How to Leave a Church Properly - Part II

Yesterday I started sharing about the message I shared this past Sunday (6-3-12) about "How to Leave a Church Properly."  

Before we talk about leaving a church, let’s talk about how to find the right church.  Joshua Harris in his book

Stop Dating the Church:  Fall in Love with the Family of God suggest  in Chapter 5 “Choosing a Church:  The Ten Things That Matter Most”

1. Is this a church where God’s Word is faithfully taught?  Are the Scriptures the meat of the message or the seasoning?
2. Is this a church where sound doctrine matters?
3. Is this a church in which the gospel is cherished and clearly proclaimed?
4. Is this a church committed to reaching non-Christians with the gospel?
5. Is this a church where leaders are characterized by humility and integrity?
6. Is this a church where people strive to live by God’s Word?
7. Is this a church where I can find and cultivate godly relationships?
8. Is this a church where members are challenged to serve?
9. Is this a church that is willing to kick me out?
10. Is this a church I”m willing to join “as is” with enthusiasm and faith in God?

Pastor Harris continued:  “Don’t get stuck in a church-hopping, church-shopping mode.  Do your best to find a good church as quickly as possible.  If you’re feeling overwhelmed by too many points (above), boil them all down to three:

•  You want a church that teaches God’s Word.
• You want a church that values God’s Word.
• You want a church that lives God’s Word.

These are the nonnegotiables.  [End of Joshua Harris’ comments]

How to Leave a Church Properly - Part I

All this week I want to share about the message I preached this past Sunday (6-3-12).

It was the most unusual message I had ever preached as a pastor.  A pastor preaching on how to leave a church properly - are you kidding?  But after 32 years of being a pastor, I have long sensed such a message is necessary.  I firmly believe that not leaving a church properly can result in spiritual issues from one may never recover without repentance and restoration.  

Coming and going is at an all time high in churches today. I believe this is mainly due to three reasons:

1. Mobility - simply we live in a more mobile society where driving 20-30 miles to a church is no problem.  This has resulted in churches seeing themselves as in "competition" with other churches for the mobile church member.
2. Music - people will choose a church over the music they like or don’t.  While music is very important in a church, it is seldom (may be one percent or less) a valid, single reason to join a church or leave a church.  There are far more important issues.  
3. Me - the American culture is now one that is totally built around “me.”  That creeps into the church and people choose a church if it “fits me and my family.” There is no consideration of what this churches teaches or their doctrine....they just "like it."  The church is to be a different culture than the world and persons joining a church should have different criteria in choosing a church.

Tomorrow I will share more.

Antipsalm 23 and the Real Psalm 23

by David Powlison 

Antipsalm 23

I’m on my own.
No one looks out for me or protects me.
I experience a continual sense of need. Nothing’s quite right.
I’m always restless. I’m easily frustrated and often disappointed.
It’s a jungle — I feel overwhelmed. It’s a desert — I’m thirsty.
My soul feels broken, twisted, and stuck. I can’t fix myself.
I stumble down some dark paths.
Still, I insist: I want to do what I want, when I want, how I want.
But life’s confusing. Why don’t things ever really work out?
I’m haunted by emptiness and futility — shadows of death.
I fear the big hurt and final loss.
Death is waiting for me at the end of every road,
but I’d rather not think about that.
I spend my life protecting myself. Bad things can happen.
I find no lasting comfort.
I’m alone … facing everything that could hurt me.
Are my friends really friends?
Other people use me for their own ends.
I can’t really trust anyone. No one has my back.
No one is really for me — except me.
And I’m so much all about ME, sometimes it’s sickening.
I belong to no one except myself.
My cup is never quite full enough. I’m left empty.
Disappointment follows me all the days of my life.
Will I just be obliterated into nothingness?
Will I be alone forever, homeless, free-falling into void?
Sartre said, “Hell is other people.”
I have to add, “Hell is also myself.”
It’s a living death,
and then I die.

The Real Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me.
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil.
My cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Powlison says, “Can you taste the difference?”

What is a local church?

by Jonathan Leeman

A local church is a group of Christians who regularly gather in Christ’s name to officially affirm and oversee one another’s membership in Jesus Christ and his kingdom through gospel preaching and gospel ordinances. That's a bit clunky, I know, but notice the five parts of this definition: 

• a group of Christians; 
• a regular gathering;
• a congregation-wide exercise of affirmation and oversight; 
• the purpose of officially representing Christ and his rule on earth—they gather in his name;
• the use of preaching and ordinances for these purposes.

Just as a pastor’s pronouncement transforms a man and a woman into a married couple, so the latter four bullet points transform an ordinary group of Christians spending time together at the park—presto!—into a local church.

