Most people I know don’t love the Church. I’m speaking of people who love God and who love some people, but they don’t love the Church. Many feel this way because of past hurts, broken promises, and unfulfilled expectations. Frankly, this side of heaven we should learned to expect that people will fail God; that some people if I given the chance will walk all over our hearts again and again. Yet, we are called to love those who Jesus died for, we are called to fellowship with some people we may not even like, we are called to worship every Lord’s Day with the corporate Body of Christ, and we are called to do it all, faithfully, and with a right heart, because of Jesus!
I once heard a preacher say, “I love the Church. Its people I can’t stand.” Too bad! God didn’t gather to Himself the wise, the powerful and the noble. “God chose what is foolish . . . what is weak . . . what is low and despised . . . so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (I Cor. 1:27-31).
So, before I pick up a rock to throw it at anybody, I’m reminded of the words “The seed of every sin known to man is in my heart” Robert Murray McCheyne. I not only need a Savior, I need a church where I can hear the gospel preached, where the sacraments are administered, and where good and godly elders watch over my soul.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Word, Sacrament and Prayer
No matter how much a pastor prepares, how much he prays, or how sincerely he loves God, without people it’s hard to have church. Mission developers in particular are obsessed with the thought of “How do we get people to come to church?” With all good intentions the mission pastor will attempt to figure out some common denominator between the church and the un-churched. This usually results in ministry programs that conforms the church to the demands of the marketplace.
The secret to drawing a crowd is easy – make it about them! Give them music that excites, talks that encourage, and principles for living a victorious life and they will come. On the contrary, give them hymns rich in the theology of the faith, Christ-centered sermons, and a cross driven life and you may have a small crowd. Yet, the ministry whereby Christ communicates His mediation to His people is through Word, sacrament and prayer. It is through these “ordinary means” that God enlightens, convicts and humbles sinners; “driving them out of themselves, and drawing them unto Christ . . . ” (WLC, Q. 155).
I’m aware of the pressures pastors feel to bend under the weight of cultural demands in ministry. I understand well the drawing power of programs that appear relevant to the “felt needs” of people. Drawing a crowd is easy. Doing ministry God’s way is hard. In fact, building a church is impossible apart from the miracle that happens when ministers are faithful in proclaiming the Word of God.
The secret to drawing a crowd is easy – make it about them! Give them music that excites, talks that encourage, and principles for living a victorious life and they will come. On the contrary, give them hymns rich in the theology of the faith, Christ-centered sermons, and a cross driven life and you may have a small crowd. Yet, the ministry whereby Christ communicates His mediation to His people is through Word, sacrament and prayer. It is through these “ordinary means” that God enlightens, convicts and humbles sinners; “driving them out of themselves, and drawing them unto Christ . . . ” (WLC, Q. 155).
I’m aware of the pressures pastors feel to bend under the weight of cultural demands in ministry. I understand well the drawing power of programs that appear relevant to the “felt needs” of people. Drawing a crowd is easy. Doing ministry God’s way is hard. In fact, building a church is impossible apart from the miracle that happens when ministers are faithful in proclaiming the Word of God.
Heresy as Orthodoxy
All people believe. They all believe in something or someone. People base their lives here and their lives hereafter on what they believe about God, gods, and themselves. Unfortunately, believing does not make it true! The problem is that most people, atheists and agnostics excluded, in some way believe in the Bible. Even heretics make their appeal to Scripture to justify departure from orthodoxy.
In our culture the subjective, experiential, and existential aspects of one’s personal spiritual journey is beyond question. The credo “I just believe that . . . .” is not to be judged, challenged or disputed. Someone might as well say, “What I believe is true for me and if it works for me who is anyone to say it’s wrong?” People become so psychologically invested in what they personally believe that they demand the right to believe and they insist everyone must respect that belief even if that belief makes no rational or biblical sense. The only requirement of belief is that it be sincere. Non-Christian writer, Curtis White described in Harper’s Weekly this type of subjective, narcissistic, belief this way, “Yahweh and Baal – my God and yours – stroll arm in arm, as if to do so were the model of virtue itself.”
