Encourage One Another: Giving Grace with Your Words by Garrett Kell

“Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” (Heb. 3:13)

Yesterday I received a kind note of encouragement from a friend. It was only about three sentences long but the Lord used it to stir some much-needed strength in my soul.

Receiving the note led me to open up my Bible and dig around to see what the Lord says to us about encouragement. As I read passage after passage, I was struck by how vital this expression of love is for God’s people. In one sense, encouragement is like oxygen in the life of a church. It keeps hearts beating, minds clear, and hands inspired to serve.

Because encouragement is so important to the church, God doesn’t merely recommend it; he explicitly commands it (1 Thess. 4:18, 5:11; Heb. 3:13).

WHY WE NEED ENCOURAGEMENT

God commanded that his people encourage each other because he knows we need it. In the Gospel of John, Jesus warned that “in this world you will have trouble,” which he then followed with a much needed encouragement: “But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

We live in a broken world where everything calls us toward selfishness and despair. Sin steals joy, our bodies break down, our plans falter, our dreams die, our resolves weaken, our perspective dims. We are promised suffering (1 Pet. 4:12), persecution (John 15:20; 2 Tim. 3:12), and trials of various kinds (James 1:2-3).
When encouragement is absent from the life of a church people will feel unloved, unimportant, useless, and forgotten. God knows his people are in need of grace-filled reminders, so he calls us to encourage each other every day until his Son returns (Heb. 3:13).

WHAT IS ENCOURAGEMENT?

Biblical encouragement isn’t focused on complementing someone’s haircut or telling them how good their homemade salsa tastes. That kind of encouragement is important, but the encouragement the Scriptures refer to is explicitly Christian encouragement.

Encouragement is shared with the hopes that it will lift someone’s heart toward the Lord (Col. 4:8). It points out evidences of grace in another’s life to help them see that God is using them. It points a person to God’s promises that assures them that all they face is under his control.

The New Testament reveals that encouragement was a regular part of the early church’s life together (Acts 13:15, 16:40, 18:27, 20:1-2, 27:36). They shared Scripture-saturated words with each other to spur one another on in faith (Acts 14:22), hope (Rom. 15:4), unity (Rom. 15:5; Col. 2:2), joy (Acts 15:31), strength (Acts 15:32), fruitfulness (Heb. 10:24-25), faithfulness (1 Thess. 2:12), perseverance (Heb. 10:25), and the certainty of Christ’s return (1 Thess. 4:18).

Encouragement was and is an essential way of extending grace to each other.

HOW DO I GROW IN BEING AN ENCOURAGEMENT TO OTHERS?

There isn’t only one “right way” to encourage each other, but here are a few ideas to help you get started.

1. Pray for God to make you an encourager. Ask him to give you a heart that loves others and creativity to know how to show it. Ask him to help you die to self-centeredness and grow in a desire to build others up. Because God delights in helping his people obey his commands, we can trust that his Spirit will teach us how to bless others for his glory and their spiritual good.
2. Study Barnabas and ask God to make you like him. Barnabas was nicknamed the “son of encouragement” by the early church (Acts 4:36). He was the kind of guy you wanted to have around as you were serving the Lord. He wasn’t just a spiritual cheerleader, but he was a man of great conviction who wanted to see the church flourish and did all he could to make it happen. Ask God to give you and your church a heart like Barnabas.
3. Make encouragement a daily discipline. For some of us encouragement comes naturally, for others, not so much. I have a reminder in my calendar each day to send someone an encouraging note, email, text, or phone call. I need this reminder to pause, pray, and then intentionally try to spur someone on in Christ.
4. Pray for God to show you who to encourage. Ask God to bring someone to mind that you should reach out to. One way to do this is by praying through your church’s membership directory. Check out this article to learn more about that.
5. Use Scripture if you’re able. Nothing encourages us like promises from God’s Word. Make a list of Scriptures that God has used to bless you personally or an excerpt from something you read in your daily devotional. Mine the Psalms, Romans 8, and the Gospels. Find and share riches of God’s grace with others.
6. Be specific in what you say. The note I received from my friend included two very specific ways he had seen evidences of grace in my life. When I read them, I was humbled and reminded of the fact that God does actually work in and though me. I needed that.
7. Regularly encourage your pastor. If your pastor says something that God uses, tell him about it. Don’t expect him to write you back, but just send a few lines in a card or an email. Nothing encourages a pastor like hearing specific ways God used a sermon or counseling session to work in your life.
8. Pray that God would create a culture of encouragement in your church. Ask God to make your church a community that loves each other in specific, tangible ways like encouragement. Ask God to use you to help fan that flame. Don’t get discouraged if people don’t return your encouragement (Matt. 6:3-4; Eph. 6:3-8) or if you don’t see fruit from it (Gal. 6:9-10). Creating a church culture that glorifies God takes a long time, lots of prayer, and abundant grace. I encourage you to keep at it.
9. Be wise. If you want to encourage someone of the opposite sex, use discernment in how best to do it. If I’m going to encourage a single sister in the congregation, I will tell my wife and copy her on the email. If I were encouraging a married sister, I would again tell my wife and copy her and the husband of the person I’m encouraging. You can also use that as an opportunity to encourage both the husband and wife.
10. Get started. Who can you encourage right now? Who has blessed you recently that you can thank? What verse can you share with them? How might God use it?

May the Lord do more than we can imagine through just a little encouragement (Ephesians 3:20-21).

Garrett Kell is the lead pastor of Del Ray Baptist Church in Arlington, Virginia. 

Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Garrett's personal site, "All Things for Good."

Oswald Chambers on Prayer

This is a question Oswald Chambers asks in his classic devotional, My Utmost for His Highest. I thought his reflections on this were insightful and helpful. Here are a few nuggets:

“It is not part of the life of a natural man to pray. We hear it said that a man will suffer in his life if he does not pray; I question it. What will suffer is the life of the Son of God in him, which is nourished not by food, but by prayer. When a man is born from above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve that life or nourish it. Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished.”

