9Marks Blog: Building Healthy Churches

The Sufficiency of Scripture

Carl Trueman — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 04:01:00 +0000

The doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture lies at the heart of what it means to be a Protestant. Protestantism and Roman Catholicism share much in common in terms of basic theology, such as a commitment to the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. When it comes to matters of authority, however, there are major divergences. One of these is on the matter of Scripture: is Scripture sufficient as an authority for the church or not?

Scriptural sufficiency is, of course, a doctrine that stands in positive connection to a number of other theological convictions, such as inerrancy, the extent of the canon, and the perspicuity or clarity of Scripture. All of these help to shape our understanding of sufficiency but are beyond the scope of this brief article. Thus, I will focus on the doctrine as generally understood by those who accept the Protestant confessional consensus on these matters, as reflected in the Second London Confession, the Three Forms of Unity, and the Westminster Standards.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN THAT SCRIPTURE IS SUFFICIENT?

We do of course need to parse what we mean when we say that Scripture is sufficient. If my car breaks down or I am trying to work out who committed the crime in a particularly complex whodunit, I will not find the answer in the Bible. Nor will I find discussion of the human genome, the rules of cricket, or the wing markings of North American butterflies. In fact, the scope of Scripture’s sufficiency is neatly summarized in Question 3 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism:

Q. 3. What do the Scriptures principally teach?
A. The Scriptures principally teach, what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.

In other words, the Scriptures are sufficient for a specific task: they reveal who God is, who man is in relation to him, and how that relationship is to be articulated in terms of worship.

Even with this definition, however, we need to be precise concerning the nature of this sufficiency. In some areas, the Scriptures are sufficient for teaching principles but not for providing specific details. For example, while they clearly teach that the church should gather for worship on the Lord’s Day, they do not specify precise times and locations. Neither my local congregation nor the time of our services are mentioned anywhere in the New Testament. Scriptural sufficiency is not jeopardized by this lack; Scripture was never intended to speak with precision to such local details.

The last observation is perhaps obvious. A more subtle point about scriptural sufficiency can be deduced from Paul’s pastoral epistles. When Paul writes these, he is laying out his blueprint for the post-apostolic church. It is thus significant that he does not simply tell Timothy and Titus to make sure there are copies of the Bible available to the church. If Scripture in and of itself were sufficient to maintaining the truth of the faith, surely that is all he would need to have done. Instead, he not only emphasizes the importance of Scripture but also says that there is a need for officers (elders and deacons) and for adherence to a form of sound words (a tradition of creedal teaching). So to say that Scripture is sufficient for the church is not to say that it is the only thing necessary. Officers and creeds/confessions/statements of faith (agreed forms of sound words) also seem to be a basic part of Paul’s vision for the post-apostolic church.

Given these factors, there is a sense in which we might say that Protestants believe in the insufficiency of Scripture: we acknowledge that Scripture is insufficient for many of the details of everyday life, such as motorcycle maintenance and cooking curries. It is even insufficient for the day-to-day running and good health of the church: we need elders, deacons and forms of sound words. What it is sufficient for, however, is for regulating the doctrinal content of the Christian faith and the life of the church at a principial level. That is Paul’s point in 2 Timothy 3:16. In other words, to speak of scriptural sufficiency is one way of speaking about the unique authority of Scripture in the life of the church and the believer as the authoritative and sufficient source for the principles of faith and practice.

WHAT IS SCRIPTURE SUFFICIENT FOR?

We can elaborate this. First, Scripture is sufficient as the noetic ground of knowledge of God. This means that all theological affirmations are to be consistent with the teaching of Scripture. The statement “God is Trinity” is found nowhere in the Bible; but its conceptual content is there; that is why it should be affirmed by all Christians. By contrast, “Mary was conceived without original sin” is not a concept found anywhere in Scripture. Roman Catholics who affirm the notion thereby reveal their view that Scripture is not sufficient as the noetic basis for theology, but needs to be supplemented by the teaching magisterium of the church.

Second, Scripture is sufficient for Christian practice. At the level of behavior, Scripture offers principles which guide believers in their day to day lives. This can be a complicated area: the advent of Christ demands that the Old Testament law codes be read in the light of his person and work, and this issue is beyond the immediate scope of this short piece. But the principle of sufficiency is clear: given the redemptive-historical dynamic, Scripture provides fully adequate and sufficient general principles which can be applied in specific ethical situations. For example, the Bible may not reference stem cell research, but it contains principles that should shape our attitudes to such.

Third, at the level of the church as an institution, Scripture is again sufficient for the principles of both organization and public worship. In terms of organization, I have already noted the fact that Paul sees both office-bearers and creeds/confessions as vital to the ongoing health of the church. As to office-bearers, Scripture also describes the kind of men who are to be appointed. As to creeds, my first point above—that Scripture is sufficient as the norming norm of the content of doctrinal statement—is clearly relevant.

Fourth, in terms of public worship, Scripture is sufficient for establishing its elements: singing of praise, prayer, the reading and preaching of God’s Word, the giving of tithes and offerings for the work of the church, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. As with creeds, Scripture is also sufficient to regulate the agenda and content of sermons, worship songs, prayers, what the money is spent on, who is baptized, and who receives the Lord’s Supper.

In short, one can tell a lot about how a particular church understands scriptural sufficiency by looking at her form of government, the content and emphases of corporate worship, and the way in which the elders pastor the congregation.

Carl Trueman is Paul Wolley Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary, and is the pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Ambler, Pennsylvania.

Five Reasons We Don’t Disciple (Part 3)

Barry Cooper — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 04:01:00 +0000

In my last two posts, I offered three reasons Christians and churches don’t disciple. Bearing in mind that I develop programs for a career, this next one is a bit awkward to say: our churches are program-dependent.

Here’s a modern day parable, told to me by a friend at seminary. The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is (possibly) true.

A young man walked into a Christian bookstore in Chicago and asked where the bumper stickers were. The assistant said, what kind are you looking for? The man said, I’d like to buy a fish sticker. The assistant said, oh I’m afraid we’ve sold out of those. To which the man responded, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO EVANGELIZE WITHOUT FISH STICKERS?

As Western evangelicals, we have become increasingly reliant on courses, programs, techniques, and methodologies to do the work of evangelism and discipleship.

Now, as I said, I write this post as someone whose job it is to write good programs. I’ve worked with Christianity Explored Ministries for thirteen good years, and we work hard at making our programs as biblically faithful and as easy to use as possible. I believe in their value. I’m grateful to God that they can be very helpful indeed in the right hands.

But in the wrong hands? Programs become a sub-par, plug-n-play, hearts-not-in-it, one-size-fits-no-one stand-in for genuine discipling. And what’s worse, running these courses may delude us into thinking we’re “doing” evangelism and discipleship when actually, we’re just prayerlessly and heartlessly going through the motions. We’ve come to believe that the magic is in the methodology. We buy a product and we expect it to work for us, with no further spiritual investment on our part.

This first appeared as an anxious blip on my e-dar (evangelical radar) about five years ago. We would work solidly for 18 months to produce a new course—crafting Bible study questions, writing and rewriting talks and scripts, testing the material in various places, rewriting some more, shooting and editing a DVD series—and then on the day of publication, just as everyone was having a lie-down or checking into rehab, an email would appear in my inbox. “Thanks for the new course,” it would say perkily. “When’s the next one coming out?”

Allow me to translate: “HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DISCIPLE WITHOUT A NEW PROGRAM?”

Brothers and sisters, discipleship is possible without programs. Jesus wrote a really good book about it.

And a program—however biblically faithful—is no substitute for ongoing, personal discipling. At least not the kind of ongoing, personal discipling Jesus has in mind in Matthew 28:

“...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matt. 28:19-20)

For a start, programs are necessarily a “one-size-fits-all” proposition. However tailored they may be to a particular demographic (literate/semi-literate/illiterate/adult/teen/child, etc.), they are not written by you, and therefore they cannot be perfectly tailored to the situation in which God has placed you. A person who always uses exactly the same set of Bible study questions with every person he disciples is probably not doing a great job. Similarly, a presenter on a DVD can never personally engage with someone the way you can. He cannot hear the specific cries of a person’s heart and then speak directly and biblically to them.

Secondly, programs can imply that discipleship is a matter of following the correct “process” rather than cultivating the correct character.

It should go without saying that a child’s character is most profoundly shaped by the character of his or her parents. Rather than doing what we say, children naturally tend to do what we do. By contrast, techniques and programs can implicitly give the impression that what we say is important, but what we do, not so important. We may begin to believe that the program we use in our church is more important than the character of the people we have teaching it.

Thirdly, we sometimes use programs in the same way a family might use the DVD screens in a Nissan Pathfinder: as surrogate parents. Yes, it’s a great way to keep the kids occupied. Yes, it means we don’t have to engage them as much on the journey. But it can compromise the quality of our parenting. It can be a dereliction of our personal responsibility to those in our care.

So my question is, have we been too ready to get the babysitters in? Have we been too ready to outsource our discipleship, and in so doing, have we forgotten how to do it ourselves?

At their best, programs increase our reliance on God and his Word. But at their worst, programs simply increase our reliance on programs. If they do, our discipleship will suffer.

Come back next week and, if I still have a job, I’ll suggest a final reason we don’t disciple.

Barry Cooper is the author or co-author of Christianity Explored, Discipleship Explored, One Life, The Real Jesus, and If You Could Ask God One Question. He blogs at Future Perfect, Present Tense and is helping to plant Trinity West Church in Shepherd's Bush, London.

Click here for parts one and two of this series.

Favorite Books on Evangelism

Jonathan Leeman — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 19:58:33 +0000

Hey guys, what are your favorite few books on evangelism?

Kevin DeYoung

Evangelism in the Early Church, Michael Green
Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity, Richard Fletcher
Questioning Evangelism, Randy Newman
The Gospel and Personal Evangelism, Mark Dever
A Narrative of Surprising Conversions, Jonathan Edwards

J. D. Greear

To Tell the Truth, Will Metzger
Just Walk Across the Room, Bill Hybels

The two must be read side by side. Hybel's book assumes the gospel too much, but it is second to none on developing awareness and "technique" in sharing your faith. Reading them together makes for a powerful combination.

David Platt

Master Plan of Evangelism, Robert Coleman
Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, J. I. Packer
The Gospel and Personal Evangelism, Mark Dever
Tell the Truth, Will Metzger

Ten Questions to Ask of a Song’s Lyrics

Aaron Menikoff — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 14:05:29 +0000

Choosing songs to sing in corporate worship is tricky business. Everyone in the church seems to have an opinion. How then should a pastor or team of elders select music that glorifies God and serves the body?

The style and quality of the music matters, of course. (For some helpful thoughts on church music that touch more on music, see Ed Stetzer’s post here.) Yet I’d suggest that the lyrics are a primary concern—so here are ten questions to ask about the words of any song that you’re considering including in corporate worship.

1. Are the lyrics true? Each song is like a sermon. A preacher should be committed to speaking only those words which accurately reflect biblical truth. Likewise, lyrics must be read carefully before they are selected to be sure they also communicate biblical truth.

2. Are the lyrics true but misleading? Lyrics that are technically true can still be misleading. So it is not enough to affirm the truthfulness of the lyrics; their clarity is important as well. I believe the Brian Doerksen song, “Come, Now is the Time to Worship” falls into this camp. First, to say that now is the time to worship is true, yet does it lead people to think they were not worshipping during the drive to church? Second, to say “Come, just as you are” is technically true, but does it run the risk of ignoring the important truth that we should come to God with clean hands and a pure heart?

3. Are the lyrics rich? Most of our songs should be not just a theological appetizer, but a feast. Thankfully, there is a growing demand for rich lyrics, which explains the renaissance of older hymns, sometimes set to new music, and even new lyrics with greater theological depth.

4. Are the lyrics God-centered or man-centered? This is a complicated idea. Some man-centered lyrics tend to focus on our response to the Lord’s character or work—and they can be very appropriate. But an abundance of man-centered lyrics can give the congregation a heavy dose of moralism and even discouragement.

Other man-centered lyrics tend to focus upon how we are feeling, how we are doing, or how excited we are about what God has done. Though this may be appropriate, an abundance of this kind of song can lead to shallowness (I’m singing that I feel great when really, I don’t) or pride (it’s all about me). But if the lyrics focus on who God is and what God has done, then we are drawn out of our moralism and our pride and the lyrics begin to preach truth to our hearts, leading us to think and feel the right things.

5. Do the lyrics praise God for who he is and not merely for what he has done? We should be content to sing often about God’s character and not merely about his work. God is honored when we sing his attributes as well as his actions. To sing only about his work is to imply, even unintentionally, that God is good because he saved me. And though this is true, it is also true that God is good because he is good—and we should recognize that truth in song.

6. Do the lyrics explicitly address the atoning work of Christ on the cross? Though not every song will explicitly mention the cross, the majority of our singing must be cross-centered since that is what makes it Christian. Though it is wonderful to sing the psalms, and we should sing them, we should be aware that a good Jew could sing them, if not always embracing their fullest meaning. The lyrics of our songs should specifically teach the congregation about the atonement.

7. Are the lyrics beautiful? Some writing is better than others. What makes one set of lyrics more beautiful than another is a topic for another day. But several factors should be considered: 1) the use of rhyme and assonance; 2) the use of imagery; 3) the use of elegant versus inflated or florid language; and 4) the use of repetition.

8. Are the lyrics understandable? Some of the older hymns are wonderful for theology students who spend hours reading the Puritans, yet they leave many others scratching their head thinking, “I know I should like this but I just don’t know what it means.” This is where a good service leader makes all the difference. Lines that are hard to understand can be explained beforehand. Or, simple changes can be made to the text so long as the integrity of the hymn is preserved.

9. Are the lyrics familiar? While it is important to introduce new lyrics, every congregation should have a canon of well-worn lyrics that they can return to regularly. Just as good writing rewards re-reading, repeating singing of good lyrics can drive their meaning more deeply into the heart.

10. Do the lyrics fit the theme of the day? Most good song lyrics are appropriate for any service. Can you find any sermon text in the Bible where it would not be appropriate to sing that day of God’s holiness, love, mercy, grace, or the hope we have in heaven? Of course not!

And yet every set of lyrics has one or two clear emphases. And we should choose lyrics that will underscore the meaning of the text we are about to hear preached. This should not be done by simply finding songs with the “love” in the title if the theme of the day is God’s love (though titles may be a good way to start). It is better to ask some more questions. What aspect of God’s love are we considering that day? His love as Creator? His love as Redeemer?

Aaron Menikoff is the senior pastor of Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

Is She Up for This? Questions for a Potential Pastor’s Wife

Bob Johnson — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 04:01:00 +0000

Before you pursue the office of pastor, you know that you need to be ready. But have you asked whether your wife is ready?

Formally, I don’t believe there should be extra expectations placed on a pastor’s wife. There is no office of “pastor’s wife” in the Bible. But practically, being married to a pastor is a tough role. Does your wife have what it takes? Is she up for it?

Those are the questions I want to help you ask in this article.

It is critical for you to ask such questions. Men preparing for the ministry can easily become blindly ambitious, even idolatrous, without realizing it. When that happens, we risk turning our wives into means to making much of ourselves. If they get in the way of our goals, we run them over. It’s therefore critical, as I say, to stop, loosen our grip on the ministry goals, and give real honest thought to our wives.

