Christians, the church and Memorial Day

This Monday is Memorial Day in the United States, so most of us not only get a day off, we also commemorate the men and women who have died in the service of the United States military. There are few Americans who have not been touched in some way by this day. My wife’s grandfather on her dad’s side was killed in action during World War II at Anzio Beach. If you go back far enough, most American families have lost someone to war and Monday is the day we remember our fallen war dead.

Across this country on Sunday, many churches will mark Memorial Day. It is not unusual to recognize war veterans among congregations. Many church buildings sport American flags on the podium next to the pulpit. I am certain that many prayers will be offered in thanksgiving for those who died to protect our right to freely assemble for religious services.

Here is my question on an emotional issue for American Christians. How should American Christians view Memorial Day? Should we celebrate or recognize Memorial Day in the gathering of the church? I would argue against it for several reasons.

Blessed are the peacemakers

Jesus taught that “Blessed are the peacemakers”. That seems hard to reconcile with a celebration of war making, even if we are on the “right” side. I have written before on my stance that the Bible doesn’t leave room for Christians wielding the sword and based on that it seems inconsistent to gather with the church and simultaneously celebrate or commemorate those who killed and were killed in wars.

Christians killing Christians

One of the most tragic witnesses the world has observed over the centuries is the grotesque spectacle of Christians who kill, especially when we kill each other. It is quite reasonable to say that in most wars where American soldiers were involved there were Christians killing other Christians. Even in Nazi Germany there certainly were soldiers who were Christians. It is hard to say you love your brother but are willing to shoot him because your nation tells you to. God’s people are united not by nationality but by our common salvation. God isn’t in the business of picking sides between secular nation-states in wars.

I am not sure that being an American is that great a thing for Christians

I am less and less convinced that America is or has been a healthy place for the church. It is commonplace to think of America as the land of great freedom (which it is) and especially for religious freedom (absolutely!). Having affirmed that, I am coming to the conclusion that the very religious freedoms that we cherish and hold dear enough to kill others to retain have been unhealthy for the Gospel witness and for the life of the church. Easy-believism flourishes in America but so does easy-churchism. The great paradox of the church is that where persecution is greatest, the church is often its healthiest. The converse seems true, where the church is most accepted, the witness of the church is the weakest. The persecuted Anabaptists being driven from their homes were probably a healthier manifestation of the church than Calvin’s Geneva. The underground house church in China likewise looks more like what we see in Scripture than the five thousand person megachurch in America. We have come to equate Western religious tradition with the church but that simply does not jive with Scripture. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate living in America. God has placed us here and we will live here in America as long as God wills it but I am not more blessed by God than my brothers in Ethiopia or Brazil because I live here in the United States. That leads me to my final point...

True Freedom is not based on where you live

For Christians, our freedom that we cherish is not found in our Constitutional right to freedom of religious expression or of free speech or the right to keep and bear arms. Our freedom is in Christ because He has freed us from the only bondage that matters. An unbeliever in America has the freedom to sin as he or she chooses but is not truly free. A believer languishing in prison in China is far freer than any unbelieving American, even while imprisoned and possibly tortured, because of what Christ has done. Freedom for an American Christian was not won on a battlefield at Yorktown and was not preserved at Midway. It was bought and paid for on a cross.

I know this is not going to be a popular viewpoint. I love military history. My favorite movie of all time is Patton. We as a family have taught our kids to respect those who serve in the armed forces of the United States for their sacrifice (which is very real) and their heroism (also true). We have taught our kids to love this country as unique in the world and that American exceptionalism is a fact of life. Those are the safe and easy positions, the default for Americans. I am having a much harder time seeing those as compatible with what we should be instilling in our kids. The bottom line, as always, is that we should have more affinity with a fellow believer in China or Tanzania than we do with an unbeliever in America. Just because the government of America says “Our cause is just, now go kill that person” doesn’t mean Christians should dutifully pick up the sword.

I am not saying we cannot commemorate the fallen soldiers of the United States. I just don’t think that we should do so in context of the gathered church.

