Mark Dever is the senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in downtown Washington DC. He is the Executive Director of 9Marks Ministries, whose purpose is to help local churches re-establish their biblical bearings and re-think their ministry methods, by helping local church pastors and leaders in the discovery and application of the biblical priorities that cultivate health and holiness in the local church. His books include Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. Read more…
Depth Step #3: Members Only Small Groups
When PJ (faithful intern) asked Jamie (faithful elder) what had led to the unusual sense of community at CHBC, Jamie gave a very thoughtful response. This series is briefly reviewing these steps as an encouragement to pastors struggling with a lack of community among their congregation.
First, let me just say that we are always struggling with people who feel left out, who feel they've not been welcomed, who are marginalized or marginalize themselves. This is simply the reality of life in a fallen world. But as elders we want to be continually in action trying to lead the body into greater fellowship, for accountability, mutual rejoicing and edification, witness, etc.
On to this specific step--our small groups are only for our members. We have evangelistic small groups that are [obviously!] for non-members. And our members are free to be in Bible studies with whomever they choose, so many of our members will be in neighborhood groups, or prayer triplets at work, or lunchtime gatherings that will include members from other churches. So we sponsor evangelistic talks in a few places around DC working with a few other evangelical congregations of different denominations. And our own small groups--that is, those that our staff assigns members to when they ask to be in a small group, those groups whose leaders we train, for whose teaching we take responsibility--our own small groups used to be open to non-members. Then, some years ago, when we had some members leave unhappily, but they wanted to remain in their small groups, we were faced with a decision. And, after long discussion and prayer, our elders bravely, and (in hindsight) greatly to the benefit of our congregation, decided that our official CHBC small groups would be open only to members.
This has brought a unity and cohesion to the small groups that has, in turn, blessed our congregation. In these small groups, the vision of the congregation as a whole is believed and taught. No small groups are acting as the point of real or chief loyalty of any band of members disaffected with the church or its leadership. All the small groups now are not only prospering themselves, but are led by those who we train, and who share our vision for this local congregation. The transition was a bit difficult. The small group leaders had to be convinced, or at least trust the leaders on this, or be replaced, but the fruits have been obviously excellent. God, in His kindness, has clearly used this step to encourage the body here in our shared commitments to Him and to each other.
Posted on July 10, 2008 | Link to this Post | Comments
Depth Step #2: Evening Service
Jamie (faithful elder at CHBC) told PJ (faithful intern at CHBC) that a second reason this congregation seemed to have unusual depth of community and relationships was the evening service. Let me briefly explain.
We understand Sunday as a Christian Sabbath. Not equivalent to the 4th commandment in the OT. We think that is fulfilled in Christ. But we also see the Lord's Day in the NT (e.g., Rev. 1:10). We think Hebrews 10:25 requires us to assemble regularly. That is normally on the Lord's day in the morning (in continuity with the earliest Christian history, long before it was a day off for Christians from their jobs, and in celebration of the Lord's Resurrection). However, we as a congregation also exercise our liberty by deciding as a congregation that we will ALSO assemble on Sunday evenings for praise & prayer. We don't understand that Scripture requires this of us, but we chose to for our edification.
So we have a second meeting on Sunday, at which most members come, and some visitors (they are welcome). At this service (which runs from about 6:00pm to 7:30pm) we will sing (6:00-6:15), and conclude by hearing a 15-minute sermon (after which we close with a hymn). This 15-minute sermon is delivered by someone other than the regular preaching ministers. It may be one of our non-staff elders, a deacon who is gifted in teaching, a member who works on the Hill but is considering being a preaching pastor long-term, a member of our church who works for a non-profit but is a good teacher, etc. The text is chosen by me. It is given to them weeks or months in advance. It is from the opposite testament of Scripture as the morning passage, but should contain a related theme. This helps the congregation to hear from more people and focuses us less just on the preaching pastors (especially me & Michael Lawrence). God works powerfully in the lives of members through other members. This strengthens the community of the church.
But the core of our time on Sunday evening probably does this even more. This is the period from 6:15 to 7:00 or 7:15 in which pre-screened prayer requests (they ask me through the week, or on Sun AM) are shared & sometimes questions asked by the congregation, or volunteers gotten, and then they are prayed for by members of the congregation. So, this past Sunday night, various members said good-bye, told us where they were going, thanked us for various aspects of their life here, and shared prayer requests. One couple who have been here for 5 years shared about going to become associate pastor of a nearby church. Mike's sharing of his gratitude to God for a number of ways He has used the congregation in his life put a number of us in tears. Another sister shared about a practical way women in the church could help an evangelism prjoject in the Middle East. Another brother stood up and shared about his having preached his first sermon that morning. (A church in Delaware had asked us to cover their pulpit for them this past Sunday morning, and we asked this brother to do it.) Another brother who is stationed in Afghanistan was back for a couple of weeks and shared how things were going & took questions. We prayed for Matt & Jonathan as they were headed to South Africa for a couple of weeks to do 9marks work. And this is just HALF the things that were shared & prayed for.
People feel sad when they miss Sunday mornings. But, it has to be said, at least they can get the audio of the sermon. When you miss Sunday EVENINGS, you just don't feel like you know what's going on. And people stand around forever and talk.
How to establish this kind of culture would be a different entry. It certainly happened slowly, over time, and took deliberate leadership. (I had to "move" the requests from mainly about health to being mainly about more spiritual matters, and from being mainly individual to being more about ministry or some corporate activity of the church.) Some of this shift was difficult. Much of it had to be carefully done. In all of this we had to be patient. But I think Jamie is right. This, by God's grace, has been greatly used by God to establish a deeper community here among the congregation. And we thank Him for it!
Posted on July 3, 2008 | Link to this Post | Comments
Depth Step: #1--One Church, One Assembly
Elder Jamie made a list for Intern PJ at CHBC about things that he has observed that he thinks have made for the unusual relational depth which, by God's grace, seems to characterize our congregation. I say "by God's grace" because we understand that there are no guaranteed recipes for our actions to produce certain results. But I think Jamie's observations would be of interest to others, and perhaps of help as pastors pursue improving the "life together" aspect in their congregations.
I've often heard it said that people come to CHBC because they hear about the preaching, but they stay because of the community. That's only partly true, I'm sure, but I think it IS partly true. This series intends to go through the aspects of life together that Jamie mentioned to PJ, and expand on them very briefly.
#1 is the understanding that the LOCAL church in the New Testament met together in one LOCATION. It is very hard to begin to develop community when you are divided into multiple services, sometimes even on multiple days. While more theologically and even biblically-driven arguments could be made, practically community arises from being together. While churches with multiple services can certainly be marked by a strong life together, there is no doubt that the depth of community life is enhanced by regular weekly meeting together for public worship--hearing the word, singing praises, sharing, giving, observing the ordinances, prayer, etc. Formally and informally, meeting together helps promote togetherness! Forgive me for stating the obvious, but meeting together helps to deepen relationships in a congregation.
For more such advanced thinking on the local church, stay tuned!
Posted on June 26, 2008 | Link to this Post | Comments
“Mark Dever doesn’t practice separation?”
Really? Some have said this. But, I must confess that this comes as a surprise to me. I think defining marks of my time at CHBC have been involved with separation. So at our members’ meeting in May of 1996 we separated ourselves from most of our church’s members (256 disciplined for non-attendance!). Also, I remember the tears many of us shed over a marriage broken up in those early years, and the first of a number of excommunications we’ve decided (the latest being for a member who joined the Roman Catholic Church). These are sad duties, but we must separate ourselves from those who are openly disobedient to God’s command in His Word, whether that be to not forsake the regular assembling of ourselves, the command to marital faithfulness, to adhere to the Gospel, etc. For all of these matters, corrective church discipline which issues in separation (until the sinning party repents) is what is called for, and our elders have tried to lead our church into faithfulness in this area. And we have known not only the sadness of separation, but rejoicing in repentance. Regardless of what we experience, we see God’s Word is clear on this separation in the local church, and we intend to practice it.
Not only so, but I have advocated this in public teaching and writing. In fact, I have been caricatured and misrepresented for doing so. “OK,” my fundamentalist critic may respond, “but only in your local church.” Well, that is certainly my primary responsibility. And the Lord’s teaching through Matt. 18 and I Cor. 5 is certainly given with the local church primarily in view.
Having said that, I have tried to have a wider ministry of encouraging godly cooperation and discouraging ungodly associations. This is one of the sources of my being unpopular and even unwelcome in some circles. So we declined an invitation to give leadership in DC to a Graham-like crusade. Furthermore, we worked to get the Southern Baptist Convention to de-fund the local DC Baptist Convention, because (among other reasons) the convention’s organ, the Capital Baptist, had mocked those who believed that faith in Jesus was the only way to be forgiven for our sins, or who believed that Mormons need to be evangelized. I could go on. In fact, our own giving to the Southern Baptist Convention is targeted—it is focused on the International Mission Board, in order to help us fulfill the Great Commission. I regularly decline to speak at conferences because of who else is speaking there. On the 9marks website we critically review books. In our Together for the Gospel statement of faith, we deliberately had Affirmations AND DENIALS. In personal and private conversations I seek correction from others, and try to faithfully and lovingly rebuke others. Indeed, my recent conversations with Mark Minnick have been, in part, attempts to encourage us to do this with each other, so that we may both follow the commands of God in Scripture more faithfully.