It has taken me a long time to realize how vulnerable our wives are to us. They take our name. They live with the consequences of our decisions. And they just might have to crawl under the pew—at least in my case—when we use poor grammar in a sermon.

So please be careful. And be careful in how you use this article. I am not proposing a new law for our wives: “Honey, read these eight points. You have to be these things!”

I just want to keep some people from trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole. There are a variety of roles within the church. Knowing where you and your wife fit will bless you and the church.

My wife Cathi and I have been married for almost 30 years. Early on I discovered that I had punted beyond my coverage. No matter the situation, Cathi has been an incredible source of support, wisdom, and grace.

She never wanted to marry a pastor. She did not “feel called” to this role. But she was willing to follow me, and along the way God has proven her well suited to the position. For the last twenty-four years we have been members of one church where I have served as the senior pastor. Although she chooses not to be highly visible, she has a very important—and not easy—role.

On the other hand, another senior pastor recently told me that his wife could no longer handle the work. If someone left the church or was upset at him, she took it personally. If the church was not growing, she felt the weight of failure. The demands on his time, her feeling neglected, and the weight of the whole ministry had brought her to the breaking point. He loved to preach and certainly had been affirmed in it, but he realized that living with his wife in an understanding way (1 Pet. 3:7) meant considering what she could and could not handle. So he planned to resign.

This does not necessarily mean failure on his or her part. God may have different work for them to do, and men in such situations should encourage their wives with whatever God might have next.

Still, what questions should a potential pastor think through concerning his wife?

A WORD TO THE CHURCH

Before I answer that, a word to the church. When a church hires a pastor, the church hires a pastor, not the pastor and his wife. Granted, she is going to be a member of the church and will serve in the church like other members. But the Bible does not provide a specific job description for an elder’s wife.

So resist the urge to place additional expectations on her. Her primary responsibility is not to organize the annual mother-daughter tea, VBS, or the ladies retreat. It is to be the wife of her husband and to be his helper. That is a major responsibility. Elders’ wives are critical to helping their husbands manage their households well, and to help him providing hospitality for members in the congregation as seasons permit. The fact that a woman’s husband is in the ministry does not mean that she has more time; she probably has less.

A WORD TO THE HUSBAND

A preliminary word to the husband, too. There are differences between the role of a senior pastor and the role of other elders, which means his wife will encounter different expectations than their wives.

Here are a few that come to mind. First, the senior pastor’s wife will face increased visibility. Every time you preach on marriage, the congregation will think about your marriage. Every time you preach on parenting, they will think about your family.

Second, people tend to assume that the senior pastor’s wife knows about everything happening in the church’s life, like who is in the hospital, what time the bus returns from the junior high camping trip, and which teams are playing Friday night in the softball league.

Third, the senior pastor feels responsibility for the whole church in a way others don’t. This is perhaps the greatest challenge of being a senior pastor and, therefore, of being married to one. You may have supportive elders and staff, but your senior position means you own the church, feel the church, breathe the church. Your elders and associates are wonderful, but you feel responsible for them too! You cut the grass thinking about the church. You discuss the church at meals, on walks, and on vacation. Others may rotate off the elder board for a time, but you are always on. Others can take a weekend to go visit children or get away. But Sunday is not the weekend for you, it is the main event. And it feels like it comes every three days.

QUESTIONS TO ASK OF YOUR WIFE

How can you know if your wife can handle this? Here are some things to consider. Some of them may be tough to work through, but it is better to address these now, before you get into a ministry role.

1. How territorial is she?

First, how territorial is your wife? Is she willing to share you with people? After the Sunday service, other people may be able to hang around for a few minutes and then go home. But not you. If you preached the Word, people want to talk to you, and generally should be able to. Hopefully, your wife will see this as an opportunity, not a burden.

Is she willing to share herself? The ministry is not a profession; it is a passion. My wife is extremely organized. Her “to do” list is daunting and she loves the thrill of checking things off. But when she makes her list, she does not plan for three phone calls from women who need counsel and encouragement. When she gives herself fifteen minutes to run into the store for fresh veggies, she does not plan for long conversations with members and neighbors. Yet they happen. How does your wife handle those “interruptions”? As opportunities to serve others, or as obstacles that get in her way?

Is she willing to share your home? Does she see your home as your retreat from the world, or as a base for ministry? Your home is a wonderful tool for establishing and developing so many relationships with others—as long as your wife shares that vision.

By the way, there are times when your wife needs to be territorial, particularly when you need to be home with your kids and you are tempted to do something else “for the church.” In cases like this, she is fighting for you and for your kids and for the church, and you need her help to see it.

2. Does she really love others?

Second, does your wife really love others? Some ministry wives view the church as a burden to bear, and it shows. If your wife sees the church as a means for validation, instead of as people to serve, she will grow exhausted.

Over time, your church will sense whether your wife really loves them, or whether she is only doing what is expected. Cathi says that this is really at the heart of it all.

3. Is she high maintenance?

Third, is your wife high maintenance? Does she take herself too seriously? Is it all about her? Is she impossible to please?

If your wife thinks that everything in the church reflects on her, then she is going to be paranoid. The church is a bunch of messy sinners, who, like porcupines, tend to poke each other when they get close enough. If your wife does not handle others’ failures with grace, then life at home will be miserable, even while you attempt to put up a brave front.

Your wife needs to be able to handle her own issues with others without pulling you into them. If she has a conflict with someone, she needs to address it as Christ taught us in Matthew 18. It is neither right nor fair to the other person for you to step in.

4. Is she insecure?

Fourth, is she insecure? Of course, we are all insecure to some degree. Just because your wife has feelings of insecurity does not mean that you cannot be a pastor. No wife can match the expectations of others, especially since they are constantly changing. But there is a difference between struggling with insecurity and being owned by it. Is your wife owned by it?

One Sunday morning early in my pastorate, an older usher, a pillar in the church, stopped Cathi from entering the sanctuary. He explained that he didn’t let in “riff-raff.” Without a pause, she pointed to me on the platform and said to him, “See that guy up there? I wash his underwear. You can let me in!” He did.

5. Is she controlling?

Fifth, is she controlling? Things happen that you cannot control. How does she respond?

I once warned a member of a pulpit committee not to pursue a particular candidate because his wife had to run everything her way. Even if she was not in charge of something, she attempted to take over because no one did it “as good as she did.” She had successfully offended many other women, and I knew that no matter how well this brother preached, his wife would eventually blow things up. The church called him anyway, and, sure enough, she blew things up.

Your wife will be able to affect some changes, but can she handle the 1970’s wallpaper in the ladies restroom and not offend the decorating committee that still thinks it looks good?

6. Is she discreet?

Sixth, is she discreet? Can she pass over others’ sins silently, rather than gossiping or “venting”?

Another lady in the church once falsely accused my wife. It was ugly. This lady even came over to our home to confront Cathi. Yet I never knew it. That evening when I got home Cathi didn’t say a word to me about it.

Months later, this lady was in my office and she told me she was surprised that I was talking with her. I was taken aback and asked her what she meant. She then told me what she had done to my wife. I was able to tell her that Cathi had never breathed a word of this to me. Cathi’s restraint freed me to be able to minister to this lady. It also gave this lady a great appreciation for my wife. That evening when I asked Cathi why she never shared that with me, she simply said, “It did not involve you.”

Women in my church can trust my wife. They know that their stories will never end up as illustrations in the pulpit, because she will not share what is meant to be private.

7. Is she willing to ask forgiveness?

Seventh, is your wife willing to ask forgiveness? My wife is incredible, but she is not perfect. There have been times when she has spoken before she had all the facts, and has hurt others’ feelings. The reason why she has been such a compliment to the gospel, however, is that she is willing to own her failures, admit them to others, and seek forgiveness. For someone who sets the bar high, failing to meet the mark can be debilitating, but she knows that we can only extend grace to others as we live in view of grace ourselves.

8. Is she willing to be honest with you?

Several years ago Cathi pointed out some of my major blind spots. It took an enormous amount of courage for her to do this, and she did it with grace, hope, tears, and humility. It was hard to listen to her articulate my failures, but I needed to hear them. What is more, the church needed me to hear her.

She served our congregation that night by helping me confront some areas that I desperately needed to correct. Many of the weaknesses that she pointed out were echoed in the church. Now I could see them. Her boldness was a gift to our marriage and to our church.

SHE WASN’T HIRED, BUT YOU’RE STILL A TEAM

Pastors, our wives have a tough job. They see parts of our life that the rest of the congregation doesn’t, and they still have to listen to our sermons.

Ministry is not easy. I have been tempted to quit a number of times and Cathi not only knows it, she feels it and carries it. The church may not hire your wife, but if you’re married you’re a team. May God grant you wisdom and grace.

Bob Johnson is the senior pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Roseville, Michigan.

How Our Elders and Deacons Work Together

Mike Lumpkin — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 04:01:00 +0000

“I just don’t feel like the church cares about me.” This is hard to hear as a pastor, yet most of us have heard it. Sometimes we write it off as coming from an overly needy member who has unrealistic expectations of the pastor’s time. Sometimes, though, it’s a real problem.

The church has two offices: elders and deacons. Each local church should not only have these offices, but have them work together. However, too often elders and deacons don’t complement one another but instead contradict, overlap, or ignore one another altogether.

A measure of structure can help remedy this, but it has to foster caring relationships, not merely task-driven organization.

When I arrived at University Baptist Church in 2006, one of the first things that needed addressing was member care. The church had been through a very difficult season. There had been fractured relationships, broken trust, and a burden of financial debt. My desire in coming to a church in need of healing and reform was to first establish expository preaching and, eventually, a plurality of elders. I was content for this to take the first five years to complete, but the church was in need of care—now.

After meeting with the deacons several times, it was apparent that these men really wanted to be deacons. These were not elder wannabes or a baptized labor union. They were men longing to be led and organized to care for the church, so that’s what we did.

First, we divided up the church membership by households and assigned those households to the deacons. At the time, each deacon had about fifteen households to care for. In the early stages, we contacted all inactive members. This “family plan” helped us tremendously as we sought to reconnect with our members and, where necessary, remove from our rolls those who were unable or unwilling to reconnect.

Once the inactive members were all but removed, we focused care on the present members. Our deacons were tasked with a plan to contact their households via personal visits, phone calls, emails, and/or texts. After several relational hits and misses, we finally settled on a more balanced approach to entrusting the deacons primarily with families they had natural relationships with, some families they did not know at all, and at least one widow. This made caring for the members measurably more natural, though still daunting.

Once we established elders in the church, we implemented a second phase of care for the body, shepherding groups. These shepherding groups are led by an elder and consist of four or five deacons. Each deacon is responsible for ten or so families, therefore each shepherding group represents approximately 50-60 households.

Shepherding groups meet every 6 to 8 weeks for discipleship, family reports, and prayer. These reports alert the elders to practical needs. If there are deeper spiritual concerns, including potential discipline issues, the elder leading the group takes the concerns to the elder body at the next elders’ meeting.

This organization of care for our church has helped us meet the needs in our body, understand member concerns, and strengthen the relationship between elders and deacons. While we do not currently have deaconesses, if we moved in that direction, we would separate deacon tasks between those with household assignments and those with more administrative responsibilities. Out of prudence, only men would be assigned households.

There are many ways to organize ministry. We have found that this model of shepherding groups gives us the best chance of fulfilling the responsibilities and relationships necessary to the offices of deacon and elder in member care. It is just one way, be we have found it to be a very good way.

Mike Lumpkin is the pastor of University Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Book Review: Understanding Biblical Theology

Sam Emadi — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 09:00:00 +0000

What is biblical theology? The question is unfortunately not as easy to answer as many would like. For some, biblical theology may activate memories of seminary assignments demanding careful historical reconstructions and taxing lexical studies. For others biblical theology evokes anything from the works of Geerhardus Vos to the preaching of Tim Keller to academic debates over theological interpretation of Scripture.

In light of this confusion, Edward “Mickey” Klink and Darian Lockett are on target when they suggest in their new book Understanding Biblical Theology that “biblical theology has become a catchphrase, a wax nose that can mean anything from the historical-critical method applied to the Bible to a theological interpretation of Scripture that in practice appears to leave history out of the equation altogether” (13). Or as Carson wryly quips, “Everyone does that which is right in his or her own eyes, and calls it biblical theology” (78).

THE SPECTRUM OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY

Thankfully students and pastors now have a reliable guide to the various types of biblical theology on offer in today’s theological market. Klink and Lockett’s Understanding Biblical Theology defines and analyzes five major types of biblical theology along a spectrum from those more concerned with matters of history to those more focused on matters of theology.

The authors separate their work into five parts. Each part consists of one chapter defining the biblical-theological method and then another chapter analyzing the works of one of its foremost proponents. Chapters which define biblical-theological methods generally follow the same outline and address the “perennial issues” associated with biblical theology: the relationship between the Old and New Testament, the historical diversity and the theological unity of the Bible, the scope of biblical theology and whether the sources should be restricted to the Christian canon, and whether biblical theology is a task for the church or for the academy (20-21).

Click here to continue reading.

I Was a Pragmatist

Jeramie Rinne — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 04:01:00 +0000

Hi, I’m Jeramie. And I’m a recovering pragmatic pastor.

I graduated from seminary seventeen years ago and became the senior pastor of South Shore Baptist Church in Hingham, Massachusetts about two years later. Seminary gave me a solid theological foundation, sharp exegetical tools, and a firm grasp of the Bible’s storyline. That education fuels my ministry to this day.

But despite my schooling, I launched into pastoral work lacking something critical: a biblical approach to local church ministry. I didn’t have what Tim Keller calls a theological vision: that philosophy of ministry that connects one’s doctrinal beliefs to one’s practical day-to-day ministry.[1]

Well, that’s not exactly true. I actually did have a theological vision, albeit unconsciously. It was the same ministry philosophy that serves as the default setting for so many pastors. I was a pragmatist.

PRAGMATISM IN PRACTICE

Let me define what I mean by “pragmatist.” It’s the approach that says a church can use any effective means to win people to Jesus, make disciples, grow the church, or build the kingdom. A church may adopt any structure, program, or strategy that “works” to reach people for Christ as long as the initiative isn’t obviously sinful.

So that means no men’s ministry kegger and no Ponzi scheme for funding the youth mission trip. But besides dubious programming like that, a church’s ministry is only limited by its creativity. As long as you agree on a short list of core doctrines, or a handful of biblical purposes, the actual shape of evangelical ministry is up to you.

Pragmatism has proverbs like, “The church’s methods change but its message stays the same” and “There’s no one right way to do church.” Like most proverbs, those sayings contain a kernel of truth. But for the pragmatist, these are the rallying cries for an entrepreneurial, results-oriented, whatever-it-takes way of “doing church.”

Pragmatism served as the operating system for the first seven years of my ministry. I played around with lots of different ministry apps on that platform: drama, a third worship service, coffee houses, and of course lots and lots of programs. If someone had a ministry idea and energy to lead it, I tended to back it because, hey, it might just work! I’m not suggesting all of those ministry initiatives were bad, or that churches should squash new ideas, or that we shouldn’t be passionate about reaching people. But the programmatic hodgepodge that formed in the church was indicative of a pragmatic theological vision.