Our identity is in Christ alone

Great quote I read a few nights ago in Total Church regarding our identity in Christ.

By becoming a Christian, I belong to God and I belong to my brothers and sisters. It is not that I belong to God and then make a decision to join a local church. My being in Christ means being in Christ with those others who are in Christ. This is my identity. This is our identity. To fail to live out our corporate identity in Christ is analogous to the act of adultery: we can be Christian and do it, but it is not what Christians should do. The loyalties of the new community supersede even the loyalties of biology (Matthew 10:34-37; Mark 3:31-35; Luke 11:27-28). If the church is the body of Christ, then we should not live as disembodied Christians. (Total Church, pp. 40-41 )

We place so much emphasis on "joining the right church" but our identity in Christ means we are already part of the "right" church by virtue of our identity with other believers in Christ. That supersedes everything else.

Interesting thoughts on missionary financial support

Contend Earnestly: On the Topic of Missionary Support

I ran across an interesting post (part of a series of posts on missionaries) over at Contend Earnestly. The post asks if we who are not out in the field shouldn’t be more than merely financial supporters but also help to raise funds for the missionaries so they spend less time looking for support. That raised a whole ‘nother question for me, one I have written about before and so I posted a response.

Here was my question:

Is there not a case to made that missionaries should be self-supporting, not in the sense of raising their own support from other Christians but supporting themselves financially either by saving up their own money or working for a living where they are ministering?

I am thinking specifically of places where Paul speaks of his own efforts to work in place to support himself (Acts 28: 30-31; 1 Thess 2:9; 2 Thess 3: 6-12) and even in 1 Corinthians 9: 1-14 where Paul talks about eschewing financial support in favor of supporting himself so that the Gospel ministry is not hindered. In one place Paul speaks of getting support from another church (2 Cor 11: 7-10) and sees it as robbing the supporting church (verse 8).

Not trying to be snarky, but I do wonder if we need to rethink our model for missionary support from “Pay-Go” (you pay, I’ll go) to one of self-support where practical. It seems that many missionaries spend far too much time raising funds and reporting back to those who support them, time that could be spent working “in country” which in and of itself is a evangelistic opportunity.

Certainly there are some cases where it is less feasible to become a self-supporting missionary. On the other hand, being a missionary somewhere in the U.S. or in other more developed nations like Europe, Japan or Korea makes it fairly easy to get a “job”. I can see financial help to get in place and get settled, but if a long term missionary is going to minister to a people, why shouldn’t he or she work alongside them?

Should missionaries be supported by individual Christians, local churches and denominational mission boards or should they fund their own way and work among the people they are trying to reach? I wonder how people in other countries see this? I also wonder again, if we are funding missionaries to go overseas shouldn’t we also fund missionaries to come to America?

Important questions.

Thinking about Acts

As I am reading Total Church, it is really getting my gears working. This morning I was thinking back to a topic that I frequently mull over, the Acts of the Apostles and how it (and other depictions of the early church) apply to us today.

I think if most people are honest, they will admit that there is an enormous disconnect between what we see in Scripture and what we practice in the church, at least in America and the former realms of Christendom. It is impossible to see it otherwise. The early church in the days of the apostles was a day of explosive growth amidst unbelievable persecution. In Acts 8:3 we read that Christians were having their doors kicked down and were dragged off to prison for the crime of being a follower of Christ. Along with persecution the church almost immediately faced false teachers, gross sin, and divisiveness. At the same time growth in the church was exploding, miracles were performed and the world was being changed. The more severe the persecution, the more the church seemed to expand. We haven’t seen anything like that on such a scale since the Reformation era.

