Good Friday Easter Service in Toronto

Reading Categories

This is a list that my Professor and Principal Kirk Wellum gave us a few weeks ago. These are primarily categories for pastors but make good for anyone wanting some selection and direction when looking at all the literary material out there.

1 BIBLE - first and foremost
2 Commentaries & Introductions
3 Read Systematic & Biblical Theological Books
4 Biographies and Autobiographies
5 History (Secular & Christian)

> Biblical Backgrounds, Civilizations, Countries
6 Apologetic Books
7 Contemporary Issue
8 Read Hymn Books & Materials on Hymns 

> these are poems set to music
9 On the Church & Leadership 

> good to read about trends within the church
10 Read Journals & Periodicals
11 Blogs (careful though - there are so many - start with GospelCoalition)

12 Newspaper & Magazines 

What other categories should there be?

The Church by E. P. Clowney: A Review

“If [the church] is to stand against the gates of hell, it must know its own divine charter, its bond to Jesus Christ, and the ‘Holy Spiritual’ power of its calling”. In 1942, twenty-five year-old Edmund Prosper Clowney was ordained in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Ten years later, he came to serve on staff at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia for the next thirty-two years; eighteen of them as its president. In 1995, for the series Contours of Christian Theology, Clowney contributed this work, entitled The Church. Going with the series’ theme to introduce foundational Christian doctrine, he supplies his own take on the doctrine of the Christian church. He writes to a culture that considers the God of the Bible to have “died long ago with orthodox theology” and sees the local church as God’s tomb. This work seeks to restore the doctrine of the church as represented from the Bible.

Clowney was a life-long affiliate of Westminster Theological Seminary. Each of the major points throughout the book - whether male eldership, Christian nurture, or witnessing to the world - are driven heavily from the Scriptures. Clowney is clear as he walks the reader through his convictions and how they bear upon the Christian. His covenantal theology and praise of the Westminster Catechism are present in the text, and subsequently his disposition to paedobaptism. Yet his positions do not curtail his overall evangelical position of the church. He could have extended his position on women in the church and gone deeper into the corporate service structure; dedicating only one page to preaching. As well, his view on prophecy for today is not adequately presented, rather he only points out Grudem’s misappropriation of 1 Thess 5:19-21. The wisdom from chapter ten on the nurture of the church should be prized the highest out of all eighteen chapters. The Church, is an excellent twentieth-century take on the doctrine of the church. His dependence on the apostolic accounts of the Scriptures in formulating his doctrine of the people of God is comforting. The work gives a deeper understanding of the form and function that Evangelical Churches must retain in their life and practice.

Deliberate Church by Mark Dever and Paul Alexander: A Review

The purpose of The Deliberate Church is to get churches centered back on the Bible; primarily the Gospel. God’s Word needs to be the central authoritative standard by which all actions of the local church are conducted. Mark Dever, Senior Pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC. and executive director of the 9Marks Organization, is credited to much of the content of this work. Paul Alexander, who interned under Dever in 2003 and currently serves as an editor for 9Marks, here put his and Dever’s conversations about the church into print. Though slender in size, the role for members and elders in the local church in this work is above all clear. They look at the foundation stones of the church and then move to what constitutes the actual services. The second part focusses on the elders of the church and the elders meetings.

Assessing the member’s roll is a great chapter on how the pastor should seek out individual interviews with each church member. Chapter five, on church discipline, is an excellent reminder of how the leaders should be treating unChrist-like members. There is an admonition for corporate times of music to be just that: corporate. The pastor’s goal for the members should be for them to sing and hear truths about God from each other, instead of their memory falling to one individual or “the band”. The only skimmer chapter is on church paid-staff who aren't elders. This chapter is the least relevant to many churches outside of the slim American mega-church percentage. By far, the primary appeal in this book is for biblical eldership. It is the most helpful advice that any pastor will glean from this book. With much confusion over leadership and church membership this work is an invaluable guide to casting out the false and diluted views of the local church and reverting back to those developed from the Bible. 

David Brainerd Conference

To share the flyer, click the above photo.

