Another poor defense of the traditional church as the only valid expression

I haven’t been doing “point by point” critiques of blog posts much anymore. I don’t think it is terribly productive. Having said that, I am going to make an exception here because of something I read Sunday morning in a Tabletalk essay by Kevin DeYoung. Tabletalk is a widely read publication put out by Ligonier Ministries and Kevin DeYoung has become the de facto spokesperson for and defender of the institutional church, so an essay like this is going to be widely read and referenced. His essay The Glory of Plodding makes the case for Christians (at least the laity) to plod along through life. What I am writing is not a shot at men and women in traditional churches, laity or clergy. It is a poke at those who refuse to recognize that a) there are problems in traditional churches and b) refuse to consider as legitimate any expression of the church other than what they are used to. Here is the the key passage:

My generation in particular is prone to radicalism without followthrough. We have dreams of changing the world, and the world should take notice accordingly. But we’ve not proved faithful in much of anything yet. We haven’t held a steady job or raised godly kids or done our time in VBS or, in some cases, even moved off the parental dole. We want global change and expect a few more dollars to the ONE campaign or Habitat for Humanity chapter to just about wrap things up. What the church and the world needs, we imagine, is for us to be another Bono — Christian, but more spiritual than religious and more into social justice than the church. As great as it is that Bono is using his fame for some noble purpose, I just don’t believe that the happy future of the church, or the world for that matter, rests on our ability to raise up a million more Bonos (as at least one author suggests). With all due respect, what’s harder: to be an idolized rock star who travels around the world touting good causes and chiding governments for their lack of foreign aid, or to be a line worker at GM with four kids and a mortgage, who tithes to his church, sings in the choir every week, serves on the school board, and supports a Christian relief agency and a few missionaries from his disposable income?

Is there much that is mundane about Christian life? Sure, we have work and bills and dirty diapers and meals to make. Are there a lot of people who talk a lot about community and radical discipleship who think coffee once a week at Starbucks equals community and radical discipleship means a soul patch and cool glasses? Absolutely. Having affirmed that, I can’t see any reason, Scriptural or pragmatic, to believe that we are best served by “plodding” along. I don’t see any warrant in Scripture for paying professionals to do ministry on our behalf while we stumble along through life waiting to die or the Second Coming, whichever comes first.

Is the Christian life for those of us not in vocational ministry nothing more than working during the week, shuffling into a church building, sitting quietly for an hour or two, putting our “tithe” in the offering plate to pay for the building we shuffle into and the man we listen to and then shuffling out at the end, repeated week after week and year after year for our entire lives?

Or is it more accurate to say that the Christian life we are called to and see demonstrated in Scripture is one of self-denial, sacrifice, ministry by all Christians, not just a select few. There is nothing terribly sacrificial about putting a check in an offering plate and getting dressed up once a week. Rather than a faithful life of Christian discipleship, Kevin is advocating the perpetuating of a religious system that hampers the maturity of Christians. The evidence for that statement is all around us.

DeYoung closes with this quip that I guess is supposed to be pithy:

Don’t give up on the church. The New Testament knows nothing of churchless Christianity. The invisible church is for invisible Christians. The visible church is for you and me. Put away the Che Guevara t-shirts, stop the revolution, and join the rest of the plodders. Fifty years from now you’ll be glad you did.

I suppose that is supposed to be terribly clever. I found it smarmy, unbecoming and insulting. Using that as your closing paragraph is exceedingly odd since he is so concerned with what the New Testament does and does not know. The New Testament knows nothing of institutional Christianity nor professional clergy nor monologue sermons nor huge church budgets designed to prolong the institution of the local church nor VBS nor ritualistic “Lord’s Supper” ceremonies and on and on and on. You have to be cautious when you throw out “The New Testament knows nothing of…” statements in defense of something that the New Testament truly knows nothing of.

So we have yet another essay that makes a faulty argument based on the “either-or” error, i.e. either you embrace the traditional church without question or you reject the church entirely. There is no middle ground. It apparently never crosses the minds of some of the best thinkers of the church that the traditional church might not be the Biblical model. Faithful church plodders are noble and everyone who questions the traditional church is a perverse blend of emergent/social justice/liberation theology/neo-Marxism. Kevin DeYoung is a bright guy and writes some thought provoking stuff on many topics but when it comes to this topic (the church) he all too often reverts to gross mischaracterizations, groundless blanket statements and unbecoming mockery that strike me as pandering to an audience.