In fact, such willingness to correct and be corrected is fundamental to leading a Christian congregation. So each Sunday evening, the CHBC staff reviews the day’s services and public teachings. In doing this, we hope to model giving and receiving godly criticism and encouragement. Soliciting critical, correcting feedback and responding to it is a large part of the burden that I am trying to faithfully model and encourage in other, younger pastors.
So, in light of all this, do I really not practice separation?
I think what my loving critics mean is “Mark doesn’t practice separation as well as we do.” Which may be true. When it is clear whom I should separate from, I mean to separate. But I have not yet come to understand the consistency in the “fundamentalist” practice of separation. That’s what some of you heard me searching for in my interview with Mark Minnick (a dear man, and clearly a brother in Christ with a commitment to God’s Word). To make my point, I share with you three simple questions:
1. Is ______ a sin?
2. Is this sin (mentioned in #1) a sin we should separate over?
3. If so, what should this separation consist of? What should it include and what should it allow?
My question to fundamentalists is this: is there liberty between Christians of good will and basic orthodoxy on the Gospel to disagree over any or all of these three questions? I have not yet perceived how in a fallen world there can always be complete consistency of practice on these matters between churches. I think some allowance must be made for differences with our brothers on such issues. And such differences should not necessarily bar us from fellowshipping and associating with each other. I think of Romans 14:4 “Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls.” Of course, there are some issues that seem to me both so important and clear that disagreement on them will affect, and perhaps even end my fellowship with someone who disagrees. But there will also be other issues which though important are not so clear, OR that are very clear to me in Scripture, but not quite so important. In these issues, I long to fellowship with and to work with as many of those for whom Christ died as I can.
Pray for me, and work together with me to lead the bride of Christ to be pure—purely faithful and purely attractive for the God we represent.
To sum it up, I want my separation from the world to be more pronounced than my separation from other Christians. Does this make sense?
Posted on June 14, 2008 | Link to this Post | Comments
When Seeing Doesn't Help Believing: Videos "in Church"
Should we use videos in our weekly gathering for the corporate worship of God? Well, for obvious reasons, I can't cite a Scripture passage commanding or denouncing the practice. But I do have my hesitations. They would go something like this. (I'll number my mental moves to make it easier to comment on them, decry them, question them, or agree.)
1. God Himself was personally (and perhaps visibly) present to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before the Fall (Gen. 2-3). The curse involved the casting out of Adam and Eve from God's immediate presence. He became invisible to us. The climax of the Bible's story of redemption is Rev. 22:4, where believers are restored to the personal presence of God, and that includes seeing His face. So, seeing God represents an immediacy of relationship that is specifically denied to us after the curse, even when we're redeemed. And the effects of God's curse continue until we are glorified (I Jn 3:2).
2. We are made to desire the sight of those we would know and love. Sight seems to give us a quality of knowledge, a confidence and certainty, that eludes us as long as we are denied seeing someone or something. (That's why we carry around photos of those we love.)
3. We were made to desire sight, and to find fulfillment in seeing God forever. After we sinned against Him in our first parents, in His mercy God has continued to speak to us--revealing Himself, the truth about us, His promises, etc. There is something about being a Christian that recognizes a special dependence we have upon hearing, rather than seeing.
4. With current technology, we consider using video clips not to depict God Himself (the second commandment forbids that) but as a means of having more of an impact in our teaching. But have we considered that the method we use may be at odds with the message we declare? In this fallen world, the visible is still very important--most of us are not physically blind. We are encouraged by the sight of other saints, of the visible signs Christ left for us--baptism and the Lord's Supper. But even these visible signs must be explained (and that will involve at least reading, and normally hearing--using words). And as a word-centered faith in a video-craving age, we demand the immediate impact of the visual. Is it wise to try to meet those demands in corporate worship?
In conclusion, I am not suggesting using video on Sun AM is necessarily sinful; but I am suggesting that it must normally (or always?) be imprudent. We are trying to build a word-centered counter-culture in a vision-addicted age. Will it really help the people to concentrate on the words of Scripture, or my words of explanation and exhortation by getting them to engage with a video just a few moments before? Immediate impact doesn't always lead to lasting awe. In fact, it can work against it.
Posted on June 5, 2008 | Link to this Post | Comments
Cry #2 "Make the Gospel Larger!"
In addition to the cry to make the gospel public is a second popular cry: “Make the gospel larger!” The point here is typically posed as, “Jesus didn’t simply come to save our souls, but our whole person along with the entire cosmos.”
In one sense, that’s true, particularly if the idea of “soul” is being used to mean something less than the whole person. Also, in seeking to apply the gospel to all of life, the people who make this cry are thinking through life with a Christian worldview, which is great!
The danger, however, is that the implications of the gospel are then sometimes referred to as part of the gospel (which is not great). When that happens, there is a real possibility that the unique message of Jesus’ reconciling death and resurrection for sinners will be confused or relativized. Furthermore, we run the risk of confusing the world about what it means to be a Christian.
There are many places in the New Testament where the implications of the gospel are explicitly set beside the gospel itself, not taken to be a part of it. For instance, we might be tempted to think that sharing our lives with other people is the gospel. Yet in 1 Thessalonians 2:8, Paul says: “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well . . . ” Clearly, Paul’s sharing his life with the Thessalonians was something in addition to sharing the gospel with them. He could have shared the gospel without sharing his life with them.
Friends, I am in favor of thinking through the implications of the gospel. But I’m concerned that we not, in the process, misunderstand what a Christian is. We must always be clear to distinguish between the core of the gospel and its results or implications. The fruit of the Spirit and the transformation of our minds comes from our being a Christian; it does not effect our salvation. If we confuse this issue, we could actually begin tacking fruit onto dead fruit trees, looking at people’s good works and calling them Christians because we see them doing what we might identify as “gospel work” in the world.
On the other hand, what do we say about those people who agree with us about Christ, but not about particular implications? Can true Christians disagree on how best to care for the poor? Someone may be a supporter of monarchy or of taking away the religious liberties of Baptist preachers, and I would disagree with them vehemently. But can I say that because of these mistakes, such people could not be my brothers or sisters in Christ? Would I really say that we could not share the same gospel because we’ve not worked out the implications in the same way? If we say about Christianity, as one prominent leader did in 2007, that “Christianity is a worldview. . . . When Jesus Christ came He announced the kingdom . . . every aspect of life under the Lordship of Christ,” how then do we think about those who haven’t thought through all the implications of Christ’s Lordship? Is that person not a Christian? Can one genuinely be a Christian without participating in what this leader here calls “Christianity?” What is the dividing line between Christian and non-Christian? Is it really here—over how thought through we are about the implications of our faith? Or is it simply whether or not we have faith only in Christ to save us from God’s wrath because of our sins?
This is a question that many African-American brothers and sisters have had to wrestle with for years, as they listen to Whites favorably quote the old writers who believed that racial slavery was morally defensible. Of course none of us agree with such defenses, but seminaries have even been named after these people who took what we all think were terrible positions! And yet can we say that these people still understood—and even appreciated—the gospel? I think we can.
We all live imperfectly and inconsistently with what we know to be true. That’s why we are saved by faith in Christ alone. To require us to include what we take to be implications of the gospel in the gospel itself can too easily confuse our message and compromise the radical and gracious sufficiency of faith in Christ alone for salvation. We want to have a Christian worldview, and we don’t want to confuse it with the gospel.
Brothers, don’t try to improve the gospel by making it larger. You’ll end up losing it. Preach the gospel we’ve received.
Posted on June 2, 2008 | Link to this Post | Comments
Improving the Gospel (1 of 5)
CRY #1—“MAKE THE GOSPEL PUBLIC!”
One of the cries going up these days is that the gospel should not be understood merely as the salvation of individuals. Instead, it is said, the gospel—and therefore the mission of the church—is about saving the structures of society.
Some Christians have argued for a complete disjunction between the church and the world—a separation of the two which leads them to withdraw from this world entirely. Partially in response to this error, other voices (like Tom Wright’s) have begun to champion the biblical witness to God’s concern for societal issues like justice and poverty. They speak of “redeeming the culture,” and suggest that some evangelicals have wrongly privatized the gospel. Indeed they suggest that the gospel, as one of its goals, aims to reform politics and government. Thus in the name of “seeking the peace and the prosperity of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7), some pastors are leading their churches to take responsibility for nearby schools, housing developments, and other matters of interest for the wider community. They explain that they are simply living out Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount and Peter’s words about living good lives among the pagans (Matt. 5:16; 1 Peter 2:12).
Now, if these voices mean that we pastors should educate our members to think biblically about every area of life, then I agree with them. We should teach our congregations to act wisely in all the stewardships of their lives.