Dead and Now Alive

This is my pastor John and I when I got baptized last summer on July 3rd. 

It took me a while before I realized I should be obedient to Scripture and take the plunge. There were about 1/2 dozen of us who got baptized. In this way I was able to demonstrate the inward spiritual reality of what had happened years prior when I received eternal life. It was great to have my parents, church family, Daniel, and Tyler all there.  In this act I was confirming that I had been flatlined in my sin before I knew Jesus Christ. But God, showing me my sin, let me turn and believe in Christ's sacrifice for my punishment. That my old life of sin was buried and that I was now raised to life with Christ; for this life and the next. 

Dead

Buried

Alive

Id-un-get-betah den dat. 

5 Mistakes Pastors Make

At a recent Southern promotional talk by Al Mohler at The Masters Seminary in Sun Valley California, I received a free Southern Seminary Magazine Vol 79, No 2 - entitled: Teaching About Jesus Through the Old Testament. This morning as I sprawled around in bed contemplating getting up, I decided to have a gander. I was surprised to see the amount of work they contribute herein. It's similar to SGF's Barnabas' magazine actually. It's got a compilation of contributors from Southern - in particular in this issue Schriener, Moore, and Mohler (of course) - some promotions for the seminary, current mission work, book reviews, yada yada yada. What really caught my eye was these 5 thoughts on page 20 by Professor H. W. York about common pastoral mistakes in teaching. Leading to potential divisive doctrines to their congregations he warns of:

1 - Uncontrolled emotion. A pastor cannot afford to let his congregation sense either fear or anger in him.

2 - Treating disagreement as unwelcome. If a pastor affirms loving and gracious disagreement, then he will seldom have to deal with the kind that is mean-spirited.

3 - Preaching a system rather than a text. When a pastor shows truth in the Scriptures, it's hard for people to disagree with it unless they are willing to deny the truth of the Bible itself.

4 - Avoidance of Biblical Tensions. Any pastor who presents only one side of an argument will never convince thinking people, to the contrary, will open himself to their equally simplistic rebuttals and denials.

5 - A failure to love. A pastor must never forget that God sent him to love the people, not merely to [inspire] them with Biblical facts.

Church Membership: Bogus or Biblical?

I have heard too many people say "church membership is not required of Christians", "you don't find it in the New Testament", and "it's a recent invention". But just how true are these assertions? Are the NT texts silent or is there something we've missed? The following article by Pastor Chandler is worth consideration and prayer:

Is Church Membership Biblical?
By Matt Chandler May/June2011© 9Marks

“The spouse of Christ cannot be adulterous; she is uncorrupted and pure. She knows one home; she guards with chaste modesty the sanctity of one couch. She keeps us for God. She appoints the sons whom she has born for the kingdom. Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church; nor can he who forsakes the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger; he is profane; he is an enemy. He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.”
— Cyprian, Treatise on the Unity of the Church, 6.


I was 28 when I became the pastor of Highland Village First Baptist Church (now known as The Village Church). I had had a rough go early on in my church experience, and at that time I was not fully out of my “disenchanted with the local church” phase.


In all honesty, I wasn’t sure at the time that church membership was biblical. Despite that, the Spirit had made it all too clear that I was going to be pastoring this small church in the suburbs of Dallas. That was one of the many ironies of my life in those days.

Highland Village First Baptist Church was a “seeker-sensitive” church in the Willow Creek mold and had no formal membership process, although they were actively working on one and wanted the new pastor’s input. I had a strong understanding of the church universal but wasn’t well versed—and, as I said, somewhat skeptical—about the church local. We started growing quickly with young and oftentimes disenchanted 20-somethings who usually had no church background, or bad church backgrounds. They liked The Village because we were “different.” This always struck me as strange because we weren’t doing anything but preaching and singing.

In conversations with these men and women I began to hear things like “The church is corrupt; it’s just about money and a pastor’s ego,” or “I love Jesus, it’s the church I have a problem with.” My favorite one was, “When you organize the church it loses its power.” Although something occasionally resonated in me with these comments (I, along with most of my generation, have authority and commitment issues), I found them confusing since they were being made to me by people who were attending the church where I was the pastor.

