Not Going Back To Church?

A friend sent me a link to a religion story from the Huffington Post by "Reverend" Mark Sandlin, I Don't Want to Go Back to Church and Why I Will. It was quite interesting. As I have mentioned the religion page of the Huffington Post is usually a seething swamp of bad theology but every now and then something interesting pops up like a beautiful swamp flower among the weeds. This is one of those rare times. Mr, Sandlin has been away on sabbatical and is getting ready to "go back to church" but doesn't really seem to want to. Here is the end of his essay...

Here's the thing though, this way of operating has become so indoctrinated into the system, so artfully woven in and out of the dogma, governing structures and informal peer-approval networks that from within the system it is nearly impossible for most people to see it has hypocritical. It is the air we breathe, the support system which gives us meaning, the stuff of church life. It's how you fit in.

We've been trained to follow faithfully and not so much thoughtfully, which is probably why some ministers seem to think "faith is so fragile." Then, when some of us do see the error of our ways and try to do the difficult work of turning the ship around, we find that the forms of government and the unofficial power brokers are designed and operate in ways that bend but do not break. Even people who are sympathetic to the cause find themselves ultimately bound and constrained from affecting change because of the system within which they exist. The Church system produces the results it currently produces because it is perfectly designed to produce them and will continue to do so until radical change is instituted.

I'm going back, even though I honestly don't want to, because my time away has given me a little perspective on the disease behind the problem and I can promise you it will not change because of outside voices. The change must come from within, and I, for one, still believe the Church is redeemable. I just hope it's not too late.

When you get to the end of his essay, you come up with the same sort of realization so many of us have had. What we know as "church" is about the furthest thing from "The Church" that you can find and yet so many of us, even knowing that, keep on going back somehow expecting that the weight of thousands of years of error are suddenly going to be overcome. In spite of his recognition that there is so much that is so far from what church is all about in organized religion, Mr. Sandlin is "going back" thinking that he can change things but even he ackowledges that it might be too late. Guess what.

It is too late and it has been for over a thousand years.

The best chance for change came about with the Reformation and it died just as quickly when the magisterial Reformers chose the path of retaining the Roman forms and practices and quashing the dissenters among the Anabaptists. I don't believe we can "fix" the church from inside the institutional system because that system isn't really broken. In fact it is working exactly as intended, providing a religious experience with no real cost, a way for people to check the religion box for the week, a system to employ clergy and distance the laity which makes everyone happy. As I have learned too often and to my chagrin, the system doesn't want anyone to ask questions or change anything and those who benefit in various ways from that system will fight tooth and nail to keep it running. Perhaps they no longer put dissenters to death but they certainly do their best to make life miserable for those who refuse to walk the line: "How can you say you love Jesus but hate His bride!", "You are just rebellious and individualistic and don't want to submit to authority!", "You are always welcome to attend but you will be treated as a second class citizen unless you become a 'member'", "You are forsaking the assembling of the saints!". I hear this stuff all the time and it always strikes me as an attempt to shout down those who ask the wrong sorts of questions.

I wish "Reverend" Sandlin the best but I am quite certain his quest is doomed to fail. The system will keep on chugging along until, like Europe, people finally grow disinterested and all that will remain are the foolish cathedrals. Unlike Europe most of our "churches" are so hideous, ostentatious and tacky that no one will want to visit them. Perhaps they will becomes mosques. When that happens we will see the church of Christ rising up from the ruins to do what has been going on quietly for centuries in spite of, not because of, organized religion: Christians telling others about Jesus, helping the downtrodden, visiting the widow, feeding the poor, loving the unlovable. We will realize that we not only don't need organized religion of any flavor to follow Christ but that it actually hampers our walk far more than it helps. I am looking forward to that day in spite of the angst that will accompany it because only then will we be free to be what we are called to be rather than being coerced into doing what we never were intended to do.

Is Radical Together the catalyst for change in the institutional church?

Many Christians, myself included, have come to the realization that something is, for lack of a better word, drastically wrong in the institutional church. We come to this realization by different paths but generally speaking what unites us is comparing the traditional church with the church as described and commanded in Scripture and recognizing that there is a huge gap. That gap has been around in various forms for over 1500 years and we just don’t seem able or willing to bridge it. In a lot of corners of the church, it is forbidden to even speak of it. The institutional emperor has no clothes but woe unto the Christian who points it out.

Typically the response of those who come to this point of view manifests itself in a gradual disentangling from the institutional church. Often there is an attempt to see change happen within the structure of the institutional church, an attempt that is both frustrating for the person trying to get a message across and viewed as divisive and threatening by those who are committed to the institutional model. In frustration the questioner leaves the institutional church behind and sets out to find organic/simple/home church somewhere else with varying degrees of success. The only interaction many of us have with the traditional church and the vast majority of Christians who are in it are equal parts “beating head against the wall” with our friends and lengthy and impassioned critiques detailing why the institutional church is wrong. While some people are convicted and “join the cause”, many more see us as malcontents that just need to either go away or shut up and sit down in their pew.

As I continue to think about David Platt’s book Radical Together, I wonder if his is the better method when compared to voting with our feet? He seems to “get” a lot of the issues in the church: our overreliance on clergy, our love of self-sustaining programs, our tendency to confuse The Church with “the place I go on Sunday”, our love of money and our relative lack of concern for the lost except as lip-service. This recognition leads to a ministry model that looks in some ways like most traditional churches but operates in a, well, radical way.

Is Platt’s approach a way to enact real, substantive change through the backdoor rather than impacting the church by walking out of the front door?

Ultimately I don’t think that it is the answer for many of us. Just speaking for myself and my family, we have a hard time sitting through a traditional “worship service”. To be blunt, the rigidity, the rows of people sitting mutely while someone else prays or speaks, the whole performance mentality of it all makes the institutional church untenable and change like the ones David Platt is championing must come from the leaders of a given local church. This is problematic because again asking questions and seeking change from a regular layperson is going to be labeled divisive, anti-authoritarian and dangerous.

However, for those who are unwilling to completely abandon the institutional church, David’s “Radical Together” approach has a great deal of merit. It moves the focus away from the church building, church programs, church meetings and church leaders and onto the Body of Christ. Evangelism doesn’t mean inviting someone to church to hear a sermon, it means sharing your faith. Ministry opportunities are not based on the churches schedule of events, they are everywhere and all around you. You can serve others without getting permission from the pastor. It all depends, as everything really does in the institutional church, on the leaders buying into the idea and passing that on. Sadly, a lot of people in a given church are not going to like this. At all. I have no doubt that people have abandoned Brook Hills where David Platt pastors because they don’t like someone shaking up church as they know it. Many clergy leaders are going to see this as a threat to the churches finances and by proxy their own finances. Giving up control is seen as a sure path to heresy and confusion. So following the Radical Together model is not going to work in many (most?) local churches. It is perhaps going to lead to some institutional churches that actually leverage the benefits of large groups of people and full-time leaders to multiply their Kingdom impact way beyond what you normally find in a traditional church.

While I am all for making new disciples and seeing those disciples gather as the church in a simple, “organic” fashion I am not at all interested in knocking the dust off my sandals at the door of the traditional church and abandoning the vast majority of my brothers and sisters. Nor am I interested in gritting my teeth and sitting in a traditional church service. Books like Radical Together and Jim Belcher’s Deep Church are forays into the bastion of institutionalism that might start to bridge the gap between these camps, camps that are increasingly defining the church between “traditional” and “non-traditional” settings at the same time the traditional church is dividing into "For Rob Bell" and "Against Rob Bell" factions. Radical Together is hampered, necessarily, by operating within an institutional framework but it may present the best hope for the vast majority of Christians in that setting to get involved in the work of ministry directly and that can only be beneficial to the mission of the church.