Invisible Christians are not the people who have become disenchanted with religion and sought a new path. The truly invisible Christians are the ones who plod through life, shuffling in and shuffling out of “church” on Sunday (always sure to pay their “tithe” of course!) who never mature in the faith beyond attendance and have no fruit to show for years of plodding except for a giving statement to file with their taxes.

Lives not worthy of persecution

This is a stinging indictment of the church...

In any case, how do we interpret that troubling verse in 2 Timothy: "Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted"? Rather than asking whether or not persecution is feasible in western society today, maybe we should be asking why we are not being persecuted. Are we still living under the sheltering wing of a fading Christendom? Or are we simply not living as faithful disciples and so not worth persecuting? That might be the question early Anabaptists would ask us to ponder. (The Naked Anabaptist, pg. 91)

Ouch! I think there is a lot of truth to that. Perhaps our witness to the world is so paltry, so comfortably ensconced in the culture, so worldly that it doesn't raise the ire of the world sufficiently to bring about persecution. Losing the "culture wars" is not a sign of the failure of the Western church. Nor is the rise of the emerging church. The lack of persecution in the Western church is our greatest indictment.

The expectation of suffering and persecution is not a call for us to train "Christian lawyers" to defend our rights. It is a reality that believers will face but not fear. Our response is not fear and retribution, it is submission and humility and trust. Persecution and the hatred of the world are the marks of faithful ministry, not full churches and large budgets.

You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra--which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. (2 Tim 3:10-13, emphasis added)

The faith or regeneration question

Christians affirm that we are saved by faith alone. That saving faith results in good works, works that are possible and pleasant to us after we are saved. Those works of course do not save us, help to save us or make us "saveable". Christians also recognize the necessity for regeneration, that we must be born-again to see the Kingdom of God (John 3:3). These two truths bring up a "chicken or the egg" dilemma. Which comes first, faith which leads to regeneration or regeneration which leads to faith?

Traditional Reformed theology holds that faith of necessity follows regeneration, that an unregenerate heart is incapable of saving faith. This is my position. Most evangelicals today (and for much of recent history) would say the opposite, that we are regenerated or born-again when we have in faith. I have been thinking about this since we met with the church last Wednesday and discussed the role of the Holy Spirit in regeneration.

Most evangelicals will affirm a couple of key points of doctrine:

- Man is depraved, dead in sins and trespasses.

- Someone who is born again is a new creation, which is something that you cannot undo. You cannot be "un-born again"

The problem is that while the majority of the church agrees with those two points, and rightly so, the disconnect comes when you deal with the necessary implications of those two doctrines if you take them in a vacuum. In other words:

- How does a spiritually dead sinner respond in faith to the Gospel?

- If someone can of their own volition exercise faith, why can't they stop exercising it?

Those questions are impossible to answer if faith precedes regeneration. If man is able to save himself by choosing to exercise faith in Christ, than Jesus died to enable men to save themselves and man becomes the ultimate arbiter of his own salvation. That sounds awfully palatable to our ears but theologically there would be nothing more cruel than for God to leave the "decision" up to spiritually dead sinners and indeed I would argue that if the final decision was left up to man, there wouldn't be a single sinner redeemed and Christ would have died in vain.

The New Covenant in Christ that we celebrate with the Lord's Supper was not that if we have faith, then God would reward us with salvation. It was that God would initiate salvation by creating a new heart in dead sinners (Eze 36:26), that He would put His spirit within us, that He would write His law upon our hearts (Jer 31: 33) and that He would remember our sins no more (Jer 31: 34). That is the Gospel of grace, a monergistic faith that makes salvation truly all of grace, not a cooperative effort. When you gather with the church today you can truly sing "Amazing Grace" because grace that is all of God truly is amazing.

The Reformers had many faults, missed the mark in many places and were flat-out wrong in some. You have to hand it to them though, when it comes to recovering the glorious doctrines of God's sovereign grace in salvation they were right on. I thank God this morning that He didn't leave it up to me or wait for me to save myself. In His mercy, He saved us while we were yet sinners incapable of saving ourselves or even showing faith in Christ.

