Category Archives: Local Church

Public Worship to Be Preferred Before Private?

Posted on May 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

Modern Christians typically downplay or outright rejects the importance of public worship on the Lord’s Day. The most common variety justifies this rejection based on the “just me and Jesus” sort of thinking. This theology is nothing more than the Christianization of Western individualism. It cannot be squared with the intensely communal nature of biblical Christianity and therefore must be tossed on the heresy trash heap. The other, slightly rarer, variety downplays public worship in the name of organic Christianity. They will say, “The church is the people, not the steeple” or “we don’t go to church, we are the church!”  They are definitely onto something. The church isn’t merely a series of event but a family of believers under the spiritual discipline of elders. That being said, every family has routine events that strengthen the familial bonds and provide context for loving correction. Events and family go hand in hand. It isn’t an either/or sort of situation. Living under such a false dilemma will rob Christians of a myriad spiritual blessings that are normally the byproduct of the public ministry on the Lord’s Day. David Clarkson, a Puritan preacher, explains this in a very helpful sermon entitled, “Public Worship to Be Preferred Before Private.” Clarkson explains: Continue reading →

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Posted in Local Church, Pastoring, Preaching

Excuses Are Like…

Posted on April 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

After converting  to Christianity, I made the decision that I would never miss a Sunday worship service unless I was deathly ill. My thinking was that being committed to hearing the Word preached every Sunday would keep me from falling away into spiritual mediocrity or, worse yet, open rebellion. This has proven true over the last 15 years. I have suffered some deep valleys over those years. It is easy to become cold to the things of God. However, good sermons have often been the means which God used to defrost an icy heart.

My track record isn’t perfect. I’ve missed a service roughly twelve times. There are legitimate reasons to skip services. Kids get sick. Sometimes Sunday travel is require due to circumstances. Stuff happens. The main thing is that you don’t develop a habit of forgoing worshiping publicly with the  local church.  Charles Spurgeon rightly observed that this is all too common: Continue reading →

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Posted in Church History, Local Church

Creating a Culture of Church Discipline pt. 4

Posted on April 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

Third, a pastor must constantly be “meddling” in the lives of his flock. Many men go into the ministry because they enjoy studying theology and preparing sermons. These men often fail to be faithful ministers because pastoral ministry is a vocation that is centered on being deeply involved in the lives of people. Good contextual preaching will draw out many sins that can only can be resolved by a pastor meddling in his people’s lives. What good is an airstrike if it isn’t followed by a ground offensive? Pastors need to know their people well enough to offer helpful correction and advice. This requires that they actually spend time with the individuals that make up their congregation. It is during these visits that much of church discipline is accomplished. Baxter wrote, “One word of seasonable, prudent advice, given by a minister to persons in necessity, may be of more use than many sermons.” Children behave differently when dad is around. There will be growth in communal godliness if a pastor is actually present in the lives of his people.

I’ve given just three ways in which a pastor can create a culture of discipline in his church and each of them were only briefly discussed. There is so much more to be said. A pastor must seek and fine tune every means possible to make his church a place that produces godly disciples. John Leadley Dagg, the author of an influential church manual of the nineteenth century, said: “It has been remarked, that when discipline leaves a church, Christ goes with it.” Many churches–even those that practice the reduced version of church discipline–are functionally Christless. They have no testimony because they have no discipline. The remedy to this both starts and ends with the pastor.

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Posted in Authority, Local Church, Pastoring

Tim Keller Endorses a Woman Pastor’s Book

Posted on September 19, 2011 | Leave a comment

Pastor Tim Keller of Redeemer PCA has endorsed a book by a woman claiming to be a pastor. Here is her biography as provided on Amazon dot Com:

“Adele Ahlberg Calhoun (M.A., Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) currently copastors Redeemer Community in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with her husband, Doug. She was formerly Pastor of Spiritual Formation at Christ Church in Oak Brook, Illinois.”

“A trained spiritual director, she has taught courses at Wheaton College and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary. In the early 1970s she helped pioneer student work with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. She has also worked with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in New England and Canada and with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students in the West Indies and South Africa.”

More details here.