I truly believe that as people are empowered and encouraged to not only minister outside of the walls of the church building but also to study the Word, they will naturally come to the conclusion many of us have reached regarding the church. But even if they don’t, I would much rather see Christians in institutional churches being equipped and empowered to do the work of ministry than I would sullenly keep pointing out the flaws of institutionalism. I think that men like David Platt and Jim Belcher can be a catalyst for that change. It isn’t as much of a change as I would like to see but all real reformations have to start somewhere.

Back to the beginning of this journey

I read a couple of interesting posts this morning, one from Bobby Auner, church refugee, and one from Eric Carpenter, Ceremony? Why? and it got me thinking about the path God has put so many on and that he put me on around two years ago. Back in November of 2008 I wrote this post and as I went back and read it this morning, I think I would tweak a few words here and there but by and large this was the beginning of so much of where my thoughts have been directed since.

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Kabuki

Main Entry: Ka·bu·ki
Pronunciation: \kə-ˈbü-kē, ˈkä-bü-(ˌ)kē\
Function: noun
Etymology: Japanese
Date: 1899

: traditional Japanese popular drama performed with highly stylized singing and dancing

It would seem sadly fitting that 491 years after that day in Wittenberg, Germany we find the church in such dire straits. A lot of what passes for “Christianity” today is gross heresy because the Gospel is watered down to make it less offensive to sinners, and as such it becomes “another gospel” and as such is declared anathema by Paul in his letter to the Galatians. But much of what is declared to be appropriate in “Bible believing”, orthodox churches is little more than a carefully choreographed and stylized dance, with actors who know their roles and carry them out as expected, saying the right thing, looking the right way. Even the churches that are admired as being paragons of "Reformation" thinking are seemingly content to carry on the dance, comfortable that what they are doing is the right thing: Sunday worship=Sunday school+1 hour of singing and preaching+maybe a Sunday evening sermon for an hour.

So what should the church look like? The model now is to dutifully show up on Sunday morning, an hour early for Sunday school if you are especially devout. You sit in your pew, stand up when told to stand up, sit down when told to sit down, drop your check or cash (or pass it on) when the offering plate comes, listen to the announcements, sing a couple of songs when the choir isn’t performing, listening to a sermon for 20-45 minutes and then heading out after the closing prayer. It is highly regulated, the same every week and does very little to foster a “love one another” atmosphere. I have often said in response to the “just love Jesus” crowd, how can you love Him if you don’t have any idea who He is? In the same vein, how can we love one another if we don’t know one another? Church is designed now for us to receive, we listen in Sunday school, we listen to the choir, we listen to the prayer, we listen to the sermon. It is very comfortable and very easy to be anonymous. It is also pretty easy to not get to know anyone, especially as the church gets bigger.

Men like Michael Horton, who is someone who I admire and appreciate for his knowledge and ability to communicate, still buy into the notion that the church is fine in its present form, we just need to modify what is being taught. According to Horton and company on the White Horse Inn, what makes a church a “True Church” is the Word rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered. Umm, what about Christians? If you have a guy faithfully preaching and passing the wine and bread to a room full of unbelievers, is that a church? Isn’t the church the assembling of the body of Christ under the Word? The focus is not on a faithful preacher, is it? As long as we stay in the church sandbox, we just need the right order of worship, the right exegesis, the right observance of the sacraments. I am a big advocate of deeper study, of expository, verse by verse, chapter by chapter Bible preaching that links one Sunday sermon to the next. But is that all that we need?

As I was watching Luther with my friend James last night, it struck me that when you look at Luther and read his 95 Theses, what Luther was trying to do was reform the church within the framework the church had created. Given the circumstances that is understandable. But we haven't gone much beyond that in the intervening 491 years. We are still content to tinker around in the sandbox, moving the shovel over here and the pail over there.

The need for a fresh reformation is not limited to the egregious false gospel preached in emergent churches or in far left liberal “mainline” Protestantism. It is also found in many of the most “conservative” churches, churches that pride themselves on fidelity to Word and creed and confession, who wear the mantle of “Reformed” like a superhero cape.

This need for reformation goes beyond how we preach, or what music we sing, or the programs we run. It is not about tweaking around the edges, tinkering with the basic model. It goes to how we view the church and how, or if, we get beyond the model of the vast majority of churches. Semper reformanda should not be about returning to the 1950's. Or even the 1600's. Our source should always be the Word of God. Being "Reformed" is not a declaration that we subscribe to this Reformed confession or that creed, but that we seek God's will in the church, in our teaching and preaching, in our prayers, in our worship, in our lives.

So who am I to make such a grandiose, sweeping declaration? What of all the more learned men in the church, shouldn’t they get to decide how the church is run? I should maybe just be quiet and go about my business. Maybe not. I am hardly a modern day Martin Luther, or even a modern day Ulrich Zwingli! I haven’t exactly done a really good job of leading in the church in the past so what business do I have in declaring a need for an overhaul of how we “do church” in America especially but throughout Christendom? I am nobody I guess, but I am one of His sheep and thanks to men like Martin Luther and William Tyndale I can read His Word and because of that and because I love His church, I am concerned. That concern drives me to speak out, not out of anger or out of arrogance but out of fear. Fear that we are worshipping a jealous, holy God in a way that suits us instead of glorifying Him.

I do not have an end-result in mind, a preordained conclusion. I am not calling for the wholesale abandonment of the church, the "steeple house" in favor of so-called "house churches". But I am similarly not content to just muddle through like we are, tinkering around in the sandbox unafraid or unconcerned with why we do what we do because that is just how we have always done it. But I want to think out loud on this public forum, to express what my thoughts are and to encourage constructive conversation and even rebuke if needed. I want to examine every aspect of the church as it exists today, not just in this external or that, but in everything we do, including some of the most cherished traditions we hold.

This is very important to express up front. My intent is not to slander any of the multitude of godly men who lead our churches today, or the people who attend and serve, or the men raised up by God in the past upon whose shoulders we stand. This thought process is NOT an indictment of any church I have, am or will attend or any individual who I have been taught by, sat under the preaching of, or even anyone who has sat under my teaching or preaching. But the human heart, whether mine or Calvin’s or John MacArthur’s, tends to wander like the sheep we are. We need constant reflection in the mirror of Scripture to see if what we are doing is worship authorized by God or if it is strange fire. That is my intent, and that is my only intent. I invite you to think and pray and study along with me, and see where it leads.

The latest salvo on the Calvinist resurgence

The Christian Science Monitor is the latest publication to examine the resurgence of Calvinism in the church. The article, Christian faith: Calvinism is back, takes its readers to Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., home of one of the T4G founders, Mark Dever, and parent church of 9 Marks Ministries. There is little that is new in the report, it includes many of the same talking points we see over and over including the obligatory quote from Colin Hansen.

In spite of the clamor from the small group of self-appointed watchmen in places like Westminster Seminary in California, the energy in Calvinism is in places like Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minnesota and in conferences like Together for the Gospel and the Gospel Coalition. Those are places where the great doctrines of grace are given their proper preeminence and the myriad extra-Biblical baggage that comes with the Reformed tradition take a backseat. That doesn’t sit well with some corners of the church that see that as a betrayal of Calvinism. In doing so they demonstrate a troubling misunderstanding of what Calvinism is all about or at least what it should be about. Calvinism at its heart should be about recognizing and giving all glory to God instead of exalting Reformed church traditions over all other traditions.

I think the article exposes the good and the bad in the resurgent Calvinist movement. On the one hand, I like this:

In addition to Sunday worship and Wednesday night Bible study, they spend hours each week in small-group study or one-on-one "discipling." They say those sessions – a time for confessions, encouragement, and prayer – are the most challenging and rewarding feature of church life.

"Christian fellowship is so much more than hanging out with friends," says Claudia Anderson, a magazine editor. "It involves spiritual intimacy, support, learning, counseling, and stunning acts of kindness."

