Church Growth

Greetings All, 

    This week's 'thought' is for those of you who love the Church, and because you love it, desire its health and vitality.  It's a selection which someone else came across, and when he handed it too me, said: "I think you'll like this."  He was right, I did.  It resonated with something in me because it expresses so well something I've always felt but have struggled to express as well as the author of this selection does. 

 

     It comes to you from Dr. Alan Jacobs, professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois and is taken from the book: "Wayfaring:  Essay's Pleasant and Unpleasant." Enjoy, and be challanged, and never stop loving the Church Christ loves and for which Christ gave His life (Eph. 5:25) -- Dr. Jacobs tells us one of the ways we can.

 

     "We Christians cannot set as our goal the becoming of a counterculture for the common good.  Nor can we directly seek the elimination of the vices and illusions that constrain our attempts to love our neighbors as we should.  We will strip away our self-deceit and become a true light unto the nations only by seeking and becoming faithful to the call of the Gospel.  If we eventually become a true counterculture for the common good, that counterculture will simply be the product of our faithfulness. 

 

     All too often Christians think even of faithfulness as a means to an end, that end being (usually) something called 'church growth.'  We think so because in our culture goals are always products; quantifiable goods that, because they are quantifiable, can be produced by techniques.  Thus our true ancestor is Charles Finney, the 19th century evangelist who believed that his evangelistic techniques were fully scientific:  'The right use of means for a revival is as philosophically sure as the right use of means to raise grain and a crop of wheat.' It is truly wonderful that Finney and his many modern heirs fail altogether to notice that whenever the Bible compares soul-winning to agriculture, it invariably does so in order to emphasize the inscrutable sovereignty of God: Paul planted. Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.  And we never get an explanation of why the ground on which the sower sows is so variable in quality, in receptiveness to the seed of the gospel. Obedience, not results, must be our watchword. 

 

    Last Christmas Day my pastor, Martin Johnson, spoke of his youthful habit of walking in the forests of British Columbia at night, guided only by moonlight. It was remarkable how far he could see, how delicately beautiful the landscape. The only problem was that he couldn't see where to put his foot for his next step.  The light that is Christ, said Martin -- is just the opposite: it illuminates with perfect clarity your next step, but blots out the surrounding territory.  It's worth remembering that when people ask Jesus cartographic kind of questions -- 'Will many be saved or only a few?' -- Jesus tells them to mind their own spiritual business.  I think that if we try to formulate a plan for becoming a counterculture for the common good -- if we draw up a map and an itinerary -- we may well receive a similar rebuke.  'What's that to you? Follow me. One step at a time.' 

 

    Yet there is a sense in which a focus on today's obedience makes a long view possible: it does not yield a map, but it does yield a confidence that He who has called us is faithful, and will conduct the whole church to her journey's end. About a dozen years ago, Pope John Paul II answered a question concerning demographic predictions that Muslims would outnumber Catholics by the year 2000.  To this inquiry the Pope replied placidly. After all, Jesus Christ himself proposed a still more frightening question: 'When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?' (Luke 18:8)  The whole business of counting the adherents of religions in order to find out which of them 'has a future' is a process at best distracting from, at worst hostile to, true faith... 

 

     The church must insist on the integrity of its witness, because only such countercultural integrity will save the church -- and therefore serve the common good -- in the long term.  George Weigel points out that Pope Benedict is fond of quoting the old Benedictine maxim, Succisa virescrit -- 'pruned, it grows' -- but as every gardener knows, the immediate result of a vigorous pruning is an apparently lifeless remnant.  It is only in the next season that the luxurious growth appears... 

 

     How delightful it would be to drive past an empty megachurch and tell an unbelieving friend that the congregation couldn't pay their bills after they gave too much to rebuilding churches in New Orleans... We must remind ourselves that we can insulate ourselves from surprising uncertainties or setbacks only by the kind of false prudence that insulates us also from surprising blessings.  Indeed, we need to ask ourselves what, exactly, in our prudence, we are afraid of.  Sometimes I suspect that it is God himself, or at least life itself."   