TWO QUESTIONS FROM HEBREWS 13:17

With conflicts already brewing over other doctrines that I viewed as far more central, I wondered if we should let this church membership thing slide and come back to it later. I was preparing at the time to preach through the book of Hebrews and “happened” to be in chapter 13 when verse 17 leapt off the page: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”

Two questions occurred to me. First, if there is no biblical requirement to belong to a local church, then which leaders should an individual Christian obey and submit to? Second, and more personally, who will I, as a pastor, give an account for?

These two questions started my search for a biblical understanding of the local church, and they began around the ideas of authority and submission.

Regarding the first question, the Scriptures clearly command Christians to submit to and honor an elder body (Heb. 13:17, 1 Tim. 5:17). If there is no understanding of local church membership, then who are we to submit to and obey? Is it anyone with the title “elder” from any church? Should you as a Christian obey and submit to those loons at Westboro Baptist? In order to obey Scripture, must you picket soldiers’ funerals, as the pastor of Westboro seems to imply?

Regarding the second question, the Scriptures clearly command an elder body to care for specific people (1 Pet. 5:1-5; also, Acts 20:28-30). Will I as a pastor be held accountable for all the Christians in the Dallas Metroplex? There are many churches in Dallas that I have strong theological and philosophical differences with. Will I give account for what they teach in their small group, how they spend their money, and what they do concerning international missions?

WHAT ABOUT CHURCH DISCIPLINE?

After considering questions of authority and submission, the second issue that came up in my study of the local church was the biblical teaching on church discipline.

You see it in several places, but none so clearly as 1 Corinthians 5:1-12. In this text Paul confronts the church in Corinth for approving of a man walking in blatant, unrepentant sexual immorality. The Corinthians are celebrating this as God’s grace, but Paul warns them that this type of wickedness shouldn’t make them boast, but rather mourn. He calls them arrogant and tells them to remove this man for the destruction of his flesh and the hopeful salvation of his soul. In verses 11-12, he pulls no punches: “But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?”

It has been my sad experience that very few churches still practice church discipline, but that’s another article for another day. My question out of this text is simple: How can you kick someone “out” if there isn’t an “in”? If there is no local commitment to a covenant community of faith, then how do you remove someone from that community of faith? Church discipline won’t work if local church membership doesn’t exist.

LOTS OF OTHER EVIDENCE FOR MEMBERSHIP

There are other evidences to support local church membership in the Scriptures.

We see in Acts 2:37-47 that there is a numerical record of those who have professed Christ and been filled with the Holy Spirit (v. 41) and an acknowledgement that the church was tracking the growth (v. 47).

In Acts 6:1-6, we see elections take place in order to address a specific problem and accusation.

In Romans 16:1-16, we see what appears to be an awareness of who is a church member.

In 1 Timothy 5:3-16, we see a clear teaching on how to handle widows in the church and in verses 9-13 we read this:

Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work. But refuse to enroll younger widows, for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not.

In this text we see criteria for who would or would not qualify for Ephesus’s widow care program. The local church in Ephesus is organized, and they are working out a plan.

We could go on and on here, asking questions about how we could be obedient to the commands of God in 1 Corinthians 12 or Romans 12 if we aren’t connected to a local covenant community of faith. But to unpack all the possible texts would require longer than I have for this article.

GOD’S PLAN IS THAT WE WOULD BELONG TO LOCAL CHURCHES

When you begin to look at these texts it becomes clear that God’s plan for his church is that we would belong to a local covenant community of faith. This is for our own protection and maturation, and for the good of others.

If you view church as some sort of ecclesiological buffet, then you severely limit the likelihood of your growing into maturity. Growth into godliness can hurt. For instance, as I interact with others in my own local body, my own slothfulness in zeal is exposed, as is my lack of patience, my prayerlessness, and my hesitancy to associate with the lowly (Rom. 12:11-16). Yet this interaction also gives me the opportunity to be lovingly confronted by brothers and sisters who are in the trenches with me, as well as a safe place to confess and repent. But when church is just a place you attend without ever joining, like an ecclesiological buffet, you just might consider whether you’re always leaving whenever your heart begins to be exposed by the Spirit, and the real work is beginning to happen.

