David Wells on MOS

The latest Mortification of Spin is up and running.

Back in their secret underground bunker, the spin team phone up David Wells to discuss his body of work and his huge contributions to modern Christianity. As a turncoat, a self-described "African-American," David has a unique experience and insight into American Christianity. David's voice has carried a lot of weight for much of evangelicalism, and he discusses issues related to this movement. Does evangelicalism have a center, a true coherence, anymore? Is it possible to have one again? David's Wells' input on this timely conversation is beneficial both for those who profess to be evangelical, and for those who don't.

Essential reading from David Wells:
No Place for Truth  
The Courage to be Protestant  
God in the Whirlwind  

Church Gimmicks

The new Credo is online and man, is it good. Check it out HERE.

Movements and the Means of Grace

Evangelicals love movements. I suppose it's because it makes us feel a part of something big or at least bigger than our church. Don't misunderstand. I like a good conference as much as anyone. I have benefited from good conferences. I appreciate Together for the Gospel, not least of all because their ambition is fairly limited to a conference every other year. They make no effort to be a quasi-denomination. I hope it stays that way. But the evangelical church, particularly in the United States, seems to birth more movements than we can keep up with. Some movements come on like gang busters and then just a quickly fade away (Remember Promise Keepers?).

What is this appetite for movements? Is it our craving for the ever new? Probably. Now that the Young Restless Reformed movement is no longer new there is evidence of former enthusiasts departing for greener pastures. Let's face it. Now that the Young Restless and Reformed are Middle-aged and exhausted it does not seem quite so cool as it once did.

But I think the more likely culprit in our craving for movements is our poor ecclesiology, particularly related to God's ordinary means of grace. I had never heard the phrase "God's ordinary means of grace" until I was introduced to the reformed faith. As a result I had no doctrinal or experiential category for the true significance of those ordinary elements that make up the corporate life of a biblically informed church. If you are unfamiliar with the term "ordinary means of grace" it refers to those elements of our gathered worship to which the Lord has attached his blessing: the preaching and reading of God's Word, the sacraments (Lord's Supper and Baptism), prayer, praise, and fellowship.

These ordinary means of grace are the things that the Lord has given his church. They are not the inventions of man. We call them means of grace because the Lord has appointed them as means by which he blesses and builds his church. We call them ordinary because there is nothing about them that is spectacular. They are not rare like miracles. They are ordinary. They are to be practiced regularly in our Lord's Day gatherings precisely because we regularly need what God offers us through them. But these are gifts not given to movements. God has given these means of grace to his church.

Movements tend to focus on a preferred market niche like women, men, black, white, young, fans of loud music, students, the balding, etc. Interestingly I don't see many movements targeting for its core the elderly or poor. But that's another post. I'm not saying that a meeting or conference tailored specifically for men or women is wrong. But it must not supplant the church, for a movement is not the church. Movements are not the inheritors of God's promises nor are they the stewards of God's oracles and his ordinary means of grace.

Christians need to be very cautious about movements. This is especially true when a movement seeks to minimize doctrinal distinctives in favor of a poorly defined quasi-mysticism. This came to my mind (once again) when I read an article about the IF Gathering.

"I hear enough people telling me how to be a good Christian mom. I don't need that," said Andrea Burkly, a Catholic who traveled from Wheaton, Illinois, to attend the Austin event. "This is a call for revival and unity, and it lined up with what's in my heart right now."

In between sessions, the mostly-young crowd discussed with each other their own sense of calling as well as hindrances such as fear and comparison. They worshipped together with hands lifted high and kneeled to pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance.

 

The origins of IF, as well as Allen's recently released book Restless, date back to 2007, when she woke up in the middle of the night with the vision to "gather, equip, and unleash" this generation of Christian women. Allen, 37, holds a master's in Biblical Studies from Dallas Theological Seminary and had been a stay-at-home mom leading a women's group at her church Austin Stone, an Acts 29 congregation.

Since then, she published a series of Bible studies through Thomas Nelson and built up the connections necessary to organize a movement around that initial vision, one she sees echoed in the words of her friends—new and old—across the Christian blogosophere.

 

"We've been slow to step into our giftedness or strengths. For a long time, that wasn't an option," said Allen. Now, though, "there is something happening in our generation, and I believe it's a manifesto in a way, a call for us to link arms and to spend our lives beautifully and well for the glory of God."

I was not surprised to see the connection between the movement and a recently published book. Now a major publisher will be stepping in to create a series of studies feeding into the movement. Perhaps I am cynical but there is often much money to be made in these ventures. You will notice also the vague language of revivalism - "something happening in our generation," "unleash this generation," "step into our giftedness." I honestly don't know what any of that means.

I know I will be perceived by some as criticizing a move of God. But I assume that critics of Finney faced the same rebukes. I am troubled by movements which promise fresh experiences with God or a new movement of God and then market products to support this new outpouring. Those of us raised in conservative but non-confessional evangelicalism were steeped in that language. Everything had to be new and fresh. A steady sanctification wrought by God's ordinary means of grace in a local church was simply not a part of our diet.

I was raised attending the obligatory annual Spring and Fall revivals. There were camps and retreats and choir tours and mission trips. The underlying assumption was that in those events we would feel especially close to God; we would have a particularly "meaningful," "intimate," "authentic," etc. experience with God that was not generally available on the ordinary Lord's Day. As a result (and I was far from alone) I never considered what happened in our regular Sunday gatherings as anything particularly special.

I am happy to be part of a movement. It's called the Presbyterian Church in America. We have a rather detailed confession of faith called The Westminster Confession of Faith. We have a well thought through structure for polity, governance, dispute settling, instructions for public worship, etc. It's called the Book of Church Order. We have a growing ministry to university students called Reformed University Fellowship (RUF). We have a church planting agency. We have a missions sending agency for North America (MNA) and the World (MTW). We produce curriculum for Christian education and discipleship (Great Commission Publications). We have a university and seminary. Not too shabby.

Believe it or not, that was not a commercial for the PCA. Rather it was a means by which I might force a question: Why another movement? Why a movement without a proper confession of faith? Why a movement that would take time away from that to which I already belong? And most importantly, why a movement that is detached from oversight of a church? Why a movement that minimizes the ordinary means of grace which Jesus has entrusted to his church?

"A self-indulgent love of our own voices"

I think a lot of the rejections in evangelicalism today of God’s sovereignty and biblical infallibility are not unrelated to the more recent conversations about the need to attend regular local church services. They are all simply manifestations of a rejection of authority...
- Jared Wilson

We've all heard the mantra of the church-less Christian: "I am into Jesus, not organized religion." That used to be said by a few outliers who really had not much experience with the church to begin with. Now however it has become more mainstream.

