Keruxai.com

Posted By Joe Haynes on July 31, 2010

I’m not a fan of the Alpha Course. It does not give adequate weight to the whole message of Scripture, particularly on what the Bible has to say about why the Gospel of Jesus Christ is “good news”. (There’s more to say about Alpha, but that’s another blog post.) I am a fan of the Christianity Explored and Discipleship Explored courses (http://www.christianityexplored.com). CE is a course for un-churched people introducing them to the Christian Faith by walking them through the Gospel of Mark—it lets the Bible present the Gospel. DE is a course for new or immature believers introducing them to the reality of living as a disciple of Jesus Christ by walking them through Paul’s letter to the Philippians—it lets new believers hear what the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to teach to the new believers in Philippi. I’m glad to be able to recommend another Bible-centred resource for introducing the un-churched to Christianity and for helping believers become grounded in their faith—it lets both sorts of people discover the whole story of the Bible so that the Gospel of Jesus Christ becomes very clear in its biblical setting. This new series, by biblical scholar Don Carson, is a real gift to pastors wanting to reach the lost and teach the found. Here’s an introduction from the Gospel Coalition Blog:

On February 20-21 and 27-28, 2009, Don Carson presented a 14-part seminar entitled “The God Who Is There” at Bethlehem Baptist Church’s North Campus in Minneapolis. This series will serve the church well because it simultaneously evangelizes non-Christians and edifies Christians by explaining the Bible’s storyline in a non-reductionistic way.

The series is geared toward “seekers” and articulates Christianity in a way that causes hearers either to reject or embrace the gospel. It’s one thing to know the Bible’s storyline, but it’s another to know one’s role in God’s ongoing story of redemption. “The God Who Is There” engages people at the worldview-level.

And now MP3s (full) and video (10-minute previews) are available for Carson’s 14-part series:

1. The God Who Made Everything | MP3 | Video Preview
2. The God Who Does Not Wipe Out Rebels | MP3 | Video Preview
3. The God Who Writes His Own Agreements | MP3 | Video Preview
4. The God Who Legislates | MP3 | Video Preview
5. The God Who Reigns | MP3 | Video Preview
6. The God Who Is Unfathomably Wise | MP3 | Video Preview
7. The God Who Becomes a Human Being | MP3 | Video Preview
8. The God Who Grants New Birth | MP3 | Video Preview
9. The God Who Loves | MP3 | Video Preview
10. The God Who Dies—and Lives Again | MP3 | Video Preview
11. The God Who Declares the Guilty Just | MP3 | Video Preview
12. The God Who Gathers and Transforms His People | MP3 | Video Preview
13. The God Who Is Very Angry | MP3 | Video Preview
14. The God Who Triumphs | MP3 | Video Preview

[The above is re-posted from the Gospel Coalition Blog. Read the rest of the original blog post by Andy Naselli here.]

Category: The Bible in English, To Pore | View Comments
Tags: Bible survey, discipleship, Don Carson, evangelism, The God Who Is There

Posted By Joe Haynes on July 24, 2010

What would happen if modern civilization was destroyed by a lethal virus and nuclear war, thrusting the surviving population back into a time of medieval technology and brutality? What would happen if all knowledge was lost, including the knowledge of God’s Word? What would happen if one couple, far from home, running for their lives, four centuries from now, discovered a copy of the Bible, preserved and hidden for posterity by a dying Christian in “ancient” times?

This is what Bryan Litfin imagined and developed into a new novel, The Sword, published by Crossway Books (2010).

This book took me by storm. Litfin captured my imagination with the post-apocalyptic, futuristic/medieval setting. The interplay of action, romance and sound biblical doctrine resonated in me with every page as I couldn’t stop myself from continuing to read late into the night to find out what would happen next. In one sense I’m glad I’ve finished The Sword, because I need a good night’s rest. In another sense, I’m disappointed it has come to its end because I feel impatient at the thought of having to wait until next April (2011) to buy the sequel.

This book is one, I think, men will enjoy. It’s not that a female audience won’t enjoy it too, but that men in particular will relate to some of the book’s themes and the struggles of the characters. Call it “masculine-friendly”. But a caution to parents: this is not a kids’ book.