However, I believe confusion enters when concern for issues like poverty and justice is taken to be either the gospel itself or the central mission of the church. As I read the New Testament, I do not see any example of the church understanding its gospel or its mission to be the direct shaping of the laws of the land or the improving of its structures. Certainly, the apostle Paul never tells the church to spend its time explicitly instructing the Roman emperor or shaping the pagans’ view of culture.
The gospel that has been committed to us is the Christian message that Jesus has died in the place of sinners in order to reconcile them to God. That gospel has been uniquely entrusted to the church, and thus it must remain the center of our message and our mission. Once that message is received, then—of course, yes—we will begin to work out the implications of this message. But those implications aren’t the gospel itself. If you say they are, confusion will result. The message of God’s fully sufficient work in Christ will be mixed with our own works. There is no entrance into the Kingdom apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ!
Now, I don’t mean to communicate any indifference about the issues of this life. Both evangelism and compassionate service must be part of my individual discipleship, and both ought to typify my life as a Christian. But are evangelism and compassionate service equally part of “the gospel”? No. Of course the local church may be involved in good works, and certainly Christians must be involved in good works. But the local church should not think that it has a responsibility to do so because such good works are a part of the gospel itself. When the church is involved in good works, it should do so as a reflection of and an attraction to this gospel of Jesus Christ.
To call the church to focus on repairing the passing structures of this fallen world—a world under the curse of God—is dangerous in at least a couple of ways. First, it can cause churches the same discouragement that comes to those who build sandcastles at low-tide. Whether by our socially-informed preaching or by any of our actions, we will never usher in the Kingdom of God. That will only happen when Christ returns. And, as Revelation 21:4 tells us, the Kingdom will come by God’s action, not ours.
Second, and even worse, giving a primary focus to repairing the world’s passing structures distracts us from the work of preaching the gospel—the news that people can be eternally reconciled to God through repentance and faith. The fact is, if we lead Christians to believe that they may preach the gospel just as much by alleviating poverty as by evangelism, many of them will choose the former because the world recognizes and values that kind of service, while it rejects and scorns the work of evangelism. In time, such a “public” gospel will inevitably lose its supernaturally awkward corners; it will be smoothed out and made acceptable to sinners all around.
Evangelism will never be appreciated by the world. So it is our special task, as pastors, to protect the priority of evangelism.
Brothers, never substitute doing good works for sharing the gospel! Don’t try to improve the gospel by making it public like this. You will end up losing it. Preach the gospel we have received.
Posted on April 29, 2008 | Link to this Post | Comments
The Gospel?
OK, I've been wanting to write this one for months but haven't made time. I'm just going to give it to you very simply, boiled down and brief. No time for longer argumentation.
THESIS: It is very important to [mentally] divorce the gospel from its implications and entailments. [Do NOT divorce these in your life and practice--that is James 2 hypocrisy!]
That's it. I could give reasons and explanations and examples, but that's it.
I bring this up is because so many authors and speakers are dismissive of the God-Man-Christ-Response (which is composed of repentance and faith) presentation of the Gospel, as neglecting this or that. And they get great rhetorical points by sweeping the neglected duty into the definition of the Gospel itself. While I would often agree with what the author or speaker means to encourage, I think it's very important to distinguish the unchangeable, essential Gospel--that news through which Christ can be received by faith as our Savior--from its many implications and entailments.
I can't resist, and then I've got to get back to my sermon! One reason for the significance of this--we can get agreement with many others on this or that implication or entailment of how we should live or think, even though those friends might find the Gospel itself offensive. We know non-Christians are by nature at enmity with God [James 4:4; Eph. 2:1-10], and that the fleshly mind cannot understand the things of the Spirit [I Cor. 2:14]. Is it any surprise then if our non-Christian friends, and the least mature Christians applaud most for the implications of the Gospel, and are most uncomfortable when we're talking about the Gospel itself? Let's debate the Gospel's implications; let's agree about the Gospel itself. Let's keep our definition clear and sharp. Look at what we read as "of first importance" (I Cor. 15:3).
I just had to get that out. Now, back to Luke 23.
Posted on December 7, 2007 | Link to this Post | Comments
The Five Points of Criticism
In our own service reviews, we talk about trying to model giving godly criticism and receiving godly criticism, giving godly encouragement and receiving godly encouragement. Because of some of my own mistakes, and reflections on them, I offer the following suggestions on how to give godly criticism.
Proverbs 26:27 says "A lying tongue hates those it hurts, and a flattering mouth works ruin." I think that Christians, and especially pastors, should have words which reflect hearts of wisdom and love toward those we speak to. And it's in reference to those obligations and opportunities we have (and out of my own mistakes in doing this well!) that I offer the five points of criticism. Here are several ideas on HOW criticism is best offered:
1. Directly, not indirectly. If you're anything like me, you might have a temptation to imply something, to presume something, to do anything to avoid a direct confrontation. Be very careful, however, before adopting this pattern, especially in criticism. If you're not careful, you'll have people regularly looking at your words and asking themselves what you "really mean."
2. Seriously, not humorously. Again, I might want to give some piece of advice through a humorous aside, but I probably am giving criticism this way because of my own fear of man. I want them to like me, and so I don't want to directly confront them. I want to be able to dismiss my own words if their cost proves higher to me than I had estimated. And humor can appear to be a useful vehicle for this. I can disown the words I've spoken, explaining them merely as humor if they're not received well. I should know better. I should know that if something is worth correcting, I should show respect to the other person by taking it seriously. I should never joke about something I'm really concerned about in someone else, without first having spoken seriously to them about it.
3. As if it's important, not casually. Similar to the previous point, but distinct, is the idea that the other person deserves me to give a certain level of importance to the issue, or I probably shouldn't be offering them correction at all. Eleazar Savage has a wise section (pp. 487-490) in the book of books (Polity) on minor offenses that we as Christians should simply bear with in each other. Don't use up the other person's emotional energy on criticizing them if the matter isn't really very significant.
4. Privately, not publicly. A remark around other people could have negative effects on other people's opinion of the one you are offering criticism to. You probably won't have the opportunity to follow up with all of them about the nature and reasons of your criticism. Your friend will probably only struggle more with fear of man issues, having those confused with the merits of the criticism you have offered. Now your friend may well be left open to the Evil One tempting him to be distracted by what this or that person will think of him. You honor your friend better by offering the criticism in private.
5. Out of love for them, not to express your feeling or frustration. It's interesting how my "honesty" can sometimes be inspired by my own frustration. Good criticism should not be "my frustration"-driven, but "your need" driven. If I ever offer a friend criticism it should be in the time and manner that will best serve them, not that is most convenient and emotionally satisfying for me. One way we show that love is by sincerly encouraging them (not flattering them) in areas where God's grace is clear in our friend's life. The more they can believe that we mean this for their good, that we love them, and see real good in them, the less open they are to pridefully dismissing our criticism.
Posted on December 5, 2007 | Link to this Post | Comments
You shouldn't work at a church you wouldn't attend
I've just been reading Bob Kauflin's manuscript for his soon forth-coming book, Worship Matters. There is much to refresh the pastor, the music guy, the Christian in reading this wisdom-filled volume, but here's just one quotation of simple straight-forwardness to show you what you have to look forward to:
"I know worship pastors who wouldn't be in their present church unless they were being paid. That's not good. Salary shouldn't be the primary means of determining where we serve. And you shouldn't work at a church you wouldn't attend."
Don't you love to read a rarely stated but important truth put clearly?
Of course, pastors can go to a church hoping to change it, but without the pulpit, in a position like "minister of music" that would be very difficult. Anyway, pray that God will use this book for His glory and for the good of His churches.
Posted on November 24, 2007 | Link to this Post | Comments
Membership Patience
May I simply say that I think the advice given in both the comments under Jonathan's original question from the pastor, and Mike McKinley's answer are wise. The pastor needs a happy resolve. He should continue to preach clearly what a Christian is, and also, as has been suggested, the benefits of clear church membership (e.g., enables the church to encourage care and community [all the one another passages], recognize its responsibilities for one another [I John; John 13:34-35], practice church discipline [Mt. 18; I Cor 5-6]). And certainly be patient. Allow 6 months to 2 years to transition the church into this healthier place. Stop admitting anyone without going through the new membership process, and then begin helping those currently attending to regularize their commitment and relations by going through and making the commitment, after instruction and examination. Probably at the 6, 12, 18 or 24-month period you would want to begin having somethings that are explicitly for members only (like members' meetings).
