Locusts and Wild Honey

Responsible Church Membership

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 | General | 2 Comments

Some time tomorrow, Tom Ascol will attempt, once again, to present a resolution to the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention calling “Southern Baptists to repent of our failure to maintain responsible church membership.” I do not know if the resolution will reach the floor, much less meet with approval, but as for Lakeshore Baptist Church, where I pastor, we have heard the call and desire to move toward a more meaningful, definite, love-motivated, Christ-honoring, joy-enhancing regenerate church membership.

This past Sunday Lakeshore Baptist Church celebrated our 97th anniversary. A handful of believers met together in 1911 to found the church in Lakeshore. In the sparse minutes of that meeting we learn that the moderator read from their Articles of Faith and their Church Covenant. The record also gave a definite list of five original church members. I pointed to these three pieces of data and appealed to the churches founders as examples to dedicate ourselves to upholding and valuing sound doctrine, our covenant promises to each other, and to maintain definite responsible caring church membership rolls for the glory of God. While I think we could receive a decent grade on the first point, we would need to repeat the class on the other two and probably enlist a tutor.

In the Homecoming sermon, I swallowed hard, acknowledged my own personal failure in leadership regarding our church rolls, asked for forgiveness, and publicly repented. My cards lay face up on the table and we pray that God would grant us the grace to lovingly move forward toward a more healthy church. At the risk of airing our dirty laundry, I am making the audio of the sermon available here. (1 hour 15 min.)

 

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Ecclesiastical Hitchhikers

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 | General | 1 Comment

I’m reading R. Kent Hughes’ book, Disciplines of a Godly Man. In his chapter on the church, he describes the rampant aversion to meaningful church membership. He calls the phenomenon “ecclesiastical hitchhikers.” He writes:

Church attendance is infected with a malaise of conditional loyalty which has produced an army of ecclesiastical hitchhikers. The hitchhiker’s thumb says, “You buy the car, pay for repairs and upkeep and insurance, fill the car with gas — and I’ll ride with you. But if you have an accident, you are on your own! And I’ll probably sue.” So it is with the credo of so many of today’s church at tenders: “You go to the meetings and serve on the boards and committees, you grapple with the issues and do the work of the church and pay the bills —and I’ll come along for the ride. But if things do not suit me, I’ll criticize and complain and probably bail out — my thumb is always out for a better ride.”

This putative loyalty is fueled by a consumer ethos — a “McChristian” mentality — which picks and chooses here and there to fill one’s ecclesiastical shopping list. There are hitchhikers who attend one church for the preaching, send their children to a second church for its dynamic youth program, and go to a third church’s small group. Church hitchhikers have a telling vocabulary: “I go to” or “I attend,” but never “I belong to” or “I am a member.”

So today, at the end of the twentieth century, we have a phenomenon unthinkable in any other century: churchless Christians. There is a vast herd of professed Christians who exist as nomadic hitchhikers without accountability, without discipline, without discipleship, living apart from the regular benefits of the ordinances…

…membership in an invisible Church without participation in its local expression is never contemplated in the New Testament.

So we conclude that church hitchhikers, ecclesiastical wanderers, spiritual Lone Rangers, Christians who disdain membership, are aberrations in the history of the Christian Church and are in grievous error.

????????
from Disciplines of a Godly Man pp 169-170

Integrity in Church Membership

Monday, May 19th, 2008 | General | 1 Comment

Tom Ascol plans to present the Resolution on Integrity in Church Membership again at this years Southern Baptist Convention. Although I do not plan to attend the SBC, we at Lakeshore Baptist Church, do strive to implement this resolution in our local church. We still have a ways to go

Whereas the Baptist Faith and Message states that the Scriptures are “the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried” (Article 1); and

Whereas life in a local church should be characterized by loving discipline as the Bible teaches in passages like Matthew 18:15-18, 1 Corinthians 5 and Titus 3:10-11; and

Whereas the 2007 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Church Profiles indicate that there are 16,266,920 members in Southern Baptist churches; and

Whereas those same profiles indicate that only 6,148,868 of those members attend a primary worship service of their church in a typical week; and

Whereas the ideal of a regenerate church membership has long been and remains a cherished Baptist principle as described in Article VI of the Baptist Faith and Message; and

Whereas the significance of believers’ baptism tends to be lost when churches that practice it fail to exercise loving care for all their members; therefore, be it