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people. (Titus 3:4-8)

(See here for an excellent introduction to monergistic regeneration)

Best of the week entry 4

Comes from Becky Lynn Black and it is a wonderful blog post. Mrs. Black looks at the idea of birthdays in light of giving all the glory to God and all I can say is that it is one of the best things I have ever read on the internet. Dr. Black is a pretty smart guy but the wisdom in his wife (and mine) often makes us look like amateurs. Give Birthdays & Glory a read and pass it on to your friends. You won't regret it!

Best of the week entry 3

Comes from Matt Stone on a blog that I stumbled across. I would probably disagree with quite a bit of what Matt writes but I like his thought process. His post Apocalypse of Peace looks at the idea of pacifism as expressed in Revelation which seems pretty counter-intuitive. Isn't Revelation a book about the war of the Lamb and armies and retributive justice? Well yes, but...

This may come as a surprise to some critics of pacifism. Isn't the Revelation of John one of the most violent books of the Bible? Why do some pacifists emphasize it so much then? Isn't that counter productive? It's certainly counter intuitive!

...

The answer comes in discerning between different streams of pacifism. Just as pro-military Christianity may be differentiated into "just war", "blank check" and other streams according to the degree they rely on secular wisdom, so anti-military Christianity may be differentiated into "absolutist", "apocalyptic" and other streams according to the degree they rely on universal principals.

Absolute pacifism, more typical of liberals, tends to gloss over the authority of the Old Testament in its search for a universal ethic applicable to everyone, everywhere, everywhen. Apocalyptic pacifism, more typical of Anabaptists, takes a different route, emphasizing the covenant transforming revelation (Greek: apocalypse) of Jesus. Absolute pacifism espouses timeless teaching, apocalyptic pacifism espouses time asymmetric, kingdom coming teaching.

I found this perspective interesting in light of the prevailing culture in the church that sees nothing wrong with Christians supporting and participating in the drawing of the sword, as long as we are on the "right" side. I know this is a highly charged issue among American Christians but I also believe that reading Revelation should reassure us that when we are called to non-resistance and sacrifice, even martyrdom, that we do so not out of cowardice but out of confidence that the only one who judges perfectly and righteously will set dispense justice over the evil-doer. Punishing the unrighteous is not our calling as Christians.

Best of the week entry 2

Comes in a colorfully titled post by Seth McBee Church Programs Suck. Seth takes on the programmatic nature of many churches and talks about why the very programs designed to simulate Christian fellowship and mission actually hamper what the church is supposed to be about:

Maybe we should just see how God has called us to be as the church, instead of trying to make the church an organization that is open for business and we go there to be taught and trained. Maybe we only go as the gathered church once a week to hear the great news of the gospel of grace and the rest of the week we live that out. Maybe this is exactly how Jesus did this and exactly how the apostles did it. Maybe this is why they had so much time to focus in on making disciples instead of memorizing the correct answer that the group leader will ask from the handout he emailed to us. Maybe this is why the church in America is so stagnant. Maybe this is why people hate the church. Maybe we should stop calling the building the church and understand that we are the church. Maybe we should understand that worship doesn't only happen when at that ugly building, but happens all throughout the week as we live our lives.

Good thoughts from Seth and no punches are pulled. Give it a look.

Best of the week entry 1

Goes to Eric Carpenter for his post Is Not Knowing Good Enough?

Is not knowing good enough for us? In unimportant areas of life I suppose it is. For example, I don't know if my shoes always match my pants. This doesn't matter because it is of little importance.

However, the church gathering is of utmost importance. We see many exhortations in scripture as to how the church is to function. We are told that we should gather together to edify one another. We are instructed in many things to do and not do. We are given the example of the early church to show us practices that are acceptable.

I hope your conclusion on this issue is that not knowing is not acceptable. The flip side to that is that knowing is acceptable. When we engage in activities that the early church took part in and were approved, we can know that they are approved for us as well.

I appreciate that Eric, as a pastor in a traditional church, is taking the time to try to think past the traditions of the church and start looking at what Scripture reveals about how Christians are to live in fellowship and community with one another. It is easy to just go with the default and it is troubling to see what God has really said. That is the key to the whole prescriptive vs. descriptive argument, when you see something in Scripture that contradicts your traditions or preferences you just dismiss it as descriptive or cultural. I am enjoying reading along and thinking along with Eric as he asks the tough questions.