Christopher Brown, a lawyer, concurs. "I came for the theology but stayed for the community," he says. "As Americans, we're so individualistic. But the New Testament rebukes this 'rugged individualism.' We're not saved to be lone rangers."

It is very interesting that they see the time outside of the Sunday morning service as "the most challenging and rewarding feature of church life". On the other hand …

Membership at CHBC isn't for the faint of holy. Classes on theology and Christian history are required before joining. At the "Lord's Supper" once a month, members stand and recite an oath that ties them to one another.

An oath before sharing the Supper? Where is THAT in Scripture? The teaching at CHBC is described as “preaching for PhDs” and I can attest that the sermons are very meaty. I fear that many men fall into the trap of trying to emulate what they hear from Dever, Al Mohler and others and in doing so are teaching way over the heads of most people (and frankly way over their own heads). Simple teaching is often the best teaching.

So there is good and not so good in the article. I think that anytime we see people getting more serious about their faith, about Scripture and ultimately about God, that is a good thing. There is no doubt in my mind that the renewed emphasis on Calvinism is a boon to the church. Of course it has its downside. There is a very real sense that a lot of what we find in Calvinism, old and new, is quite academic and cerebral. In place of action we see lots of studying. There is a lot of knowledge about God but not as much action on behalf of God, if that makes sense. My big concern is that Calvinism becomes the end in and of itself. As long as you are Reformed and getting more Reformed, you are good. I have fallen prey to that thinking myself but I have since come to a somewhat different mindset:

Reformed theology/Calvinism is not the pinnacle of Christian maturity. It is the beginning.

A recognition of the sovereignty of God over all creation and particularly over salvation is the beginning of our understanding of God. It is the foundation but a building is more than a foundation. Soteriology is not the final piece of the puzzle, it is the first. Calvinism, new or old, should spur us to study the Scriptures more deeply and in doing so I have found that many of the traditions that I have held don’t match up with the Bible even though they sound good. It drives me nuts when people ask “Is it Reformed to do such and such” instead of “Is it Biblical”? The answer may be the same either way but in many areas, especially ecclesiology, what is traditionally Reformed is not terribly Scriptural. My hope is that as people respond to the ancient doctrines of grace, they will search more deeply in the Scriptures. Not just for proof-text regarding predestination and election but also about the fellowship of the saints in the community of the elect, the Lord’s Supper as a meal among the redeemed instead of a religious ritual, a real and functional priesthood of all believers instead of a hierarchical ministry. I pray that the “New Calvinists” will keep searching backwards to guide our path forward, not merely to the 16th century but all the way to the 1st. That is what real reformation looks like!

A New Radical Reformation

Are we in a new Reformation or a new Radical Reformation?

Something is changing in the church. The staid, safe cultural church that has been the hallmark of 20th century America is fading fast. Something new is coming or perhaps is already here. New movements are springing up all over the place. At the same time many of the traditional bulwarks are crumbling. Denominations hold less sway than ever before. America is becoming a progressively more secular country or perhaps more accurately a more vaguely spiritual, less overtly “Christian” people. Poll after poll reflects the reality that Americans are less concerned with orthodoxy and more with self-fulfillment. Truth be known, I think it has always been this way. Now people are more willing to abandon the safety of religion and act according to their nature instead of hiding in the church. Amidst the turmoil, I think we are seeing a new Reformation taking place, or more accurately a new Radical Reformation.

One of the drivers of the Radical Reformation was access to the Word of God. In the Bible, translated into the vernacular of the people, regular people found a source of information that had been closed to them and that access led to people asking questions. Those questions led to actions, some that were not so good but many that were very positive. Where Rome once controlled the flow of information and access to the Bible, even among her own priestly caste, now the Word was widely available. In the same way, information is now available to virtually everyone that was not easily accessible even a decade ago outside of the halls of academia. It is much harder for the professional scholars and theologians to control the discourse in the church. With the advent of the internet we have easy access to materials and opinions outside of our own local church. In online booksellers like Amazon and smaller, niche book stores like Monergism books the average Christian has easy access to hundreds of thousands of books. No longer restricted to the local public library and the church library, Christians can buy all sorts of books that they otherwise wouldn’t have had access to and via the internet have access to opinions that once were unreachable. This unprecedented access is leading to dramatic change today just as it did nearly five hundred years ago. People are asking questions and finding out that many, many others have the same questions. The flipping of the switch that turned on the internet in many ways is our modern day version of nailing the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg.

Like the original Radical Reformation, the new found freedom has led to many excesses. In the Radical Reformation, all manner of kooks found an outlet. Freed from tight controls, some people invariably will go too far. It is like business casual dress. Most workplaces no longer require suits and ties for men and skirts and hose for women. That is great for the most part but in every office I have worked in there are those who take it too far, wearing clothes to work that would make a prostitute blush or dressing like you literally just rolled out of bed. In the same fashion on a much larger scale, people freed from the bounds of tradition invariably are going to spawn a few bad apples. In the Radical Reformation those bad apples led to the Munster Rebellion and the Zwickau Prophets. Today we see all sorts of excesses, less violent for sure but just as troubling. Dangerous doctrines like denying salvation by grace alone and justification by faith alone, the sufficiency of the Scriptures and the exclusive nature of Christ as the only path to redemption have all crept back in to the church.

For far too many people, the excesses of a few are reason to reject the whole. That is unnecessary and unhealthy. Just as the extremists and heretics in the original Radical Reformation died out and left behind a wonderful heritage in the mainstream Anabaptists (a heritage that I would argue is at the heart of most evangelical churches and the very establishment of the United States), so too I believe that God’s people, armed with His Word and indwelt by the Spirit, will stand fast for the faith once for all delivered to the saints and those seeking to poison the church will eventually grow weary and move on to greener pastures. God’s people will survive and honestly this turmoil is good for the church because in far too many ways the church has grown flabby, comfortable and complacent. Content to be an acceptable social structure in the broader secular community, the church has essentially lost its witness to the world.

There are many other similarities between the original and modern Radical Reformation. As in the Radical Reformation, we find that those who question the status quo today are all lumped together. Just like all Radical Reformers are lumped together as “Anabaptists” even though many of the most infamous bear no similarity to the majority of Anabaptists, so too any who dares raise their hand today and ask “Why?” are shouted down as part and parcel of some heretical camp. The entrenched traditional forces are lashing out at those with the temerity to ask questions but in doing so the tone and anger is such that the defenders of tradition finds themselves increasingly out of the conversation, relegated to blogging at each other and harrumphing about them durn lib’rals.

One major difference is that at least in this iteration of the Radical Reformation, the forces of tradition don’t have the ability to put dissenters to death. Unable to wield a literal sword, they are reduced to the sword of mockery. Instead of burning “heretics” at the stake, they now burn strawmen. Some (perhaps much) of what has come out of this new Radical Reformation is both silly and dangerous and frankly deserves to be examined, found to be in error and discarded. Unfortunately what is actually happening is that in place of a scalpel and a discerning, keen eye, we have a sledgehammer and a blindfold. Many blogs I read as recently as a year ago I find insufferable to read today. In the witch hunt to root out heterodoxy, many defenders of tradition are incapable and unwilling to examine their own firmly held traditions. In doing so they become guilty of the same sort of errors, of a different sort but errors nonetheless, of those that they spend so much time attacking. When men like Jim Belcher write a very mild attempt to reconcile competing camps, he is attacked by the watchdogs of orthodoxy for being insufficiently virulent.