RESOLVED that the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, June 10-11, 2008, urge Southern Baptists to repent of our failure to maintain responsible church membership, and be it further

RESOLVED that we urge the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention to repent of the widespread failure among us to obey Jesus Christ in the practice of lovingly correcting wayward church members (Matthew 18:15-18), and be it further

RESOLVED that we plead with pastors and church leaders to lead their churches to study and implement our Lord’s teachings on this essential church practice, and be it further

RESOLVED that we encourage denominational servants to support and encourage churches that seek to recover and implement our Savior’s teachings on church discipline, especially when such efforts result in the reduction in the number of members that are reported in those churches, and be it finally

RESOLVED that we commit to pray for our churches as they seek to honor the Lord Jesus Christ through reestablishing integrity to church membership and to the reporting of statistics in the Annual Church Profile.

Young, Restless, Reformed

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 | Books, General | No Comments

This week I enjoyed reading Collin Hansen’s book, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalists’ Journey with the New Calvinists.” As one of the editors at Christianity Today, Hanson chronicles the new movement among young evangelicals who recoil from the superficiality of the postmodern church and run to the depth of authentic theological grounding they find in the God-rich soil of reformation thought.

Hanson’s seven chapters cover the Passion Conference, John Piper, Jonathan Edwards, Southern Seminary and the SBC Founders, Sovereign Grace, the New Attitude Conference, and Mark Driscoll. He peppers in conversations with every-day guys influenced by the resurgence. He closes the work with:

For nearly two years, I traveled across the country and talked with the leading pastors and theologians of the growing Reformed movement. I sat’ in John Piper’s den, Al Mohler’s office, C. J. Mahaney’s church, and Jonathan Edwards’s college. But the backbone of the Reformed resurgence comprises ordinary churches like those I saw in South Dakota — churches used by God to do extraordinary things. Armed with God’s Word and transformed by the Holy Spirit, these churches’ leaders faithfully proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ week after week, through tragedy and triumph. Culture has conspired to give their message a wider audience. Desire for transcendence and tradition among young evangelicals has contributed to a Reformed resurgence.

Contrary to the rumors, I’m not quite as young as the focus group of the book, so I’ve never attended a Passion or New Attitude conference, but I resonate with the revival of the doctrines of grace in my own life. I read hints of my own autobiography in the book, but I’ll save my story for another day. If you are young, restless, or reformed, and particularly if you are all three, you will probably enjoy this book.

btw, Mike Corley interviewed Collin Hansen last week. Great show.

 

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1 Timothy 1:12-17 - Stacy Morgan

Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 | General | No Comments

A few weeks ago, I preached in Louisville KY and Stacy Morgan preached in my place at Lakeshore Baptist Church. He preached 1 Timothy 1:12-17. I wanted to share the sermon here.

 

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The Truth of the Cross - R. C. Sproul

Friday, April 25th, 2008 | Books, General | No Comments

R. C. Sproul’s latest book, “The Truth of the Cross” provides an in depth overview of Christ’s atoning work for sinners. He explains, in his characteristic clarity, why the atonement is necessary for sinners, how Christ stands as the only suitable and sufficient substitute willing and able to take in the curse for guilty humans who lay estranged from a holy God.

I love the way Sproul can communicate rich and complex theological truths in unclouded and concise language that, as Bruce Walkie notes, even a seventh-grader can grasp. For example, consider his treatment of the sometimes confusing understanding of the ransom motif, that I posted yesterday.

“The Truth of the Cross” would serve as an excellent resource for believers at any level. For new believers, it gives a rich introduction to the core Christian doctrine of the atonement. For mature believers, it serves as a wonderful reminder of Christ accomplishment on their behalf. As I read it, I also caught myself thinking that the book would serve as an excellent evangelistic tool. Too often we relegate evangelism to small little snippet tracts that seek to present the gospel in the fewest number of words possible. While those resources prove helpful, we should also add to our arsenal fuller treatments of the gospel for individuals bombarded with anemic Christianity.

The gospel saturated “Truth of the Cross” provides a rich presentation of Christ’s work. At only 166 pages, its not too long to intimidate casual readers, but long enough to pack in a wealth of gospel content. buy and read a copy for yourself, and several more to pass along to friends - believers and unbelievers alike.