Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 30

Unparalleled: How Christianity’s Uniqueness Makes it Compelling

Excited to announce today’s release of my new book, Unparalleled (Baker Books). I hope it will serve the Church well as we explore more of what it will take to share the gospel of Jesus with an increasingly pluralistic, irreligious, and spiritually hostile world.

Unparalleled is not your average apologetics work. Oh sure, it does contain the kind of information that will help Christians respond to common objections to the faith like these:

– The resurrection is just a Christian repackaging of pagan myths.

– All of the monotheistic religions basically worship the same God, so Christianity is just one expression of several legitimate faiths.

– Christians are the most selfish of all religious adherents and responsible for most of the wars and injustice in the world.

– Jesus never really claimed to be God.

These are the kind of new(ish) challenges believers need to be equipped for. But Unparalleled‘s greatest strength is in how it helps Christians not simply to win arguments, but to “win the man.” A lot of believers know the answers to basic apologetic questions. But not enough know a) how the tenets of Christianity are completely unique compared to other religions and philosophies, and b) how these unique claims and characteristics actually correspond to deep-seated needs and longings in every single human heart.

In other words, my hope is that Unparalleled doesn’t just help believers and unbelievers alike know how Christianity makes religious and historical sense, but how it actually makes emotional and spiritual sense.

Here are some endorsements:

Kyle Idleman, author of Not a Fan & Teaching Pastor, Southeast Christian Church:

“I love a book that helps me love Jesus more. Jared C. Wilson has a way of talking about Jesus that both informs and inspires. Whether you are just learning about the Gospel or have been following Jesus for many years, Unparalleled will deepen your understanding and appreciation for the Christian Faith, so unique and distinctive.

Russell Moore, President of the ERLC, author of Onward:

“Read this book to shore up your own convictions, but don’t stop there. Share it with someone who needs some light cast on who Christians are and what we believe.”

Jonathan K. Dodson, lead pastor of City Life Church, author of The Unbelievable Gospel and Raised? Finding Jesus by Doubting the Resurrection:

“With characteristic wit and style, Jared weaves in and out of perplexing doctrines such as the exclusivity of the gospel, the baffling nature of the Trinity, and the uniqueness of Christ. While the topics are approached with reflective credibility, it is the storytelling that pins each point to the chest. As I finished each successive chapter, I found myself saying, ‘Now that was my favorite chapter’.”

Gloria Furman, cross-cultural worker, author of The Pastor’s Wife and Missional Motherhood:

“Unparalleled is a reliable guide of clear and artfully illustrated truths about Christianity. I always appreciate how Jared’s compassion comes alongside his candor as he gives perspective for our near-sighted faith. Unparalleled is going to help many people to see the unseen.”

Sam Allberry, Associate Minister of St. Mary’s Church, Maidenhead, England, and author of Is God Anti-Gay?:

“Jared Wilson has written a compelling, attractive and lively account of what makes Christianity so distinctive. This is a great book for any Christian wanting to be refreshed in the faith, and for anyone else looking for an excellent introduction to it. Highly recommended!”

Thomas S. Kidd, Distinguished Professor of History, Baylor University:

“Jared Wilson’s Unparalleled is a stirring reminder of just how different Christianity is from any other faith. Readers will come away emboldened to witness for Christ, and encouraged in the grace we have in Him.”

Read more about the book (and see more words of commendation from some really cool people) here.

Unparalleled is available wherever Christian books are sold.

Success is Dangerous

And his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped, till he was strong.

— 2 Chronicles 26:15

The counter-intuitive truth is this: getting bigger does not mean getting less vulnerable. It very often means the opposite.

Not a single one of us wishes, really, for failure. Oh, sure, there are certainly some spiritual masochists out there, Christians who take great pride in the ministry of Isaiah — “I’m losing 90 per cent? I must be doing something right!” — but there’s a reason God provoked Isaiah’s commitment to the mission before giving him his depressing orders. None of us would want to sign up for that.

When we find ourselves in difficult ministries, where the word seems out of season and the soil inordinately hard, despite our sincere and faithful efforts to share the gospel in contextualized ways and love and serve our neighbors with gladness and kindness, many of us battle discouragement, but we at least theologically understand that sometimes God gives and sometimes he takes away.

There is something biblically beautiful, actually, about such littleness. It appears to be the primary mode of thinking of the apostles about themselves. Paul boasts, but he boasts in his weakness. He considers his successes garbage compared to Christ’s glory. It is God’s bigness he is concerned ultimately with, not his own or that of the churches.

So when we are made little, we can find ourselves in the heart of John the Baptist’s prayer, that Jesus would increase and we would decrease. It’s not the ideal place to be in terms of our dreams and ambitions, but relying totally on God’s sovereignty is right where God wants us. It’s not a call to passivity or to excuse-making. But even the most diligent of workers can say that God has called him to be faithful, not successful.

And then God grants many much visible success. Sometimes God’s people succeed greatly at things he hasn’t actually called them to do, but sometimes in his strange wisdom he grants extraordinary, legitimate successes to his children. But with such glories should come many cautions.

We all prefer success to failure but, really, success is more dangerous. In failure, we know we rely totally on God’s approval and sustaining arm. In success, it is easy to begin looking around, surveying all the territories claimed, all the peoples gathered, all the ministry renown redounding, and we think, “Well, lookee here. Look what has been built with my talents, my gifts, my skills, my strategies, my visions, my sweat, my sacrifice.”