I’m glad for books like this (though I’ve never read a book quite like this!), because I think there is a need for good story-telling by theologically savvy writers. After reading books like The Shack, where story-telling comes at the cost of sound biblical doctrine, The Sword is a breath of fresh air. The quality of writing isn’t the best, though I hope to see Litfin’s writing improve with each new novel, but the originality and relevance of this, his first novel, more than makes up for his lack of experience writing fiction. Nevertheless, it’s hard to find good fiction that doesn’t toss deep and trustworthy biblical teaching out the window. It seems like many writers of so-called “Christian” novels have a very low view of their audience’s ability to think deep thoughts. Not so Shannon Van Roekel, in her novel I recommended recently, and not so Bryan M. Litfin.

For a long time, Maurice rubbed his shaved head in his palm, until at last he looked up at his student. “Teo, I think you have to let Deu be the God he is, not the god you want him to be.” (Bryan M. Litfin, The Sword, p. 247)

Category: To Persevere | View Comments
Tags: Bryan Litfin, Crossway, fiction, The Sword

Posted By Joe Haynes on July 22, 2010

Maybe I’m just feeling a bit grumpy? Maybe it was the bag of vegetable chips I just ate? But when I saw a tweet talking about the 10-10-10 Initiative (http://www.101010initiative.org/) my stomach turned over a little bit.

I really hope I’m just irritable right now and that my concerns with this thing are totally unfounded and overly pessimistic. But as I read through the steps for how anyone from an individual to a denomination can “get involved” in the 10-10-10 Initiative, I got a bit gassy. When I joined 10-10-10 as an individual member and read through the resource materials, well… you get the picture.

An example: on the website, 10-10-10 urges pastors to preach a four-week sermon series using packaged sermon outlines and other resources on the theme of “transformation”. That in itself isn’t exactly a wrong thing to do, but no where could I find any encouragement for pastors to preach sermons in which the exposition of Scripture is the focus. In fact, I used the website’s search tool on words like “expositional”, “exposition” and “exposit” and got zero results. Then, thinking perhaps I’m being too narrow, I tried searching on the word, “gospel”. I got three results—none of them really relevant. None of these three actually said what the Gospel is, or that the content of the Gospel message should be the message of 10-10-10 participants in this campaign. I simply find it shocking that the purpose of the Church (to spread the Gospel) was overlooked in this campaign to galvanize the Church to plant churches. Here’s what the 3 results for “gospel” did show:

1. http://www.101010initiative.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19&Itemid=21 This page talks about the Gospel as the purpose of church-planting and says that it’s important to find fresh ways of spreading the Gospel. That’s pretty good.
2. http://www.101010initiative.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11&Itemid=11 This page gives reasons why one should participate in 10-10-10, listing as one such reason that it could be helpful in figuring out what one should do next to help spread the Gospel through church planting. A little vague, but not bad.
3. http://www.101010initiative.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12&Itemid=13 This page mentions, “gospel” in a quote from Ed Stetzer, author of Planting Missional Churches (a good idea by the way!). Here’s the quote: “When Great Commission Christians decide to plant Great Commission churches, that’s good news.  We need to plant thousands of gospel-centered, scriptural churches, and my prayer is that churches will be multiplied to a new level on 10-10-10 and beyond.” Hey it’s a good quote. I fully agree with what he says here, and it’s my prayer too that “churches will be multiplied to a new level” on October 10, 2010 “and beyond”, but I think Ed is on the money when he says that these must be “gospel-centered, scriptural churches”!

If 10-10-10 results in a whole lot of hype about wonderful stories of how people’s lives were changed when they got connected to a group of Christians in a church plant, how they finally found a place where they belonged, or where they found new meaning in life by serving others instead of themselves, but produces no “gospel-centered, scriptural churches”, I just might be sick all over my keyboard. Because Jesus did not have to die on the cross under God’s wrath against sin for us to hug gender-confused people and sing “kumbaya” after a potluck. And it’s not the kind of results that should define Christianity either. All it is is what has been called “Therapeutic Moralistic Deism” (click here for a church planter’s blog article on what that means!).

