The emerging church

I mentioned the Emerging church this morning as one of the new movements in the church world wide, much good is coming from them and some not so good stuff too. It is important to see what is happening in the church worldwide as trends in other countries will help us bring the message of Jesus to our context when these changes hit us (we're normally about 5 years behind the US) so a bit of preemptive thinking and reading is always a good thing!

Here is a helpful pdf article on the emerging church, in it Mark Driscoll outlines four 'lanes' of the emerging movement and it might be worth your reading it.

The Leavers: Young Doubters Exit the Church | Christianity Today

A really thought provoking article about why so many young people leave the church in their droves. These kinds of articles are mandatory reading for churches and leaders who do not want to repeat the errors of previous generations, they don't have all the answers but do have the tools to begin our thinking on how we can tackle this in our unique context. The Leavers: Young Doubters Exit the Church | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Accessing God without Christ?

The Gospel is the central tenet of the scriptures. In short: God. Man. Christ. Response.

To expand:

• God is holy, righteous and perfect.
• Humans, created in his image, are marred by the fall and are totally and completely sinful.
• God in his mercy, love and compassion sends Christ to stand in our place as a substitute for the punishment that is due to us.
• We must respond to that offer of grace by having faith through repentance.

There are a great number of challenges that lie before the church in proclaiming and explaining the gospel to the world. One of the biggest challenges is a world that thinks they can access God without coming through Jesus. Even in the church there is a widespread misunderstanding of the doctrine of total depravity - that humans are totally and completely unable to do anything to please God. Hebrews 11 reminds us that without faith it is impossible to please God - and faith Ephesians 2:8 reminds us is a gift from God. So even our believing in Jesus is a gift given to us through the Holy Spirit that comes from Jesus. Outside of faith in Christ there is no pleasing God and if faith is a gift from Christ then without Jesus in the picture there is no chance of us pleasing God and so how can we so mistakenly think we can come before this holy God.

Jesus is necessary and central to ALL of the activity of God on this earth. He is the one through whom and and for whom all things are made (Colossians 1) and he is the one who breaks the great barrier of sin that separates us from God. There is one mediator between us and God - not ourselves, but Jesus - without Jesus there is no mediator to take our messages to God and we are isolated and separated from him.

Luke 10:22 ESV All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

This line of thinking inspired by Jerry Bridges vid below.

People at Work - Presentation 1 | The Lausanne Global Conversation

Mark Greene executive director of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity gives an fascinating and very challenging presentation on how to be the church in the workplace - really worth a watch! The single most striking line is this "98% of Christians have not been envision nor equipped for mission in 95% of their waking lives, what a tragic waste of human potential"

Part of Lausanne conference is a manifesto stating truth and vision for the movement part of it says this "Another context for lay witness is the workplace, for it is here most Christians spend half their waking hours, and work is a divine calling. Christians can commend Christ by word of mouth, by their consistent industry, honesty and thoughtfulness, by their concern for justice in the workplace, and especially if others can see from the quality of their daily work that it is done to the glory of God."

People at Work - Presentation 1 | The Lausanne Global Conversation

Lausanne Testimony

A very powerful testimony a North Korean teenager from the Lausanne conference held recently in Cape Town.

Some parts of the body of Christ have life much tougher than us, they are persecuted for the faith in ways that we as westerners simply do not realize not that we will hopefully ever experience. These people go back to their home countries to spread the great love of Christ - to the detriment of their families and often to the end of their lives. Persecution often inspires greater passion and devotion to Jesus and

My prayer is that we would have this young woman's passion for Jesus!

The ten commandments on how to interpret the bible is worth a look!

Art and faith do not often overlap especially in modern times. Here is a video about Crossway's new project to create a bible with modern art as part of it, it looks pretty impressive!

John Piper makes some comments on the ESV study Bible.

Tullian writes a great post about how idolatry can rob us of Joy and how suffering does not, if our theology of grace is sound

There has been some noise about the Bible's inconsistency based on some recent posts on the internet commissioned by FastCompany. Here is some commentary and encouragement from The Resurgence.com

Legalism?

As I reflect on the broader church there are areas where we have improved hugely over previous generations. Our desire to be relevant to the culture in which we find ourselves so that we might win people to Jesus is awesome. We've lost the religious and formal atmosphere that makes God (and church leaders) inaccessible and distant that too is amazing. We often have contemporary worship and accessible sermons – again, well done!

But we've lost a few battles too. Sanctity of marriage and sexuality within marriage has been lost as most couples Christian or not will live together prior to marriage. We've been largely silent on the social injustices like poverty and abortion and too vocal in some places on things like homosexuality and yet strangely silent about gossip.

A major area where I believe that we are in danger of losing the battle is with regarding grace and legalism. And much of the debate is about misunderstanding the biblical principals.

Grace is God giving unmerited favour to those who cannot earn it. Legalism is the opposite, that we can earn God's favour by our good deeds.

