment. After being exposed to life outside of that group, I felt as though I had been hoodwinked all my life and I used my blog to express my frustrations and address all the myths, errors, falsehoods, etc.. that I had bought into. Inadvertently, I learned that I had a porcupine effect on some people. Eventually, I began to sense that very same spirit of dissent in a few members in my congregation. It was then, that I realized that my spirit had probably negatively effected some people whom I was supposed to be leading. We ended up losing one family shortly after I stopped blogging. It was really painful to see them go, but I had to wonder after the fact how much of their dis-satisfied disposition was caused by mine? It took a rebuke from someone close to me that got me thinking about this, and so I knew it was time to quit blogging. I needed to shut up and listen to what God needed to teach me.

Another lesson I learned these past months is that the IFB or Fundamentalist movement, network, culture (whatever you want to call it) is not going to be revived or reformed. Those loyal to it cannot and will not recognize the inherent and fundamental defects of the movement. It will continue to decline from relevance and influence on its own. God doesn't revive or reform such things. He does so to individuals. There is no use trying to correct the course of Fundamentalism by reasoning with the Scripture because for the most part, Sola Scriptura is not really valued by the movers and shakers in the movement. So, I have learned that it is best to just leave it alone and get my head out of the clouds - I am not going to make a dent in reforming fundamentalism. All I will ever be is a burr in their saddle, an irritation to be put up with should I continue identifying myself with them - not my idea of purposeful existence. I don't need to be identified with the Fundamental Baptists, the Reformed Baptists, the Southern Baptists or any other group. We can exist in happy obedience to God's Word and in fellowship with anyone else who is striving to do the same That is truly independence!

My missiology has greatly matured as well since I stopped blogging. I needed to really get a wide angle view of the great commission. Authors and Pastors who call themselves "Missional" have been very helpful as I have been reading much of their material. This term does not need to be feared because it's new. It's just a new term used to clarify an old idea. Reading stuff by Tim Keller, Ed Stetzer, Thom Rainer and yes, even Dan Kimball and Mark Driscoll have been extremely helpful in understanding a perspective on missiology that was totally off my radar. The idea that the gospel can really ooze out of you in all of life is a concept that has been foreign to me. I am used to "program-mentality": putting evangelism in a box, putting worship in a box, and putting theology in a box; but to hear about how the gospel really effects all of life and naturally makes disciples is so refreshing and different. I had to shut up for a while, stop blogging, and start learning.

Lastly, I'll mention something else. People are like pendulums: they like to swing from one extreme to another. It's easy for someone who was on the Arminian bandwagon to completely abandon ship and jump on the Reformed Calvinist bandwagon. I have tried to be careful about not becoming a sell-out to another group as undiscerning as I was to the previous. But when you first read John Piper, RC Sproul and other great writers, it's easy to get enamored with them as if they can do no wrong (which is the same thing we did in fundamentalism). I guess what I'm trying to say is that I have learned that the Reformed camp doesn't have all the answers and best solutions either. The body of Christ is multi-faceted and we all have a lot to learn from each other.

Anyway, even in my reforming, I have had to learn how to reform.

30 Years of Salvation

2011-06-10T11:41:00.000-07:00

Today, is my Spiritual Birthday! I asked Christ to be my Savior as a 4 year old boy and have been growing in my walk with Him ever since. I'm so thankful for God's patience with me. I've been a hard kid to deal with I'm sure. So, thanks be to God for His sovereign foreknowledge of me before the foundations of the earth!
Thanks be to God for the Christian home that He saw fit to raise me in.
Thanks be to God for the church that He wanted me to grow up in that taught me the gospel from a young age.
Thanks be to God for giving me a vocation that allows me to tell others about this same salvation.

Starting Over

2011-06-08T13:50:00.000-07:00

It's been almost seven months since I last posted anything on my blog. In fact, I had closed it from public view for a while. Over the past seven months, God had really been trying me and purifying me as a pastor. I felt that God was telling me: "You need to just be quiet for a while and just listen and learn!" I realized that I had to deal with the defects in my own life and ministry and stop worrying about all the "issues" that need to be addressed outside of my own area of ministry. So, I have archived all my old postings and put them on the shelf and hitting the restart button.