A Little Dose of Calvin

These cut straight to my heart. Funny how I get exactly what I need to hear from reading a textbook about a guy who lived five hundred years ago. Thought I'd share the experience to whoever may come across this little page of thoughts.

"For, if we would be like angels in the pulpit, but subsequently would lead a licentious life and people would detect in our life nothing but contempt for God, that we were mockers and vain people, what would that communicate?"
-John Calvin

"Those who proclaim the Word of God faithfully must therefore be listened to, as if God himself descends from heaven to the listeners."
-John Calvin

"But we know that God considers nothing higher than His honor, and it consists especially in this, that people know Him and that poor souls are led to salvation. Let us, therefore, not be surprised when our Lord desires that His Gospel is proclaimed with so much zeal that nothing can prevent its course. For the only means by which people may be saved is to be instructed in the teaching of the Gospel."
-John Calvin

What is the Church About?

This is a helpful guide for people who want to be a part of a solid church but aren't sure what to look for. It answers some of the questions of what a church should be about and what a healthy one looks like. If you are looking for a church, or want to look into what a church actually is, this is a good place to start. I would suggest confirming these propositions with scripture as well. It's also just encouraging to read through and be refreshed in your understanding of church ministry.
These points are taken from the 9Marks website (http://www.9marks.org/). FYI... Mark Dever is the President of 9Marks.

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The Mission of 9Marks

We believe the local church is the focal point of God's plan for displaying his glory to the nations. Our vision is simple: Churches that reflect the character of God. Our mission is to cultivate and encourage churches characterized by these nine marks:

1. Expositional Preaching

This is preaching which expounds what Scripture says in a particular passage, carefully explaining its meaning and applying it to the congregation. It is a commitment to hearing God’s Word and to recovering the centrality of it in our worship.

2. Biblical Theology

Paul charges Titus to "teach what is in accord with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1). Our concern should be not only with how we are taught, but with what we are taught. Biblical theology is a commitment to know the God of the Bible as He has revealed Himself in Scripture.

3. Biblical Understanding of the Good News

The gospel is the heart of Christianity. But the good news is not that God wants to meet people's felt needs or help them develop a healthier self-image. We have sinfully rebelled against our Creator and Judge. Yet He has graciously sent His Son to die the death we deserved for our sin, and He has credited Christ's acquittal to those who repent of their sins and believe in Jesus' death and resurrection. That is the good news.

4. Biblical Understanding of Conversion

The spiritual change each person needs is so radical, so near the root of us, that only God can do it. We need God to convert us. Conversion need not be an emotionally heated experience, but it must evidence itself in godly fruit if it is to be what the Bible regards as a true conversion.

5. Biblical Understanding of Evangelism

How someone shares the gospel is closely related to how he understands the gospel. To present it as an additive that gives non-Christians something they naturally want (i.e. joy or peace) is to present a half-truth, which elicits false conversions. The whole truth is that our deepest need is spiritual life, and that new life only comes by repenting of our sins and believing in Jesus. We present the gospel openly, and leave the converting to God.

6. Biblical Understanding of Membership

Membership should reflect a living commitment to a local church in attendance, giving, prayer and service; otherwise it is meaningless, worthless, and even dangerous. We should not allow people to keep their membership in our churches for sentimental reasons or lack of attention. To be a member is knowingly to be traveling together as aliens and strangers in this world as we head to our heavenly home.

7. Biblical Church Discipline

Church discipline gives parameters to church membership. The idea seems negative to people today – “didn’t our Lord forbid judging?” But if we cannot say how a Christian should not live, how can we say how he or she should live? Each local church actually has a biblical responsibility to judge the life and teaching of its leaders, and even of its members, particularly insofar as either could compromise the church’s witness to the gospel.

8. Promotion of Christian Discipleship and Growth

A pervasive concern with church growth exists today – not simply with growing numbers, but with growing members. Though many Christians measure other things, the only certain observable sign of growth is a life of increasing holiness, rooted in Christian self-denial. These concepts are nearly extinct in the modern church. Recovering true discipleship for today would build the church and promote a clearer witness to the world.

9. Biblical Understanding of Leadership

What eighteenth-century Baptists and Presbyterians often agreed upon was that there should be a plurality of elders in each local church. This plurality of elders is not only biblical, but practical — it has the immense benefit of rounding out the pastor’s gifts to ensure the proper shepherding of God’s church.

In identifying and promoting these nine marks, we are not intending to lay down an exhaustive or authoritative list. There are other significant marks of healthy churches, like prayer and fellowship. We want to pursue those ourselves as well, and we want you to pursue them with us. But these nine are the ones we think are most neglected in most local churches today, with the most damaging ramifications. Join us in cultivating churches that reflect the character of God.

Jesus Is Really God

One thing that I often thought about and was told throughout my Bible Institute education was how much things would change if we “really believed these things!” that we were being taught. This has had a dual effect of making me on the one hand, really inspired to believe the truth of scripture and live accordingly. But on the other hand, it has made me doubt its possibility. Seriously, sitting in Bible classes every day and reading a bunch of books about the Bible leads to me knowing a lot of Bible stuff that I am supposed to “really believe.” There can’t be any way for me to implement 100% of what I know about God in true belief every moment as I am meant to, can there?

