the blog of Jerry Bolton
Posts tagged The Church
I Need Church.
0Currently listening to: “This Is The End” – Relient K
Relient K made a great new album. You should listen to it if the chance comes upon you. It is called “Forget And Not Slow Down”. I am refusing to be using contractions. No reason.
My friend Ian Hales just made a great post over on the Harvest Durham website. You can read it here.
The post is the second in his series entitled “Who Needs Church?”. He’s examining the components of the local church and the necessity of it in the lives of believers. It’s actually something I’ve been dancing around doing myself for many months, so I’m thankful someone far better qualified (and far better “having his head around it”) stepped up to the plate.
Personally, the part that was most useful to me is where he mentions that Acts can’t be our model for church structure, as some are prone to demand (house church movement, anyone?). Why? Simple hermeneutics. Acts is a history book – it’s descriptive. So, just in the same way that we wouldn’t take the historical accounts of the Old Testament as prescriptive for how we should live our lives (thus becoming polygamists, as some misguided folks are… prone to demand) we can’t take the embryonic church structure in the book of Acts and use it as our primary source. I’m not suggesting for a second Acts isn’t useful and important, but basic study will reveal that Luke’s purpose in writing Acts was to relay the history of the early church in a rather condensed form. It’s descriptive – describing the events that took place, only occasionally weighing in on things. Conversely, the pastoral epistles of the New Testament are prescriptive by genre and by nature – they prescribe the correct structure for the local church in a way Acts never so much as pretends to.
All in all, I found Ian’s breakdown quite helpful. I trust you will too. Make sure to check out the first post in the series as well (heck, maybe even add the Harvest Durham blog to your feed reader, fair citizen!).
Minor note: Harvest Bible Chapel Durham is the recently announced church plant out of Harvest Bible Chapel York Region, and is planned to launch sometime in 2010.
Can we call it “Body-planting”?
0Currently listening to: “Freedom is Here” by Hillsong United
I’m a very, very late comer to the worship music scene. I find that as I draw nearer to God, I can’t help but revel in worship. That, and there’s something inherently intriguing to me about songs written for the express purpose of being sung in a large-group setting. If you judge worship music purely on musical merit alone, you’re missing the point – it’s really, REALLY hard to write songs so personal (yet generally connectable) that they lend themselves to such a context. Having said all that, there’s still a lot of garbage worship records out there (and songs)… and Hillsong, as usual, evades such derision. They write good worship songs.
I’ve been working on two posts, neither of which is ready. One containing continuing thoughts on God’s will, one being the next about finances and stewardship – another of Jesus’ parables.
In the meantime, I wanted to share this post on CJ Mahaney’s blog by his friend Dave Harvey. It’s about church planting. More than that, it’s about how the church is God’s intended mission to the world. It’s about the church doing the things often left to parachurch ministries. It’s about how much can be lacking when the context of ministry is squarely outside (or alongside) the church rather than within the context of a local body of believers.
Being familiar with a great example of a church that has recently planted INTO a University campus (pray for them!), such things excite me greatly.
Check out Dave’s post here.
…habitual sin and holy ostracism
02 years ago
Current Tunage: Oh, Sleeper – Son Of The Morning
New record out, sporting an inverted, “horns cut off” broken pentagram on the cover. Heavy material. Apparently it’s a concept album, where all but the last song on the record is voiced by Satan – and the last song (“The Finisher”) is God’s response. Check out an interview here that will explain it a bit better. All in all, it’s a pretty amazing record. The guest spot with Cody Bonnette of As Cities Burn on track 3 is wondrous to behold (or rather, to be heard). Either way, compelling stuff. I’ll share some lyrics soon.
This morning on Facebook, I posted a video of Dr. John Piper responding to the question “How should Christian friends respond to a friend who has entered a homosexual relationship and moved to a church that accepts it?”. During the discussion that followed, I realized there’s something much deeper at stake, namely, “How should Christian friends respond to a friend who claims to know and follow Christ but has made a truce with their sin?”. Ultimately, “Holy Ostracism” isn’t about homosexuality in particular, it’s about any mode of sin that we might make habit and be unrepentant of.
1 Corinthians 5:9-13 ESV
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people– not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler–not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”
The answer? It depends on the person, and what they claim. In both cases, we love them.
If they don’t claim to be a Christian – to know and follow Jesus – we love them. In this case, loving them means that we (among other things) seek to propose (not impose) the Gospel; that God became Man, lived a perfect life, and was crucified by his enemies (namely, us) to save and deliver and redeem them… and arose again 3 days later to prove all of the above.