Most of us can’t even fathom living like that and that might be in part why we have such a hard time applying Acts to the church. We see so little persecution and experience nothing like the movement of the Spirit that the early church experienced. It seems so foreign, so alien even, that it begins to seem irrelevant to church today, in our culture and context. Acts and the other accounts of the early church have been relegated to mere historical records that are not directly applicable to church practice today. I think it is dangerous to disregard Acts as an interesting story. Clearly the church is the tangible manifestation of the Gospel at work. Unbelievers should be able to see in Christians the fruit of the Gospel proclamation, not in organizations or buildings or people thanking Jesus for hitting a home run but in lives markedly changed. Careful study of the Scriptures can reveal to us important principles recorded for all time that have immediate and direct applicability for the church that are universal and timeless. I think the key is to avoid either dismissiveness or wooden literalism. Either extreme is going to cause trouble.

We are a people called out from the world and that calling is more than being told to go on living as we were before, concerned with the cares of the world, but with an added bonus of a “Get Out of Hell Free” card. Without Scriptural guidance, it is pretty hard to figure out what that looks like. We have seen the results of making it up in our own wisdom in the form of 1700 years of empty religious rituals coupled a perverse blend of church and state that has given us our current hybrid cultural Christianity. I have a hard time reading Acts and looking around at the state of the church and believing that God intended this pivotal book to be strictly descriptive.

It is not enough to be proponents of Sola Scriptura only where we find it practical. Unless we are willing to apply the Scriptural treatment of the church in the same way we do justification, we will continue to see the church stumbling along, even in the most theologically conservative corners, mired in a failed religious system. It is important to note that God has not failed. He still builds His church and He saves His elect. God promised to build His church and that nothing would stand against it, and He has, but that has next to nothing to do with our manmade religious traditions. It is our unfaithfulness and our lack of trust that is at issue. Why do we trust what God has said when it comes to how we are saved and what Christ has done and yet seem so unwilling to exhibit that same trust when we speak of the Bride of Christ and how believers should live and relate to one another and to the world?

Hair gel is not counter-cultural

Many people make the mistake of equating the Anabaptists with some of the more liberal elements of Christianity we see today. It is something I saw hints of in reading The Naked Anabaptist and it seems to be gaining traction. It is almost as if people cannot differentiate between the widely divergent movements that have stood outside of the prevailing traditional church throughout the centuries.

For the Anabaptists, being counter-cultural meant not just standing against the dominant church, whether Roman Catholic or magisterial Reformer. It also meant at the same time standing opposed to the state powers that were inextricably linked with the church and that was simply not tolerated. Anabaptists were slaughtered by the thousands during the Reformation period and did not have the benefit of safe states to flee to. At best there were areas that they were more or less tolerated and that tolerance often evaporated leaving them on the run once more.

In contrast, the “counter-cultural” among the modern church are frankly nothing like the Anabaptists. The worst persecution they face are the frequent snarky blog posts by traditionalist bloggers. In many ways, the various contemporary movements that stand apart from the traditional church are far more like the world than distinct from it. Instead of trying to see the church become more Scriptural, these movement by and large seek to strip away anything that the world finds to be unpalatable in an effort to be relevant. There is essentially no sacrifice for being in this movement today.

Wearing cool glasses and putting styling gel in your hair is not radical and counter-cultural. Having your tongue ripped out so that you cannot preach the Gospel as you are being led to your death by being burned alive or drowned? That is counter-cultural.

Lay your cares and burdens on Him

My wife and I read this from Spurgeon this morning, from his Morning & Evening devotional. Great thoughts on Psalm 55:22

Care, even though exercised upon legitimate objects, if carried to excess, has in it the nature of sin. The precept to avoid anxious care is earnestly inculcated by our Saviour, again and again; it is reiterated by the apostles; and it is one which cannot be neglected without involving transgression: for the very essence of anxious care is the imagining that we are wiser than God, and the thrusting ourselves into His place to do for Him that which He has undertaken to do for us. We attempt to think of that which we fancy He will forget; we labour to take upon ourselves our weary burden, as if He were unable or unwilling to take it for us. Now this disobedience to His plain precept, this unbelief in His Word, this presumption in intruding upon His province, is all sinful. Yet more than this, anxious care often leads to acts of sin. He who cannot calmly leave his affairs in God's hand, but will carry his own burden, is very likely to be tempted to use wrong means to help himself. This sin leads to a forsaking of God as our counsellor, and resorting instead to human wisdom. This is going to the "broken cistern" instead of to the "fountain;" a sin which was laid against Israel of old. Anxiety makes us doubt God's lovingkindness, and thus our love to Him grows cold; we feel mistrust, and thus grieve the Spirit of God, so that our prayers become hindered, our consistent example marred, and our life one of self-seeking. Thus want of confidence in God leads us to wander far from Him; but if through simple faith in His promise, we cast each burden as it comes upon Him, and are "careful for nothing" because He undertakes to care for us, it will keep us close to Him, and strengthen us against much temptation. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee."