Posted on October 12, 2007 | Link to this Post | Comments
"Unrepentant Sinners"
Whoaa!! I just got back into the country (and onto the internet) a few hours ago and, well, hasn't a lot gone on?! I'll try to regroup and provide some feedback on the myriad of good questions that have been raised about my last post, but let me simply clarify that I assume that all Christians continue to sin in this life. Our basic posture is to repent of those sins (according to I John & Romans 6 & Galatians 5) that we become aware of (though we will still struggle). There are always going to be other sins of which we are not aware. A particularly difficult category would be those things that one set of Gospel-trusting Christians take to be sin and another set do not (e.g., sabbatarian practices [or lack of them], women serving as elders [or not], commitment to the 10/40 window, a certain church polity, I could go on and on). I would only suggest that Christ's teaching on baptism seems simple, straightforward and clear to me, so that I don't understand that I have the option to set it aside. A good friend--let's take Lig Duncan for instance--honestly agrees with me that I don't have the option to set it aside, but does disagree with me on what the Bible teaches about baptism. He must act according to his own best understanding, and so must I. God will sort it out. Until there, the greatest of things--the proclamation of the Gospel--we can partner in. And we will work to evidence the unity of the Spirit we enjoy as an encouragement to other saints. Furthermore, Lig's error on baptism in NO WAY diminishes my appreciation for God's remarkable work in and through him, nor lessens my desire to learn from him. Hmmmm. Is that helpful, blogworld?
I addressed all this in more depth in the talk I did at New Attitude back in May 2007 on how we cooperate together despite our differences. You might also see if the thoughts there are helpful. God bless us all, as we seek for Christ-honoring unity and Christ-honoring truth.
Posted on August 20, 2007 | Link to this Post | Comments
Baptism, Church Membership and Congregationalism
OK, I'm on vacation with my family, but I took print-outs of the Piper/Grudem exchanges on baptism and chruch membership. 9Marks guys, can we weigh in on this? What would you add to, disagree with, nuance in this argument?
Baptism SHOULD be required for church membership:
1) Because Jesus clearly commanded baptism and to disobey this command is sin [whether intentional or not]. To continue in such an unbaptized state is unrepentant sin [whether intentional or not]. Thus, no careful paedo-baptist will follow John P's apparent "generosity" about membership. That is, they will never knowingly admit someone to the Lord's Table that they understand to be unbaptized (even if they took that evangelical Quaker or believing Salvationist to be their brother or sister in Christ). John P wants us to admit to the Lord's Table those that he and we all agree are not baptized. John has no doubt that infant baptism is not baptism. He is solid on that point. But I think that actually leaves his position unusually open to other difficulties--knowingly admitting the unbaptized to regular communion. I simply don't want to take the responsibility to so disregard Jesus' commands (not that John P intends to in anyway disregard Jesus' commands). I especially don't want to do this in what has been an area of relatively unanimous Christian agreement from Jesus til now. Baptism precedes the Lord's Table. MUCH more could be said on this, but it probably already has been.
2) Because according to the New Testament, it is not merely the elders, but the entire membership of the local church that bear responsibility for establishing and patrolling "border & boundary" issues of discipline (Mt. 18; I Cor. 5) and doctrine (Gal. 1; II Tim 4). I think John P recognizes the importance of unity among such a responsible body, but he understands [I think] the local congregation NOT to be this responsible body, but rather the active followers of the elders--but merely followers. A congregationalist on the other hand (as Baptists have traditionally been) understands that it is the congregation who must ultimately establish such issues. John P would NOT want such divisions on baptism in the body that he takes to be the final earthly adjudicatory--the elders--and neither would we Baptists. The difference is, we think that body is the congregation as a whole, led by elders, yes, but only with the necessary and Biblical consent and cooperation of the congregation. (So, in classic terms, John would be an independent, but not a congregationalist.)
Much more we could say here, but, reader, please keep in mind that this is written by one who loves John Piper, appreciates his ministry (see earlier blog post) and who is planning to have an Anglican Dean and a Presbyterian former Moderator of the General Assembly preach in his Baptist pulpit in the next few months. There is a great unity in active cooperation, honoring, encouragement and love that is not broken by our lamentable temporary separation over local church membership.
Guys, comments?
Posted on August 15, 2007 in Membership | Link to this Post | Comments
Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? Part 10 of 10
I first thought of these blog entries back in January. I had had a conversation or two with friends in which they asked my why I thought there was this resurgence of Calvinism among younger evangelicals. Of course, theologically, the answer is “because of the sovereignty of God.” But I’ve never been convinced by hyper-Calvinism’s argument that because God has determined the ends, the means don’t matter. Means do matter. And as a Christian, as an historian who had lived through the very change I was considering, I wondered what factors had been used by God.
Before I go further, I acknowledge that in this blog I depart from giving answers that even Arminian friends of mine could agree with. (For more on how those of us who are more Reformed in our soteriology can work with the more Arminian see a blog I wrote recently over at the T4G website.) If my Arminian friends agree that this rise has happened/is happening, then there is no reason an Arminian should want to disagree about the effect of any of the previous nine influences I’ve noted. They may lament such influences, but they need not dissent from my suggestions, at least not for theological reasons.
This tenth and final influence that I note will be different.
When I doodled this list back in January, I tried to imagine the influences chronologically, like a picture slowly developing. Under God, where did this come from, who's given it shape, lines, color? From the background noise of respect for Spurgeon and the reprinting of his sermons to the latest conference John Piper has addressed or blog he’s written, I’ve tried to trace out this path from inside American evangelicalism for the last several decades. This last influence that I suggest is, however, less immediately obvious. But I think it has been increasingly present throughout the last part of the 20th century in America. And I think it has shaped the “theological climate” in which weaker, more wan versions of Christianity pale and fade, and in which more uncut, vigorous versions thrive. It is the rise of secularism and decline of Christian nominalism.
This may seem as unlikely as saying that the Great Awakening was caused by the Enlightenment, but I think there is actually a little more reason to suspect this observation of being true. My fundamental thesis is this: Arminianism is a theodicy. That is, Arminianism tries to exculpate God from the problem of evil. It tries to make sense of God in a world with sin and suffering.
Much as the modern Limitedness of God and Process thinking has tried to get God off the hook by redefining what God knows or is responsible for, so its earlier ancestor—Arminianism—with the best of motives (honoring God) desired to make sense of God. (See Richard Mueller’s excellent study of Arminius, God, Creation, and Providence in the Thought of Jacob Arminius: Sources and Directions of Scholastic Protestantism in the Era of Early Orthodoxy [Baker Book House: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1991] 309pp.) In the course of constructing a theology and philosophy and of exegeting Scripture, Arminius & Co redefined term after term so as to both present God as the majestic being He so clearly is, and us as the responsible beings we so clearly are. But they did this by reversing too many Biblical truths about who first chooses whom, and how specifically the choice is made, and to what end.
My point in this already too-long entry is not how much Arminianism changed, but how incomplete their labors were. They said God hadn’t predestined and elected the way most earlier Protestant theologians understood Scripture to teach, but they didn’t say God couldn’t. In a nominally Christian culture, Arminianism may appear to be a satisfying explanation of the problem of evil—“God’s good; it’s our fault”. But as the acids of modernity have eaten away at more and more of the Bible’s teachings and even presuppositions about God, that answer is proving woefully insufficient to more radical critics. It appears merely like moving the wrinkle in the carpet. A backslidden United Methodist may be satisfied with such teaching, but a Deist, a Buddhist or an atheist would have no reasons to be. A. C. Grayling, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and their like will not for a moment be satisfied with someone saying “Well, God could have made this world without suffering, but in order to be loved with dignity by free beings, He decided He must allow such sin and suffering as we experience.”
Really? Then hang being loved with dignity! Forget the whole experiment! It costs too much! Furthermore, what kind of God NEEDS to be worshipped? What kind of deity is this?!
And it’s this line of questioning that I think has quietly, deeply, perhaps subtly been re-shaping the field into one in which the half-measures of Arminianism are not even beginning to be satisfying. They are attractive to fewer and fewer people. Their adherents average age will grow even as their numbers shrink. They will be recruited mainly from the churched, and perhaps even those who’ve nurtured grievances against God, for allowing this or that to happen.
Reformed theology, on the other hand, teaches about a god who is GOD. The kind of objections that seem to motivate Arminianism are disallowed by the very presuppositions Calvinism understands the Bible to teach about God. This God is sovereign and exercises His sovereignty. This God is centered on Himself. And this God is understood to be morally good in being so Self-centered. In fact, it would be evil, wrong, deceptive for Him to be centered on anything other than His own glory. There is no apology about this.
This God saves to make His name known (read Exodus, or Ezekiel!). This God has created us to display His own power and glory, His holiness and mercy to His creation. Creation is a theatre for His glory. This is the God of Genesis 1 and Revelation 22. Even as the book of Revelation came not from John’s philosophical discussions in the king’s court, but from the crucible of persecution by worldly powers opposed to God, so this world’s increasingly open and categorical denials of God and His power will likely be met not by retreats, compromises, edits and revisions, but by awakenings and rediscoveries of the majesty and power of the true God who reveals Himself in the Bible, the God who made us and who will judge us, the God who in love pursued us even to the depths of the incarnation and humiliation of the cross.
This is Christianity straight and undiluted. And the questing, probing spirit of the rising generation has, by this God’s grace, found this Rock. May they stand upon it faithfully in these unbelieving times, until God calls them home to Himself.