What’s the bottom line? Local church membership is a question of biblical obedience, not personal preference.

Matt Chandler is the lead pastor of the Village Church in the Dallas, Texas area.

May/June2011
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Ask not...

My fellow Christians:

Ask not how your church can serve you, but how can you serve your church? 

Playing off of JFK's inaugural speech, it seems those who aren't serving must be thinking "Jesus served me, he died for me. Shouldn't everyone else in the church should do likewise?" Wrongo - it is the whole body working together - that means preachers and chair movers, that means evangelist and greeter, that means worship leader and cook. But are you just paying your offering as your only act of service? Are you just attending meetings as a wallflower? Some would even say - I don't have a gift. The Apostle Paul actually disagrees with you and, moreso, God disagrees with you.

Two weeks ago, I was at Grace Community Church - not a jumbo church by USA standards, but pretty close; about 8,000 members. Now they hold an annual conference specifically for men, so Tyler, Dan, Dilly and I were able to attend. And during the seminar and session breaks everyone piled into the outdoor walkways & parking lot where we were given meals and snacks; and directions for us Canadians. Some people actually took the week off work to come volunteer. It was ballparked that around 700 members were volunteering throughout that week for us four guys and the other 3300 guests. Every volunteer I talked to, as I got a churro or breakfast donut, happen to be a member of the church. And you wouldn't believe it, I saw 5 helpers there who are constrained to electric wheel chairs! People who can't move their own limbs, are still participating by giving directions and general help. 

That really impacted me. I've got all four working tip top shape - and what am I doing?

So service may be menial, it may be repetitive, it may even be agonizing or a messy one (i.e. nursery!) but when we serve we should be humbled. We should be thankful to serve, and we should be doing it. See a need? fill it! Don't see one? ask your pastor or elder - they'll be glad you asked! Likely, there will be a place and you will be able to start helping out. Join an evangelical church in your area and serve God by serving others. 

Finally, wherever you are, citizens of Christ and his church, commit yourself to the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which Christ has asked of us all. And with a good conscience our only sure reward with history as the final judge of our deeds let us go forth to lead the church we love asking his blessing and his help but knowing here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

What is my calling or my vocation?

This question has been on my mind for some time.
Perhaps it has been plaguing you as well. Or maybe you are sure, dead-set, knowing God's intention and plan for you. What does God want me to do with my life? Regardless if you are certain or wondering - this section from John Frame's Doctrine of the Christian Life gives a much needed light on the subject of calling/ vocation:

"Although the term 'vocation' suggests a divine revelation to each individual of God's assignment to him, the Reformers did not consider vocation to be a special revelation. Special revelation is limited to Scripture. But God gives each believer wisdom to discover how God has gifted him and how he can best use that gift in God's kingdom. That wisdom should of course be compared with the wisdom of other believers, who can help us to evaluate our gifts. It would not be wrong to describe this process as 'existential revelation'... In vocation, God enables us to apply the principles of Scripture to our own lives and to our circumstances. In this process, we come to see God's will for our lives and to gain assurance that we are in the place where God wants us to be.

Vocation comes to us, then, by way of
(1) God giving gifts to us,
(2) the [Holy] Spirit enabling us to discern those gifts through self-examination and through the confirmation of others in the church,
(3) God providing oppourtunities for us to develop and exercise those gifts,
(4) God providing wisdom so that we can use those gifts
[a] in ways that glorify him,
[b] extend his kingdom,
[c] fulfill his mandates,
[d] and in the end enjoy him forever."

- John Frame, A Theology of Lordship: The Doctrine of the Christian Life (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P & R Publishing, 2008), 312-313. 

Whether we are called for Christian ministry, or called to work an honest job -
one thing is for sure: that we be apart of the local church. There we serve God by serving others, consistently having Colossians 3:21 as our focus:
"And whatever you do, in word or deed, 
do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through him."