Let me be clear again, there are plenty of people teaching squirrely doctrines. That does not mean that everyone who questions the status quo is a heretic and frankly it is utterly unhelpful to paint everyone with the same broad brush. We stand amidst a sea change in the church. Rather than playing the part of the Inquisitors, orthodox thinkers would be far more useful being involved in the conversation. Change is coming and in many ways this change is a good thing! I so desire to see the church become a light to the world, a radical witness of changed lives and a place of sending out Christian to proclaim the risen Lord instead of a social club. I for one would rather be involved in being a voice that is willing to ask “Why?’ but still be a champion for orthodoxy than be a spectator throwing stones from the safe confines of my local church or seminary.

Viva la Radical Reformation!

How will reformation come to the church?

This is a question I wrestle with a lot. There are days, especially recently, where I don’t blog because I don’t think anyone is listening. Between general apathy, stubborn clinging to tradition befitting the most staunch Roman Catholic, institutional inertia, overweening pride and worst of all my own failure to live up to the standards I call for, it can feel hopeless. I can write with all seriousness that the church has lost her way for hundreds of years. Denominational splintering, theological wandering, neglect of the Word, refusal to fellowship, on and on it goes. The problems can seem so enormous, the gulf between the Word and our practice (personal and corporate) so great, that true reformation of the church seems impossible.

Having said that, I do know this for certain. Reformation will not come to the church by devoting ourselves to 16th and 17th century confessions nor by seeking to exclude from meaningful (i.e. more than a begrudging acknowledgement) fellowship Christians with whom we disagree on secondary issues. Confessions are wonderful and I refer to them all the time but when used as a litmus test for who can or cannot fellowship with us, their purpose has been perverted and their usefulness evaporates. Reformation in the church is something that must reform “The Church” and not be an attempt to create doctrinally pure enclaves. You can endlessly carve out others from the body of Christ until only you remain. That is not reformation, that is the precise opposite. That is telling Christ that what His Word declares important is less important than our own prideful pet peeves and doctrinal preferences. One of the faults of fundamentalism is a radical separation from the world around it, the very world that we are called to go forth and call to repent and belief in Christ. Instead of “in the world but not of the world” , you get just "out of the world". One of the faults of some corners of the reformation movement is a radical separation from the rest of the church that rivals that error. Saying I desire reformation but only on my terms and only by conforming yourself to my distinctives is a false and damaging misguided notion that has done nothing to unite and reform the church.

If we cry “Semper Reformanda” but only reformation on our own terms, we grossly misunderstand the nature and purpose of the church in the first place. The church gathered is not a place for theological triumphalism but of worship, fellowship and edification in the unity of our common confession and our common salvation. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that raising the banner of your doctrinal distinctive and centuries old traditions equates to reform. Nor should we strive to conform ourselves to the form of the 16th century church. Reforming the church will come only as a work of the Holy Spirit, calling God's people back to the faithful, simple expression of the gathering of the church under the power of the Spirit and the authority of the Word of God. We must spend far less time poring over tomes of theology and far more time in prayer. Less time worrying about the order of worship and more about the object of worship. Less time devising ways to keep others out and more time spent praying for genuine unity.

Let us strive in prayer and humility for reformation in the church, reformation in His way and not ours, reformation that brings people into conformity with Christ and not conformity with ourselves. Reformation is a desperate need in the church but only when done with the right motives and the right heart.

Is the Reformation over?

That is a question that has been raised on a number of occasions. I was thinking about it again Thursday, spurred on by a note on Facebook from Ligonier that asked that exact question.

From the standpoint of the key doctrines at stake, certainly not. Not because we are unfamiliar with foundational doctrines like sola scriptura and justification by faith alone, but because these doctrines are constantly under assault. There is always someone looking for a loophole, somehow looking to claim credit at least in part for their own salvation. Coupled with this is the fact, as Dr. Sproul points out, that while the rhetoric out of Rome is toned down and Protestants aren’t being burned at the stake for their “heresy”, Rome still espouses a form of works based righteousness, where the inherent righteousness of humans plays a pivotal part in salvation.

The Reformation was focused, almost myopically, on justification and authority. Rightly so, because the basis on which a sinner is saved is the foundation of the Gospel witness. If you get that wrong, you get the whole thing wrong and end up preaching “another gospel” which we have seen coming out of Rome for over one thousand years as well as from other heretical groups that have sprung up since the first century. This false gospel that relies even in part on the inherent righteousness of man and his works is incompatible with Biblical Christianity and until that damning doctrine is overturned, Rome will continue to be estranged from Christianity. In ecumenical talks, we often hear about common ground and Rome sees these talks as a way to bring the wayward brethren back into the fold. There can be no common ground with a group that denies the Gospel. I have no interest in “returning to the fold” when the fold denies the Gospel. Protestants haven’t left “The Church”, the Roman church abandoned the Gospel more than 1000 years ago. I appreciate the candor of Dr. Sproul in his closing statement:

At the moment the Roman Catholic Church condemned the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone, she denied the gospel and ceased to be a legitimate church, regardless of all the rest of her affirmations of Christian orthodoxy. To embrace her as an authentic church while she continues to repudiate the biblical doctrine of salvation is a fatal attribution. We're living in a time where theological conflict is considered politically incorrect, but to declare peace when there is no peace is to betray the heart and soul of the gospel.

You don’t see this sort of candor and unapologetic standing for the Gospel much anymore. Too many people tiptoe around Rome because they a) are afraid to offend anyone, b) probably can’t articulate the difference between Biblical justification and what Rome peddles and c) are more concerned with making political allies than disciples. The Roman Catholic Church is the schismatic organization, having declared the Gospel of Jesus Christ anathema and abandoning the only Gospel by which men can be saved. It may affirm many important doctrines like the Trinity, it may stand side by side with Christians on social issues like abortion but no group that denies the Gospel can be yoked with believers. Roman Catholics, by and large, are not brothers to be reconciled with; they are lost people who need the Gospel preached to them (of course so are many “members” of Protestant churches, but that is a different topic).

That brings us back to the question at hand. My other reason for saying that the Reformation is not over is that so much was left undone. We recovered the Biblical Gospel and brought the Word of God to the people but retained the ritualistic worship of Rome. Because of the intense struggle to reclaim the Gospel and the rediscovery of the Word of God, the early years of the Reformation focused on the “big picture” doctrines. Meanwhile the gathering of the church retained the look and style of Rome. Priests were replaced by pastors. The ritual of the Eucharist was replaced by the ritual of the Lord’s Supper. Babies were still baptized with a modified ceremony. The audience still sat and listened. The guy up front was called something different and the message was radically different but the mode of delivery was essentially unchanged. The local parish was replaced by the local church. Many magisterial reformers retained a semblance of Roman hierarchy with a top down style of leadership.

So no, the Reformation is not over. We must continue to strive for the Gospel. We must also seek to reform those areas left untouched after the Reformation or worse yet those areas where dissidents were punished with death for questioning tradition. When you “reform” the church but still burned, drowned and tortured brothers for doctrines that are common place in Baptist churches today, you have to recognize that the reform was incomplete.

A call for a new Reformation in the church: Why do we worship?

In the last post I asked the “who” question: Just who is it that we are worshipping? Not who do we think we are worshipping or who does modern culture tell us we are worshipping, but who does the Bible reveal to us that we are worshipping? Hopefully that got you thinking about Christ and who He is revealed to be. Now I want to approach the “why” question.

First, the reasons we don’t worship. OK, that is clumsy wording. First, these are not reasons why Christians worship. That sounds better.

We don’t worship to be saved

It is an article of faith that salvation is apart from human effort or action. Salvation is accomplished through the cross and received by faith which is a gift from God. God does not trade our worship and devotion for salvation. In other words, we worship because we are saved, not in order to be saved.

