Deficient Derelicts

Dr. Al Mohler of Southern Seminary has written a very compelling article dealing with what he calls “the deficit of doctrinal instruction” in many of our churches. He writes:

The church is faced in the postmodern age by several distinct apologetic challenges. Internally, the church must defend the faith against ignorance, against compromise, against doctrinal apathy, and against denial. The church now suffers from a breathtaking deficit of doctrinal instruction and biblical truth. In some churches, the great truths of the Christian faith are unknown, and in others, these truths are left dormant and untaught. Beyond this, the very real dangers of doctrinal corrosion and heresy threaten. (To read the rest of the article, click here.)

It seems that our churches by and large have handed off the theological instruction to our seminaries — not something I believe Paul nor Christ intended. Our churches are to be theological and missiological training grounds for all congregants, and especially ministers-in-training. Our churches must not only be afraid of commitment to serve but also of committing to think through their belief systems. Are we on target in our biblical thinking?

Evangelism in a difficult age (Mohler)

Christians today are called to serve the cause of Christ at one of the crucial turning points in human history. This is a very strange time to proclaim and defend the Christian faith. Evangelism is difficult in an age when most persons think their most basic problems are rooted in a lack of self-esteem, and when personal choice is the all-determining reality of the marketplace. In the same way, the task of apologetics is complicated by the postmodern condition. How does one defend the faith to persons unwilling to make any judgment concerning truth?

To read Dr. Albert Mohler’s entire commentary click here.

How Many Christians Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb? (Humor)

Charismatic:  Only 1 – Hands are already in the air.

Pentecostal:  10 – One to change the bulb, and nine to pray against the spirit of darkness.

Presbyterians:  None – Lights will go on and off at predestined times.

Roman Catholic:  None – Candles only. (Of guaranteed origin of course.)

Baptists:  At least 15 – One to change the light bulb, and three committees to approve the change and decide who brings the potato salad and fried chicken.

Episcopalians:  3 – One to call the electrician, one to mix the drinks, and one to talk about how much better the old one was.

Mormons:  5 – One man to change the bulb, and four wives to tell him how to do it.

Unitarians:  We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey you have found that light bulbs work for you, you are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your light bulb for the next Sundayervice, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, 3-way, long-life and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.

Methodists:  Undetermined – Whether your light is bright, dull, or completely out, you are loved. You can be a light bulb, turnip bulb, or tulip bulb. Bring a bulb of your choice to the Sunday lighting service and a covered dish to pass.

Nazarene:  6 – One woman to replace the bulb while five men review church lighting policy.

Lutherans:  None – Lutherans don’t believe in change.

Amish:  What is a light bulb?

Gimme a V… Gimme a B … Gimme an S — what does it spell?

This week, our church will hold our annual Vacation Bible School. We will be using the LifeWay curriculum Arctic Edge: Where Adventure Meets Courage. This is by far the biggest outreach event of the summer for our church. We pray that God through His sovereign grace will draw many children to Himself through Jesus Christ.

Are any of you involved with Vacation Bible School this summer? If so, what do you think? How was it?

The Prayer of the Consistent Synergist (Reformation Theology)

The Reformation Theology blog has a great post on the "Prayer of the Consistent Synergist."  Synergism is "…the doctrine that there are two efficient agents in regeneration, namely the human will and the divine Spirit, which, in the strict sense of the term, cooperate. This theory accordingly holds that the soul has not lost in the fall all inclination toward holiness, nor all power to seek for it under the influence of ordinary motives."  This gives some power of salvation to the human rather than salvation being solely "of the Lord" (Jonah 2:9).

I also noticed in the comments section how a synergist would sing Amazing Grace.  It is as follows:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
My choice saved me!
I once was lost, but found my way,
Was partially vision-impared, but now am healed.

The Lord has promised good to me,
My action, His hope secures!
He shall my sheild and portion be,
So long as I don't lose my salvation.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares,
I have already come,
Twas my faithfulness that brought me safe thus far,
And I'll bring myself home.

Congratulations to Frank Page, the new SBC President

Our family is having a wonderful time at the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting here in Greensboro, NC.  It is truly a study in cooperation and parliamentary procedure — not to mention a great way to catch up on all the SBC entities.  The fellowship is nice as well.  I have had the chance to see people I haven't seen in years!  The high point in that aspect was seeing Chris Whaley and his family.  Chris serves as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Longwood, FL, and was very instrumental in me starting out in the ministry in the early 1990s.  

Special congratulations to Frank Page.  Although I voted for Jerry Sutton, it was clear that the other nominees jumped on the fact that Ronnie Floyd's church gave only 0.27% of their annual budget to the Cooperative Program.  Frank Page's church gives over 12%. 

