Beauty & Purpose of the Cross
Sadly not everyone recognizes the requisite necessity for God to be Just. Many picture him exclusively as absolute and unconditional love, thinking he will dismiss the the legal demands that result from mankind’s sin on that basis alone. This approach is offensive to God because it demeans two of the other essential facets of his unfathomable nature: Holiness & Justice. In addition, to see God solely as love is to overlook the beauty and the purpose of the Cross. For at the Cross, the perfect holiness of God meets his perfect love in action.
-Jerry Bridges & Bob Bevington, The Great Exchange
10 Dumbest Things Christians Do
There is a book out there with the title: The 10 Dumbest Things Christians Do. I feel compelled to pick up a book with a title like that. I want to see how many of these 10 dumb things I am guilty of doing.
I don’t know if the list the author, Mark Atteberry, compiled is right or not. Are these the DUMBEST things Christians do? Some of us do so many dumb things, it is tough to tell which are the dumbest. But I must concur. He is right. These are some stupid things many Evangelical Christians do:
- Slinging Mud on the Bride of Christ
- Winning People to Church Rather Than to Jesus
- Living Below the Level of Our Beliefs
- Speaking Above the Level of Our Knowledge
- Hopping From Church to Church
- Fighting Among Oursleves
- Missing Golden Opportunities
- Settling for Mediocrity
- Allowing Wolves to Live Among the Sheep
- Accepting the Unacceptable
Gospel Discipling: The Crying Need of the Church
by Stephen Smallman
“Thirty years of discipleship programs, and we are not discipled.”
This is the startling assessment of Jim Petersen, the visionary leader of the esteemed discipleship ministry, the Navigators. Petersen goes on in the first chapter of his important book, Lifestyle Discipleship, to ask some very hard questions about the real effectiveness of our various attempts at discipling believers. But if the situation in most of our American evangelical churches is lacking with respect to discipleship, the condition of many churches in developing nations is nothing short of tragic. Instance after instance can be cited of young and vital churches sliding quickly into debilitating legalism, with Christianity being defined by believer and unbeliever alike as essentially little more than the keeping of certain rules.
There is little need to draw out this lament about the current condition of “discipleship”. Almost anyone in ministry recognizes the need to rethink assumptions and approaches to this critical aspect of the work of the Church. In this article I would like to make the case for a fundamental shift in the paradigm we use with respect to the content of our discipling ministries. It seems to me that most of the work being done to improve the discipleship component of our churches or missions focuses on the matter of methodology – how to secure greater commitment from participants, whether we should work in small groups or one-on-one, how pastors should redefine their roles, etc..But the actual content of what is imparted can be largely described as the “doing” of the Christian life. It is my contention that before methodological issues are discussed, we need to recognize that the essential content of our discipleship is to be the Gospel – taking people who have believed the gospel back into the Gospel again and again. This is what I will call “Gospel discipling”, which could just as easily be termed “discipleship in the Gospel.”
I believe it can be demonstrated that this was the approach of the Apostles, as evidenced by their letters to new churches. In particular I want to use the book of Romans as a model of Gospel discipling. I believe it can also be demonstrated that it is the Gospel itself that supplies the power to enable believers to become meaningfully engaged in the “doing” of the Christian life. Once I lay out these foundational issues, I will then explain briefly how World Harvest Mission, building on the seminal thinking of Dr. Jack Miller, has attempted to address the issue of Gospel discipling in a practical way.
Definition of the Gospel
At the outset, it is essential to contend for a much broader understanding of the word “Gospel” than is commonly held by evangelicals. In its essence the Gospel is the glorious announcement that God has kept his promise to bring salvation to the earth (Isaiah 52:7). The fulfillment of his promise is a person, his own Son, named Jesus, who is Messiah and who died for our sin and was raised to life. Remarkably, by believing this Gospel we are granted eternal life, and the break caused by the original fall and our personal sin is restored.
But the Gospel is more than the announcement about the person and work of Christ, it is used by Paul and others to include all that comes to us when we believe the Gospel. In the words of Galatians, it includes not only God sending his Son to redeem those under the law, but also his sending the Spirit of his Son into our hearts that we might experience the privileges of sonship. (Galatians 4.4-7) In Colossians 1 Paul talks about the “word of truth, the Gospel” and seems to equate it with “God’s grace in all its truth”. (Colossians 1.5-6) It is also worth taking time to reflect on Paul’s use of Gospel in 2Timothy 1.8-2.10. I believe in the light of that context, Paul’s exhortation to “be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2.1) can be understood as challenging Timothy to find his strength to endure by returning again to the Gospel.