During that first seven years of ministry, the church grew steadily in numbers. People came to faith and got involved. Whatever we were doing seemed to succeed. And that’s what matters, right? But even as the church grew, something else was growing in my heart: a nagging discontent and disillusionment with how we did church.

FULL CHURCH, EMPTY PASTOR

Despite our church’s apparent success, the pragmatism left me empty and disoriented. This model for church ministry felt increasingly hollow. In retrospect, there seemed to be several reasons for my response, stemming from pragmatism’s inherent weaknesses:

Pragmatism Is Exhausting

First, pragmatism is exhausting. It takes a lot of work to be a pragmatist. You have to keep abreast of the latest ministry trends, read the newest how-to books, and attend the conferences of the most successful churches.

You must also keep your finger on the pulse of people inside and outside the church to discern what will reach them. And let’s not even talk about how draining it is to shift church paradigms every couple years. The pragmatic pastor must be part organizational change guru, part cultural analyst and futurist, part salesman, and part start-up specialist. It all left me very soul-weary.

Pragmatism Is Man-Centered

Further, pragmatism is man-centered. I found this to be true in at least two ways. First, focusing on results inevitably means focusing on people’s in-the-moment status. Are they coming, staying, converting, giving, participating, or serving? If so, then keep doing what you’re doing because something is working.

Of course good pastoral leadership involves humbly listening to the congregation. But pragmatism propelled me beyond pastoral sensitivity into the fear of man. Conversely, it didn’t lead me into theological thinking or the fear of God.

Second, pragmatic ministry tends to be man-centered in the way it celebrates successful practitioners. Those pastors who have cracked the code to reaching baby boomers or millennials or post-moderns or urbanites draw throngs of pastors searching for help. Even at a local level, when regular pastors get together they inevitably want to know: one, who in the group has the thriving ministries, and two, what those pastors are doing that works so well.

Pragmatism Is Subjective

Finally, pragmatism is subjective. Pragmatism rests on a disturbingly relativistic, arbitrary foundation. Why should the church follow my ideas instead of someone else’s? Just because I am the senior pastor? Why implement this best-selling church model instead of that best-selling model? And how do we define “success” or know when something “works?” Who sets those metrics and on what basis? I sometimes had the sinking feeling that I was making ministry up as I went along.

RIGHT UNDER MY NOSE

At the end of that first seven years, my church generously granted me a three-month sabbatical. I told the elders I planned to spend the time hunting for the “right model” for our growing church. My plan was to visit over a dozen churches all over the country to find the best ministry template. It was the ultimate pragmatist pilgrimage.

But instead of finding the right church to imitate, I found something else on my sabbatical: the Bible.

To my surprise I discovered that the Bible actually had a lot to say about how to do church, far more than pragmatists want to admit. The Bible gives us more than just core doctrines or a few overarching ministry principles. It lays out a robust theological vision for local church ministry, centered on the gospel, with very practical implications.

And so began a slow process of learning not to ask, “Will it work?” and instead asking questions like, “Does Scripture speak to this?” and “How should the gospel shape this decision?” For the last seven years I’ve been reprogramming myself to think theologically about local church ministry.

What has a biblical and theological vision looked like in practice for us? It looks like the primacy of expository preaching so that God’s Word sets our agenda. It means our elders transitioning from a board of directors model to a shepherding mentality. It has looked like two worship services adopting a single blended style to reflect the unity we see stressed in the Bible. It has meant (for us, at least) morphing our building project from a gym to a sanctuary.

As I write this, our elders and pastoral staff are wrestling through whether to continue conducting two Sunday morning services or combine them into one. Rather than simply being pragmatic and listing pros and cons for one service vs. multiple services, we’re also looking at what the Bible says about the very nature of a congregation. Can we be a body that doesn’t assemble, a church family that doesn’t gather as one, or a people in communion who don’t take the Lord’s Supper together? What does it mean, biblically, to be a local church?

MY COPERNICAN REVOLUTION

This rediscovery of a biblical vision has profoundly changed my ministry. I no longer feel adrift in the sea of pragmatism, but can chart a course using Scripture as my sextant. People’s reactions don’t throw me for a loop because I see how ministry decisions flow from a theological basis, enabling me to trust God even when people aren’t happy. But most satisfying of all, God and his Word have returned to the center of my ministry and our church’s life. It is so worshipful to open the Bible and ask, “What does God have to say about his church?”

To my fellow struggling pastors trying to figure out ministry: Take heart because there is wisdom to be had. And it begins with the fear of the Lord and his Word.

[1] Tim Keller, Center Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 17-19.

Jeramie Rinne is the senior pastor of South Shore Baptist Church in Hingam, Massachusetts.

Wendell Berry and the Beauty of Membership

Matt McCullough — Thu, 30 May 2013 04:01:00 +0000

Once each quarter I teach a new members class for people interested in joining our church. It’s become one of my favorite responsibilities as a pastor. I’m a believer in church membership, no question. But I’ll be honest: every time I teach the class I cringe a bit along with my audience at some of the things we discuss.

Concepts like authority, exclusivity, and discipline just don’t sound right on a pre-reflective, aesthetic level. They evoke a yuck factor ingrained in us by the often unnoticed influence of our western culture—literature, film, music, pop psychology—and its celebration of the unfettered individual. (Chapter 1 of Jonathan Leeman’s The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love is helpful for tracing out examples of this influence.)

Now, I know that some of these ideas have always been distasteful to fallen humans. Self-denial is nauseating to the self-centered. That said, I don’t think we’re guilty of ear-tickling if we look for counterbalancing images, images that make sensible the beauty that’s in a community defined by the goals of membership. And to that end I’ve really come to appreciate the world created in the novels of Wendell Berry.

Berry is not the sort of author to whom you turn for help crafting your church’s statement of faith. His works aren’t the right genre and he isn’t the right author. But novels are especially well-suited for retraining our aesthetic tastes, for putting flesh on ideas that otherwise may remain sterile and abstract.

Set in an isolated Kentucky farming community called Port William, Berry’s works portray the beauty of a bounded life, a death to the options of Elsewhere, the embrace of a concrete place and its people. It’s no accident that Jayber Crow, my favorite of Berry’s novels, is subtitled The Membership of Port William. Like all common graces, a community fostered by the willing limitation of one’s horizons can turn idolatrous, breeding an insularity Alan Jacobs has recently described as unchristian. And it’s also true that there is a darker side to small town life. Those familiar with the works of William Faulkner will find the world of Port William to be an ideal world by contrast. And yet Berry’s novels are especially useful for illustrating the liberating submission that’s always involved with membership.

In Jayber Crow, Berry’s characters show what it is to belong to a community, by which I mean more than the welcome and affirmation typically communicated by the word today. To belong to a community is to be at its disposal, to have given over all you have to be used for whatever your community needs. It is to be implicated substantively, not just sympathetically, in the ups and downs of a place and its people. It is a submission of yourself—your identity, your interests, your ambitions—to the needs of those to whom you’re bound.

The book’s heroes reject the notion that you make your own identity rather than receive it. They know and embrace who they are through their connection to things larger than themselves: their community, the land, the march of history, the mysterious purposes of God. They find joy, peace, and freedom in accepting their subsidiary status.

One of the barriers to this sort of belonging, of course, is the selfish ambition that dwells deep in all of us. Rather than submitting ourselves to community, ambition drives us to subordinate all things to our personal gratification or our relentless effort to build a name for ourselves. Berry’s villains in Jayber Crow depict this impulse vividly. They’re not the sort of villains who steal, kill, and destroy. They’re characters like Cecilia Overhold, a woman who marries into Port William from the upper crust of the town next door and can never forgive “the failure of the entire population of Port William to live up to [her] expectations” (209). She’s described as a woman who “thought that whatever she already had was no good, by virtue of the fact that she already had it” (209); she lives as if “there is always a better place for a person to live, better work to do, a better spouse to wed, better friends to have” (210). In the midst of a vibrant, gracious, and happy community she is discontented, angry, and lonely.

Troy Chatham is perhaps even more to the point. His character emerges in detail as a young farmer who rejects the old ways, never imagining that “the reference point or measure of what he did or said might not be himself,” never belonging to the place but convinced the farm exists “to serve and enlarge him” (182). Throughout the story, Chatham leverages the present for the future in his all-consuming desire to “be somebody,” using and abusing all the resources he could claim in service to his exalted self-image. He is a man who utterly fails to recognize his limits or his dependence on what is outside of and bigger than himself.

Jayber Crow is a nostalgic book, and—for all its beauty—a sad one. The world it describes is for the most part a lost world. It was held together by traditions no longer valued and an isolation no longer possible. Which is to say much of its staying power rested on personal preference for its traditions and to some extent an ignorance of alternatives.

Bound in time, Berry’s world offers but a pale reflection of the local church ideal, a community where members’ submission to each other is rooted in the message of the gospel and the power of God’s Spirit. Against his redeemed community, Jesus has promised us, even the gates of hell are no threat.

But Berry’s stories bring to life truths at the heart of the community we’re aiming for when we emphasize church membership. A thriving, covenant-shaped local church requires precisely the sort of self-abnegation Berry celebrates and is opposed by the same self-exaltation he portrays in all its ugliness.

Too often we try on new churches like we try on new clothes and for much the same reason. We’re looking for style and fit, for what meets our needs and makes the appropriate statement about who we are. We put our churches in service of our desire to be somebody and our commitment doesn’t outlast the better options of Elsewhere. But this posture—beside its offense to the cross—leads to self-absorption, restlessness, and isolation.

By contrast, there is freedom in coming off the market. There is sweet rest in belonging to one people, for better or worse, and there is the opportunity for displaying costly, Christlike love. We’re called to die to our narrow interests and to what we might hope to enjoy or become on our own. But we’re called to a truer life in our identification with Christ and his body on earth. On the terms of 1 Corinthians 12, we must embrace our status as a mere hand, ear, or foot, helpless apart from the other members and happy so long as Christ is exalted and the body is thriving. This is boundedness, for sure, but it’s liberating and it’s beautiful.

Matt McCullough is the pastor of Trinity Church in Nashville, Tennessee and the author of My Brother's Keeper: Christian Nationalism, Messianic Interventionism, and the Spanish-American War of 1898 (University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming).

Five Reasons We Don’t Disciple (Part 2)

Barry Cooper — Fri, 24 May 2013 13:06:22 +0000

Last time, we looked at the biblical rationale for making disciples and asked the question, “Why aren’t we obeying the Lord’s command?” I suggested that “cheap grace” was one of the prime suspects.

TWO MORE REASONS WE DON’T DISCIPLE

Let me suggest two more reasons our discipleship is so shallow.

1. Our Churches are Seeker-sensitive, but Believer-insensitive.

First, our churches are seeker-sensitive, but believer-insensitive. No church has done more to research and develop seeker-sensitive services than Willow Creek in Chicago. They first started tailoring their church services specifically for seekers 30 years ago.

But in 2008 they published the results of a four-year survey on how effective they had been in fulfilling Jesus’ call to make disciples (Matt. 28:19). Their conclusion was that after three decades, they needed to shift from seeker-sensitive services to services which focused on enabling believers to grow in their faith: from seeker-sensitive to believer-sensitive.

What Willow Creek realized (the hard way) is that we cannot serve two masters. If our focus is always on trying to please seekers, we will not be growing disciples. Our diet as a church will be restricted to milk, and our growth will be stunted because we’ll never get to consume solid food.

The writer of Hebrews castigates those believers who have never progressed beyond “the elementary truths of God’s word”:

…though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. (Heb 5:12-14)

To be clear, I’m not saying there isn’t a place for one-off services which focus on the outsider. Carol services, for example. But if that’s our general approach every week, Christians will not be hearing the deeper things of God, their discipleship will remain shallow, and as a result they’ll be practically incapable of discipling anyone else.

We needn’t fear that in making a shift toward more believer-sensitive services our churches will no longer speak to non-Christians. We will still, after all, be preaching the gospel. And the gospel that sustains and grows believers is the same gospel that got us started.

As a result, for the benefit of believers and unbelievers alike, we should be preaching the gospel every week—in every service, whatever our text. Jesus spoke of the whole Scripture as testifying about him (John 5:39). So even if we’re lurching through Leviticus, let’s preach it the way Jesus did: as pointing to the redemption that is in him.

Of course, if we’re fixated on trying to be seeker-sensitive, there’s a good chance we won’t ever preach Leviticus anyway—or any other part of Scripture we think might startle the unsuspecting. This is not good. As 2 Timothy 3:16-17 reminds us:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

In other words, we need all of Scripture to make disciples. If we neglect certain parts of it because we’re worried we’ll drive away non-Christians, the quality of our discipleship will sharply decline.

2. Our churches are less converted.

Second, our churches are less converted. That is, our churches have fewer Christians in them, so there are fewer people able to disciple each other. No doubt the reasons for this are complex, but let me suggest two.

Firstly, it used to be that to be known as a member of the body of Christ, you had to be a Christian. That’s the assumption of the New Testament.

But now, in many churches—even in some large, well-known evangelical churches—you can become a member simply by ticking a box on a welcome card. There is little or no attempt to examine the person spiritually to try and ascertain that they are truly followers of Christ. How can we expect people who aren’t disciples themselves to be discipling others?

Secondly, the practice of church discipline has been all but lost.

This was the standard custom of the New Testament church, or at least the obedient New Testament church. In 1 Corinthians 5, for example, Paul says that we are to expel unrepentant sinners from membership in the church.

Our failure to obey Paul’s command here is spiritually deadly. It results in members who are not disciples. Indeed, they may be showing signs of being actively opposed to Christ, to the great dishonor of the Lord and his gospel. Again, we can’t expect people who aren’t disciples themselves to be discipling others.

Why have we neglected these two things?

I think there are several reasons, but here’s one of the main ones: numbers have become so important to us that we will do anything to boost them. We are desperate for people to enter, and desperate for them to stay. We have lowered the cost in the hope that more will buy.

What happens when we duck the biblical practices of church membership and discipline? We end up with a church culture that becomes increasingly de-Christianized, denuded of its salt and light. A culture of discipleship in our churches is impossible when so many of our members are not disciples themselves. And the influence of those non-discipling church members on those church members who are genuinely seeking to follow Christ will not be benign.

To put it another way (and to borrow Mark Dever’s analogy), it used to be that the front door of the church was protected carefully, while the back door was wide open. That is, churches were careful about who they let in, and they diligently disciplined those whose lives contradicted their professions. Now, however, we leave the front door swinging wide open, and we jam the back door tight shut because we’re so afraid of anyone leaving.

If this is our mindset, then sadly we can expect to see congregations who are not discipling one another.

Next time, I’ll suggest a fourth reason we don’t disciple.

Click here for part one of the series.

When Disaster Strikes...Again

Jonathan Leeman — Fri, 24 May 2013 02:56:48 +0000

About a week ago, we posted Toby Jenkins' article on how a number of churches in his county and state rallied around his church when his community was struck by a tornado last Spring. A few days after posting, the tornado hit Moore, Oklahoma.

So if you missed Toby's article, take a look. (We asked him to re-write the intro.) It might encourage you to look for ways to serve churches in Moore or other disaster-affected areas.

When Disaster Strikes: How Other Churches Helped Ours

Toby Jenkins with Cade Campbell — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:18:45 +0000

Seeing an EF-4 tornado zero in on your town is terrifying. Living in the devastation it brings is horrifying. Responding with the gospel is liberating.