The best and the worst lines of the convention came from Frank Page's nominator, Forrest Pollock, pastor of Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon, Fla..  The best was this: "My father could not spell SBC President without the letters 'CP'." 

But he also gave the worst, as noted, "This vote is not about theology, but methodology."  Are they mutually exclusive?  To most Southern Baptists, they must be.  Theology drives everything.  If theology is not driving your methodology, I'm not interested in your methodology. 

More tomorrow (hopefully). 

Highly Questionable Methods

by Robert Reymond

“The problem in our day, which gives rise to highly questionable church growth methods, is twofold:

On the one hand, we are seeing a waning confidence in the message of the gospel. Even the evangelical church shows signs of losing confidence in the convincing and converting power of the gospel message. That is why increasing numbers of churches prefer sermons on family life and psychological health. We are being overtaken by what Os Guinness calls the managerial and therapeutic revolutions. The winning message, it seems, is the one that helps people to solve their temporal problems, improves their self-esteem and makes them feel good about themselves. In such a cultural climate, preaching on the law, sin and repentance, and the cross has all but disappeared, even in evangelical churches. The church has become “user friendly,” “consumer oriented,” and as a result evangelical churches are being inundated with “cheap grace” (Bonhoeffer). Today’s “gospel” is all too often a gospel without cost, without repentance, without commitment, without discipleship, and thus “another gospel” and accordingly no gospel at all, all traceable to the fact that this is how too many people today have come to believe that the church must be grown.

On the other hand, we are seeing a waning confidence in preaching as the means by which the gospel is to be spread. As a result, preaching is giving way in evangelical churches to multimedia presentations, drama, dance, “sharing times,” sermonettes, and “how to” devotionals. Preaching is being viewed increasingly as outdated and ineffective. Business techniques like telemarketing are now popular with the church growth movement. Churches so infected also look to the multiplication of programs to effect their growth. They sponsor conferences and seminars on every conceivable topic under the sun; they subdivide their congregations down into marrieds and singles, single parents and divorced, “thirty-something” and “twenty-something,” teens, unemployed, the child-abused and the chemically dependent, attempting to arrange programs for them all. And once a person joins such a church, conventional wisdom has it, the church and the minister must meet his every felt need. Accordingly, ministers have become managers, facilitators, and motivators—everything but heralds of the whole counsel of God—and this all because they have lost confidence in the preaching of God’s Word as the primary means for the growth of the church and the individual Christian.

What is the answer? A restored confidence in the Reformed doctrine of the sovereignty of God in salvation!”

— Robert L. Reymond, in A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith

Politics in the Pulpit? What’s Wrong With That? (USA Today)

In the April 17 USA Today, Notre Dame law professor Richard Garnett argues that it is not the place of government to determine what is or is not appropriate in terms of political speech in the pulpit. He writes: "the First Amendment does not constrain — in fact, it protects — 'political' preaching and faith-filled activism. Yes, our Constitution preserves a healthy separation between the institutions of religion and government. This wise arrangement protects individual freedom and civil society by preventing the state from directing, co-opting or controlling the church. It imposes no limits, though, on conversations among religious believers — whether on Sunday morning, around the water cooler, or at the dinner table — about the implications of their faith for the controversies of the day. Our First Amendment protects religious freedom, individual conscience and church independence from government interference; it requires neither a faith-free public square nor politics-free sermons.

"Even if the Constitution does not presume to tell ministers to stick to parables, is it bad citizenship, or just plain bad manners, for ministers to confuse our 'public' role as citizens and voters with our supposedly 'private' religious lives and beliefs? No. Religious faith makes claims, for better or worse, that push the believer inexorably toward charitable and conscientious engagement in 'public life.' To the extent that religion purports to provide insight into human nature and relations, it necessarily speaks to politics. We best respect each other through honest dialogue by making arguments that reflect our beliefs, not by censoring ourselves or insisting that religious believers translate their commitments into focus-group jargon or cost-benefit analysis.

"True, there is the matter of the tax laws. Churches have, for centuries, for the most part been immune from taxes imposed by secular authority. Accordingly, the United States has long exempted corporations organized and operated exclusively for religious purposes from federal taxation. This exemption, however, comes at a price: Like other tax-exempt charitable organizations, religious communities may not engage in activities and expression that are regarded by government as excessively political (or, perhaps, as insufficiently religious).

"It is the regulation of the churches' expression, and not their expression itself, that should raise constitutional red flags. Religious institutions are not above the law, but a government that respects the separation of church and state should be extremely wary of telling churches and religious believers whether they are being appropriately "religious" or excessively "political" or partisan. Churches and congregants, not bureaucrats and courts, must define the perimeter of religion's challenges. It should not be for the state to label as electioneering, endorsement, or lobbying what a religious community considers evangelism, worship or witness.