How easy it is to rest in Christ when things are going well! How much harder though when things are going wrong or in our case when you are waiting on something and growing impatient, how much more tempting to "help God along". It is precisely in those times of turmoil when it is most tempting to grab the reins that we must rely even more upon God. Those were timely words for us to read this morning. Funny how that works.

Out of work pastors

I am not sure how I missed the original article since I read the Wall Street Journal everyday but last week there was an interesting story on the increasing number of pastors who are laid off: Joblessness Hits the Pulpit (HT: Dan Edelen). As giving goes down in the midst of the recession, church budgets are hurt and that means that many local churches with large paid staffs are finding themselves in the unenviable position of laying off pastors. Losing your job is jarring for anyone but it is especially emotional when your job is as a pastor. I would imagine there is a great deal of bitterness and emotion on the part of the pastor who loses his job and the congregation that is left behind.

This situation is causing a great deal of consternation among church administrators.

Some church leaders fear donations won't reach prerecession levels as long as unemployment stays elevated. Church surveys report that giving dropped off sharply beginning in November 2008, when the overall unemployment rate was at 6.7%. Since then, contributions have slipped in tandem with rising unemployment.

I think that captures the mindset, tragically so. The recession is bad and joblessness is not getting better but it is seen as a problem because giving at the local church is down. Huh?! The real problem we face is that people are unemployed and hurting, and the church is not able to help because it has its own budget woes to worry about. When times are good and giving is up, churches spend and spend on buildings and staff and then are shocked when giving goes down and they can’t afford their huge expenditures. The cost of supporting a local church is crippling and leaves the local body of believers in a pickle when giving is down.

I wonder how many of these men who have lost their jobs are still ministering in that local body of believers? I would imagine a lot of them are looking for new jobs at new churches. We hear all the time that being a pastor is not a job, it is a calling. When the local church can’t support that pastor financially, it sure starts to look like a job though.

The local church should support the community of believers when times are tough, not ask for even more sacrifice from that community to support itself. All the more reason we should follow Paul’s example:

He lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance. (Acts 28: 30-31)

I am not trying to bash pastors who are on staff and get paid by the local church. I am merely trying to be a voice of warning and caution. The days ahead are not rosy for the church model we are used to. We only need to look across the pond at Europe to see what the future holds. It might not be next year, or the next decade but it is coming. It is high time that the church gets out of the budget and fund collection business and gets ready for a future where the local church is not warmly welcomed in the community. We better start to figure out how to minister to people, how to reach the lost with the Gospel, how to be a community without the benefit of million dollar budgets and plentiful church buildings and we better start to figure it out right now. The days ahead for the church look a lot more like 1st century Rome than 20th century America.

Up Next: Total Church

The next book I am reading is Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis.

I read through the introduction last night and already am intrigued. I like what Chester and Timmis laid out right at the beginning, the idea that we can do church in a different way and yet still maintain theological orthodoxy. Orthodoxy and orthopraxy are not enemies! The groundwork right up front is that the church must have as her focus Gospel (Word and mission) and community. I would say a lot of churches, especially in the Reformed streams, get the Gospel right but community is woefully lacking. In many other churches there is all sorts of community but the Gospel is diminished or watered down or even neglected entirely.