It is perfectly normal for humans to prefer success to failure. You’d be a weirdo if you didn’t. And yet it is perfectly normal for humans to taint all their successes with the swelling of their big fat heads. You’d be a weirdo if you didn’t.

And so we remember the Holy Spirit, the sovereign breath of God Himself in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28), without whom we could not receive one single stinking thing (John 3:27). It is the Spirit who directs our paths while we’re making our big plans (Proverbs 16:9) and hijacks our mission statements (James 4:13-15). Oh, we can produce some very exciting enterprises, we can get a lot of stuff done if we’ll just have that can-do attitude and take-charge spirit and gung-ho personality and yada yada yada. That Babel tower was pretty tall too.

Don’t run ahead of the Lord God. You may find yourself in the midst of a great, booming success and therefore very, very vulnerable.

And the dirty little secret is that you don’t really need it. If God wants you to have it, that’s great. But you don’t need “more” to be satisfied in God, to be fully justified by Christ, to be fully filled by the Spirit. God does not measure success the way we do. So whether you are struggling or succeeding, the best position to take is always that of prayer so that you know how to have little and how to have a lot, how to do “all things” through Christ — not know-how. Only Christ is inexhaustible.

Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

— 1 Corinthians 10:12

Listen to the Little Guy Too

“Americans must count religion in order to see or show its value . . . To them big churches are successful churches . . . To win the greatest number of converts with the least expense is their constant endeavour . . . Numbers, numbers, oh, how they value numbers! . . . Mankind goes down to America to learn how to live the earthly life; but to live the heavenly life, they go to some other people.”

– Kanzo Uchimura, “Can Americans Teach Japanese in Religion?”

He’s right. We are obsessed. We are obsessed with bigger, better, faster. We define success according to quantity and presentation. We reckon churches increasing in size as effective.

And so our heroes are the big church guys. They speak at the conferences, they publish the books, they exert the influence.

But the guys at the “little churches” have just as much, if not more, to teach us about how to shepherd and how to disciple.

Disclaimer: I do not believe that big = bad. Nor do I believe that small = good. I just don’t believe that big = good and small = bad, which seems to be the prevailing and operating assumption of the vast majority of American evangelicals. In the same way, because I don’t believe that big = bad, I don’t believe that all megachurch pastors are idolaters of ambition. Little church guys can be just as idolatrous of ambition, perhaps more so if they are discontent with the relative smallness of their churches.

I’m not proposing an either/or here, but a perspective corrective, an invitation to open up one’s view to encompass more than just what is most visible.

Trigger warning: Generalizations.

Here are some reasons we ought to seek out and listen well to (and perhaps even give large public platforms to) the guys who pastor small churches, especially if they’ve been doing it for a while.

1. The little guy who’s been little for a while can teach you about contentment. While the big guy is constantly looking to make that next quantum leap in ministry, the little guy has been learning to be content with what God has provided. The content little church guy is not motivated by the same preoccupations of the discontent big church guy, and while his ministry may not be bigger, his peace and his joy probably will be.

2. The little guy knows about pastoring. As in, actually pastoring. Shepherding. The big church guy probably knows a lot about managing people, organizing people, probably even inspiring people, but the little guy knows his people. He knows who’s struggling with what, who’s fearing what, and he’s spent time in the trenches of pastoral ministry, actually “curing souls.” The little guy sees his flock more often than a few hours on the weekend from the stage. He tends to his flock, because he has to. And over years of doing this, he may not have cutting edge creativity or a conversational preaching style, he may not be dynamic or arena rousing, but he will have learned the art of pastoring.

3. The little guy makes for a better mentor. Not necessarily because he has more time. In fact, he probably has less time because he cannot delegate as often as the big guy with staff support. But the little guy has spent his time pastoring in biblical categories, making visits, gaining the wisdom of engaging people who are dying, divorcing, falling away. The big church guy can pass on skills, systems, techniques, tips, quotable quotes, book recommendations. He can pass on the business acumen of church growth. But the little guy more often makes for a better heart to heart, because he’s not passing on concepts, but convictions.

4. The little guy who’s been little for a while is seasoned. The guy who’s grown his church from 100 to 4,000 in four years is successful. That is a remarkable achievement. But if I wanted to be mentored by a battle-hardened minister, a guy who’s seen increase and decrease, who knows what it’s like to have much and have little, a guy who’s had his hands to the plow without looking back for the long haul, facing opposition and criticism, who has not banked his success on attractional programming but on the long-term investment of faithful pastoring, I would go to the guy who’s had a church of ~150 for 15 years or more.

5. The little guy knows what really matters. He is not as often caught up in ecclesiological oneupmanship. He is not easily impressed by or easily dismissive of big churches or their pastors. Being dismissed or considered irrelevant by the big guys doesn’t matter much to him, because he knows what matters. He’s not a slave to statistics but has his finger on the pulse of his congregation. He is measuring success by faithfulness to his calling and the health of his congregation. He goes through difficult times in his spiritual walk, perhaps deals with doubt and disappointment, but the course of his ministry does not follow the spirit of jealousy or ambition. The little guy really knows what “Blessed are the poor in spirit” means. He doesn’t know it as a concept or an idea, but in his life and in his ministry and in his gut.

Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage — with great patience and careful instruction.