"Of course, there are good reasons — religious reasons — for clergy to be cautious and prudent when addressing campaigns, issues and candidates.

"Reasonable people with shared religious commitments still can disagree about many, even most, policy and political matters. It compromises religion to not only confine its messages to the Sabbath but also to pretend that it speaks clearly to every policy question. A hasty endorsement, or a clumsy or uncharitable political charge, has no place in a house of worship or during a time of prayer — not because religion does not speak to politics, but because it is about more, and is more important, than politics." (Click here to read the full article)

(From PreachingNow, Vol. 5, no. 17. May 16, 2006 — http://www.preaching.com )

Do you have sensuality or Spirituality?

He that has not received the Spirit is said to be sensual. Oh, what a gulf there is between the least Christian and the greatest moralist! What a wide distinction there is between the greatest professor destitute of grace, and the least of God's believers who has grace in his heart. As great a difference as there is between light and darkness between death and life, between heaven and hell, is there between a saint and a sinner; for mark, my text says, in no very polite phrase, that if we have not the Spirit we are sensual. " Sensual!" says one; "well, I am not converted man—I don t pretend to be; but I am not sensual." Well, friend, and it is very likely that you are not—not in the common acceptation of the term sensual; but understand that this word, in the Greek, really means what an English word like this would mean, if we had such a one—soulish. We have not such a word—we want such a one.

There is a great distinction between mere animals and men, because man hath a soul, and the mere animal hath none. There is another distinction between mere men and a converted man. The converted man hath the Spirit—the unconverted man hath none; he is a soulish man—not a spiritual man; he has got no further than mere nature and has no inheritance in the spiritual kingdom of grace. Strange it is that soulish and sensual should after all mean the same! Friend, thou hast not the Spirit. Then thou art nothing better—be thou what thou art, or whatsoever thou mayest be—than the fall of Adam left thee. That is to say, thou art a fallen creature, having only capacities to live here in sin, and to live for ever in torment; but thou hast not the capacity to live in heaven at all, for thou hast no Spirit; and therefore thou art unable to know or enjoy spiritual things.

And mark you, a man may be in this state, and be a sensual man, and yet he may have all the virtues that could grace a Christian; but with all these, if he has not the Spirit, he has got not an inch further than where Adam's fall left him—that is, condemned and under the curse. Ay, and he may attend to religion with all his might—he may take the sacrament, and be baptized, and may be the most devout professor; but if he hath not the Spirit he hath not started a solitary inch from where he was, for he is still in "the bonds of iniquity," a lost soul. Nay, further, he may pick up religious phrases till he may talk very fast about religion; he may read biographies till he seems to be a deep taught child of God; he may be able to write an article upon the deep experience of a believer; but if this experience be not his own, if he hath not received it by the Spirit of the living God, he is still nothing more than a carnal man, and heaven is to him a place to which there is no entrance. Nay, further, he might go so far as to become a minister of the gospel, and a successful minister too, and God may bless the word that he preaches to the salvation of sinners, but unless he has received the Spirit, be he as eloquent as Apollos, and as earnest as Paul, he is nothing more than a mere soulish man, without capacity for spiritual things.

Nay, to crown all, he might even have the power of working miracles, as Judas had—he might even be received into the church as a believer, as was Simon Magus, and after all that, though he had cast out devils, though he had healed the sick, though he had worked miracles, he might have the gates of heaven shut in his teeth, if he had not received the Spirit. For this is the essential thing, without which all others are in vain—the reception of the Spirit of the living God. It is a searching truth, is it not, my friends? Do not run away from it. If I am preaching to you falsehood, reject it; but if this be a truth which I can substantiate by Scripture, I beseech you, rest not till you have answered this question: Hast thou the Spirit, living, dwelling, working in thy heart?

(An excerpt from a sermon by Charles H. Spurgeon, The Holy Spirit and the One Church.  Delivered on Sabbath Morning, December 13, 1857, at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.  To read the entire sermon, click here.)

Where is Your Denomination Located?

Al Mohler has such a helpful blog entry on this issue.  The Glenmary Research Center has put together a map showing where our various denominations are represented across the country. 

Speaking for Southern Baptists, why are we clustered so much in the South and Southeast?  I mean, I know we are Southern Baptists, but shouldn't we have moved out a little more by now?  Mohler makes a point that the Pacific Northwest has the fewest church represented there — and it shows by how liberal they are politically and socially!

Sounds like a part of Samaria that we need to reach, eh?