Church isn't boring because we're not showing enough film clips, or because we play an organ instead of guitar. It's boring because we neuter it of its importance. Too often we treat our spiritual lives like the round of golf used to open George Barna's Revolution. At the end of my life, I want my friends and family to remember me as someone who battled for the Gospel, who tried to mortify sin in my life, who found hard for life, and who contended earnestly for the faith. Not just a nice guy who occasionally noticed the splendor of the mountains God created, while otherwise just trying to enjoy myself, manage my schedule, and work on my short game.
from "Why We Love the Church" by DeYoung and Kluck
Monday, July 20, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Satan gets us to focus on charitable works?
From a sermon by Steven Cole:
I just read K. P. Yohannan’s powerful book, Revolution in
World Missions [gfa books]. He grew up in India and didn’t wear
shoes before he was 17 (p. 55). He has preached the gospel all
across India. He is not oblivious to India’s oppressive poverty. But
he strongly contends against getting distracted with meeting physical
needs, but ignoring the spiritual needs. He says that India has
seen 150 years of schools and hospitals brought to them by British
missionaries, but it has not had any noticeable effect on either their
churches or society (p. 103, 110).
Yohannan says that it is one of Satan’s lies that people will not
listen to the gospel unless we offer them something else first (p.2
109). He has sat on the streets of Bombay with beggars who are
about to die. He has told them that he does not have material
goods to give them, but he has come to offer them eternal life, and
he has seen many respond.
He says (p. 111), There is nothing wrong with charitable acts—but they are not
to be confused with preaching the Gospel. Feeding programs
can save a man dying from hunger. Medical aid can prolong
life and fight disease. Housing projects can make this temporary
life more comfortable—but only the Gospel of Jesus
Christ can save a soul from a life of sin and an eternity in hell!
Thus our emphasis should always be first and foremost on
evangelism and discipleship. Social concern is a result of the gospel.
We must not put the cart before the horse (pp. 106, 99).
I just read K. P. Yohannan’s powerful book, Revolution in
World Missions [gfa books]. He grew up in India and didn’t wear
shoes before he was 17 (p. 55). He has preached the gospel all
across India. He is not oblivious to India’s oppressive poverty. But
he strongly contends against getting distracted with meeting physical
needs, but ignoring the spiritual needs. He says that India has
seen 150 years of schools and hospitals brought to them by British
missionaries, but it has not had any noticeable effect on either their
churches or society (p. 103, 110).
Yohannan says that it is one of Satan’s lies that people will not
listen to the gospel unless we offer them something else first (p.2
109). He has sat on the streets of Bombay with beggars who are
about to die. He has told them that he does not have material
goods to give them, but he has come to offer them eternal life, and
he has seen many respond.
He says (p. 111), There is nothing wrong with charitable acts—but they are not
to be confused with preaching the Gospel. Feeding programs
can save a man dying from hunger. Medical aid can prolong
life and fight disease. Housing projects can make this temporary
life more comfortable—but only the Gospel of Jesus
Christ can save a soul from a life of sin and an eternity in hell!
Thus our emphasis should always be first and foremost on
evangelism and discipleship. Social concern is a result of the gospel.
We must not put the cart before the horse (pp. 106, 99).
Friday, July 10, 2009
What in the World is the Missional Church?
Wow, wow, wow, wow.
That is all I can say in response to this lecture by Jonathan Leeman (Capital Hill Baptist and Nine Marks Ministries) on the missional church. Go here and click on Jonathan Leeman's talk "What in the World is the Missional Church."
In this talk Leeman critiques the "missional movement" calling to task such evangelical leaders as Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, and, yes, even Ed Stetzer. He acknowledges his respect for them and how much he has learned from them, yet, as he says, they are not Jesus and so are able to receive some criticism. He also talks of what we can learn from missional leaders and here is where I found myself in need of repenting.
Good, good stuff.
If you find that the history stuff at the beginning bogs you down, skip to about a third of the way through where he begins his response. But then go back, the whole thing is worth listening to.