— 2 Timothy 4:2

Three Things Pastors Can’t Do Too Much

I’m not a big fan of overdoing it. Not a huge proponent of overcooking your sermons, overproducing your worship service. But there are a few things I think pastors probably could do more of than they already do, no matter how much they already do. I think pastors ought to:

1. Over-read

I’m not sure I’ve met a pastor who reads too many books. He might be out there; in fact, I’m sure he is. But most I meet don’t read enough, and many I meet hardly read any. But I’m less concerned about books than I am the Scriptures, and in particular, whatever biblical text a pastor is fixin’ to preach on.

I once attended a Christmas Eve service where the pastor preached on Matthew 1:19, going on and on about how Joseph was “just a man” — you know, an ordinary guy, a regular Joe just like you and me. It was meant to show how God can use run-of-the-mill people for great things. You know, Joseph was “just a man.” The problem with this sermon was not the point; it’s that the point didn’t go with the text, but the Matthew 1:19 doesn’t say Joseph was “just a man” but that Joseph was “a just man.” This preacher devoted an entire sermon to a basic misreading of the text.

Now, that’s an extreme example, but there’s plenty of us who have preached sermons based on cursory readings of our biblical text. It’s a great reminder to try to get over-familiar with your text!

2. Over-pray

It’s not a last resort; it’s not a first resort; it’s an all-inclusive resort! “Pray without ceasing.” Prayer is essentially acknowledged helplessness — prayer is faith actualized, an emptiness and needfulness expressed — and we are never not in need of God’s grace, presence, and power. Therefore we can’t pray too much!

Maybe your church excels at this, but it’s become pretty routine for a church to ensure low attendance by scheduling a prayer service. Pastor, the first thing you ought to do about your people’s reluctance to pray is pray. Pray for for them. And with them. And by them and in front of them.

A few years ago I spoke to a parachurch rep who spent many Sundays in our area visiting local churches to network and talk about how his ministry. He remarked on the amount of prayer in Middletown’s worship service, saying that in his travels he found it rare that a church spent much time in prayer. And lest I sound like I’m really trumpeting the prayerful devotion of my ministry, I should mention that whenever we internally discussed strategically shortening our worship service, the extended prayer time was usually the first point of evaluation. We all had to constantly fight against the temptation to find prayer expendable. But whether you have extended prayer in your formal gathering or not, we should all have extended prayer in our daily lives. This is double, triply, quadruply true for pastors. I really don’t know if any of us are ever in danger of praying too much.

3. Over-think

This point will be the most difficult to grasp, I suspect, so don’t under-think it! I am not arguing for passivity or laziness or a failure to lead or anything like that. I’m also not suggesting we become meddlers or given to speculation, much less paranoia or internal accusation about others. I just mean we ought to consider our flock more. Definitely more than we currently do. We ought to consider their hearts, their minds, their motivations, their fears, their idols. We ought to think about the people in our care as sacred beings made in the image of God, beset by all kinds of temptations, plagued by all kinds of worries, burdened by all kinds of sins, wounded by all kinds of memories, traumatized by all kinds of violations, and so on and so on. The minute we don’t consider the flock as “sheep without a shepherd, harassed and helpless,” is the minute we drift away from compassion for them.

Pastors treat congregants like statistics, warm bodies, butts in the seats when they under-consider them — when they under-think. Don’t write off needy people, don’t flatly reject critical people, don’t wash your hands of sinful people. Think. Think biblically, pastorally, spiritually, self-reflectively. And then do it some more.

Read, pray, and think — three things you can’t do too much. Overdo it, brothers.

TGC Los Angeles: The Pastor’s Vindication, The Church’s Validation

I’ll be speaking at the TGCLA ministry equip event this coming Tuesday, April 19. Details:

8:30am – 12:30pm

Location: 1530 E. Elizabeth Street, Pasadena, CA 91104

This event is free for TGCLA members, and $15 at the door for non-members. Lunch and snacks will be provided. Click here to register.

Schedule:

8:30-9:00am: Arrival, breakfast snacks

9:00-10:00am: Session 1, The Pastor’s Vindication

10:00-10:30am: Break

10:30-11:30am: Session 2, The Church’s Validation

11:30-11:45am: Break

11:45-12:30pm: Q&A over lunch

Please REGISTER to RSVP so we have enough seats and refreshments for everyone!

God Broke Antinomianism For Love

It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. — Romans 3:26

I think I understand what Steven Furtick is trying to say in this now-infamous clip from a recent sermon, but it is so problematic on so many different levels, it is difficult to know where to start untangling it. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals’ Todd Pruitt has done a good job of outlining the significant theological problems with Furtick’s statements here.

Furtick is wanting to emphasize that the gospel is better than the law (I think), and this is true enough. In fact, we should all be eager to emphasize that, as Paul does in 2 Corinthians 3. The gospel’s superiority to the law is the essence of sound Christian preaching, because in fact the gospel (not the law) is the essence of sound Christianity. (In fact, I wish Furtick’s regular preaching offered up more of the emphasis of the finished work of Christ rather than regular sets of steps and tips and pick-me-ups based on human potential, which, whether he realizes it or not, is a pretty legalistic way of preaching.) But there is a biblical way to express this important truth, and then there is Furtick’s way. Furtick’s way is to say that God breaks the law “for love.” But this only makes sense of his illustration, not of anything the Bible actually teaches.

See, many people tend to think that when the Father sent the Son to die on the cross to forgive sins, he was in some sense “breaking the law.” That line of thinking is what I suspect is at work in this sermon clip. Like, because of Jesus, God is letting our law-breaking somehow slide.

