I've had the privilege over the past week to travel around the South East of England with Mark Dever attending various events where Mark was speaking.

On Wednesday we took perhaps the emptiest transatlantic flight I've ever been on. (The stewardess said that if you want an empty flight, take a day flight.) Mark was reading a fundamentalist's view of the 20th century whilst I watched Spiderman 3. I'm sure the observation of Spiderman's worldview was more useful for pastoral ministry. (That's my excuse anyway!)

After recovering from jet lag and catching up with old friends on Thursday, on Friday we visited Oak Hill College (a predominantly Anglican Evangelical Seminary where I trained). Mark gave two talks there on Membership and Discipline from a biblical and practical perspective. One of the things I really appreciated about Mark's presentation was that he was wanting to encourage people to be biblical more than denominational. So, when talking about membership, he didn't set out the historic denominational arguments between congregationalists, Presbyterians and Anglicans. Rather he showed biblically that the congregation has certain responsibilities for which she will be held accountable: the last stage of discipline (Matthew 18:17, 1 Corinthians 5:4-5); the taking in of members (2 Corinthians 2:6-8); the recognition of leaders (Acts 6:3,5); the faithfulness of the preaching (Galatians 1:1-10, 2 Timothy 4:3). Having laid out these biblical responsibilities, he encouraged the future pastors present to ensure that their congregations have the ability to carry out this responsibility.

After the Theology for all Conference on Saturday, and church on Sunday, it was great to meet with a bunch of pastors for the first UK 9Marks workshop on Monday at East London Tabernacle. One of the things that struck me there was the massive need in London for more churches where a vital preaching ministry is amplified by a congregation committed to loving one another, particularly those different from themselves. This had been modeled to us well on Sunday morning at East London Tabernacle, where perhaps the most ethnically diverse congregation I've visited stayed around for a good amount of time after the service sharing instant coffee and sharing their lives.

Tuesday was Tyndale House, Cambridge. Mark spoke at chapel in the morning from Mark 4. It was a great word to those who might be spending three years focusing on a tiny piece of theology to remember that work done faithfully for the Lord might appear tiny and insignificant today, but in the hands of the king who is building his kingdom, we may be overwhelmingly surprised by the unimaginably significant fruit it might bear in eternity. Over lunch he encouraged us to be readers of the puritans. His 3 favorites puritan writings are Sibbes' The Bruised Reed, John Bunyan's The Unsearchable Riches of Christ & Baxter's The Reformed Pastor. He had great advice for anyone thinking of reading the Reformed Pastor: don't read it if you have a sensitive conscience, read it regularly if your conscience is so weak that you need a substitute conscience!

After a great evening with Sir Fred and Lady Elizabeth Catherwood, I waved goodbye to Mark last night.

I pray the priorities of 9 marks, particularly the oh-so-absent meaningful church membership, begin to take root in my green and pleasant (if slighty damp and wet) land.

Well done, Reuben.

Pastor Lance Lewis offers some helpful thoughts in his post on the "Jena 6," and asks some good questions for pastors to think about (ht: Justin Taylor). Here's an excert:

"How would you minister to the families and protestors if you have the opportunity? Would you say that the young man got what he deserved, that black folks once again are over-reacting that they need to realize that we live in a nation of laws that must be obeyed? Could this be an opportunity to identify with those who aren’t in power or control as a witness of the gospel? How could you use this situation to speak to your congregation about the issues of ethnicity that plague our land?"

Mike Gilbart Smith has a helpful review and introduction to the  "Introducting God" evangelism material, produced by an Australian group called Christians in the Media.

Jim Hamilton recommends the new Dever book on evangelism.

9Marks just finished another of its "Weekenders." I don't know of any other conference like it. It's not just lectures or sermons. It's more show-and-tell or touch-and-feel. We cap attendance at fifty pastors or seminarians, and basically take them through a LONG weekend at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. You sit through an elders meeting, membership courses, and so on. Along the way, you hear a few lectures of explanation. I suspect the Weekender is one of the most helpful things 9Marks does. The book may present the principles. But the Weekender makes it come to life.

In case you're interested, I discovered after the fact that one of the CHBC interns--Noah Brayman--"live blogged" (sort of) this last Weekender. If you're curious to learn more, click here. This is unofficial, and I have not even read it all. But it looks good.

BTW: Josh Coover and Andrew Sherwood, whom you don't ordinarily read about b/c they're behind the scenes, did a fantastic job pulling off this last Weekender. Thanks, fellas.

Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. - 2 Timothy 4:2

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. - Hebrews 4:12

Below are three useful tools that I picked up from godly mentors who have been faithful in preaching God’s Word. May God use these suggestions to better equip and prepare you for the wonderful task of interpreting, preaching, and applying His whole Word to your family, friends, and congregations.

The Puritans – their methodology for interpretation and application
The following points come from chapter six of J.I. Packer’s A Quest For Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life.

1. Interpret Scripture literally and grammatically. Ask yourself: What do these words actually mean?

2. Interpret Scripture consistently and harmonistically. Ask yourself: What light do other Scriptures throw on this text? Where and how does it fit into the total biblical revelation?

