GRACE & PEACE

Author: Dennis Griffith

  • Art of Our Discontent

    Trevin Wax asks these questions:

    How do unbelievers know we are Christians?

    • By the fish symbols on our car?
    • By our bumper stickers?
    • By our voting patterns?
    • By our church attendance?

    No. Jesus tells us that the outside world will know we are Christians by the way we love one another.  (John 13.34-35; 1 John 4.12)  When we submit to one another in love, we bolster our evangelistic witness by showing the world that love and authority don’t have to be separated.  God’s rule is life-giving.  He rules us for our good and for his glory, and the church reflects that loving rule.

    (From Counterfeit Gospels, page 157)

    But what about when that love runs cold?  What are faithful followers of Christ to do when we grate on one another or disappoint one another?  I am not talking about when we are in conflict, necessarily. I have in mind when we just seem to grow apart?

    This is a pertinent question to ponder, because inevitably most will experience this in at least some relationships with others in our churches.  So how are we to respond? How can we most glorify God in these situations?

    First, let me offer an illustration of a way not to respond.

    Once, in a previous church I served, I participated in a discussion with a church member who had seemingly disappeared.  As we inquired about him, how was doing, and what he was up to, he informed us that he had been disappointed by some of the Elders in the church.  None of us had been aware that this had been the case, so we were filled with a mixture of emotions: sadness, disappointment, frustration, etc.  One man asked him why he had not made this known, why he had not followed the pattern of Matthew 18 to seek reconciliation and restoration of relationships.  His response: “Matthew 18 does not apply. None of you sinned against me.”

    Somewhat perplexed, I inquired: “Had someone offended you because of sin would you have then followed Matthew 18?”  He assured us all that he most certainly would have done that.  And I believe him. He was (and is) a faithful man, zealous to be obedient to God.

    I felt I had no choice. I had to point out the absurdity of this logic.  He was missing the whole spirit of the instructions for the process of reconciliation. True, Matthew 18 is a process that must be undertaken and which could culminate in some form of church discipline. But it is not discipline the Lord delights in.  Our Lord delights in heartfelt relationship.  What this man expressed was essentially that he would have shown more love and concern for his fellow Christians had any of us been guilty of offensive sins.  Absent that, he felt he had no responsibility to seek to restore these relationships.  In other words, he would have loved us more had we sinned against him than he did because we had not.

    I suspect his dilemma is not uncommon.  In our disposable culture it seems relationships are among the easiest things to discard.  But as I posed at the beginning of this post, this is not the way things ought to be among those in Christ’s Church.  As J.I. Packer observes, in his doctrinal handbook Concise Theology:

    “The task of the church is to make the invisible Kingdom visible through faithful Christian living and witness-bearing.”

    I think Packer sums it up beautifully.  Our task is to embody the values and principles before a watching world. By doing so we become a living demonstration of the way things ought to be – and one day will be.  As we live this out, perhaps especially in relationship, we are counter-cultural – i.e. we present an alternative to the culture in which we live.

    So how should we respond when we feel we have drifted apart from others in our church? How, practically, do we honor God with our relationships?

    (more…)

  • How to – or NOT to – Read Your Bible

    How should we read our Bibles? There are a number of good ways.  But Dane Ortland offers some suggestions about how not to approach it:

    • The Gold Mine Approach – reading the Bible as a vast, cavernous, dark mine, in which one occasionally stumbles upon a nugget of inspiration. Result: confused reading.
    • The Hero Approach – reading the Bible as a moral hall of fame that gives us one example after another of heroic spiritual giants to emulate. Result: despairing reading.
    • The Rules Approach – reading the Bible on the lookout for commands to obey to subtly reinforce a sense of personal superiority. Result: Pharisaical reading.
    • The Artifact Approach – reading the Bible as an ancient document about events in the Middle East a few thousand years ago that are irrelevant to my life today. Result: bored reading.
    • The Guidebook Approach – reading the Bible as a roadmap to tell me where to work, whom to marry, and what shampoo to use. Result: anxious reading.
    • The Doctrine Approach – reading the Bible as a theological repository to plunder for ammunition for my next theology debate at Starbucks. Result: cold reading.

    This post is excerpted from Ortland’s post on The Resurgence blog: Transform Your Bible Reading.  The expanded article offers some valuable insights.