The god preached in this kind of scenario is really the false god of antinomianism (“against the law”) because he can only forgive sins by in some way compromising his holiness. In other words, he sort of tips the scales towards his mercy and away from his righteousness. A lot of Christians tend to think of God’s work like that — as if, with Jesus, he’s kind of bending the rules. He sacrifices one part of his self (holiness) in order that we might take advantage of another (love).

But the one true God does not compromise one bit. He bends no rules! In fact, he punishes every single sin. Not a single sin throughout all of history slips through the cracks.

So how can he forgive sinners like us while maintaining the perfection of his holiness? He puts our sin on Jesus Christ.

God has declared that he will by no means clear the guilty (Nahum 1:3). So he instead makes guilty people righteous! But to do this in a way that is just, he must make a righteous person guilty. And he accomplishes this, the Bible reveals, by punishing our sin by punishing his son Jesus.

In this way, all sin is accounted for. Whether by the wrath of hell or by the wrath of the cross, every single sin is accounted for. And in this way, the grace of God is revealed. Christians therefore believe that if anyone wants to stand before a holy God and be declared holy enough to escape judgment, they must reject trusting in their own good works and instead accept the good works of Jesus Christ as their own.

The cross of Jesus Christ, then, shows us how God is both perfectly holy and perfectly loving, simultaneously and totally just and yet totally gracious. He doesn’t bend any rules or break any laws, as the spirit of antinomianism would suggest. It is in fact through the very cross of Christ that God, according to the Apostle Paul, “showed his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).

The Christian God is both just and justifier, and he does his justifying as an act of sheer grace, forgiving sinners not by their obedience (because they could never obey well enough) but by Christ’s obedience, which is perfect and thus perfectly fulfills the perfectly holy law of God.

In fact, when you do a bit of “reverse engineering” on the atonement knowing this, you can see that in fact it wouldn’t be very loving at all for God to have broken his own laws to save us. Because an atonement made by a law not perfectly kept is no atonement at all. If God broke his law to save me, I am not saved, because what is needed is perfection. It would not be perfectly loving for our holy God to apply to me an imperfect atonement! But in fact the gospel announces not just that my sins are forgiven, but that I am counted righteous in Christ.

I have received the righteousness of Christ, which means that’s his perfect obedience to the law of God is considered as my own perfect obedience to the law of God. That’s how gracious God is! He has broken antinomianism for love.

And now, in the spirit of this grace, I pursue obedience of God with gratitude and freedom and joy — not because I am saved by my righteousness but because, in a sense, I am saved from it.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. — Matthew 5:17

(A portion of this post is a slightly edited excerpt from my forthcoming book Unparalleled: How the Uniqueness of Christianity Makes It Compelling)

How to Uncheapen Grace in Your Church

“I resolved to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ and him crucified” – 1 Corinthians 2:2

When we take up our ministry crosses and die to our visionary selves and follow Christ’s way of “doing church,” we show how costly grace really is. We show how powerful it really is.

Ironically, however, the way to show the enormous costliness of grace is not to heap on people an enormous burden of instructions. The logical mind wouldn’t think it should work this way. But you demonstrate how valuable grace is by emphasizing grace over the spiritual “to do” list. If you want to uncheapen grace, actually, you will throw it at everything.

If instead we treat grace like it’s just for conversion, we hold it cheap. If we assume grace, we hold it cheap. If we “of course” grace, we hold it cheap.

The very nature of grace throws off all measurements of balance. You don’t balance out law with grace, or vice versa. They don’t keep each other in check. Thinking so reveals a misunderstanding of both. Trying to strike a balance between the two is to envision them as equal but opposite forces, as if they are synonymous with legalism and license. We think the way to balance away from legalism is to get some license in the picture and call it “grace.” If we fear that “grace” is creating too much license, we seek to balance it out with a little law. But either option, to borrow from Lewis who is borrowing from Luther, is “falling off the horse on the other side.” Tim Keller writes:

Christians typically identify two ways to respond to God: follow him and do his will, or reject him and do your own thing. Ultimately this is true, but there are actually two ways to reject God that must be distinguished from one another. You can reject God by rejecting his law and living any way you see fit. And you can also reject God by embracing and obeying God’s law so as to earn your salvation. The problem is that people in this last group—who reject the gospel in favor of moralism—look as if they are trying to do  God’s will. Consequently, there are not just two ways to respond to God but three: irreligion, religion, and the gospel.[1]

In reality, both irreligion and religion are fundamentally self-salvation projects. They are equally self-righteous, even though the former is predicated on being automatically righteous and the latter aims to earn righteousness. So there is no wisdom in seeking to balance “grace” and law this way. (When Keller refers to doing “balanced ministry” in his book, he doesn’t mean to set gospel against law but to set the gospel as a third way, the biblically-harmonious way.)

The parable of the prodigal son certainly shows us the two ways to reject the father in the lost son’s irreligion and the older brother’s moralism. And one thing we notice about the prodigal son’s repentant moment in the pigsty is that he rides the pendulum to the other side:

But when he came to himself, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants’.”  (Luke 15:17-19)

He went where we all impulsively go to please the Father: to the law. He cannot fathom that after spending up all his Father’s mercies, there will be any left. “I’ll go work for my dad.” And thus he shows how alike he is in the flesh with his older brother, who’s only distinctive quality is that he’s been trusting in his works all along. The lost son wants to trade in his penitence for the merit system. He wants to trade the leaven of Herod for the leaven of the Pharisees. When navigating this divide ourselves, we ought to pay attention to C.S. Lewis, who said:

For my own part I hate and distrust reactions not only in religion but in everything. Luther surely spoke very good sense when he compared humanity to a drunkard who, after falling off his horse on the right, falls off it next time on the left.[2]

That’s not just a reaction; it’s an overreaction. That’s instinctively where the lost son goes, falling off the horse on the other side. But that’s not the way to show grace’s value.