What I have observed in evangelicalism over the last 25 years is an increasing desire to recast the church as a clearing house of various people's personal ministries and spiritual experiences. The idea is a church as a big tent paying the bills for everyone's personal small church. Who is a pastor or elder to tell someone they cannot "express their gifts" in the church? Why not promote books by John Calvin and T.D. Jakes? Why not practice Eastern meditation exercises in a women's "Bible study"? It is all part of the project of creating a church that is more about hearing the echo of my own voice in my heart rather than the voice of God from His Word.

Many thanks to Jared Wilson for writing a helpful analysis of the latest assertions of church-less Christianity. He rightly grounds our thoughts about church in our thoughts about God for what we think about the church is a window into what we think about God.

Wilson writes:

We should go to church — not mainly, but nevertheless — because it confronts and stunts our spiritual autonomy and individualism. We should go lest we become Cainites, saying “I’m not my brother’s keeper.” Or reverse Cainites, “My brothers aren’t my keepers.”

Of course most of us prefer to worship at the First Church of Hanging Out With My Friends at The Coffee Shop. Of course the more elite of us prefer to worship at My Own Speaking Engagements Community Church. Because, we believe, we “learn better” when we’re the ones doing the talking.

But something happens when you stop submitting to the communal listening of congregational worship and start filling the air with your own free range spiritual rhetoric. Your talk of God starts to sound less like God. He starts sounding like an idea, a theory, a concept. He stops sounding like the God of the Bible, the God who commands and demands, the God who is love but also holy, gracious but also just, et cetera. He begins to sound less like the God “who is who he is” and more like the God who is as you like him.

Read the entire piece HERE.

I Blame His Church

The evangelical circus may be making an addition to their increasingly grotesque sideshow. Apparently, the world needs another reality show. Ed Young Jr. of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, TX is in talks with a major network to bring his big life to the small screen.

While Ed Young Jr. is a grown man and fully responsible for his decisions, I nevertheless blame his church for this latest publicity stunt. You may remember that Ed and his wife Lisa have made headlines in recent years for things like the week long sex challenge they gave their church, the 24 hour bed-in on the roof of Fellowship Church, and the controversy surrounding their lavish lifestyle. All of this would be a bit more understandable if Fellowship Church were an independent word/faith congregation a' la Kenneth Copeland. But Fellowship Church is a member of the Southern Baptist Convention.

 I understand that things happen gradually, but didn't any of the controversies (24 hour bed-in on the church's roof, the mansion by the lake, the partnerships with prosperity preachers, the million dollar condo in Miami, the private jet, the unaccountable board) merit a rebuke from his congregation? Ed Young did not become Ed Young Inc. without the permission of his church.

I offer the following observations in hopes that other churches will not follow Fellowship Church's example:

1. Fellowship Church should not have allowed their pastor to embrace prosperity preachers.
Fellowship Church should have done something when Pastor Ed embraced prosperity preachers like T.D. Jakes and the Houstons of Hillsong Church. These relationships seem to have only emboldened Ed to further his embrace of certain aspects of prosperity teaching.

2. Fellowship Church should not have allowed their pastor to appoint his own board of directors.
Fellowship Church has a strange and dangerous system of government. The men to whom Pastor Ed reports, the men who set his salary, are appointed by him. They are mega-church pastors from other churches living in different states. Ed should never have exploited his church in such a self-serving way. But Fellowship Church should never have allowed it.

3. Fellowship Church should not have made their pastor wealthy.
To be sure, church's are called to take care of those elders who labor in preaching and teaching. My own denomination admonishes churches to care for their pastor's financial needs so that he is not distracted from his calling by the cares of the world. But providing responsibly for a pastor so that he can afford a home and send his children to college is not the same as burdening his soul with an excess of material wealth. Scripture makes it clear that wealth, while not inherently sinful, does present a particular form of temptation that many cannot not find tolerable. Riches are dangerous for the pastor. Just as too little money can burden him, so too will great wealth. There is also the pastoral consideration of a church making its pastor wealthier than 95% of his congregation. We pastors are sinful creatures and we need our brothers and sisters to help us. Riches are a great temptation to any human soul. A church should not tempt their pastor to sin by paying him too little or too much.

4. Fellowship Church should not have allowed their pastor to become an exhibitionist.
One of the justifications Pastor Ed is offering for the proposed reality show is, "I don't mind showing anybody anything." Frankly, this mystifies me. There ought to be all manner of things in our lives that we don't want broadcast into millions of homes. I'm not suggesting that pastors should have hidden lives of shame. God forbid! But what happened to the idea of modesty? Is there any value in privacy anymore? I suppose in our celebrity saturated culture exhibitionism is simply the job description for the reality TV wannabe. But a pastor ought to have more wisdom than this.

So is it fair of me to blame Fellowship Church for its pastor's behavior? I believe so. They made a bargain that they now have to live with. They agreed to allow their pastor to be a celebrity (perhaps encouraged it) so long as he treated them like spectators in his own show.

I close with a description of a typical Sunday at one of Fellowship Church's new satellite locations (a Southern Baptist congregation):

Church happens inside a theater with plush leather stadium seats. As approximately 50 congregants trickle in — hipster dads with Sunday-morning stubble and retro eyeglasses, women in designer jeans with their hair pulled into ponytails — an extended remix of Justin Timberlake’s “Suit & Tie” thumps through the sound system. (The church embraces secular music.) The house music fades. A band in front begins a set of contemporary songs, some with vaguely spiritual lyrics. The leader of this morning’s service is 32-year-old Landon Pickering, whose title at Fellowship is global youth pastor. He is also the pastor at this branch and at the church’s downtown Dallas location. Pickering (he goes by “l_pick” on Instagram) welcomes the crowd with enthusiasm. They hand it back. Pickering has movie-star looks, tatts on his arms and speaks in a sort of urban dialect. He is also dating his boss’s eldest daughter, LeeBeth Young, 27, who works in communications and video for the church and is on hand this morning to help out.