As I listened I found myself, at times, reflecting on the minutes of past Baptist Associational meetings that I have read and how when pastors got together back in the 17 and 1800's in America, they did it to wrestle with theological issues and to support each other in rightly dividing the word of truth. I found myself lamenting the fact that we don't do that today.
Talks such Jonathan's by Southern Baptists such as him are much needed. May there be more in the future.
BTW- It would do my heart good to know that somebody is actually reading these posts-even better yet, if someone else would post some things. If this website has proven to be of no help, let me know, and we'll just shut her down.
-Doug
That is all I can say in response to this lecture by Jonathan Leeman (Capital Hill Baptist and Nine Marks Ministries) on the missional church. Go here and click on Jonathan Leeman's talk "What in the World is the Missional Church."
In this talk Leeman critiques the "missional movement" calling to task such evangelical leaders as Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, and, yes, even Ed Stetzer. He acknowledges his respect for them and how much he has learned from them, yet, as he says, they are not Jesus and so are able to receive some criticism. He also talks of what we can learn from missional leaders and here is where I found myself in need of repenting.
Good, good stuff.
If you find that the history stuff at the beginning bogs you down, skip to about a third of the way through where he begins his response. But then go back, the whole thing is worth listening to.
As I listened I found myself, at times, reflecting on the minutes of past Baptist Associational meetings that I have read and how when pastors got together back in the 17 and 1800's in America, they did it to wrestle with theological issues and to support each other in rightly dividing the word of truth. I found myself lamenting the fact that we don't do that today.
Talks such Jonathan's by Southern Baptists such as him are much needed. May there be more in the future.
BTW- It would do my heart good to know that somebody is actually reading these posts-even better yet, if someone else would post some things. If this website has proven to be of no help, let me know, and we'll just shut her down.
-Doug
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Church Planter's Library
"Between the Times" a blog run by several profs. at Southeastern Seminary is beginning a brief series on The Church Planter's Library. Check it out.
Multi-site campuses redux
From today's 9 Marks Blog comes this post from Jonathan Leeman. As I've noted before, I'm not a big fan of multi-site campuses and Leeman gives yet another reason why we should pause before jumping in. Good stuff.
-Doug
You won't believe it, but I found a page torn out of a church history book written one hundred years from now--in the year 2109. It comments on the present multi-campus "church" phenomenon. Here's what the page reads:
...the principle difference being caused by developments in technology. In the first millennium of the church’s existence, a heterodox bishop could corrupt the churches within his ambit in decades, maybe years. Even then his influence over other congregations was indirect, occurring through its leaders. In the twenty-first century, however, the bishops of so-called multi-campus churches could exert greater influence over entire congregations instantaneously via video-feed. No longer did the multi-campus pastor have to persuade the leaders of other congregations over years. He could project his own face before numerous assemblies week after week, and do untold damage in seconds.
Few anticipated how quickly these pragmatic, seemingly inconsequential shifts of polity would corrupt the churches throughout an entire nation. Ninety-six percent of evangelical Christians in America belonged to approximately one hundred multi-campus “churches” by 2030—the franchises swallowing up the mom-and-pop shops. Some of these franchises were originally orthodox. Yet many of them were not, which meant that the wolves now had a mechanism for multiplying their influence exponentially. Furthermore, the orthodox bishops were often replaced within a generation or two by less orthodox successors, in a way that unorthodox bishops are seldom, if ever, replaced by faithful men, simply by virtue of the kinds of trees the unorthodox pastor plants. The cumulative trajectory was downward, then, away from orthodoxy.
Gone were the days of the “ordinary pastor,” the man whose skills were not extraordinary, but sufficient to guide a ship with a hundred eternal souls safely through stormy waters to the distant shores. His sermons weren’t made for television. His music wasn’t good enough for the recording studio. Therefore, churches, feeling themselves entitled to professional excellence in all things, politely dismissed him, tore down the old buildings, built high-tech stadiums, and gave the league all-stars seven-year, multi-million dollar contracts.