3. Interpret Scripture doctrinally and theocentrically. Ask yourself: What truths does it teach about God, and about man in relation to God?

4. Interpret Scripture christologically and experimentally. Ask yourself: How are these truths related to the saving work of Christ, and what light does the gospel of Christ throw upon them?

5. Interpret Scripture experimentally and practically. Ask yourself: What experiences do these truths delineate, or explain, or seek to create or cure? For what practical purposes do they stand in Scripture?

6. Interpret Scripture with a faithful and realistic application. Ask yourself: How do they apply to myself and others in our actual situation? To what present human condition do they speak, and what are they telling us to believe and do?

“The soundness of their [Puritan] method is unquestionable; we shall do well to follow in their footsteps” (Packer, 105).

The Joseph Hall Questions
Joseph Hall was an Anglican, Puritan from 17th century who wrote The Art of Divine Meditation in 1607, which was one of best selling books of its time (available for free online at http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/hall/hallbib.htm.). His questions are a useful tool in generating good information when meditating on and teaching Scripture.
1. What is it (define and/or describe what it is)?
2. What are its divisions or parts?
3. What causes it?
4. What does it cause, i.e., its fruits and effects?
5. What is its place, location, or use?
6. What are its qualities and attachments?
7. What is contrary, contradictory, or different to it?
8. What compares to it?
9. What are it’s titles or names?
10. What are the testimonies or examples of Scripture about it?

Mark Dever’s Application Grid
Mark often takes the main points of his sermon outline and plugs them into his application grid (available online at http://marks.9marks.org/Mark1). The main sermon points go down the first column of the grid. And then the first row has the six application headings listed below, asking, what does this mean for:
• Unique Salvation-History
• Non-Christian
• Public (e.g., culture, society)
• Christ
• Christian
• Your Church

What tools and methods do you have in place to ensure you are faithfully expositing and applying God's Word? Any other suggestions?

I hope I'm not flogging a dead horse, but I'm returning to the issue of believers' baptism and church
membership.

In the comments around there have been sentiments that sound something like this: "churches belong to Jesus not to the leaders of the church: therefore if a person belongs to Jesus, they must be allowed to join your local church." (see point 4 below for this) Or "the local church cannot have more requirements for membership than the kingdom of God." (see particularly point 3 below for this)

A friend of mine who was considering ordination in the Church of England, though previously having baptistic convictions, expressed it something like this. "I hate the way that baptist churches exclude faithful Christians from membership just because they have different understanding of baptism. It is just like the Galatian heresy, denying full fellowship to those you understand to be members of the body of Christ."

Let me say a few things to this.

1) It is not Galatian to require something that is required by Scripture. It is Galatian to require something NOT required by Scripture. This therefore begs the question, "Is believers baptism required by Scripture?" If it is (as baptists believe) then baptist churches are not Galatian.

2) The Galatian heresy denied even table fellowship with the uncircumcised. Baptists will have a very high level of fellowship with paedobaptists. (In an hour I'm heading off to an evangelistic talk that we are  putting on with Anglicans, Presbyterians, E-freeians, and baptists.) We'll even eat!

3) As soon as you have said that membership is for those who give credible evidence of salvation, you exclude some believers from membership. You are saying that there must be credible evidence of salvation. Are my children believers? I don't know. They might be - but they are so young that it is hard to tell. If a church wants to be sure that it will not deny membership to any believer, they must be paedobaptists (and paedo-communionists). In fact even paedo-communionists feel required by Scripture to excommunicate people who are being disobedient to Scripture - they are not suggesting that they have finally determined that this person is not a believer at this point. Was the immoral brother of 1 Corinthians 5 a citizen of heaven? We don't know... only time would tell.

4) Baptists have traditionally understood Jesus' headship of the church to imply that a church has no right to recognize baptisms that are not biblical. If Jesus has commanded us to practice believers' baptism (Matt 28:18-20) and the Spirit of Christ inspired the book of Acts that makes it clear that we are to repent and believe and then be baptized, and inspired 1 Corinthians 12 that makes it clear that membership of the body is for those who have been baptized, we do not feel that we have the authority to recognize baptisms that are not commanded by Jesus.

Yes, I'm breaking all the blogging rules with a long post, but here it goes...

A very thoughtful and godly brother recently emailed me about several of the contributions to the recent 9Marks eJournal on race. He had sincere questions, and wondered if we shouldn’t simply be working harder to simply affirm our unity in the gospel.

His email made me realize that it might be useful for at least for one or two people what I, as a white man at 9Marks, learned from reading through all the contributions to the last issue of the eJournal: in short, I’ve become fairly persuaded (together with every contributor to the forum) that we Whites aren’t getting it. And the fact that not many of us are even talking about the “race problem” is evidence of the fact that we aren’t getting it.

Here’s why I think we’re not getting it. We continually rehearse the line about the solution being in “the gospel,” as if that’s the final word on the matter. We feel satisfied with that. What we haven’t done, however, is the more difficult work of asking what the gospel requires from us personally. What I learned from a number of the contributors, together with several offline conversations, is that we Whites can display a fair degree of insensitivity toward non-white brothers and sisters in Christ by (i) affirming our unity in the gospel, while (ii) simultaneously paying insufficient attention to the existential realities of what it's like being a minority in the United States.