The screen darkens. A video with better special effects than most Syfy channel shows begins. It depicts a set of bones magically being enveloped in tendons, then flesh, then skin, until a whole man — naked and ripped, but shown in chaste tight shots — stands upright. Music swells. Cross-dissolve. Ed Young is now on-screen, live, at the Grapevine church, flanked by two medical-supply skeletons. The hashtag for today’s sermon and the handles of Ed’s Twitter and Instagram accounts remain posted in the screen’s lower corner. Want to accept Christ into your life at the end of the service? Hit #32898 on your smartphone and ushers will assist. Young wears a black hoodie with shiny zippers, snug rust-colored pants and chunky lace-up black boots. Later that morning, for the 11:30 service at the mother church, he will don a new outfit: blue oxford button-down, plaid vest, jeans cuffed at the ankles and wingtips with no socks. (One of Young’s side projects is a blog he started, called pastorfashion.com.) Ahead of his arrival? An elaborate production number interpreting “Radioactive,” an end-times anthem and hit song by Las Vegas rock band Imagine Dragons. A young woman on-stage sings the apocalyptic tune while laser lights slice through a thickening mist from a fog machine. Behind her, three jumbo screens flash disturbing images of gas masks. At stagefront, two breakdancers in yellow biohazard suits contort and gyrate, and simulate drum-beating on large toxic-waste barrels.

Why I Ran To Confessionalism

From the end of 2008 to 2013 I was the lead teaching pastor of a large non-denominational church in the northeast. During my time there I was told by various elders to lead the church in a more “broadly evangelical” direction. By others I was encouraged to lead the church to become more narrowly Reformed. I was told that our theological “tent” was too big and that it was too small. In those few years I understood the wisdom of the words of Dirty Harry, “A man has to know his limitations.” There are a few things I can do. There are other things I could probably learn to do. But one thing I will never know how to do is lead a church in two opposing directions simultaneously.

During that sojourn I came to the conviction that the entire project of “big tent” evangelicalism is failing. Whereas broad evangelicalism used to mean John Stott, now it encompasses Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, and Gregory Boyd. The tent pegs of evangelicalism’s big tent have been moved out too far. It can no longer support the weight of its own contradictions.

So, in August of 2013 I ran to confessionalism. Specifically my ordination was transferred to the Presbyterian Church in America and I became the Lead Pastor of a PCA congregation. The experience has been like finding an oasis in a desert. It has been like discovering a GPS after meandering blindly through an unknown country. Too dramatic? It does not feel that way to me. It is nearly impossible to effectively put down error and nurture unity within a church whose minimal statement of faith is only able to identify the grossest of heresies.

A church needs something more than a statement of faith that encompasses mere Christianity. As one of my fellow pastors put it recently, “a church’s confession needs lots of words.” Indeed. For example I know of an Old Testament professor who rejects much of the Bible but nevertheless insists on affirming inspiration. What he means by “inspiration” is radically different from what the church has historically affirmed. For this reason, a church which desires to maintain a biblically faithful and historically orthodox doctrine of Scripture must now be careful to use “lots of words” in explaining it. A church desiring to be doctrinally conservative can no longer state that they believe the Bible to be “inspired, truthful, and authoritative” and expect to properly guard its doctrinal boundaries. It sounds ridiculous perhaps. But such is the state of mere evangelicalism.

There are at least three reasons why I joyfully fled to a confessional church and denomination.

1. Only confessionalism is able to adequately guard a church’s doctrine.

Paul writes to Timothy that the church is the “pillar and buttress of the truth” (1Timothy 3:15). Elsewhere he tells his young apprentice to “guard the pattern of sound words that you heard from me” (2 Timothy 1:13). One of the essential qualifications of the elder is that he must be “able to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2). What is more, “He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9). I argue that a comprehensive confession of faith is what makes this possible. “No creed but the Bible” is simply not realistic. It fails to reckon with the fact that most Christians do not know the Bible well enough to have a properly formed system of doctrine which can defend against error. An excellent confession of faith, like the Westminster Confession of Faith or London Baptist Confession, properly summarizes Scripture thus equipping the church with not only a tool for instruction but a buttress against error.

2. Only confessionalism is able to adequately guard a church’s unity.

A church is not simply an umbrella organization for various individual’s ministries and hobbies. A church is not a convention hall for loosely connected groups of evangelicals. Confessions of faith act as a remedy against the balkanization of a local church. Essential to a church’s unity is agreement in doctrine and not just of the merest sort. A church cannot limit its statement of faith to that of the average para-church ministry and expect to maintain its unity for the long haul.

A few years ago I explained in a staff meeting why our leadership would not be endorsing a particular book. The book in question was then, and continues to be, enormously popular. The issue was discussed in three consecutive staff meetings with plenty of push back from several. My perspective was backed up by two other pastors on staff as well as some of the elders. But there was nothing in our rather mere statement of faith that spoke to the particular errors of the book in question. As a result no consensus was ever reached, no final decision made, and division rose as a result. Paul makes clear in Romans 16 that those who cause division in a church are not those who guard sound doctrine but those who seek to undermine it.

 

Without a clear confession of faith a church will a) be ruled by whoever has the most influential voice or b) break into various camps holding mutually exclusive positions on important matters. What it will not have is durable unity.

3. Confessionalism is properly aspirational.

I owe this insight to Carl Trueman’s book The Creedal Imperative. Confessions of faith are not first and foremost defensive. Rather they represent the aspirations the church holds for its members. Trueman writes: “[Confessions of faith] represent that which the church aspires to teach its members…If a church has a six-point creed or confession, she essentially communicates to her people that these six things, and only these, are important. Everything else is so minor that it forms no part of its identity” (177, 178). A church ought to desire something more for God’s people. A church ought to desire its members to be mature and maturing in their knowledge of God’s powerful and profitable Word. A church ought to aspire to more than simple agreement on the broadest possible doctrinal categories. It ought to aspire to greater things than simply “majoring on the majors.” Again, Trueman writes: “A good confession becomes not a stick with which to beat people…but an exciting map of the territory of biblical truth and something to which to aspire” (180).

None of this means that confessional churches are safe from the machinations of the enemy and the sins of its own members. We are still south of heaven after all. Confessional churches can and do struggle mightily. However, a confessional church within a confessional denomination is far better equipped to deal with the inevitable threats that arise.

  

We're all adolescents now

From The Juvenilization Of American Christianity:

"Juvenilization happened when no one was looking. In the first stage, Christian youth leaders created youth-friendly versions of the faith in a desperate attempt to save the world. Some hoped to reform their churches by influencing the next generation. Others expected any questionable innovations to stay comfortably quarantined in youth rallies and church basements. Both groups were less concerned about long-term consequences than about immediate appeals to youth.

"In the second stage, a new American adulthood emerged that looked a lot like the old adolescence. Fewer and fewer people outgrew the adolescent Christian spiritualities they had learned in youth groups; instead, churches began to cater to them."

There And Back Again?