  • 5 Reasons Church Leaders Quit

    Why do so many church leaders quit or go into early permanent retirement?  This is epidemic these days.  According to Pastor in Residence, a ministry aimed at restoring ministry casualties back to active duty, at any given time as many as 33% of American pastors consider throwing in the towel.  And this is not a problem isolated among the “professionals”.  Some of the same stressors also plague non-staff church leaders.

    Perry Noble offers some wise insight aimed at my ministerial colleagues – and me.  These are things we need to be reminded regularly.  I know I do.

    #1 – Burnout

    I once heard someone say, “I would rather burn out than rust out.”  Uh…BOTH are bad because NEITHER of them finish well.  Too many people in the ministry work themselves into a frenzy, never take time to disconnect and refresh, and do absolutely nothing for fun–this always ends badly!

    When it comes to leadership circles in America, we’ve equated being busy with being godly; however, the haunting reality that confronts that idea is what God Himself said in Psalm 46:10, “BE STILL and know that I am God,” not “be busy!”

    If we are not taking regular breaks, doing things “just for fun,” and disconnecting, then burnout isn’t a matter of “if,” but “when!”

    #2 – Unrealistic Expectations

    Too many people believe that “ministry = easy” despite the fact that it seemed to go really badly for everyone in the Scriptures that sold their lives out to Him!  Jesus went to the “place of the skull” to be crucified…why would we ever believe He would lead us to “the place of the mattress?”

    When we impose our plans and ideas on God and refuse to surrender to His, it usually leads to people “giving up” because “God just didn’t come through.”

    #3 – Criticism

    Criticism hurts, it always will, and if it ever doesn’t, then, according to my counselor, something is dead inside of you.  And it is always personal (especially when someone begins with, “Don’t take this personally, but…).

    You can’t let the critics dictate what you think/feel!  If you have a ministry that constantly responds to critics, then you will not have one that responds to Jesus.  You MUST respond to the people who God has placed in your life to surround you and protect you–that’s not criticism but rather correction.  However, you cannot allow those who know you the least to control you the most–period!

    #4 – Discouragement

    Every church leader I’ve ever chatted with has done some serious battles with discouragement.  After your message on Sunday, the enemy comes in and begins to accuse you, telling you that you did a pathetic job and that no one is going to come back next week.  I’ve had to battle discouragement during the message before, hearing voices inside of my head saying things like, “You stink, these people hate you…you need to quit the ministry…” and so on.

    This is why it is essential for leaders to get in a place like David did in I Samuel 30:1-6.  David faced an incredibly discouraging situation and yet somehow managed to find His strength in the Lord.  I do this by reading through encouraging letters and e-mails that I’ve received in the past, placing myself in encouraging environments, and focusing on what God’s Word says about me.

    #5 – Losing Focus on God’s Power

    When we actually believe it is up to us to make people come back to church every week rather than believing we are conduits that God wants to work through to do that very thing…it’s over!  Because we fall into the trap of trying to outdo ourselves every week, every series and every year and prayer/seeking the Lord become some things we love to talk about but fail to do.  He saves…He draws people…and He uses us to do it.  It’s not up to us but rather we need to allow Him to work through us to accomplish all that He wants to do!

    Face it; on our own, we don’t have enough power to blow our noses.  We need Him. He is the game changer!

    ~ Perry Noble is pastor of New Spring Church in Anderson, South Carolina

  • Erasing Hell

    Recent discussion about Judgement and Hell, spurred largely by a recent book by Rob Bell, have prompted many to rethink what they believe – what Scripture teaches – about this subject.  Among them, Francis Chan in this video titled Erasing Hell.

    I had thought I was done with this thread, but Chan’s reflections warrant hearing.

  • Living Together as the Church

    The late theological statesman, Edmund Clowney observed:

    “If we lack interest in the church we lack what was for Jesus a  consuming passion. Jesus loved the church and gave himself for it (Ephesians 5.25).”

    Jesus’ love for his church is evident throughout the pages of the New Testament.  In Matthew 16.18 Jesus promises to build his church. In fact he promises to empower it and protect it to such a degree that even Hell itself can not stand against it.

    In Ephesians we are told that we, the followers of Christ, are the Body of Christ. (Ephesians 5.30) And the way the world will know we are his people is through the way we relate to one another. (John 13.35)

    OK. I know that there is little, if any, new ground being broken here so far. What I have written is widely understood and little debated by those who are followers of Christ.  But while these principles are widely known, lesser understood is how we can -and should – practically live out our life together as Christ’s Church.

