Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Happy Reformation Day

Today is the 490th anniversary of the nail heard round the world.

Just letting you all know, I made it home safely. New York was amazing. Seeing the sights was pretty cool too. The mission trip made a big impression on me and brought me to tears on a number of occasions. (I know, I know, crying isn't manly, but I think this kind is acceptable.) I will be posting a much more detailed account soon, but for now I just want to say:

Happy Reformation Day

O What great things our God wrought 490 years ago today that continue to shape this world and bring many to the greatness of knowing Christ!

Thursday, October 25, 2007

New York

I leave my house in about an hour to go to New York with my church's youth group and the youth group of our mother church. We're going with an organization called Center for Student Ministries and we will be doing a lot of work with the poor and homeless. It's going to be pretty crazy. Hopefully I'll come back with some good stuff to write about, maybe even a few pictures to post, and most importantly, a little bit more transformed into the image of Christ.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Train up a child...

Lately I have had the privelege of being around a bunch of little kids. And I don't say that sarcastically :) Between the families at my house church and my friend and his family that I hand out with at least once a week, I'm around about a dozen different kids during the week and only about two of them are older than 10. The rest are younger than 6. It's been a very interesting experience. For instance, at my house church three out of the last four weeks one of the kids has thrown up. I meet with my friend every Tuesday night and he has five kids under the age of six and I usually spend some time reading to them while also trying to keep them from falling off of barstools and telling them to get off the table. I'm starting to wonder what God has in store for me in the future and if he's using this to train me for something. To be totally honest, I'm kind of terrified. Don't get me wrong, I like kids and I look forward to the day when I will have some of my own. But I'm terrified that I won't be a good father. There is so much that goes into it and I know I'm going to make a ton of mistakes and I just pray that the mistakes that I do make aren't too severe. The very prospect of being a father really makes me grateful that God is a sovereign God and he will keep me and my wife and kids. He's in control. I couldn't even imagine wanting to be in total control over the situation. I would totally screw it up. Anyway, the reason I brought all of this up is because being around this many kids has caused me to think a lot more about how to raise them and the verse that keeps coming to my mind is Proverbs 22:6 "Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it." If God ever blesses me with a wife and children I think this verse will define much of my parenting efforts. If I want to raise my children and in a God-glorifying manner, then I must train them up in the way of the Lord. If I want them to be not just good kids but good adults that seek after the glory of God, I must raise them to love and seek after God through the Bible. I must constantly be teaching them the Bible and the gospel and how everything is about the glory of God and that it is in seeking that glory that we will be satisfied and find eternal life. There is no greater parenting method than to train your children in the word of God. What a God-given blessing that my parents thought that way and constantly taught me the Bible. I can only pray that God would give me the grace to do the same for my kids. Praise God that he is a good Father and a sovereign Lord and he leads us in the way everlasting and provides for us the ultimate example of the kind of fathers and mothers we should be.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Gospel Series

I never blogged about it, but about two-and-a-half months ago I accepted the position at my church as youth leader. I'm not paid staff or anything, but I teach the youth (grades 7-12) Sunday mornings and I'm one of the youth leaders for our Wednesday night gathering (we combine with our "mother church"). So far we have gone through the book of Ruth, and the last two Sundays I have taught on heaven and hell. In teaching about hell, I centered on II Thess. 1:6-10. One of the phrases really caught me, and that is verse 8 where it says "dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus." After teaching about the eternal torment of hell and that it is those who don't know God and don't obey him that will endure that, I was deeply struck by the need to preach about what the Gospel is. In order for us to obey it, we must know it, and by knowing the Gospel, we will know who our God is. So I came up with a tentative eight-part series on the Gospel. Let me know if you have any feedback or additional topics that would be helpful to cover. Anyway here's the series:

The Good of the Gospel - God
The Object of the Gospel - Jesus
The Dilemma of the Gospel - Man
The Means of the Gospel - The Cross
The Effect of the Gospel - Sanctification and Glorification
The Enemies of the Gospel - Legalism and Antinomianism
The Power of the Gospel - God's Sovereignty and Evangelism
The Purpose of the Gospel - The Glory of God

That's it. Let me know what you think. God bless.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Response to my pastor

This is a response I just sent to my pastor about an article that he sent me and wanted my thoughts on it. In short, the article sees problems in the maturity level of believers in today's church and encouraged the development of small groups and discipleship to correct the problem. Anyway, I thought I would share my response with you.

