OK, it's been a little slow around here, so I wanted to share a gem with you all. "Our King" is a song that not many people know, but our church has come to really love. Michael Tinker, the guy who wrote the words and music, is part of The Crowded House network.

It's a simple tune (my kids love to sing it) and the words bring tears to the eyes. The words of the chorus are based on the words of John Newton at the end of his life. If you're looking for a gospel-centered song for your church to learn, you couldn't do better.

Our King
Our King is a king of mercy
He gave the blind their sight and the dumb their speech
He healed the sick and raised the dead
Our King is a king of mercy.

Chorus:
Even though our memories may fail us
May we always remember this:
We are great sinners
But we have a great Saviour in Christ.

Our King is a king of cruel scars
He was beaten, stricken, whipped and condemned to die
Though he had done no wrong at all -
Our King is a king of cruel scars.

Chorus

Our King is a king of passion
‘It is finished!’ he cried out and gave up his life
So we could be his family:
Our King is a king of passion.

Chorus

Our King is a king of glory
Even death could not keep hold of this king of life
He rose triumphant from the grave
Our King is a king of glory.

Chorus

Download a PDF of the music here.

Hmmmm.  "People can/will reform church."  That doesn't quite get at it, does it?........

(Thanks, Doug.)

Of course, here's Thabiti's:

Show-off.

6.  Train other leaders.  Aim for majorities.

One of the things I've learned in my few years working on reforming a church is that congregation-wide agreement does not fall out of the sky on a silver platter.  Reforming a church is a long process that requires a whole lot of conversations, a whole lot of persuasion---and a whole lot of votes.  And at the end of the day, if you're going to facilitate reform, you need majorities that will vote for it.

Once you've been recognized as a leader in your church, the next step is to work on discipling other men who could also be recognized as leaders, and who, eventually, could join you in forming a majority of the leadership that wants to press for reform.  As in so much of the Christian life, that's a long process of identifying men whom God has gifted for leadership, spending time with them, teaching them, and preparing them spiritually and otherwise for leadership.

When I came to Third Avenue, there were three men (including Aaron Menikoff who blogs here occasionally) on the board of deacons who were in favor of change.  But there were three other men on the board who were not.  When I was elected as a deacon, after several months of serving as a member in the church, all of us knew that my becoming a deacon made it 4-3 in favor of reform.  And so we started reforming the church on a series of 4-3 votes.

Now one can argue that this was somehow unethical, and that it would have been better to try to persuade one (or even all three) of the other men to agree with the idea of reform, rather than just electing one more person to make a majority.  I agree that would be great, but the reality is that unfortunately it's not always (or even usually) possible.  Churches can be held hostage for years by a philosophy that the only way to reform is by changing the existing leadership's mind, rather than electing new leadership.  I truly believe our church would have died---and fairly quickly, too---if those three deacons had not decided to create a majority on the deacon board and move on ahead.

But that all started---and it will start with you, too---with the foundational step of identifying and training up men who will join you in leadership.  It bears being explicit, even though it ought to be obvious:  Your goal isn't just votes.  It's genuine, full-on, 1-Tim-3 leaders who long for God's glory and the church's good, and who recognize that church reform is a means---a good means, yes, but nothing finally more than a means---to both. 

NOTE:  I should give you a heads-up that there's going to be something of a change in this series from here on out.  I'm primarily going to be talking from the perspective of someone who's already in leadership.  I'm guessing, therefore, that insofar as these next few nuggets of experience are helpful to anyone at all, it's most likely to be for young pastors who are moving through a process of reform, or laymen who find themselves in a position to help lead such a process.  That said, I know there are lots of people out there longing for reform in their churches who aren't recognized as leaders, and who may already have spent years serving and loving their churches as members.  To you guys, God bless you.  You're in the hardest, most thankless part of church reform.  Keep praying for God to pour out his Spirit on your church, keep loving, keep serving, and keep aspiring.  Faithfulness is a long hard road, but it's a good one, too.

Matt and Jonathan,

Thank you so much for your updates from South Africa.  I greatly appreciated living vicariously and learning about the saints in that part of the world.  It sounds like it was a fruitful and tremendously important trip given the need there in South Africa.

Jonathan, your last post left me musing on something, then Mike's mystery quote sealed it for me.

How different is the United States from the Union of South Africa when it comes to the needs and threats against the church?  Particularly, Jonathan, I was thinking about this summary point you shared:

According to one pastor with whom we spoke, that battle for the gospel is on two completely different fronts. Among much of the White population, the battle is against secularism, post-modernism, epistemological authority, and the same things we're battling in the West. Among much of the Black population, Scripture is treated as authoritative among many. The battle is against (i) ATR (African Traditional Religion, e.g. ancestor worship) and (ii) Charismatics a la Trinity Broadcasting Network (called "The God Channel" in S.A.) and prosperity gospel. Talk about two different battles--both post-modernism and TBN!

