End Children's Church?

During the breakout session at the most recent Resurgence Conference at Mars Hills Church in Seattle, John Piper begged the pastors in the crowd to shut down “children’s church” in their home churches and keep kids in the pews with their parents. I think Piper’s on to something. How can we expect children to make church a priority in their lives if we continue to shoo them out the sanctuary doors when the service begins? What do you think?

Getting A’s, obeying curfew, and wearing Polos doesn’t save anybody.

Abraham Piper has a good post on his blog about what society, and the church, thinks it means to be a well-adjusted teen.

It seems that wherever adults define cultural guidelines (i.e., schools, most churches, libraries), the decision about whether a young person is to be welcomed or not usually has more to do with how that teenager looks and behaves than an actual knowledge of who that youth is as a person. In general, adults not only don’t know the young people in their communities, but aren’t interested in taking the time to get to know them or what they’re interested in. All they want to know is whether or not a young person is going to disrupt what they have established - if so, they’re out, if not, then they’re welcome to stay.

It’s rare to find a teenager that will sit in a pew quietly for an hour and listen to an adult, who probably doesn’t know them, talk about why they should know God; and when they get “rowdy,” the common opinion is that those youth would be better off not attending the church service. I’ll take the rowdy teens over the sleeping old folks any day. Why? Because it’s not about me or delivering some message that I’ve prepared, it’s about getting to know people (regardless of age) and doing life together within the context of Christian community. Community can’t happen if the requirement for gaining acceptance is that you have to be like me. Is it any wonder why the church is so segregated and divided today?

Abraham says:”Understanding teenage rebellion only as sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll (may I add worship style preference?) implies that the goal is celibacy, sobriety, and employment. It’s not.

It’s Jesus.”

Amen.

Raising the Bar for Church Membership

Brain Metke, Senior Pastor at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Pell Lake, WI, has an interesting article over at Building Church Leaders about his experiences with leading a dormant church into exuberance by raising, not lowering, the requirements for new members. He says, “Our members are required to participate in at least one specific ministry, attend a weekly Bible-study class, and tithe regularly. We call it ‘intentional Christianity.’” You can read Metke’s article here.

The elders and staff at the church where I work have been discussing this very issue. What do you all think? What’s the best way to encourage people to get connected within the church, required participation or something more informal?

What does the Bible reveal about the origin of human life?

Ludwig Feuerbach (19th century) was an atheist who declared that God did not make us, but rather we made God as a figment of our imagination. Students of his thinking include Karl Marx (who applied this politically), Sigmund Freud (who applied this psychologically), and Friedrich Nietzsche (who applied this philosophically). Conversely, in Genesis 1-2 we see that we did not create God, but rather God created us with the following features:

• The Trinity created us.
• A personal God personally created us as persons (e.g., by his hands and not his words like the rest of creation).
• God’s creation of us was loving.
• God made us male and female, which means that while the genders are distinct they are equal.
• God made us originally very good (Gen. 1:31 cf. Eccles. 7:29).
• God blessed us.
• Unlike the animals made according to their “own kind,” we were made in the “image of God.”
• Because God is Trinity and made us in his image and likeness, we were made for relationships in the following categories:
  1. With God (theological)
  2. With self (psychological)
  3. With others (social)
  4. With creation (environmental)

HT: Mark Driscoll

The Expository Genius of John Calvin

In The Expository Genius of John Calvin, Dr. Steven J. Lawson delves into the practices, commitments, and techniques that made John Calvin, the great Reformer of the sixteenth century, such an effective preacher during his long pastorate at Saint Pierre Cathedral in Geneva, Switzerland. Dr. Lawson identifies thirty-two distinctives of Calvin’s preaching, providing comments from Calvin’s writings, quotations from Reformation scholars, and examples from Calvin’s own sermons to reinforce his points. In the end, Dr. Lawson finds in Calvin a strong model for expository preaching and calls on modern pastors to follow the Reformer’s example.

