Blogging The Deliberate Church: Part 2

In this post I want to give my thoughts on chapters 2-3 in the book, The Deliberate Church. You can read my first review here. My friend, Jeff Wright, has made his opening comments on the book here. It is worth reading, so check it out.

Chapter two is entitled, "Beginning the Work." So what is the first thing you should do when beginning ministry in the local church? The authors waste no time giving their answer. The first thing you must do is clarify the Gospel by preaching it clearly. Here the authors discuss the plague of nominalism running rampant in our churches today.

The human heart is astoundingly deceptive (Jer. 17:9), nominalism (being a Christian in name only) has spread in our churches like gangrene, and misunderstandings about the Gospel abound among professing evangelicals, especially regarding its relationship to other religions and its implications for our everyday lives. People need to hear the Gospel--whether they're professing Christians or not. (p. 43).

Words like this are music to my ears. I appreciate the authors reminding us that "the Gospel of Christ has never needed the gimmicks of man to effect conversion in the soul" (p. 44). And their suggestion that we begin with an exposition of Mark or John to let Jesus' words speak for themselves is an excellent idea.

If you are not surprised at the suggestion that the first thing one should do when beginning a ministry in the local church is clarify the Gospel, then you may be surprised by what comes next. In a section entitled "Cleaning the Rolls," the authors argue that we must make a big deal about making church membership meaningful. How serious do the authors think this is?

Most seriously of all, when we allow prolonged nonattenders to keep their names on the membership rolls, we actually help deceive them into thinking they are saved when their behavior is in fact calling their salvation into question. If membership is the church's public affirmation of a person's conversion, then to leave a nonattender on the rolls could very well be damningly deceptive. (pp. 47-48).

I think the key to affirming this quote lies with one's agreement with the idea that "membership is the church's public affirmation of a person's conversion." It is this idea that I think so many churches have a hard time with. Not agreeing with that statement is certainly a major reason why many new churches avoid having a formal membership at all. But I think this is a huge mistake. As pastors, we will be held responsible for the spiritual well-being of those we pastor (Heb 13:17), so it is important that we have some way not only for identifying those for whom we are accountable, but also for being able to say something about one's spiritual health. Commitment to the church is one biblical way of doing just that (see 1 John 2:19).

At this point I can say that the authors have made it clear by example what they mean by being deliberate. They mean taking seriously the charge to defend the Gospel, to watch over the spiritual condition of those within the church, and (in chapter 3) to seek for genuine conversions. This last issue the authors call "Doing Responsible Evangelism," the title of chapter three, a must-read chapter in this book. Here the authors discuss four essentials of the Gospel and deal with two responses that seem to be confused with a genuine response to the Gospel: praying a prayer and coming forward at a church service. The chapter concludes with an appeal to avoid entertainment and manipulation in presenting the Gospel as well as a warning against making the Gospel me-centered rather than God-centered.

In my first post on this book I began by noting this probing question found in the early pages of the book: Does the Gospel enjoy "functional centrality" in your church? This question continues to drive the ideas of this book in the next couple of chapters. After all, the Gospel is the only message the church has been entrusted with, so we had better take great care in making sure that it is the Gospel we are indeed delivering to people both inside and outside of the church.

Blogging The Deliberate Church: Part 1

My friend, Jeff Wright, and I are reading through the book The Deliberate Church together, and decided we would also blog our way through it, too. This is my first post on the book. Check out Jeff's thoughts over at Pursuing Truth.

Does the Gospel enjoy "functional centrality" in your church? That's the question that stands out to me through my reading of two "Forewords," two "Prefaces," and the Introduction to this book. I like that question because it goes so well with the title of the book: In order to answer that question in the affirmative, we will have to be quite "deliberate" about it. But this does not mean we need new programs in our churches for putting the Gospel back front-and-center. In fact, the authors argue that "to preserve functional centrality for the Gospel, human method has to remain plain, or else it will naturally supplant the Gospel's rightful role" (p. 22).