“We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves; the Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.”

“Give Jesus Christ a chance, give Him elbow room, and no man will ever do this unless he is at his wits’ end. When a man is at his wits’ end it is not a cowardly thing to pray, it is the only way he can get into touch with Reality. Be yourself before God and present your problems, the things you know you have come to your wits’ end over. As long as you are self-sufficient, you do not need to ask God for anything.”

“It is not so true that ‘prayer changes things’ as that prayer changes me and I change things…. Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in a man’s disposition.”

A.T. Robertson & his 'monumental achievement'

This article was authored by S. Craig Sanders and posted by Baptist Press on Monday, September 22, 2014

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP) -- 

A.T. Robertson

 

On the afternoon of Sept. 24, 1934, A.T. Robertson pondered over a difficult text in his Greek New Testament. Leaving a mark onMatthew 6:11, Robertson walked out of his office in Norton Hall at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to teach his Greek class.

A.T. Robertson at his Norton Hall desk on the campus of Southern Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

 

He would never return.

As students recited their translations of New Testament passages, sweat poured down Robertson's discolored face. The scholar dismissed class early, an occurrence so rare that a junior professor rushed to Robertson's aid and took him home. Shortly after, with his wife Ella at his side, the 70-year-old Robertson died of a stroke.

According to his biographer, Robertson's sudden death left the seminary campus in a state of shock. "If a storm had blown away the buildings and left Doctor Robertson," a student is recorded as saying, "the seminary would have been more real than it was with him gone."

Eighty years later, Robertson's grave lies in the shadow of his father-in-law, Southern Baptist statesman John A. Broadus, at Louisville's Cave Hill Cemetery. Despite requesting this humble resting place, Robertson's towering genius arguably surpasses that of Broadus, one of the founders of Southern Seminary.

"Robertson's life and his work stand as a monumental achievement pointing to the true essence of evangelical scholarship," R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Seminary, said of the famed Greek New Testament scholar. "The very fact that we are having this discussion 80 years after his death is an indication of the power of a teacher and, in particular, the power of a teacher in the service of the Christian church."

Born Nov. 6, 1863, Archibald Thomas Robertson professed faith in Christ at the age of 12 and was licensed to preach four years later. He attended Wake Forest College, where he earned his M.A. (1885) before enrolling at Southern Seminary. Broadus, his Greek professor, quickly recognized Robertson's aptitude for the biblical language and selected him as a teaching aide. In 1890, Robertson was elected assistant professor of New Testament interpretation and would teach at Southern for 44 years until his death in 1934.

Recognized as the premier New Testament scholar of his generation, Robertson published 45 books, including the six-volume "Word Pictures in the New Testament" and 1,454-page "A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research," which is still consulted by leading Greek scholars a century after it first appeared in print.

When Robertson completed the 3-foot-tall handwritten manuscript of his Greek grammar, the publisher required him to pay for typesetting fees on account of his nearly illegible writing. As the price continued to soar, Robertson borrowed on his life insurance policy and took out a second mortgage on his home to finance the project. Southern Seminary President E.Y. Mullins and trustee George W. Norton established a $10,000 endowment fund to cover the remaining costs.

Amid the financial crisis, Robertson confided in fellow faculty member W.O. Carver, lamenting the possibility of bankruptcy and questioning the value of the project. Carver consoled him, saying, "You are our window to the world. Nobody knows anyone at this seminary except you."

In 1914, the first edition of the grammar received widespread praise from Greek scholars. Harvard scholar Henry Cadbury said it is "not only the most modern of such grammars; it is much the completest." By 1923, the book appeared in a fourth edition, bringing the 26-year project to completion.

When Lutheran theologian Oscar Cullmann visited Southern Seminary in 1966, he told a group of graduate students about a personal audience he had with Pope John XXIII. Upon noticing a copy of Robertson's grammar next to the pontiff's Greek New Testament, Cullmann asked why he was using an English grammar. "It's the best one available," the pope responded.

"A.T. Robertson was one of the greatest scholars in the seminary's rich history, perhaps the greatest of all," said seminary historian Gregory A. Wills, who is also dean of the school of theology. "He did more than any other to establish the seminary's reputation for scholarship."

Robertson delivered his initial address at Southern Seminary, titled "Preaching and Scholarship," on Oct. 3, 1890, rejecting the idea that theological education was a waste of time. "If theological education will increase your power for Christ, is it not your duty to gain that added power?" Robertson said. "Never say you are losing time by going to school. You are saving time, buying it up for the future and storing it away. Time used in storing power is not lost."

For Robertson, scholarship was not the goal of seminary education but rather a means. "If our system of theological training fails to make preachers, it falls short of the object for which it was established," Robertson said in his address. "My plea is for scholarship that helps men to preach."

Robertson himself gained renown as a preacher, frequenting the pulpits of churches across the nation and delivering lectures at conferences and colleges. He refrained from denominational leadership during the Mullins presidency but pursued broader activities through the establishment of the Baptist World Alliance in 1900.

"His scholarship was not in order to advance his reputation or career, but to serve the Kingdom of the Savior," Wills said. "His 45 published books, countless articles and many addresses throughout the nation advanced sound Bible teaching, defended the Bible's inspiration and inerrancy, and opposed the aggressive errors of his day. He gave his life in defense of the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints."

The quotable "Doctor Bob"

"The greatest proof that the Bible is inspired is that it has stood so much bad preaching."

"Give a man an open Bible, an open mind, a conscience in good working order, and he will have a hard time to keep from being a Baptist."

"The Greek New Testament is the New Testament. All else is translation."

"The Lord won't hear your prayers if you don't treat your wives right. Don't look at me, Brother! It's a dangerous thing to get married if you still mean to pray."