So my prayer is that a) I’m way off the mark on my brief analysis of the 10-10-10 Initiative and that the movement will result in just the sorts of churches Ed Stetzer prayed for in the quote above; or b) that someone with some credibility talks some sense into the 10-10-10 organizers so that instead of telling pastors to whip up their churches by talking about transformation, they will exhort preachers to stand up on 10-10-10 and on every single Sunday and preach sermons that exposit the Bible, passage after passage, pointing at Jesus all the time and proclaiming the Gospel message in every page of Scripture. Because that is God’s plan for causing transformation. Talking about transformation instead of preaching the Word that transforms is like making a lot of smoke, hoping the smoke will start a fire.

"…Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."  14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?  15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!"  16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?"  17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ."  (Rom 10:13-17 ESV)

Category: To Preach | View Comments
Tags: 10-10-10 Initiative

Posted By Joe Haynes on July 21, 2010

I’m just going to shamelessly copy and paste Brian Croft’s blog post from the Gospel Coalition Blog, found here: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2010/07/21/how-can-i-make-sure-i-am-individually-shepherding-my-children/ . What a challenge! But what a worthy goal!

How can I make sure I am individually shepherding my children?

Most pastors would affirm our priority is first to shepherd our family, then to shepherd the church. Yet, I fear many pastors are laboring hard to shepherd the church to the neglect of their family. The Lord in His kind providence challenged me several years ago about this as my neglect in this area had become known. However, it was not another pastor that challenged me. It was through an out-of-town friend who is a pharmacist and faithfully serves as a deacon in his local church that exposed my neglect. His effort and model to shepherd his seven children both individually and regularly in addition to their regular family worship challenged me, convicted me, inspired me, and put my pathetic efforts I had made thus far to shame.

This faithful father shepherded his seven children by taking one morning a week to meet individually with each of his children. Seven days in a week–each of the seven children got one morning each week with their dad. They prayed, read scripture, talked, and read a book of that child’s choosing. Inspired by his amazing example, I came home and established a similar model in our home that I remain faithful to this day. Here is what I do to individually shepherd my four children regularly in addition to our regular time of family worship, as well as implications attached to it:

1)  Monday through Thursday each child gets a day and on his or her appointed day stays up 30 – 45 minutes later than their siblings to meet with me before bedtime. I thought they would be excited about it for a few times, but then grow bored with it. Not so. Years later, they look forward to that time more than anything, which provides a natural accountability when you are tired from the day and are tempted to skip for that evening.

2)  We read the passage I am preaching for that week, discuss it a bit, then we read a chapter from a book they have chosen to read. At the end, I take time to ask them how they are doing and how I can pray for them. This is a great way to see how they are really doing and teach them what are good things to be praying for others. Then, I pray for them and take them to bed.

3)  One of the greatest joys to my wife is her watching my effort with our children and lead our family in this way. The last thing she feels is left out (just in case you were thinking that). Our wives’ desire for us to make regular, deliberate, spiritually meaningful efforts to care for our children will mean more to her than I think we realize or understand. I find this especially true for our wives who are stay at home moms who labor hard in this task of shepherding their little hearts all day with little break.

4)  My efforts with my children have put me in a position to challenge other men in my church to do something similar. It has been amazing the way our fathers in our church have embraced this and the way it has empowered many of them to see they can spiritually lead their families with deliberate efforts. Fellow pastors, the obvious needs to be acknowledged that you cannot challenge the men in your church to do anything you are not making a faithful effort at. Regularly and individually shepherding your children’s hearts is certainly one of those efforts that we must model for the men in our local church.  Their failure to do it could be a reflection of your failure to model it.

Fellow pastors, leaders, and faithful men in the church, may the Lord use this blog post to bring a similar awakening that I needed that the Lord brought through my dear friend  many years ago. Then, dear brother, act upon it and start today to back up what most of us as pastors and fathers acknowledge with our lips, but too few actually do.

Category: To Pastor | View Comments
Tags: Brian Croft, children

Posted By Joe Haynes on July 19, 2010

The year the ESV Study Bible was published, I did not know who Tullian Tchividjian was. I saw his video introduction to Crossway’s new study Bible in the kiosk at the local Christian bookstore in Saskatoon and thought, “Who is that guy? And how many consonants are in the name, ‘Tullian Tchividjian’?” But since then, having jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon, I have been appreciating his tweets (@PastorTullian) and have also found myself often edified by his blog, “On Earth as it is in Heaven” at the Gospel Coalition.