 

 

          Duplicating the ways and methods of the world in the Church only produces worldly churches.  Whatever good Finney may have done in his own lifetime, his attempt to turn revival (or mass conversion) into a matter of duplicatable human means, methods and gimmicks, rather than a sovereign, miraculous and supernatural move of God where we are entirely dependent upon His grace, has left us with scores of people who have said a prayer under pressure from another, but never experienced true, saving, supernatural heart change through the implantation and germination of the seed of the Gospel in the soil of their soul.   Prof. Jacobs is right -- we are called by God to be obedient and faithful, not successful by the world's standard of measure (Rev. 3:7-13).  

   

           Loving the Church for the sake of the Lord of the Church, 

 

Pastor Jeff

Liberating

Greetings All, 

     This week's 'thought' comes from James S. Stewart former professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. His name should sound familiar by now since I have quoted him in the past.  It is taken from his superb book, "A Man in Christ."  I cited a condensed version of this selection in my sermon on Sunday, but thought I would send it out in its near complete form for your further examination and contemplation.  It contrasts two approaches to Christianity: one that sees Jesus primarily as our example, and the other which sees Him as the Lord with whom, or to whom, God has joined us, by grace, through faith. 

     As I mentioned in my message Sunday, I embraced (in my early years as a Christian) the concept that the goal of the Christian life was to imitate Jesus example of love, devotion and holiness.  No problem there -- as long as the impossibility of the task is understood from the start. Yet, with the need to follow Jesus example I had also mixed in the idea that the more one did, or the closer one came to doing so, the more God accepted, approved of or loved them (or me) which can only lead to self-righteous pride when one feels they've succeeded, or utter despair when they realize they always fall short of the ideal. I wish I had read these words of Stewart before I ever did so. It would have saved me alot of needless pain and emotional turmoil and despair! 

     Therefore I offer them to you in the hope that if anyone has embraced the same ideas, it will save you from the pain I went through at that time (due to my distorted view of New Testament Christainity and what it is that gains us God's acceptance).  Enjoy.  

"Paul's mysticism... constitutes a very decisive challange to that type of modern religion which is content to regard Jesus merely as example... Now it is perfectly true that the noble ethic Jesus preached, and His own fulfillment of it in life and deed, have laid down the lines for all His friends to follow.  Nor can there be any doubt that this was a real part of the divine plan by which the Word became flesh and dwelt among us -- as indeed the New Testament apostle recognized when he wrote, "Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow in His steps." But what Paul's mysticism [that is, his focus on our spiritual union with Christ] does, is to remind us that the example of Christ is only a part, and not even the greatest part, of the redeeming Gospel.  Were there no more than this, the contemplation of the perfect holiness of Jesus could only breed despair.  For no shining example... can cleanse the conscience that has been defiled, or break the octopus grip sin has upon the soul. 

The evangel of an ethical example is a devastating thing. It makes religion the most grievous of burdens. Perhaps this is the real reason why, even among professing Christians, there are so many strained faces and weary hearts and captive, unreleased spirits. They have listened to Jesus teaching; they have meditated upon Jesus character; and then they have risen up and tried to drive their own lives to follow the royal way. Yet disappointment upon disappointment has been the bitter result. The great example of Jesus [like the law] has been a dead-weight beating them down, bearing them to the ground, bowing their hopeless souls in the dust.  If Harnack's Christ (as ethical teacher and noble example) is all we have, we are left without a Redeemer.  

Yet ever since Isaiah [46:1-4], men have been aware that one of the vital distinctions between true and false religion, is that, whereas the latter is a dead burden for the soul to carry, the former is a living power to carry the soul... "Christ in me" means something quite different from the weight of an impossible ideal, something far more glorious than the oppression of a pattern forever beyond our imitation. "Christ in me" means Christ bearing me along from within, Christ as the motive-power that carries me on, Christ giving my whole life a wonderful poise and lift, and turning every burden into wings.  All this is included when the apostle speaks of "Christ in you, the hope of glory."  

Compared with this, the religion which bases everything on example is pitifully rudimentary.  This, and this alone, is the true Christian religion.  Call it mysticism or not -- the name matters little -- the thing, the experience, matters everything. To be "in Christ," to have Christ within, to realise your creed not as something you have to bear, but as something by which you are borne, this is Christianity.  It is more: it is release and liberty, life with an endless song at its heart.  It means feeling within you, as long as life lasts, the carrying power of Love Almighty; and underneath you, when you come to die, the touch of everlasting arms."