With that in mind, I still want to bring out that classic youth group hypothetical challenge, “what if everyone in hear truly believed the truth that they are taught from scripture!” Lets just start with one truth that lays at the cornerstone of our Christian world view, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” This clause is most significant in light of John’s opening words in the book, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The word becoming flesh is referring to the man Jesus who lived and died in the near east early in the first century AD. Look at the this whole verse, “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). This truth is the truth about who Jesus was (or is). Jesus was a man. He is also God.

My challenge, as a person who calls himself Christian, is to be completely convinced of and compelled by this truth. If God really did take on a human body and was with us in this way in order to “bear witness to the truth,” to live the perfect life of obedience to God that we were supposed to live, to die the death that we were supposed to die, to rise again and sit at the right hand of God until he finally comes to earth again in all His glory and power to judge the earth revealing Gods wrath against all sin and making a new heaven and a new earth… If we believe all of this, and trust in it as that which brings us hope, then because of the substance of this truth, the Gospel, it will take precedence over everything else that we live for.

This means that the way I love my friend Mark, is by doing whatever is within my capacity to help him become a man who glorifies God, because according to our worldview that is defined by the Gospel, the thing that will make Mark eternally joyful is making much of God. That is what he was created for. The problem is that often I do not love Mark as I should, really because I fail to believe the Gospel as I should.

Lord we believe, but help our unbelief. You alone can lead us to life giving, hope breathing faith. We are dangerously forgetful, would you remind us of your truth and help us to trust and believe it.

The Gospel Coalition

God Loves You

"Love is the costly labor or effort to enthrall the beloved with what will bring them full and eternal satisfaction, namely, God."
- John Piper

Tastes Awful

“In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule

I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black

And I held my tongue as she told me

‘Son fear is the heart of love’

So I never went back”

Lyrics from I’ll Follow You Into the Dark

by Death Cab for Cutie

I bought a bed the other week from a mattress store down town (a first for me, it’s a part of living in the real world, buying your own bed). The salesman, not much older than me, was a personable guy and seemed to be interested in my doings in Chicago, as a salesman should be. Soon enough he found out that I was a seminary student interested in church planting and preaching.

Often, this intensifies the difficulty of striking a genuine conversation about spiritual things as a certain agenda is projected upon the preacher or seminarian. But that isn’t entirely how it went.

He thought I was studying to be a priest at first – the word “seminary” provokes that reaction occasionally. But as I clarified what Trinity Seminary is and that I was about he proceeded to let me in on some of his story. In it, he mentioned going to Catholic School where he was basically force fed what seemed to be a twisted version of selective biblical truth, and “railed into” (I think his words were..) by nuns.

Steve, like many others had a taste of religion and the bitter taste is still strong in his mouth. There is an inoculation of indifference to the Gospel that goes along with this bitter taste, one which many of us are far too familiar with.

This taste that Steve has lingering, and perhaps that Benjamin is referring to in his lyrics, is not a reflection of the true Gospel as far as I’m concerned. But how can we best talk to someone like him and show what the Gospel really is when this image of Christianity is already set? Maybe you’ve had similar conversations or a similar experience as Steve. Do share…

Do we Mourn?

I am not one who has undergone many deaths, diseases, injuries, or other afflictions, but being human I do know pain and suffering to some extent. Despite the past, it is inevitable that suffering will come. For that reason, I (or we) must learn and be prepared for the unexpected time of atrocity. There are those in our churches, who are much acquainted with grief and pain but are ignorant when it comes to finding a biblical response to these pains.
The following is my reflection on an article written by Walter Brueggemann on the lament in his book, Reverberations of Faith. In this book he has many pointed critiques for us (the western church), routed in an Old Testament thematic biblical theological study. His words on this subject may help us in dealing with our pain. They may help us to know how to mourn in the time that it is needed.

The Lament
As mentioned in class, the Lament is an act that is not often practiced by western believers, I believe much to our own detriment. This subject is received in a similar way to the discussion of herem (Hebrew term used to describe the God-ordained annihilation of whole people groups) just above, in the sense that when we find ourselves faced with the grim reality of our own suffering and the questions thereof, we frequently tend to suppress them. We do this, perhaps, because we think that our faith is supposed to supersede and maybe even mitigate our own circumstantial agony. Is there, perhaps, a fear that if we are to recognize these painful feelings and scary questions as significant, God may find out what we really think about this sickness that has come upon us, or the car accident that just killed our brother or sister. Wrongly, we tell ourselves and tell each other that we must smother our emotions and feelings replacing them with what we know to be true (or what we are told is true). Is this how God would have us work through our suffering?
Brueggemann’s discussion on the lament is very helpful for those of us who are timid to tread in the unknown waters of petitionary prayer and mourning. As he mentions, fully one-third of the Psalms are laments. He describes it as a “daringly assertive way for Israel to address God” on the grounds of a “covenant of mutual fidelity and commitment…” (118). Brueggemann also notes that “the most interesting and perhaps most important recurring feature of this form of prayer is that while it characteristically begins in need, sadness, or dire strait, these same prayers characteristically end in praise, celebration, and confidence that God has acted or will act” (119). Another interesting part of this petition is its demanding nature and the recurrence of imperatives addressed to God. This shows that they are real prayers and not just “psychological acts of catharsis whereby the speaker “feels better’… [they are] seriously addressed to God, who is expected to answer” (119). They are acts of hope that expect God to hear and act in response.

What do you think of Brueggemann’s ideas?