Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 71

The White Flag as Victory Banner

“We are not just ordinary. Nothing is just ordinary. “The whole earth is full of his glory.” We keep trying to fill it with monuments to our own glory — kingdoms, businesses, hit songs, athletic victories, and other mechanisms of self-salvation. But the truth is better than all that. Created reality is a continuous explosion of the glory of God. And history is the drama of his grace awakening in us dead sinners eyes to see and taste to enjoy and courage to obey.

“Do you realize that it is God’s will to make this earth into an extension of his throne room in Heaven? Do you realize that it is God’s will for his kingdom of glory to come into your life and for his will to be done in you as it is done in Heaven? Heaven is expanding, spreading in your direction.

“That is the meaning of existence, if you will accept it and enter in.

“Heaven is taking over. Yield.”

– Ray Ortlund, Jr., Isaiah: God Saves Sinners (Preaching the Word Commentary: Crossway, 2005).

Cultivating a Gracious Climate in Your Church

As I’ve said before, a message of grace may attract people, but a culture of grace will keep them. What our churches need, not in exchange for a gospel message but as a witness to it, is a gospeled climate. But how do you get that? How do you develop in your church community a safe space to confess, be broken, be “not okay”? What are some ways to cultivate a climate of grace in your church?

1. Ordain totally qualified elders

We often do well to make sure our elders are solid in doctrine and confident in leadership, but too often we let the just-as-important qualifications slide. Or we skimp over them in assessment. Many churches fail their communities when they ordain the smartest guys in the building because those smart guys lack in qualities like gentleness, long-temperedness, or in shepherding their families well. Consider candidates who live in open, transparent ways, who distinguish themselves in hospitality and generosity, who have reputations for patience and meekness as much as intelligence and confidence. Examine their families. Do they lead their families graciously? Do their kids seem happy? Are their wives flourishing? There is a reason Paul puts the quality of husbanding and fathering at the top of his list.

This is one reason I am particularly fond of older men as elders, particularly men with adult or young adult children. A man may have prodigal children in spite of him, of course, not because of him, and so I want to take that into consideration, but if a man’s children are no longer walking with the Lord I want to know if it was because they grew up in an undisciplined, ungodly home or an overly disciplined, rigid, authoritarian, graceless home. I am not opposed to younger elders with younger children (I am one) or even single elders with none (Paul was one), but older men give you both the benefit of life experience and wisdom, and if they’ve been walking with Jesus for a while, they are often softer in heart than younger men. In short, what you want is not just elders who preach and teach well, but elders who love well, who shepherd well. You don’t want simply ruling elders, but gracious shepherds. Because whatever your elders are, your church will eventually be.

2. Go hard after doctrinal arrogance.

Most everyone who thinks they are right about a particular theological issue believes they came to it through growing in the Lord, not just reading information. Both the Calvinists and the Arminians in your church think that. Both the premillennialists and the postmillennialists think that. Most every one of us believes that we came to our particular view in the midst of our spiritual growth. (And we’re all right about that, sort of.) Thinking this way is only natural. But the danger in this thinking is equating our particular view with progressive sanctification. Doing so means believing that because I believe ______, I am more sanctified than you. The reason you don’t yet subscribe to my view on this matter is because you are more immature in your faith. Suddenly we are creating first and second class Christians in the community. And that’s gross.

Gently but firmly rebuke doctrinal arrogance and root it out wherever you find it. Factions develop over devotion to secondary matters quite easily if left unchecked. Be careful in preaching against sin that you don’t have “favorite” sins, pet sins to rail against. People guilty of such sins may be convicted and repent, but more often they do not hear the message of grace when their sin is repeatedly singled out but that your church is a safe place to have any sin but theirs. And there is an inverse danger in having favorite sins to preach against: it implicitly tells people who don’t struggle with that sin that they must be holy because they don’t struggle with it. By singling out certain sins for special treatment, you are helping everybody else embrace the arrogance of the Pharisee in the temple who was proud he wasn’t the tax collector.