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Posted in Feminism, Local Church

Discovering Your Spiritual Gifts…

Posted on September 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

A simple search on Google will show just how popular the subject of spirituals gift are in the Evangelical world. You will find thousands of websites dedicated to this subject alone. You will find sermon series after sermon series by pastors on the spiritual gifts. Sadly, the Christian’s quest to discover their particular set of spiritual gifts typically represents nothing more than a thinly veiled form of self-actualization. One popular website offering a “Free Spiritual Gifts Analysis” explains the value of their test:

“Discovering and exercising your God-given spiritual gifts allows you to experience maximum fulfillment with minimum frustration in your Christian life and ministry. For that reason, we are pleased to introduce you to the nation’s best-selling Spiritual Gifts Inventory!”

Did you take note of their reasons for supplying you with a best-selling Spiritual Gifts Inventory? It has nothing to do with building the kingdom of God, serving the people of God, or magnifying the glory of God. Quite to the contrary, it is all about you experiencing your life and ministry to their absolute fullest. They are promising nothing more than a variation of the “Best Life Now Christianity” that dominates the church in America. This, of course, is diametrically opposed to the teaching of Scripture. Paul says,

“There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” 1 Cor. 12:6-7

Why has the manifestation of the Spirit been given to us? It is given for the common good of the saints in the local church. It really isn’t about you and your desire for fulfillment. God has endowed us with gifts for his glory and the church’s good. We must keep this in focus as we seek to serve him in the local church. If we aren’t careful our deceitfully hearts will be quick to seize the search for spiritual gifts as an opportunity o turn our eyes inward instead of outward and upward. Continue reading →

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Posted in Local Church

Preachers need to live well…

Posted on September 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

“It is a palpable error in those ministers that make such disproportion between their preaching and their living, that they will study hard to preach exactly and study little or not at all to live exactly. All the week long is little enough to study how to speak two hours; and yet one seems too much to study how to live all week…We must study as hard how to live well as how to preach well.” – Richard Baxter

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Posted in Local Church, Pastoring, Preaching

Masculine worship?

Posted on August 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

My worship pastor, Jody Killingsworth, stepped up to the plate and took a swing at very unpopular question: what are the essential elements of “masculine worship?” His answer is one of the best I’ve ever read. Here is just a little bit to whet your appetite… Continue reading →

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Posted in Local Church, Pastoring, Reformed Theology

Twice a brother

Posted on August 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

My youngest brother, Wayne, recently confessed Jesus as Lord. Consequently, this past Sunday he was baptized and welcomed into membership at ClearNote Church, Bloomington. He now is more of a brother than he had previously been. Why? Because the blood of Christ is thicker than the blood of our parents. Praise the Lord!

He is a video of the joyous occasion:

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Posted in Baptism, Local Church

Why we don’t invite people to church pt.1

Posted on August 2, 2011 | 5 Comments

For next few posts, I’ll be discussing the reasons why Christians don’t invite people to their church functions. The question has come up a lot lately. Consequently, I decided it would be worthwhile to see what sort of reasons I would get from posing it to everyone on my Google+ and Facebook accounts. Each blog post will offer a brief examination of the particular responses and sketch out a solution for it.

Why do you not invite people to your church functions? Here are a few of the answers:

“Right now, it’s because I work mostly with Christians, that are members at Christian Churches.”

“Currently in my life, my circles are pretty much my small group, youth kids, friends from church, and people at work. However, most of the people that make up those circles claim to be Christians.”

“The only non-christians that I see these days are the ones at work and we don’t have much a chance to talk because we are a call center.”

“Other than work, pretty much all my circles are composed of people from church, especially with school on hiatus for the summer.”

So, here is our first reason: we only know Christians. Continue reading →

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Posted in Evangelism, Local Church

Drawing Near to God on His Terms

Posted on July 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

People think they can draw near to God on their own terms. They think a walk in the woods or an Arby’s breakfast bible study can be their primary source of spiritual nourishment. They are wrong. God has designed and determined the means in which we will draw near to him. We cannot change it. We cannot improve upon it. So, what is the way we draw near to the Father? John Calvin answers:

Shut up as we are in the prison house of our flesh, we have not yet attained angelic rank. God, therefore, in his wonderful providence accommodating himself to our capacity, has prescribed a way for us, though still far off, to draw near to him. (And that way is the) church, into whose bosom God is pleased to gather his sons, not only that they may be nourished by her help and ministry as long as they are infants and children, but also that they may be guided by her motherly care until they mature and at last reach the goal of faith. “For what God has joined together, it is not lawful to put asunder,”  so that, for those to whom He is Father the church may also be Mother. (Institutes, IV.1.1, “The Necessity of the Church.”)

You cannot draw near to God outside of the church. She is our mother and through her ministry we are brought near to the Father.

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Posted in Authority, Church History, Local Church