In many attractional churches, they talk up grace a lot but actually preach law (advice), which shows how cheaply they hold grace. This is not how the Bible writers gave instructions. You don’t find any applicational exhortation that is disconnected from gospel proclamation. For the New Testament authors, especially Paul, the practical matters of the faith are inextricable from the explicit emphasis on the finished work of Christ. So in Paul’s epistles, we see him begin every message with an extended gospel presentation. The longer the letter, the longer the gospel foundation. See for examples the first ten chapters of Romans, and the first couple chapters of Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians.

Paul even bookends his letters with gospel proclamation. Every one of his epistles begins with some form of the greeting “Grace to you” and ends with some form of “Grace with you.” These customary salutations contain an important spiritual truth—when we begin reading one of Paul’s Spirit-breathed letters, we should realize that grace is coming to us through the words of Scripture, and when we are done reading, we should realize that we have just received a divine grace in receiving God’s word. But this opening and closing reveal an important theological truth too: all of the Christian life is of grace. It is grace that saves us, grace that sustains us, and grace that will lead us home to heaven.

So when we preach steps and tips but only assume grace, we are withholding from people the actual power they need to experience God’s love and obey him.

Grace is what makes Christianity unique among all world religions and philosophies. Only the Christian faith has grace. No man would have made this up. We love our merit badges too much. None of us would have come up with the concept of divine unmerited favor. None of us would have invented the notion that we cannot be good enough or smart enough, that we could not become somehow gods ourselves. We would be too busy building our own Babel towers, monuments to our own personal awesomeness. Instead, this alien thought comes down from the heavens, delivered by the one true God, that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone. Therefore, when we assume or obscure or otherwise deemphasize grace while at the same time emphasizing “practical application,” we de-Christianize our Christianity. Thomas Smith offers a personal illustration:

Several years ago I was invited to speak with several other preachers at a summer family conference. One of my colleagues spoke each night on the Christian family. What became more striking with each installment in this series was there was nothing distinctively Christian about any of it! We were given, night after night, good advice, sound wisdom, entertaining anecdotes, but we were not told what made the Christian family unique and distinctive from, say, a pious Jewish or Muslim family. This example could be repeated infinitely on a large variety of subjects.

One of the most remarkable things about the New Testament is the way that its writers deal with thorny ethical issues. Every ethical requirement, every matter of conduct, is rooted in the redemptive accomplishment of Jesus Christ.[3]

So Paul says, “I resolved to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). If Christ alone saves, if Christ alone is worthy, if Christ alone is the power and source of all blessing and treasure, what is it with the attractional church’s highlighting application as some graduation from the conversion experience? We don’t begin by the Spirit and continue by the flesh (Gal. 3:3). We are not followers of Christ-and-something-else-ianity.

We can uncheapen grace when we’ll open up the treasure chest of the Scriptures and start handing out Christ. It is from his fullness that we receive grace upon grace (John 1:16).

—

[1] Timothy Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2012), 63.

[2] C.S. Lewis, “The World’s Last Night,” in “The World’s Last Night and Other Essays (Orlando, Florida: Harcourt, 1987), 94.

[3] Thomas N. Smith, “Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing: Preaching Christ as the Focus of All Reformation,” in Reforming Pastoral Ministry ed. by John H. Armstrong (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2001), 109.

This post is an adapted excerpt from The Prodigal Church: A Gentle Manifesto Against the Status Quo

The Australia Diary

Becky and I recently had the great privilege of traveling to the land down under for about 12 days of ministry and fellowship. While we’re still a little bit tired from the return trip jetlag and still processing all we met and all we saw, I thought it might be interesting to some to jot down some notes from our time there.

The trip was organized by a collection of (mostly) Brethren churches that affiliate under the organization Christian Community Churches of Australia (CCCAus). There is a great move toward gospel-centrality ongoing in this evangelical tribe, and we had a blast getting to know many of the pastors and leaders at the forefront. My friend Chris Thomas who is a vocational elder at Raymond Terrace Community Church in the Hunter Valley on the mid-coast of New South Wales was our primary contact point for the trip, and he and his colleagues facilitated an experience for us that was both fruitful and joyful.

Becky and I departed Los Angeles on March 8 and, despite flying for only 13 hours, we landed in Brisbane on March 10. (I’m still a little bitter with the Aussies for stealing a day from me.) There we met up with Phil and Adele Thomas (Chris’s parents), who were our incredible hosts for the first few days of our trip. Phil and Adele are dear people we connected with very much just in our short time together. They took us first up into Queensland, into the Bunya Mountains, where we joined them on a retreat for the elders and wives of Bundaberg Bible Church, where Phil is a vocational elder.