Grace says “Jesus does all the work on the cross our job is to have faith.”
Legalism says “God will accept me if I am good and Jesus showed me how to live”

Paul fights this fight all the way through Romans.

My concern is that when churches bring in some sort of rule or legislation they are often accused of being legalistic and that grace must prevail. I don’t like that at all mostly because I think it is a lie. Firstly laws and rules are not legalism and neither is trying to enforce them as long as they are biblical. Secondly that kind of response is not called grace it’s called permissiveness.

The question gets raised in my mind in dealing with a number of issues in the church:

-Tithing is a big one – all people should be tithing and yet our statistics tell us that our tithing is around 2%. Should leaders be tithing? Surely they should be leading the charge so to speak? And if they are not are they being obedient to Jesus and if they are not being obedient should they be leading? How does this tie in to express instructions in the bible to give to God of our first fruits?

-Our kids church is looking at a questionnaire asking some pretty deep questions about peoples lives. These people are caring for our kids, surely they should be vetted in some way so that we are sure that our kids are safe. The recent debacle in the catholic church shows what happens when these things are swept under the carpet. How does this tie in to the biblical instructions of caring for children?

-Uninvolved members – how should churches deal with those who no longer attend worship? Many churches have people on their roll who come to worship once a year at most – how does that tie in with the biblical command to gather regularly or to fellowship and encourage each other? Do we leave them be or confront them?

-Gossip – wow all churches have a lot of gossipers! Do we weed them out or leave them be? How does this tie in with the bible’s instructions to seek unity, peace and harmony with each other and James’ instructions on taming the tongue? In our desire to be gracious are we not allowing disunity to be spread?

My concern is that in being permissive we harm the church by accepting unacceptable behavior and being silent lest we be ungracious - I believe that is a lie spun by the evil one. And then in the same breath I am concerned that we become a bunch of rule-focused people rather than Jesus focused, that would be another evil lie too...there must be some middle ground!

The scriptures paint a picture of grace that so changes our lives that we live differently to Jesus glory, one cannot legislate that kind of thing can one? And yet somehow we need to remind those who are not living differently that they have missed out on grace, for such a grace cannot leave us the same, such a grace will shape and mould our lives because it is the most profound truth the world has known.

My belief is that the church has made it much, much easier to 'follow' Jesus than Jesus made it to follow Jesus. He tells us to pick up our cross and to come and follow him. To die for him that we might live. To let the dead bury themselves. To drop everything and follow him.

And yet millions of those who profess faith in Jesus refuse to carry their cross and reject the call to follow...and leaders in those churches have allowed those under their care to believe they are OK with Jesus instead of graciously but firmly calling them to repentance and faith by pointing out their error and reminding them of the instructions, law and rules that Jesus and the apostles laid down...

Some food for thought and I'd love to hear your comments.

Justified: Modern Reformation Essays on the Doctrine of Justification

Michael Horton writes this his latest book Justified: Modern Reformation Essays on the Doctrine of Justification a great statement reminding us that the gospel is always about what Jesus has done on the scross in saving and sustaining us:

Scripture is of no use to us if we read it merely as a handbook for daily living without recognizing that its principle purpose is to reveal Jesus Christ and his gospel for the salvation of sinners. All Scripture coalesces in Christ, anticipated in the OT and appearing in the flesh in the NT. In Scripture, God issues commands and threatens judgment for transgressors as well as direction for the lives of his people. Yet the greatest treasure buried in the Scriptures is the good news of the promised Messiah. Everything in the Bible that tells us what to do is “law”, and everything in the Bible that tells us what God has done in Christ to save us is “gospel.” Much like medieval piety, the emphasis in much Christian teaching today is on what we are to do without adequate grounding in the good news of what God has done for us in Christ. “What would Jesus do?” becomes more important than “What has Jesus done?” The gospel, however, is not just something we needed at conversion so we can spend the rest of our Christian life obsessed with performance; it is something we need every day–the only source of our sanctification as well as our justification. The law guides, but only the gospel gives. We are declared righteous–justified–not by anything that happens within us or done by us, but solely by God’s act of crediting us with Christ’s perfect righteousness through faith alone.

Christians and the environment

Reformation Day

I was certainly amiss in not making some fuss on Sunday...yesterday 493 years ago a German Monk named Martin Luther nailed a document called the 95 thesis to the door of the church in Wittenberg in opposition to un-biblical and heretical teaching by the Roman Catholic church.

That document began one of the most revolutionary movements in human history the Reformation. It changed the face of Europe and thankfully it changed the church. We at PVFC are one of the fruits of Luther's movement to return us to the grace of Jesus.

The five major statements defining the heart of the Reformation was:

• Scripture alone
• Faith alone
• Grace alone
• Jesus alone
• For God's glory alone

Thanks Martin for what you did so that we could know Jesus and his mercy for repentant sinners like us!