Remind your people often that the demons have impeccable theology, that demons can be Calvinists and Arminians, millenniarians and amillenniarians.

3. Preach a whole gospel aimed at hearts, as well as minds

Preaching that takes the form more of lectures is great for creating information-glutted minds. Sometimes. But while every sermon should convey information — it should definitely teach — the purpose of a sermon is not primarily mind-informing but heart-transforming. Aim at the heart in two primary ways: 1) proclaim good news, not simply good advice, and 2) exult in your preaching. In other words, don’t just preach the text, as much as you are able, feel it. More often than not, churches don’t become passionate about what their pastors tell them to be passionate about but about what their pastors are evidently passionate about themselves. So if it’s clear from your preaching that what really fires you up is the imperatives of the Scriptures, and not the gospel indicatives, guess what? No matter how many times you tell your church to center on the gospel, they’re going to see that your zeal is reserved for the law.

And as you preach the gospel, preach to both prodigals and older brothers. Explain how the gospel is opposed to self-righteous religiosity. Entreat both “brothers” to embrace Christ, the legalist as well as the hedonist. Don’t give the impression that the gospel is just for those obvious sinners, the “lost” people, but for all people, including those in the pews every Sunday.

4. Establish limping leaders

From elders on down, I don’t empower any leader who has no record of or reputation for humility. I want to know if the leader has ever been broken, ever had his legs knocked out from under him. I don’t empower leaders who don’t walk with limps, because they often have no empathy for the broken, the hurting, the abused, or the penitent. I don’t empower any leader who has not confronted and wrestled with his own sin, who doesn’t demonstrate an ongoing humility about his sin and a grief over it. Leaders who do not personally know the scandal of grace set a climate in a church of gracelessness.

5. Promote hospitality, service, and generosity

What values, programs, initiatives do I most want to promote? The ones that are most conducive to closeness with each other and outwardness with the community. Church people don’t learn to be gracious with unchurched people if they are never in proximity with them. And often being in the same work environment doesn’t cut it. We want to facilitate and promote opportunities for growth that involve the opening of homes, the active service of people inside the church and out, and the giving away of money and stuff. Lots of things fit these bills, so you can get creative. But when church people spend a lot of time with each other in these sorts of settings — as opposed to simply classroom type settings or the worship service — they get to know each other in ways that build familiarity, empathy, intimacy, etc. And the same is true of spending time in these settings with unchurched folks, as well. A closed-off, insular, cloistered church is not conducive to a gracious climate. It runs out of air too quickly; people can’t breathe.

6. Take it personally

Most importantly, you I must be what you I want to see. So often as you are I am checking your my church’s pulse — which Bonhoeffer wisely says not to keep doing — we are I am thinking of all the people who need to get their act together, who need a big dose of humility. We may be right about them. But applying to others first is not the humble impulse of grace taken seriously. I need to keep a close watch on my life and doctrine. I need to outdo others in showing honor. I need to practice confession and repentance. I need to humble myself. As I am growing intellectually, I need to hold the fruit of the Spirit up to my heart and be fearless and honest about asking, “How am I doing in these areas?”

For each of us, a gracious climate begins with us.

—

Related:

The Welcome of Grace

Safeguarding Against Abuse in the Church

Stay Messy, My Friends

How to Almost Guarantee Your Children Will Run in the Opposite Direction from the Faith

Wormtongue at the Listless Wheel

“Did God actually say . . . ?”