"There are so many young Spurgeons, but so few of them grow up."

"A minister ought to be a gentleman even though he is a minister."

"If a numbskull comes to the seminary and goes away a numbskull, do not blame the seminary. For some men are hard to teach."

Robert L. Plummer, Thomas J. Nettles, John B. Polhill and the late Wayne Ward contributed biographical information in a 2009 panel discussion on A.T. Robertson, which can be accessed here.

S. Craig Sanders
S. Craig Sanders is the manager of news and information at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Whatever Became of Church? by James Emery White - Part III

Vol. 10, No. 76

Whatever Became of Church?
(Part Three)

Editor's Note: This is the third of three blogs on the demise of a robust understanding of "church" in modern evangelical life. To read the first installment, click here.  To read the second installment, click here.

The earliest church, in the first forty or so years following the resurrection of Jesus, was essentially a movement within Judaism that believed that the Messiah had come.  But then, around 70 A.D., Jerusalem fell to the Romans, and the Christian church was dispersed.  The most important church that emerged, as you would imagine, was the one in Rome, which was the capital of the Roman Empire.

During the next few centuries, the church defined itself by four very important words: one, holy, catholic and apostolic.  Each word carries great significance.

First, the church was to be one, or unified.  Jesus, in His great and grand final prayer recorded in John's gospel, prayed fervently for unity among those of us who would embrace His name in years and centuries to come.

Second, it was to be a holy church, meaning set apart for God and separate from the world, for God Himself is holy.  The church is to reflect this holiness to the degree that it can be identified with God as holy.

Third, the church was to be catholic, which simply meant "universal."  The church was meant to be a worldwide church, one that included all believers under its umbrella.  So the word "catholic" was being used of the church long before any kind of institution within Christianity used it for its own.

Finally, the church was to be apostolic, which means committed to the teaching handed down by Jesus through the apostles.

Beyond being one, holy, catholic and apostolic, local churches were entities that had definition and form, structure and purpose.  They were not simply doing "community" in the broadest of senses, much less simply pursuing ministry.

In the Bible, the church was a defined, purposeful gathering of believers who knew they were coming together to be a church.  There were defined entry and exit points to the church; clear theological guidelines navigating corporate and community waters; the responsibility of stewarding the sacraments; specifically named leadership positions; and, of course, a singular mission.

Yes, one often hears that the church is where "the Gospel is rightly taught and the sacraments rightly administered."  This is taken from the Augsburg Confession (1530), the primary confessional statement of the Lutheran Church, courtesy of Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon.  Calvin said much the same thing in his Institutes.  But sensing the inadequacy of such a definition, in 1539 Luther wrote On the Councils and the Churches, and added five more distinguishing characteristics, including church discipline, ordination, and worship through prayer and singing.

All to say, there are those who intimate that the idea of the church in the New Testament is either so embryonic, or so ethereal, that there is a license to define the church in any way desired.  This simply is not the case.  In trying to convey the specificity inherent within the nature and definition of the church to my seminary students, including a clear sense of when you know you actually have the church in operation and not just a pale imitation or even impostor, I came up with five "C's," beginning with community.

To be a church, you must be a community of faith.  There is no sense that this community is to be segmented in any way, whether by race, ethnicity, gender or age.  In fact, the radical declaration of Paul in Galatians is that in Christ such divides are no longer to exist (Galatians 3:28).  There is clear instruction that within the church, such worldly divides are to be turned on their head.  For example with age, the young are not to be despised if called to lead the old, and with wealth, the ones with means should care for those without.

But the community is to be defined in one way: it is to be made up of God's people.  Those outside of the faith are to be welcomed and spiritually served – even to the point of ensuring their understanding of the proceedings of public worship and being sensitive to their sensibilities (I Corinthians 14), but they are never to constitute the church itself, nor partake in its sacraments.

As a defined community of faith, we read how the New Testament church had clear entry and exit points.  We see this throughout the New Testament not only in the address of the apostle's letters to defined groups of people in various geographic locations, but also in the prescribed exercise of church discipline.  Paul talks of those "inside" the church and those "outside" the church, and speaks of the importance of expelling those who are wicked and unrepentant (I Cor. 5:12-13).

The second dynamic which constitutes the church involves confession.  The idea of "confession", in the sense being suggested here, is related to the Greek homologeo, which means "to say the same thing" or "to agree."  For the church to be the church, it must be a place where the Word of God as put forward in Scripture is proclaimed in its fullness.  If a Christian church is anything, it is foundationally confessional, for the earliest mark of the Christian movement was the clear confession that Jesus is the Christ (Mk. 8:29), or the Lord (Rom. 10:9; cf. Acts 16:31; I Cor. 12:3; Php. 2:11).

Formal confessions of faith, which are doctrinal summaries of essential Christian beliefs, have been developed throughout the history of the Christian church in order to verbalize basic doctrinal commitments.  Among the earliest of examples is what is now known as the Nicene Creed, so called because it was at the Council of Nicea [325] that it was adopted:

We believe in one God the Father All-sovereign, maker of all things visible and invisible;

           And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things were made, things in heaven and things on the earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down and was made flesh, and became man, suffered, and rose on the third day, ascended into the heavens, is coming to judge living and dead.

           And in the Holy Spirit.

           And those that say 'there was when he was not,'

                      and, 'Before he was begotten he was not,

                      and that, 'He came into being from what-is-not,'

           or those that allege, that the son of God is

                      'Of another substance or essence'

                      or 'created'

                      or 'changeable'

                      or 'alterable,'

           these the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes.