On March 2, 2012 this is exactly what I faced as a pastor of First Baptist Church of Henryville, Indiana. The town that I love was reduced to rubble, as were the homes of the people I love. It was beyond imagining. As I drove through our community, I was brought to tears by the destruction around me. I remember asking my wife Sonia, “What are we going to do?”

PASTORALLY UNPREPARED

I felt overwhelmed, unprepared, and insufficient for the work God had dropped in my lap. My fellow pastors and I knew we needed to reach out both to the needs of our church and to the community around us, and to speak the gospel through it all. But how?

I was not prepared. For far too long my ministry vision was nearsighted. Whether your church is thriving or struggling, it is easy to become self-focused. Before the tornado hit, I had not valued church association, because I was more concerned about us and ours.

But the easy way of selfishness is anti-gospel. The Bible calls us to a caring, cooperating, serving, and giving ministry that puts action to our affirmations.

PAUL’S CALL

In 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, Paul calls the church in Corinth to a ministry of cooperation and giving. He was working to send an offering of relief to the church in Jerusalem. They were suffering from a devastating famine. The book of Acts tells us the Jerusalem church had made great sacrifices to meet the needs in their midst, but then found themselves needing more help than they alone could provide. So Paul called the Corinthians to model Christ to the world by using their abundance to meet the needs of other congregations (8:13-15).

In so doing, he teaches us that using the gifts that God has given to meet the needs of other churches is a reflection of Christ’s own love for us (8:9). We do this work knowing that God is the one who provides the resources for our ministry (9:8-10). And we do this, ultimately, so that God would be glorified as his gracious character is made known: “The ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God” (9:12; cf. vv. 11-15).

The home of one of First Baptist Church of Henryville's deacons after the March 2, 2012 tornado.

HELP CAME

Our church surely needed help after the tornado. The day after, I woke up not knowing whether help would come. The phone towers had been destroyed in the storm, and only a few calls had come through. But then the calls came, churches responded, and believers joined together to bring us gospel-fueled assistance:

First Baptist Church Fairdale showed up Saturday morning and started boarding up the church’s windows and putting tarps on the roof.
Bethel Baptist, which is three miles away, housed hundreds of volunteers that helped me love my people for months.
Local churches all across our country deployed volunteers and overwhelmed us with financial gifts.
Victory Memorial Baptist Church sent a stack of Wal-Mart gift cards for us to give to our neighbors in the community with personalized stickers that read, “From FBC Henryville with love.”
Our state association of churches rushed to our aid with disaster relief. Our SBC State Executive Director Cecil Seagle called to assure me: “Don’t worry. Love your people. Meet needs. Preach the gospel. Money and materials are on the way.” So we did. The next day he shows up with a stack of $500 gift cards.

The stories are too many to tell. This last year, because of the generosity and love of sister churches, we have been able to love our community. We have been able to meet needs, bind up wounds, and most importantly preach the gospel to the people of Henryville. And God has worked mightily! Many individuals have believed. The wind of God’s Spirit has blown and is still blowing, a mighty gust stronger than any tornado.

CARE FOR SISTER CHURCHES

I want to encourage you to turn from a selfish inner-focus to an outward-looking mission focus. This demands a vision for leading churches to care for the needs of their sister churches. It took a tornado to teach me this ministry-altering lesson.

We are co-laborers in the gospel. Many are hurting. Many are in need, and God has given us the resources to assist, to equip, and to evangelize. Let us center our cooperation on the cross and work together for the good of our churches and the glory of our Savior. As we join together in this way, we will be led to declare all the more: “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” (2 Cor. 9:15).

Toby Jenkins is the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Henryville, Indiana. Cade Campbell is the associate pastor for teaching and discipleship of FBC Henryville.

Churches Cooperating in Discipline

Jonathan Leeman — Thu, 02 May 2013 04:01:00 +0000

Yes, autonomous local churches really can cooperate in church discipline. No, they typically don’t. But, yes, they should!

The first step my own church takes to cooperate with other churches in discipline is to ask everyone joining the church, have you ever been disciplined from a local church? If the person answers “yes,” more questions will follow, and possibly the pastors will reach out to the former church.

Read Greg Wills’ book Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785-1900, and you will discover that, once upon a time, it was harder for excommunicated individuals to float from church to church because pastors asked those kinds of questions. Yes, it is rarer today. But what if more and more church leaders—like you?—began doing that again? How might that affect the evangelical landscape? My guess is that it would deal a hard blow to nominal Christianity and that our witness to outsiders would improve.

If you are a Baptist or believer in a free-church polity generally, say it out loud with me: cooperate.

Here are three illustrations from my own church’s experience of cooperating with other churches in discipline:

1) In a membership interview, a woman admitted that she had been excommunicated from a church in another part of the country for non-attendance. She had stopped showing up, and the church faithfully excommunicated her (see Heb. 10:25). When pressed, she admitted that she had never reconciled with her past church, but that she wanted to. The elder conducting the interview therefore called her former pastor and asked about the situation. The former pastor said that, in light of the fact that she now lived in another part of the country, her repentance would be shown in joining our church. His congregation then formally and publicly expressed its forgiveness toward her, and she joined our church.

2) Another woman joining our church admitted to having been excommunicated from her church (again, in another part of the country) for rebelling against her parents and the pastors. Our pastors, no doubt, took such a charge very seriously and wanted to respect and honor that church’s action. Therefore, they researched the incident carefully through phone conversations with her former pastors and family members. In the final analysis, however, our pastors decided that her former church had been mistaken in its decision to excommunicate her, and they decided to recommend her membership to the congregation.

3) A man was excommunicated from our congregation for a public sin. He then attempted to join another church in our metropolitan area. Somehow (I don’t know how) the new church caught wind of his excommunication. Since their pastors are friends with our pastors, they immediately called us, asked for our counsel, and told us they would delay on any membership decision, seeing that the man had unfinished business with us.

As a small “c” congregationalist, I believe that churches are autonomous, meaning that they rule themselves under God’s Word and King Jesus. But no church should be entirely independent. Indeed, we should be inter-dependent, even in matters that go to the heart of a church’s authority such as membership and discipline.

That means (i) another church’s decision in a matter of discipline and membership never formally binds your church, but (ii) you should give other churches the benefit of the doubt, assuming they have acted wisely until you have concrete reasons for thinking otherwise. Also, I hardly think churches should conduct manhunts for excommunicated members, following them everywhere they go and putting in phone calls to the pastors of any church building they walk into. But you should do what you can, with prudence, to aid other churches whenever they ask you about members who once belonged to you.

Finally, there is no reason why Baptist, Presbyterian, Anglican and other churches might not informally cooperate in such matters. Every church has a gospel-interest in seeing the others succeed in gospel health and faithfulness.

Jonathan Leeman, a members at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, is the editorial director for 9Marks and is the author of Church Discipline: How the Church Protects the Name of Jesus.

Churches Cooperating in Missions

Andy Johnson — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:25:27 +0000

I know this Christian named “Guy.” An out-of-town friend once sent him a thank-you note that read something like, “Hey, Guy, I’m so glad you were willing to help support the missionaries from my church when they came through your town. You know, we ought to support missionaries like them because when we do we partner together for the gospel.”

What do you think of that note and the sentiment it expresses?

I admit that talk of “partnering together” makes me a little cynical. It’s a common phrase in the missions world, especially among workers who raise their own support. When I hear someone say “monthly partners,” “financial partners,” or “strategic partners,” I feel like they just want me to “part” with my money or time.

But then again, I have found that the cynic in me is frequently wrong, and quite often sounds like the voice of Satan.

The Apostle John, at any rate, would not agree with the cynic in me. After all, he is the one who penned those words to Guy, or Gaius, as he’s better known. John writes in his third epistle, “You are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers, even though they are strangers to you…Therefore we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth” (3 Jn 5, 8).

WHY COOPERATE IN MISSIONS?

Cooperating in missions among local churches is a big-time important deal. It was during the New Testament era, and it still is today. The books of 3 John and Philippians are especially clear on this point.

In recent days, churches have increasingly recovered a sense that they—not fundamentally a denomination or missions agency—are biblically responsible to send missionaries. That’s good. But there is a danger: churches can loose sight of the fact that Bible encourages churches to cooperate with one another in the missionary endeavor.

So as better theology, technology, and transportation encourage many churches to take a more personal, hands-on approach to missions, we don’t want to stop joining hands with other churches. Such cooperation is both humble and gospel-clarifying, as we publically affirm the work of other churches by joining with them in it.

TESTIMONIES OF CHURCHES COOPERATING IN MISSIONS

We have seen this kind of cooperation in a number of ways in our own church. In every case it has begun by getting to know other like-minded churches that are invested in the same areas of the world where we are.

In one case, a church in another state was sending a team to a country in Central Asia where we also have members serving. The team had only one single woman, so they needed another woman to live with her and to provide accountability and fellowship, but no one from their church was available. So what did their pastor do? He humbly called us and a couple of other likeminded churches to see if we had a woman who might join them for the two-year post.

In another case, our church had committed to providing short term-workers to help host a meeting for missionaries in a city overseas, but the needs of this missionary meeting outstripped our church’s volunteer pool. So I called another church also invested in that part of the world. It was a delight to see them joyfully jump onboard and outdo us in their good works. They sent childcare workers, a dentist, and even a hairdresser to serve the workers extravagantly.

HOW CHURCHES CAN COOPERATE WELL IN MISSIONS

But cooperating in missions is not always easy. Here are a few reflections on how to cooperate well in missions with other churches.

1. Only partner deeply with likeminded churches.

First, only partner deeply with likeminded churches. Churches can grow discouraged from trying to partner in missions with other churches that see the work too differently. Life is too short, and the return of Christ too imminent, to spend too much time trying to bridge too many gulfs. Anything that would make you think twice about planting a church together in your home town should probably give you pause about partnering for foreign missions, particularly if planting churches is the end goal. But where you agree on the fundamentals of church life, you have a good foundation for most missions partnerships. As for the rest of Christ’s churches, thank God for them and then get back to work with likeminded churches.

2. Network within your network.

Second, network within your network. Inside whatever groups or entities you may use to go about doing missions, work to create a more closely-knit group of especially like-minded churches. Our church cooperates with the International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) to pool resources for missions. But inside that larger group of churches we have cultivated a much smaller group of churches with whom we more directly cooperate. These are the churches with whom we have a personal history of trust and are most eager to partner with, to share members for teams, and to join with in short-term projects.

3. If you don’t have a network, build one.

Third, if you don’t have a network, build one. Talk to pastors of churches with similar theology and find out what they are doing in missions. See if there might be ways that you could join with them in support and encouragement. Just a phone call or an email a few times a year may be enough to get something started. Let other sister churches know what you are doing, and even be willing to invite some of their members to join with you. Or, join with them and learn a few things yourself.

4. Keep it simple.

Fourth, keep it simple. Sometimes well-meaning churches may bite off too much too soon when they start cooperating for mission. But this doesn’t need to be complicated or take a ton of time. You can open a door to fruitful cooperation just by sharing plans over lunch with a fellow pastor once a year. Another good place to start is to send an email a couple of times a year inviting another church or two to join you on some project. Then, as you get to know the culture of another church, you may find it’s possible to cooperate more deeply and permanently—maybe even sending a team of members from both churches to labor long-term overseas.

TO EXALT AND CLARIFY THE GOSPEL

In a special way, cooperating in missions can serve to exalt and clarify the gospel. It helps to show that your church is about more than just your own programs and projects. It shows that you care about the spread of the gospel, even if another church is doing most of the spreading and reaping. And maybe it will help you to find “fellow laborers for the truth” that will bless you and your congregation for years to come.

Andy Johnson is an associate pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC.

Why I Pray Publicly for Other Churches

Greg Gilbert — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:01:00 +0000

Every Sunday morning, I lead the congregation of Third Avenue Baptist Church in what we call a “pastoral prayer.” I pray for many things during that time—congregational events, members who are suffering, evangelistic opportunities, various officials in government, missions opportunities, and even events that have been in the nation’s headlines. The part of that prayer that elicits the most comment, however—both positive and out of sheer confusion—is when I pray for another evangelical church or two that is meeting in the city of Louisville.

Each week, I choose one or two churches and pray for their services that day. I pray for the church to be attentive to the Word of God. I pray for the pastor to speak boldly and accurately from the Bible. I pray for people to be convicted of their sin, for Christians to be encouraged in the faith, and for non-Christians to be converted. I also thank the Lord that we live in a city where we are not the only church in which the gospel is preached!

Believe it or not, the practice of praying for other churches is so rare in many Christians’ experience that many don’t know exactly how to process it. More than once during my pastorate, a visitor to Third Avenue has walked up to me with a very concerned look to express surprise that such-and-such church is having troubles. After all, why would the pastor of one church pray for another church if there weren’t serious problems afoot there?!

I think there are many benefits to doing this sort of thing week after week. For one thing, it helps me in the work of crucifying my own spirit of competition. It’s so easy for pastors to subtly (if not less than subtly!) begin to think of other churches as “the competition” instead of as fellow proclaimers of the gospel in their city. I want to go on record, in the most public forum I have, as praying for the success and faithfulness of those churches. We are not in this to make a name for ourselves; we are all in it to make a name for our King.

Not only so, but I think those prayers do the same work of crucifying a spirit of competition in the members of Third Avenue. Pastors are not alone in struggling with feeling competitive with other churches. Members do too, and it is good for them to see their leaders working publicly to counteract that tendency so that it doesn’t take root in the life of the church.

Praying for other churches also communicates an important truth about the various churches in a city: We are all on the same team! We all have the same mission, and it is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus and make disciples of him. The last thing we should want as pastors is to communicate a provincial, myopic spirit among our members that recognizes good only in our church, and cannot see what God is doing more broadly. We serve a massive God, and an important way to show that to our people and teach them to rejoice in it is to teach them to care about God’s work in the lives of other churches.

I have found that praying for other churches also helps me to cultivate friendships with their pastors. It reminds me, week after week, that there are other men engaged in this same work that so consumes me each day, and challenges me to strain against any tendency I might have to isolate myself in the work.

In our church covenant at Third Avenue, one of the promises we make to one another as members is that we will not “omit the great duty of prayer both for ourselves and for others.” At its heart, that is a promise that we will remember not only God’s great delight in answering prayer and his unstoppable power to do so, but also the great truth that He is glorifying his Son through the work of churches all over our cities and the world.

Greg Gilbert is the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church and is most recently the author, with Sebastian Traeger, of The Gospel at Work: How Working for King Jesus Gives Purpose and Meaning to Our Jobs (Zondervan, forthcoming).

Testing the Glue that Binds Churches Together

Bobby Jamieson — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:01:00 +0000

Are denominations dying? That seems to be the common wisdom. Certainly the mainline denominations are bleeding out; people are leaving those churches en masse. But what about denominations of evangelical churches that are holding fast or growing?

I’m no demographer, so I can’t give you data to test the idea that denominations have seen better days. But this common line does seem to be picking up a genuine trend that deserves attention—namely, that relatively new ways of relating church to church are at least complementing, and sometimes replacing, traditional denominational structures.

What follows is based on anecdotal, entirely unprofessional observation of (American) evangelical churches. But my goal in this article isn’t so much quantitative analysis as qualitative description. I aim to describe and theologically evaluate a handful of “glues” which bind pastors and churches together, and offer pastors a few tools for thinking through who to partner with, and how.