In his article “Hot Air Gods”, White went on to say “Consequently, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that our truest belief is the credo of heresy itself. It is heresy without an orthodoxy. It is heresy as orthodoxy. The entitlement to belief is the right of each to his own heresy. Religious freedom has come to this: where everyone is free to believe whatever she likes, there is no real shared conviction at all and hence no church and certainly no community.” Over 10 years ago in the publication Modern Reformation, Shane Rosenthal humorously described this contemporary spiritual anarchy with the question, “Was That Your Karma That Ran Over My Dogma?”
Fighting liberalism was easy. Liberals outright denied the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. We don’t need to go any further in recognizing that liberal Christianity is not Christianity at all. Machen settled that argument. New Age mysticism with its “the divine within us all” mantra discovered through serious “naval” contemplation is both irrational and blasphemous. And I’m not sure that outside of California, Public Broadcasting, and the Ivy League anyone really cares.
But what happens when everything sounds Christian, the terms are right, yet the practice of the faith smacks of “another gospel”? The great threat to evangelical Christianity in our day is not that which is evidently false but that which tickles our ears and seems right but isn’t; where subjective spiritual experiences and a undefined personal relationship with Jesus (or whoever) stand above and authoritatively over the clear doctrines of Scripture. This results in the God of Scripture being reinterpreted to reflect a god we can live with. As Dorothy Sayers, the British playwright of the last century said, “We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him ‘meek and mild,’ and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.”
To put this in an historical perspective, during the Reformation the formal principle was whether the Church was over the Bible or the Bible over the Church. In our day I think the issue is whether the Individual will be shaped by the Scripture and thereby be conformed to Christ or whether the Individual will look into the mirror of the Bible and only see god in his own image.
“We are thus the congregation of the Church of the Infinitely Fractured, splendidly alone together.” Curtis White, Harper’s Weekly, December 2007
In our culture the subjective, experiential, and existential aspects of one’s personal spiritual journey is beyond question. The credo “I just believe that . . . .” is not to be judged, challenged or disputed. Someone might as well say, “What I believe is true for me and if it works for me who is anyone to say it’s wrong?” People become so psychologically invested in what they personally believe that they demand the right to believe and they insist everyone must respect that belief even if that belief makes no rational or biblical sense. The only requirement of belief is that it be sincere. Non-Christian writer, Curtis White described in Harper’s Weekly this type of subjective, narcissistic, belief this way, “Yahweh and Baal – my God and yours – stroll arm in arm, as if to do so were the model of virtue itself.”
In his article “Hot Air Gods”, White went on to say “Consequently, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that our truest belief is the credo of heresy itself. It is heresy without an orthodoxy. It is heresy as orthodoxy. The entitlement to belief is the right of each to his own heresy. Religious freedom has come to this: where everyone is free to believe whatever she likes, there is no real shared conviction at all and hence no church and certainly no community.” Over 10 years ago in the publication Modern Reformation, Shane Rosenthal humorously described this contemporary spiritual anarchy with the question, “Was That Your Karma That Ran Over My Dogma?”
Fighting liberalism was easy. Liberals outright denied the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. We don’t need to go any further in recognizing that liberal Christianity is not Christianity at all. Machen settled that argument. New Age mysticism with its “the divine within us all” mantra discovered through serious “naval” contemplation is both irrational and blasphemous. And I’m not sure that outside of California, Public Broadcasting, and the Ivy League anyone really cares.
But what happens when everything sounds Christian, the terms are right, yet the practice of the faith smacks of “another gospel”? The great threat to evangelical Christianity in our day is not that which is evidently false but that which tickles our ears and seems right but isn’t; where subjective spiritual experiences and a undefined personal relationship with Jesus (or whoever) stand above and authoritatively over the clear doctrines of Scripture. This results in the God of Scripture being reinterpreted to reflect a god we can live with. As Dorothy Sayers, the British playwright of the last century said, “We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him ‘meek and mild,’ and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.”
To put this in an historical perspective, during the Reformation the formal principle was whether the Church was over the Bible or the Bible over the Church. In our day I think the issue is whether the Individual will be shaped by the Scripture and thereby be conformed to Christ or whether the Individual will look into the mirror of the Bible and only see god in his own image.
“We are thus the congregation of the Church of the Infinitely Fractured, splendidly alone together.” Curtis White, Harper’s Weekly, December 2007
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