Posted on August 9, 2007 in Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? | Link to this Post | Comments
Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? Part 9 of 10
This is the one many of you have been waiting for. You knew it was coming.
Love Your Enemies, published in 1979 was his dissertation from 5 years earlier. Academically speaking, he's a New Testament scholar. The Justification of God was published in 1983 from his teaching work, in part. Professionally speaking, he had worked as a Biblical Studies professor. But then, in 1986 a [gerund]-God book was published (like Knowing God, Loving God, Trusting God). It was called Desiring God. And with that book, pastor John Piper first put together for the reading public the adjective "Christian" with the noun "Hedonist."
I remember when a friend first asked me about the book. I had not read it. And was both attracted and repelled by the thesis, as my friend enunciated it. As the years have rolled on, and I have read not only it, but most of the books that the pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN, has written, I find myself repeatedly taken with the power and goodness of God and His Gospel in Piper's words. John has a Puritan-like ability to stare at an idea unflinchingly, watch it, and then watch it some more, interrogate it, and then draw implications out of it that are both convincing and surprising, and maybe even startling!
John has taken his Jonathan Edwards-inspired meditations and published them on many different aspects of life and ministry--preaching, missions, suffering. His books, Desiring God Ministries, the many conferences he speaks at, all have made him probably the single most potent factor in this most recent rise of Reformed theology.
I hesitate to write that.
All the factors that I have mentioned before John and his work I do think are part of the explanation. But they are part of the explanation for how the wave, if you will, became so deep, so large, so overwhelming, but they were happening unnoticed, in the 1960's and 1970's and 1980's--all preparing the ground, shifting the discourse, preparing the men--like John--who would be leaders in this latest resurgence. But it has been John who is the swelling wave hitting the coast. It is John who is the visible expression of many of these earlier men. His Desiring God Ministries is the conduit through whom so many of these others who have preceded him now find their work mediated to the rising generation.
Why John Piper? What explains the power of his ministry? All unction about God's truth comes from God. All fructifying of our labors comes from God. But, in terms of human observations, what sets John's labors off from those of so many others of us? Theological precision meeting up with spiritual, life-consuming passion. A profound hope imparting a serious joy leading to satisfying sacrifice.
The starkness of John's statements, the uncompromising nature of his sermons' calls and claims have captivated this supposedly word-weary generation. John may have turned 60 not too long ago, but his discipleship, his Bible reading, and his preaching and writing have more of the freshness of the young convert's "anything, God, anything you ask of me" than they do of professorial overstuffed leather chairs with a retirement account to protect.
If nothing else, when he preaches, John makes it clear that the sovereignty of God he's talking about is not the sovereignty of some musty philosophical argument. No, it's the kind of dangerous sovereignty that means God may demand anything--or everything--from you at any time. (And God will never demand as much as He's already given.) And it's the kind of comforting sovereignty which points us to God's kind providential care of his own, and which allows the believer to get through some otherwise desperate nights by considering Christ's love at Calvary.
When everyone else has been out polling to see what people want to hear, or at least how they want to hear it, John has been meditating on Romans, and his own heart, and life as he sees and knows it. And he has been unsparing in reporting what he finds, whether it has to do with the greatness of God, or the foolishness of our own tiny goals and ambitions.
When all those seminarians and ministers in their 20's stood up at Together for the Gospel in April of 2006, if I couldn't give a 10-part answer, but if I had to give a 2-word human explanation for their presence there, I know what two words I would utter: "John Piper."
Posted on August 2, 2007 in Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? | Link to this Post | Comments
Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? Part 8 of 10
Among the popular Christian teachers and preachers of the early and mid-20th century who utilized the radio, and later, television, few if any were known to be champions of the doctrines of grace. Truett & Criswell among the Baptists, Walter A. Maier among the Lutherans, Charles Allen of the Methodists, Fosdick, MacCartney and Barnhouse among the Presbyterians, and of course Rome's Fulton Sheen filled the airwaves of America in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Radio gave way to television. Liberals and Catholics, evangelicals and fundamentalists all had their programs; but few if any were distinguished by the kind of clear Spurgeonic championing of a Calvinistic gospel (as Lloyd-Jones was doing in London).
But in the 1960s and 1970s two men were raised up whose ministries were to last for decades, touching thousands of ministers and shaping them. One was a paedobaptist covenantalist, the other a dispensationalist. In 1965 or 1970, their commonalities might not have been so evident. But over the passing years and decades, as these ministries grew and prospered, as more and more of their teaching was stored and circulated on new technologies (cassette tapes, cd's, internet MP3 files), as new depths of questioning orthodox belief were reached, that which these men have had in common became more apparent.
New technologies allowed their teaching to be stored and re-listened to or passed around in a way mere broadcasts could not be. Furthermore, as these technologies have continued to develop, they have become more convenient to access. And these teachers have used these technologies to defend historic protestant understandings of the Bible, and especially of the Gospel. The result is that the teaching ministries of RC Sproul and John MacArthur seem to only be increasing in their influence. From the east coast and the west, among Presbyterians and nondenominational types, and everything literally in between Florida and California, the teaching ministries of these two men have had a quiet, but consistently compounding effect for almost 40 years now. Their conferences are attended by thousands. Their books are legion. Their characters are, by God's grace, unquestioned.
Certainly each of these two men is one of the most significant teachers of hundreds, perhaps even thousands of evangelical ministers, and have been so for some decades now. Their work has been more steady than spectacular, more quiet and consistent than sudden and electrifying. More Wesley than Whitefield (in manner). But when one looks at thousands of young evangelicals who identify with the doctrines of grace, there is no doubt that behind many of them stand the ministries of these two teachers of the Word--John MacArthur and RC Sproul.
Posted on July 30, 2007 in Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? | Link to this Post | Comments
Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? Part 7 of 10
So far in this series we've considered influences from the Presbyterian or Baptist streams. It may surprise some to hear that I think one of the main reasons for the resurgences of Calvinism in American evangelicalism in the 1970s and 1980s came from Episcopalians! Historians know that Episcopalians (Anglicans) are historically a reformed denomination, but few Americans today would associate Episcopalianism or Anglicanism with Reformed theology. That reflects both our ignorance of history, and how much the Anglican tradition has changed over the centuries (especially with the rise of Anglo-Catholicism and theological Liberalism in the 19th century).
Nevertheless, Thomas Cranmer (the first protestant Archbishop of Canterbury) was a reformed theologian. The 39 Articles (the Church's statement of faith) is a clearly Protestant, Calvinistic statement. The Puritan movement was largely a movement of Anglicans. The Westminster Confession was written for the Church of England. And Richard Sibbes was an Anglican!!
Anyway, it should not surprise us, therefore, that the English church has so strongly contributed to the revival of Calvinism in English-speaking America. Spurgeon, Lloyd-Jones, Banner of Truth--all of these are British influences. But in 1973 Hodder & Stoughton in England, and IVP in the US printed a book which had a large immediate effect, and an even larger longer-term effect. Did you notice how the 1970s and 1980s saw a number of books [gerund] God? Like Loving God, Desiring God, Trusting God. Where did that trend come from?
It came from J. I. Packer's book, Knowing God. It was published in 1973. And it has continued to sell, year after year, to seminarians, small-group leaders, Christian study groups. It has been read by hundreds of thousands of Christians. Packer has written many other things which have made him the current grandfather of this reformed movement. (He just turned 81 day before yesterday. Pray for more years of health and strength and ministry.) Many of us have disagreed with his work with ECT, but there is no denying that from his introduction to Owen's Death of Death to his book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, to his many published articles on theology and history, Packer has been one of the best and clearest and most popular theological tutors of those Christians who've grown up in the evangelicalism of the 1980s & 1990s.
Posted on July 24, 2007 in Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? | Link to this Post | Comments
Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? Part 6 of 10
In the mid-twentieth century, Calvinism was at a low ebb in America (at least outside of Western Michigan!). I've suggested in this series some factors which explain something of its resurgence. The last one I suggested in the 1970s was the Inerrancy Controversy. In the early days of that--you could say in part, as some of that controversy's earliest fruit (even before the turn-around of the Missouri Synod Lutherans and long before the recommitted conservatism of the Southern Baptist Convention's leadership) was the founding of the Presbyterian Church in America.
Born out of theological controversy in what was then the southern Presbyterian Church (PCUS), representatives of 260 congregations met together in December of 1973 to form what would soon be re-named as the Presbyterian Church in America. Throughout the 1970s this connection of churches grew, mushrooming in the 1980s and 1990s. In its numbers are found many who were once members of Methodist, Baptist and Episcopalian churches. These churches (nearly 1500 of them at last count) have over 300,000 communicant members, and far more in attendance at their churches.