It’s like a conversation I once had with Thabiti in which I (proudly) told him that I didn’t think of a fellow friend as “black.” I just thought of him as a “friend.” Thabiti gently asked me whether I had asked this friend about what it’s like to be black. I said I hadn’t. Thabiti then remarked that I must not be a good friend after all, because those are the experiences this friend has on a daily basis.

Do you see what I’m getting at? I can say, “Hey, we’re all one in Christ.” But if I’m unwilling to enter into the experience of a minority as best I can—maybe by joining a different church; maybe by seeking out different friends; maybe by working extra hard to serve; most definitely by asking honest questions—I am potentially demonstrating a failure to love a brother or sister in Christ as an embodied human being. Rather, I’m showing an indifference to what he or she may experience on a daily basis.

Yet aren’t we all grateful that the God of the gospel is not like that? (Think of Frank Houghton’s hymn: “Thou who wast rich beyond all splendor, all for love’s sake, becamest poor; thrones for a manger, didst surrender, sapphire paved courts, for stable floor…”)

Are Whites willing to consider whether “systemic injustices” remain in the United States that minorities still experience in 2007? I sat next to an African American gentlemen on an airplane recently who has been living in Washington, DC for several years, having moved from Mississippi. We had been enjoying a good conversation for over an hour when I asked him what it was like to be black in DC versus Mississippi. He said it was harder in DC because he felt like he’s already hit the glass ceiling in his work for the government, something he never felt like he hit in the South. Wow. That’s not what I expected to hear. We had already been discussing the gospel, and so at that point, I was able to extend the gospel conversation with a little more conscientiousness.

In other words, unity in the gospel, ironically, means

1) that complete color blindness won’t work. Color blindness, in many circumstances, is insensitive. It’s wrongfully indifferent. It’s uncaring. We know this when it comes to widows and orphans and outcasts and aliens. Jesus tells us not to tell a brother to be “well fed” and then send him off with nothing. Why would we then be “blind” to the social disadvantages that come in American society with belonging to a minority?  If my fellow White brother or sister wants to argue that there are not social disadvantages that come with being a member of the minority, I would suggest asking whether that’s your idea or whether you learned it through conversations with minorities.

2) But unity in the gospel also means there is another sense in which we should be colorblind. There should be aspects of my affection, friendship, fellowship, and partnership in the gospel with Thabiti, for example, that we will share aside from, apart from, in spite of, without giving a thought to differences of ethnic background. To be constantly aware of our differences would allow the differences to overwhelm all that we share in common—both spiritually and temporally.

3) In short, Christians and churches need to exercise discernment for knowing when to be color blind and when to be color conscious. The different members of the body should recognize both our differences and our oneness, so that each can love and honor the different parts of the body as occasion requires (1 Cor. 12). One body; many parts. Being entirely unaware of our differences will demonstrate a lack of love and concern for one another. Being overly aware will undermine unity and promote division. In the final analysis, of course, our unity in Christ should govern everything. May God give us all more wisdom!

It’s on this third point where the rubber really meets the road for the actual decisions church leaders and members have to make: How does this affect our selection of leaders? How does this affect our selection of music or dress? How does this affect what Sunday Schools are taught? How does this affect the preacher’s choice of applications or illustrations? It’s in these types of practical areas where we Christians should be asking God for more wisdom in combining color consciousness and colorblindness in just the right ways and at the right times.

All this why I liked Thabiti's proposal: it remarkably combines both oneness in Adam and in Christ with actual color consciousness, i.e. "affirmative action in the church." Now, maybe this isn’t the right answer either. But we need to have the conversation to figure that out…

I love the local church. In many ways, the Lord used her as the main instrument of my conversion 9 ½ years ago, when I was 22 years old. Many people had personally witnessed to me beforehand, and no doubt each of these personal witnessing experiences was important in my conversion. But I think the Lord used the local church, and its corporate witness of love, purity, and unity, to convert me. I had known many individual Christians my whole life, and had extensive conversations with them about the faith. But God converted me only after I experienced those conversations and relationships within the corporate context of a local, biblically healthy church. And this leads to my main question:

“What is the role of the local church (i.e., corporate witness) in our personal evangelism (i.e., individual, personal witness)?” As I read books on evangelism, survey the landscape, and observe the “success stories” of people coming to faith, it all seems to center on “Personal Evangelism.” Is the focus on Personal Evangelism faithful to the Bible’s teaching on this topic? I fear that the importance and role of the local church is so much assumed in our evangelism today that it’s largely forgotten, or at best, not relevant to a non-Christian until he “makes a decision for Jesus.”

In light of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:16, Peter’s words in 1 Peter 2:12, the message of 1 Corinthians and Ephesians – indeed the whole New Testament – perhaps Christians, pastors, and local churches should consider personal evangelism within the context of our corporate evangelism, so that we testify and witness to the whole gospel. I’d love to hear any thoughts you all have on the relationship between personal and corporate witness, as well as some practical ways that the local church can develop a biblical understanding of corporate evangelism.