The third mark of the church is corporate.  The Bible speaks of defined organizational roles, such as pastors/elders/bishops and deacons, as well as corporate roles related to spiritual gifts such as teachers, administers, and, of course, leaders (Rom. 12; I Cor. 12; Eph. 4; I Pet. 4).  These corporate dynamics allow money to flow from one group to another (II Corinthians 8); decisions to be made by leaders as to doctrine and practice (Acts 15); and the setting apart of some individuals for appointed tasks, mission and church plants (Acts 13).  There are often disparaging quips made about "organized religion," but there is nothing "disorganized" about the biblical model.

The fourth dynamic of the local church is celebration.  The church is to gather for public worship as a unified community of faith, including the stewarding of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, for these are far from being "public domain."  In the New Testament, believers were to "come together" for the Supper, and its proper administration fell under apostolic teaching and direction which was then delegated to pastors to oversee.  Indeed, the refusal of the Lord's Supper by church leaders to church members has been one of the more common approaches to church discipline throughout history.

The final mark of the local church relates to cause.  The church is on a very specific mission, given to it by Jesus Himself, to reach out to a deeply fallen world and call it back to God.  According to the Bible, this involves active evangelism with subsequent discipleship, coupled with strategic service to those in need, such as the poor.  We are to be the body of Christ to this world, and the twin dynamics of evangelism and social concern reflect Christ's ongoing mission.  And it is this "cause" that may be the most defining mark of all.  Theologian Jurgen Moltmann reminds us that the church does not "have" a mission; rather, the mission "has" us.  And it is the mission of Christ which creates the church.  God has sent Himself, and now sends us.  This is the "missio dei," the "sending of God."  Or as Christopher J.H. Wright contends, our mission "means our committed participation as God's people, at God's invitation and command, in God's own mission within the history of God's world for the redemption of God's creation."  So to engage the mission of God is to engage His church; they are inextricably intertwined.

There is a phrase that runs in some circles.  When a glimpse of Christ's dream erupts, there is an exclamation, "This is church."  Much of it flows from the "asides" within Luke's narrative of Acts where he seems to pause in his history, full of the drama of the unfolding of Christ's dream, and writes a description of its power and majesty.  Perhaps his most well-known summation is in the second chapter:

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47, NIV)

That is church.  And it was a beautiful thing to behold.  The challenge is to so pursue it that we can behold it again.

James Emery White

Sources

The marks of the church were affirmed in both the Nicene (A.D. 325) and Niceno-Constantinopolitan (A.D. 381) creeds.

John Calvin, Institutes 4.1.9.

Stanley J. Grenz, David Guretzki, and Cherith Fee Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms.

Henry Bettenson and Chris Maunder, eds., Documents of the Christian Church.

Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit.

Darrell L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America.

Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative.

    

Editor’s Note

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president.  His latest book, The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated, is now available on Amazon.  To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, visit www.churchandculture.org, where you can view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world.  Follow Dr. White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.

Sunday Sermon, September 21, 2014

I preached part two of a three-part series "What Does It Mean to Be a Christian" this past Sunday (Sept. 21, 2014) with this message "A Community To Belong" from Matthew 10: 1-5.

The audio is here:

Whatever Became of the Church? by James Emery White - Part II

Vol. 10, No. 75

Whatever Became of Church?
(Part Two)

Editor’s Note: This is the second of three blogs on the demise of a robust understanding of “church” in modern evangelical life. To read the first installment, click here.

The word “parachurch” is built off of two words:  “para,” which means “alongside of” and, of course, the word “church.”  As conceived, the parachurch is meant to serve “alongside” the church - not in place of the church or in competition with the church.

One could easily trace its roots to the early monastic movement and countless subsequent ministry endeavors since.  Originally embraced as a way to enlarge the boundaries of God’s work beyond the traditional church, it has often become a substitute entity; sometimes competitive, and occasionally antagonistic.

The role of the parachurch has loomed so large in certain circles that it has led some to speak of the “potential” partnership of the church and parachurch, as if it might be a nice option, which speaks for itself as to the devaluation of our ecclesiology.

Suffice it to say, there are many, many legitimate and even strategic parachurch ministries.

But there are also many that are not.

When a parachurch group does little more than replicate what local churches are already doing,

...when they serve at the invitation of churches for a season but then, when the church proper is prepared and ready to invest itself, refuse to close up shop and move elsewhere,

...when they do not truly serve “alongside” any church, but rather show up with an announcement that they have arrived and a request to “pay, pray and get out of the way”,

...you do not have a healthy parachurch enterprise.

Yet this is precisely what you have with countless parachurch efforts.

The free-market response is, of course, to point to success.  It is all too common to point to results alone and from that claim biblical justification.  This is no stronger of an argument than citing the amount of money raised for ministry during the telethon in Clearwater, Florida led by Jim Bakker on the day of his sexual tryst with a secretary.

Though the Bible says to make judgments based on fruit, it is a common misinterpretation to assume this means legitimacy.  In truth, the Bible’s call to judgment is about individuals, not enterprises, and the “fruit” in mind has to do with the fruit of the Spirit.  The reality is that some parachurch groups are justified in light of this relationship with the church, and some are not, success notwithstanding.  But whether “legitimate” or not, parachurch groups are not the church, nor should they become a substitute for the church.

So where is the church today?  When do you know the church is truly present?  Is my campus group the church?  Is my small group the church?  As a pastor, such matters are far from academic.  Knowing what is and is not the church is often at the heart of daily life:

...the energetic young man who makes an appointment, casts a vision for a parachurch marketplace ministry, and wants the church to support his efforts and platform his seminars;

...the small group that asks if they can take the Lord’s Supper together;

...the homeschooling family who asks about “home-churching”;

...the father who asks about taking it upon himself to baptize his son in their backyard pool;

...the opportunity to offer satellite campuses with video teaching throughout your city, and even around the world;

...the volunteer who is interested in leadership, but does not want to become a member.

It is precisely upon these questions – knowing when we do have the church and are being the church – that we must strengthen our grip.