If they claim to be a Christian – to know and follow Jesus – we love them. In this case, loving them means that we do many things (worship together, “do life” together, bear each other’s burdens, serve Christ together, etc). It also means that, rather than sharing the Gospel with them, we hold them accountable to their claim OF it.
What does this accountability look like? Well, obviously, it’s rooted in relationship. If someone claims Christ and avoids his body (the Church), that’s a separate problem (equally grievous, but separate). So, assuming they’re in relationship with other believers – in this case, you – what does holding them accountable look like?
Simply, it looks like loving them enough to challenge them, question them, confront them, and rebuke them for their sin. Always gently, always in love, always with Truth (ie. the Word of God), always patiently and helpfully. It also looks like committing what Piper calls “holy ostracism” eventually.
Titus 3:10-11 ESV
As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.
Holy ostracism is something that, prayerfully, we do when someone refuses to deal with their sin (or acknowledge it as such despite the clear teaching of Scripture). It’s not something that happens overnight, it happens in response to a pattern of stubborn and selfish love for sin – a love for sin that eclipses love for Saviour and His Name & Glory. It looks like a severance of relationship because it is – it sounds like this: “We can’t be friends anymore until you either stop claiming to be a Christian, or repent and begin the process of making war with the sin you prize.”
Quite frankly, I have some friends who – because of the way they live – need to stop claiming they know and follow Jesus. They are hypocrites to the n’th degree and, much more than that, their “peace” and “truce” with their sin declares to the world that the Saviour doesn’t save. For this reason and others, “ostracism” is what scripture prescribes for that kind of circumstance.
Of course, I also have many other friends who claim to know and follow Jesus and their lives show it. Not in perfection, but in constantly moving forward and dealing with their sinfulness.
2 Thessalonians 3:14-15 ESV
If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.
If someone habitually and stubbornly refuses to deal with – for example – their pride (aka self-idolatry), they need to be held accountable and consider how, and IF, that is acceptable for a follower of Jesus. We present them with loving rebuke and correction – as brothers, not enemies – and if they consistently refuse to see the problem or to move forward against it, we break fellowship (and lovingly give them the ultimatum above). The rebuke is always loving, always geared toward restoration and reconciliation with God.
To refuse to help others in this way (I believe) weakens churches, weakens believers, and gives plenty of weight to outsider’s charges of meaningful hypocrisy amongst Christians. There is nothing to be gained by refusing to break fellowship with the unrepentant, and much to be gained from “handing them over to Satan”.
1 Timothy 1:18-20 ESV
This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.
Obviously, one must be in a place in this person’s life to know about their habits and their patterns of living – this of course means that to be in a position to do ‘holy ostracism’, you must be in a place from which to ostracize. Of course, this is complicated by the way that things like Facebook and Twitter make friends who, in past ages, would have been more “stranger” and “acquaintance” than “friend” something much more. From the wonders of social networking, people’s lives are on display, and their attitudes and sinfulness with it. We don’t have to look far anymore to see “friends” who are pregnant (or have impregnated) outside of wedlock, or living with someone they’re not married to, or carrying on with a lifestyle of drunkenness and debauchery… all while claiming to be “Christian”. The trick with this is that although we might have the data, we don’t have the relationship and thus, holy ostracism’s goal (restoration to God) is unnattainable in such loose contexts – not to mention we aren’t close enough to them to know if they’re dealing with their sin, repentant and putting themselves under spiritual discipline. It is this which leads me to believe that holy ostracism is something reserved for honest-to-goodness real life contexts where not only will it actually have meaning, but where its purpose can actually be worked out through the division of relationship. This hints at something at the heart – holy ostracism isn’t something done entirely for the sake of the person being ostracized. Why? Simply because holy ostracism isn’t always helpful for the person being ostracized. If it were, we could say that was the reason behind it. Really though, doing ‘holy ostracism’ is about God – it is always helpful for the name of Christ and for the collective integrity of those who claim His Name.
Matthew 18:15-17 ESV
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
We don’t cut off lightly, but we must do it when someone claims to follow Jesus but lives habitually in a “backslidden” state of habitually not battling the flesh, not battling pride, not battling selfishness, not battling their natural, sinful impulses. Believers are marked by war – against sin, against self, against the flesh, against pride, against lust, against everything that arrays itself against our God and Saviour. Those who claim to believe but live in contradiction need to be confronted with the witness their life gives and called to repentance – and if they refuse to agree with God and turn from their wicked ways – they need to either stop claiming to believe, or they need to be subjected to holy ostracism.