The gathering is important for a number of reasons. One is that it’s where we Christians “go public” to declare our highest allegiance. It’s the outpost or embassy, giving a public face to our future nation. And it’s where we bow before our king, only we call it worship. The Pharaohs of the world may oppose us, but God draws his people out of the nations to worship him. He will form his mighty congregation.

The gathering is also where our king enacts his rule through preaching, the ordinances, and discipline. The gospel sermon explains the “law” of our nation. It declares the name of our king and explains the sacrifice he made to become our king. It teaches us of his ways and confronts us in our disobedience. And it assures us of his imminent return.

Through baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the church waves the flag and dons the army uniform of our nation. It makes us visible. To be baptized is to identify ourselves with the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as well as to identify our union with Christ’s death and resurrection (Matt. 28:19; Rom. 6:3-5). To receive the Lord’s Supper is to proclaim his death and our membership in his body (1 Cor. 11:26-29; cf. Matt. 26:26-29). God wants his people to be known and marked off. He wants a line between the church and the world.

What is the local church? It’s the institution which Jesus created and authorized to pronounce the gospel of the kingdom, to affirm gospel professors, to oversee their discipleship, and to expose impostors. All this means, we don’t “join” churches like we join clubs. We submit to them.

This article is excerpted from Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus (Crossway).

Six Simple Rules for Parenting

written by Ryan Whitley, Pastor, CrossPoint Church, Trussville, AL

Some of you asked me to post my rules for parenting from my message last Sunday.  Since you asked for it, here it is.

Please note I am not an expert in parenting.  I have been, however, a parent for more than 22 years.  So I have learned a few lessons along the way.  Perhaps some of my lessons will help you.

The basis of my relationship with my children is my love for them.  I have always loved my kids, and I will always love them.  I loved them before they were born, and I have not stopped lavishing my love on them since then.  Thus, the basis for my relationship with my kids is my love for them.

There is nothing my kids could ever do to take away my love for them.  Again, the basis for my relationship with my kids is my love for them, and not my rules for them.

Nevertheless, I lavish my laws on my children because I love them.  I tell what to do and what not to do because I love them.  I instruct them in what to say and what not to say because of my love for them.  If I did not love my kids, I would not guide them with my laws.

These are my rules.

It’s Sunday, and we go to church.

This rule helps our children understand their need for a Savior.  If I give them a choice to go to church or not, they will chose not to attend.  It is part of their sinful nature.  On Sunday I want them in God’s house, hearing God’s gospel with God’s people so they can learn their need for a Savior.

It’s Monday, and we go to school. 

This rule helps our children understand the importance of learning.  In today’s economy our kids need an education, whether formal or informal, to survive.  I want my kids to get the best education possible.  That is why I have worked diligently with them to attain the minimum of an undergraduate degree.

IT’S THE WEEKEND, AND WE KEEP A CURFEW. 

This rule helps our kids understand abiding by rules.  If their curfew is 11:00 PM, then they should be home by 10:58 PM.  If they cannot make it home on time, they do not deserve the freedom of going out on a weekend.  Let them spend a boring weekend with you and they will soon appreciate keeping their curfew.

It’s the summer, and we get a job. 

This rule helps our kids develop a good work ethic.   Teach them how to cut grass, baby sit kids, paint houses or flip burgers.  In doing so, they learn the importance of earning an income.  Then teach them how to save and to spend their money.

It’s dinner time, and we eat together. 

This rule helps our kids develop healthy social skills.  By sitting and eating around the dinner table they learn how to carry on adult conversations.  They also learn about the dynamics of family.  More family values our passed on in those brief moments around a meal than many people realize.

And for those who were not in the third worship celebration, here is a bonus rule.

It’s a dating relationship, and we do not treat our boyfriend or girlfriend like our husband or wife. 

This rule helps our children understand sexual purity.  Too many kids associate the feelings of lust with being in love.  Remind them their boyfriend is just that, a boy who is their friend and not their husband.  And the same is true about your son’s girlfriend.

So, there you have it.  Here are my simple rules for my kids.

What to Say When Someone Says, "The Bible Has Errors."

by Jonathan Dodson

Most people question the reliability of the Bible. You’ve probably been in a conversation with a friend or met someone in a coffee shop who said, “How can you be a Christian when the Bible has so many errors?

How should we respond? What do you say?

Instead of asking them to name an error, I suggest you name one or two of them. Does your Bible contain errors? Yes. The Bible that most people possess is a translation of the Greek and Hebrew copies of copies of the original documents of Scripture. As you can imagine, errors have crept in over the centuries of copying. Scribes fall asleep, misspell, take their eyes off the manuscript, and so on. I recommend telling people what kind of errors have crept into the Bible. Starting with the New Testament, Dan Wallace, New Testament scholar and founder of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, lists four types of errors in Understanding Scripture: An Overview of the Bible’s Origin, Reliability, and Meaning.