The word “church,” from the Greek word “ecclesia,” literally means “the called-out ones.”  It was a word that was used in Jesus' day for any group that was gathered together for a specific purpose or mission.  Jesus seized the term to speak of a group with a very specific purpose or mission, setting it apart from every other group or mission.

This is where “ecclesiology,” which is the theological term for the doctrine of the church, finds it origin.  The church of Christ, however, is anything but a man-made organization, but instead was founded and instituted by Jesus Himself (Mt. 16:18).

In the Bible, you have three primary understandings of this church, the body of Christ:  the local church, the universal church as she exists around the world, and the church as she exists throughout time and history - incorporating all of the saints that will one day be gathered together in heaven.

Without question, the dominant biblical use is in reference to a local church or collection of local churches as defined bodies of believers that were gathered with both intent and order.  Think of how the letters of Paul were written:  “To the church of God at Corinth;” “To the churches in Galatia;” “To the church of the Thessalonians;” and at the beginning of John’s Revelation, “To the seven churches in the province of Asia.”

This church was to serve as the ongoing manifestation of Christ Himself on earth, being called His “body,” an idea of profound significance throughout the New Testament.  As the apostle Paul wrote:  "Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.  We each have different gifts according to the grace given us" (Romans 12:4-6).

And later in the New Testament, we read Paul reiterating this idea:  “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (I Corinthians 12:27).  And if the point hadn’t been made clearly enough, Paul writes the following words to the church at Ephesus:  “And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way” (Ephesians 1:22-23; see also 5:23; Colossians 1:18, 2:19).

Beyond the interconnectedness this suggests, it means that the church is the locus of Christ's activity and He works through the church now as He worked through His physical body during His 33-year life.  In the New Testament there is no ministry outside of the church, or at least its umbrella.

But what is this “local” church that functions as the body of Christ?

That is for the next post.

James Emery White

    

Editor’s Note

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president.  His latest book, The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated, is now available on Amazon.  To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, visit www.churchandculture.org, where you can view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world.  Follow Dr. White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.

Whatever Became of Church? By James Emery White

Vol. 10, No. 74

Whatever Became of Church?
(Part One)

Editor’s Note: This is the first of three blogs on the demise of a robust understanding of “church” in modern evangelical life.

Near the beginning of my rather short tenure as a seminary president, I sat in the boardroom of a prominent Christian business leader to try and pitch a vision for contributing to theological education, specifically student scholarships.  Instead of listening to the opportunity, or asking pertinent questions as to the value of such an investment, he was determined to boast of his company’s identity as a Christian enterprise.

He told of the mission trips he had taken with his employees, the investments the company had made from its profits in select boutique parachurch ventures, and the Bible study offered on-campus for employees.  Throughout his self-congratulatory spiel, he took more than his fair share of shots at local churches and pastors who were not as “alive” as he and his company were in their faith.

Forgive me, but he was insufferably full of his own spiritual self-importance and virtue, as if he had drunk a bit too deeply from the fawning of countless pilgrims who had come to his corporate offices to laud his beneficence and ask for his generosity.

Like me.

At the time, as a new seminary president facing an inherited budgetary shortfall of over one million dollars, I was willing to endure almost anything – or anyone – for aid.  I smiled and nodded, affirming his many self-ascribed accolades.

Then, in the midst of one of his personal asides about the sorry state of the church, as compared to the pristine missional nature of his business, he maintained that it was for this reason that he wasn’t involved in a local church.  They were, he intimated, beneath his own theological vision.  “And after all,” he added, “we’re the church, too.”

And then everything within me wanted to leap from my seat, shout “Enough!”, and say, “No, you are NOT!”  A company is not the body of Christ instituted as the hope of the world by Jesus Himself, chronicled breathtakingly by Luke through the book of Acts, and shaped in thinking and practice by the apostle Paul through letter after letter now captured in the New Testament.  A marketplace venture which offers itself on the New York Stock Exchange is not the entity which is so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell can withstand its onslaught.  An assembly of employees in cubicles working for end-of-year stock options and bonuses is not the gathering of saints bristling with the power of spiritual gifts as they mobilize to provide justice for the oppressed, service to the widow and the orphan, and compassion for the poor.

But it is not surprising that an evangelical, Bible-believing follower of Christ would think that it is.  The research of D. Michael Lindsay on the leaders of evangelical Christianity found that – among Christian Presidents and CEO’s, senior business executives and Hollywood icons, celebrated artists and world-class athletes – more than half had low levels of commitment to their congregations.  Some were members in name only; others had actively disengaged from church life.

With jaw-dropping vigor, ignorance, and at times unblushing gall, increasing sectors of the evangelical world are abandoning two thousand years of ecclesiology; as if the church was some malleable human construct that can be shaped, altered, redefined or even disposed of as desired.  This, coupled with a radical revisionism in terms of biblical interpretation and ecclesial history that would seem more in line with The Da Vinci Code than Christian theology, the doctrine of the church is being reformulated apart from biblical moorings, or simply dismissed as if not a part of biblical orthodoxy at all.

For example, it is more than disturbing that a recent survey of American Christians found that the majority deemed each of the following to be “a complete and biblically valid” way for someone who does not participate in a conventional church to experience and express their faith in God in place of the church:

*engaging in faith activities at home

*watching a religious television program

*listening to a religious radio broadcast

*attending a special ministry event, such as a concert or community service activity

*participating in a marketplace ministry

This from a movement that had one of its early fathers, Cyprian, maintain that "You cannot have God as your father unless you have the church for your mother."

So what happened?  In many ways, the answer is that the Reformation happened.  As a Protestant, I obviously believe much within the Reformation was both needed and good.  But there was much that flowed from the Reformation that was neither.  Specifically, a loss of historical sense, and a robust ecclesiology.

Too often, Protestant Christians seems to think that the Reformation was the beginning of the Christian faith instead of a turning point within its history.  Church history did not begin with Luther posting his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg church on October 31, 1517.  If we believe it did, we divorce ourselves from a rich heritage which would, among many other things, speak to a strong ecclesiology.