The "I've been to heaven and back" book phenomena continues to grow. There is yet another one which has hit the New York Times bestseller list. Now we can read about Mary C. Neal's trip to heaven in her book "To Heaven And Back." Evangelicals love this stuff! The books by Don Piper and Todd Burpo have numerous spin-offs. I recently saw a big, colorful Heaven Is For Real For Kids in a local Barnes and Noble. If I were cynical I'd conclude that all these daily thoughts, calendars, journals, kids and women's editions were crass attempts to make more money off evangelical's lack of discernment. But I'm not cynical so I'd never conclude that. Personally, I'd like to see a Mixed Martial Arts edition of one of these trip to heaven books. That's a growing market after all. Now, just watch some enterprising young fella at Multnomah or Zondervan steal this idea.

Tim Challies, who has written well about the dangers of this nonsense, has a fresh post on Miss Neal's foray into the wacky world of Christian publishing.

The most recent heaven tourist is Mary C. Neal. Much like Todd Burpo, who is responsible for taking his son’s adventures to print, Neal only decided to write about her experiences many years after the fact, after all those other “I went to heaven” books began to sell in the hundreds of thousands. But that’s definitely just coincidence. She initially self-published her book To Heaven and Back, but once it started generating buzz (i.e. selling lots and lots of copies), Waterbrook Multnomah stooped down and scraped it off the bottom of a shoe somewhere, and promptly re-issued it. With the extra marketing nudge, it has now made its debut on the New York Times list of bestsellers. I gave it a skim—I just couldn’t bear to read it all the way—and found that it is much the same as the others. In fact, it may be worse than the others in that it contains even less Christian theology, less gospel and far more New Age, sub-Christian nonsense. That a publisher of Christian books would even consider taking this to print is appalling.

Challies goes on to explain well why these sorts of stories are dangerous for Christians to ingest.

I do not believe that Don Piper or Colton Burpo or Mary Neal or Bill Wiese visited the afterlife. They can tell me all the stories they want, and then can tell those stories in a sincere tone, but I do not believe them (even when they send me very angry and condescending emails that accuse me of character assassination). I am not necessarily saying that these people are liars—just that I am under no obligation to believe another person’s experience. Here’s why:

In the first place, we have no reason to believe or expect that God will work in this way—that he will call one of us to the afterlife and then send us back to our old bodies. The Bible says that it is for man to die once and then to experience the resurrection. There are many experiences we can have in a near-death state I am sure—dream-like experiences that may even seem real—but the Bible gives us no reason to believe that a person will truly die, truly experience the afterlife, and then return. Those who have a biblical understanding of life and death and heaven and hell will know that for a person to die and visit heaven, to experience sinlessness and the presence of Jesus Christ—for that person it would be the very height of cruelty to then demand that they return to earth. None of these books are at all consistent with a robust theology of heaven and hell, of the work of Jesus Christ, of the existence of indwelling sin. On the surface they may seem compelling, but in reality they raise far more questions than the few they may appear to answer.

In the second place, the very idea of God calling a person to heaven and back and then having that person share his experience in order to bolster our faith is the exact opposite of what the Lord desires for us. We have no reason to look to another person’s experience of heaven in order to prove that heaven is real or hell is real. The Bible promises blessings on those who do not see and yet believe. Our hope is not to be in the story of a minister or toddler or doctor or anyone else who insists they have been to heaven; our hope is to be in Jesus Christ as God has graciously revealed him to us in the Bible. Faith is believing that what God says in his Word is true and without error. You dishonor God if you choose to believe what the Bible says only when you receive some kind of outside verification. You dishonor God if you need this kind of outside verification.

A question remains: How do I respond to a Christian who has read these books and who finds great joy or comfort in them? You point that person to what is true. You will need to be careful with tone and timing, but ultimately, it will be a blessing for any Christian to direct his faith to the worthy object of faith. Faith will be strengthened by reading the Bible and believing it. Faith will be weakened by reading the Bible and believing it only after reading 90 Minutes in Heaven. You can serve any Christian by directing him to the Bible and helping him to see that we are called to believe God on the basis of what he says in his Word, not on the basis of another person’s experience. 90 Minutes in Heaven and Heaven Is For Real and all the rest are not books that beautify the doctrine of heaven, but books that attack the doctrine of Scripture. The Bible insists that it is enough, that it is sufficient, that we have no need for further special revelation from God; these books insist that it is not.

Read the entire post HERE.

There are issues and then there are ISSUES

Great analysis by Denny Burk on the idea of "Post-Partisan" Evangelicals:

My concern with the post-partisanship of Jonathan Merritt is the message that it sends to ordinary evangelicals. When the ordinary evangelical steps into the voting booth this November, he will in fact have a choice to make. And that choice will involve prioritizing some issues over others. But I think Merritt disagrees. In his new book A Faith of Our Own, he writes:

Evangelicals…often reduce the immense witness of the Scriptures to only a few culture-war issues—namely, abortion and gay marriage. Both are important issues deserving serious thought. The Scriptures speak often about life and sexuality. But they also regularly address poverty, equality, justice, peace, and care of God’s good creation.

If Christians act as if the culture-war issues are the only issues or make them so paramount that they dwarf all others, we distill the limitless bounty of the Scriptures into a tiny cup of condensed political juice (p. 89).

How is a reader to apply this reasoning when it comes to voting? Merritt seems to be saying that evangelicals need not prioritize ending the regime of Roe v. Wade in their exercise of the franchise. If that is the message he’s trying to send, I think he is dead wrong.

When it comes to voting (which is the extent of political activism for most evangelicals), if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. Merritt’s “post-partisan” approach causes the pro-life issue to get lost in the din of competing interests.

Christians should cast a wary eye toward anyone who suggests that abortion-on-demand is just one among many social ills. In America, it is the single greatest human rights crisis of our time, and to overlook the fact that it is legal in all fifty states to kill a person at any time from 0-9 months gestation is unconscionable.

Abortion definitely deserves more than “serious thought” in the voting booth. It deserves priority.

Read Denny's entire post HERE.

"What is that difference?"

Kevin DeYoung has written one of the most insightful posts I have read in a while concerning the problem of what he calls "squishy evangelicalism." And it describes far too many churches accurately.

The audience I have in mind are those Christians, pastors, and churches that continue to affirm the basic contours of evangelical faith. They’ve never read Fosdick or Tillich or Schleiermacher. They don’t read the Christian Century. They don’t know much about Deutero- or Trito-Isaiah and don’t really care to waste any more time with documentary hypotheses. They think Paul wrote Ephesians and John wrote John. They love Jesus and want other people to love Jesus. If you ask these Christians, pastors, or churches if hell is forever and people must be born again, they’ll say yes. If you ask them whether you can trust everything in the Bible, they wouldn’t dare say no. They have no problem with any of the historic creeds and confessions. The people and institutions I have in mind gladly affirm penal substitution, the bodily resurrection of Christ, and a real historical Fall. The folks I want to address are energetic about evangelism. They want to see churches planted and people come to Christ. They think small groups, accountability partners, and mission trips are excellent. And at least in private conversation they’ll tell you that homosexuality is not. These Christians, pastors, and churches are not liberal...