While the first few days in the mountains were largely intended for rest and recovery from the trip over, a way to catch our breath and prepare for the upcoming itinerary, I spoke a bit on the material in my book The Pastor’s Justification at a couple of the elders’ gatherings. Most of the time, however, Beck and I had the chance to explore the mountains. We went for a hike in the Bunya “scenic circuit,” drank coffee on the back porch of our villa serenaded by countless songbirds, hung out with all the wallabies, fed the parrots and cockatoos, and just generally enjoyed the company of our hosts.

From Bunya we traveled with Phil and Adele down to Bundaberg, where I preached Sunday morning at their church. The reception to the gospel there was sweet, and our first taste of corporate worship in Australia was a joy. After church, we had some delicious fish and chips with our friends on the shores of beautiful Hervey Bay. That night Phil and Adele took us to Mon Repos, where we witnessed the transcendentally adorable sight of sea turtle hatchlings making their first journey into the ocean!

It was sad parting ways the next day, but it was time for the next leg of our journey. The Thomases drove us back down to Brisbane, where we met up with John Fleming, a bivocational elder at Wollongbar Christian Church, which is located in a beautiful village on the coast of New South Wales. The church hosted a gathering of Christians from a variety of local churches that Tuesday night, and I spoke to a packed house on the topic of “Keys to Discipling New Believers.”

The work in Wollongbar is particularly interesting and peculiar, as the local area is becoming more and more discriminatory to churches, especially in the area of building and zoning. The story behind Wollongbar’s building space is nothing short of a miraculous answer to prayer, and the place is growing so much, they are already planning to build a larger sanctuary on their current property. Being smack-dab in the middle of a developing neighborhood puts them in the center of community activity, as well, which is ideal for their missional aims.

We stayed with John’s family during our time there and met his wife and grown children. We were incredibly blessed by their hospitality and Becky especially enjoyed exploring the Flemings’ lush backyard gardens with her camera, looking for kookaburras and cockatoos.

From Wollongbar, John drove us further down the eastern coast of Australia. We ate chocolate and drank coffee on the Sunshine Coast, took pictures of some fabulous beaches, and ate salt-and-pepper squid at a cool little cafe on the Gold Coast. The sights were beautiful, despite it being a pretty dreary, rainy day. Parting ways with John, we flew from Brisbane to Newcastle, where we finally met up with Chris and journeyed to Raymond Terrace.

We had dinner with the elders and wives of his church on the night of our arrival. The next day was purely a fun day. Chris and his wife Kath took us to Oakvale Farm, which is managed by members of their church. Becky finally realized her dream of cuddling a koala! Several of them, actually. And we fed the kangaroos and kept our distance from the crocodiles and cassuaries. That evening we ate shrimp stew overlooking the Hunter River and walked back to our hotel through downtown Raymond Terrace at dusk under the ominous and intimidating cloud of thousands of fruit bats on their evening frenzy.

The next day Chris drove us down to Camp Toukley for the BUILD Conference. This event was the primary reason for our trip. I preached 4 times at this men’s conference, which has been running for nearly 50 years! The conference has seen a resurgence in attendance in the last few years, owed largely to a renewed commitment to cooperation among area churches and to the sweet gospel renewal taking place in these parts. The preaching was very well received. The men of these churches are characteristically sweet, humble, teachable, and full of life and joy. (In addition, Beck and I just loved the laid-back, largely casual, “no worries” demeanor of basically everybody we encountered during our visit. Nobody seems particularly infected with the hurry sickness epidemic in the United States, and we noticed the difference most starkly when we later returned to the San Francisco airport.)

At the close of conference that Saturday afternoon, we traveled with a CCCAus leader Bradley Scott, another key organizer of our trip, to his home in Sydney. On Sunday morning I preached at One Community Church, a Samoan congregation in the city. The congregation was lively and enthusiastic and we heard some of the best music of our time in Australia. This church is growing quickly and they are rapidly outgrowing their warehouse space, which is prompting both a desire to expand their facilities into the neighboring warehouses and an intensified pace in church planting. They have already planted several churches and have a strategic plan for 12 more in the next 12 years!

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to an Australian tea. What we discovered is that when Australians say “Would you like to have tea?” what they mean is “Would you like to have a meal?” The Samoan “tea” after church conisted of sandwiches, rice pudding, salad, fruit, and donuts. Pastor Tom Meredith and his family treated us so warmly and affectionately.

After a brief rest that afternoon, including a quick jaunt to a Sydney flea market, I preached that evening in a suburban Sydney church, West Pennant Hills Community Church, pastored by Tim Kirkegard. Tim and his team were fantastic hosts, and while they don’t normally have a Sunday evening gathering, his sanctuary was full that night with people eager to hear the word. I preached from 2 Peter 1, and the response and ministry time afterward was very encouraging.

Beck and I had one more day to enjoy the coast before heading back home, and it just so happened that I had one free night as an account holder with a particular hotel chain that was about to expire, so we figured, When are we gonna be back in Sydney, Australia? I booked our free night at a hotel on the Sydney Harbour and we spent Monday exploring. We took the ferry across to Manly and toured the shops and cafes on the beach there. We went to the sea reserve on Manly and saw the sharks and rays and penguins. Beck took a lot of pictures.

On Tuesday we boarded our plane for the 13 hour flight back to the States. In all, I spoke 10 times in those 12 days, so while we had lots of fun, it was not a little tiring. The jet lag on the return is no joke, by the way, and while it took me a few days of daytime exhaustion and overnight wakefulness, we both came home with full hearts and many fond memories. The Lord is doing something wonderful and exciting among the churches we visited and many more besides. I am looking forward, Lord willing, to returning to the country next Easter and hope to see many of our new friends again.