All Christian worship is post-salvation. In other words there is no such thing as Christian worship by an unregenerate person. Only those who are born-again participate in Christian worship. An unregenerate person may “go to church”, they may bow their heads when we pray, they may sing along side us, they may listen intently to the sermon and take notes but until the Spirit works upon their hearts, they are not engaged in true worship of God. Further, any worship outside of Christian worship is a form of idolatry whether atheistic self-worship or Muslim worship or Mormon worship or Hindu, Buddhist, whatever. Any worship that has as its object of praise and adoration anything other than Christ is inherently idolatrous and blasphemous. It is too easy to get caught up in religious pluralism and make erroneous statements like “We all are worshipping the same God in different ways”. The reality is that there is room for two kinds of worship, proper worship of God and idolatry.

We don’t worship Him to gain something for ourselves

Tread carefully here. We gain nothing from worship. Nothing tangible. There is not a return on investment. If we give money, food to our neighbor, visit someone in prison, sing songs of praise, prayer of thanksgiving God doesn’t shower us with blessings. Don’t misinterpret that. God is constantly blessing His people, but there is not an equivalency where X units of worship = Y units of blessing. The great lie of the health, wealth and prosperity preaching is that worship and blessing are part of a marketplace, commodities to be traded and exchanged. God blesses us in spite of our feeble attempts to worship Him. We may feel uplifted by praising God, or doing works of mercy. But ultimately worship is an act of gratitude and adoration directed to the one who saved us, and we worship in spite of any blessings we receive. After all, He saved us from our sins. Isn’t that enough?

We don’t worship Him because it makes Him more than He is.

God is not made more godlike by our worship. He doesn’t seek or demand our worship to pump Himself up. The God of the Bible is not one in a pantheon of gods who seeks more followers to make Himself more powerful. God is God whether everyone worships Him or no one worships Him. Truth is not measured by numbers, and the validity of God is not measured by numbers of followers. Statistics like this religion or that is the fastest growing are interesting but ultimately irrelevant. I don’t care if there are 6 billion Muslims and 1 lone Christian, it doesn’t make Islam real and it doesn’t make Christianity false. Worship is not a numbers game.

So why worship? Why bother? If you are a Christian, you are already saved so why not send God a nice thank-you card and move on with our lives. Why all the fuss over worshipping Him at all?

We worship Him because we are designed to worship something. Before we were saved, we worshipped all manner of idols, most often ourselves. Give me a person and place them in an unfamiliar setting and they will eventually end up worshipping something. They may not call it worship, but that is what it is. Whether their career, or their pleasures, or their family, or sports, or money they will find something to focus and heap their attention on.

When we are saved, our entire view changes. Not our every thought, or desire or deed but our view. In spite of our failings and sins, in spite of the times when we stumble or lose our way, the Christian will always return his gaze to the Son of God. We look to Him because whenever we look away, eventually we realize how futile our worship of anything else is. Christ is the sole object of true Christian worship because He alone is worthy to be worshipped and worship of anything else leaves us unfulfilled.

I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies. 2 Sam 22:4

I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies. Psa 18:3

For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. Heb 3:3

Christ is worthy in a way that far transcends any human being, thus I believe the comparison to Moses as a comparison that the Hebrew audience would understand. Moses was the ultimate prophet for Jews, and in comparing Moses to Christ we see that even the greatest of men is but a pale shadow of the glory of Christ.

In Revelation we get a deeper view of His worthiness to be worshipped in His triumphal return.

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” Rev 4:11

Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” Rev 5: 11-12

And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” Rev 5: 9-10

He is worthy to open the scrolls, He is worthy because He created all things and He is worthy because by His death He redeemed all things to Himself. We worship Him because He, and He alone, is worthy of worship.

The why is easy. We shouldn’t even ask why we should worship Christ, we should ask why would you worship anyone or anything else?

A call for a new Reformation in the church: Who do we worship?

I have found myself drifting more and more into thoughts of “how” and “where” we should worship and in doing so, while recognizing that those are valid and valuable questions, I have neglected my personal study and reflection on some of the more important and foundational questions pertaining to Christian worship.

Before we even examine the “how” of worship, you need to answer the “who” and the “why” of worship. The answer may seem easy on the surface: “I am just worshippin’ Jesus!” but the reality when you dig deeper is that who God is by no means is a settled question in the church. The “why” is one that even fewer people have given much thought to. I know I have often approached worship without the proper gravity and reflection on who I am worshipping and why I am worshipping Him. A lot of this has been spurred on by some conversations I have had online regarding the so-called “regulative principle of worship” but before I delve into that, I want to spend some time in reflecting on who the Body of Christ is worshipping in our personal, family and corporate expressions. After that I want to get into the “why” we worship “who” we worship. Only after that do I want to get into specifics on the "how" and "where" as I try to get that cart back behind the horse where it belongs.

The answer to the question of “who” we worship is more than merely “God” or even a list of the attributes of God. The attributes of God are valuable to understand and given short shrift in our study of the Word, but a list of attributes is inadequate to answer the question of who He is. We can only and must only turn to the Word, for that is where He has revealed Himself to us. The image of God has been terribly tarnished by many who name the name of Christ. I don’t think most of it is a willful act, although in some cases it is, but it is something that needs be redeemed.

First and foremost, God is holy. I know some people focus on God is love, but I assert that we cannot even begin to fathom God’s love until we squarely face God’s holiness contrasted with our sinfulness. God is not merely a much better person than we are, He is holy on an order of magnitude that separates us from Him infinitely outside of His intervention. When I think of the holiness of God, I instinctively turn to Isaiah 6.

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”
And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isa 6:1-5)

That image is one that captures the awesome and awful majesty of God. The seraphim who dwell in His presence sing eternally of His holiness and dare not even look upon Him, covering their eyes and feet. The great prophet Isaiah, in seeing the King is “undone” by what he sees for he recognizes that he and all of humanity stand condemned before the throne.

How carelessly we tread in the presence of our Lord! How cavalier we are in the handling of His Word!

Because of God’s holiness, He hates sin. Not just doesn’t much care for it, or is displeased by it or is disappointed by our behavior. Sin doesn’t hurt God’s feelings. God hates sin. We ignore or gloss over that truth at our own peril because God is not an impotent being who dislikes sin but can do nothing about it.

For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. (Exodus 12:12)

We read that and gulp. To make ourselves feel better, we often throw out “God hates the sin but loves the sinner” to try to make God seem more fair. Two problems though, first that doesn’t appear in the Bible and second just the opposite does:

The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. (Psalm 5:5)

The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence. (Psalm 11:5)

(These verses raise a question outside of the scope of this conversation: If God loves sinners but still sends them to hell, what does that say about God? He is impotent to stop them from going? Anyway, that is not the topic at hand.)

But what about Jesus, He is all love isn’t He, not like that mean God of the Old Testament? Hardly. The Son of Man is not a hippie flashing peace signs and holding love-ins with sinners.

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. (Matt 25:41)

Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. (Rev 1: 12-16)

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev 20: 11-15)

This is one of my favorites and it should send a chill down your spine to think on the Lord of Hosts coming in glory…

Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. (Rev 19: 11-16)

Six times in Matthew alone Jesus speaks of outer darkness or the fiery furnace where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. So Jesus is no 98 pound weakling getting sand kicked in his face at the beach. He willfully humbled Himself in the Incarnation, but make no mistake about who He is. He is not going to be on the outside looking in, plaintively crying for us to let Him in so He can love us. He is riding that door down mounted on a warhorse!

One of the assurances of the Christian in this life is that God is just and will set all things right when His Son returns to sit in judgment. When faced with iniquity and wickedness in the world, when bad things happen to “good” people and evil people prosper, our comfort is that it is not our place to punish the evildoer, it is His. He comes not as a humble servant on a donkey, but as a conquering Lord riding on a white horse arrayed with the armies of heaven for war.