Types of Errors

1. Spelling and Nonsense Errors

These are errors that occur when a scribe wrote a word that makes no sense in its context, usually because they were tired or took their eyes off the page. Some of these errors are quite comical, such as “we were horses among you” (Gk. hippoi, “horses,” instead of ēpioi, “gentle,” or nēpioi, “little children”) in 1 Thessalonians 2:7 in one late manuscript. Obviously, Paul isn’t saying he acted like a horse among them. That would be self-injury! These kinds of errors are easily corrected.

2. Minor Changes

These minor changes are as small as the presence or absence of an article such as “the” or changed word order, which can vary considerably in Greek. Depending on the sentence, Greek grammar allows the sentence to be written up to 18 times, while still saying the same thing! So just because a sentence wasn’t copied in the same order, doesn’t mean that we lost the meaning.

3. Meaningful but Not Plausible

These errors have meaning but aren’t a plausible reflection of the original text. For example, 1 Thessalonians 2:9, instead of “the gospel of God” (the reading of almost all the manuscripts), a late medieval copy has “the gospel of Christ.” There is a meaning difference between God and Christ, but the overall manuscript evidence points clearly in one direction, making the error plain and not plausibly part of the original.

4. Meaningful and Plausible

These are errors that have meaning and that the alternate reading is plausible as a reflection of the original wording. These types of errors account for less than 1% of all variants and typically involve a single word or phrase. The biggest of these types of errors is the ending of the Gospel of Mark, which most contemporary scholars do not regard as original. Our translations even footnote that!

Is the Bible Reliable?

So, is the Bible reliable? Well, the reliability of our English translations depends largely upon the quality of the manuscripts they were translated from. The quality depends, in part, on how recent the manuscripts are. Scholars like Bart Ehrman have asserted that we don’t have manuscripts that are early enough. However, the manuscript evidence is quite impressive:

• There are as many as 18 second-century manuscripts. If the Gospels were completed between AD 50–100, then this means that these early copies are within 100 years. Just recently, Dan Wallace announced that a new fragment from the Gospel of Mark was discovered dating back to the first century AD, placing it well within 50 years of the originals, a first of its kind. When these early manuscripts are all put together, more than 43% of the New Testament is accounted for from copies no later than the second century.
• Manuscripts that date before AD 400 number 99, including one complete New Testament called Codex Sinaiticus. So the gap between the original, inerrant autographs and the earliest manuscripts is pretty slim. This comes into focus when the Bible is compared to other classical works that, in general, are not doubted for their reliability. In this chart of comparison with other ancient literature, you can see that the New Testament has far more copies than any other work, numbering 5,700 (Greek) in comparison to the over 200 of Suetonius. If we take all manuscripts into account (handwritten prior to printing press), we have 20,000 copies of the New Testament. There are only 200 copies of the earliest Greek work.
• This means if we are going to be skeptical about the Bible, then we need to be thousands of times more skeptical about the works of Greco-Roman history. Or put another way, we can be a thousand times more confident about the reliability of the Bible. It is far and away the most reliable ancient document.

What to Say When Someone Says “The Bible Has Errors”

So, when someone asserts that the Bible has errors, we can reply by saying: 

Yes, our Bible translations do have errors—let me tell you about them. But as you can see, less than 1% of them are meaningful and those errors don’t affect the major teachings of the Christian faith. In fact, there are a thousand times more manuscripts of the Bible than the most documented Greco-Roman historian by Suetonius. So, if we’re going to be skeptical about ancient books, we should be a thousand times more skeptical of the Greco-Roman histories. The Bible is, in fact, incredibly reliable.

Contrary to popular assertion, that as time rolls on we get further and further away from the original with each new discovery, we actually get closer and closer to the original text. As Wallace puts it, we have “an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the biblical documents.” Therefore, we can be confident that what we read in our modern translations of the the ancient texts is approximately 99% accurate. It is very reliable.

For Further Study

In order of easy to difficult:

• My sermon and manuscript, “Is the Bible Inerrant?”

• Can I Trust the Bible? (free preview), by R. C. Sproul
• Understanding Scripture: An Overview of the Bible’s Origin, Reliability, and Meaning, edited by Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas Schreiner
• The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, by B.B. Warfield
• Text of the New Testament, by Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman

This post originally appeared on Gospel-Centered Discipleship.

Sunday Sermon, May 27, 2012

Sunday, May 27 was Pentecost Sunday and I continued my series of messages on the church "The Church is Built on the Power of the Holy Spirit" from Acts 1:1-8; 2:1-4.  Here are the notes on the sermon.

The audio of the sermon is here