Have you ever been talking to a pastor or someone from another church and it seems like you should be kindred spirits. The person you meet is obviously a warm-hearted, sincere Christian. They don’t have a problem with any of the doctrines you mention as precious to you and your church. They don’t affirm liberal positions on major theological questions. They nod vigorously when you talk about the Bible and prayer and church planting and the gospel. And yet, you can’t help but wonder if you are really on the same page. You try to check your heart and make sure it’s not pride or judgmentalism getting the best of you. That’s always possible. But no, the more you reflect on the conversation and think about your two churches (or two pastors or two ministries) you conclude there really is a difference.

And what is that difference?

That’s something I’ve thought a lot about over the past few months. I’m sure I don’t have all the answers, but here are ten things that distinguish between what I would call a vibrant, robust Bible-believing church and one that gets the statement of faith right but feels totally different.

1. The mission of the church has gotten sidetracked. Recently I stumbled upon the website for a church in my denomination. Judging from the information on the site I would say this church thinks of itself as evangelical, in the loose sense of the word. Their theology seems to be of the “mere Christianity” variety. But this is their stated missional aim: “[Our] Missions are designed to connect people and their resources with opportunities to respond to human need in the name of Jesus.” A church with this mission will be very different from one that aims to make disciples of all nations or exists to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.

2. The church has become over-accommodating. I’m not thinking of all contextualization (of which there are some good kinds and some bad). I’m thinking of churches whose first instinct is to shape their methods (if not their message) to connect with a contemporary audience. And because of this dominant instinct, they avoid hard doctrines, cut themselves off from history and tradition, and lean toward pragmatism.

3. The gospel is assumed. While the right theology may be affirmed in theory, it rarely gets articulated. No one believes the wrong things, but they don’t believe much of anything. When pressed, they will quickly affirm the importance of Jesus’ death and resurrection, of penal substitution, of justification by faith alone, but their real passions are elsewhere. What really holds the church together is a shared conviction about creation care or homeschooling or soup kitchens or the local fire station.

4. There is no careful doctrinal delineation. Theology is not seen as the church’s outboard motor. It’s a nasty barnacle on the hull. You will quickly notice a difference in message and methods between the church whose operating principle is “doctrine divides” and the one that believes that doctrine leads to doxology.

5. The ministry of the word is diminished. While preaching may still be honored in theory, in many churches there is little confidence that paltry preaching is what ails the church and even less confidence that dynamic preaching is the proper prescription. No one wants to explicitly pooh-pooh preaching, teaching, or the ministry of the word, but when push comes to shove the real solutions are structural or stylistic. How often do those engaged in church revitalization begin by looking at the preaching of the word and the role the Bible plays in the practical outworking of the congregation’s ministry?

6. People are not called to repentance. It sounds so simple, and yet it is so easily forgotten. Pastors may call people to believe in Jesus or call people to serve the community, but unless they also call them repent of their sins the church’s ministry will lack real spiritual power. And this should not be done by merely encouraging people to be authentic about their brokenness. We must use strong biblical language in calling people to repent and calling them to Christ.

7. There is no example of carefully handling specific texts of Scripture. People will not trust the Bible as they should unless they see it regularly taught with detail and clarity. Churches may still espouse a high view of Scripture but without a diet of careful exposition they will not know how to study the Bible for themselves and will not be discerning when poor theology comes along.

8. There is no functioning ecclesiology. If you put two churches side by side with the same theology on paper, but one has a working ecclesiology and the other has a grab-bag of eclectic practices, you will see a startling difference. Careful shepherding, elder training, regenerate church membership, a functioning diaconate, purposeful congregational meetings–these are the things you may not know you’ve never had. But when you do, it’s a different kind of church.

9. There is an almost complete disregard for church discipline. If discipline is truly one of the three marks of the church, then many evangelical congregations are not true churches. All the best theology in the world won’t help your church or your denomination if you don’t guard against those who deny it. If we are to be faithful and eternally fruitful, we must warn against error, confront the spirit of the age, and discipline the impenitent.

10. The real problem is something other than sin and the real remedy is something other than a Savior. The best churches stay focused on the basics. And that means sin and salvation. Sadly, many churches–even if they affirm the right doctrine on paper–act and preach as if the biggest problem in the world is lack of education, or material poverty, or the declining morals in our country, or the threat of global warming. As a result we preach cultural improvement instead of Christ. We preach justice without Jesus. We lose sight that the biggest problem (though not the only problem) confronting the churchgoer every Sunday is that he is a sinner in need of a Savior.

If you read through this list and think you have everything down already, don’t be haughty. If we get all these right and are proud about it, we’ll rob ourselves and our churches of God’s blessing. But my prayer is that somewhere out there in the frozen tundra of the internet a pastor or a congregation or a church leader will read through these ten items and think, “You know, this may be what we’re missing.” The evangelical church needs depth where it is shallow, thoughtfulness where it is pragmatic, and conviction where it has become compromised. A casual adherence to a formal set of basic doctrines does not guarantee real unity and does not ensure genuine spiritual strength.

A Very American Religion

Dr. Brian Lee, pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Washington D.C. asks, "What's wrong with Joel Osteen?"

He writes:

Osteen is the latest embodiment of the American Religion — Revivalism. For centuries now, preachers have known how to fill stadiums or circus tents and send people home with hope in their heart and a skip in their step. Osteen promises you will leave a transformed person — at least until his tour comes around again next year, when you can be transformed again.

Osteen’s message is a positive one for a difficult time. Every one of us has seeds of greatness inside, potential that has not yet been released, buried treasure waiting to be discovered. If you were a car, you would be the fully loaded and totally equipped model — “with pin stripes,” he says, gesturing to his suit.

Before God created you, he planned great things for you. As you stretch your faith, “God is going to show up, and show out, in tremendous ways. … If you don’t step into your destiny and release your gift, then this world will not be as bright as it should be.”

That’s a pretty positive message. What could be wrong with that?

The biggest problem with Osteen’s message about God is that it is really a message about me. God is a potential, a force, a co-pilot, waiting to be tapped and deployed. I may have a net below me, but I am the one that has to take the first steps on the wire:

God is as big as I think him to be.