But Jesus Christ is also not just the new sheriff in town coming to clear out the villains and save the day. It is a hard truth, but even those of us (which is most of us) who think that we are the good guys will find in the Word that we are actually wearing black hats, not white hats in this Western (not to be confused with black and white cowboys). Praise God that He is indeed also a God of not just wrath and judgment but also of love and mercy. Were God nothing but a God who is holy, just and wrathful He would still be deserving of our worship but our worship would be all of fear, and not at all of love. But that is not the God we worship because of one word: grace. His grace, His love, His mercy to those who were His enemies is a splendor to behold.

He dwelt among us, the Father sending His only begotten Son to take on flesh…

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

He humbled Himself, poured Himself out to be like us…

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2: 5-11)

He knows our suffering…

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Heb 2: 14-18)

He died for us, laying down His life willingly...

For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” (John 10: 17-18)

He did so not because of anything good in us, indeed He died for us while we were yet sinners…

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5: 6-11)

Christ didn’t die for good men, He didn’t die to make good men better, but He who was infinitely righteous died for those who by nature are children of wrath and self-made enemies of God (Eph 2:3 )

In the greatest and most unexplainable act of mercy sublime, Jesus Christ, very God of God, became sin for us and bore in His flesh the wrath that we deserved so that we might be found righteous before God based on His merit.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Cor 5:21)

On the cross He fulfilled the demands of the Law, he bore the penalty in His flesh and with the wounds in His hands and feet He settled the debt forever. He was pierced for our transgressions and by His stripes we are healed….

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. (Isa 53: 4-6)

And it all happened on a cruel cross, a symbol of shame that has been turned into an emblem of hope for countless Christians purchased by the blood of Christ, the debt paid, the trespasses forgiven…

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. (Col 2: 13-14)

THAT is who I worship. The Sovereign most High and Holy, most Merciful and Loving. He and He alone is worthy to be worshipped. That is who I pray to, plead with, love, adore and fear.

That is but a tiny sliver of who God is revealed to be in His Word but even that brief intro should suffice to show that the One we worship is due and deserving of all worship, honor and glory.

Next, the question “why” do we worship?

A call for a new Reformation in the church: Just who are we worshipping anyway?

Displays of riches have long been a feature of Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox church. The local parish priest and the nun may dress and live humbly, but the “Pope” and the “Patriarch” have no such restrictions.

Case in point was a recent article on the new patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church. The article reads: Russian Orthodox Church enthrones new patriarch. Lets skip for a second the idea of man who is supposed to be a minister of the Gospel being "enthroned". The opulence of this mans attire is obscene.Other pictures of the church leaders at the coronation or whatever it was, along with sweetheart Vladimir Putin (who always is frowning and looks like he is collecting money for the Russian mob) show similar fancy clothing, gold and jewels, elaborate hats and robes and chains around their necks. When you read the Gospels and then look at pictures of stuff like this, and men bowing down to kiss the gold ring of a “pope” who is similarly decked out in fancy garments and surrounded by functionaries who are also wearing a fortune in apparel and accoutrements, you should notice with minimal discernment a disconnect with the simple and humble faith of Christianity. That is unfortunately nothing new. But…

At the risk of being put out of the Reformed camp more than I already am…

Unfortunately, this phenomena of ostentatious behavior is not restricted to Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches or even skeezy televangelists or prosperity preachers. I checked in on the Ligonier Ministries blog and the first post I saw was a defense of the new sanctuary and fellowship hall being constructed at St. Andrews Chapel, the church where Dr. R.C. Sproul, Sr. serves. Check out this pamphlet for St. Andrews Chapel's new "sanctuary". The place is going to be enormous, holding 1400 at a time in the sanctuary and “a covered open air pavilion that will seat 300 and a Fellowship Hall that will seat an additional 360.”

I know that Dr. Sproul is untouchable in many circles, and I respect much of his teaching immensely. But seriously, is this how we ought to be worshipping the Risen Lord? Is Dr. Sproul's teaching that vital that we must enshrine his pulpit in a building like this?

The title of the blog post is “The Unchanging Gospel”. I am pretty sure that the Gospel doesn’t require a massive, brand new building to be preached in.

Now this is all their money, freely given, and they can do whatever the want with it and I don’t want to sound like Judas, complaining about the value of a jar of fragrant oil that was used to anoint Christ but could have been sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor (John 12:5). But really, what is this place going to cost? A couple of million? More? In the midst of horrible economic times, no matter what the motivation, an extravagant building like this is frankly obscene. Heck, even in great economic times buildings like this are extravagant and unnecessary.

When you recognize the linkage between the lavish palaces and edifices of Rome and the massive new structure you are building from scratch, that should set off warning gongs for you. That is not a time for spin control; it is time for prayer and reflection. To use churchy lingo, is this being a good steward? If people are drawn to St. Andrew’s Chapel because of the type of teaching and worship they find there, then plant a dozen more smaller similar churches in the area. I am sure they could find no lack of young pastors to lead those churches under the direction, guidance and tutelage of a luminary like R.C. Sproul. What Reformed guy wouldn’t want to sit at the feet of Dr. Sproul and learn? But if people are drawn because it is “R.C. Sproul’s church” then they are coming for the wrong motivation and Dr. Sproul is not a young man. What happens to this church when Dr. Sproul, who looked pretty frail at Together for the Gospel a year ago, is unable for whatever reason to be actively involved in the ministry at St. Andrews?

When a church is growing, there are two ways to go. One is to build ever larger buildings and the other is to replicate and spread. Think of the influence a dozen small St. Andrews clones could have in the area instead of one huge building with 1000 people trying to leave after the Sunday morning service all at once. Our impulse should not be like the world, bigger and better. After all, what is the object of our worship?

A Call for a New Reformation in the church: Membership, schmembership

Time for a dogmatic overstatement! The very institution of local church membership has become essentially meaningless. My reason for saying this is multifold but it starts out of the gate with my contention that formal church membership in a local church has no Scriptural support. I am not convinced at all by references to 1 Corinthians 12: 12-31 where it seems to me that Paul is making an analogy between the different members of our (physical) body and comparing it to the different members of the Body of Christ. I don’t see how we can make the leap from the use of the word “member” and apply it to a tradition of membership rolls in local organizations.

The key for me is verse 13: For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. 1 Cor 12: 13. Then Paul goes on to speak of members of that body. We certainly are all members, but not because we have our names on the rolls of a local church but because we are baptized into that one Body, the Body of Christ. Nor are references to lists of widows getting a distribution at all convincing and to suggest that the one confirms the other (lists of widows in need and formal membership lists) is ridiculous. Really, what we see is just the opposite. Christians A, B and C in membership at First Baptist and Christians X,Y and Z in membership at First Presbyterian are not members of the same local bodies but they are all members of “The Church”. In fact they share something with one another that many people in “membership” in their respective bodies do not share, that is being members of the Body of Christ. I am far more concerned with my standing in the Body of Christ than I am with my, or anyone else’s for that matter, standing in a local church organization.

But even beyond that (as if we can or should get beyond the lack of Biblical support), the practical working out of the system of membership has failed to achieve any useful purpose. I make that claim for two main reasons:

First, in any given church a substantial portion of the membership is unregenerate. That is a bold claim. I stand by it wholeheartedly. I base that in part on my experience, which granted is limited to less than a decade as a Christian, and in part on the methods by which we enable church membership. In paedobaptist churches, infants are brought into the covenant community by virtue of having parents who are believers. Little wonder that many of those darling infants being sprinkled turn out to be unbelievers and go to judgment lost in their sins. It is not because the church failed to catechize them or take them to Sunday evening services. It is because they are not elect and there was never any way that they were going to come to faith. In spite of that reality, thousands of churches keep sprinkling babies in a misguided attempt to maintain a sentimental church tradition. Credobaptist churches are often little better, baptizing young children and adults alike after they “make a decision” and pray a prayer. In a well-meaning but misguided quest to carry out the Great Commission, they are inviting people into a local church body as members and giving them a false assurance of salvation. Given the two headed monster of infant baptism and “decisional evangelism”, it is little wonder that the membership rolls of local churches are full of people who never go to a particular church (I would be willing to bet that our names are listed as members in at least two Baptist churches we haven’t attended for some time) or worse people who have never exhibited Biblical faith and repentance but think that they have based on baptism as an infant or praying a “sinners prayer”.