I think he's right on in most of his assessments. A couple of minor nit-picky things like using the term saints for mature Christians. Paul even called the Corinthians saints. We don't want to create a catholic mindset where we elevate mature Christians over immature ones. We are all one in Christ and we don't want to create division where the Bible doesn't and in fact fights vigorously against it (Eph. 4:2-6). But overall I think his analysis of the problem is right on. Modern day evangelical churches are producing baby Christians - Hebrews 5 Christians if you will. The level of immaturity is even such that we are losing (perhaps even lost entirely) our distinction from the world and we cannot accurately gauge the salvation of most of the people sitting in the seats in front of us. Not that we are the judge of the people's salvation and relationship to God. May that never be! I would hate to think about me judging anybody's salvation. What I mean though, as I'm sure you know, is that all we can look at is the fruit in a person's life and if the American church today is producing fruit, it is small and produces little impact. There is an aspect where I don't fully line up with the solution that is being offered. Let me say, first, that I think small group discipleship and accountability are key. If we lack that, then we miss out on half of the equation and we won't achieve the fullness of God's blessing for us and we won't fully achieve the measure of a mature Christian and thus our church bodies won't achieve the full measure of a mature man. We must have small groups. We must encourage tight knit relationships (Col. 2:2 - being knit together in love). We must have close relationships founded upon, grounded and established upon, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This is my concern with the emphasis on small groups. The emphasis on small groups seems to think that if we just had good small groups then all our problems would disappear, or at least a good deal of them would. And my response to that is how often in scripture do we see the writers putting an emphasis on small group fellowship, above and beyond that of the larger fellowship? To be sure, there are examples. Acts 2 comes to mind as well as all the portions of scripture that talk about the group that Paul took with him. He was never without Barnabas or Silas, and it seemed he always had disciples around him as well, such as Timothy and Titus. He also spent a great deal of time with Aquila and Priscilla as well. In fact, at the end of most of Paul's letters he sends greetings from a great deal of people that were with him. At the end of II Timothy Paul urges Timothy to return to Paul quickly because only Luke was with him and everybody else had either abandoned him or gone into ministry in other parts of the world. All that to say, we have a great list of examples of small group fellowship and how needed and beneficial it is. If we think we can go it alone and be the American lone ranger Christian, then we have got it all wrong. We need each other, particularly in a smaller group as these examples illustrate. But my question is where do we see the gathering into small groups encouraged or commanded in Scripture? I'm just working off of memory, but I can't think of a single passage that relates small group fellowship specifically to spiritual growth. Large group fellowship is most definitely encouraged and commanded (Heb. 10:25 among others) but I can't think of any verses that specifically talk about small group fellowship and discipleship.

Rather, what I think you see more often in the Bible is an emphasis on preaching and teaching truth, specifically that of the gospel. You see this in passages like Eph. 4:11-16. What comes first? People gifted to preach and teach and expound upon the truth of God's word, and by so doing they equip the people who hear them to grow themselves up into a strong and mature body. What's interesting about this passage is that it links maturity to a knowledge of the Son of God and unity. And the end goal of all this is that we attain to the measure of the fullness of Christ. As it has been said before, when you train a cashier to spot a fake 20 you don't have them look a bunch of counterfeits, you have them look at and study the real thing until they are so accustomed to seeing the real thing that spotting a fake is easy. We all are, as Christians, called to be like Christ, so the only way that we can truly be like Christ is if we look at Him constantly. When Paul came to the Corinthians his goal and his means of making them mature Christians was to preach Christ and Him crucified and at the end of I Cor. he says that this is of first importance. When Paul wanted to correct heresy in the Galatian and Colossian churches he told them about Christ. In fact, in Colossians 2 Paul tells us that the way to be firmly grounded and established in the faith is to know and understand and gaze upon Christ. When Paul wanted to give the Philippians a reason for joy he talked about nothing other than Christ. When Paul wanted to have fellowship with the Roman church he wrote the book of Romans and then called the whole book the gospel in chapter one. In Rom. 1:14-17 Paul tells the Romans that he longed to preach the gospel to the believers there. Not to unbelievers, but believers. I think the church has made a huge mistake in thinking that the gospel is what brings us from life unto death and then the rest of our Christian lives is training separated from the gospel. I've been thinking about this and writing about this a lot lately and the short end of it is I believe that it is the gospel that saves us and, if you will excuse the word choice, it is the gospel that keeps us saved. As you know, I fully cling to and believe in the perseverance of the saints and that it is God's power that does it, but I believe that the means that God uses to do this is through the gospel. And if I went into some of the thoughts I've been having about all this and reasoning from the scripture, then this e-mail would get far too long. But the basic gist is that I believe all texts speak of God as seen through the face of Christ (II Cor. 4:4,6) and we must focus on Christ in order to produce transformation into the image of Christ in the lives of those who profess belief. So my conclusion about this article is that it is right in that we focus too much on programs and we have weak (even blasphemous) preaching and teaching, shallow books, and a self-centered gospel. But the answer isn't encourage small groups. The answer is preach and teach in such a way that people see the face of Christ and leave transformed into the image of Christ's glory and then those small group fellowships develop much easier. Granted, because of our nature and our individualistic culture we must encourage small group fellowships from the front, but I guarantee that it will be much easier when the congregation is gazing into the face of Christ and not just going along with some program that tells them that the Bible and God is all about them