- Genesis 3:1

In Tolkien’s The Two Towers we are introduced to Grima Wormtongue who, under the pretense of caring for Theoden the King, has wickedly ingratiated himself and usurped his moral authority. Indeed, as Wormtongue’s influence over Thedoen grows, the king’s power dissipates. In the Peter Jackson film, we see this vividly in the way Theoden is depicted as a mere shell of a man, somewhat skeletal with a gray pallor and dull, glazed eyes. His counselor has a parasitic effect. It’s a dramatic link, to be sure, but I think of this relationship when I ponder the ambitions of the emergents, the neo-evangelicals, or whatever they’re calling themselves now (or not calling themselves) in seeking to commandeer the the conversation of the evangelical movement. “Christianity must change or die,” a satanic bishop wrote a few years back. His spiritual progeny are catching up to agree with new books and new publishing houses, new conferences, blogs, and talk shows. But we’ve seen the trajectory for years. They can take us no place worth going. Talking out of both sides of their mouths, we ought not be surprised when the forked tongues become more evident.

Professing to be wise, they reveal themselves to be fools. “Did God actually say?” they begin. Then they’ll tell you the answer: “No.” Before long, they insist the gospel cannot expand in this brave new world without a brave new faith that coddles disbelief and calls sin virtue. When you get right down to it, the whole enterprise is nonsensical and self-defeating. Cultural rebukes from a relativistic reading of the Scriptures and of historic orthodoxy guts any presumed authority in the rebuke from the outset. In a comment thread at one of these wormtongue-y blogs I read someone’s defense of the use of p()rnography in a marriage, arguing the need to respect differing values. The commenter also maintained that complementarian marriages were evil. “Get a brain, morans,” indeed.

The wizard Gandalf’s rebuke of the parasitic Wormtongue is fitting. In Tolkien’s book:

“Down snake!” he said suddenly in a terrible voice. “Down on your belly! How long is it since Saruman bought you? What was the promised price?

Well, the expected reward is the same stuff they accuse prominent evangelicals of greed for: money, power, prestige. Here is the rebuke as depicted in Jackson’s film adaptation:

Be silent. Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crude words with a witless worm.

Church, only let us hold true to what we have attained (Philipians 3:16). In the days coming, a regular re-reading of the book of Jude might be in order. The talking faces of the post-evangelical Jello salad want to help evangelicals navigate the uncharted waters of post-Christendom. But Jesus gave us plenty of words about unfaithful stewards and hired hands. We can learn nothing from the heterodox about navigating “the future of evangelicalism” except how to shut the engines off and drift.

The Three Generosities of a Local Church

Just noodling around with this theory. I think there are three levels of generosity a local church can process through given the gospel’s dominion in the place and the leadership’s determination to be humble and not insecure. From easiest to hardest:

Generous with Facilities

This is the first generosity and the easiest for most churches to engage in. Sometimes even for reasons of conceit — the appearance of busy-ness or the desire to impress others — but most often out of sincere hospitality and graciousness, churches can open their facilities for use by other churches or community groups. Churches have been doing this for a long time, running soup kitchens or community dinners in their fellowship halls, opening classrooms for daycares or Boy/Girl Scout troop meetings, 12-step groups, etc. When a church is generous with its facilities, it shows a gratitude for what’s been stewarded to them and often that their building is not a sacred cow to them.

Generous with Money

Sometimes the first generosity and this one are flip-flopped and churches are more readily generous with money than with their building, but for many, this is a harder generosity, especially in tough economic times. A church’s budget will tell you what is most important to them, just like our bank statements reveal what is most important to us. It can be difficult for a church to be generous with its money because the drift to inward focus and enhancing the internal experience of the church is automatic. When the gospel takes more dominion in a church, however, it understands that generosity and good stewardship are not at odds.

Generous with People

This is the hardest generosity, especially as it pertains to our “best and brightest.” Churches tend to be stingy with their leaders and leadership prospects. Many churches will not endeavor to plant churches because they cannot trust God enough to send quality missionaries away — or, more bluntly, to drop in attendance. Many churches will not cooperate with other local churches for fear of losing people to the other church. This stinginess with people is an idolatry very difficult to kill. But a gospel-centered church will grow into a kingdom-mindedness that is a constant reminder that no local church owns anybody and that what is best for every local church is whatever is best for the expansion of the gospel and worship of Christ.