Unawares, the leaders of the orthodoxy were all too happy to heed the siren call of pragmatism, believing the new mediums simply enlarged the reach of their orthodox pulpits. They failed to see how the medium would affect their message. Their congregations—plural—could no longer know them, and they could no longer know their congregations. Life and doctrine became separated, thus distorting the doctrine. Not only that, bigness was no longer the exception, but the norm, meaning that everyone became oblivious to the dangers peculiar to size.
A century which began with several bright stars—a proliferation of good literature, biblical preachers of the first order, even what some called a Reformed Revolution—ended darkly. Indeed, some of the century's best preachers, driven by the very desire to propagate the good message in their day, helped to undermine that message for the next generation by following the strategies of the marketplace. No one expected the devil to once more usher in the corruptions of the ancient Roman church through such a peripheral matter like church polity, even though he had done it before. (He always does his best work in the places where people forget to look.) Only now he did in decades what earlier he had taken centuries to accomplish. By the middle of the twenty-first century, the devastation was…
-Doug
You won't believe it, but I found a page torn out of a church history book written one hundred years from now--in the year 2109. It comments on the present multi-campus "church" phenomenon. Here's what the page reads:
...the principle difference being caused by developments in technology. In the first millennium of the church’s existence, a heterodox bishop could corrupt the churches within his ambit in decades, maybe years. Even then his influence over other congregations was indirect, occurring through its leaders. In the twenty-first century, however, the bishops of so-called multi-campus churches could exert greater influence over entire congregations instantaneously via video-feed. No longer did the multi-campus pastor have to persuade the leaders of other congregations over years. He could project his own face before numerous assemblies week after week, and do untold damage in seconds.
Few anticipated how quickly these pragmatic, seemingly inconsequential shifts of polity would corrupt the churches throughout an entire nation. Ninety-six percent of evangelical Christians in America belonged to approximately one hundred multi-campus “churches” by 2030—the franchises swallowing up the mom-and-pop shops. Some of these franchises were originally orthodox. Yet many of them were not, which meant that the wolves now had a mechanism for multiplying their influence exponentially. Furthermore, the orthodox bishops were often replaced within a generation or two by less orthodox successors, in a way that unorthodox bishops are seldom, if ever, replaced by faithful men, simply by virtue of the kinds of trees the unorthodox pastor plants. The cumulative trajectory was downward, then, away from orthodoxy.
Gone were the days of the “ordinary pastor,” the man whose skills were not extraordinary, but sufficient to guide a ship with a hundred eternal souls safely through stormy waters to the distant shores. His sermons weren’t made for television. His music wasn’t good enough for the recording studio. Therefore, churches, feeling themselves entitled to professional excellence in all things, politely dismissed him, tore down the old buildings, built high-tech stadiums, and gave the league all-stars seven-year, multi-million dollar contracts.
Unawares, the leaders of the orthodoxy were all too happy to heed the siren call of pragmatism, believing the new mediums simply enlarged the reach of their orthodox pulpits. They failed to see how the medium would affect their message. Their congregations—plural—could no longer know them, and they could no longer know their congregations. Life and doctrine became separated, thus distorting the doctrine. Not only that, bigness was no longer the exception, but the norm, meaning that everyone became oblivious to the dangers peculiar to size.
A century which began with several bright stars—a proliferation of good literature, biblical preachers of the first order, even what some called a Reformed Revolution—ended darkly. Indeed, some of the century's best preachers, driven by the very desire to propagate the good message in their day, helped to undermine that message for the next generation by following the strategies of the marketplace. No one expected the devil to once more usher in the corruptions of the ancient Roman church through such a peripheral matter like church polity, even though he had done it before. (He always does his best work in the places where people forget to look.) Only now he did in decades what earlier he had taken centuries to accomplish. By the middle of the twenty-first century, the devastation was…
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