…visited here, tenfold on your head
1Current Tunage: Project 86 – To Sand We Return
Surrender to the sound.
I’m just beginning to catch my breath after a whirlwind summer. In June we were able to visit family “up north” in New Liskeard and Timmins for a pair of weeks. July found us house-sitting for friends in the Bayview & 401 area, which was thoroughly enjoyable – among other things, it gave us enough room to invite our “friends who have childrens” over, which of course was a delight. The first weekend of August was, progressively, my brother-in-law’s wedding, our FIRST ANNIVERSARY (hooray!), a great day at the beach with Steph’s extended family, and – moving into the following week – a trip down to Ohio to visit old friends. The last couple weeks have included time up on Baptiste Lake near Bancroft cottaging with my family (as well as my honourary brother Shane) as well as, this past week, a stint of freelance writing, editing, and layout for a great family-run business in Mississauga.
In other words, I’ve been “busy”. Hopefully that fleshes it out a bit.
Of course, I haven’t been resting on my laurels much in terms of things I’d like to be writing about, either. That said, I do have a disturbing habit of falling short on my own hopes and intentions for this space – promises to myself I don’t seem to keep. My friend Todd recently captured some of the dynamics involved (and helpful), in this post.
So, there’s not a dearth of profundity to be found here today. Just a random mishmash of words that have been bouncing around my noggin of late. Words like Church, Marriage, Ecclesiology, Authority, Covenant, Hebrews, Galatians, Titus, Thrice, Beggars, Project 86, Emery, Review, and a host of others. We’ll see what comes of it all.
Galatians 5:22-26 ESV
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
…lest we drift away
12 years ago
Current Tunage: Jars of Clay – Faith Enough
“Poor enough to gain the treasure / Enough a cynic to believe.”
I’ve started my way through Hebrews, in part spurred on by Josh Harris’ workshop last week at The Gospel Coalition 2009 National Conference.
One of Josh’s main points was that ‘loving the local church’ is a matter of obedience – or, in other words, it’s not optional for followers of Jesus. His texts for this were mostly in Hebrews and hearing the passages coupled with his exposition and thoughts was something God really used to bring clarity to me on something I’ve really been disobedient in for much of my life as a believer.
Let me explain that a bit -
I was saved at a very young age. By saved, I mean that I realized and accepted that there was no hope for me in this life outside of Jesus and his atoning sacrifice on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins. I made him boss, God, and saviour and have never really looked back (other than the very human doubts and cynicism that plague myself and most others). This happened so early in life because I grew up in a Christian home, with loving and godly Christian parents who really wanted me to know what’s truly important in life – Jesus.
Consequently, I grew up in the local church. Particularly, in what most would term a ‘fundamentalist, theologically and practically conservative, local-church-oriented denomination’. If it sounds like I’m deriding it there, please disregard – I still have a lot of respect and love for where I’m from, it’s just that those who have been inside something tend to see its problems most clearly – the challenge is often how to apply your vision of those issues.
Anyhow, all of my life I’ve struggled with ‘loving’ the local church. This is despite the ones I attended being populated by godly, loving Christian brothers and sisters who really loved me and, as best as they were able, strove to be like Jesus and live lives that please Him, conduct church in a way that pleased Him, and so on.
So why was it a struggle? It’s pretty simple actually – I realized as I was listening to Josh that for all of my life, with very few and momentary exceptions, my attachment to the local church has generally been one of mere “obedience” (read: doing it because its ‘the right thing to do’ and because ‘the Bible tells me so’) – not of “love”. Which, if I’m reading Hebrews correctly, and if I understood Josh correctly, means that I wasn’t really being obedient with regard to the local church. What God calls us to is to passionately love and serve the local church – to love and serve His people and His body. I haven’t really done that a whole lot. It’s not that I was wrong to go out of ‘obedience’, it’s that I didn’t understand what ‘obedience’ entailed – a passionate love for, servanthood to, and focus upon my fellow believers in the local church.
Check out one of Josh’s primary texts:
Hebrews 10:19-27 ESV
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
Isn’t it remarkable how the writer to the Hebrews talks about our individual right to enter the ‘holy places’ by the merit of our saviour’s blood, and about how that right, that way, is open to us via the torn and murdered body of our great high priest Jesus? Isn’t it amazing how we can enter such a solemn and holy place with a ‘true heart’, ‘full assurance of faith’, and ‘a heart sprinkled clean”? Doesn’t it just make the writer’s admonition to “hold fast hope” hit home?