Robert Webber, known for championing the Patristic era, used to tell of a colleague at Wheaton College who said, “Webber, you act like there never was a Reformation.”  To which Bob replied, “You act like there never was an ancient church.”  Failing to recognize this long and rich history “is to be stripped of our story, heritage, and even identity,” writes Kenneth Collins, who then added: “Stripped and naked is no way in which to enter the twenty-first century.”

Among evangelicals, this truncated view of history has been a double-edged sword.  For most, it has led to a trivialization of the church; for a growing minority, it has led to a hunger for a deeper sense of church than they found in their evangelical upbringing.  This hunger, coupled with the lost sense of history, has led many to feel the need to leave evangelical Christianity in order to tap into the rich narrative of ancient and medieval faith, putting many evangelicals on the Canterbury trail toward Anglicanism, or even leading them to “cross the Tiber” into Catholicism.

It is not that one cannot be an evangelical Anglican, or an evangelical Catholic.  The point is that many are driven to this, often at the expense of true theological conviction, due to the desire for something of the biblical vision for the church – or any vision for the church.

Adding to the ecclesial wasteland was the approach taken by many of the Reformers toward the purification of the church from its perceived medieval excesses.  My seminary patristics professor used to quip that Calvin reduced the church to “four walls and a Bible.”  It wasn’t that strong of an exaggeration.  Evidence of the ferocious assault on all things “Rome” can be found throughout Europe.

I recall walking through Holyrood Palace at the foot of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Scotland, which was founded as a monastery in 1128, and seeing rows of empty alcoves, once filled with precious art, that had been destroyed by the Scottish Protestant leader John Knox’s inspiration of a “rascal multitude” in 1567 that then went on a destructive tear.  Or more recently walking through the Prague Castle in the Czech Republic – and specifically St. George’s Basilica which rests within its walls – which was decimated by radical Calvinists who felt they had to destroy priceless art in order to make the church suitable for Protestant worship.  A wood relief exists to this day in the church chronicling the debasement.

The point is that if one tries to look to the Reformation alone for a vision of the church, it is often depleted by the excesses of Reformation frenzy.

But the Reformation didn’t just spawn a rejection of medieval ecclesiology; as it wrenched itself from the monolithic nature of the “catholic” church, it spawned the birth of free-market spiritual entrepreneurialism, which in turn weakened ecclesiology even more – particularly as it later washed upon the shores of the American continent.

If there is a dominant force shaping the contours of American Christianity, it is, without a doubt, democratization.  As historian Nathan Hatch has written, the democratic spirit deeply affected popular religious movements – and especially evangelicalism – in three respects:

First, there was the denial of the age-old distinction that set the clergy apart as a separate order of men.  Anyone could “minister.”  They did not need to work through a church or ecclesiastical body.

Second, ordinary people were empowered to take their deepest spiritual impulses at face value rather than subjecting them to the scrutiny of orthodox doctrine, or it may have been upheld by an ecclesial body.  Further, those who chose to minister did not have to be subject to oversight.  The democratization of American Christianity is the story of “how ordinary folk came to...defend the right of common people to shape their own faith and submit to leaders of their own choosing.”  So not only were leaders turned loose, but so were the followers.

Third, there was little if any sense of limitations.  There was a dream that a new age of religious and social harmony could flow from their efforts.

And democratization took hold.  To be sure, as Hatch also notes, the free-market mindset helped to ensure the vitality of American faith.  But apart from a clear and ongoing understanding of, and commitment to, the biblical and historical idea of the church, it soon gave rise to a collection of parachurch ministries and freelance ministries that separated the practice of ministry from a theology of the church.  Or more to the point, from church in general.

And it is the worst of the parachurch movement that in many ways continues to undermine a robust view of the role and ministry of the church.

James Emery White

Sources

“A gated community in the evangelical world,” D. Michael Lindsay, USA Today, Monday, February 11, 2008, 13A.

“Americans Embrace Various Alternatives to a Conventional Church Experience as Being Fully Biblical,” The Barna Update, February 18, 2008 (see www.barna.org).

“Together in the Jesus Story,” David Neff, Christianity Today, September, 2006, p. 54.

Kenneth Collins, The Evangelical Moment: The Promise of An American Religion.

Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity.

  

Editor’s Note

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president.  His latest book, The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated, is now available on Amazon.  To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, visit www.churchandculture.org, where you can view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world.  Follow Dr. White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.

Sunday Sermon, September 14, 2014 "The Call to Jesus"

I was back in the pulpit Sunday (9-14-14) at CrossRoads after a two-week mission trip to Africa.

I started a three-part series of messages "What Does It Mean to Be a Follower of Jesus? based on Matthew 10:1-7.

Here is the first message "The Call to Jesus."

Jared Sparks Sermon September 10, 2014

Jared Sparks preached on Wednesday, September 10, 2014 at CrossRoads Baptist Church. Here is the audio of the message:

Defending Against Satan's Greatest Attack by James Emery White

Vol. 10, No. 68

Defending Against Satan’s Greatest Attack

Where will Satan most likely attack your church?

That’s easy.

Your community.

It’s the primary way Satan attempts to attack churches and their leaders.  He will do all he can to stir up dissension, conflict and discord.  He will attempt to drive staff teams apart, and create animosity among volunteers.

Why?

Because he knows that unity is the primary apologetic for a lost and watching world.

Jesus said it would be this unity, and this unity alone, which would arrest the world’s attention and confirm that He was from the Father (John 13-17).  We often marvel at the growth of the early church, the explosion of faith in Christ in such numbers and speed that, in only a blink of history, the Roman Empire had officially turned from paganism to Christianity.  The secret?  As Tertullian noted, the awed pagan reaction to the Christian communal life was, “See how they love one another.”