WHAT HAS CHANGED?

First, though, we need to ask: what has changed? Why do new ways of relating pastor-to-pastor or church-to-church seem to be cropping up, and even competing with older structures?

There are probably a number of reasons: the theological downgrade of the old denominations, the ever-growing Western skepticism toward all forms of authority, even the shrinking of the globe due to revolutions in communication technology. Just consider this last factor and the rise of the internet. Sure, many of the connections the internet fosters are “weak ties”—like Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Yet communications technology gives those “weak ties” the chance of becoming stronger ties. And it allows us to sustain stronger ties over distances that would’ve been unthinkable a generation ago. With the rise of communication technology, traditional denominational structures aren’t the only show in town—or even the leading one—for connecting pastors and churches.

Further, by democratizing access to information, the internet has also democratized ecclesial identity formation. Previously models of church were inherited, now they’re mixed and matched. Certainly plenty of pastors throughout the ages have read widely. But I’d guess that today more pastors are influenced by figures outside their denomination than was true in former generations. Eighteenth century Baptists may have read Jonathan Edwards, but they couldn’t download his sermons for free. Bottom line: for many pastors and churches, informal ties to leaders and movements are growing stronger, and formal ties to denominations are growing weaker.

AN INDEPENDENT CONVERSATION

In speaking about churches as independent entities that can be “glued” together in a variety of ways, I am, of course, speaking as a congregationalist. That is, I don’t believe that the “church” on earth exists in any formal, institutional manifestation over and above the local church.

Many congregations, though, do belong to such an extra-local structure. Roman Catholicism is one kind, Eastern Orthodoxy another, Episcopalianism another, and Presbyterianism still another. In all these polities, the local church is formally accountable to an outside individual or entity. We call these “connectional” polities to recognize that this authoritative connection is an intrinsic part of what it means, on this understanding, to be the church.

A connectional polity necessarily enforces a certain confession and practice: someone is able to say “this is out of bounds” to a local church. This means that a connectional church’s very identity is wrapped up in its association with the broader communion in a way that isn’t the case for independent churches.

Connectional polities have their own promises and pitfalls, but I won’t address them here. That’s not because I think they’re unbiblical—though I do—but because most 9Marks readers belong to churches that are formally independent. To put it crassly, connectional polities more or less determine your friends—or enemies!—for you. On the other hand, independent churches have to look up and ask, “Who do we want to associate with, and how?” Hence my focus on the latter.

WHY SHOULD CHURCHES COOPERATE? FOR OUTREACH AND INREACH

In order to describe and assess what holds churches together, we should first think a bit about why they seek to hold together. Jonathan Leeman’s piece “A Church and Churches: Integration” offers several exegetical and theological reasons for why churches should band together. Here I want to take a snapshot from another angle—a practical one. For what practical purposes should churches attempt to stick together?

As I see it, there are basically two: to fulfill the great commission, and to both receive and supply what is lacking in the life of a local church. You could call these two goals outreach and, to use some evangelical-ese, inreach.

Outreach: The great commission is bigger than any local church (Matt. 28:18-20). To evangelize all peoples and establish churches across the globe requires that churches cooperate. And the same is true when it comes to evangelizing our local communities.

Inreach: On the other hand, churches should also seek to aid in supplying each other’s needs as they have opportunity (e.g., 2 Cor. 8-9). If you’ve got a counseling situation that’s spiraling out of control, I hope there’s a wise pastor friend across town you can call. If your church is devastated by a natural disaster, I hope other local churches will rally around you.

TESTING A FEW TYPES OF GLUE

These two goals of outreach and inreach form the backdrop against which I’ll asses a few types of “glue” that hold churches together. While each of these types of glue can be considered on its own, many connections between churches, especially denominational ones, will combine several of them. Think of a denomination as Super Glue, with some of these individual glues as the ingredients.

“Ethnic” Identity

The first kind of glue to consider is “ethnic” identity—note the scare quotes. I don’t mean ethnicity per se, though ethnicity is a very powerful glue. Instead, I am using the term metaphorically to refer to churches that share a tradition so culturally thick that it functions like an ethnic identity.

This is many people’s experience of church life in the Southern Baptist Convention. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, the Southern Baptist Convention became a centralized provider of an all-encompassing church culture: church holidays, Sunday School lessons, midweek programs, music, and more. SBC churches became like McDonalds: you could pop into any one of them, any week of the year, and know exactly what was on the menu.

This kind of “ethnic” identity fosters an intense brand loyalty. On the one hand, that loyalty extends naturally to the thousands of other churches which share the same programmatic profile. Hence many Southern Baptists’ fierce devotion to the denomination’s central mechanism, the Cooperative Program.

On the other hand, this brand loyalty is a double-edged sword. For one, the identity itself is only as biblical as the content of all the programs. Further, the very emphasis on universal, standardized programs can foster a consumer mindset rather than responsible, relational ministry. Finally, this kind of identity can foster a hermetically sealed subculture that finds it difficult to adapt to new people, new places, and new times.

Personality

A second kind of glue to assess is personality—usually the personality of a key pastor who is either a formal or informal denominational head. Sometimes attachment to a personality can lead one into a new denomination. More commonly, this personality glue shows up in megachurches that either birth or effectively become their own denominations. An example of the former would be the Willow Creek Association. For the latter, think of any multi-site church that has “campuses” not just across its city, but across the country and beyond.

Again, in these kinds of relationships there’s more to the story than personality. There’s always some shared doctrine and practice, on which more below. But often, if you take away the big personality the center won’t hold, which means personality is an active ingredient in the glue.

On the one hand, I don’t want to deny that God can use singular personalities to achieve big things—John Wesley’s name heads that list. But on the other hand, attaching yourself and your church to a personality puts you in danger of multiplying not just another man’s fruitfulness, but also his errors. When a group of churches’ identity derives more from a single man than from a more objective tradition—say, a time-tested confession of faith—those churches may be building on pretty thin ice.

If your church is attached to a big personality, how many church members were initially drawn, at least in part, because of your connection to the big man? What happens if he falls into sin or serious error? Who or what holds him accountable? What happens if the big personality’s interests conflict with the local church’s? Who should members side with?

Theological Vision

A third kind of glue is what I’ll call theological vision. As I said above, in this internet age pastors and churches often find they have more in common with churches of other denominations that share their overall theological vision than with churches in their denomination that don’t.

Conferences like Together for the Gospel and the Gospel Coalition both build on, and in different ways seek to foster, this kind of interdenominational unity. Once every two years, T4G casts a thick theological vision for ministry and encourages pastors to build friendships across secondary divides. TGC presents a slightly broader spectrum, creating more of a “village green” feel on its website and at its conference—though this village green is fenced in by robust doctrinal and practical commitments. Further, while T4G is merely a three-day event every two years, TGC has begun to foster cooperative structures with a life of their own, such as their regional chapters.

Because of the shared theological vision which they embody, these two conferences have become shorthand for a pretty long list of doctrinal and practical commitments. If someone identifies with either of these events, you can take a lot of common ground for granted—common ground in which real partnerships can quickly sprout.

How well can these conferences foster cooperative outreach and inreach between churches? Probably the best thing they do is encourage pastors, and help pastors get to know each other. You might not have known there was a likeminded pastor fifteen minutes up the road until you met him in Louisville or Orlando. But if a conference helps you make that connection, over time your relationship can organically grow into a fuller partnership between your churches.

On the other hand, cooperation based on a shared theological vision has its limits. The cooperation T4G and TGC can foster necessarily excludes ecclesiological distinctives like the sacraments and polity—the very things which make a local church what it is. And since the goal of the great commission is planting and nurturing churches, this means that a “theological vision” by itself isn’t enough to foster long-term cooperation for great commission goals.

NEEDED: AN ECCLESIAL VISION

To foster long-term cooperation toward great commission goals, what you need is not merely a theological vision but an ecclesial vision. In order to work with another church to plant churches, you need to agree about what it is you’re trying to plant. You need to agree on the answer to questions like:

What is baptism and who are its proper subjects?
What are the qualifications for church membership? Is (believer’s) baptism on the list?
How should a church be structured? Who has final authority in matters of membership and discipline?
How do we decide what to do, and how to do it, in corporate worship?
What is a pastor’s fundamental job description?

Of course, you can agree about such matters but disagree about essential areas of theology, and then you’re back to square one. That’s why an ecclesial vision requires theological agreement too—more precisely, enough shared theology to constitute a church together.

MULTIPLE LAYERS OF PARTNERSHIPS

The problem is, when many pastors stroll through the denominational grocery aisles, they don’t see any visions on offer they particularly resonate with, whether theological or ecclesial. Or perhaps their preferred vision is just one among many that are tolerated, and by no means the majority view.

If there’s a traditional denomination or network of churches which perfectly matches your theological and ecclesial commitments, the decision to link arms is a no-brainer. But what do you do if there’s no perfect match on offer?

I’d encourage you to think in terms of multiple layers of partnerships. Instead of seeking one all-encompassing identity to wrap your church in, think about multiple overlapping networks.

To begin: What other churches in your area do you have a strong relationship with? Or even just a friendship with their pastor? What formal or informal ways can you partner with them? If they disagree about ecclesial distinctives, you can still meet for fellowship, supply some of each other’s needs, and to some degree cooperate in local outreach.

If other local churches share your ecclesial vision, how can you build your friendships into a more durable partnership? Can you organize pulpit supply to fill a need and train young preachers? Or form a regular pastors’ fraternal where you get into the nitty gritty of shepherding issues? Or even fund a church plant together?

Those are two overlapping local layers. In addition to these local layers, what about a larger scale denomination? Local and larger partnerships can complement each other rather than competing with each other. You may not love everything you see in a big-tent denomination. But if there’s enough basic theological and ecclesial agreement, that big-tent denomination may be able to multiply your church’s efforts for the great commission in a way that outpaces a merely informal relationship.

Further, some larger networks or denominations serve complementary goals. For example, plenty of churches are dually aligned with Acts29 and the SBC. Many brothers I know partner with Acts29 for the coaching and encouragement, and with the SBC in order to support global missions and pastor training.

My point is simply that relationships between churches are not an all-or-nothing affair. They can be more or less formal. They can be local or global. They can focus on planting and building churches, or more broadly on promoting gospel work throughout your city. And you can invest differently in these partnerships depending on your church’s resources, other options for cooperating with likeminded churches, and the needs of your community.

THREE ENCOURAGEMENTS

I want to conclude with three brief encouragements for pastors. First, if you’re feeling lonely and isolated, look first to your fellow elders. Do you have fellow elders in the first place? If not, let your loneliness in ministry spur you to patiently lead your flock toward adopting the biblical model of multiple shepherds. And if you do have multiple elders but still feel isolated, consider how you might spread around the shepherding load.

Second, if you can only pick one place to invest, build around a shared ecclesial vision. If there’s only one other pastor in your town who agrees with your theology and ecclesiology, build into each other and your churches. Work together to raise up other likeminded churches, and to put good resources in other pastors’ hands.

Certainly meeting with brothers who have shared theology can be an encouragement and lead to practical partnerships. But for those partnerships to serve great commission ends over time, they have to build on shared ecclesial DNA. So multiply your networking efforts by focusing on partnerships which could, by God’s grace, result in new and renewed churches.

Finally, be willing to give more than you receive. Don’t judge a denomination or network only by what it can give you and your church. Instead, be willing to invest for the sake of others. The payoff may happen in your city or across the world, next year or in the next generation.

Bobby Jamieson is assistant editor for 9Marks, a member of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, and the author of Sound Doctrine: How a Church Grows in the Love and Holiness of God (Crossway, 2013). You can follow him on Twitter.

A Church and Churches: Integration

Jonathan Leeman — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 04:01:00 +0000

What is the relationship between your local church and every other church in the world?

In the companion piece to this article, I consider what makes different local churches independent from one another. Here we consider how they should integrate.

To understand how and why our churches should cooperate, it is worth taking a second to step inside the U. S. Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, while the ominous storm of angry Muslim students brews just outside the embassy gates. You probably know that the mob eventually broke into the compound, and fifty-two Americans spent 444 days as hostages in the Iran Hostage Crisis. Yet don’t focus on what eventually happened; focus on what it would have been like to be inside the embassy while the fury was still building. What would you be doing in those moments?

Presumably, you would be on the phone in a frantic search for friends. The U. S. State Department, the nearby Canadian Embassy, the Swedish Embassy in town, even sympathizers in the Iranian government—you would be grabbing for whatever friends you could find.

What you would not do is assume that your little embassy compound, floating like a storm-embattled boat in the middle of the seething urban sea that was Tehran, sat fine all by itself. You would not try to “go it alone!” as if the fate of the U.S. government’s diplomatic mission in the world depended upon your embassy’s shoulders.

Yet strangely, this is the attitude that many of our local churches maintain as we seek to undertake God’s mission in the world. We know we are sojourners and aliens. We know other embassies and friends are “out there.” We know the world, the flesh, and the devil oppose us like a bloodthirsty mob—“for your sake we are being killed all the day long” (Rom. 8:36). But too easily our churches undertake Christ’s mission all by our lonesome. We go it alone.

Just consider: does your church cooperate with other local churches in evangelism and missions, in discipline, in counseling, in mercy ministry, in prayer? Or, honestly, does it do its work fairly independently?

A BETTER APPRECIATION FOR FAMILY TIES

Open the Bible and you will find a better appreciation for family ties among the apostolic churches. They shared love and greetings:

“All the churches greet you” (Rom. 16:16).
“The churches of Asia send you greetings” (1 Cor. 16:9).
“All the saints greet you” (2 Cor. 13:13; also, Eph. 4:22).
“I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints” (Eph. 1:15; also Col. 1:4).

They shared preachers and missionaries:

“With him we are sending the brother who is famous among all the churches for his preaching of the gospel” (2 Cor. 8:18).
“Beloved, it is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testified to your love before the church” (3 John 5-6a).

They supported one another financially with joy and thanksgiving:

“At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem” (Acts 15:25-26).
“For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God” (2 Cor. 9:12; also, 2 Cor. 8:1-2).

They imitated one another in how to live the Christian life:

“…you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia” (1 Thess. 1:7).
“For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea” (1 Thess. 2:14).

These apostolic testimonies of shared love and support between the earliest churches are matched by apostolic exhortations. They were told to greet one another:

“Greet the church in their house” (Rom. 16:5).

They were instructed to love one another by caring for one another financially:

“Now concerning the collection for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem” (1 Cor. 16:1-3).
“So give proof before the churches of your love and of our boasting about you to these men” (2 Cor. 8:24).

They were cautioned about whom to receive as teachers:

“Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).
“For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves” (2 John 7-8a).

They were exhorted to pray for other churches and Christians:

“To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints” (Eph. 6:18).

They were exhorted to imitate other churches in steadfastness and faith:

“Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring” (2 Thess. 1:4).

The topic of the relationship between churches gets difficult, of course, because it involves different ideas of authority between churches, which is where denominations divide from one another.

But wherever you come down on the question of authority between churches, it is important to recognize that our local congregations should in some measure be integrated with one another. And your church will best fulfill the Great Commission when its life is connected in relationship and awareness with other churches.

It’s worth seeing several things churches share in common and the practical implications these connections have for our corporate lives.