All of this points to a need to understand the Gospel as much more than rehearsing the facts of Christ’s death and resurrection – as wonderful as they are. Furthermore, teaching or preaching the Gospel is more than inviting unbelievers to put their trust in Christ for salvation. The Gospel is the word we should use for all that has been given us in Jesus Christ, which is why it is frequently called “the Gospel of grace”. This broader use is much closer to the historic distinction of Law and Gospel, which was commonly understood in earlier generations, but seems to have been largely ignored by ours. To be sure, the benefits of the Gospel are being taught today, but I believe our discipling of believers will be helped by recognizing that biblically, these are still to be thought of as Gospel. The posture of simply believing in Jesus as we learn of Him in the Gospel is as fundamental to our progress in the faith as it was to our initial receiving of it.
***
This is Part 1 of a 5-part series titled Gospel Discipling. This series is taken from an essay by Stephen Smallman, author of Spiritual Birthline and past Executive Director of World Harvest Mission. Some of the content has been edited.
My thanks to New City Fellowship of St. Louis, who posted Smallman’s essay on their web page.
To read Parts 2-5 of this essay click:
Gospel & Evangelism
What If Church Was Different?
Practical Difference Makers
One of the vows folks are required to affirm if they are to become a member of our church – or a member of any church in the PCA, for that matter – is:
Do you promise to support the Church in its worship and work to the best of you ability?
This seems simple enough. I don’t recall anyone ever hesitating on that one. In fact I don’t recall anyone even asking a question for clarification. But, how does one actually DO that? How does one support the worship and the work of the church?
In the closing message of NEXT 2010, Kevin DeYoung offered a list of suggestions for the conference participants to become “difference makers” in their local church:
• Find a good local church.
• Get involved.
• Become a member.
• Stay there as long as you can.
• Put away thoughts of a revolution for a while.
• Join the plodding visionaries.
• Go to church this Sunday and worship in Spirit and truth.
• Be patient with your leaders.
• Rejoice when the gospel is faithfully proclaimed.
• Bear with those who hurt you.
• Give people the benefit of the doubt.
• Say “hi” to the teenager that no one notices.
• Welcome the old ladies with the blue hair and the young men with tattoos.
• Volunteer for the nursery.
• Attend the congregational meeting.
• Bring your fried chicken to the potluck like everybody else.
• Invite a friend.
• Take a new couple out for coffee.
• Give to the Christmas offering.
• Sing like you mean it.
• Be thankful someone vacuumed the carpet for you.
• Enjoy the Sundays that “click.”
• Pray extra hard on the Sundays that don’t.
• And in all of this, do not despise the days and weeks and years of small things (Zechariah 4:8–10).
Seems so simple, doesn’t it? But I can tell you if even a handful of people adopted these things in a local congregation the difference would be noticeable. As a pastor, I would be thrilled.
Ah!! You Just Said a BAD Word!
Tony Campolo is famous – or infamous – for a statement made at a Christian college chapel service:
“The United Nations reports that over ten thousand people starve to death each day, and most of you don’t give a SH%T. However, what is even more tragic is that most of you are more concerned about the fact that I just said “sh%t” than you are about the fact that ten thousand people are going to starve today.”
Let me ask you:
- What was your first thought when you read that quote? Did you visualize thousands of starving people? Or were you stunned by the use of the “bad” word?
- Imagine if you had been in the congregation at your church and he made that statement. What would have struck you then?
- Can think of any better way to point out that sometimes we do not have the heart and priority of Christ?
- Can you think of a better way to reveal our tendency toward self-righteousness and legalism?
I’ve never had the nerve to say anything like this from the pulpit. Maybe if I was a traveling speaker who didn’t have to face the same crowd again a week later I might have considered it…
Easy Chairs & Hard Words
Some time ago I posted a series of fictional discussions between a young man from a Broadly Evangelical background and a seasoned minister in a more historical theological tradition. The series is titled Easy Chairs & Hard Words. It was penned by Douglas Wilson of Christ Church of Moscow, Idaho, and first appeared in Credenda Agenda.
These engaging instructive narratives have come to mind in a few discussions over the past couple weeks, so I decided it might be good to republish them. At least I will post links to each of the six chapters:
Easy Chairs & Hard Words – Part 1
Easy Chairs & Hard Words – Part 2
Easy Chairs & Hard Words – Part 3
Easy Chairs & Hard Words – Part 4
Teen Challenges
Does this description sound familiar:
Teens are unstable emotionally. One minute they feel wonderfully happy. The next minute they feel like the world has come to an end again for the third time that day. Their lives are emotional roller coasters. Solid ground is hard to find.
As the parent of three, relatively well-adjusted, teenagers, I recognize the description. As a former teenager myself – albeit long, long, ago – I remember this to be an apt portrayal.