Satan doesn’t want us doing that kind of loving.

Yet community is not something encountered; it is something constructed.  It’s built life-by-life, and the building is often very hard work.  Particularly because so much of the work involves people who are difficult to work with.

Even under the best of conditions, with staff and volunteers you genuinely enjoy great chemistry with, there’s no way to be in community with others without friction.  It just comes from rubbing shoulders with people.  And nowhere are more shoulders rubbed than in the context of ministry.

So how do you get along with others, and have them get along with you?  How do you not only build community, but keep the peace?

Here’s four critical defense mechanisms against Satan’s schemes:

Do the 18:15 Thing

By far, the most important lesson I have ever learned about relational health is to practice Matthew 18:15.  Not just talk about it, or know about it, but do it.  The verse is elemental - if you have a problem with someone, go to them and them alone to work it out.

Sounds simple.

It’s not.

The temptation will be to go to six of our friends telling them our problem and painting the person as a jerk and us as the victim.  Or as John Ortberg once wrote, his tendency is to go to someone else and say:  “Let me tell you what’s going on here.  I just want to lay it out objectively and get some feedback from a neutral third party.  Don’t you share my concerns about this person, who is my brother in Christ and a deeply disturbed psychopath?”

When you do that, you’ll feel better for a little while because you’ve got it off your chest, but all you have done is practice and then cement your anger, resentment, or sense of offense and hurt.  Ever thought of it that way?  You’ve just practiced your feelings of conflict with this person, drilled it deeper, and put it in concrete.  And not only that, you’ve added to the overall breakdown in community by getting others to be in conflict with the person, to feel what you feel, to be offended like you’re offended, to be hurt like you’re hurt.  Why?  Because you’ve just vomited it all over them.

It’s a smokescreen for gossip and slander and wider dissension.

Jesus said go to that person and that person alone.  It’s the only way to contain the conflict and bring it to resolution.  Which is why I’ve made Matthew 18:15 a verb.  I talk of needing to “do” Matthew 18:15, or to ask someone if they’ve “done” Matthew 18:15.  It also can, and should, become a leadership value.  Someone will go to a person and start talking about a third party – some way they got their feelings hurt, were offended, a decision they disagreed with, or some area where they were disappointed, and if the person they’ve been talking to has been around Meck for very long, they’ll stop them and say, “Hold on – I don’t need to hear this.  Have you gone to this person?”

Nine times out of ten they say, “No.”

Then they’ll say, “That’s step one.  And step two is for me not to hear about it.”

Be Quick

Have you noticed how big things get when they’re given time to grow?  All I have to do is take something home with me, and by the time I see the person in a day or two, its already gone through a few imaginary conversations in the shower, and been magnetized so that every negative thing in my memory – real or imagined – gets attached.  When the time comes to actually do Matthew 18:15, my RPMs are way higher than the situation deserves.

So I’ve learned to be quick, and as “on the spot” with things as I can be.  I’ll be offended by something, or bothered, and instead of waiting three days, I’ll ask the person for a moment immediately after the meeting where the words were spoken.  I’ll say, “Listen, I’m sure you didn’t mean it this way, but when you said that, it sounded very patronizing.”  They’ll say, “Really?  I’m so sorry.  I didn’t mean anything like that.”

Then it’s done.

So be quick, and as on the spot with things as you can.  There’s a reason the Bible says to never let the sun go down on your anger.

When the sun goes down, your emotions ramp up.

Watch the Ladder

One of our staff members talked about someone going “down the ladder” one day, when they should have been going “up.”  What she meant was that a team leader was griping about something to her team of volunteers, and it was totally inappropriate.  If the team leader had an issue with something, they should have taken it up with their leader, or a member of the staff.  And if a staff person has a problem, they should take it up with their supervisor.

You take things up the ladder, not down.

It made me think about other ways to watch the ladder.  You don’t go sideways, either.  Meaning if you are a staff, going to another staff person, or if you are a volunteer, going to another volunteer.  You always go up with your concerns, otherwise you are not resolving issues, you are spreading them.

Community is often built not simply on talking things through, but talking in the right direction.

Believe the Best

Another mantra I have learned is to believe the best about those you are in community with, as opposed to assuming the worst.  This is not an original perspective, by any means, but its practice has taken greater intentionality than I could have possibly imagined.  Why?  Because my tendency is the opposite: to instantly question someone’s motives, to doubt their intentions, to be paranoid about their loyalty.

Tied to this is being fiercely loyal to your fellow staff and leaders.  You will hear others attempt to tear them down – it comes with the territory.  That’s when you not only insist that person practice Matthew 18:15, but you also refuse to give whatever it was they tried to plant in your spirit any room to take root.

The heart of believing the best is simply suspending judgment in favor of that person.

Stephen Covey writes of being on a subway in New York.  A man got on with two kids, who promptly began to run wild all over the train.  They were yelling, throwing things, pulling people's newspapers down; I mean they were acting horrible.

Covey asked the man if he wouldn't mind controlling his kids a little bit.

The man lifted his gaze as if in a fog, and said "Yeah, you're right.  We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago.  I don't know what to think, and I guess they don't know how to handle it either."

Suddenly, everything changed in Covey's spirit.

And it should have.

But it should have been offered on the front end.

If it had, Satan would never have made it to first base.

James Emery White

Sources

James Emery White, What They Didn’t Teach You In Seminary (Baker).

The Apology of Tertullian.

John Ortberg, Everybody’s Normal Till You Get To Know Them.

Stephen R. Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

  

Editor’s Note

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president.  His latest book, The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated, is now available on Amazon.  To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, visit www.churchandculture.org, where you can view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world.  Follow Dr. White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EXPOSITORY PREACHING

Dr. Roger D. Willmore

Expository Preaching is vital to the life of the church.  The church in the twenty-first century is to a great degree malnourished. The tragedy is compounded by the fact that it does not know it is malnourished. Where is the Bible in the life of the average church?  What is the view of preaching in the average church?  I fear that we have drifted so far from Bible centered ministry that we no longer recognize it.  Today church is man centered.  It is 'Me" centered. We live in the world of "Meism." 

