The Gospel in Real Life

I came across this on the Rethink Mission web site. It helped in adding clarification to something that I get asked a lot. I hope you find it helpful. Here’s a snippet of what’s in it…

Often, it’s not that these churches have fallen into some gross heresy. Most likely, it’s just that over time, they’ve let the gospel slip in favor of another way to try to draw people and change people. A few of the most prevalent things I’ve seen that can crowd out the gospel:

Moralism – using fear, rules, and commands as the basis for discouraging sin and encouraging holy living, which sadly results in increased self-righteousness among rule-keepers and absolute despair in those who are unable to live up.

Pragmatism – when in an effort to reach new people, church leaders spend more time teaching helpful techniques or useful principles than actually pointing people to the only thing that has real power to change both hearts and lives.

Read More…

The topic of “doing church” seems to come up regularly in casual conversation. I sometimes get asked about ways of doing church, so I thought I would blog on it just to flesh out my own thoughts on the subject. I’m a bit of a conference junkie and I usually get asked about doing church while at a conference where I bump into somebody who’s curious about it and who wants to hear more. Allow me to say up front that how a group of believers chooses to do church is largely an area of freedom. By that I mean that as long as we aren’t violating Scripture by what we are doing, we are free to do church in whatever way we are most comfortable with. We are free to meet in a house, or in a stadium, or at the park. We are free to celebrate the Lord’s supper once a year (Yikes! Did I really say that!?), once a month, once a week, or every hour on the hour. We are free to sing Psalms, hymns, or contemporary praise music. We are free to meet at 7:00 AM or 11:00 PM. We are also free to meet on Thursdays, Tuesdays, or Sundays. These are all areas of freedom and we dare not attempt to bind one’s conscience to a particular way of doing church just because we may think it is the best way. For example, if I am partial to certain elements of house church, I cannot succumb to the notion that is the only way to do church or that house church has some type of Apostolic tradition attached to it that makes it the only option to consider in sorting out how we do church. Likewise, if I am partial to a more traditional church environment, I cannot impose that model on someone who is inclined toward Read more…

Yesterday morning we filled out Elder cards in our fellowship. We do that every so often. It’s a way for the Elders to keep their finger on the pulse of what others in the church are thinking in regards to men in the fellowship who may be qualified as Elders. The Elders already know what they think about it, but if someone is going to be recognized by the church as a shepherd or Elder, the entire church has to be convinced that he is qualified because the entire church will have to submit to his authority and leadership once he is recognized by the church as qualified and he begins serving in that capacity. This is our first step in the Elder selection process. Scripture doesn’t tell us how to do this, so it’s a freedom area and every church does it differently. This is the method we’ve chosen because it seems the most effective in our church environment. The current Elders may think someone is qualified, but the evaluation cards can sometimes give more information that perhaps the Elders weren’t aware of. In that instance, the cards serve as a good safeguard. Someone may have the perception that Joe Candidate isn’t fully qualified and their perception may be wrong, but even wrong perceptions need to be Read more…

Scripture is very clear in defining the qualifications of an Elder, Pastor, or Bishop (in the New Testament, these terms are synonymous and refer to the same man. I will use the term Elder to refer to all three). In short, an Elder must be a man who is above reproach. This is explained in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9. Any man who fails to meet these qualifications, is not qualified to lead God’s people as an Elder in the church. But let’s suppose for a moment that a man is functioning in the role of an Elder already and then he falls into unrepentant sin and is no longer qualified to lead God’s people. What is the church to do in such a circumstance? Fortunately, Scripture addresses this predicament.

To begin with, Scripture assumes a plurality of Elders. The one Elder or one Pastor church is going to have a more difficult time dealing with the kind of ugly situation I’ve described, simply because the solution Scripture provides assumes a plurality of qualified leadership. There truly is safety in numbers and the plurality of Elders in the church is Read more…