This is just one paragraph from an excellent article by Tedd Tripp that appeared in CCEF‘s Journal of Biblical Counseling: Communicate With Teens.
In this article Tripp not only describes the all too common symptoms of the teenager, but he lays out the foundational issues, identifies common pitfalls that we parents fall into, and offers some insightful goals for parenting through the teen years.
What are the foundational issues?
Tripp observes three, taken from Proverbs 1:
- Need for Fear of the Lord. (Proverbs 1.7)
- Need to Remember Parents’ Words (Proverbs 1.8)
- Need to Dissociate from Wickedness (Proverbs 1.10)
As parents we need to be aware that the problems of the teenage years are not one-sided. Tripp cites five common errors. We need to honestly assess ourselves in light of them. To what degree am I guilty of:
1. Spy vs. Spy.
Teens often try to get away with as much as they can. Parents often try to catch them by spying on them. Sometimes the teens try to catch the parents trying to catch them… Tripp says it becomes “a cat and mouse game”.
2. Disengaging.
Parents give up trying to be a nurturing influence in their teens’ lives. They limit their engagement to giving curfews and consequences. The result: Teens are more influenced by their friends than by their parents.
Parents often think, They don’t care about me and what I think. One word from me and they go in the other direction anyway. Instead of being in the thick of the battle in the most important time for teens, parents give up trying to have any influence on them at all.
3. Authoritarianism vs. influence.
By authoritarianism Tripp does not mean the proper exercise of authority. Instead he is referring to the practice of being overly tough: “You can’t get away with anything with me. I’ll stay one step ahead of you. I’ll make the punishment more onerous.”
“Rather than becoming a bigger authority”, says Tripp, “we need to come alongside our teens as bigger positive influences. We need to be someone who has their ear, who shows them love, who helps them be successful in the things they want to accomplish, and who gains the right to speak to them. We want to become people who have influence with our teens. We want them to be willing to listen to what we say. In the years from infancy to adulthood, authority diminishes, but our influence should increase.”
4. Reckless words.
Reckless words, the proverb says, “wound like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”
5. Majoring on the minors.
Parents tend to focus on matters of taste and style. But we must carefully choose our battles. We need to focus on things that have moral significance, with biblical truths at stake.
And so what is the overarching goal?
Community is Identity
From Tim Chester:
The church is not a building you enter. Nor is it a meeting your attend. It is not what you do on a Sunday. To be a Christian is to be part of God’s people and to express that in your life through belonging to a local Christian community.
Our Belonging
We belong to one another (Romans 12:5). If a car belongs to me then I am responsible for it and I decide how it should be used. If a person belongs to me them I am responsible for them and I am involved in their decisions.
Our Home
Peter says Christians are ‘foreigners’ = ‘without home’ in the world (1 Peter 2:11). But we are being built into an alternative ‘home’ (1 Peter 2:5).
Our Family
Families eat together, play together, cry together, laugh together, raise child together provide for one another. Families argue and fight, but they do not stop being families and they don’t join other families because they have different tastes in music or reading. With family you can take off your shoes and put your feet on the sofa. They provide identity and a place of belonging.
Family is one of the most common New Testament images for the church. So try re-reading the paragraph above, substituting the word ‘church’ for ‘family’…
Our Community
The New Testament word for community is used to describe sharing lives (1 Thessalonians 2:8), sharing property (Acts 4:32), sharing in the gospel (Philippians 1:5; Philemon 6) and sharing in Christ’s suffering and glory (2 Corinthians 1:6-7; 1 Peter 4:13). Helping poor Christians is an act of ‘community’ (Romans 15:26; 2 Corinthians 9:13). Christians are people who share their lives with one another.
Our Joy
How would you answer this question: ‘For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ when he comes?’ Paul says to the church in Thessalonica, ‘Is it not you?’ (1 Thessalonians 2:19)
Implication: ‘We’ not ‘I’
We need to say not ‘I am planning to …’ or ‘this is my ministry’, but ‘we are planning to …’ and ‘this is our ministry’. We need to say not ‘you need to … or ‘the church doesn’t meet my needs’, but ‘we need to …’ and ‘why don’t we do this’.
Taking Pieces of Heaven to Place of Hell On Earth
Jesus says: “I will build my church and the gates of Hell will not stand up…” –Matthew 16.18
First it is important to remind ourselves that in this challenge Jesus is calling his church to take an Offensive stike, not a Defensive response. The church is to take the initiative, go, and storm the gates. This verse does not suggest the church create a fortress and stand guard, as we too freequently have done.
Second, we must ask ourselves what this means practically. I’ve been through some pretty rough neighborhoods, but I have yet to see a literal enterence to the actual Hell. So how can we act out on this passage?