Pray for these dear brothers and sisters. In many ways, Australia is a few steps behind the evangelical gospel-centered movement of the states, but they are also a few steps ahead of us into the uncertainty of post-Christian culture. But even though, as I learned, there are no “big cats” in Australia, Aslan is on the move there.

(If you read this whole thing, I thank you. I knew it would be of limited interest, but it was helpful to me to process this way. I hope it was helpful to you in some way, as well.)

Here are some pictures:

John Updike’s Seven Stanzas at Easter

Make no mistake: if he rose at all

It was as His body;

If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,

The amino acids rekindle,

The Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,

Each soft spring recurrent;

It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the

Eleven apostles;

It was as His flesh; ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes

The same valved heart

That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered

Out of enduring Might

New strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,

Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,

Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded

Credulity of earlier ages:

Let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,

Not a stone in a story,

But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of

Time will eclipse for each of us

The wide light of day.

And if we have an angel at the tomb,

Make it a real angel,

Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in

The dawn light, robed in real linen

Spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,

Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed

By the miracle,

And crushed by remonstrance.

5 Distinguishing Marks of a Fruitful Church

I follow the ongoing pastoral and missiological discussions about “faithfulness vs. fruitfulness” from a bemused distance. I do believe that a church’s faithfulness to the mission of God is itself success, regardless of the “results.” And I also believe that a faithful church will be a fruitful church. But when some begin defining fruitfulness in quantifiable ways — decisions, attendance, etc. — I see more pragmatism and less Bible.

Does this mean I don’t think we should look for results? No. It just means I think we should look differently for results. I think measuring a church’s fruitfulness is not as simple as how many hands get raised during an invitation or how many parking spots are filled.

In 1741, the great Jonathan Edwards first published his now-classic book The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God. In this important work, Edwards is analyzing and synthesizing all he’s experienced in the revivals of his day (chronicled most notably in A Narrative of Surprising Conversions and An Account of the Revival of Religion in Northampton 1740-1742). He wants to know — what are the signs that a genuine move of God is taking place?

What, in other words, are the true evidences of Spiritual fruitfulness?

Interestingly enough, he prefaces his list of “distinguishing marks” with a list of things that may or may not be signs of a genuine move of God. It’s a curious collection — including things like charismatic experiences, the stirring up of emotions, and the fiery preaching of hell — and Edwards is saying that these things might be good things in many instances, but they do not themselves authenticate a work of God. A work of God may have charismatic experiences, stirring up of emotions, and the like, but it also may not. (He also lists some negative things — like errors and counterfeits — that he says do not necessarily disprove a work of God, since he reasons that a genuine move of God is likely to have Satan actively trying to derail it.)

I think we ought to apply Edwards’s strong reasoning to the ecclesiological landscape today. What are the signs of actual fruitfulness? How do we know our church is a growing part of something God is blessing?

Well, first, let’s look, as Edwards did, at some things that may or may not accompany a genuine move of God.

Marks of Neutrality – These May or May Not Authenticate a Church’s Fruitfulness

1. A steady accumulation of decisions or responses during Sunday invitations.

We have all seen the pastors touting their weekly catch on social media. Many people do hear the gospel and respond genuinely in this way. And yet, this kind of evangelistic strategy has been employed by evangelicals for the last 50 years, and we still face a discernible drought of mature Christianity in the West and a steady decline in evangelical numbers. The discipleship processes in so many of these “count the hands” churches seems to top out at the counting of the hands. Something isn’t adding up. Even Spurgeon commented on this practice, routine even in his day. No, what we can say is this — people coming to know Christ is always a good thing, no matter what kind of church they’re in, no matter the method by which they heard the gospel. But this does not itself sanctify methods. And a simple counting of “decisions” does not itself prove genuine fruitfulness because a (genuine) decision is itself only the first tiny bud of a life of fruit.

2. Large attendance.

It is wearying to need to repeat this, but American evangelicals love bigness, so we have to keep saying it: a lot of people is itself not a sign of faithfulness. It is another neutral sign. A lot of people coming to a church can be a good thing. There is nothing inherently wrong with a big church! But nor is there anything inherently right about it. One of the largest churches in North America is a church where Christ crucified is not routinely preached. Further, the Mormons have big churches. We need only look to the political realm for a fitting analogy: a lot of people supporting something does not mean that that something is doing something right!

3. Emotional experiences.

Here we track with Edwards again. Edwards rightly says that true worship often engages worshipers on an emotional level. It would be strange for a genuine love of Jesus not to make human beings feel something. But in many churches, the emphasis is on the emotional experience. This is why they advertise their music as “exciting,” “vibrant,” or the all-too-familiar “relevant.” These adjectives communicate that the worship is for the worshiper, which is another way of revealing that it is the worshiper the worshiper is worshiping. So it’s not a bad thing to get emotional in church. But it’s not in itself a sign that your church is doing something right.

So there we have 3 neutral signs, none of which are reliable indicators of genuine fruitfulness. A fruitful church may witness many conversions, growing attendance, and intense emotional engagement — or it may not. What, then, ought we to look for as signs of Spiritual fruitfulness? I happen to think Edwards’s “distinguishing marks of a work of the Spirit of God” hold up rather well.