Perseverance of the Saints

“How excellent is that inner goodness and true religion that comes from this sight of the beauty of Christ! Here you have the most wonderful experiences of saints and angels in heaven. Here you have the best experience of Jesus Christ Himself. Even though we are mere creatures, it is a sort of participation in God’s own beauty. ‘Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature.’ (2 Pet 1:4) ‘God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.’ (Heb 12:10) Because of the power of this divine working, there is a mutual indwelling of God and His people. ‘God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.’ (1 John 4:16)

“This special relationship has to make the person involved as happy and as blessed as any creature in existence. This is a special gift of God, which he gives only to his special favorites. Gold, silver, diamonds, and earthly kingdoms are given by God to people who the Bible calls dogs and pigs. But this great gift of beholding Christ’s beauty, is the special blessing of God to His dearest children. Flesh and blood cannot give this gift: only God can bestow it. This was the special gift which Christ died to obtain for his elect. It is the highest token of his everlasting love, the best fruit of his labours, and the most precious purchase of his blood.

by this gift, more than anything else, the saints shine as lights in the world. This gift, more than anything else, is their comfort. It is impossible that the soul who possesses this gift should ever perish. This is the gift of eternal life. It is eternal life begun: those who have it can never die. It is the dawning of the light of glory. It comes from heaven, it has a heavenly quality, and it will take its bearer to heaven. Those who have this gift may wander in the wilderness or be tossed by waves on the ocean, but they will arrive in heaven at last. There the heavenly spark will be made perfect and increased. In heaven the souls of the saints will be transformed into a bright and pure flame, and they will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Amen.”

– Jonathan Edwards, “How to Know if You Are a Real Christian”

Irresistible Grace

“So, then, what is this effectual, internal call that we are speaking about? Well, the most we can say about it is — and this must of necessity be true in the light of these scriptures — that it is the exercise of the power of the Holy Spirit in the soul. It is a direct operation of the Holy Spirit within us. It is immediate, it is spiritual, it is supernatural, miraculous. And what it does is to make a new mode of spiritual activity possible within us. Without this operation we are incapable of any true spiritual activity but as the result of this operation of the Holy Spirit upon us, we are rendered capable, for the first time, of spiritual activity and that is how this call now becomes effectual, that is what enables us to receive it.

“Now this is very important and I want to emphasise the immediacy, the direct action. You see, what happens when the call comes to men and women effectually is not simply that the moral influence of the truth is exercised upon them. Some people have thought that; they have said that the gospel is preached and that the truth has a kind of general moral effect upon people. For instance, to take a human theme, a capable orator, a man wanting to persuade men and women to vote at an election for a given party, can put the case so well that he can exercise a moral influence upon his listeners. But it is not that. It is an operation of the Spirit upon the men and women themselves, in the depths. It is not merely that the Holy Spirit heightens our natural faculties and powers, it is more than that. It is the Spirit acting upon the soul from within and producing within us a new principle of spiritual action.

“Now it must be that; it cannot be less than that. Because these things, says Paul, are all spiritual. And that is why the natural man does not understand them; and that is why, as I have often reminded you, we should never be surprised, or to the slightest extent disappointed or put out, when somebody brings us the argument that ‘Christianity cannot be right because look at this great man and he doesn’t believe it!’ How often have you heard that argument! Someone says, ‘You know, I cannot believe this, because if Christianity were true, it could not be possible that all these philosophers and scientists and all these great statesmen and other men do not believe it.’

“In the light of these things, it is very natural and we can understand it perfectly well. The greatest natural intellect cannot receive this, he is ‘a natural man’. And you need a spiritual faculty to receive the wonderful truth about the two natures in the one Person; the outstanding doctrine about the Trinity; the whole doctrine of the incarnation and the atonement, and so on. This is spiritual truth and to the natural person it is utter folly, it is foolishness, as Paul says. So when the Holy Spirit does enable us to believe it, it must be something beyond the heightening of our natural faculties. It is not simply that He brings the truth of His great moral suasion to us. No, no. We need some new faculty, some new principle, and that is the very work that He does. He implants within us this new spiritual principle, this principle of spiritual vitality and activity, and it is as the result of this that the general call of the gospel comes to us in an effectual manner.”

– Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Effectual Calling and Regeneration”

On the Anniversary of My Sweetheart’s Birth

My wife Becky turns 40 today. She’s so cool she doesn’t even care if you know how old she is. “What’s it feel like to be married to an old person?” she said to me yesterday. (I turn 38 this fall, by the way.) “I wouldn’t know,” I said.

Last week we attended a Valentine’s sweethearts dinner for pastors and their wives in the area hosted by another local church. They had set up a collection of tables for two and volunteers served us chicken piccata over linguine by candlelight. They gave us a sheet of suggested questions for “couple talk.” We played the Newlywed Game (and a pair of actual newlyweds won). The whole night we enjoyed playing by the rules, but we also enjoyed — don’t tell anybody — making light fun of the questions. One of the listed instructions said to “reflect quietly on your life together,” so I rested my chin on my fist and stared dreamily off to space. Becky laughed out loud.

We’ve spent our married life (17 years this summer) not playing by the rules, really. Got married in college. Becky never finished. Went into debt. Moved away from family. Becky became the breadwinner, while I did the stay-at-home dad thing for about eight years.

We broke the rules of grace too — me especially. I broke the rules of God and I broke our marriage. But Becky broke the rule of common sense. She didn’t love me for a while, and especially didn’t like me. But she hung in there with me. Even when she asked me to leave, she still didn’t let me go. The rules of the modern relationship road all pointed to kicking me to the curb. She gave me grace. And when God granted me repentance, over time Becky granted me trust. And against all odds, she fell in love with me again.

When we first got married, we were like every other annoying ooey-gooey newlywed couple — naive about marriage and sin and the realities of real people living in close proximity with the best behavior of courtship long gone. People would say to us, “Just wait.” They wanted us to know things were gonna get awful. All these years later, some seem resigned to staying true to their own words. Their marriages are self-fulfilling prophecies. Ours? We can’t get enough of each other. We’re breaking their stupid rules about how married people our age are supposed to behave. While some couples can’t wait to spend time apart, we can’t wait to spend time together. God did this.

But he used Becky. He is still using Becky, who is amazingly creative, wonderfully sarcastic, gently humbling, constantly encouraging, faithfully supporting, abundantly creative, and persistently gracious. I can’t believe she’s mine. I deserve one of those dreary wives constantly sighing and tsking. The ones who are following the rules of how you treat dumb husbands. But my wife is a living, walking, loving picture of grace to me.

Becky is 40 years awesome today, and it reminds me that I’m eternally blessed.

I love you, baby. Thanks for breaking the rules with me (and for me) every day.

Previously:

Sweet Sixteen

Limited Atonement

“The Arminians say, ‘Christ died for all men.’ Ask them what they mean by it. Did Christ die so as to secure the salvation of all men? They say, ‘No, certainly not.’ We ask them the next question: Did Christ die so as to secure the salvation of any man in particular? They answer ‘No.’ They are obliged to admit this, if they are consistent. They say, ‘No; Christ has died that any man may be saved if ?’ and then follow certain conditions of salvation. Now, who is it that limits the death of Christ? Why, you. You say that Christ did not die so as infallibly to secure the salvation of anybody. We beg your pardon, when you say we limit Christ’s death; we say, ‘No, my dear sir, it is you that do it.’ We say Christ so died that he infallibly secured the salvation of a multitude that no man can number, who through Christ’s death not only may be saved, but are saved, must be saved and cannot by any possibility run the hazard of being anything but saved. You are welcome to your atonement; you may keep it. We will never renounce ours for the sake of it.”

– Charles Spurgeon, “The Death of Christ: What Did it Accomplish?”