In His Service, Pastor Jeff 

Forgiveness

Greetings All,

     This week's 'thoughts' come from a British lady named Joyce Huggett, and are taken from her book, "All Through the Year."  They have to do with one of the most difficult of all biblical commands -- the command to forgive others, as well as the command to believe the promise of forgiveness (the Gospel) for ourselves.  

 

     And if you're wondering if the the first of these thoughts (about forgiving others) might apply to you, it doesn't usually take much time.  For when we harbor unforgiveness, a person, or a face, or a memory usually pops up within just a few seconds of even hearing the challenge to do so.  One may have popped up for you while you were reading that sentence, reminding you of the need to forgive someone, or forgive them again. Because as I have learned, in cases of deep hurt or offense, forgiveness usually involves more than a one time, "I forgive them."  It involves an ongoing commitment to release the person from what we believe is our justifiable right to harbor anger, retaliate, desire them harm, or refuse them the grace of forgiveness. 

 

    And I say, "the grace of forgiveness," because oftentimes it's a forgiveness they don't deserve, and grace is undeserved favor.  It means extending a grace which allows us to practice the very difficult obedience of "forgiving others as God in Christ has forgiven us"  (Eph. 4:32 / Matt. 6:14-15).

 

    The second thought also addresses something difficult for us to do (as I pointed out in my message on Sunday). It's the difficulty believers often have in fully accepting the forgiveness Christ secured for them on the cross when He poured out His life-blood unto death to atone for all of their sins -- even the worst ones.  Something that is often much harder for us to do than we tend to think.

 

    These thoughts, then, address both aspects of forgiveness: The need for believers to forgive others, and the need for those same believers to fully embrace and accept the forgiveness Christ purchased for them.  Enjoy.

 

   " 'I don't get mad. I just get even.' We smile when slogans like that greet us from the back window of people's cars.  Yet such tit-for-tat thinking is part of the clutter which sometimes hinders our prayer, because it is incompatible with Jesus' teaching on forgiveness.  To forgive means to let go of resentment and bitterness, hatred and anger.  To forgive means to let the offending person off the hook. To forgive means to cancel the debt we feel they owe us.  To forgive is therefore extremely costly. And it happens in stages.  

 

    Forgiveness begins by feeling the full brunt of the pain and recognising that we have every reason to feel hurt as well as every right to want to retaliate; to hit back; to hurt as we've been hurt.  But forgiveness continues by making a deliberate choice to refuse to exercise that right.  By engaging the will, forgiveness drops any accusations we might wish to make and switches off the gas which has kept our anger simmering.  Yet forgiveness goes even further.  While refusing to deny that we have been hurt, it searches for acceptable and significant ways of serving the one who harmed us in the first place.  This, as least, is forgiveness following the pattern of Jesus." 

 

     Sometimes we forget that forgiveness (in Christian circles) is defined by what Jesus did on the cross.  And since it is, forgiveness means "paying for another the debt they deserve for their sins against us."  That's what Jesus did to purchase and secure our forgiveness -- He paid the penalty for our offenses against God (which, as those who believe in the Trinity, means sins committed against Himself).  He freed us from the penalty we deserve for our willful, and intentional, as well as unintentional, offenses against Him. That's what forgiveness is: Choosing, like Jesus, to pay the debt of sin, or cancel the debt of sins, which someone has committed against us -- hard as that always seems to be.  

 

 

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  Then Huggett moves on to what may be an equally difficult thing for us to do -- fully embrace and accept the complete forgiveness Christ purchased and secured on the cross for all who would ever place their faith and trust for salvation in Him.

 

     "Introverts are good at confessing and bad at receiving forgiveness, particularly if they come from an evangelical background.  I am an introvert, and an evangelical, and these words of Thomas Merton never cease to amaze me.

 

        'We are not permitted to nurse a sense of guilt. We must fully and completely accept

         and embrace His forgiveness and love.  Guilt feeling and inferiority feeling before God

         are expressions of selfishness, of self-centeredness. We give greater importance to 

         our little sinful self than to His immense and never-ending love.  We must surrender

         our guilt and our inferiority to Him.  His goodness is greater than our badness.  We

         must accept His joy in loving and forgiving us (Heb. 12:2).  It is healing grace to

         surrender our sinfulness to His mercy.' " 

 

           With you in the battle to forgive and fully accept forgiveness 

 

Pastor Jeff

On Death

Greetings All, 

 

     We just had a funeral service here at my church. Therefore, these two thoughts from Spurgeon have been rolling over in my mind since I came across them yesterday in a devotional called "Beside Still Waters  -  Words of Comfort for the Soul."