Distinguishing Marks of A Fruitful Church

1. A Growing Esteem for Jesus Christ

How do you measure this? How do you know if a church is focused on the glory of Jesus Christ? Well, I think you start with the most visible communications. In sermon and song, is Jesus the focal point? Are the sermons preached making Jesus a bit player, an add-on at invitation time, a quotable hero? Or do they promote his finished work as the only hope of mankind? Do the messages labor more intently in the Law or do they delight more intently in the gospel? Are people getting a steady dose of five things to do or are they walking away understanding that the essential message of Christianity is that the work of salvation is done?

Musically, is the church focused more on creating an experience or adoring the Creator? Do the songs tell the story of the gospel? Are people the star of the show, or is Jesus? Does the church speak in vague generalities about hope, peace, light, etc. without constantly making the connection that Jesus is the embodiment of these virtues?

Do the people of the church speak more highly of Jesus than simply doing good or knowing the right doctrine? Do the pastors exhibit high esteem of Jesus? Are they Jesusy people?

If the church is not ensuring Jesus is explicitly and persistently the point, it is not fruitful. And conversely, if a church is ensuring Jesus is explicitly and persistently the point, it is being fruitful, since ongoing worship of Jesus is a fruit of the new birth.

2. A Discernible Spirit of Repentance

Is the church, first, preaching the dangers and horrors of sin? And then, in its preaching of the gospel, are people responding to the Spirit’s conviction and comfort with repentance? Do people own and confess their sin? Is there an air of humility about the place or an air of swagger? Are the pastors bullies? Are the people narcissists? Is appropriate church discipline practiced, gentle but direct? Is there a spirit of gossip in the place or of transparency? Is the church programming built around production values or honest intimacy with the Lord?

Are the people good repenters? That’s a real sign of genuine fruitfulness.

3. A Dogged Devotion to the Word of God

A lot of churches say they are “Bible-based,” by which they mean they will quote some Bible verses in the sermon. Or you can take a look at their small group offerings and see most of them are built around special interests, hobbies, or personal demographics. But fruitful churches love God’s word. They preach from it as if doing so gives oxygen. They study it with determination and intensity. They believe the word of God is sufficient and powerful and authoritative. You might even see people carrying their Bibles to the worship gathering!

Edwards says that a mark of a true move of God is high esteem of the Scriptures. I fear this mark is much missing in too many evangelical churches that admittedly use the Bible but aren’t effectively esteeming it.

4. An Interest in Theology and Doctrine

Yes, knowledge apart from grace simply puffs up, but this does not make knowledge disposable. Edwards says that the people of God will love the things of God. They will search out his ways, following the trails of doctrine in the Scriptures straight to the throne. In our day, it is common to see emotion/experience set at odds with doctrine/theology, and so it is quite common to see churches that have devoted themselves to one while keeping the other at arm’s length. But just as unfruitful as a church that’s all head knowledge and no heart is a church that’s all feelings and no depth. Some pastors even publicly mock theology or denigrate Bible study. But the church has not endured for 2,000 years on “spiritual feelings.”

The Lord himself says that true worshipers worship in spirit and in truth. We cannot jettison the truth for a dominating “spirit.” And in fact, as Edwards says, the work of the true Spirit “operates as a spirit of truth, leading persons to truth, convincing them of those things that are true.”

5. An Evident Love for God and Love for Neighbor

Exactly as it sounds. True fruitfulness is evidenced chiefly in obedience to the commands of God, the greatest of which is loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves. If a church appears to exist only for the sake of its own survival, only for the sake of its own enterprise, only for the sake of its own internal experiences, no matter how big it gets, it is not likely fruitful but more likely swollen.

Fruitful churches may or may not see steady conversions but they will have a steady outward heart of service and compassion for the world outside their doors.

Measuring the Spirit

Obviously, these five things are harder to quantify than simply counting hands and bodies. I think this is why we (lazily?) tend to equate hands and bodies with fruitfulness. But I want to make the provocative claim that a church can be Spiritually fruitful without seeing many or frequent conversions, without bursting at the seams attendance-wise, without creating “worship experiences” that stir people emotionally and imaginatively. Seeing those things can be good when done from the right place. But they are not themselves indicators of genuine fruit.

Yes, the early church counted. It’s totally fine to count. But we don’t see the kind of emphasis on high attendance and decision-producing that exists today in the pages of the New Testament. We see faithfulness. And we see fruit (“in season”) and sometimes we don’t (“out of season”). The job of the church is not to succeed but to be faithful. If you are not seeing much evangelistic fruit, in other words, be careful that it is not because you are being evangelistically disobedient!

Here are some good diagnostic questions to help us go deeper in our church measurements. I have adapted them from my book The Prodigal Church:

1. Are those being baptized continuing to walk in the faith a year later? Two years? Three years?

2. How many of our people are being trained to personally disciple others?

3. What percentage of our weekend attendees are engaged in community groups? Evangelism? Community service?

4. How many of our people could articulate the biblical gospel?

5. What is the reputation of our church in the community?

6. Are our people graduating into other grades and classes demonstrating a growing understanding of theology and a growing walk with Christ?

In Galatians 5, Paul contrasts a list of bad behaviors with good qualities. The fruit of the Spirit. These are much harder to measure than an accumulation of good deeds, but they are a much better indicator of spiritual growth. One thing we keep seeing in the Scriptures is how character, disposition, quality, being is consistently emphasized over behavior, position, quantity, and doing. The former is much harder to measure, yes, but shouldn’t this make sense? The Holy Spirit is not so easily sized-up.