For several days I was thinking, "But isn't that a fair description of what occupies the attention of Black and White churches in the U.S.?"  Aren't we battling various forms of superstition and false religion (not much ancestor worship, to be sure, but other claims for the supremacy and essentialness of "culture," etc.) and TBN and prosperity gospel here?  "Both post-modernism and TBN?"

You made mention of the tendency to nod or give signs of approval to a speaker, even when you don't necessarily agree with what's being said.  That's been part of how many (myself included) have tried to explain how it is thousands of people could listen to Jeremiah Wright Sunday-to-Sunday and not hold his political views.  In the U.S., that was seen as somehow excusing the inexcusable.  In South Africa, perhaps the visitor sees that as some curious aspect of "indigenous culture."  But I think it's the same thing.

And McKinley's quote underscores why it's important that we see this dynamic right here where we live, not just "over there."  Folks on TBN sound a lot like us at times.  They use similar words and ideas, and yet mean something far, far different with different and sometimes disastrous consequences.  The hocus pocus in Creflo Dollar's teaching is no less disastrous, imo, than the syncretism that combines ancestor worship and Christian practice.  I think it's the same thing.  Both having a cultic, controlling influence over people... damning some and hindering others.

So, let me plead for something that I'm sure Jonathan would agree with.  Let's confront at home the things that we find odd, curious, wrong, shameful, ignorant and unfortunate abroad.  For my money, TBN is a much bigger (popular) problem than the New Perspective and post-modernism.  Maybe 10% of my folks know anything about these things.  Maybe 10%.  But nearly the entire congregation dips into TBN on occasion or has someone who appears on that channel that they appreciate, but who is less than sound on critically important issues.  Can we please prime the book and article publishing machine and YouTube and web and every other medium to counter the paganism that masquerades as "church" and "Christianity" right here where we live?

Without hesitation, I could point to a dozen books that I think would be helpful on post-modernism, emerging/emergent, and so on.  But I can't recommend more than 2-3 that address prosperity errors or other falsehoods frequently viewed on TBN.  And that's where too many American Christians live.  I think the USA is much the same as the USA.  We need to work on that.   

A rough transcript from a 7/13/08 broadcast --

Now, I'm going to say something controversial, but the truth is controversial all by itself... you've got to be careful who you let preach to you. Listen, I'm very selective who preaches to me... some guy can get up and preach something that he really believes, but it's just not in the Bible. If I receive what he said, then that's going to become a part of my life and then all of the sudden I'm going down a dead end road because I received something that wasn't even scriptural in the first place... you've got to check out who's doing the feeding, because I'm opening my life up, I'm opening the ground of my life up to somebody's seed.

I'm going to tell you something. Based on who you're getting fed by, you may wake up one day looking just like them. So I take this very seriously, and I'm going to have to give an account for this. What I sow into your life and what your life turns out to be... I'm going to have to stand before God to make sure I sowed the correct seed from His Word to produce the correct life that he wanted produced in your life.

The source: Creflo Dollar.

5.  Have conversations with people---lots of them.

Church reform does not happen in business meetings.  If church reform goes like you want it to, business meetings are just the moment of formalizing a congregational decision that has already been made.  When we went through the process of reforming Third Avenue in Louisville, the really exciting business meetings were the ones that didn't go well.  All of us remarked over and over again that when the reform progressed in a good way, the actual vote at the business meeting was always a little bit of a let-down.  All the actual work of reform happened before the meeting---in conversations.

That's how church reform works.  You change people's minds and shape people's views in private--over coffee, a good book, and a Bible.  You don't change them by offering hostile amendments and making speeches.

So make it a point to try to meet with as many people as your schedule will allow, and do it regularly.  Read through books with people and talk about them.  Mark's Nine Marks of a Healthy Church would be a good place to start, or back issues of the IXM e-journal, or even maybe a selection of old and recent resolutions of the Southern Baptist Convention if you think that would help.  The point is to get people thinking about what a New Testament church really looks like, and to let them do so when they're not under the gun of having to vote on something in the next few minutes---or even the next few weeks.

Schedules are what they are; we all know that.  So you're also going to have to be strategic in deciding who to try to meet with.  Unless you're in a really small church, you're just not going to be able to meet with everyone.  So try to figure out to some degree who the church's opinion leaders are, who are the people most likely to spread enthusiasm for reform among other members, and who would really cause a congregational sigh of relief if it turned out that they agreed with the reform.  Then meet with those people, over and over and over.  Be a friend to them, care for them, and at the right time, start asking questions and teaching about the nature of a Christian church.  In time, you may find that you have more allies in reform than you thought---or, perhaps even better, you may find that you've created some.