Yes, this is the American Religion: a program, a plan, five simple steps to help me be all that I can be. This is the religion of the bootstraps, where “God helps those who help themselves.”

By the way, an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that is a quote from the Bible. It’s not.

And that’s the second problem. Osteen’s message is not biblical. His promise that his audience will be taught the Bible — from a preacher who has admitted that teaching the Bible isn’t his strength — is fulfilled with a smattering of verses. These snippets are at best torn out of their context, at worst fabricated.

There’s this stretch: “God is saying to you what He said to Lot, ‘Hurry up and get there, so I can show you my favor in a greater way.’” In Genesis 19:22, the Angel does tell Lot “Get there quickly, for I can do nothing until you arrive there.” God waiting on Lot to step out in faith so he can bless him? Not exactly. It is God telling Lot to flee to Zoar, a city of safety, so he can rain down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah.

Osteen bolsters his bootstrap religion by quoting Jesus: “Roll away the stone, and I’ll raise Lazarus.” This, Osteen says, is a “principle,” “God expects us to do what we can, and He will do what we can’t. If you will do the natural, God will do the supernatural.”

One problem. Jesus does command them to roll away the stone, but no such quid pro quo is found in holy writ. This foundational principle is one of Osteen’s own making.

It is not primarily the details of Osteen’s biblical sunbeams that are problematic. It’s the overall message. What’s missing is any sense of human sin. Osteen leads his crowd in a mantra at the opening of his performance: “This is my Bible. Tonight I will be taught the word of God. I can do what it says I can do.” Again, bootstraps.

What does the Bible say we can do for ourselves? Our best works are like filthy rags, the prophet Isaiah teaches (Isaiah 64:6); we are like sheep gone astray (Isaiah 53:6). Paul says “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and includes himself in this “all” as “the chief of all sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). The big problem is that we don’t want what’s good for us, and when we do, Paul says, “The good that I want to do, I do not do” (Romans 7:19).

Ring true? It does for me. That’s why the stadium will be full next year. Self-esteem doesn’t help me, it just leaves me with more me, digging deeper within.

How about Jesus? Surely he’s more upbeat than Paul or the prophets? Well, he does offer this simple recipe to happiness: “Sell all you possess, give it away to the poor, and follow me.” You done that yet? Yes, he does say that our faith makes us well, but he is the healer our faith looks to. He also tells the paralytic to take up his bed and walk, but only after he has healed him.

What we want is the excitement and encouragement and affirmation of the stadium — “God is waiting for you to act.” What we need is the truth and compassion of Jesus — “Come to me you who are weary, and I will give you rest.”

After the adrenaline boost, I hope some of those 41,000 find their way through the desert to some place where they can get a drink of water.

Earlier Sunday, 45 worshipers (about 0.1% of Osteen’s crowd) gathered at Christ Reformed Church in Logan Circle — and other churches in this city — to hear a message of sin and salvation, the Good News of a God who loves those who are his sworn enemies. They responded to God’s word with prayer, song, and confession, and received the benediction of a God who pardons sin full and free.

The High Cost of Pragmatism

From a helpful post by Johnathan Leeman:

The question I want to think about can be posed like this: is there something endemic not just to megachurches, but to post-1950s-evangelicalism as a whole that, over time, tends to undermine the very doctrinal convictions which makes us evangelicals? More specifically, does our doctrine of the church inevitably tend in a pragmatic direction, such that we will eventually leave the gospel and other core theological convictions unguarded?

Evangelicals Yesterday: A Theological Consensus

TIGHT GRIP ON THE GOSPEL: Think back to the 1950s and 1960s. An evangelical was someone who believed in the inerrancy of the Bible, the substitutionary death and resurrection of Christ, the necessity of conversion, the call to evangelism, and the importance of engaging the culture. In order to preserve the gospel, evangelicals wanted to keep a tight grip on gospel essentials, and a loose grip on everything else.

LOOSE GRIP ON THE CHURCH: This often included a loose grip on the local church. Evangelicals rightly observed that church structure and programming are secondary, but this led many to treat these as unimportant. They decided the Bible doesn’t say much here anyway, and they began defaulting toward the latest trends of “what works.” Eventually, the Boomers wanted one thing, the Xers another, the Millenneals still another. In the meantime, parachurch ministries began supplanting churches’ work of discipleship and evangelism.

Evangelicals Today: An Ecclesiological Divergence

TRIBALIZATION: But pragmatism and parachurch ministries, for all their good uses, are poor guardians of the gospel. Since those early days, evangelical paths have diverged as churches have become distracted by one thing or another. Call it tribalization, Balkanization, or the passing of the old coalition, many people agree that evangelicalism has divided into a number of separate camps. Their members orbit around different leaders, different conferences, different books, and often different church models. 

 

PROLIFERATING MODELS: There are the Emergents, the Neo-Reformed, the denominational loyalists (SBC, PCA, Mainliners, etc), the mystical spiritual-formation movement, the Pentecostals and Charismatics, to say nothing of several prominent megachurches which are movements unto themselves. Floating through these camps are an abundance of church models: traditional, house, multi-site, seeker-oriented, purpose-driven, cell, missional, organic, and more.

THEOLOGICAL UNRAVELING: This might not sound dangerous at face value, but in many cases these camps have begun to represent different theological trajectories. Evangelicals find it harder and harder to agree on the truthfulness of Scripture, the nature of the Christ’s atonement, God’s foreknowledge, and the importance of conversion and evangelism. In short, the old theological consensus has been passing away.

A Evangelicals Tomorrow: A Theological Divergence

GOSPEL COMPROMISE? The question that I would like to pose is, did our original evangelical starting point ultimately leave the gospel unguarded? We chose to treat the church with an open hand—pragmatically—in order to help the spread of the gospel. But did this very first step put us at risk of theological compromise? Mohler points toward the example of one pulpit which is promoting a gospel without repentance. But it's not too hard to find other examples.

These issues, as I said, go to the heart of why 9Marks exists. One of our basic convictions is that the local church and its polity present the platinum prongs that hold the diamond of the gospel in place. When one generation of Christians decides to downplay or relativize or pragmatize the local church, they just might find that the next generation no longer values the same gospel.

Read the entire article HERE.

Johnathan is the author of two outstanding books:

The Church And The Surprising Offense of God's Love  

Reverberation

When growing a church costs too much OR Is the day of the mega-church coming to an end?