Maintenance or mission

I came across a very interesting concept in The Naked Anabaptist. In a listing of seven ways the church will change as we move to a post-Christendom environment, the sixth change is:

- From maintenance to mission: in Christendom the emphasis was on maintaining a supposedly Christian status quo, but in post-Christendom it is on mission within a contested environment.

There is an assumption of the status quo and a lot of the writings about the church have to do with maintaining the status quo. There is a lot of hand-wringing over the good old days which rarely go past 1517. Christendom infects most of Western Christianity and indeed sees the faith as something tangible to be maintained by supporting programs, denominations, buildings, etc. In the post-Christendom era perhaps we will see less energy devoted to maintaining this assumed Christianity and more devoted to the mission of the church, proclaiming the Gospel and living for the Kingdom of God instead of the kingdoms of man. If we lose our fear of losing the traditions we have come to associate with Christianity and instead focus on the purpose of Christianity, we will all be better off. Perhaps, almost certainly not, in the ways the world counts important (money, respect, comfort) but definitely in the Kingdom of God sense. Christianity never operates as the default but is always counter-cultural.

Using the Bible as a political tool

Yikes, this is unpleasant. Two candidates for Governor in Alabama are arguing about whether one of the candidates believes sufficiently in the Bible.

A mysterious ad that accuses a candidate for governor in Alabama of supporting the theory of evolution and questioning the Bible has triggered a dizzying and nasty shouting match in the state's hotly contested Republican primary race.

The ad -- part of a campaign against Republican candidate Bradley Byrne by a group called the True Republican PAC -- questions Byrne's faith and accuses him of being a "liberal."

Referencing Byrne's time on the state school board, where he was first elected as a Democrat in the 1990s before switching parties, the ad's narrator says in a quizzical voice:

"On the school board, Byrne supported teaching evolution, said evolution best explains the origin of life -- even recently said the Bible is only partially true." Another voice closes the ad by saying Byrne is "trying to look conservative."

That and other ads triggered an all-hands-on-deck response from the Byrne campaign, which launched a "truth team" website, issued a series of statements denying the group's charges, accused a GOP opponent and Democratic operatives of being in cahoots against him, and launched an ad of its own. The campaign also released a lengthy statement calling the faith ad "despicable."

In the statement, Byrne said he believes "every single word" in the Bible is true and that, to the contrary, he fought to get creationism taught in Alabama's schools.

So in their lust for political power, two men who are supposedly believers are engaging in a public mud-wrestling match. What a wonderful witness to the world, men who use the Word of God as a tawdry political tool.

Ligonier Ministries needs $15,600,000

Apparently they have an urgent need for over $15 million. What is this pressing need going to fund?

- A new "Reformation" academy to teach people the right way

- Upgrades to Ligonier's headquarters building

- A new library building

- Paying off existing debt incurred for, you guessed it, property

Good news, they have already raised $6,000,000! I guess that is good news.

I love me some Reformed theology and I own a bunch of Sproul's books but when I look at the webpage asking for money to pay for what they are doing, I have to ask a question. Is that the most pressing need in the world for the church to address with limited resources? How many Bibles would $15 million buy? How many missionaries would it support? How many orphans could be adopted? If an adoption costs $20,000 then the money Ligonier is raising for a building would pay for 780 orphans to be adopted and raised in Christian homes. Isn't that a more pressing need than yet another set of expensive church buildings? 780 children taken out of orphanages and given a chance at a home and a family. Those kids might have kids some day and perhaps raise them in Christian homes. How many lives would be touched and changed in a real way by that kind of money? That is a proper monument to Christ, not yet another Bible school and ministry headquarter.

George Barna at the Michigan Prayer Breakfast

I am going to be at the Michigan Prayer Breakfast tomorrow morning and the keynote speaker is George Barna. I just found this out and am very interested to hear what he has to say, I wonder if it will be on a general topic or on the house church movement he espouses. Look for a report tomorrow, I am sure you can't wait!

Community in the traditional church

Is it possible?

I spend a lot of time banging the drum for community. I also spend a lot of time critiquing (or bashing depending on your point of view) the traditional church.