WE SHARE THE SAME CHRIST

Notice, first, that different Christians share the same Lord and Christ, as comes through in Paul’s greeting to the church in Corinth: “To the church of God that is in Corinth…called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours” (1 Cor. 1:2; cf. 2 Cor. 1:1).

Different churches call upon the same Christ. They are possessed by the same Lord.

Think about what this means: the fact that we have the same Christ, Lord, and King means our many churches are bound together as a distinct body politic, or kingdom, or nation. Just as a common parent makes for familial unity, so a common Lord makes for a kind of political unity. Paul can therefore describe the Ephesians as “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19). Fellow citizens belong to a common nation.

Different denominational traditions make this political unity visible differently. Connectionalist churches put it into practice through presbyteries and bishoprics. As a congregationalist, I find the metaphor of an “embassy” useful here because this Christian “nation” is actually spread throughout the nations of the world, and every individual Christian should be accountable to his or her own embassy. But whichever polity we adopt, we can all agree that churches at least invisibly share a kind of political or national unity together because of our one King.

Practical implication 1: All Christians should care about how our churches are structured, since polity makes this political unity visible. And polity is how Christians are made effectively accountable to our common Lord. Polity is the tool that disciplines us for righteousness.

Practical implication 2: Like a nation, our names and reputations are all bound together, even when we belong to different denominations. Do you know how obnoxious Americans overseas have given rise to the concept of the “ugly American”? In the same way, when one Christian church presents a poor witness in the city, every Christian church in that city suffers. When one church presents a positive witness, every church benefits. We therefore share an interest in one another’s spiritual welfare.

Practical implication 3: Since we share an interest in one another’s spiritual welfare, we should pray for one another, encourage one another, financially support one another as opportunity allows, and generally do what we can to support one another’s ministries. This in turn means there should be an openness to informal relationships with other churches, particularly between church leaders. Having knowledgeable relationships facilitates more specific prayer, encouragement, and aid.

WE SHARE THE SAME CONFESSION

Different Christian churches also share the same gospel confession, even when they belong to different denominations. Think of how Paul exhorted “the churches of Galatia”: “If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:2, 9).

John, too, expected every church to embrace a right doctrine of the incarnation (1 John 4:1-3).

Practical implication 4: Churches should partner in learning from one another and teaching one another. If you and I believe in the same truth, might we not both possess some insight to help one another understand that truth better? I listed several examples above of how the earliest churches did this in the sharing of preachers and missionaries.

In our day, there are lots of ways this can be done: through attending or hosting conferences; through supporting seminary education; through working to equip other church leaders with biblical understanding in a host of ways, from writing books to starting a local ministerial association (to supporting 9Marks!).

Practical implication 5: Churches should work to learn from other churches from across time. The great creeds have something to teach us, as do the various controversies of the past. My church often recites a historic creed on Sunday morning.

Generally, pastors should teach their people to be readers and to be thoughtful. And churches should generally care more about history than we might expect from the population at large.

Practical implication 6: Churches should encourage one another to conform to the same pattern of life, just as the apostolic churches imitated one another (1 Thess. 1:7; 2:4; 2 Thess. 1:4). Paul, sure enough, sought to “remind [the Corinthian church] of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church” (1 Cor. 4:7); and he often insisted on a common rule “in all the churches” (1 Cor. 14:33b-34; also, 7:17, 11:16, etc.).

This implication, too, points to the value of multi-church conferences, books, or ministerial associations. But it particularly highlights the need for pastors to build relationships with one another beyond their own churches, as they seek to grow in wisdom in the nitty-gritty areas of pastoral practice. How do you deal with this tough pastoral counseling situation? I hope you have a pastor friend or two to call, or even a group with whom to discuss it.

Practical implication 7: Churches should work to supply capable pastors or at least supply-preachers to struggling churches who lack them. I know of a number of churches who, when they work to plant or revitalize another church, agree to pay the pastor’s salary in that other church for the first couple of years. And they do so without asking to exercise any authority over that other congregation! It is a gift.

WE SHARE THE SAME COMMISSION

Different churches also share the same calling and commission. All of them are “called to be saints” or holy-ones (1 Cor. 1:2). All of them are commissioned to make disciples (Matt. 28:18-19). All of them are tasked with guarding the name and reputation of Christ through church discipline (see Matt. 18:15-20).

Practical implication 8: Churches should help one another with membership and discipline. As a congregationalist, I do not believe one church can exercise authority over another. But I have watched our church work well together with other congregations in the transfer of members, as well as in the exercise of discipline. For instance, when one individual whom our church had disciplined tried to join a nearby church with whom we have a relationship, that church turned to us for guidance. Our church has done the same when individuals who were disciplined by other congregations tried to join our church. Our church does not believe that it is bound by the other church’s decision, but we would be foolish not to make enquiries. Working together in matters of membership and discipline helps us make and oversee Christ’s disciples and so fulfill the Great Commission.

Practical implication 9: Churches should work together in missions and evangelism. This can happen locally, as when our church partners with nearby churches (from different denominations) to lead evangelistic Bible studies at lunchtime in the business district. Or it can happen nationally and globally, as when the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention pool their money to send missionaries overseas.

Practical implication 10: Churches can partner together in their mercy ministry work. Paul’s example of collecting from a number of churches to support the church in Jerusalem, as mentioned above, provides the most obvious biblical example. Churches today also do well to look for ways to support sister churches with fewer resources at their disposal. This helps Christ’s kingdom and serves the Great Commission.

Cooperating in, compiling, and coordinating resources for mercy ministry among non-Christian neighbors can also help churches fulfill the Great Commission and live as holy ones who are salt and light in the world.

CONCLUSION

It was not until 2:15 in the morning of December 18, 1944, that the orders came for the 422 and 423 regiments of 106^th Division of the U. S. Army to retreat westward toward St. Vith, Belgium from their position in the German forests of Schnee Eifel. By then it was too late. The German Army had successfully executed a pincer movement, surrounding and cutting off the two American regiments. By the next day over 7000 American soldiers found themselves as German prisoners of war.

Now imagine an army regiment trying to do their work alone, without relating to other regiments or the larger division or battalion. It would be foolish.

The army analogy breaks down insofar as the division or battalion command belongs to Christ in heaven. But whether or not you are a congregationalist or a connectionalist, it should be clear that the work of our churches depends upon other churches, like one regiment depending upon another.

How can your church practically support the work of other local churches?

(Click here for “A Church and Churches: Independence.”)

Jonathan Leeman, a member of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, serves as the editorial director at 9Marks and is the author of Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus. You can follow him on Twitter.

A Church and Churches: Independence

Jonathan Leeman — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 04:01:00 +0000

What is the relationship between your local church and every other church in the world?

In the companion piece to this article, I consider how different churches should integrate together. Here we want to ask what makes each independent.

We can answer that by asking what makes our relationship with fellow church members different from our relationship with Christians who belong to different churches. The biblical call to love, pray for, give to, imitate, perhaps even instruct and rebuke other Christians is hardly restricted to the members of our own church. So what makes the relationship different?

DISCIPLINE AND WHO HOLDS THE KEYS

The short-cut answer is to say that your fellow church members can participate in your excommunication in a way that other Christians cannot. An unresolved offense must be taken to the church (Matt. 18:15-17). The independence of the local church, we might therefore surmise, has something to do with the fact that the local church is where church discipline happens.

But there is a bigger picture here pertaining to who holds the keys of the kingdom, and it’s worth taking the longer route to catch all the scenery.

The theological champions at the Westminster Assembly spent several days debating who in the post-apostolic age holds the keys that Jesus originally gave to Peter (Matt. 16:19), since they understood that the keys represent, at the very least, the power of excommunication. And the power of excommunication is the highest authority in a church, just as the power of the sword is the highest authority in a nation. All power in a nation derives from the authority to end a life, and, in the same way, all power in the church derives from the authority to remove someone from membership, including the authority to receive members, pick pastors, or adopt a statement of faith. Whoever has the power of excommunication has the power to do those other things, or at least to decide who does.

The majority of Presbyterians at the Assembly argued that presbyteries hold the keys. The few Congregationalists present—the “dissenting brethren”—argued that the keys are held by the whole congregation together with the elders. (Thanks to Hunter Powell for the history lesson.)

Staring down at Matthew 18:15-20, I would argue with the dissenters that Jesus places the keys squarely in the hands of the local church—wherever two or three are formally gathered in his name. In Jesus’ narrative of discipline, the ekklesia—the assembly—provides the last court of appeal when a person’s profession does not match his or her life.

Later in the New Testament, we learn that elders should be set apart for teaching and oversight, which suggests they ordinarily lead the church in using those keys. I would even say the church needs the elders to responsibly wield the keys. But finally the keys belong to the entire congregation. No text in the New Testament explicitly links the oversight of the elders with the keys of the kingdom in the manner that Matthew 18 so clearly links the keys with the whole assembly. Elder authority is real, but it is a different kind of authority than congregational authority.

Whether or not you are convinced every member jointly holds the keys together, or just the elders of a church do, what should be clear is that no outside body, whether a presbytery or bishop, intervenes in Matthew 18. The local church alone holds the keys.

The independence of the local church, in short, rests squarely on the fact that it is the local church who holds the keys of the kingdom.

THE KEYS AND THE THINGS OF HEAVEN

So what exactly are these keys of the kingdom for binding and loosing? I have argued elsewhere that the keys represent the authority to build the church on earth on Jesus’ behalf by declaring what and who belong to the kingdom of heaven—what is a right confession of the gospel, and who is a right confessor. Certainly, preaching is highly related to the exercise of the keys, and could even be said to form an implicit part of their exercise. But, strictly speaking, I would argue that the exercise of the keys is the pronouncing of a judgment. It is a legal or judicial binding or loosing. It is a church’s decision about what constitutes a right confession and who is a true confessor.

In other words, the keys are put into practice whenever

a church decides upon a confession of faith that will bind all church members,
a church admits a member,
a church excludes a member.

The holder of the keys—the church—is being called upon to assess a person’s life and profession of faith and then to make a heavenly sanctioned and public pronouncement affirming or denying the person’s citizenship in the kingdom and inclusion in the church.

The supreme example of this is Jesus’ interchange with Peter: Jesus asked who they thought he was, Peter made a confession, and then Jesus affirmed both the confession and Peter (“flesh and blood did not reveal this to you…you are Peter, and on this rock…”). The same kind of conversation transpires in Matthew 18, only in reverse. Jesus’ envisions a situation in which a church gradually determined that the what of a gospel confession does not match the who of a gospel confessor.

What all this means is, each local church is independent from every other church on earth because Christ has given each assembly the authority to declare before the nations the what and the who of the things of heaven.

The local church is not a building. It is not the place where you go once a week to get your spiritual jolt. It’s where heaven comes to earth, and the truths of heaven are spoken, and things of heaven get handled, and the people of heaven find life and fellowship. Our churches are embassies of heaven’s rule scattered across the nations of the earth now.

What does all this mean practically?

A CHURCH AFFIRMS WHO REPRESENTS CHRIST

An embassy is a useful metaphor for a local church because an embassy does not make someone a citizen, it affirms someone as a citizen. It stamps the passport when it expires.

An embassy, moreover, makes the rule of one nation visible inside of another nation. You can see the building, the flag, the passports, the ambassadorial staff, the soldiers with guns standing at the embassy gates. Plus, the authority of an embassy is, in a sense, independent within a host nation.

In the same way, the independent authority of the local church makes the rule of Christ’s kingdom visible on planet earth as it exercises the keys, which it does through baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The ordinances are what make the receiving and dismissing of members by the authority of the keys visible. Call them Christian passports.

To baptize someone is to identify them by name with the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit. To give someone the Lord’s Supper is to affirm their membership in the body of our Lord.

Practical implication 1: The ordinances should be practiced in the context of the gathered assembly. If the gathered assembly holds the keys, and if the keys are exercised through the ordinances, then the ordinances should be practiced in the context of the assembly. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are not private mystical experiences in which we shut our eyes and feel Jesus’ special presence. They are corporate and public proclamations of identification and belonging. Together we declare that God’s name is upon us (Matt. 28:19); together we declare our union with Christ’s death and resurrection (Rom. 6:1-2); together we declare his death and our membership in his body (1 Cor. 11:18-19, 27-33). The ordinances are not for Christian families, youth camps, or even small groups. They are assembly activities.

Practical implication 2: Baptism is ordinarily into membership. With the exception of settings in which a local church does not yet exist (e.g. the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8), it is irresponsible (and unbiblical) to baptize an individual—thereby affirming his profession of faith before the nations—and then leave him unaccounted for within a local body. Who will ensure that he remains faithful to his profession? How will this baptismally-affirmed professor be excommunicated if he is not within a church?

Practical implication 3: Christians should belong to local churches. Christians do not have the authority to declare themselves Jesus’ representatives. The church has this authority, which it ordinarily exercises by dispensing the Lord’s Supper to its members. (Which is not to say that church cannot provide the Lord’s Supper to visiting members of other churches for the sake of acknowledging the wider body of Christ.) Plus, maintaining the credibility of one’s profession of faith requires a believer to remain under the oversight of a church.

Practical implication 4: Churches should examine those whom they receive as members, and maintain oversight for the sake of meaningful discipline. “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asked of Peter. In churches today, too, the elders should interview all prospective candidates for membership. Plus, a church should work hard to make sure it can give an account for the spiritual welfare of every member.

Practical implication 5: Discipleship works best in the framework of accountability, which means discipleship works best in the context of the local assembly. We grow as believers through formative and corrective church discipline—teaching and correction.

A CHURCH AFFIRMS A RIGHT CONFESSION

The independence of the local church is also found in the fact that King Jesus has authorized each local assembly to affirm the faith that believers should confess.

Other bodies in church history have written confessions or creeds that are then used to bind churches and what members believe—from the apostolically unique council in Jerusalem in Acts to the council of Nicaea to the Westminster Assembly. But biblically, the legitimate body in a post-apostolic age for exercising the keys in this confession-prescribing fashion is the local church.

Practical implication 6: Churches gather around right preaching of the Word. It is as the church sits under the preaching of the Word and gospel that they learn to exercise the keys responsibly—assessing both the who and the what of the gospel.

Practical implication 7: Churches should establish a clear statement of faith. The very thing which unites a church to all other churches—its confession of gospel faith—also makes each church independent. Since the gathered assembly has been given the keys, every member of the gathered assembly is responsible to affirm a single statement of faith, a responsibility that fits comfortably with the priesthood of all believers. In fact, it’s this act of corporately affirming a statement of faith (through the ordinances) whereby a group of Christians constitute themselves as a local church.

On the flip side, the fact that a statement of faith in the gospel is what unites a church to every other Christian church suggests that it is wise to employ historical creeds or confessions in its official statement of faith. We must independently affirm a statement, but it should be a statement that is (or at least could be) broadly shared by Christians throughout the ages.

Practical implication 8: Churches should choose their pastors. In Galatians 1, Paul rebukes the “churches of Galatia” for abandoning the gospel. He does not address the elders or pastors, he addresses the congregations themselves. They are finally responsible for ensuring that right doctrine is preached, which, by implication, suggests that the assembly should have final say in affirming who the teachers of the Word are.

A CHURCH ADMINISTERS THE GREAT COMMISSION

Finally, the independence of the local church is found in the fact that King Jesus has commissioned each local assembly to fulfill the great commission and to equip its saints for this task. Of course this does not mean that a church does this apart from cooperating with other churches, but the local church is the primary location where the work of the Great Commission gets done, and which has the independent authority to administer this work through the ordinances.