This past Saturday, Pastor Tullian published an article to his blog entitled, “The Ongoing Need for the Gospel,” featuring a quotation from Tim Keller commenting on Colossians 1:6. Tullian’s point, gratefully derived from Keller, is that no matter how long we have been Christians, our need for the Gospel–the actual hearing and reading of the good news of what Christ has done for us in His life, death and resurrection—is never diminished. It is the fertilizer which the Spirit of God employs when He quickens our dead spirits to eternal life through faith in Christ; it is the food with which the Spirit endows us as we meditate on the Bible He inspired and which causes our growth in maturity, sanctification and fruitfulness.

One sentence by Keller, in that article, caught my attention in particular: “Paul says that the gospel only does its renewing work in us as we understand it in all its truth.” Wait a minute… I can hear the objections already. “All?” Once during an informal pastor’s performance evaluation, when it was reported that my preaching was sharply criticized by some as being a perversion of Scripture and by others as simply being too hard to understand, the chairman of the church board asked me why I thought these particular people felt that way. My response seemed to add fuel to the fire: I said something to the effect that in general, because I knew of some relatively uneducated people who managed to come away with something beneficial from my sermons, the problem wasn’t merely that I tended to overcomplicate my points (a fair criticism), but also that some hearers lacked spiritual maturity. Apparently this was the wrong thing to say. But here’s the text of the verse Tim Keller was commenting on in the quote on Pastor Tullian’s blog:

" All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth." (Col 1:6 NIV)

The reason Keller says understanding of ALL the truth of God’s grace is necessary for the Gospel to do its work in us is that the Greek word for "understand" in Colossians 1:6 is epiginosko, which means, "to fully know". This is why people who refuse to study the Scripture, to dig deeper, who fall asleep during sermons, put no effort into preparing for their weekly small group Bible studies and rarely brush off their Bibles; these sorts of people do not grow spiritually. They remain immature Christians, bearing little fruit. That is, there is little evidence that they are born again.

I suppose it was sinful human nature at work in me when I bristled at some of the criticisms fired my way at that once-upon-a-time evaluation. After all, though some of the sting was helpful in the long-run and there were many things God had even then already begun to teach me through tough feedback, some darts were not motivated by love and some other revealed more about the critic than they did about me. However, as the preacher said this morning at the church we attended, meditation on God’s Word always brings correction. And correction is painful. Contemplating Colossians 1:6, sitting under the uber-competent teaching of Tullian Tchividjian and Tim Keller, simultaneously through Tullian’s blog, I had an, “Aha!” moment. The kind that Gru, in Despicable Me, would describe as, “Light bulb!” And it stung. Maybe some congregations which complain about their pastors do their pastors a great disservice. But the congregation I had did me a great service through their complaining. Perhaps the greatest service of all the benefit they were to me. Because I learned that a spiritually immature pastor is not justified in pointing the finger back at a spiritually immature congregation.

There are days when the only good adjective to describe my spiritual condition is “immature”. I don’t even want to think about how many days in my life actually are marked by spiritual regress instead of progress toward the goal of Christ-likeness. May God help me to make these few and far between. And may God quicken in my soul the appetite for His Word suitable to the new birth that happened to me when I became His child. I appreciated the reminder from Pastor Mark Buchanan this morning, during the song time, that we often have to talk to ourselves, urging ourselves to spend time in the Bible, especially when we don’t feel like it. Colossians 1:6 holds Divine promise that if we persist in plumbing the depths of Christ’s Gospel every day, it will bear fruit every day. Amen.

Category: To Persevere | View Comments
Tags: Colossians 1, sanctification, Tim Keller, Tullian Tchividjian

Posted By Joe Haynes on July 17, 2010

Two opinion pieces in Canada’s National Post caught my attention tonight. The first is by Jonathan Kay, posted yesterday, entitled “Bad Science: Global-warming deniers are a liability to the conservative cause”. The impression one gets from reading this article is that people (conservatives) who doubt that “Climate Change” (nee “Global-Warming”) is a real, scientific fact, themselves actually belong to a certain category of persons which includes skeptics of the lunar landing and so on. Mr. Kay cites a scholarly paper, makes a great sounding argument and really succeeds in making a climate change skeptic (like me) feel pretty small and even small-minded for having repeated the, apparently, foolish though oft-repeated argument that a growing number of climate experts are doubting the popular ideology touted by the media. Before reading the next paragraphs, click the above link and read Mr. Kay’s article.