How is it, then, that for so many years I missed the connection between all of the above, and the command to “consider how to stir up [fellow believers] to love and good works … encouraging one another” as well as “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some”? How is it that I’ve managed to make a disconnect for so long between the obedience of “holding fast hope” and the obedience of the habit of meeting together with other believers? The two seem to be inextricably interconnected.
Josh put it this way (what follows are some point form notes I took from his workshop):
- Holding fast is vitally connected to being committed in a local congregation.
- To hold fast, we need fellow Christians to spur us on, stir us up, and love us.
- To hold fast, we need to ourselves be spurring other believers on, stirring them up, and loving them.
- We will not be faithful without connecting the Gospel to the local church – it’s the only way to hold fast hope.
- The local church is vital for so many areas of obedience and growth: Giving, acquiring counsel, worship, teaching and input, service, accountability, and the regular giving and receiving of testimony. Others help you grow and obey, you help others grow and obey.
- 1 Thesselonians 5:14 – Admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all. Another passage that requires obedience of us, to love the local church.
- God works through a people to put his glory on display – Jesus came to save a church.
- 1 Peter 2:9 – All the language is pluralized. We are a ‘chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that [we] may proclaim the excellencies of him who called [us] out of the darkness into his marvelous light”. It’s a group plan!
- If you can’t get excited about Christ’s bride here on earth, you won’t enjoy heaven.
- Hebrews 3:12,13 – We are called to ‘exhort one another every day‘ so that ‘none of [us] may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin’.
- We are called to counsel one another with truth.
- Something irreplaceable happens when we gather and worship, serve, and give together.
- It is through the church that the Gospel is proclaimed and demonstrated, and disciples are made.
- Do I know and feel my need for the Body of Christ (and express it in my actions)?
- We can’t hold fast to the gospel without the local church.
Today, as I was studying in Hebrews 2, I was really struck by the first four verses, which read as follows:
Hebrews 2:1-4 ESV
Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.
For so long, I haven’t been paying “much closer attention” to what I have heard in God’s word my whole life – that the church is vital for growth and obedience, and that I must learn to love it. My connection to the church cannot be simply one of cold “obedience” and habitual involvement, but it must be genuine obedience that flows out of a passionate love for the local church – for the people of God, believers, that I meet with regularly. I know from experience that when I haven’t been paying this kind of closer attention to God’s Word in this area, I do drift away. Much of the past 24 years has been spent drifting away from Him and His people. Clearly and unmistakably, I see so much of His gentle (and at times, forceful and strikingly corrective) hand of discipline over especially the past decade.
So, what I’m considering this morning, and this week, and this life… is how I can better love, serve, and give myself to the local church. I know how fleeting my hope in Christ can be, and I know how quietly drifting my love for Him is. The question inevitably must be this: “Do I love the local church?”
Hebrews 10:23-27 ESV (emphasis mine).
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
…second reformation part one
13 years ago
THE SECOND REFORMATION
[part one: introduction]
[part one: introduction]
Welcome to my first proper blog series, entitled “The Second Reformation”. A heavy title, if ever there was one. I don’t claim to be the new Martin Luther… far from it! There are much better contenders to take up that mantle. Some of them were instrumental in shaping and influencing my thoughts of late as I have struggled with some questions; some troubling, “preoccupying questions”. These questions have formed the basic root of what I hope to address in this series. I will share them with you shortly.
In his 2007 book Everything Must Change, author Brian McLaren began with his own set of troubling, “preoccupying questions”. I won’t go into much detail about McLaren or his book here, as that’s not my aim. I probably won’t surprise anyone reading this by saying that I’m really not much of a fan of his work. As best as I can discern, the book is an attempt to re-cast and re-new his reader’s understanding of what it is and what it looks like when we follow Jesus Christ. No small or insignificant task.
McLaren approached this task by setting a foundation of two “preoccupying questions” which have formed the basis from which the book issued forth. Respectfully, they are:
01. What Are the Biggest Problems in the World?
02. What Does Jesus Have to Say About These Global Problems?
Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change pp. 11-12)
I can agree with McLaren’s title with one addition: A subtitle. It should read “Everything Must Change (But God)”. Brian McLaren attempts to deal with real, difficult issues, but he starts in the wrong place – both of his questions are human-centric. From the language of his second question (labelling the problems as “Global”), it doesn’t take an expert in modern textual criticism to gather that he feels the biggest problems in the world are the ones that affect “everything” – or, perhaps, everybody? At first, this seems sensible… after all, aren’t the most important problems the big ones that affect everybody?