Practical implication 9: Church membership should be treated as an office. It is a job. It is not a casual connection with a voluntary society like a country club, where you come for the benefits so long as the dues are not too high. It is citizenship, and citizenship is an office of governance. Once a church has affirmed an individual as a Jesus Representative and a member, that member becomes responsible for overseeing other confessors of the faith.

Picture a person’s passport getting stamped at an embassy desk, and then walking around to the other side the desk in order to take part in the work of the embassy. In other words, part of fulfilling the Great Commission for an individual Christian is to take responsibility for other church members, that the keys might be exercised responsibly.

Yes, you, Christian, are jointly responsible for every other church member in the room on Sunday morning, and whether or not they continue to walk in the faith. So get to know them! It is as we accept this formal responsibility for the who and the what of other disciples that we ourselves grow as disciples and help others to grow.

In short, responsibility and authority belong together, just like a custodian with the responsibility of cleaning a building must possess the authority of the building keys in order to open all the doors. Christ gives every Christian the responsibility to make disciples in Matthew 28. Wonderfully, he had already given every Christian the joint authority to fulfill this responsibility by giving the whole assembly the keys back in chapters 16 and 18.

Practical implication 10: A church’s basic work is to equip the saints to do the work of this office. It is true that conferences and books and Christian friends can be wonderfully used to equip Christians for the work of ministry. But the local church and its officers will be uniquely called to account for such work (Eph. 4:11-12; Heb. 13:17).

CONCLUSION

Churches should work together to fulfill the great commission because they call upon the same Lord and share a common gospel confession. This is the argument of the companion article.

At the same time, the fact that Christ has placed the keys of the kingdom into the hands of the whole assembly means that every church has an independent authority to exercise the authority of Christ in the what of gospel confessions and the who of making disciples.

Jonathan Leeman, a member of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, serves as the editorial director at 9Marks and is the author of Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus.

Gospel-Minded Churches Cooperating in Pastoring

Deepak Reju — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:14:23 +0000

A wee-little sheep breaks through a fence and runs away. But unlike most parables, his shepherd doesn’t find him (Luke 15:1-7). This little sheep wanders to and fro, far away from home, and eventually stumbles upon another flock. From that moment on, another shepherd is given charge over his life. Imagine the first shepherd picking up his cell phone and saying to the new overseer, “Hey, friend. There are a few things you should know about this wee-little sheep…”

I have no idea whether shepherds use cell phones while wandering across lush plains, but consider this point: shepherds should cooperate with other shepherds, churches with other churches, in order to wisely love the sheep entrusted to their care.

In our very mobile society, where people rarely stay put for long, you shouldn’t be surprised when a Christian stumbles through your church’s front door carrying baggage full of junk from his past. In caring for the hurting sheep, a pastor can go it alone, with nothing but what the new member tells him, or he can informally cooperate with another pastor to better care for this sheep.

CHURCHES COOPERATING: EXAMPLES

Let’s think about a couple of real-life examples.

A struggling member moves to another church. In many ways, this is the simplest and most straightforward example. A Christian who is struggling relocates to another city or state because of a job. He starts going to another church. The pastor knows there is a long history of problems, so he calls this sheep’s previous pastor to get some background and advice.

Mediation between family members. Parents are not getting along with their adult children. The parents and the kids are members of different churches. Pastor Bob is getting one side of the story from the adult kids; Pastor Jim is getting the other side from the parents. Both pastors can persist in their one-sidedness, or they can take the simple step of picking up the phone and calling one another. The pastors act as mediators between family members, with either one or both pastors involved.

A husband and wife separate. A husband and his wife are in a difficult marriage, and things are not going well. For whatever reason, one spouse separates, which often means physically moving out of the home. He or she starts going to another church, maybe in a different city or even a different state. You can choose to deal with just the one spouse in your congregation, or you can extend a hand to the other spouse, inviting them to re-engage in the marriage. His or her new pastor wants to help, and his newness to the issues makes him a little green. Both pastors talk in order to make sure they are on the same page about how to handle the marriage and move it toward reconciliation.

An adult child strays from the faith. A mother and father in your church are burdened for their agnostic adult son. He enters a crisis, and begins searching for answers, but he lives nowhere near his parents. The parents—or often their pastor—call a pastor-friend who lives and works near the adult child. “Can you do a hospital visit?” “Can you meet up with him and talk to him while he is struggling?” “Can you invite him to church?” This seems like a good opportunity to help a non-Christian who is not doing well. Maybe this is an opportunity to help him see God in the midst of his suffering?

A single woman grows interested in a man she meets online. Guy meets girl on-line through a dating service. She doesn’t know if his story is legitimate or not, but she sure hopes so, because she desperately wants to be married. She’s vulnerable, and her pastor knows that. Online dating services provide an opportunity to create a persona which may or may not match up with the real world. The guy says he belongs to First Baptist in the neighboring town. Her pastor calls his fellow pastor in order to protect his sheep: is this guy the real deal or is he faking it?

These are just a few of the many examples of informal, gospel-minded cooperation between churches. Shepherds talk to one another—as long as they have good cell-phone plans.

SIX PRINCIPLES FOR STICKY SITUATIONS

How do we navigate sticky situations like these? Six principles can help guide us.

1. A pastor should know his sheep and lovingly shepherd them through life’s challenges (John 10:14-18; 1 Peter 5:1-4). Are your leadership meetings more about maintaining church programs than shepherding hurting souls? Are you more concerned with putting on a good Sunday show than knowing your flock personally? If so, and another pastor calls you for shepherding help, he won’t get very far. He’ll ask you about someone in your church and you might see that person’s name on a list, but you’ll have nothing to say. Pastors should follow the example of the Good Shepherd, who not only knew his sheep, but was willing to lay down his life for them.

2. There needs to be like-mindedness about the gospel and other core doctrines (1 Cor. 15:3). Without a high view of Scripture and a keen focus on the gospel, ministry philosophies will be fundamentally different, which makes cooperation much harder. If the other church cares more about paying the bills or meeting felt needs or granting a divorce than they do about salvation, eternal hope, and the centrality of Christ in all things, then cooperating together just won’t work.

3. Here is yet another reason to promote church membership. Imagine a Christian landscape in which nearly all Christians had been taught and understood that being a Christian meant being a church member. This sort of cooperation between churches would be a lot easier. But to the extent that Christians float around as free agents, never committing anywhere, the examples cited above become more unrealistic. Keep encouraging everyone who walks through your doors to join a church, whether yours or someone else’s.

4. The church leaders need to trust each other (Acts 15:36-41). It goes without saying that if the leaders don’t respect one other, not much can be done together.

5. Use relational resources wisely. Weak sheep tend to over-consume relational resources without much consideration for the other sheep. They demand time. They tax pastors. They burn people out. Pastors should wisely coordinate time, energy, and effort. If Pastor Bob is talking with Jeannie this week, Pastor Jim doesn’t need to talk with her, too. There are plenty of other hurting people who need a few minutes of the pastor’s attention.

6. Don’t be afraid to over-communicate (Prov. 25:11). If multiple churches and multiple people are involved, miscommunication and assumptions can quickly wreak havoc with the process. So communication, though time-consuming, is essential to facilitating reconciliation. Imagine a husband and wife who are separated and attending different churches. In helping them, I typically have regular talks with another pastor, a counselor, the husband, and the wife. And if they are ready, I’ll also do couples counseling.

7. The weaker sheep are indispensible (1 Cor. 12:22). As hard as it sometimes is to bear with Christians who are weak, immature, and struggling with life, the apostle Paul reminds us that the weaker parts of the body are indispensible. This is a good reminder to every pastor to endure in the very hard work of caring for God’s sheep.

SHARE THE WORK

Several months ago I was helping a couple in a troubled marriage, and the wife’s new pastor (from another church) called me. He said, “I’d really like to know how your elder board is thinking about this situation.” The pastor worked at a Bible-believing congregation in another state.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I want to make sure my counseling falls in line with how your elders want to exercise oversight over this marriage.”

Wow. I’ve been pastoring for a while, but I’ve never had a pastor from another church make a statement like this. It was clear that this man gets cooperation. And as I came to find out, he was also gracious and gospel-minded. If your church believes the same gospel as other churches, that should encourage this kind of friendly and informal cooperation.

Pastor, think about a difficult situation that you are shepherding right now. What steps could you take to cooperate with another gospel-minded church that might help both you and those you are shepherding?

Deepak Reju is an associate pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC. He has a PhD in biblical counseling from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Pastors, Homosexuality, and Same-Sex Marriage

Jonathan Leeman — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 02:43:43 +0000

Pastor, I understand your reluctance to talk about homosexuality and same-sex marriage. I really do. It's a topic that can make enemies instead of friends--certainly enemies outside the church, but possibly inside, too. And who wants enemies?

Yet here are several reasons why I would challenge you, not to make this a major topic of your ministry, but to teach on it nonetheless.

1) Unlike a number of ethical issues, this is an embattled one, around which an evangelical consensus is still forming. Most evangelicals have pretty clear lines on matters like abortion, fornication, or unbiblical divorce. Even if we act inconsistently in these areas, we mostly agree on how we should act. But many evangelicals are still trying to figure out what they think about homosexuality, and certainly what they think about same-sex marriage. That's become clear to me both through personal conversations and through the responses to my article "Love and the Inhumanity of Same-Sex Marriage." Christians don't know how to think well on this topic because their minds are so clouded by other worldviews, as well as by fear.

2) If you don't teach your people on this matter, who will? It is not fundamentally Al Mohler or Kevin DeYoung's job to teach your people from the Scriptures on these controversial issues. It is your job. You will give an account for it. God has given you the job of teaching them everything that Christ has commanded (Matt. 28:19). So the culture is pulling your members hard in one direction on these issues. They need you to offer a counter force now--in the very midst of our present circumstances. If you don't, where do you expect your church members to be in five years?

3) If your congregation does not see you stand clearly upon God's Word, how do you expect them to stand? Think of Paul's words: "For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men" (1 Cor. 4:9). Brothers, we need to be willing to put ourselves first in line to be called fools by the world. If we won't, they won't.

4) You want the church to grow in holiness both for God's sake and for the nations' sake. The witness and mission of the church depend upon its holiness. Salt that looses its saltiness might as well be thrown out and trampled upon, and light hidden under a bowl is good for nothing. I know a counter-cultural stance in this area feels like it could hurt our evangelistic potential in the short-term, but we have to trust that our counter-culture stance in such areas which, in the long-run, give credibility and evangelistic power (see 1 Peter 2:9-12 and Matt. 5:13-16).

I recently heard Tim Keller say that he's looking forward to getting to the other side of this cultural moment, because we'll discover that life goes on, and that we should not respond in paranoia in the meantime. I completely agree. That said, we are in a unique moment right now that pastors need to capitalize on, while some of the cement is still wet.

I'm not encouraging you to be a cultural warrior, or to raise up a church of cultural warriors. But I am saying it's our responsibility to teach the church to be the church. Teach them that true love is inseparable from holiness. Teach them that God will judge unrighteousness. Teach them that God laid down his life for the unrighteous, and so should we. Teach them to love their enemies.

For discussion on the topic themselves, see

Love and the Inhumanity of Same-Sex Marriage
Why the Arguments for Gay Marriage Are Persuasive, by Kevin DeYoung

The Yuck Factor, by Carl Trueman

Pastoring the Idle

Owen Strachan — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:38:40 +0000

It’s a standard trope: The young seminarian takes his first pastorate. He’s loaded for bear, brimming with theological conviction, eager to love the people. He’s ready to meet the devil on the battlefield. His first year’s sermons are planned. He’s dreaming big, praying hard, and ready to go.

And then he meets it: Torpor. Indifference. Spiritual laziness.

In his vibrant memoir The Pastor, Eugene Peterson reflects on this. In its early days, his church plant drew “A few seasoned saints who kn[e]w how to pray and listen and endure,” but also “a considerable number of people who pretty much just showed up” (128). They were “the lukewarm,” and there were many of them.

In such a situation, facing spiritual lethargy in a congregation, what should a pastor do?

DIAGNOSING THE PROBLEM

First, he should think carefully, and not reflexively, about factors that may be contributing to this sorry situation. Here are a few of the biggest.

Culture of Low Expectations

Many 9Marks readers are familiar with what happened in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in American evangelicalism. For various reasons, many churches shifted to a more pragmatic, business-friendly, consumer-attuned model. This model was good at attraction; it was not as good at engagement.

Guess what? If you treat people as consumers, that’s how they will act. If you recruit them as spectators, that’s what they will be. That’s where a good number of American churchgoers are today.

Weak Church Membership

Following closely from the previous point, many folks in the mid-to-late twentieth century did, in point of fact, join churches. The postwar evangelical boom—chronicled in Grant Wacker’s forthcoming biography of Billy Graham and seminal works like Joel Carpenter’s Revive Us Again (Oxford, 1997)—led to huge increases in church attendance and membership in the 1950s. But the aforementioned church culture meant that many people were not trained to view their congregational allegiance as meaningful or, dare I say it, costly.

In a good number of communities, you joined the Kiwanis Club, the Rotary, the Junior League, and a church. It wasn’t that church participation was an empty ritual; a good number of folks were genuinely converted in this period. But many church members weren’t trained to think of the church as the “true culture,” as Stanley Hauerwas has argued, but rather as a part of the broader culture.

Natural Human Sinfulness

The previous two points are what we could call “legacy problems.” These are realities that have shaped many of the existing churches pastors enter today. But there are also less cultural and more native problems that incline church folk to passivity and laziness.

Our modern evangelical movement, particularly the grace-loving wing (of which I am an enthusiastic part), has a tendency to take a biblical text, perhaps one anchored in God’s mercy but with some sharp edges, and to blend it all together. To make a gospel smoothie of it.

To be sure, we should read all Scripture with theological lenses, and with Christ at the center. But if we’re not in tune with the actual tone and style of the biblical authors (and not a footloose-and-fancy-free pastiche of their material), passages like Titus 1:10-16 can sound harsh to our modern ears:

For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth. To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.

Paul knew the glories of grace firsthand, yet he powerfully indicted the culture of laziness in Crete. He didn’t hold back. He made it clear that there were tendencies in this region toward idleness. He also made it clear that laziness and failure to pursue the Lord wholeheartedly and to engage the mission of God are shameful sins. These behaviors are also dangerous, because idle passivity leaves people susceptible to false teaching, particularly teaching oriented to selfish gain.

Unseen Factors: Discouragement, Pain, Need for Investment

Spiritual idleness is a sin. That’s our starting point for addressing it. Beyond this truth, though, what are some possible problems getting in the way of meaningful church involvement?

A harsh or overbearing leadership culture might have singed fragile members.
The unbiblical models of church life mentioned above may have genuinely convinced people they are supposed to be low-energy at church. And if people are low-energy at church, they’re not likely to bring a godly boldness to other areas of life.
Some folks may have a desire to engage the work of the gospel in the local church, but may have no idea where to start. They need mentoring and discipling. At many churches, if you polled church members on how many had been invested in personally by a church leader at any point in their membership—some for decades—I bet the resulting negative response would stun many of us.
In a similar way, some people need encouragement. They genuinely (and mistakenly) don’t think they can serve the church.
Some folks come from traditions that rightly respect church leadership but wrongly obscure the “priesthood of all believers.” They think that only the clergy can serve the Lord.

ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM

We’ve sketched a few of the major reasons why people in the church are idle and passive. Now let’s look at a few ways that we can address these problems.

Preach the Word

Your first duty as a pastor is to declare the Word of God. God’s Word brought life to the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezek. 37); the Scripture is still, all these years later, bringing life to dry bones today, including the weary, the fearful, and the idle. Declare the whole counsel of God. Mediate biblical reality to the people. As you do so, over time, the Spirit of God will convict and awaken the lazy.

With Clarity and Compassion, Indict the Sinful

In regard to the idle, further, you must not shy away from imperatives. The teachings of Christ and Paul will suffice to show that it is entirely possible to preach from a grace-saturated perspective, against the backdrop of a massively powerful God, and yet bore into the particular sins and struggles of our human nature. Your preaching should accomplish these aims: it should show the idle how great and powerful God’s grace is, make clear how dishonoring idleness is in light of the kindness of God, and lead them to repent of their passivity and practically overcome their sin.

Your exhortations should be strong, though self-aware. Consider Paul’s words to the Thessalonians:

For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. (2 Thess. 3:7-10)

Be like Paul: Call sins what they are. Identify idleness. In a spirit of courageous compassion, rebuke it.

Alongside your call for repentance, cast a grand vision of the Christian life and the church’s work. Too many churches labor under either an unarticulated mission or a small one. Not every church will be large in number, but every church is an outpost of the kingdom, a participant in the most dynamic work there is on earth, the preaching of the gospel of Christ. Every congregation goes to war against Satan, the defeated tempter of the sheep. Every believer offers acceptable service to the Lord through the Spirit in service of this great cause (1 Pet. 2:9).

Idle believers first need to repent, and then get gloriously lost in the work of the kingdom.

Lovingly Shepherd the Sheep

In addition, you’ll need to make this practical. Many of us shy away from programmatic membership which reduces everything to a sign-up sheet and a start time, but many church members will need help getting plugged into the church’s ministry. Many will not have the vision (at least initially) to figure out a course of action. This is why elders who actually know the people are so essential. It is not enough to preach against idleness and to trumpet the mission of God. The elders of the church must dig in and help people overcome their sin and struggles. This is a complex matter—really the heart of shepherding—but suffice it to say that the church’s elders must dig in, meet with members, listen to their stories, call out sin in their lives, and map out a plan for overcoming their challenges.

In the course of doing so, you will find numerous people who are walking through a unique season of life that taxes them and leaves them with little time to plug in spiritually. They may come to you feeling lazy, and it may be your call to gently help them see that they’re not lazy, just overtaxed. A doctoral student living the fever dream of the final dissertation phase; the young mother waking four times a night to feed a newborn; the construction worker pulling double shifts for a season to make the mortgage; in these and other seasons, the church can easily extend grace to the burdened. D. A. Carson—no spiritual slouch—has quoted Lloyd-Jones on the need to relieve young mothers of guilt in this area. I fully agree.

Ideally, pastoral shepherding will form long-term strategies by which to transition the overworked out of their hyper-busy state. Busyness is an easy sin for a modern people to excuse. Nonetheless, strong shepherding will distinguish between unusual seasons and spiritual lethargy, and apply gospel grace—and gospel power—to the situation.

It will also discern how to engage those who lack confidence in their ability to serve, and gently lead them to areas of need in the body which they can begin to address.

Live it Out

The people also need you to live out your exhortations. If you light a fire in the pulpit but fail to carry that fire into the week, your people will see that. They won’t know all the doctrine you know, but they will know a worker. You’ve got to show them that the work of the kingdom, the preaching of the gospel and its application to fallen lives, really matters to you, and that it drives your life.

To use Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s language, you need to preach costly grace, and you need to show just how it costs you.

Pray for Change

Prayer must permeate all the work of the church. This is true for your care for the idle: you must pray for them, and ask God to change them and motivate them by the riches of his gospel. Pray when you’re encouraged by what you see; and pray when no encouragement is in sight, and you feel alone and weak like Gideon before the Midianites (Judges 7). There is no substitute for prayer. God answers it, and is often pleased to show his power not through our Unstoppable Plans for Personal Change, but through the mysterious power of his Spirit.

Trust a Great God to Act

In all of this, remember: it is not you, ultimately, who builds the church and awakens the idle. It is Almighty God. He loves your people far more than you do. He is all-powerful. He is working through you as you preach his Word. And he will reward the long-suffering, long-praying pastor who seeks by the power of God to awaken the sheep to the mission of God.

Owen Strachan is Assistant professor of Christian theology and church history at Boyce College and executive director of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. He is the author of the forthcoming Risky Gospel (Thomas Nelson, 2013) and, with Kevin Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian (Brazos Press, 2014).

Book Review: Sensing Jesus: Life and Ministry as a Human Being, by Zack Eswine

Kevin Wilkening — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 18:41:56 +0000

As a pastor, I fight the temptation to act as if I can be everywhere, fix anything, and know everything. Such sinful assumptions are spiritually detrimental for any pastor, not to mention his church. We are human, and we will never fully magnify God without confessing that we are not him.

Zack Eswine understands this thoroughly. Thus, in his book, Sensing Jesus: Life and Ministry as a Human Being, he reminds us that “the Christian life and ministry are an apprenticeship with Jesus toward recovering our humanity and, through his Spirit, helping our neighbor do the same” (20-21).

EXPOSING AND ADDRESSING THE MINISTER’S TEMPTATIONS

Sensing Jesus is divided into two parts. First, Eswine exposes the minister’s temptation to try to be God: omnipresent (everywhere-for-all), omnipotent (fix-it-all), and omniscient (know-it-all). Second, he addresses the solution to these temptations, namely, the restoration of our humanity in Christ.

Exposing our Temptations

As pastors and ministers we want to be great. We envision doing great things for Jesus. We want to be great preachers, extraordinary counselors, outstanding writers, and remarkable shepherds. Simply put, we want to be exceptional in every way. However, if there is anything we must remember about pastors and ministers, it is that we are first and foremost exceptionally broken.

Continue reading here.

Book Review: Pastoral Leadership Is..., by Dave Earley

Colin Adams — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:32:35 +0000

Something is wrong with pastoral ministry—at least Dave Earley thinks so. Introducing his book Pastoral Leadership Is, he laments that in the Western world we have “adopted an unbiblical model on pastoral leadership, that is killing our churches and harming our people” (1). Pastors have become “chaplains.” In truth, God has called them to be “spiritual warriors, missional leaders, and multiplying mentors.” The situation is dire, but the solution is at hand. We must return to “what the Bible says about pastoral leadership” (2).

BACK TO THE BIBLE

The book divides into five parts that collectively form an understanding of the pastorate. Pastoral ministry is “being a man of God,” “praying with power,” “teaching the word of God,” “equipping and leading others,” and “shepherding God’s flock.” These five major divisions are further subdivided into six smaller chapters apiece, which explore the larger theme in detail.

Easley makes good on his promise to plant our noses in the Bible. Scriptural references are copious throughout, and the ministries of Moses, Jesus and Paul—understood as paradigmatic for pastors—are prominent. These ministries involved three central responsibilities: prayer, the ministry of the Word, and equipping others to serve. These tasks are the essence of pastoral work. They are tasks which “every effective shepherd simply must do” (12).

At the same time, Easley does not overlook the character of the pastor: “Personal integrity and godly character are the foundations for authentic, God-blessed pastoral leadership.” (28).

Click here to continue reading.

Five Reasons We Don’t Disciple (Part 1)

Barry Cooper — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Seven years ago Christianity Today magazine asked John Stott to assess the growth of the evangelical church. This was his reply:

The answer is “growth without depth.” None of us wants to dispute the extraordinary growth of the church. But it has been largely numerical and statistical growth. And there has not been sufficient growth in discipleship that is comparable to the growth in numbers.

Sadly, seven years on, that assessment still rings true. Although our growth has been wide as the ocean, it’s often about as deep as a puddle. Why is that? What is going wrong? Over the coming months, I’m going to suggest five reasons we don’t disciple—or at least don’t disciple well.

But first, what is the biblical rationale for discipling? There are many, but the key passage is Matthew 28:18-20:

Then Jesus came to [the eleven disciples] and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you...”

Now the question is, does this command (“go and make disciples...”) apply only to the eleven disciples Jesus was speaking to? Or does it apply to every Christian disciple?

Sometimes translations give the impression that “go” is the emphasis of the command—which is how the verse came to be the catalyst for the modern missionary movement. But the main verb of the sentence is “make disciples.” One commentator puts it like this: “Jesus’ commission here is not fundamentally about mission out there somewhere else in another country. It’s a commission that makes disciple-making the normal agenda and priority of every church and every Christian disciple.”

D. A. Carson draws the same conclusion:

...the injunction is given at least to the Eleven, but to the Eleven in their own role as disciples. Therefore they are paradigms for all disciples...It is binding on all Jesus’ disciples to make others what they themselves are—disciples of Jesus Christ.

Which brings me to a troubling question. If the Lord Jesus himself has commanded every Christian to “make disciples,” why isn’t everyone doing it? What is keeping our churches from being thriving communities of disciple-makers?

Let me suggest five reasons—one now, and four to follow in future columns.

WHY DON’T WE DISCIPLE? BECAUSE WE PREACH CHEAP GRACE

You’ll remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian. He defined cheap grace like this:

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.” (The Cost of Discipleship, 43-44)

When the gospel is preached in your local church, what do your people hear? Do they hear, “Of course you’ve sinned. But now everything is forgiven. Jesus paid the price for your sin. So everything’s taken care of.”

That’s okay as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough. The problem is that this gospel contains no demand for discipleship. There’s no requirement for repentance. No holding out for holiness. Isn’t that at odds with Jesus’ insistence in Mark 8:34? “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

As the old truism goes, grace may be free—but it isn’t cheap. It cost Jesus his life. And it will cost us our lives too, if we want to follow him. The invitation may be extended to all, but only those who obey Jesus’ call—deny yourself and take up your cross—have received it.

And the question is, are we teaching this gospel in our local churches? Does our gospel contain the demand for discipleship? Or do we cough loudly over Mark 8:34, and relegate it to the small print, hoping no one will notice until after they’ve signed on the dotted line? Are we lowering the cost of discipleship in the hope that more will buy?

Another, related question: do we speak of God’s love as “unconditional”? If we do, we unwittingly contribute to the problem of cheap grace. Because in one sense, God’s love isn’t unconditional at all. Listen to what David Powlison says here:

“While it’s true that God’s love does not depend upon what you do, it very much depends on what Jesus Christ did for you. In that sense, it is highly conditional. It cost Jesus his life.” (God’s Love: Better than Unconditional, 11)

If we fail to teach the “conditionality” of God’s love, we’ll serve up cheap grace. Grace that requires no radical obedience, only a sleepy nod. Grace that cannot stir, only sedate.

The gospel is not conditional (“If you obey me, I will love you”). But neither is it unconditional (“I love you regardless of whether you obey me.”). The gospel is contra-conditional (“I love you even though you haven’t obeyed me, because my Son did.”). And the obedience of the Son on our behalf moves us to love and obey. As Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey my commands” (John 14:15).

My fear is that in our evangelistic desire to get “decisions” from people, we may have rendered many of those “decisions” meaningless. It is one thing to “pray the prayer,” another thing entirely to repent and believe. It is much easier to tread the sawdust trail than to walk the Calvary road.

HOW CAN WE MAKE GRACE “MORE EXPENSIVE”?

So what should we do (if I can put it this way) to make grace more expensive?

First, when we preach the gospel, it is tempting to preach only the identity and mission of Christ (“Jesus is the Son of God and he died for sinners like you.”). But we must also preach his call: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34).

Let none of our congregation be in any doubt: a Christian demonstrates that fact by denying self and taking up their cross. That means that in our gospel preaching, we must not forget the way Jesus himself preached the gospel. He called people to repent as well as believe (Mark 1:15). The two are inseparable. We must never drive a wedge between them in our preaching, as if “belief” is necessary to make someone a Christian, and then “repentance” is an optional extra for the really keen Christians. Neither are negotiable.

Second, when people ask us how they know they are truly in Christ, let’s not point to a prayer prayed, or an aisle walked. The biblical grounds for assurance is our continuing walk along the Calvary road, bearing the cross of shame, and also bearing fruit in keeping with repentance (Matt. 3:8).

Cheap grace may be easier to “buy.” It may help our churches to fill. But we will watch them fill with people who aren’t disciples, don’t particularly want to be, and therefore have no desire to disciple others. We will have created a culture where discipleship is essentially irrelevant.

Next time, I’ll suggest a second reason we don’t disciple.

Click here for part two of this series.

What Faith Isn’t and Is

Ross Sawyers — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:36:14 +0000

When people pursue faith in an unbiblical way, false converts are made, and the world is misled about what it means to follow Jesus. Pastors, therefore, need to keep an eye out for false faith, that they might separate the false from the true:

1. True faith is not deedless, but shows itself in deeds.

James asks what kind of faith is saving by asking about faith’s relationship to deeds. “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder” (James 2:19). According to this passage, knowing the truth is not enough. It is possible to know about the truth, and be deceived. So mere knowledge does not equate to a real saving faith. Rather, true faith shows itself in deeds.

2. It is not faith in yourself, but in God.

Walk into any Christian bookstore and you’ll see bestselling Christian books with self-help advice. Westerners today love talk of the God within. Yet we cannot save ourselves: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (Eph. 2:4-5). Following ourselves and believing in ourselves will not result in eternal life, but eternal death.

3. It is not faith in heritage, but in Christ.

Growing up in a Christian home is not what saves you. Having grandparents who are saved is not what saves you. If anyone had reason to place their faith in heritage it was Paul—“circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews,” and on and on he goes (Phil. 3:4-11). But all this is rubbish, he concludes—our heritage does not save us. Christ does.

4. It is not faith in faith, but in Christ’s completed work.

Much so-called Christian TV and radio programming today panders to what peoples' "itching ears" want to hear: the promise of earthly gain. Over and over again we hear the testimonies of businessmen who "turned on to Jesus" and saw their businesses double. “If you don’t have these things,” people are told, “it’s because you are not believing hard enough. So believe harder!” Notice two problems here: stuff (not Christ) is the end, and looking inward (instead of outward at Christ) is the means. Sadly, people take their eyes off of Christ’s finished work on the cross, and put them on themselves. But true faith does not look to itself, it looks to Christ, his work on the cross, a sacrifice that we know God accepted because he raised him from the dead.

5. It does not fail to repent, but changes direction.

Apart from repentance, faith is not real and it is not saving. There are many people who say they believe in Jesus, but nothing has changed in their lives. They refuse to renounce the old way of living. Repentance is not just feeling sorry for sin. Anyone can feel bad about sin. True repentance begins with sorrow, seeks forgiveness, and then culminates in a change of direction. A person turns around and starts walking the other way.

Real saving faith is repentance and trust in Jesus Christ as a living person for forgiveness of sins and eternal life with God.

It is full reliance on Christ. He is the object.

It is the way of surrender, and evidences itself as real by the authentic crop it produces.

Ross Sawyers is lead pastor at 121 Community Church in Grapevine, TX.