Here's the first few paragraphs of an article I wrote for the July/Aug issue of Modern Reformation, entitled "Individualism's Not the Problem--Community's Not the Solution." You can read the whole thing here.

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Individualism is the problem; community is the solution.

That’s what they are saying. First the philosophers, sociologists, political theorists, psychologists, and theologians were saying it. Now I hear pastors, church leaders, and impressionable young seminarians saying it. Individualism is what bedevils culture and church both; community is what will save them.

Last Thanksgiving I was wholly absorbed in the sweet potato casserole on my plate when the twenty-something sitting beside me, whom I had just met and is working on his master of divinity at a conservative, Reformed seminary, threw out that increasingly common line about traditional accounts of the gospel and conversion being “individualistic.” I had to put my fork down and say something; and I love sweet potato casserole, you know, with the baked pecans, brown sugar, and butter?

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Read the rest of the article.

Matt and I returned from our trip to South Africa Saturday morning. Here are four final, completely unrelated thoughts:

1) According to one pastor with whom we spoke, that battle for the gospel is on two completely different fronts. Among much of the White population, the battle is against secularism, postmodernism, epistemological authority, and the same things we're battling in the West. Among much of the Black population, Scripture is treated as authoritative among many. The battle is against (i) ATR (African Traditional Religion, e.g. ancestor worship) and (ii) Charismatics a la Trinity Broadcasting Network (called "The God Channel" in S.A.) and prosperity gospel. Talk about two different battles--both postmodernism and TBN!

2) One of our African hosts reprimanded our the pastors we were teaching about not finishing their food but leaving an entire plate on the table uneaten. At first, Matt and I thought, "Why is he taking them to task about not eating their food?" On the airplane home, I was reading a book on the African concept of ubuntu, which explained that in African Traditional Religion, people will often leave out plates of food for their deceased ancestors. Huh. We now suspect our host may have really been telling these pastors who struggled w/syncretism to stop following their old ways. Chalk it up as another lesson in cultural differences?

3) Ubuntu, the Zulu word for "humanness," is an African concept that goes back thousands of years, but has been popularized since the end of apartheid by the likes of Mandela, Tutu, and others. It's the idea that we can only be human through other humans. It promotes the community over the individual. Unfortunately, it can also promote relationship over truth, because (based on my reading), whereas an ubuntu-driven worldview can admit of a belief in God, it seems to be fundamentally humanistic (man-centered).

4) A friend recently attended a concert in which the conducter began by turning to the audience and telling them he envied anyone in the audience who was about to hear the symphony for the first time. In our second conference, it became increasingly apparent that we could not take for granted a biblical knowledge base among a number of the attendees. So along the way we rejigged and took the attendees through important passages of Scripture. And they were hungry for it! Imagine introducing a pastor to Paul's speech to the elder's at Ephesus in Acts 20 for the first time. We felt grief and joy all mixed--grief that all of them had not received more training, and joy at being able to point some of them to parts of  of God's Word for what seemed like the first time. "Hey, check out this treasure over here!" You could hear the awes and gasps.

Thanks to Matt Mitchell who inserted Ray Ortlund Jr's insightful and convicting post from Ortlund's blog in the comment section to my previous post. Yes, you can go there and read it, but I want to highlight an excerpt here. After several paragraphs considering "Galatianism," Ortlund writes,

Whatever divides us emotionally from other Bible-believing, Christ-honoring Christians is a “plus” we’re adding to the gospel. It is the Galatian impulse of self-exaltation. It can even become a club with which we bash other Christians, at least in our thoughts, to punish, to exclude and to force into line with us.

What unifies the church is the gospel. What defines the gospel is the Bible. What interprets the Bible correctly is a hermeneutic centered on Jesus Christ crucified, the all-sufficient Savior of sinners, who gives himself away on terms of radical grace to all alike. What proves that that gospel hermeneutic has captured our hearts is that we are not looking down on other believers but lifting them up, not seeing ourselves as better but grateful for their contribution to the cause, not standing aloof but embracing them freely, not wishing they would become like us but serving them in love (Galatians 5:13).

My Reformed friend, can you move among other Christian groups and really enjoy them? Do you admire them? Even if you disagree with them in some ways, do you learn from them? What is the emotional tilt of your heart – toward them or away from them? If your Reformed theology has morphed functionally into Galatian sociology, the remedy is not to abandon your Reformed theology. The remedy is to take your Reformed theology to a deeper level. Let it reduce you to Jesus only. Let it humble you. Let this gracious doctrine make you a fun person to be around. The proof that we are Reformed will be all the wonderful Christians we discover around us who are not Reformed. Amazing people. Heroic people. Blood-bought people. People with whom we are eternally one – in Christ alone.