Based on the reviews I have read and the introduction to Total Church, I am very encouraged. It seems that more and more we are seeing a realization in the church that we have lost our sense of community, that we are so concerned with telling people how to get saved and how they got saved that we have no idea what to do with them after they are saved except…talk to them about how they got saved. They key will be for the church to let go of the traditions that interfere with community while holding firmly to the Gospel. I am hopeful that this book will be a great step along that path, more like Hellerman's When The Church Was a Family and Belcher’s Deep Church and less of a “keep doing the same thing, just do more of it and quit griping” book like Why We Love the Church. I will post snippets as I go.

This will also be the last “church book” I read for a while. I have been ingesting a steady diet of them, from The Anabaptist View of the Church to Deep Church to When the Church Was a Family and now to Total Church, so I am going to look at something more doctrinal to give me time to digest what I have read. Probably Jerry Bridges Respectable Sins will be next, a book I was given this weekend and that I have wanted to read for a while. I am also intrigued by Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt, which is in my shopping cart and will be the next book I buy when I get another Amazon gift card. There is an interesting exchange on the webpage of the Gospel Coalition where Kevin DeYoung reviews Radical and David Platt responds to his review. Predictably Radical troubles DeYoung because it sounds like it calls out traditional Christianity for its lack of radicalism and our unhealthy focus on what takes place within the four walls of "our church" to the detriment of the rest of the world. Platt seems willing to take on the affluence we see as our birthright as Americans while DeYoung seems afraid to offend the wealthy who put the most money in the plate. You can guess which side I come down on.

Book Review: The Naked Anabaptist

Stuart Murray's The Naked Anabaptist is a unique book. There are lots of books on Anabaptism but almost all of them are historical in nature. They described who Anabaptists were. Murray describes who (some) Anabaptists are. A subtle but important distinction.

The Naked Anabaptist is less a primer on Anabaptism than the story of why some modern Christians have been attracted to elements of the Anabaptist movement. If you are looking for a comprehensive history of the Anabaptists, this is not the place to look. However, if you are interested in how Anabaptism is influencing one corner of the church in the U.K., this is a great place to start. The Naked Anabaptist is a fresh and accessible view of a very old movement.

I appreciate that Stuart Murray is willing to take on and address the flaws in Anabaptism, especially some of the problems he perceives in historical Anabaptism and its most common manifestations today among the "Big Three", i.e. the Amish, the Hutterites and the Mennonites. I don't agree with all of his criticisms (for example his disdain for the patriarchal aspects of historical Anabaptism which he considers a cultural anachronisms but that I see as Scripturally faithful) but he is willing to call it like he sees it and there are many problems that have become entrenched in Anabaptism over the last four hundred years.

There are some problems with the book. Too much repetition, too many blanket assertions, too many sweeping generalizations, too many cutesy catch-phrases.

I am concerned that in some sections it smacks of a vague political liberalism that is co-opting Anabaptism. Self-sacrificially sharing material resources and refusing to defend one’s self are not the same thing as 20th/21st century liberal activism and from my readings on the Anabaptists, “social justice” was not even on the radar. The Anabaptists were not hippies holding peace rallies amidst the opulence of the West, they were a hunted and persecuted people who nevertheless refused to take up arms to defend themselves or to defend a nation-state. Statements like this: "Peace is at the heart of the Gospel because the mission of God is to bring peace to the whole of creation" (pg. 129) are common in The Naked Anabaptist and are theologically sloppy at best. I think Stuart Murray understands that the Gospel is more than liberalism couched in religious terminology but I can also see how some people would read statements like that and draw the wrong conclusion. I was also troubled by his admiration for the Emergent church movement, especially those among that group who champion what looks dangerously like "another gospel".

In spite of some areas of concern, The Naked Anabaptist is a book I recommend. Read it with your eyes wide open but if you are interested in something other than the church as usual, you should definitely read it. It can be easy to see Anabaptism as something from hundreds of years ago that only lives on in history books and modern day anachronisms like the Amish. The reality is that Anabaptism still influences the church today, in subtle ways and more recently in more overt ways. The great challenge is not to mirror or adopt all of 16th century Anabaptism but to learn from the Anabaptists in a way that is faithful to Scripture. After all, that should be the goal of every Christian from every tradition.