    The folks at 9 Marks have developed a wonderful little e-book that helps lay a solid foundation and offers wise instruction about life together.  It is titled: Living as a Church.  Originally a Sunday School curriculum, each chapter is only about 3-4 pages designed to spark conversation as well as instruction.

    Below are the links to the various chapters. I commend them all, but they are also of value considered by subject of interest.

    1. Introduction: Unity- God’s Goal for the Church
    2. Church Membership: Context for Unity
    3. Preaching: The Foundation of Unity
    4. Corporate Prayer: God’s Power Creates Unity
    5. Church Government: Godly Authority Fostering Unity
    6. Fellowship: Building a Bond of Unity
    7. Discontentment: A Test of Unity
    8. Church Leadership: Submission for the Sake of Unity
    9. Church Discipline: Preseving God-honoring Unity
    10. Serving & Giving: Sacrifice for the Sake of Unity
    11. Worship: Praising God in Unity
    12. Corporate Evangelism: A Harvest of Unity

  • Glorious Day!

  • This Present Communion

    “We are justified if we have accepted Christ as Savior.  But present communion with God requires continual bowing in both the intellect and the will.  Without bowing in the intellect, in thinking after God; without acting upon the finished work of Christ in my present life; and without bowing in the will in practice, as the waves of the present life break over me, there is no sufficient communion with God.  Without these things I am not in my place as the creature in a fallen and abnormal world.  These three things are absolutely necessary if there is to be real and sufficient communion with God in the present life.”

    ~Francis Schaeffer

  • What Makes a Good Church?

    Steve Erickson of Pointway Church in Baxter, Minnesota serves up some up beat thoughts to the question: What makes a good church?

    “What makes a good church?

    If all the…

    …Lazy folks get up
    …sleepy folks wake up
    …Discouraged folks cheer up
    …Gossiping folks shut up
    …Dishonest folks fess up
    …Estranged folks make up
    …Depressed folks look up
    …Disgusted folks sweeten up
    …Lukewarm folks fire up
    …Sanctified folks show up
    …Leading folks live up
    …Vowing folks pay up
    …And all soldiering folks stand up.”

  • Shallow Small Groups

    OK… This might make some folks cringe a little – especially some Small Group junkies… But this is just too funny!

  • Organic Church

    You will observe that I am not merely exhorting you “to go to church.” “Going to church” is in any case good. But what I am exhorting you to do is go to your own church – to give your presence and active religious participation to every stated meeting for worship of the institution as an institution. Thus you will do your part to give to the institution an organic religious life, and you will draw out from the organic religious life of the institution a support and inspiration for your own personal religious life which you can get nowhere else, and which you can cannot afford to miss – if, that is, you have a care to your religious quickening and growth. To be an active member of a living religious body is the condition of healthy religious functioning.

    –B.B. Warfield

  • Out-stretching the Outreach Dilemma

    I have been spending some time thinking about how to revamp and ignite the outreach ministry of our church.  One of the frequent dilemmas for a church that desires to become more externally focused, more missional, is the balancing of service and PR.  There is nothing inherently wrong with advertising, but sometimes a sincere outreach can be perceived as a mere marketing strategy.  When this happens it sends a distorted message to both those outside the church and those who go out from the church.

    John Stott, in his book Christian Mission in the Modern World, offers the following insights about this dilemma:

    To sum up, we are sent to the world, like Jesus, to serve. For this is the natural expression of our love for our neighbors. We love. We go. We serve. And in this we have (or we should have) no ulterior motive. True, the gospel lacks visibility if we merely preach it, and lacks credibility if we who preach it are interested only in souls and have no concern about the welfare of people’s bodies, situations and communities.  Yet the reason for our acceptance of social responsibility is not primarily in order to give the gospel either a visibility or a credibility it would otherwise lack, but rather simple uncomplicated compassion. Love has no need to justify itself.  It merely expresses itself in service wherever it sees need.

  • How to Disarm an Angry Person

    It is the most difficult of maneuvers. There are no guarantees of success. And the stakes are high. But we have no choice: we must learn how to do it.

    How do you disarm an angry person?

    The angry person could be a child, parent, spouse, friend, neighbor or counselee. And, of course, we could use a little disarming ourselves sometimes.