 

     They were spoken in the mid-1850's and thus they reflect a slightly different view of death than we tend to have today.  Yet they align perfectly with Scripture -- especially verses like Isaiah 57:1-2: "The righteous perish, and no one ponders in his heart; devout men are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to spare them from evil."   

 

     Or Psalm 139:16: "All the days ordained for me were written in Your Book before any one of them came to be." If you keep those thoughts in mind as you read these selections, it will help you understand death as Spurgeon does -- as one who is ever-conscious of looking at it through the lens of a God who is sovereign over all, knows all, and deals with His children as a loving Father.  Enjoy.

 

     "The Lord Gives and the Lord takes away..." (Job 1:21)

 

     "Some of us have suffered great physical pain that bites into our spirits and causes depression. Others have suffered heavy financial losses and been deprived even to the point of extreme hardship. Are you complaining against the Lord for this?  I pray not.  The Lord has been pruning you, cutting off your best branches; you seem to be continually tormented with the knife.  

 

      Just suppose that your loving Lord has caused this; suppose that from His own hand all your grief has come -- every cut and gash. If this is true, put your finger to your lips and be quiet until from your heart you are able to say, 'The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD."

 

      Recently I sat in the garden with my friend. We were in perfect health, rejoicing in the Lord's goodness.  We were happy as we sat there reading the Word of God and meditating.  Dare we think of being so happy? Within five days I was stricken with disabling pain (a crippling case of gout), and worse, far worse, he was called upon to lose his wife.  

 

      Yet here is our comfort: The Lord has done it. The best rose in the garden is gone. Who has taken it? The Gardener. He planted it, and watched over it, and now He has taken it. Does anyone weep because of that? Everyone knows it is the best that He should come and gather from His gardens finest.

 

     Are you troubled by the loss of your loved one?  Remember, the next time the Lord comes to your part of the garden, He will only gather His flowers.  Would your prevent Him from doing this, even if you could?"

 

 

    "A time to live and a time to die."  (Ecclesiastes 3:2) 

 

     "God has fixed the time of our death (Job 7:1).  It is useless to dream of living here forever.  A time of departure must come unless the Lord returns... Here diseases wait in ambush, eager to slay.  But, 'He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge... You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.  A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand; but it will not come near to you' (Psalm 91:4-7). 

 

      We are immortal until our work is done.  Once that has been completed, we shall receive our summons home.  Thus, if duty calls you into danger, if you have to nurse the contagious sick, do not hold back.  You will not die by a stray arrow from death's quiver.  Only God can take your breath.  Your death is not left to chance.  It is determined by a heavenly Father's gracious will. Therefore, do not be afraid.  Now, do not be reckless and rush into danger without reason, for that is madness.  Yet never fear to face death when God's voice calls you into danger.

 

       Here is comfort: If the Father of our Lord Jesus arranges all, then our friends do not die untimely deaths.  Believers are not cut off before their time.  God has appointed a time to harvest His fruit. Some are sweet even in early spring, and He gathers them.  Others, like baskets of summer fruit, are taken while the year is young. Yet some remain until autumn mellows them. But be sure of this, each will be gathered in its season.  God has appointed the commencement, the continuation, and the conclusion of your mortal life." 

 

      

       I personally enjoyed these thoughts. They give a refreshing perspective on the death of God's saints. The Church is God's garden (I Cor. 3:9), and by the grace of the Holy Spirit each believer has been planted in it (and watered and fertilized and weeded by that same Spirit), and at a certain day in the history of our lives (which has already been determined by God) He will come to glean us as flowers, picked from His garden, and to be displayed in heaven as the purchase of redemption, and the "riches of HIS glorious inheritance in the saints"  (Eph. 1:18).  

 

     "Here is our comfort: The Lord has done it.  The best rose in the garden is gone. Who has taken it? The Gardener. He planted it and watched over it, and now He has taken it. Does anyone weep because of that? Everyone knows it is the best that He should come and gather from His gardens finest."

       

       In the Bonds of Confident Gospel Hope, 

 

Pastor Jeff