Historically, the mega-church was almost the sole property of conservative evangelicalism. While theological liberalism was rising and then dying in the 20th century, conservative churches began growing. The full flower of this growth happened through the 70's, 80's, and early 90's. But things change quickly in our moment in history. It seems we are witnessing the deaththrows of the theologically conservative mega-church. Don't misunderstand. There are still a lot of mega-churches with orthodox statements of faith. But in an effort to not lose numbers in our increasingly pluralistic culture offended by exclusive truth claims, many of these same churches are obscuring the doctrine recorded in their statements of faith.

In this numbers guarding mode, many conservative churches have opted for a church model that is increasingly mere in its theology, pragmatic in its methodology, and secular in its organization. The result, not surprisingly, is a "conservative, Bible-believing church" which is increasingly unbiblical.

In an article posted today, Al Mohler raises a prophetic voice about this very reality.

Mohler writes:

Sociologically, the megachurch model faces real challenges in the present and even greater challenges in the future. The vast suburban belts that fueled megachurch growth in the last few decades are no longer the population engines they once were. Furthermore, cultural changes, demographic realities, and technological innovations have led to the development of megachurch modifications such as churches with multiple locations and sermons by video transmission. From the beginning, the megachurches led in the embrace of new technologies, and these now include the full array of digital and social media.

What about theology? This question requires a look at the massive shifts in worldview now evident within American culture. Trends foreseen by researchers such as James Davison Hunter of the University of Virginia and others can now be seen in full flower. The larger culture has turned increasingly hostile to exclusivist truth claims such as the belief that faith in Christ is necessary for salvation. One megachurch pastor in Florida recently told me that the megachurches in his area were abandoning concern for biblical gender roles on a wholesale basis. As one pastor told him, you cannot grow a church and teach biblical complementarianism. Even greater pressure is now exerted by the sexual revolution in general, and, more particularly, the question of homosexuality.

As an example, Mohler points to a sermon preached by well known mega-church pastor Andy Stanley in which he seemed to normalize homosexual relationships.

A shot now reverberating around the evangelical world was fired by Atlanta megachurch pastor Andy Stanley in recent days. Preaching at North Point Community Church, in a sermon series known as “Christian,” Stanley preached a message titled “When Gracie Met Truthy” on April 15, 2012. With reference to John 1:14, Stanley described the challenge of affirming grace and truth in full measure. He spoke of grace and truth as a tension, warning that “if you resolve it, you give up something important.”

The message was insightful and winsome, and Andy Stanley is a master communicator. Early in the message he spoke of homosexuals in attendance, mentioning that some had shared with him that they had come to North Point because they were tired of messages in gay-affirming churches that did nothing but affirm homosexuality.

Then, in the most intense part of his message, Stanley told the congregation an account meant to illustrate his message. He told of a couple with a young daughter who divorced when the wife discovered that the husband was in a sexual relationship with another man. The woman then insisted that her former husband and his gay partner move to another congregation. They did move, but to another North Point location, where they volunteered together as part of a “host team.” The woman later told Andy Stanley that her former husband and his partner were now involved as volunteers in the other congregational location.

The story took a strange turn when Stanley then explained that he had learned that the former husband’s gay partner was still married. Stanley then explained that the partner was actually committing adultery, and that the adultery was incompatible with his service on a host team. Stanley told the two men that they could not serve on the host team so long as the one man was still married. He later told of the former wife’s decision not to live in bitterness, and of her initiative to bring the whole new family structure to a Christmas service. This included the woman, her daughter, her former husband, his gay partner, and his daughter. Stanley celebrated this new “modern family” as an expression of forgiveness.

He concluded by telling of Christ’s death for sinners and told the congregation that Jesus does not condemn them, even if they cannot or do not leave their life of sin.

Declaring the death of Christ as atonement for sin is orthodox Christianity and this declaration is essential to the Gospel of Christ. The problem was that Stanley never mentioned faith or repentance — which are equally essential to the Gospel. There is indeed no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, but this defines those who have acted in repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21). As for those who are not in Christ, they stand condemned already (John 3:18).

The most puzzling and shocking part of the message was the illustration and the account of the homosexual couple, however. The inescapable impression left by the account was that the sin of concern was adultery, but not homosexuality. Stanley clearly and repeatedly stressed the sin of adultery, but then left the reality of the homosexual relationship between the two men unaddressed as sin. To the contrary, he seemed to normalize their relationship. They would be allowed to serve on the host team if both were divorced. The moral status of their relationship seemed to be questioned only in terms of adultery, with no moral judgment on their homosexuality.

Read the entire article HERE.

If we must offend, let it be for the right reasons...

I have posted before (here & here) about my concern over claims made by some that they died, went to heaven, and were miraculously returned to earth. Evangelicals love this stuff. A recent article in The New York Times by Maud Newton, although misguided in many ways, illustrates the heart of the problem with such tales. There is no source of authority for such claims outside of the person's subjective experience. This, unfortunately, is becoming normative within evangelicalism. Books that rest on internal claims of authority are all the rage. A woman goes into the woods, Jesus dictates a book to her and it sells a gajillion copies. And how do we know Jesus dictated the book to her? Because she says so. Oh, she's careful to point out that what Jesus dictated to her is somehow less authoritative than the Bible, and certainly not inerrant. But one wonders, why? Why should Jesus' direct revelation to her be less authoritative than his direct revelation to Paul? But I digress. 

If we must offend let it be on account of the gospel which is a stumbling block. Let it not be because of fanciful claims and false promises.

The Shrinking Influence of Evangelicals...

David French has written an article for National Review Online which examines the diminishing influence of evangelicals upon the wider culture. He sums up his thesis with three reasons behind this decline:

1. We are more focused on meeting the material needs of the poor than their spiritual needs. Spend much time in the evangelical community, and you’ll soon learn that the old-fashioned Gospel-focused mission trip is largely a thing of the past. Now, you go build schools. Now, you go dig water wells. Now, you repair houses. These are worthy goals, all, but service projects by themselves don’t change hearts and minds, they often make (frequently) self-inflicted misery more bearable. Service must be accompanied by intentional, vocal evangelism and discipling.

2. We go on sinning so that grace may abound. The secular stereotype of the modern evangelical — as a judgmental moralizer — is so wrong as to be laughable. Everywhere you go, preachers reject this model entirely, emphasizing, for example, “divorce recovery,” therapy, and treatment for the consequences of sin. Again, these are worthy things, but Christ and the Apostle Paul also emphasized holiness and discipline. How often has your church actually disciplined adulterers? How often have you intervened in the life of a friend before they made devastating mistakes? Our desire to be liked trumps all, and suffering is the result.