I am a big boy and it doesn't take a seer to realize that the percentage of Christians in traditional churches is overwhelming. Is it 100%? Of course not but is it 95%? 90%? Quite possibly (note, I am not saying that 95% of people in traditional churches are Christians but that perhaps 95% of all Christians, at least in America, gather in traditional churches)

So how can believers who gather in traditional churches experience real community?

While recognizing that the traditional model of the gathering of the church is far and away the most common, I also recognize that this very common cultural icon makes it difficult to enjoy real, intimate, dare I say Biblical community. I count where we gather as a family in this camp even though we don’t have some of the traditional barriers to community. Creating community is more than eliminating some of the trappings of traditional Christianity but instead involves a conscious and intentional decision to cultivate the reality of what God has created among us.

First and foremost I understand that we cannot create community. The community of God’s people as an adoptive surrogate family, what Joseph Hellerman calls familification, is created by God and cannot be forced. I do believe that there are ways we can help foster community so that our relational reality matches our positional reality. In other words, while God creates the surrogate family through regeneration, there are certainly ways we can hamper community and conversely ways we can encourage community. I am not going to rehash the ways we diminish community, although that is an important topic because if we are aware of ways we hamper community and try to avoid them, community will more naturally occur. I am also operating under a precarious assumption of orthodoxy. I say precarious because it is certainly the case that there are lots of people who talk about community and fellowship while holding heterodox beliefs. Any community that does not have at the center a right understanding of who Jesus Christ is and what His work accomplished is many things but Christian community is not one of them.

Creating real community in a traditional church setting is something that has to go beyond Sunday morning “worship services” and organizing a couple of small group Bible studies. That might be a result of community but it will not foster community. It is a “chicken and egg” question that requires an understanding that we are brothers and sisters in Christ, not unified nor divided by doctrinal statements but unified with one another in Christ.

Here are some ideas I have come up with

a) Unity in Christ precedes community and supersedes doctrinal distinctives. Instead of starting with the things that divide us and working our way down until we get to common ground, our unity in Christ must be our starting point. We cannot have Biblical community if we demand doctrinal homogeneity as the entry fee. I am not suggesting that we expand the circle to include people who are rank heretics or who are in unrepentant sin but disagreements over most of what we quibble about, while interesting and important, ought not be dividers that curtail unity. How much community have we lost over the years, how many wonderful relationships have we missed out on because someone had a different view of the end-times?

b) Rethinking the purpose of the gathering. Rather than a primarily evangelistic effort where people thought to be unbelievers are invited to hear a sermon, the primary purpose of the gathering of the church is…the gathering of the church. That doesn’t mean that we bar unbelievers but it does mean that we shouldn’t lose sight that the focus of the church gathering is God’s people gathered together in community. The witness of Christian community can and should be a springboard to proclaiming the Gospel.

c) This will require Christians who are equipped and excited to share their faith with others. That is a dramatic change in mindset, from “evangelizing by inviting” to sharing your faith with someone directly. Too many Christians are unwilling to share their faith because they have not been equipped to do so even after a lifetime in the church and because they don’t see it as something they can or should do.

d) Community in a traditional church setting means spending time together outside of Sunday morning and Wednesday evening (and budget meetings don’t count!). We have trained Christians to not expect or seek fellowship outside of the scheduled meeting times and given the nature of those meetings it is nearly impossible to see community form within the restrictive boundaries of traditional church life. There is simply no substitute for time and if someone thinks that spending even more time with the church is inconvenient, they need to check their priorities because something is out of whack.

e) Spend time in edification that explores the Biblical meaning of the church as family and community. I am talking about in-depth studies of the language Luke uses in Acts, that Paul uses in his epistles and most of all the way Christ speaks about His people. Teaching that reinforces the traditional view of the church as hierarchical, church officer driven and focused on finances, programs and secondary doctrines is not going to help people see the need for and the potential of Christian community.

These are some ideas I had and it is a pretty limited list. For those who read this and are in a more traditional church setting, what (if anything) are you doing as the church or do you think you should be doing as the church to remove impediments to community and help create an environment where community can flourish? Or do you think there is not a problem, that the traditional model of the church provides a Biblical expression of community? I am interested in hearing your ideas.