I’m inclined, after getting past “at first”, to disagree.
After all, who is Brian McLaren? Who gave him the knowledge, understanding, and authority to decide what the “Biggest Problems in the World” are? To the best of my knowledge, the answer to both is “nobody”. The same is true of me.
Before I get into the difficult bits of unravelling my grey-matter about subjects to which I’m probably not qualified to wax prosaic, I have something very deep and important to admit: I’m nobody. Consequently, what I think the big problems of the world are is rather irrelevant.
Therefore, here are my troubling, preoccupying questions, which form the basis of everything I hope to touch on from this point:
00. Who is God?
01. What Does He Say the Biggest Problems Are?
02. What Does He Say is My Responsibility?
I feel it’s important to set the stage in this way because otherwise it’s too easy for me to give commentary and amusing detours without really accomplishing much. Nothing I can say about my topics will really mean much unless I’m building on a firm foundation of who God is and what He has revealed to us in His Word(s).
Allow me to expand on my first question:
00. Who is God?
Without intending to avoid the most important question of all, I feel this one is best answered elsewhere. Most of my readership knows what I believe and (hopefully) why I believe it, but for the sake of reference, I generally align myself with the Reformed Theological tradition and the Doctrines of Grace. I believe that God is real and that He has revealed as much of Himself as we can handle in His Word, the Bible. Inclusive in that, I believe that He has also revealed Himself most completely when He came in the person of Jesus Christ and that the Bible gives us the fullness of what we need as to His story. Specifically, I believe that all of History hangs on the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Christ – all of these capture the heart of Scripture, which is that God’s primary aim is always to bring glory to Himself. I believe that there is far more to God than is in the Scriptures, but that they give us everything we need – thus anything beyond that is mystery and intended as such.
In short, and very generally, I believe in the evangelical distinctives and orthodox tenets of the Christian faith inasmuch as they belie a careful and Spirit-led understanding of the Scriptures. There is no one writer or person who has it all correct, and anyone who claims to is probably very far off the mark. That being said, my influences have included such men (past and present) as John Piper, Mark Driscoll, CJ Mahaney, CH Spurgeon, JI Packer, Francis Schaeffer, Timothy Keller, DA Carson, and many others. I don’t agree with any one of them in all areas, but I agree with all of them in some areas.
I think that’s healthy, and I could be wrong. For the most part, my theology isn’t up for grabs and is the result of years of studying, hearing, and seeing God’s word interact with myself and many others. It will always be evolving in some aspects as I learn and grow and study and see more of life and Scripture. Essentially, though, this is where I’m at, and will be at.
If you aren’t familiar with this understanding of God, either from a Christian perspective or from that of someone who is “outside” and has no idea what half/all of what I just said means, I would point you in a few directions (which tend to have the same endgame):
First, a presentation of The Gospel by Mark Driscoll.
Second, a general plug for the views shared on these fine websites: Desiring God and Mars Hill. There are loads of other good resources, but those are a good starting place if you have no idea where I’m coming from.
That about wraps up the most basic foundation of all that is to come – after all, what we think about God is our most defining characteristic as human beings. If you (for the most part) share in my beliefs about who God is (or even if you don’t really agree about the whole Reformed theology bit, but are on board with “The One True God is the God of the Bible and He revealed Himself as Jesus”), then I invite you to join me for what is to come.
And here is what is to come, what I’ve promised to write about, and what I’ve been delving through these past few months (years?):
01. What Does He Say the Biggest Problems Are?
There are many things God lays out in His Word, the Bible, as being “Big Problems”. Things such as my Sin and all the myriad branches and effects thereof, the World I inhabit, and many other things. Most likely, all of them will touch and affect the one I’ve chosen to discuss (revealed in a few lines!).
02. What Does He Say is My Responsibility?
This is kind of what we’re all getting at: What do we do when we know things are broken and messed up and definitely “not what they ought to be”? What am I supposed to do/think/pray/feel/be about this? And so on.
I believe, along with many of you, and maybe even Brian McLaren (ha!), that right now – perhaps even all the time, one of God’s biggest “problems” is the Church, both local and universal. It is my intent to explore this topic of Ecclesiology (the study of the Church) through the utilization of these two questions applied to it:
01. What Does God Say the Biggest Problems with the Church are?
02. What Does He Say is My Responsibility?
It is my intent over the coming weeks and months to delve into these questions. For my sake and yours, and most of all for the Glory of God.