The importance of expository preaching was impressed upon me early in my ministry.  I surrendered to God's call upon my life at age seventeen.  About the same time, I was introduced to one of the most noted expository preachers of our day, Dr. Stephen F. Olford, who at that time was pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church in New York City.

I met Dr. Olford at a Keswick Christian Life Convention in Birmingham, Alabama when I was eighteen years old..  I was awe struck by his preaching. It was Stephen Olford who introduced me to the method of expository preaching and who modeled anointed expository preaching.  There was born in my heart a desire to be an expository preacher and for the past forty-five years I have endeavored to follow the pattern of my mentor.

WHAT IS EXPOSITORY PREACHING

A few working definitions of the term Expository Preaching will enable us to better understand its importance.

Stephen Olford says, Expository preaching is the Spirit-empowered explanation and proclamation of the text of God's word with due regard to the historical, contextual, grammatical, and doctrinal significance of the given passage, with the specific object of invoking a Christ-transforming response.1

Phillips Brooks in his lectures on preaching delivered before the Divinity School of Yale College in 1877, stated, It is not hard to find a definition (for preaching).  Preaching is the communication of truth by man to men.  It has two essential elements, truth and personality.  Neither of those can it spare and still be preaching. 2  Phillips Brooks saw a unique and important relationship of the man to his message.  He said,Truth through personality is our description of real preaching.  The truth must come really through the person, not merely over his lips, not merely into his understanding and out through his pen.  It must come through his character, his affections, his whole intellectual and moral being.  It must be genuinely through him. 3

Haddon Robinson says, Expository preaching is the communication of biblical concept, derived from and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, and literary study of a passage in its context, which the Holy Spirit first applies to the personality of the preacher, and then through him to his hearers. 4

The Apostle Paul states the biblical mandate for expository preaching in Second Timothy 2:15, Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth. (NKJV)

WHY IS EXPOSITORY PREACHING IMPORTANT?

An expositor of God's Word is someone with a moral responsibility to God and to man.  To God he responsible for handling the Word of God correctly and in a manner which makes him, the preacher, a mouthpiece for God.

The expositor also has a responsibility to man to preach the truth of God's Word.  People are looking for answers to their questions and solutions to their problems.

I disagree with the idea that the preacher first determines the needs of the his people and then selects a biblical text from which to address the needs.  The preacher cannot accurately discern the needs of people.  Only God can do that.

I believe it is better to move from the Scriptures to the issues of life.  If a pastor is a disciplined expositor, preaching his way through the Bible in a systematic manner, he will eventually address the problems people face.  

Dr. Jerry Vines gives another reason why expository preaching is important. Thousands of churchgoers throughout America are desperately hungry for good preaching.  They are looking a Bible study, a church or some service where their souls can be fed from the Word of God.  Much of the preaching in our day is dry, irrelevant, and deadening. 5

May we never under estimate the importance of the expository preaching of God's Word.  Strongholds are torn down, families are put back together, lives are changed, and hope is restored as a result of anointed expository preaching.

John R. W. Stott, a noted author and expositor clearly states his view on the importance of expository preaching. I believe that preaching is the key to the renewal of the church...If it is true that a human being cannot live by bread only, but by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God, then it is also true of churches.  Churches live, grow and thrive in response to the Word of God.  I have seen congregations come alive by the faithful and systematic unfolding of the Word of God. 6

I agree whole heartedly with Dr. Stott.  Any pastor who faithfully preaches the Word of God will value of the impact of the preached Word.  He will have the joy of watching the transforming power of God's Word in the lives of his people.  This leads me to my last point.

WHAT DOES EXPOSITORY PREACHING DO?

Expository preaching has many positive effects on both the preacher/pastor and his people.  The personal benefits to the preacher in terms of preaching materials, time management and sermon preparation are numerous.  However, I want to address the benefits of expository preaching to the person in the pew.

I am troubled by the trends of our day that replace the Bible with projection screens and listening guides and more.  There is nothing wrong with these or any other teaching tools, as long as they do not displace the use of the Bible.

Expository preaching helps people to know their Bible.  It enables them to see the Bible as a whole, and Scripture in its context.  It also equips Christians to grow and mature in their relationship with Jesus Christ.  

The pastor as an expositor has a golden opportunity to take his people deep into the things of God.

One of the great joys of my life and ministry has been to watch people over a period of time as I have systematically preached the Word.  I love to watch their spiritual metamorphosis as they change more and more into the likeness of Christ.  I love to hear the "rustling of the leaves" (turning pages) on Sunday when the sermon text is announced and read.  I love to see the people enter the House of God with a Bible and notebook in hand.  I love to see the gleam in in their eyes when they discover the great truths of God's Word for the first time.

I believe in Expository Preaching!  May we who are called to be preachers of the Word...PREACH THE WORD.

______________

1. Stephen F. Olford (and David Olford) Anointed Expository Preaching, Broadman & Holman Publishers, Nashville, TN, 1998, p 69

2. Phillips Brooks, Lectures on Preaching, E.P. Dutton & Co. New York, 1877. p 5

3.Ibid., p.8

4. Haddon W. Robinson, Biblical Preaching, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1980, p 20

5.Jerry Vines,A Practical Guide to Sermon Preparation, Moody Press, Chicago, ILL, 1985, p 12

6 Stephen Olford, (and David Olford), Anointed Expository Preaching, Broadman & Holman Publishers, Nashville, TN, 1998, p68  

Dr. Roger D. Willmore ...rdwillmore@yahoo.com.,  ROGER WILLMORE MINISTRIES