Palmer Chinchen offers us some insights. In the line of thinking presented in Richard Stearns’ The Hole in Our Gospel, Chinchen challenges Christ’s church to come together to make a difference, and storm the gates and stem the growth of Hells on Earth.
Chinchen, pastor of The Grove in Chandler, Arizona, is brother of one of my old seminary classmates. I don’t know Palmer, but have high regard for Paul. Now I also have high regard for Palmer’s passion.
Me Worship
The foolishness caricatured in this video probably needs no comment. It touches on what is perhaps the most common plague of American Evangelicalism: the notion that life (and Church) is all about me – what I like, what I want, etc.
God seems to have other ideas. In Isaiah 48.11 God says:
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this.
How can I let myself be defamed?
I will not yield my glory to another.
This problem may nowhere be more evident than in the worship wars that erupt in many congregations. What might worship be like if our primary concern was God’s glory? If we primarily asked ourselves what God enjoys?
Measuring Up?
Do you ever feel that you have to measure up?
Do you wonder sometimes how you are grading out in God’s eyes? I suspect the answer for most people is “Yes”. Our theology may tell us otherwise, but I think most people struggle with this from time to time – especially when we feel emotionally tired and as if we are coasting in neutral gear spiritually.
I’m not sure many people are even aware they feel this way. We know our theology well enough, and so we remind ourselves of the truth of the Gospel: That we are declared righteous in Christ. This is a wonderful truth. But sometimes we don’t really live in the light of this truth. This is the difference between our confessional theology and our functional theology.
In other words there is sometimes (often?) a gap between what we know to be the facts and the way we allow those facts to impact our heart and emotions. Put mathmatically, the difference between our confessional theology and our functional theology equals frustration. (F – C = Frus)
A few months ago I posted an excellent article by Paula Rinehart, that had originally been written for The Navigators’ Discipleship Journal. Because I know the tendency we have toward wandering onto what Jerry Bridges calls a Performance Treadmill, I wanted to post it again.
If you ever find yourself tired of trying to measure up, or if know others around you who seem to fall into that trap, you will appreciate:
Prophets, Priests, and Kings
An important concept to explore and implement in the ministry of the local church is the reflection of the Offices of Christ: Prophet, Priest, and King. This is known as Tri-Perspectivalism or Multi-Perspectivalism. I have written and spoken a little about this, but I am still far more a student than an expert when it comes to the implications.
Richard Lovelace, author of Dynamics of Spiritual Life – a MUST READ for those charges with ministry leadership – offers this insight:
“Our union with the Messiah and his desire to continue his earthly ministry by living his life through us are so strong that we may be said to share his three offices of leadership. We are priests as we pray for those near us and draw them into the sphere of God’s mercy and blessing. We are prophets as we hold a biblical straightedge against whatever is crooked around us. And we are kings as we use whatever powers we have to straighten what is crooked, reshaping whatever falls within the scope of our responsibility until it reflects the order of heaven.”
Beyond the Sick List
It is one of my peeves. And it seems to be one of the most difficult habits to break church members of. I am referring to the common pracactice of praying the sick list. For some reason it is difficult to get even seasoned Christians to pray for much else.
David Powlison takes up this issue in an article published in ByFaith Magazine. Powlison writes:
Why don’t people pray beyond the sick list? We want circumstances to improve so that we might feel better and life might get better. These are often honest and good prayers—unless they’re the only requests. Unhinged from the purposes of sanctification and from groaning for the coming of the King, prayers for circumstances become self-centered.
Powlison observes:
[T]he majority of prayers in the Bible focus on other things. As shorthand, here are three emphases of biblical prayer:
1. Circumstantial Prayers
Sometimes we ask God to change our circumstances—heal the sick, give us daily bread, protect us from suffering and evildoers, make our political leaders just, convert our friends and family, make our work and ministries prosper, provide us with a spouse, quiet this dangerous storm, send us rain, give us a child.
2. Wisdom Prayers
Sometimes we ask God to change us—deepen our faith, teach us to love each other, forgive our sins, make us wise where we tend to be foolish, help us know You better, give us understanding of Scripture, teach us how to encourage others.
3. Kingdom Prayers
Sometimes we ask God to change everything by revealing Himself more fully on the stage of real life, magnifying the degree to which His glory and rule are obvious—Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, be exalted above the heavens, let Your glory be over all of the earth, let Your glory fill the earth as the waters cover the sea, come Lord Jesus.
They are tightly interwoven when we pray rightly. When any of these three strands of prayer gets detached from the other two, prayer tends to go sour.
To read Powlison’s insights click: Praying Beyond the Sick List.
GRACE & PEACE 