Then, right after reading that “Global-warming deniers” are on the side of “Bad Science”, I was glad to receive a shot in the arm from a syringe full of conservatism to innoculate me against Jonathan Kay’s ideological virus. This one was by Terence Corcoran entitled simply, “Bad Politics”. His point was that Mr. Kay’s so-called experts, cited in his article, are barely qualified to write on the subject. But even so, their shoddy analysis smacks of nasty Inquisition-type black-listing in which legitimate scientists with politically incorrect ideas become heretics according to the enlightened priests of the Climate Change Temple.

Aside from the science and the politics, this little debate within the pages of the National Post is worth mentioning in this blog for another reason. It’s a good example of how Christians can be tricked by solid-sounding arguments, complete with experts and evidence, into doubting once-held biblical convictions. All it took, for Mr. Kay to nearly persuade me that I am a narrow-minded, conspiracist and militant denialist on the subject of climate change, was some quotes from a paper purported by him to have been written by experts who have allegedly proven their dogma is only doubted by fringe, right-wing whackos. And actually, even if Mr. Kay is excused for naively trusting the credentials of the authors of the paper he cited, his whole argument boils down to this: climate-change skeptics must be practicing “junk science” simply because climate change believers have more votes on their side. But when did good science become democratic? How many scientific break-throughs would have never gained recognition if we only ever accepted the majority view? In fact, doesn’t truth often run contrary to popular opinion?

If you are a preacher, are you afraid to exposit those texts of Scripture which plainly imply the deity of Christ? What about the passages on the wrath of God against sin? or total depravity? or male spiritual-leadership in the home and in the Church? or the exclusivity of the Gospel? Do these sorts of texts in Scripture strike fear in your heart because you fear popular opinion? Are you intimidated by the chorus of “experts” who magically seem to endorse exactly what pop culture thinks about controversial doctrines? If we who preach the Word of God ever find ourselves shying away from those biblical truths which bear a higher political cost, there are only two options left: repent immediately or quit the ministry.

" 6 For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands,  7 for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.  8 Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God,  9 who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began,  10 and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel,  11 for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher,  12 which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.  13 Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.  14 By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you."  (2Ti 1:6-14 ESV)

Category: To Preach | View Comments
Tags: climate change, truth

Posted By Joe Haynes on July 3, 2010

How did that happen [that our world is just a “faint image of its former glory”]? Our passage [Romans 8:18-25] says it was deliberately subjected to futility. Indeed, the futility of the earth comes from the hand of God. The very God who pronounced his creation good, has also created a world that would need a cross, need a savior, need redemption. It was God who cursed the creation after the fall. And it is God himself who will redeem it.

– Dr. John Neufeld, Senior Pastor, Willingdon Church, Burnaby BC

This is a big thought… especially for those of us who spend little time thinking big thoughts. So sit down and let it sink in.

What Pastor John is saying is this: God deliberately caused the world to become fallen and corrupt, filled with pain and evil, so that this same world would be in profound need of a savior, Jesus Christ. As he wrote, “the futility of the earth comes from the hand of God.” This is explicitly taught by the Apostle Paul:

“For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21 ESV).

But praise God in His wisdom that His Son, our Savior, was also given by Him to redeem this fallen world! When evil overcomes me, through the acts of others or through my own sin, and I lift up my soul with cries to God, it is not a weak or desperate God to whom I pray. The God of the Bible is not some Monarch who has lost control of His Kingdom. He is not a King pitched in frantic battle to reclaim what an enemy has seized. He is a sovereign, holy, gracious, merciful and loving Creator who created the best possible Universe: one in which He reveals Himself and displays His sovereign power (Rom 9:22a) in order to also display and reveal His holiness, grace, mercy and love on those whom He has chosen by grace alone (Rom 9:23). The means of His gracious, saving act, of course, is the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of His very Son.