But this also does not mean that our methods for doing church do not matter. On the contrary, our methods do matter, so much so that we must be deliberate about letting the Gospel be the power behind our methods. In chapter 1 of this book, the authors lay out "Four P's" to focus on in church ministry: Preaching, Praying, developing Personal discipling relationships, and being Patient. These four things are basic and simple, but that's the point, I think. They give the Gospel "functional centrality" in the life of the church rather than one's creative genius or personality.

One final thought for now: I also appreciate the practical ideas the authors suggest; the book is more than theory. For example, rather than simply re-stating the oft-used beginning point of Prayer, the authors give us the practical suggestion of praying through the church directory on a systematic basis. I'm writing "PI" (that's "Practical Idea") in the margin of this book whenever I encounter such ideas.

Seeing and Testifying

One of the reasons the book of 1 John was written was to help Christians gain assurance that they have been reconciled to God and are in fellowship with him. In order to achieve this goal, the writer gives us several evidences of authentic faith. We can easily find many of these evidences as we read this book because they often begin with the words "by this." One of those places is found in 1 John 4:13 where the apostle tells us that the presence of the Holy Spirit within us is proof of our mutual "abiding" with God.

What is the connection that the next two verses have with verse 13? Verses 14 and 15 read:

And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.

It is the word “and” at the beginning of verse 14 that makes me think that John intends to connect what he says here with what he says in verse 13. In other words, another way that we know we abide in God is by "seeing" and "testifying" that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. John says whoever "confesses" this about Jesus (v. 15) can be sure that "God abides in him, and he in God."

When John says “we have seen and testify,” he must not be referring only to himself or the other apostolic witnesses of Jesus' life on earth. The "seeing" and the "testifying" go together. Hundreds of people literally saw Jesus but did not confess him to be the Son of God. So the "seeing" John refers to is probably not intended to be taken literally. It is a "seeing" of faith that is in view here. It is a seeing that takes place when God opens your spiritual eyes and gives you a glimpse of who Jesus really is. Jesus came for this very purpose, to open the eyes of the spiritually blind (Isa 42:7; Acts 26:18).

Our eyes have to be opened before our mouths can be opened. There is a direct correlation between the number of witnesses for Jesus and the number of people who have seen Jesus with the eyes of faith. The reason why we do not have more witnesses for Jesus is because we do not have enough people who have seen him for who he is. This is also part of the reason why spiritual apathy can grow in our churches. It is why you and I often struggle to find our joy in God. We need to beg God to let us see again. We need to come to grips with these words that are pregnant with God-glorifying truth: “The Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.” That is the gospel in a nutshell. The gospel is the good news! It is the best news! If our newspaper editors could see it for what it is, it would be front page every day of the week. It would never grow old, boring, or irrelevant.

For those who have the spiritual eyes to see the beauty of the Son, sent by the Father, to be the Savior of the world, they will thereby enjoy the fellowship with God that John so desperately wants them to have (1:3). It is the confession of the heart that Jesus is the Son of God that leads to mutual abiding with God.

Why Preach the Gospel?

Yesterday, I preached the sermon for our new downtown church's first worship service. We are going to study through the book of 1 John. Here is what I shared from 1 John 1:3:

. . . that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed jour fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

The aim of John’s proclamation is that his readers will “have fellowship with us.” That is, John wants his readers to experience the kind of fellowship he himself has experienced—fellowship with the Father and with the Son. “We proclaim the gospel,” he says, “so that you might find the kind of fellowship with the Father that we have also found.”

Fellowship has become Christian jargon, and most of us think little about the depth of relationship this word signifies in the New Testament. Next week, Lord willing, we will look more in-depth at this concept of fellowship. But for now note how important it is to John. It is the purpose of his proclamation. The answer to this question: “Why preach the gospel?” is not “to save the lost from hell.” It is “so that you [yes, even you Christians] may have fellowship.” The immediate aim of the gospel is not sparing you from hell. Too many of us have thought that way for too long. The immediate aim of the gospel, at least on a personal level, is reconciliation. The goal is to bring you and I back into a right relationship with God. It is to restore fellowship with the Father and the Son. Don’t say to yourself, “I know I have fellowship with God because I’ve prayed the sinner's prayer and so I’m not going to hell.” That is the wrong way to think about it. Instead ask yourself, “Do I know I belong to him because I have fellowship with Him?” That is the immediate goal of the gospel.