The official doctrinal standard of the PCA is a revision of the Westminster Confession of Faith, a document so associated with the history of Calvinism that it could almost be said to define it in the English-speaking world. This connection of churches became the home to well-known evangelical Calvinists such as D. James Kennedy and James Montgomery Boice. It's seminary grew in size and influence (Covenant Theological Seminary) and Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, Orlando, Charlotte) though officially independent, has functioned since the 1970s as the training ground for many PCA ministers. These churches are marked by aggressive evangelism and missions. We've already considered Evangelism Explosion and the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (Ft. Lauderdale), but there are many others that became leaders nationally in evangelism. Briarwood Presbyterian (Birmingham, AL) the location of the denomination's organizing meeting, has also been a vibrant evangelistic church. Campus Outreach has grown out of the ministries of that congregation. Tim Keller's Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City is also a PCA congregation. Redeemer is a leader in teaching church planting to Presbtyerians and other evangelicals. Reformed University Fellowship is the very effective student arm of the PCA, prominent especially in southern universities. By the late 1990's you could almost assume that the most seriously Bible-preaching and evangelistic congregations near major university campuses would not be Bible churches, or Baptist churches, but PCA congregations. There is no doubt that for the last 30 years, one of the major factors in the resurgence of Calvinism in American evangelicalism has been the organizing and growth of the PCA.
Posted on July 23, 2007 in Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? | Link to this Post | Comments
Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? Part 5 of 10
In case you hadn't noticed, I've been attempting to reconstruct the history of the resurgence of Calvinism among younger evangelicals in the late 20th century, and I've been attempting to do this even in the order of these posts. So I'm not suggesting that the first (or the tenth) reason I'll give is the most important. Rather, I'm suggesting that in the 1940's there was little encouragement, though there were Spurgeon re-prints. Then there was added the increasingly known preaching of Lloyd-Jones. To that, by the late 1950's, you could add the re-prints of Banner of Truth. Then, in the 1960's & 1970's, I have suggested that the rise of Evangelism Explosion was quietly undermining one of the main objections American evangelicals had to a Calvinistic soteriology.
As we move into the 1970's and 1980's I would suggest that another main cause for the renewed popularity of Calvinism came through the Inerrancy Controversy. Controversy over the authority of Scripture has always been there. From the early church to the Reformation, various challenges to Scripture's authority were met and defenses erected. From the rising deism inside "Christian" countries in the 17th and 18th centuries, to the early work of Biblical critics in the 18th and 19th centuries, Bible-believing Christians have had to articulate their understanding of God's infallible working through sinful humans to compose His perfect Scriptures. From Gaussen in Geneva to Warfield in Princeton, the 19th-century churches produced careful defenses of the inerrancy of the Bible.
Controversy over the Bible has always been with us. But it is the storm summarized and energized by Harold Lindsell's 1976 Battle for the Bible that I specifically have in mind. (See the 9Marks website under articles for an annotated bibliography on this issue.) The Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) was already in the depths of the storm by this time. The Southern Baptist Convention was just entering it. And evangelicalism at large became galvinized by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. Many of the most stalwart defenders of inerrancy were not Calvinists. But many were. Through this controversy, Jim Boice, RC Sproul, Jim Packer, Carl F. H. Henry, Roger Nicole and many other Calvinistic theologians were given larger audiences, especially among ministers. Old Princeton (especially the Hodges, Warfield & Machen) was re-introduced to a new generation.
But there was more to it all than young ministers beginning to read a Hodge here and there, or Carl Henry's vast project (God, Revelation and Authority in 6 volumes!). Theology was being discussed. Young evangelicals were encouraged not simply to preach and pray, visit and counsel, but to engage in theological thinking, to argue systematics. And not only that, but the very shape of the arguments used to promote inerrancy were exemplary of the Reformed understanding of God's complete and ultimate sovereignty over the completely responsible action of human agents. Much more could be said, but you get the idea. In the 1970's and 1980's, many young ministers were being educated theologically by theologians who had Calvinistic soteriology and a Reformed understanding of God and of His work with humanity. Part of what has led to Calvinism among the young has been the defense of Biblical inerrancy--in having a theological conversation at all, but especially by who was defending it, and how.
Posted on July 19, 2007 in Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? | Link to this Post | Comments
Introductory Applications and Evangelism Preparation
Application and gospel-implications are the main reasons I do introductions as I generally (though not always) do them.
1. Application--I am trying to front-load the "so what" of the passage, in order to help Christians and non-Christians listen well, and to apply what they hear (rather than simply depositing it in a Bible-knowledge mental file that is un-integrated with the rest of their life).
2. Gospel-implications--by picking some foil of the point of the passage, and a foil which I intend to represent a popularly held idea, either by non-Christians listening, or some who are present but skeptical, or even unwittingly by Christians, I intend to tease out popular ideas that contradict scripture and model a way to approach them mentally, biblically, maybe even practically with certain questions or lines of thought that can be pursued with secular or unbelieving or confused friends at the office. (A sentence [fragment?] of Pauline proportions!)
Posted on July 18, 2007 | Link to this Post | Comments
Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? Part 4 of 10
Some astute inquirers have noticed that all the influences I've mentioned so far have been British. A couple of observations about this. My wife and I lived in Britain for 6 1/2 years, and I would say that there is something in the British culture (perhaps it is part of living in a much older place) which is at home with given-ness. That is, where an American would say "that's unfair" a British person might simply respond "that's the way life is." There is both maturity and resignation in this British response. Such different responses have advantages and disadvantages for both sides. It is simply the case that our friends in Britain are the children of those who stayed, and we Americans are all the children of those who left. Consider the interesting gene pool that's created!
I'm not saying that Britain 70 or 80 years ago was a hotbed of Calvinism. It wasn't. But there was an at-home-ness with the Bible's teaching on election and predestination that seems somehow more alien to Americans. During the mid-20th century, Reformed theology was not totally absent from America. There was the Dutch Reformed community in Michigan and the mid-west. I first read Flavel and Baxter not from the Banner re-prints, but from those by Baker (though that Baker Book House is, sadly, long gone). A. W. Pink travelled around and made friends with various conservative Reformed Baptist ministers (among whom one was my great-grandfather, Leaman Winstead). But on the whole, the early and mid-20th-century was a desert time for Reformed theology in the broader English-speaking evangelical America.
And then came what many may see as an unlikely aid to the cause.
Among the most deadly objections to Calvinism among American evangelicals was the charge that it killed missions and evangelism. American evangelicals have had, for a hundred years or more, an inability to distinguish between Calvinism and hyper-Calvinism. Calvinism teaches the absolute sovereignty of God and the real responsibility of man. Hyper-Calvinism teaches that because God is sovereign our actions, essentially, don't matter. That is, because the end is already established, the means may be dispensed with. (Thank God Paul didn't think that! Look at Romans 9-10--the strongest statement on predestination leads to the strongest call for missions and evangelism! He himself had been encouraged in his evangelism in Corinth by the doctrine of election--see Acts 18.) Even among those who could distinguish between the two, Calvinism was dismissed by saying that it always led to hyper-Calvinism. The slippery slope is always a fascinating argument. The inevitablity of certain consequences from certain circumstances at least always sounds compelling.
And then came Evangelism Explosion. D. James Kennedy, a native of Augusta, Georgia, became the pastor of a little PCUS church in Ft. Lauderdale in 1959. He began training his people to do evangelism. And by 1962, he had organized this as a program called Evangelism Explosion. The book continues on, in its 4th edition. It has been used literally around the world. It is the subject of much debate and criticism among evangelicals. Missional types dismiss it as a modernistic sales job, assuming too much to be of any use today. Reformed types dismiss it as one-sided, coercive, or decisionistic. Nevertheless, neither of those sets of discussions need to detain us as a matter of history.
My suggestion is that Evangelism Explosion (and the subsequent dramatic growth of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, especially in the 1960's) became a quiet, but telling piece of counter-evidence against the stereotype of Calvinism killing evangelism. Kennedy was unashamedly Calvinistic in the soteriology he presented in his sermons. He later joined the PCA, with the Westminster Confession as its doctrinal standard. Regardless of how consistent or inconsistent one takes aspects of EE to be with Reformed theology, a church that clearly meant to be Calvinistic pumping out evangelism, and evangelism training throughout the 1960s and 1970s was a telling argument in pragmatic America. I'm not sure anyone thought of it at the time. But I think that it substantially weakened the ground of the opponents of Reformed theology. A pastor born in the 1920s, coming to maturity in the 1940s may have assumed that Calvinism was as gone as the horse and buggy, and partly he may have assumed that because of the "evangelism-killing" argument. But a pastor born in the 1960s, maturing in the 1980s, would have a hard time taking it for granted that a Calvinistic theology always (slippery slope) leads to killing missions and evangelism. There would be too many churches around him using Evangelism Explosion.
Posted on July 13, 2007 in Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? | Link to this Post | Comments
Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? Part 3 of 10
From the Great Plains of Kansas, I write a brief blog suggesting a third influence on the resurrection of Reformed Theology in this generation--The Banner of Truth Trust. In 1957 Iain Murray and others with a shared vision and funds began to reprint Puritan and other reformed titles. A magazine appeared, which re-aquainted us with ministers and authors of the past. Books appeared. Well-bound and attractively presented, no such editions of Reformed works from the English-speaking tradition had been popularly published for a century. Through consistently keeping key titles in print, carefully screening what would be published, word of mouth, huge 50% (or more) discounts for theological students, the Banner brought affordable, well-presented re-prints of classic works to a new generation. The libraries of our generation of ministers are filled with books written decades and even centuries earlier, newly re-printed. Some contemporary authors were published--not least of whom is Iain Murray himself. He has produced a series of productive works, uniting piety, theology and history, all in a popular style and with an eye to instructing and edifying the church.