Trying to make nice with the world is not our mission

This morning we have, courtesy of the USA Today opinion pages, another sad example of someone who professes to be a believer trying to make Christianity compatible with the religion of the world. The essay by Karl Giberson (who is a professor at Eastern Nazarene College), Atheists, it's time to play well with others is ostensibly supposed to be a chastisement of atheists for not being nice to Christians who have capitulated to evolution but ends up being a personal attack on Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis.

This is incredibly encouraging. A conservative evangelical seminary has just hired someone who has warned that Christians who deny scientific facts are in danger of becoming a "cult." This might suggest that Ken Ham and his Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., are becoming less relevant, as they speak for — and to — an increasingly smaller band of hyperconservative biblical literalists. Ham's followers, ironically, are exactly what Waltke warned us about — a cult, with their own separate science.

Actually, Answers in Genesis is pretty widely accepted among a wide swath of evangelicalism. Far from a secretive cult, they are quite out in the open about what they believe and their beliefs run to the mainstream of evangelical thought. They are something of a one-trick pony but the organization is hardly cultic and the suggestion that they are is venomous and juvenile. The danger in the church is not people denying “scientific facts”, it is teachers in the church who claim that “science” trumps Scripture and then cry foul when haters of God are not willing to play nicely in the sandbox. Christianity is not just one worldview among myriad other competing worldviews in the sandbox of ideas. Christianity is the truth of God revealed to man. There is no sandbox. You either have that truth or you don’t and where you come down has eternal consequences.

This essay by Karl Giberson just demonstrates the foolhardiness of trying to find acceptance among the world. The world is not interested in compromise and consensus because it hates the One who has declared Himself through creation, through His Word and in the person of the Son. This is not an issue of evolution vs. creation, this is an issue of those who hate God and those who love Him. I can sort of understand why some believers are so desperate to be liked and approved by the world. It can be hard to be ridiculed and an outcast but the truth of the matter is that it comes with the territory of being a follower of Christ. God did not give us an expectation that the world would like what we have to say nor that it would embrace us as messengers. Just the opposite, the world is going to hate us and revile us because it hates the One we declare. Why would someone who is a professor at Eastern Nazarene College want to make the message of the Bible more palatable to appease unbelievers? I for one would rather face the ridicule of the world and persecution even to the point of death than to surrender to the world.

Mammals that evolved from single-cell organisms don’t need a Savior because they would not be substantively any different from a cow or a monkey. Human beings, created in the image of God as humans, need a Savior. If man was not created as man, then there was no garden. There wasn’t a Fall and there is no need for salvation. If you want to chuck the Garden and the Fall, you might as well toss the cross and the empty tomb.

More thoughts on shepherding: Ephesians 4

I posed a couple of questions last week, Thinking About Shepherding, regarding the theology and practice of shepherding in the church and now I want to get at trying to answer those questions.

The first place I want to look are at the two Scriptures where shepherding is directly related to someone other than Christ, Ephesians 4 and 1 Peter 5. I am going to start with Ephesians 4: 11-16. Ephesians 4 is where we see much of the conversation turn because it typically is the only place in an English translation where the word “pastor” appears (although it is rendered “shepherds” in the ESV) and that word, which carries so much meaning in the church, attracts a lot of emotion. There is a lot more here than “God gave the church pastors”…

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4: 11-16)

Ephesians 4 needs to be carefully broken down to see what Paul is saying. All too often I hear Ephesians 4 quoted with a strong emphasis on the servants given to the church and not so much on what these servants (pastors, teachers, evangelists, apostles) are called to do for and in the church.

Why did God give these servants to the church?

- To equip

Who are they called to equip?

- The saints (i.e. everyone in the church)

Equip them to do what?

- The work of ministry (so everyone in the church is in the ministry business)

How do we know they are they equipped?