    To read the rest of this post from CCEF click: Disarm

  • Revival: The Restoration of the Holy Spirit to This Place

    To understand aright what this teaching of the Spirit is, there are three things we must specially remember:

     The first, that it is all from within. It is by influencing, by renewing, by purifying the life, that the Spirit gives the experimental knowledge of God’s truth. Out of the light of life, wrought within our feeling and willing and acting, spiritual wisdom and understanding is born.

    The second, that this power and energy of the Spirit is given on one condition — that of entire possession. As a teacher can not teach unless he has the undivided attention of his pupil, the Holy Spirit demands the entire control of the life. A great deal of prayer for the teaching or the filling of the Spirit is vain, because the seeker is not faithful in obedience to that measure of the Spirit which he already has. The Spirit claims our whole being.

    And the third essential element in the teaching is that it is only communicated and to be received by faith. The movings of the Spirit cannot be known or felt until we begin to act. It is when, while feeling our weakness, we believe in the hidden presence and power within us and begin to act, that his guidance and strength are known. Faith in his indwelling and most certain leading, much faith in the Father who works by the Spirit, unceasing faith in the Lord Jesus, in union with whom we have the Spirit flowing through us — this faith will receive the fullness of the Spirit. This is the revival we must seek for, the restoration of the Holy Spirit to his place as the inward teacher, having complete possession and control of heart and life.

    Excerpted from Andrew Murray‘s  Coming Revival

  • Being a Transforming Presence

    As followers of Jesus it is as imperative for us to fight every inclination toward dualism as it is to fight against legalism.  While legalism is widely recognized as relating wrongly to the Law, the error of dualism is not as widely acknowledged in our Evangelical circles.

    Simply put, dualism is like split vision, seeing things only as either spiritual or secular.  All things are spiritual.

    Walt Mueller reminds us that there are two kinds of dualism common in the church:

    1. Escape – When personal salvation is viewed as an escape from the world into the church, and that the world around us is then to be avoided.
    2. Segregated Spheres – Believing God is only concerned about the spiritual dimension of our lives, we dedicate our spiritual lives to the Lord, but then are shaped by the world in our professional and social lives.

    Jacques Ellul offers this critique:

    This dissociation of our life into two spheres: the one “spiritual” where we can be “perfect”; and the other material and unimportant, where we behave like other people; is one of the reasons why the Churches have so little influence on the world… All we can say is: That is the exact opposite of what Jesus Christ wills for us, and of that which he came to do.

    Here are three teachings of Jesus that should remind us that God intends for his people to engage the culture around us.  We are not to avoid it. We are to attack it stealthily.

    Matthew 5.13 – Salt of the Earth

    Matthew 5.14 – Light of the World

    Matthew 10.16 – Sheep among Wolves

  • The Presence of the Kingdom

    Jacques Ellul offers a profound insight about how we, as Christians, are to adopt as a priority an Incarnational approach to ministry.   Incarnational  ministry literally means: In the flesh.  It means going where people are, and understanding their real situations, rather than primarily trying to draw them to us with various forms of entertainment and shallow promises.  The Incarnational approach allows us to infiltrate the cultures of the world, and the sub-cultures of our community, to become agents of transformation.

    Reflect for a little while about what Ellul writes:

    The will of the world is always a will to death, a will to suicide. We must not accept this suicide, and we must so act that it cannot take place. So we must know what is the actual form of the world’s will to suicide in order that we may oppose it, in order that we might know how, and in what direction, we ought to direct our efforts.

    The world is neither capable of preserving itself, nor is it capable of finding remedies for its spiritual situation (which control the rest). It carries the weight of sin, it is the realm of Satan which leads it towards separation from God, and consequently towards death. That is all it is able to do.

    Thus it is not for us to construct the City of God, to build up an “order of God” within this world, without taking any notice of its suicidal tendencies.  Our concern should be to place oursleves at the very point where this suicidal desire is most active, in the actual form it adopts, and to see how God’s will of preservation can act in this given situation.

    If we want to avoid being completely abstract, we are then obliged to understand the depth, and the spiritual reality of the moral tendency of this world; It is to this that we ought to direct all our efforts, and not to the false problems which the world raises, or to an unfortunate application of an “order of God”  which has become abstract… Thus it is always by placing himself at this point of contact that the Christian can be truly “present” in the world, and can carry on effective social or political work, by the grace of God.

    ~ from The Presence of the Kingdom