But what was most exceptional about the Banner in the late 1950's was its widespread distribution of literature from the past. The Princeton faculty teach us again through their books. Dutch Calvinsts and English Puritans appeared again. Readers were introduced to 19th-century divines (the Bonars', Charles Bridges). Furthermore, the Banner was in it for the long-term. They were theologically motivated. They were not put off publishing a work because it would not sell immediately. They gave time to allow an old classic to slowly disseminate through networks of Christians and fraternals of ministers. And their assiduous work in publishing in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s has clearly helped to bring forth (and equip) a harvest in the 1980s and 1990s and still today.
Posted on July 12, 2007 in Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? | Link to this Post | Comments
Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? Part 2 of 10
At the J. I. Packer conference held at Beeson Divinity School last autumn, Jim Packer was asked who the heroes on his mantle were. He mentioned six. One of them was Spurgeon. Another of them was D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Now this may seem strange considering the public division that came between Anglican evangelicals (like Jim Packer) and "the Doctor" (Lloyd-Jones) in the mid-1960's. In short, an address Lloyd-Jones gave was taken as a public call for evangelical Anglicans to come out of the Church of England. This ended many joint projects in the 1960's between brethren who had, in previous decades, labored together. What's more, Packer and Lloyd-Jones had been especially close. Jim Packer had been an undergraduate with the Lloyd-Jones' eldest daughter, Elizabeth (now Catherwood). She had introduced Jim Packer to her father, and the Doctor had been a huge encouragement to Packer theologically and spiritually. Furthermore, several years later, when Packer was living in London, he would go to hear Lloyd-Jones preach in the evenings as his own schedule allowed it. Their ties were deep, thus the division was painful.
Still, 40 years later, when Jim Packer is asked the question "who is the greatest man you've known" I have, on several occasions, heard him reply without hesitation "Martyn Lloyd-Jones."
Lloyd-Jones is less well-known in American evangelicalism than in Britain. Though he made several trips to the US & Canada, Lloyd-Jones had an active preaching ministry in Britain for over 50 years, and most of it in the center of the nation--London. His preaching shaped countless thousands of Christians in the mid-20th century. His books--from Spiritual Depression to Studies in the Sermon on the Mount to Preaching and Preachers--are classics for Christian devotion and especially loved by ministers. His books, by numerous publishers, remain in print today, more than a quarter of a century after his death.
Lloyd-Jones was never partisan and narrow in his preaching. He rarely mentioned what we call "theological labels", and yet his preaching was in no way shallow, dodging difficult theological issues. Lloyd-Jones was perhap the leading advocate of and pracititioner of expostional preaching in the mid-20th century English-speaking world. And God gifted him to powerfully bring the listener into the very presence of God as he preached.
Much of his preaching--like Spurgeon's--lives on in print. Go to Amazon and you'll find hundreds of titles by or about him. From his masterful series of sermons through Ephesians and Romans to little occasional pieces like "Will the Hospital Replace the Church?", Lloyd-Jones was used of God to greatly enrich the minister's library, and his heart. Like Spurgeon before him, the riches of previous ages are brought down to the reader today. J. C. Ryle and George Whitfield, John Owen and Richard Sibbes, Calvin and Luther--all are quoted, stories from their lives recounted in Lloyd-Jones' sermons and writings.
He was also a man of tremendous stature. He was the one man in 1940s, 1950s, 1960s British evangelicalism that you had to deal with. His fingerprints were all over the broader evangelical movement--from Tyndale House in Cambridge to the Inter-Varsity Fellowship to its international expression, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, to the Christian Medical Society, to the Evangelical Library. On and on we could go.
Even if many of those who were born in the 1970s and 1980s haven't heard of Lloyd-Jones, chances are their ministers have, and have been influenced by him. Both John Piper and Tim Keller have borne eloquent testimony to "the Doctor's" influence on their own preaching. No other figure in the middle of the 20th century stood against the impoverished gospel evangelicals were preaching, and did it so insightfully, so biblically, so freshly, so regularly, so charitably--all without invoking a kind of narrow partisanship that wrongly divided the churches.
I never had the privilege of hearing Lloyd-Jones preach "live." But if you did, or if you ever heard him recorded (which I have many times), read this section of one of his expositions from Romans 1, and see if you can't "hear" him:
“Let us look at the first part of that statement: ‘they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. . . .’ What does that mean? The Revised Standard Version reads: ‘They did not see fit to acknowledge God,’ but even that is much too weak. What it really means is, ‘They did not approve of God,’ because the word that the Apostle uses is the word that is used for testing. It is the word that was employed for testing metals—gold and so on. A lump of metal would be shown to the expert with the query, Is this gold or is it not? They tried it by various tests on it. That is the word that is used. You apply tests—and what the Apostle is saying here is that mankind, having considered God, having examined Him, having ‘tested’ Him, decided to reject Him! Like the scientist who, given this lump, says, ‘No, this is not pure gold, this is an alloy; throw it away!’ Now that is the attitude of mankind towards God. They consider God. They are the judges, you see, and God is a subject for examination! ‘Ah, yes,’ they say, ‘very interesting; now let us see about this God! You say you believe in Him . . .’ and so on. They are going to get Him, and having done so, and in spite of this full knowledge which He has given in the ways that we have seen, they decide that they are not interested; it is not worth while to bother any longer about God! The Apostle Paul wrote this, remember, nineteen hundred years ago, but you see what a perfect description it is of mankind today. How interesting to have a discussion about religion and to talk about God! Should God do this or should He not do that, and what I think about God! They examine God and reject Him. ‘They did not like to retain God in their knowledge.’ What an appalling statement! What a terrible condition! That is the state of mankind; they did not think it worthwhile to retain God in their knowledge; they deliberately put Him on one side. And man in sin is doing this still.” (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans 1, p. 383).
Where'd all these Calvinists come from? Quietly, all over the world young Christians, young ministers have had their spiritual tummies rumbling after they've been reading many of the spiritual bestsellers, books that are full of jokes and life tips, whose height of profundity have been something like "Lighten up and Live!" And someone has turned them on to Lloyd-Jones. And, by God's grace, they have learned about the grace of God, and the God of that grace.
Posted on July 2, 2007 in Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? | Link to this Post | Comments
Curious
Hey, guys. I'd be curious to know what you think of a post that I wrote over at T4G today. It's about TOGETHERNESS, good and bad, and what it's for. I think I'm assuming you'd agree, but I'm happy for you to push one way or the other.
Posted on June 29, 2007 | Link to this Post | Comments
A Couple of Lessons from Spurgeon
Dear Jonathan,
You asked about lessons from Spurgeon for preachers. I don't think that Spurgeon was a perfect model for preachers, but there is much we can learn from him.
1) Preach the Cross.
2) Preach the Cross with Passion.
3) Subordinate your personality to your message. (Plenty of your personality will still come through!!)
4) Verbally speaking, paint the message on a grand scale.
5) Apply the Gospel of Grace to the saved and to the lost among your congregation.
6) Careful and judicious use of humor is OK. It need NOT necessarily in any way detract from the seriousness of the message of the cross (thought it easily and usually does!!).
There are a few. I'm off to preach an overview of I Corinthians at the Geneva Bible Institute. thanks for your prayers.
And GREAT job on the new newsletter/e-journal, Jonathan!! The Powlison piece is amazing. And Michael Lawrence's pieces are like silk. And Andy Davis' review of NT Wright and Greg Gilbert's of Brian McLaren & of the atonement volume were excellent! And Mike McKinley (though I didn't understand your earlier exchange with him) was absolutely hilarious on the Gospel Coalition meeting!! I look forward to being at the next one.
Posted on June 27, 2007 | Link to this Post | Comments
Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? Part 1 of 10
Two events served to bring to the front of my mind the growing prominence of reformed theology among the young in the American evangelical scene.
1) I was having dinner in Manhattan a couple of years ago, seated between a couple of older prominent evangelical Anglicans. They were discussing the drought of good preaching that they had been surviving through for the last couple of decades. I said only a little to them (said that wasn't my impression), but it made me notice the veritable garden that it seems to me in the circles I run in that God is growing up.
2) At Together for the Gospel, April 2006, at one point I asked people to stand by ages. Out of 3,000 we had a few senior citizens. Some guys in their 50's. A lot in their 40's. A TON in their 30's. And even MORE in their 20's. Now, there could be a lot of reasons for that, but let me simply say that when Collin Hansen came out with his interesting article about "Young, Restless and Reformed" in the fall of 2006, I had already observed the phenomenon and agreed with the premise of his article--that there does seem to be something of a reformed revival among those born in the 1970s & 1980s.