The title of this series is going to be “The Second Reformation”. I’ve named it that because, as we’re about to explore together, I believe that a second reformation of the Church is coming, probably within my lifetime (assuming that, Lord willing, I live for a normal lifetime). The first Protestant Reformation saw a reformation of theology, doctrine, and organization revolving around the five “Sola’s”: Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christus, and Soli Deo Gloria. The coming Second Reformation, I believe, will build on that foundation – once again reforming the church, this time reforming Protestantism itself, which in the West and elsewhere has become just as faulty, unbiblical, and often counter-productive for Christ as the “Catholic” church of Europe was in its time. Its emphases will be the same, but with additions. Once again, theology, doctrine, and organization will play a primary role. This time, however, there will be a variety of new elements of church which receive the reformation treatment: methodology, missiology, worship-ology (is that a word?), and various other smaller aspects. It will serve as a reaction in some ways to both the “emergent church” conversation/movement, as well as the “house church” movement, though (despite the role those two movements will play as touchpoints) hopefully not a complete pendulum swing to either. There’s a lot of things it might be, and some of it may not happen yet. I’m no prophet, just a nobody… and “The Second Reformation” is, I think, a fitting and perhaps subtly self-deprecating title. In truth, I might as well entitle it “The Second Trillionth Reformation” since, through sanctification, we are reformed daily and even “second-ly”. I’ll never live up to the heights of its demands, but hopefully this title will spur both you and I on to following and serving Christ as a part of His church more effectively, efficiently, faithfully, actively, and sacrificially for His glory. May the Reformation begin in my heart and yours.
…faith: you make me believe
1Current Tunage: Sintax the Terrific – Make Believe
Its on repeat… in my head… in my… nucleus.
Work has begun on my first “Second Reformation” series post. It will will be an introduction, setting the foundations by which I intend to explore and share my thoughts and decisions about where I firmly believe the Western church will head in my lifetime – particularly in the next 10-20 years. I will lay out not only the general and overarching directions, but also my (and, as you read it, your) practical responsibility as a part of the church to see these attitudinal, spiritual, and philosophical changes take place.
In other words, the groundwork.
I know some of you are very baited right now, and await with breath that is right along the same lines. Thus, I must apologize – I’m not ready to post. The farther I’ve gotten into this, the more it’s expanded. I hope to post tomorrow, but if not know that it’s being worked on and will be shared as soon as I’m certain it accurately reflects everything it needs to.
Also, I had a review to finish up (I’m waaaay past my deadline). You can read it below:
…the coming ecclesiological reformation
3Current Tunage: Skillet – Rest
“Invincible”-era Skillet. Good for the soul and stuff.
My apologies for the delay (Aunt Deb!). Life has a way of throwing me curveballs – the current state of my thoughts concerning the Western church should arrive in fuller form tomorrow but until then here’s a few of my point-form bits to whet the old “eye-petite” (kinda like apetite, only for reading):
Rough Form TOPICS for “THE SECOND REFORMATION”
(or, “How The West Was Won”)
(or, “Some Silly Sinner Seems So Serious”)
1. Positive Accountability: Guilt is a Lousy Motivator
2. Elder-Lead: Voting was never in the Bible, and neither was the Papacy
3. Small Groups: “Of”, not “With”
4. Transparency Without Distraction: Fiscally, Disciplinarily, Doctrinally, etc.
5. “Don’t Expand – Plant!”: Growth by Multiplication, not Migration
6. The Only Way to be Jesus-centric is to be Bible-centric: The Word
7. Worship in Song: Meaningful and Solemn, Energetic and Impassioned
…and that’s all that comes to mind off the top of my head. There might even be more once I get started.
So, even as I’m looking over that, this will probably be less a One Post Wonder™ and more likely a Multi Post Series™. I’m really looking forward to it, hang on tight.
…this one man, two-part act is wearin’ thin
0Current Tunage: sintax.the.terrific – Moonlighting
Brilliant rapcut concerning the duality of living redeemed – the war between flesh and spirit, between artist and man, between person and persona… most excellent observations and thoughts – challenging.
Things are well. I feel like I have a lot to say, but also that saying it will require much more concentrated effort and prayer than most of what I usually want to say. Things about “church” and work and marriage and life and existential concerns. So many mysteries, so little time.
In the mean, I’m thankful that time isn’t the universal constant we oft set it out to be.