All We Are Saying, Is Give Church a Chance!

(HT:Between Two Worlds)

Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck write as guest columnists today in the Newsweek/Washington Post forum on religion.

Here's an excerpt:Perhaps Christians are leaving the church because it isn't tolerant and open-minded. But perhaps the church-leavers have their own intolerance too--intolerant of tradition, intolerant of authority, intolerant of imperfection except their own. Are you open-minded enough to give the church a chance--a chance for the church to be the church, not a coffee shop, not a mall, not a variety show, not Chuck E. Cheese, not a U2 concert, not a nature walk, but a wonderfully ordinary, blood-bought, Spirit-driven church with pastors, sermons, budgets, hymns, bad carpet and worse coffee?

Their book Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion is now available.

Word-centredness produces a Worshipping Community

Here is an outline from a sermon preached by Scott Hamilton of Harvest Bible Chapel, Glasgow.

Restoring a City: Nehemiah 8

Word-centredness produces worshipping community.

What would we suggest being at the heart of such an occasion?

They don't ask for a show

They don't crave a circus

They ask for God's Word

Call for us to abandon attarctional tendencies and pursue Biblical priorities.

Anticipation breeds attendance (1)
Starving ears and hearts come longing to hear from God.
Thirsty people will gather where they will be quenched.

Appetite breeds attention(2-3)
The absence of something vital tends to focus the mind.
People willingly listen when they know there is life in the message.

Ascendance breeds acknowledgement (4-5)
The place given to God’s Word in a church defines the place it will have in the believer’s heart.

Ascription breeds adoration (6)
The priority given to God in a church defines the priority He will have in the believer’s heart.

The place of God's Word and the priority of God are inseparable- if we don't elevate what God's Word says then we cannot worship God for who He is.

Explanation breeds application (7-8)
Preaching for transformation not just education.
If we invest in the depth God will take care of the breadth..

Designed to replace grief with joy as lasting fruit. (9-12)

Tony Reinke on Gospel Faithfulness from Gal 1:6-10

1. Gospel faithfulness is required of the entire church, not merely its pastoral leaders.

2. No matter how religious we claim to be, no matter how close to the truth we reside, no matter how recent our conversion, sinners are all prone to an unintentional replacement of the gospel with a counterfeit.

3. According to Paul, we can relax our grip on the biblical gospel suddenly and dreadfully easily (ταχέως).

4. To add anything to the gospel is to desert the gospel.

5. To add anything to the gospel is to have a “no-gospel.”

6. To modify the gospel is an act of defection from God.

7. The content of the gospel is unchanging and “embodies a core of fixed tradition which is normative so that no preaching deviating can be called ‘gospel’” (Fung).

8. No authority—not even an angel from heaven—has the right to modify the gospel because “the authority of the gospel resides primarily in the message itself and only secondarily in the messenger” (Fung).

9. A divine curse (ἀνάθεμα) is threatened against teachers who—in claiming to preach the gospel—have deviated from its biblical, Apostolically-defined, substance.

10. Faithfulness to the genuine gospel requires that our hearts be freed from the chains of man-pleasing, in order that we might serve Christ. We cannot serve Christ with an adjusted gospel.

Look & Live - Good Friday @ SABC

Do you care enough to witness to the lost?

Commending Christ Conference on Evangelism...

The audio and video from this year's Desiring God Pastors Conference is a must see for pastors, but I would go so far as to say that it's a must see for the members of our churches too.

In particular, we should be encouraged and challenged by Mark Dever's three addresses...
1) The Need for Evangelism

2) The Pastor and Evangelism

3) The Church and Evangelism

Dever on the Gospel...