How is it that hard times or a little suffering in my life can cause me to selfishly turn away from contemplating Christ’s Gospel, even for a moment, for little pleasant distractions? If the “futility” to which the world was subjected is for the purpose of displaying God’s saving glory, then for what purpose has God gifted me with the little bits of suffering I have received from His hand? Isn’t it for that same purpose? Shouldn’t my struggles lead me directly to the foot of the cross, by faith, where I ought to throw my hands in the air and sing with all my heart the praises of His glorious grace (Eph 1:6; 1 Pe 2:9)?

“…we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved” (Romans 8:23b-24a ESV).

Our faith in Christ (a.k.a., the “Christian Faith”) is a forward-looking, hopeful faith. The grounds of our faith is a one-time, historic event in a particular Middle Eastern city—namely, Jesus’ death on a roman cross and His supernatural resurrection. The living-out of our faith is the here-and-now, with all the suffering, to various degrees, to which the Creation and we ourselves are subjected. “For in this hope we were saved.”

Thanks Pastor John for that good reminder. Read his whole article at the Gospel Coalition website here.

Future Glory

18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Romans 8:18-25 ESV).

Category: To Persevere | View Comments
Tags: John Neufeld, Romans 8, sovereignty, suffering

Posted By Joe Haynes on June 30, 2010

Where should a farmer spend his time? Planting or harvesting? Tending the fields or mending the fences? The answer, of course, depends on the season. When there is harvesting to be done, harvest. When their is no harvesting to be done, and there is no crop to be tended, and no fields need attention, well then, mend fences. So the million-soul question is: is it harvest time or not? Jesus seemed to think so:

Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Mat 9:37)

So let’s suppose the local church ought to be going about the business of harvesting. Sure there are other tasks to be done to support the harvesting work, but a pastor must choose very carefully whether those other tasks are the sort that can be done by others or whether he must attend to them personally. If the pastor is a shepherd, what is his job? To be nice to the sheep and cuddle with them? Or to get out, find lost sheep, bring them home, feed them, and give himself to the protection of all of his flock from the threat of predators?

These thoughts have been going through my mind since coming across the following very perceptive words from Mark Driscoll:

In retrospect, this was a hard lesson, one that I have had to learn many times in the various seasons of our church. As a church grows, it also changes. And as a church changes, so does the accessibility of the pastor and his family. As the pastor gets busier with new people and responsibilities, some people are displaced and are not as close to the pastor as they had been. Displaced people are prone to expect the pastor to ensure that their access to him and his family will never change. If the pastor agrees to these demands, he will keep the disgruntled people but not reach any new people because the mission will shift from reaching new people to pleasing old people. No matter what leaders in this situation do, they will lose people and must wisely choose who they will lose. (Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev., Zondervan 2006, pp. 81-82).

Category: To Pastor | View Comments
Tags: Mark Driscoll, pastoring

Posted By Joe Haynes on June 26, 2010

C.J. Mahaney and John MacArthur both respect the pastor of the small church. I appreciate what they both say in this blog post,

Soldiers in the Ministry.

I’ve learned that the things MacArthur talks about in that post—betrayal, disloyalty, behind-the-back criticism of pastors—are a good argument for why local churches should adhere to a biblical form of church governance. Most of my experience has been with board governance (where a group of leaders are elected to oversee the church’s affairs). In some such examples, the board might consist of either men or women (but I’ll leave the discussion of gender roles for another time). In a biblical model, the local church is led by a group of elders qualified according to passages like 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9. These two models might appear to be very similar, but the difference is on the qualifications of elders. My experience has taught me the importance of these qualifications.

MacArthur said,

“When I talk about loving loyalty, I mean when there is an issue that needs to be addressed you go eyeball-to-eyeball, man-to-man, and you confront it. And I love that. I love when guys come to me and say, “John, I think this is a problem. I think you are overlooking this. I think this is a misstep on your part.” Those are the men I cherish. Those are the men I pull to my heart.”

Amen. I too have enjoyed the rich growth that happens only when a friend is truly loving enough to confront and point to areas of sin or immaturity in my life. But it is important that elders who undertake this kind of loving ministry to their pastor are qualified according to Scripture. Here’s an example:

He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it (Titus 1:9).