3. We church-shop, seeking to meet our needs rather than serving the church. This echoes Douthat’s point above. Church-switching is pernicious. Not only does the church “market” breed selfishness, it also makes pastors market-oriented. As you survey church after church, each doing things their own way, ask yourself, which of these church institutions will still be present and viable in 50 years? Or 100 years? Or 1,000? Evangelicals often look askance at Catholics, but which of our churches has even lasted since the Reformation? We cannot build institutions when our focus is on building the self.

I once heard it said that following the social and political disruptions of the 1960s and early 1970s, religious conservatives decided that they had to win elections, while secular leftists decided to win the culture — and both groups succeeded. So now here we are, enjoying unprecedented influence on presidential outcomes even as our cultural foundation rots away beneath our feet. Not even the best presidential candidate will fix the family, nor will our most generous service project save a soul.

Justifying Unbiblical Means

When the definitive history of 20th century evangelicalism is finally written it may well point to pragmatism as the defining characteristic. Results mattered more than truth. Experience mattered more than faithfulness.

Ref21 has posted an article by James Torrens on the self-defeating reality of pragmatism. Torrens writes:

This uncontained pragmatism ('what matters is what works') is used to justify all kinds of strategies in order to 'advance the gospel' or 'build the church', without any thought as to what kind of gospel is being advanced or what kind of church built.

For example, in some circles, the Homogeneous Unit Principle (2) is a popular strategy for church growth. It's popular because it works. It's popular because we all feel more comfortable surrounded by people who look like us, think like us, and behave like us. But is it biblical? Paul's vision of the church in Ephesus and the picture painted for us in Revelation suggests that it is not.

Similarly, particularly in the bigger and 'broader' denominations, it is common to hear people argue that unbiblical beliefs and practices ought to be tolerated, either for the sake of unity or for the opportunities for gospel ministry that being part of such a denomination affords. This is essentially a pragmatic approach to heresy and apostasy. But, as is becoming increasingly clear, one cannot successfully defend the bible by letting the bible slip from one's hands.

To expand, one cannot defend biblical authority if, in seeking to do so, one ignores and thereby undermines the authority of those parts of the bible which give clear instruction as to how to handle, for example, a persistently unrepentant brother. This kind of pragmatism is ultimately self-defeating, for justifying the unbiblical means (by appealing to a positive or 'biblical' outcome) will ensure that the outcome is in fact far from positive or biblical. What eventually happens, to borrow Paul's metaphor, is that the yeast spreads through the whole loaf: the situation worsens, rather than improves.

The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Carl Trueman is an excellent ebooklet on the nature of evangelicalism and the necessity of clear confessions of faith. Anyone interested in the state of the church and the importance of doctrinal unity ought to read it.

Preaching the Word or Trading in Novelty?

Great post from Phil Johnson:

"I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry" (2 Timothy 4:1-5)

In all of Paul's instructions to Timothy and Titus, there is not an ounce of encouragement for the person who thinks innovation is the key to an effective ministry philosophy.

Much less is there any room for the pulpiteers of today who like to exegete the latest movies, or preach on moral lessons drawn from television sitcoms, or build their sermons on themes borrowed from popular culture. You know what I mean: the kind of preachers who insist they are being "missional" when they are merely being worldly.

Still less is there any warrant for the celebrity rock-star pastor who continually makes himself the focus of his preaching. "For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake" (2 Corinthians 4:5). "Necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!" (1 Corinthians 9:16).

Paul's focus is extremely narrow—stiflingly narrow for the typical young-and-restless church planter for whom "style" is everything; and whose style (let's be honest) is conspicuously dictated by secular fashion rather than by the worldview Paul was exhorting Timothy to embrace.

"Preach the word." That's the centerpiece and the key to everything Paul tells Timothy about how to shepherd God's flock. That command is followed immediately by a second imperative that simply makes the first one more emphatic: "Be ready in season and out of season." The Greek verb means "stand by," and it does have the sense of readiness. (In fact, in radio, that is exactly what the expression "stand by" means: "Be ready." But the word Paul uses is richer and stronger than that.) It also carries the connotation of expressions like: "take a stand," "stand upon it," "stick to it," "stand up to it," or simply "carry on."

Read the rest HERE.

The "Prosperity Gospel" is not the Gospel

It is appropriate that a prosperity gospel be born in the hedonistic, self-centered, get-rich-quick milieu of modern American society. We are, by nature, pagan. Either our religion will transform us or we will transform our religion to suit our sympathies. . . .

The prosperity Bible does not deal only with freedom from sickness. It would have us read, ‘He himself bore our sicknesses and poverty in His body on the tree, so that we might die to infirmity and lack; for by His wounds you have been healed.’ In contrast, there was no question in the mind of the apostles that the gospel promised, ‘spiritual riches in heavenly places in Christ’ (Ephesians 1:3), not earthly ones. Our Lord was afflicted so that we could be healed. But that is a metaphor for the wonderful truth that the penalty justly meant for us was endured by Christ, our substitute. The rod of justice that dealt the Lamb of God such bitter blows declared us righteous!

It is to trivialize greatly the work of Christ to suggest that God the Father sent His only-begotten Son into the world to bear the world’s blasphemy, insults, and violence, and, most of all, to bear the Father’s wrath—all for increased cash flow and fewer bouts with asthma. It is to make a joke out of the great displeasure, anger, and wrath God has toward sin and sinful persons. God’s real problem, say the faith teachers, is not that we are wicked, selfish, God-hating rebels who deserve eternal punishment, but that we aren’t enjoying ourselves!

- Michael Horton
quoted in John MacArthur, Our Sufficiency in Christ, Word Publishing, Dallas, 1991, pg. 251.

Carl Trueman weighs in on Trinitarianism, celebrity pastors, and the race card

Dr. Trueman has apparently seen this video.

He responds with a very helpful post on historic Christianity and the cost of defending the truth.

Still, let us go back to the fourth century and see how the `middle aged white guy’ critique measures up. Well, at the Council of Nicea in 325, many of the participants were no doubt middle aged — which Paul in the Pastorals would actually seem to think is quite a good thing in a church leader. But white? I suspect they were ethnically more akin to modern day Turks or south eastern Europeans, not that racial categories really meant anything then. The key category in the fourth century was that of Roman citizenship, not skin colour.

More significantly, of course, had you been there yourself and looked around the council, you would have seen that many of the delegates had body parts missing – an arm here, a leg there, an occasional eye – because they were survivors of the terrible persecutions under Diocletian and Galerius. Indeed, many had probably lost close friends and family members too. Thus, the foundations for the creedal doctrine of the Trinity were laid by men who thought doctrine was something for which it was actually worth suffering and dying.

Read the entire post HERE.