Second, the most common and probably most Scriptural objection is that without membership how can we have Biblical church discipline? That objection makes two major assumptions. First it assumes that if you are not formal members in a local church, then you cannot be disciplined. Second it assumes that in churches with formal membership lists, discipline of any sort actually happens. I think that both of these assumptions are highly suspect and faulty. I would argue that any Christian can be disciplined by whatever assembly they are part of. If they are a Christian they will accept loving discipline from the church. I am far more apt to listen to rebuke from men who I respect as mature brothers in Christ because they are my brothers than I am from someone who is in a position of contrived ecclesiastical authority but shows no sign of humble servant leadership. For discipline to be Biblical it is not required that a man with a seminary degree and a formal ordination be leading it. If Joe or Josh, men who are pastors but not “my pastor” rebuke me, or men like Rick or John who are not “pastors” at all rebuke me I would listen to their words. I may still not heed their words, but I at least will consider them!

On the flip side, in those churches that do have formal church membership rarely enforce church discipline. In some it is just not practical. How can someone in a church with 500 members effectively discipline members? Even in smaller churches, there is often little or no church discipline. There are a number of reasons for this but I think ultimately it comes down to this: if you are going to welcome into membership unregenerate people either by baptizing them as infants or leading them to make an emotional “decision”, then you are going to have little basis upon which to discipline them. Are you going to discipline a pagan for acting like a pagan?

Really, what does being a member of a local church do for you? There is no Scriptural mandate for it. You get to vote on the budget. You get to teach Sunday school (even though many “members” are unregenerate and not apt to teach, and some “non-members” or “regular attenders” are regenerate and are apt to teach. But I digress. ). You can submit to church discipline, which you should do regardless of your membership status. But local church membership seems to me to be contrived and worthless. There is nothing that supporters of church membership cite that cannot be accomplished without church membership.

The idea of formalized church membership with lists goes hand in hand with infant baptism as holdovers from Roman Catholicism. I may do more on this linkage later as time permits, but there is a great deal of background information that points to infant baptism and membership lists as being mechanisms invented by Rome as a means of control. In the good old days, if you were not a member of the Roman Catholic church you were outside of the body of Christ. In other words, membership in good standing in the visible local body was a prerequisite for being a member of the universal church, the Body of Christ (hmmm, now where have I heard that argument before). That is a strongly worded and vaguely supported statement, so I will have to beg your forbearance until I can dig my church history books out to gather support for it.

A call for a new Reformation in the church: Reformed Rock Stars

One of the great weaknesses among those who hold to Reformed theology is our tendency to look at the writings of other, more famous and well known Reformed theologians and treat their opinions as authoritative. Well Sproul says this or MacArthur says that or Piper preached this. We have shelves full of the works of dead theologians and living leaders of the faith. We go to conferences based on which famous Reformed theologians are speaking. If Together for the Gospel featured a half dozen pastors from East Dirtlick, Alabama and Pig Snout, Iowa instead of the Devers and Mahaneys of the church, I can guarantee that there wouldn't be five thousand men there and I wouldn't drive from Michigan to Kentucky to hear them speak. We are as caught up in the ccelebrity culture as the rest of culture, but instead of revering athletes or movie stars, we revere men who write the best books or give the best sermons.

If I had a dime for every sermon or talk I heard, or every sermon or talk I gave, that made multiple references to what this Reformed theologian or that thought on a topic I would be wealthy indeed. An argument over Scripture is not ended by a triumphal quotation of a litany of Reformed theologians. I can name 6 Reformed theologians, you can only name 3 so I win!

There is nothing wrong, and much that is right, with studying the works of the great men through the ages that were used of God. I appreciate the work of men like Calvin, Spurgeon and Edwards. They are a great aid in studying the Word, but they are not in and of themselves authoritative. We weaken our argument rather than strengthen it when we make our first line of argumentation the thoughts of a theologian instead of the Word of God.

Are Reformed theologians, even the most famous and oft quoted ones, ever wrong? Certainly they are. That is as true of modern men as it is of others. Modern Reformed theologians are as apt as any other man to bow to cultural pressure. When you sell tens of thousands of books a year, when you pastor a church of thousands of people are you immune to pressure? Of course not. That is not an indictment of their character, that is a truth of humanity. I think R.C Sproul is flat out wrong about infant baptism. I think that John MacArthur is just wrong about premillenial dispensationalism. Does that mean I think these men are useless or false teachers? Of course not. But I do think that when we examine an issue, it is absolutely incumbent upon us to start with the Word of God. Isn't that obvious? Well, not really. I fear that in too many cases, and I have done this, we make up our minds about something based on tradition or comfort and then we go to the Scriptures and try to make it fit. We come across an issue in the Word and don't like it, so we try to find cover for our rejection of the issue. I think headcovering is a prime example. If a man comes under conviction about headcovering, and then says so from the pulpit you can rest assured that some people will get mad and perhaps even leave and we can't have that. So we do a dance around the issue and try to find other men who agree to give us theological cover.

That is why it is encumbent upon the Christian to not just read what the giants of the faith wrote on a topic, but also to compare what they say to the Word of God. In fact we should flip the order around and use the Word first and then dig into what great men of the faith say about doctrine.

Reformed theology is more than a checklist of doctrines. It is certainly more than a club where we affirm certain beliefs in order to be associated with men that the world considers wise. It is a comprehensive way of viewing the Scriptures, and sometimes we will come across things that make us unfomfortable, that challenge and refute what we believe. But we who claim the title of "Reformed", of all people, need to lift everything we believe up to the light of Scripture, not church tradition, not "the Baptist way of doing things", not what this confession or that creed says. What does THE WORD say? Going back to the Word, again and again, as many times as we need to, for the rest of our lives is what makes us truly Reformed.

A call for a new Reformation in the church: Reform the church, not a Reformed church

I have long felt that if we could just find a church that is “Reformed enough” we would be OK. That was the goal and the standard. I had the White Horse Inn mentality, that our goal should be churches that are more Reformed, and in being more Reformed they would be better. But over the past year or so, it has become apparent that being “Reformed” for the sake of being able to say you are “Reformed” really defeats the spirit of semper reformanda. If our goal is to constantly seek to conform ourselves to whichever Reformed confession we hold to and use that as the standard that determines one’s “Reformedness”, then I don’t really want any part of that. If the standard instead, if the goal of being Reformed is in reality and not just rhetoric to hold all that we do up to the Scriptures, sign me up. It is the Scripture that defines being Reformed, because I believe that an honest and comprehensive view of the Word leads inexorably to those doctrines that are labeled as “Reformed”: the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation, the utter sinfulness of man, the substitutionary death of Christ as propitiation, the doctrines of election, predestination and eternal security. Again, if being “Reformed” strays away from that and becomes just a series of church practices, I want no part of it. The R. Scott Clark camp that has declared that anyone who breaks from infant baptism cannot legitimately be called Reformed completely miss the mark because they have reduced being Reformed to being able to tick off boxes on a questionnaire. We need to reform the church, not make the church more “Reformed”. If we focus on Biblical restoration of the church, traditional “Reformed” doctrines will follow but trying to restructure a church that is at odds with the New Testament by adopting Reformed confessions is the theological equivalent of lipstick on a pig.

A few thoughts on this quest, many of which are merely repeats of previous posts.

