Forget about "rethinking the Church"

As the 21st century Church becomes increasingly unchurched because of a kind of preaching that makes legalists of saints and consumers [shoppers] of the lost, [thanks Pastor Ben for your comment on Sunday that if we want to quench the Spirit, just turn the Bible into a self-help manual rather than a God-glorifying book that changes lives by putting on display with all of its implications the staggering beauty of the person and work of Christ] perhaps we need to forget about rethinking the Church since it wasn't our idea in the first place. The Church is "the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of truth" [I Timothy 3.15]. As the note on this verse in the 1599 Geneva Bible puts it, "the Church is the preserver of truth, but not the mother." What the Church is is a "body" of brothers and sisters who are saved by grace through faith in the finished work of Christ "whereby He took our sin, bore God's judgment in our place, and now clothes us in His righteousness."

At the end of his book, The Courage to Be Protestant [2008], David Wells helps us see the folly of rethinking the visible [those we see saved and lost in our pews or "chairs"] Church:

"Everything about the church must be [is being] rethought! We must rethink how it becomes successful! We must rethink it all because this is what businesses have to do. Their products are all the time dying as new niches and needs arise. So it is in the church! Rethink or die! For the multitude of pragmatists who are leading churches in America today . . . the church is nothing but its performance. There is nothing to be said about the church that cannot be reduced to how it is doing, and that is a matter for constant inventories, poll taking, daily calculations and strategizing. I beg to differ . . . The church is not our creation. It is not a business. The church, in fact, was never our idea in the first place. No, it is not the church we need to rethink. Rather, it is our thoughts about the church that need to be rethought. It's the church's faithfulness that needs to be reexamined. It is its faithfulness to who it is in Christ, its faithfulness in living out its life in the world, that should be occupying us. The church, after all, is not under our management but under God's sovereign care, and what he sees as health is very often different from what we imagine its health to be . . . God has given us the blueprint for its life in Scripture. What we need to do, then, first and foremost, is to think God's thoughts after him, think about the church in a way that replicates his thoughts about it" [pp. 222-223].

New Hymn Text written in thanks for Pastor Ben Rust

Hey you all,

Last night was one of those sweet summer Wednesday evenings we'll likely remember. God was pleased, sovereignly working through the congregation, to give Ben Rust to us as our senior pastor. The vote was unanimous. Here's the hymn text I wrote for the occasion. Ben preached from I Thessalonians 5.12-13 last Lord's Day Sunday morning.

“We Ask You Brothers to Respect Those Men Who in the Lord”
A metrical version of I Thessalonians 5.12-21

1. We ask you brothers to respect
Those men who in the Lord
Among you labor, love, correct;
Give praise for grace outpoured!

2. God’s peace we urge you now to seek,
Be patient with them all;
Rebuke the idle, help the weak,
And lift the faint that fall.

3. Seek good for all, rejoice and pray,
Repay no one with ill;
Give thanks in all, this is God’s way,
In Christ this is God’s will.

4. Quench not the Spirit, good hold fast,
The preached Word love but test;
Abstain from evil, sin’s black past,
Seek Light, bask in the Blessed.

David Harris – written 07/09/08 in thanks for Ben Rust.

Nothing quite so sweet

When the Apostle John wrote back home (to members of his former congregation) he said, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth." Nothing is quite so sweet as seeing that people you love are moving on with their lives in the Lord. My visit with the church this past weekend was a wonderful encouragement to me, seeing that Grace Baptist Church is growing as it should and how it should.

Love your pastors as you loved me. Pay them well, both because they deserve it and because it is a visible token of your love for them. Build up each other in the church. And ... enjoy the church, because your time there is all too short.

Colin & Anita

"Building' in the OT and the NT

The subject of 'building,' Hebrew BNH, is central to OT and NT theology. For example, God build the garden in which man dwelt in innocence and Solomon's attempts to build such a garden were crowned with vanity (Ecclesiastes). The addition of children in the OT is classed "building up,' in such notable passages as Sarah's plea to Abraham and Psalm127. Building in post-exilic Israel is the predominant theme of the book of Nehemiah and Haggai.

The anchor of the NT church is stated by Jesus in Matthew 16:17-19. Although it is hardly likely that the OT audience of Jesus fully understood what this meant, the audience of the book of Matthew, the NT church, certainly would have understood the reference. The power and the responsibility to build the church resides in her Lord. Paul resounds the same theme in 1 Cor 3:5-16 (dealing specifically with the local church) and Ephesians 4:11-16 (dealing ambiguously with the universal church and the local church).

The modern church growth movement, which is still very much alive despite the despite of the post-modern emergent movement, needs to take care that it does not remove the responsibility from the Lord of the church and turn to the gurus of the world for the power to build the church.