This point of qualification goes a long way toward protecting pastors from being “lovingly confronted” in a wrong way or over wrong issues by well-meaning church leaders. Every pastor has, from time to time, “problems”, things he’s “overlooking”, or “missteps” on which he needs to be lovingly confronted. But it is crucial that this be handled in a biblical way.

God is so good to gift local churches with men and women willing to serve in leadership within local churches. My prayer is that He will continue to equip and enlighten such leaders with sound biblical understanding and sound biblical practice so that they can strengthen and support the ministry of small-church pastors. When dysfunction in the local church undermines this ministry, no one wins (except the Devil). The results can include broken relationships, disillusioned church members, embittered pastors, wounded church leaders, etc.

Even in cases where dysfunction reaps its harvest of hurt, however, the local church is God’s Church. The Senior Pastor is none other than Jesus Christ. The quickening spirit is none other than God’s Holy Spirit. He will never give up on His sheep. He will never leave His Bride. As it is written,

“…Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph 5:25-27 ESV).

Category: To Ponder | View Comments
Tags: C.J. Mahaney, elders, governance, John MacArthur, pastors

Posted By Joe Haynes on June 10, 2010

So the good news first? Yesterday, I received in the mail a parcel I’ve been eagerly waiting for: Bibleworks version 8! This may not be exciting to most of you, but to me this is a lot of fun. Let me tell you why. Since my first year of seminary, I’ve been using Bibleworks software on my computer. What sets Bibleworks apart from other Bible software, like PC Study Bible or Logos or Online Bible, is the many tools included in the software for advanced study of the Greek and Hebrew text in Scripture. For example, when I’m working on a series of sermons on a hard-to-understand passage of Scripture, one of the first things I do is use Bibleworks’ diagramming tool to draw up a graphical outline of the passage showing the grammatical relationships in the text. Then I would use the built-in lexicons to look up any Greek or Hebrew words I didn’t already know (my vocabulary is incredibly small!). Next, I would use the statistics tool to see how often the various words in the passage occur throughout the rest of the Bible. A nice feature of Bibleworks, even back when I started with version 5, was that the software made it easy to search not just for a given word in Greek or Hebrew, but for a particular grammatical form of a given word, or for a particular grammatical form of a given word occuring within a specified range of verses with another particular grammatical form of a word. Pretty cool. All of these tools have made Bibleworks my favourite software for studying God’s Word.

As I mentioned, when I first began using Bibleworks, I was using version 5. A year or two later I took advantage of the special upgrade pricing to obtain version 6. Since that time I’ve drooled for version 7, and then, when it was released, for version 8. I was in the process of saving up my Amazon.com commissions to purchase version 8 (this would have taken a fair bit of time since my commissions are usually only a few dollars per month), when I was contacted by the nice people at Bibleworks with an offer I couldn’t refuse. They’ve kindly provided me with a copy of version 8 on condition that I would write a series of blog posts showcasing Bibleworks 8 on Keruxai.com. If the people at Logos had asked me to do that, I would probably have agreed. But being asked to show and tell you why I love Bibleworks is a delight and joy to me. In an entry way back in April 2008, I gushed about why I like Bibleworks 7 (long before anyone from Bibleworks asked me to do so–In fact, that was just shortly after Keruxai.com was born). I’m grateful to the Bibleworks people for this chance to feature a product I have enjoyed and that I believe in. And I’m very grateful for the gift of this software I eventually would have purchased anyway.

BibleWorks: Software for
Exegesis and Research

In the near future I will begin a series of blog posts showing how I use Bibleworks for a particular project—probably a new series of sermons. Please stay tuned and, especially if you are a Bible college or seminary student, a pastor, Bible teacher, or just a lifelong student of God’s Word, consider purchasing Bibleworks to help you in your work.

And now the bad news. Following up on an earlier post, I read today that CMI has tentatively concluded, following their investigation, that the reports of the discovery of “Noah’s Ark” are most likely the result of a hoax. Nonetheless, with or without the Ark find, the evidence for the global flood is very convincing and should give all people pause to think through the big questions of life: Is the Bible true? What does God expect of me? What happens when I die? I wrote a blog entry over at ProphecyBlog.net on this topic just the other day.

Category: Bible Software, To Pore | View Comments
Tags: Ark, Bibleworks