We must absolutely break the hold that money has over the church. I keep hammering this but ever time I do I become more convinced of the pernicious influence of money on the church. Almost every church has strife over finances and many churches spend an inordinate amount of timing talking about, praying about, fussing about spending and giving. Take away the influence of money, as much as possible, and you start to take away the incentives to water down preaching and teaching, the opportunities to cause strife within the church over spending and budgets, you eliminate to an extent the problems of unregenerate church membership (if you aren’t worried about giving, you aren’t as worried about offending!). It isn’t an end-all solution, but it would go a long way toward legitimate reformation in the church.

We need to make the main thing the main thing. The Gospel is what matters and everything else, everything else, must become secondary to that. The church spends way too much time, too much money, expends too much energy on other stuff. Some of that stuff is very important, but when we have people who are functionally Biblically illiterate, that is a problem. We can go too far the other way and get so focused on right doctrine that we ignore those in need, but in my humble opinion the opposite is more often the case, that we spend lots of time on lots of stuff and at the proverbial end of the day failed the Gospel witness.

We absolutely must recover the doctrinal underpinnings of the Gospel, and return to a true fundamentalism. Not the faux fundamentalism we see where being a “fundamentalist” is worn like a badge and consists entirely of holding to a litany of credentials that have become meaningless “Independent, Fundamental, King James Only”. That sort of fundamentalism is not what the church needs, but we do need a return to the bedrock foundational truths: the inerrancy AND sufficiency of the Scriptures, the deity of Christ, His substitutionary atonement, His exclusivity, the reality of heaven and hell as literal, the sovereignty of God, etc. This is where the White Horse Inn, Together for the Gospel type ministries become vital. In T4G, we see four men from different denominational backgrounds that come together in affirmation of the essentials of the Gospel.

Simplify, simplify, simplify. Until we start to really concentrate on the Acts 2:42 functions of the church, we have no business trying to muck things up by complicating the purpose of the church. The purpose of the church is pretty basic: the apostle’s teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer. Let’s stick to that and simplify how we do it. The more complicated we make the church, the more time we spend on stuff we shouldn’t be doing in the first place.

I would love to see a dismantling of the structures put in place over the centuries that in my opinion do far more to impede the Gospel than to promote it. That is a pretty ambitious statement. There is a lot of institutional inertia and protective self-interests in place. The seminaries, associations, denominations, multiple campus style churches all have had an enormous amount of time, money and emotion invested in them. I don’t see that going anywhere anytime soon.

Again there is nothing really new here, just the same thoughts I keep hashing over and then publishing on my blog. Really that is what I have this blog for, as an outlet for my thoughts, a place to work out concepts and ideas and hopefully to get input from others. Reforming the church is kind of my crusade. I have taken a long, uncomfortable look at myself over the last 14 months and I didn’t (and still don’t) like what I see. Along with that I am concerned about what the church has become. This hasn’t happened overnight, but the same failings keep cropping up and until we address the core problems, the cycle will repeat itself. The same thing holds true for me. Tinkering around the edges in my own sin hasn’t done much. What I was way overdue for and what I am striving for is a core examination of myself, held up to the mirror of Scripture and honestly realizing where my own hypocrisy and clinging to the old life has led me. Christ doesn’t call for incremental changes, the cross demands radical change. That holds true for me, it holds true for the church and I am pretty sure it holds true for you.

A call for a new Reformation in the church: Money changes everything

Stewardship: The most misused term in the church!

I came across a statement on Thabiti Anyabwile’s blog that sort of stuck in my craw a bit. It was regarding the expected drop in giving at church in light of the generally poor economic conditions.

We're just about to wrap up some budget planning at FBC. I know a number of other churches are in the same activity as we. And it's been interesting to hear and consider how Christians are connecting the economic woes dot with the giving dot.

Given the data, one can only conclude that many treasure this world and its coffers more than they treasure Christ. That they have not sold all and purchased this One Pearl of Great Price.

Or, as my friend James succinctly points out, maybe they are just broke? Over the last year I have had a steady stream of people come in my office who have lost their jobs, their house is about to be foreclosed on, cars about to be repossessed. Many of them spent foolishly. But that doesn’t change the fact that when times are tough, people have less discretionary income and the mortgage payment doesn’t go down and food for the table doesn’t become cheaper.

I have the utmost respect for Thabiti Anyabwile. He is a marvelous speaker, a bright writer and a man clearly passionate about Christ. But his comment illustrates the prevailing idea in the church that giving to the local church is part and parcel with the Gospel. How in the world do we connect the man who finds that precious pearl of great price with giving in the local church?

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.(Matthew 13:45-46)

The precious pearl, that great treasure is the Kingdom of Heaven and I thought that the Kingdom was not for sale. If you sold everything you owned, you couldn’t buy God’s favor. At least that was my understanding. If giving is going down, what good does it do to chastise the sheep? When giving goes down, spending must also go down. Maybe the staff at First Baptist Church Grand Cayman might have to be shrunk down. According to the webpage, there are 23 staff members at FBC-GC and I assume a number of them are paid staff. That is what for-profit entities have to do when times get tough (unless they are auto manufacturers...)

Giving and finances are always a sore spot in churches. There are few things more painful than a sermon on giving, because typically the man giving the sermon is directly benefiting from the offering and can hardly help but sound self-serving. It is not necessarily the intent, but how often have you heard a skeptic comment that all preachers ever talk about is getting money? There is an inherent perception of a conflict of interest when preachers are preaching giving on the one hand and getting a cut from the plate in the form of their salary, benefits and housing on the other.

The result of this in many churches is a series of guilt trips and anecdotes about how this person or that has always faithfully given in the offering plate and how God has fulfilled their material needs. Aunt Bessie gave her ten percent every week and God made sure she always had plenty! Or worse the tales of the pastor himself giving faithfully designed to guilt you into giving. I can speak from experience here when I say that it is a whole lot easier to preach about giving when you are not dependent on the offering to pay your mortgage (in fact I would contend that is easier to preach about nearly anything when you can do so without fear of financial retribution!) With all of the stories of how God has faithfully taken care of people who tithe, it in essence becomes a watered down health, wealth and prosperity Gospel. Go ahead and put money in the plate because if you do, God will take care of your financial needs. Maybe He will but maybe He won’t. God is not obligated to shower you with financial freedom if you put money in the plate when it comes by.

If you give groceries to a hungry neighbor in need, or contribute to a brother who is in danger of foreclosure or help pay the heating bill for a widow is that less noble than putting money in the plate? If you give no money at all in a given week at church, but are generous with those around you, is that a case of bad “stewardship”? Think about it this way…

Really, what does the offering at the local church do that builds the Kingdom? A decent chunk goes to missionaries, although typically not a huge percentage. A bunch goes to maintain the church building, and many churches spend on the physical plant far more than is reasonable. Sometimes we can make do with what we have and I have been in a number of churches for conferences that are obscenely opulent with multi-million dollar AV systems. Many churches, and I know this from being a banker, sit on an enormous amount of money for future building projects. Some money is spent on materials for Sunday school. A small percentage of churches, and growing smaller, spend a substantial portion of their offering on charitable work (i.e. food pantries, etc.) Then of course there are the staff salaries. I would hazard a guess that staff salary is the second biggest line item or the biggest line item in the budget of most churches, including in that housing allowance and other reimbursements given the pastor. Getting back to my previous post Pay The Man! I would argue that the reason we constantly worry about the offering is because we pay people to do what can and probably should be done for free.

What was that about the love of money… serving two masters...etc.?

Money can cause divisions among believers. Money leads to churches welcoming the unregenerate because the put money in the plate. Money can lead to watering down messages to avoid offense.

All of these things ultimately are sin driven, but why make it easier for sin to infect the church? Money is not evil, but it can lead to people doing evil things. Money is one of the most divisive issues in the world. Eliminating it's grip on the church would go a long way towards alleviating many of the problems we have, and it would help take away something that sucks the life and power out of the local body.

Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. (1 Timothy 6:6-11)