The purpose of this series of posts is simply to address the question--why? And I mean that not in a theological sense (our God is sovereign, or because people read their BIbles) but in an historical sense. As a trained historian, I know that suggesting causation among historians is a bit like alchemy among chemists. But it's just too interesting for me to pass up!!
I intend to suggest these sources in a roughly chronological order, wondering, if there were so few self-conscious Calvinists in the 1950's how'd we get so many of them today?
Source #1 is the only source I'll mention which endured throughout the 20th century in a consistent way--the writings of C H Spurgeon.
Of course, behind Spurgeon, and quoted by him, were lots more--Edwards and Whitefield, Bunyan and Owen and the rest of the puritans (SIBBES!!), Luther and Calvin and the other reformers. But no one can top the continuing popularity of Spurgeon and his sermons. If you look at the magnificent 57-volume Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit series of sermons, they are commended by a stunning host of the great and the good among mid-20th century evangelicals. Not only did Spurgeon's younger contemporaries revere and recommend him (like B. H. Carroll, founder of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) but so did many of the most eminent among the preachers of 1950 and 1960. Simply look at some of those who wrote commendations for the reprinting of the Met Tab series by Pilgrim. Look who was exhorting everyone to buy and read these sermons, and in the most glowing of terms! WA Criswell and Billy Graham. Wilbur Smith and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Stephen Olford and John Walvoord. R. G. Lee and Charles Feinberg. Herschel Hobbs and Helmut Theilicke. John R. Rice and Harold Lindsell. J. Harold Smith and Curtis Vaughn. Jack Hyles and D. James Kennedy. That list is so extraordinary, that it's pretty safe to say that you couldn't have gotten that list of people to endorse the writings of anyone OTHER than C. H. Spurgeon! Some of them even wrote books against Calvinism, but they praised Spurgeon.
If Spurgeon was the underground aquifer bringing down the nutrients of earlier generations to those after him, then it was this generation of preachers--many of them anti-Calvinists--who, ironically, were the aquifers who brought us all Spurgeon. And friends, if you keep being told to buy Spurgeon, eventually you'll probably read Spurgeon. And if you read Spurgeon, you'll never be able to believe the charge that all Calvinists are Hyper-Calvinists, and that Calvinists can't do missions and evangelism.
Spurgeon seemed about as healthy and balanced as a Bible-believing Christian can be. In his preaching He exalted God's grace, centered on the cross of Christ, instructed Christians and pled with sinners.
It was Spurgeon who said in his sermon on I Cor. 1:23-24, "I have my own private opinion, that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and him crucified, unless you preach what now-a-days is called Calvinism. I have my own ideas, and those I always state boldly. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism. Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith without works; not unless we preach the sovereignty of God in his dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor, I think, can we preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the peculiar redemption which Christ made for his elect and chosen people; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation, after having believed. Such a gospel I abhor. The gospel of the Bible is not such a gospel as that. We preach Christ and him crucified in a different fashion, and to all gainsayers we reply, "We have not so learned Christ."
Many of the ministers who now decry what these young people believe are the very ones who commended Spurgeon to them. And these young men have trusted their pastors recommendations.
That's one of the places that I think all these young Calvinists have come from.
Special Added Value: I'm writing this in Geneva, Switzerland, where I'm to be lecturing and preaching until Thursday (DV). From the place where I'm staying, I have a clear view of mighty Mt. Blanc. I am reminded of the quote of one of Spurgeon's admiring contemporaries, John A. Broadus, one of the founding professors of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Broadus said, "The people who sneer at Calvinism might as well sneer at Mt. Blanc."
Posted on June 26, 2007 in Where'd All These Calvinists Come From? | Link to this Post | Comments
Church matters
Church matters. Founded by Jesus Christ, birthed at Pentecost, the heavenly bride, church matters. Many today think that church is merely a convenience for me when I choose to use it to help me in my relationship with God. They don't realize that church matters. But according to the Bible, church matters. God purchased the church with His own blood (Acts 20). When Saul was persecuting the church he was persecuting Christ (Acts 9). To what other group did Jesus ever personally write letters than to local churches (Rev. 2-3)? Church matters.
This blog is dedicated to discussion of matters pertaining to the church because church matters. 9marks provides a basic framework that we can all agree on, but the discussion can push further on those points, or work out to other related issues.
The discussion is a discussion between 14 friends (with maybe some more being added as we go). You can read the official biographies of the guys, but let me give my own spin to them introducing them to you. First, there is Paul Alexander, my co-author of the Deliberate Church, and husband, father, and pastor of Fox Valley Bible Church in suburban Chicago. A Trinity EvDivSchool grad with a liking for UNC, Paul is sharp with Scripture and always thinking. He is also quickly building up a fund of his own pastoral experience.
Next up is the one, the only, Thabiti Anyabwile. Thabiti will likely be well-known to many of the readers of such a blog. He is himself the author the the PureChurch blog, of a couple of excellent books, and is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman in the Carribean. He is a sweet man, a good preacher and is unusually rich in life-experience. People feel loved by Thabiti! And that combination of head and heart is a winner.
Mike Gilbart-Smith is currently Assistant Pastor here at Capitol Hill Baptist Church (hereafter CHBC). He is a Cambridge & Oak Hill grad, looking for a pastorate back in the UK, and meanwhile serving as an elder with us. His comments are consistently some of the most biblically thoughtful, and his willingness to serve and zeal to encourage evangelism are wonderful. And I believe I had the joy of baptizing dear Mike when he was an undergrad in Cambridge.
Greg Gilbert should need no introduction to denizens of the 9marks webpages. Some of the sharpest reviews (in every sense) have comes from Greg's keyboard. He has been blessed with an amazingly sharp mind, and an accompanying ability to get the fruits of his observation and evaluation over to others.
Andy Johnson is many things. Former congressional staff, ph. d. from Texas A&M, wearer of cowboy boots. He is now serving as an Associate Pastor at CHBC, with special responsibilities for missions & discipling. In vain, he attempts to hide behind "I don't have a seminary degree". Andy has been active in church planting, discipling and in the SBC's International Mission Board as a trustee for some time now. It's a privilege to have him.
Michael Lawrence is also an associate pastor at CHBC. He is the main teaching pastor in the congregation (besides myself). He is an old friend from Duke (in fact, I had the joy of marrying them!). He is a gifted theologian and exegete and an observer of details. Another GCTS grad.
Jonathan Leeman should already be well-known to you as the editor of the 9marks ejournal. He is himself experienced pastorally and has a way with words and with seeing and understanding things. He edited my Old & New Testament overview sermon volumes and made them both immeasurably better. He is the systematic theology-kind-of-guy in our midst. An SBTS grad.
Mike McKinley is the pastor of Guilford Baptist Church near Dulles Airport. He has been pastoring this flourishing congregation in suburban DC for 2 years. A Westminster grad, Mike has an extraordinary sense of humor. So see his travelogue of his journey to the Gospel Coalition meeting last month. This travelogue should be out soon in the next 9marks ejournal.
Aaron Menikoff is from Oregon & Hawaii (via DC) and serves with Greg Gilbert as an elder of the 3rd Ave Baptist Church in Louisville, KY (where Aaron is pursuing a Ph.D. at SBTS). Aaron was my first pastoral assistant here at CHBC, one of our first elders and has been a conversation partner about church matters for a long time.
Deepak Reju is also doing a Ph.D. at SBTS, only Deepak is working in the area of Biblical Counseling. He has been called by our congregation as an associate pastor, and should be here soon. Dee is a delight, and his practical/biblical observations on church life will certainly enrich our conversations. He also is the current holder of the title "nicest man in the world"!
Matt Schmucker is the grand old man of 9marks. He founded it. He made it go. He is the boss of the man who makes this blog work. Though he's not seen in public so much, his fingerprints are all over everything we do. He is an elder at CHBC and a provocative thinker on and practitioner of church matters.
Ryan Townsend is one of our younger contributors. I knew Ryan when he was not a Christian! In the years since then, Ryan has become a teacher of everything from worldviews to evangelism. He is a student at SBTS and a staff member at Clifton Baptist Church, Louisville, KY.
Finally, there is Brad Wheeler. Brad is another elder at 3rd Avenue Baptist in Louisville, KY, and a student at SBTS. Before that, he was an elder here with us at CHBC. He is a bright student, and is one of the few guys out there who can claim to have been discipled by me and Dan Kimball!
I am thankful for this community of conversation, and look forward to others perhaps joining us from time to time (CJ Mahaney, John Folmar, Lig Duncan, Jeremy Yong, Geoff Chang, Ben Wright--the list goes on and on!!).
I'm going to try to kick this off over the next couple of weeks by doing a brief series of 10 influences that I think God has used to bring about the current resurgence of reformed theology among the young. Stay tuned!!
Because, according to God's Word, church matters.
Posted on June 19, 2007 | Link to this Post | Comments
The 9Marks blog aims to stimulate a helpful conversation among pastors, church leaders, and Christians about life together in the local church.
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Authors
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- Deepak Reju
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