The Story of Grace

Our Gracie has been hard at work the last few days writing her first book. She’s got about 7 pages already, which is a lot when you’re 9 years old and writing longhand with pencil in a legal pad. She watched me sit down at my computer today and quipped, “I don’t have it easy like you.” (I told her I wrote the first drafts of my first three books longhand, pen in notebooks, but she didn’t seem too impressed.) I asked her what her book was about. This is what she said:

“It’s about a lady who is pregnant but she’s stressed out because she doesn’t have a place for the baby, so she starts driving to a motel to stay there because it’s near the hospital but she falls asleep when she’s driving and goes off the road and when she wakes up, she’s lost and doesn’t know how to get back to where she wants to go, and then the car blows up, so she’s out in the snow, pregnant and lost.”

“Wow. Sounds pretty heavy,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “But it all ends well.”

Indeed it does.

Previously:

How Grace is Like Grace (and How Grace Isn’t)

Rural Ministry: Too Cool for Hipsters?

Ignore my punchy title, really. Just my shameless ploy at getting your attention. Here is an interesting perspective from a site that is new to me on why rural ministry seems to be off the radar of the church planting crowd otherwise attracted to organic produce, going “local,” and living simply, etc. Darryl Hart on “If Cooking Slowly and Growing Organically are In, Why is Rural Ministry Out?” An excerpt:

Signs are not encouraging though that the growing concern among evangelical Protestants about the environment is having any effect on their church’s estimation of the people who work on farms and live near them. A recent story in Christianity Today on Tim Keller, a popular Presbyterian pastor in New York City, suggests that for all the desires that evangelicals have to be cutting edge and socially aware, a ministry accessible to the rhythms of farming and local communities does not qualify as hip. The story fawns over Keller for his ability to carve out a multiple-congregation structure in the Big Apple, for a theology of the city that says cites are where redemption happens, and for the model of ministry he exhibits to a crop of younger pastors who aspire to make an impact.

According to the news story, “New York attracts the best and the most ambitious.” Keller senses this and ministers accordingly. He told the reporter, “Suppose you are the best violist in Tupelo, Mississippi. You go to Manhattan, and when you get out of the subway, you hear a beggar playing, and he’s better than you are.” One of Keller’s former colleagues puts Keller’s understanding of ministering in the city this way: “Paul had this sense of, I really should go talk to Caesar. He’s not above caring for Onesimus the slave, but somebody should go to talk to Caesar. When you go to New York, that’s what you’re doing. Somebody should talk to the editorial committee of The New York Times; somebody should talk to Barnard, to Columbia. Somebody should talk to Wall Street.”

Lost in this understanding of ministry among cosmopolitans is the sense that one might be trying to elevate one’s own status by hobnobbing with the influential, that the church’s egalitarian streak has a preferential option for the meek and lowly, or that touting pastoral success in New York City leads to a generation of prospective pastors who will not remain in rural communities once they have seen the lure of church life in the cosmopolis – not to mention that the scale, anonymity, and standard of living in places like Manhattan skew church life in ways that may not be compatible with the agrarian imagery that comes straight from the pages of holy writ.

Of course, the reasons why evangelicals fawn over the city may stem from sources other than the obvious appeal of bright lights and big buildings. One of them may a born-again infatuation with celebrity and the disillusionment that follows when public figures like Mark Sanford or Miss California, Carrie Prajean, fall from grace. Evangelicals are disposed to understand grace and faith in extraordinary categories and so overlook stories of ordinary believers, routine piety, and even rural congregations as insignficant. Discontent with the average and routine aspects of natural life and of grace appears to breed a similar dissatisfaction with humble ministries in places of little interest to the editors of the Times.

But is it wrong to wish that Christians, who have discovered the value of wholesome food and the farming practices that produce it, would translate their choices about diet and carbon footprints into congregations and pastors more circumspect about cities and more respectful of the fly-over sectors of the greatest nation on God’s green earth? I hope not.

Read the whole thing.

Previously:

Rural Ministry is Not Second Rate

11 Blessings from My First 3 Years in Vermont Ministry

Book Review: Transforming Church in Rural America by Shannon O’Dell