- They are mature in the faith (i.e. all Christians)

What is the sign of a maturity in the faith?

- A full understanding of the measure of Christ, a unity in the faith, not taken in by deceivers.

It goes without saying that some people in the Body are more mature than others. Those who are more mature should equip those who are less mature, those who have been Christians longer should equip those who have been Christians for less time. One of the key qualities in an elder is that they not be a recent convert so that they will not become prideful and led astray (1 Tim 3:6), which goes hand in hand with Ephesians 4: 11-16. Elders are to help equip Christians to come to a fullness of understanding in the faith. The three tier system where you have: 1) elders who are really mature, 2) some non-elders who are pretty mature and 3) lots of non-elders who are mostly immature even though they are not recent converts is not Scripturally healthy.

Ephesians 4 is speaking of the entire Body of Christ coming to a maturity of faith, not of making sure that the local pastor is orthodox so that the sheep are not led astray. This is so important because the truth is that elders of churches, even the famous guys like John MacArthur, are sheep and sheep tend to go astray. Unless the entire Body is equipped, empowered (I hate that word) and mature/maturing in the faith, it will be flabby and susceptible to false teachers or at least teachers who teach only a particular flavor of the truth with their own biases. All Christians are called to the work of ministry, not just a select few, but in order to do that they need to be equipped and then unleashed.

Now the question we face is how does this happen? How do Christians become mature in the faith, how are elders and other leaders in the church supposed to equip believers? I think the state of the church and the maturity level of most believers speaks to the ineffectiveness of “sermon listening” and Sunday school as the sole or even primary method to equip believers. Some of that may have to do with how we restrict teaching the Body. We can see that teaching is something elders are supposed to do but teaching is hardly restricted to elders. For example older women are to teach younger women (Titus 2: 3-5). In Acts 18: 26 we see the husband and wife tandem of Aquila and Priscilla teaching Apollos and there is no indication that Aquila is an elder. He might have been but he is never identified in this way. Paul exhorts Timothy in 2 Tim 2: 1-2 to entrust Paul’s teaching to “entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also”. That certainly should include elders but again it is not restricted to them. I have found that when I teach others I benefit from that at least as much as those I am teaching.

When we look at the next example, 1 Peter 5: 1-11, I think it will shed some additional light on the question of how elders are to shepherd and equip the Body.

Best of the week entry 5

Comes from Jasmine Baucham, daughter of Voddie Baucham, and she addresses the topic of young women and college, Should Young Women Go To College:

All I want to do is to encourage young ladies to rethink their presuppositions not only regarding education, but in regards to the aspirations that your education leads you to.

However, I can share with you, as a young woman, some of the reasons I decided against going off to school. It was more important for me to remain under the protection of my father and the discipleship of my mother than it was for me to travel cross-country to sit under the discipleship of others. I believe my primary calling is towards my home, and there is no other place I’d rather be, here in my family’s home for now, and, Lord bless, someday running a home of my own and educating my own children. I had no desire for a career that would take me away from that sphere. I believe that a Christian home is the best training ground that young women can be afforded, and that the safest place a young woman can be is under her parents’ authority.

For too long in our culture, parents have been training their daughters in the exact same way that they train their sons, launching their female arrows to go through life the same way their male arrows do. Fathers have been abdicating their duty to protect their daughters, mothers their duty towards discipleship and guidance. Young women have not only lost their femininity, but they’ve lost their desire for the biblical role that the Lord has called them to. We no longer want to be wives and mothers, and we no longer realize the power of that calling. As a result, many of us no longer realize what a unique time in our lives this can be, not only to take advantage of our ministry to our home and families, but the minister to others through that sphere.

I appreciate that she and her parents have taken the time to ask serious questions about the cost and the purpose of college education rather than just assuming that we need our kids, especially our daughters, to go to a traditional college and incur a ton of expense and debt. Very though provoking essay and written far better than a lot of stuff that comes from graduates of traditional colleges I might add!