At heart, the failure of local churches to grow, in any sense of the term, has led pastoral leaders to seek answers from the world, albeit with a veneer of Christianity. If the local assembly, the real church, uses the power of the risen Christ and His Word, their growth will be undeniable evidence that "building" is a biblical principle that deserves more genuine biblical attention that it receives.

Pastor Smith
Sunday, May 25

"Houses, Cities, Workers, and Kids"

Psalm 127 – A Song of Ascents of Solomon
“Houses, Cities, Workers, and Kids”

“There is a ‘kind’ of house that, when it is built, looks sturdy and steady and serene. There is a ‘kind’ of city that looks safe and secure and insurmountable. And there is a ‘kind’ worker that gets up early, works late, and makes anxious plans so that he might sleep more peacefully. However, built houses and safe cites and ‘working hard f0r the money’ [to quote Donna Summer] are only vain, vaporous, and vanishing unless the LORD builds the house, watches over the city, and gives sleep to the worker.

There is a kind of child that the LORD builds who, rather than shaming their parents, are an inheritance from the LORD. They are like fruit. They are like arrows from the LORD provideding protection from the enemy. The more of them the merrier and the fuller our nursery.

The Jewish children of Psalm 127 partially fulfill the promise made by the LORD to Abraham to make of him a great nation. More importantly, these children point to a future reality when strangers from every tribe and tongue and nation will become the adopted children of promise ‘in Christ.’” Doc 5/21/08

A Stranger in a Strange Land

The goodness of the LORD is never so evident as when we are are alienated from all that is comfortable and comforting in this world. Greetings to our loved ones at Grace. We have made the move down to Winston-Salem and are enjoying our new surrounding and making new friends. but, all in all, we continue as aliens in a friendly, but unfamiliar environment.

Our apartment is nice, two rooms (a kitchen/dining room and master bedroom upstairs and two rooms and a full bath downstairs), right across from the campus, and partially furnished ... er, we have a fold up table and a futon mattress. We're planning on getting furniture as we go, but right now we are living like pilgrims and/or newly married college students; and we like it. With high-speed internet (no TV) a stove and fridge, we have all the mod-cons we need!

It will be some time before we settle into a church home. We've started traveling on weekends to speak. Yesterday we were 3 1/2 hours north on the Virginia/West Virginia border in Covington, VA at New Hope Baptist Church. wonderful folk, good services, a magnificent Sunday meal prepared by Mrs. Miller, a German lady who used to run her own restaurant with German food. beef, pork, brats, 7 side dishes, three desserts and several pounds later I staggered to the pastor's home to sleep before the evening service. The drive was through the beautiful Allegheny mountains both ways. I hope to do a lot of weekend travel for the school as time and health permit.

Spending a lot to time in admin. work and prep for a PhD class coming up the week of August 2-6. Only three students so the time should be very profitable. I'm scheduled to represent the school at the GARBC conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, so I should meet some of my former BBC compatriots around the booths. Lots to talk about :-)

We love you guys, miss you more each weekend, and could not have make the move down here without the magnificent love gift that you gave us. After I found out how to silence the chimes (no one needs to be that aware of the time) we are enjoying the pendulum clock in our kitchen/dining room. We miss the grandkids something terrible.

Pastor Smith

"I'm living in a dream that's coming true"

Psalm 126 – A Song of Ascents
“I’m living in a dream that’s coming true”
Celine Dion, from “I’m Loving Every Moment With You”

v. 1 “When” the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion” [“When the LORD returned the returning of Zion”] is an “allusion” to Jewish captives returning to Judah in or around 536 B.C. Cyrus, king of Persia, is the instrument; however it is the covenant keeping LORD [YHWH] who restored their fortunes. The joy is so overpowering that they ask themselves if it could be real. Are they dreaming?

vv. 2-3 “Then” There was laughter. There were shouts of joy and gladness and affirmations from even the nations that the LORD had done great things for them.

v. 4 “Restore” [v. 1] “Turn our captivity.” The Psalmist is waiting for the full return from Babylon of the captives back to Judah not only under Cyrus but under Darius and Xerxes. Albert Barnes [1798-1870] writes, “As those streams when dried up by the summer heat are swelled by autumnal and winter rains, so let the streams of the returning people, which seem now to be diminished, be . . . kept full like swollen streams.”

vv. 5-6 “More” The backbreaking and painstaking toil and burden of planting seed on ground you’ve plowed, planting and seeing no results will be repaid harvest. So the bondage of captivity will “more” than be repaid with a harvest of captives going home. The temporal captivity and return of God’s people looks forward to our Jesus who finally and fully “led captivity captive” [Ephesians 4.8].