The Gospel in 6 Minutes

The Gospel

What is the Gospel? The word gospel simply means “good news.” The central message of the Bible is the gospel, or good news, about the person and work of Jesus Christ. In 1 Corinthians 15:1–4, Paul provides the most succinct summary of the gospel: the man Jesus is also God, or Christ, and died on a cross in our place, paying the penalty for our sins; three days later He rose to conquer sin and death and give the gift of salvation to all who believe in Him alone for eternal life.

The great reformer Martin Luther rightly said that, as sinners, we are prone to pursue a relationship with God in one of two ways. The first is religion/spirituality and the second is the gospel. The two are antithetical in every way.

Religion says that if we obey God He will love us. The gospel says that it is because God has loved us through Jesus that we can obey.

Religion says that the world is filled with good people and bad people. The gospel says that the world is filled with bad people who are either repentant or unrepentant.

Religion says that you should trust in what you do as a good moral person. The gospel says that you should trust in the perfectly sinless life of Jesus because He alone is the only good and truly moral person who will ever live.

The goal of religion is to get from God such things as health, wealth, insight, power, and control. The goal of the gospel is not the gifts God gives, but rather God as the gift given to us by grace.

Religion is about what I have to do. The gospel is about what I get to do. Religion sees hardship in life as punishment from God. The gospel sees hardship in life as sanctifying affliction that reminds us of Jesus’ sufferings and is used by God in love to make us more like Jesus. Religion is about me. The gospel is about Jesus.

Religion leads to an uncertainty about my standing before God because I never know if I have done enough to please God. The gospel leads to a certainty about my standing before God because of the finished work of Jesus on my behalf on the cross.

Religion ends in either pride (because I think I am better than other people) or despair (because I continually fall short of God’s commands). The gospel ends in humble and confident joy because of the power of Jesus at work for me, in me, through me, and sometimes in spite of me.

Would Calvin Have Pushed Our Organ Out the Sanctuary Doors?

I came across this article, “Instrumental Music in Worship: Commanded or Not Commanded,” after a conversation I had with a few friends about the worship wars going on in churches today. The thing that bothers me most about the discussion between those who prefer so-called “traditional worship music” and those who prefer so-called “contemporary worship music” is that, if we’re honest, its all about just that - preferences. Worship isn’t supposed to be about us, its supposed to be about worshiping our King as one united body of Christ. It’s fairly common for those who prefer a “contemporary” worship style to be accused of “watering down theology” and “catering to the seeker crowd,” but this article argues that the introduction of organ music and hymns into the church was exactly the same thing - a concession to popular demand. I love the old hymns (see my post on “Dusty Old Hymns?“), but I also believe that every generation should take the traditions of the church (notice I said, “traditions,” not theology) and make them relevant to their own context and time in history. The so-called “contemporary” worship style did not arise out of a desire to water down theology, it’s a product of a generation doing what has been done in the church forever — obeying God rather than following man’s traditions. I think this article is very interesting, particularly where it says:

” We are not surprised, then, that Reformed churches returned to the ancient simplicity of worship. In Geneva — and then in the Calvinistic churches influenced by Geneva — musical instruments were rejected. They were not, indeed, “forbidden . . . in private . . . but they [were] banished out of the churches,” according to Calvin, “by the plain command of the Holy Spirit,” because Paul (in I Cor. 14:13) “lays it down as an invariable rule that we must praise God . . . only in a known tongue.”

And where it says:

“It is significant, however, that the Reformers rejected the use of musical instruments in worship because they understood the Scriptures to require this. They were also able to give a clear and convincing statement of their reasons. But was this true in later times when the organ was reinstituted in the churches? Did the ministers (and theologians) of that time first show that they understood this to be a thing commanded by the Lord in Scripture? Did they present a convincing argument from the Bible? The answer to these questions is, sad to say, emphatically no! Like so many retrograde changes that have been made in Calvinistic churches since the Reformation, this was simply by way of concession to popular demand.

Definition of a Christian Striver

Strive intr.v. strove, striv·en or strived, striv·ing, strives
1. To struggle or fight forcefully; contend: strive against sin.
Philippians 3:7-14

7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Straining Toward the Goal

12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.