The Gospel For A Community

I remember sitting in my seminary preaching lab when Dr. Grant Lovejoy told us that most Baptist preaching breaks down into one of the following: pray more, read your Bible more, give more, witness more.  Pretty true.  And one thing each of those has in common is that the emphasis is on the individual exercise of those things.

That’s because we tend to overwhelmingly view the Christian life as an individual endeavor.  But I think that individualism comes more from American culture than from the nature of the good news, the Biblical message and apostolic teaching.  I’ve been teaching a Bible study through Hebrews.  When the author of Hebrews wanted to address the threat of people in the church abandoning their faith he didn’t preach a good "pray more, read your Bible more, give more, witness more" message.  He challenged them to band together for mutual encouragement and accountability.  "But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin" (Heb. 3:13, ESV).

The gospel and the Christian life is not something we were meant to have a go at on our own.  But modern churches are often structured such that we continue to live largely isolated lives.  This is especially true the larger the church is.  I’ve known quite a few people who wanted to join a big church so that they could "get lost in the crowd."  But even in smaller churches our structures often keep us isolated from meaningful contact with one another.  We come.  We sit.  We sing.  We listen.  We leave.  And many won’t have any contact with anyone else from their church until the next official meeting time.  How is it possible, in that context, to "exhort one another every day?"  Could it be that in missing that we find one of the reasons for our own "hardening by the deceitfulness of sin?"  What would a gospel living community look like?  What would have to change in how we currently think of and practice the life of the church?  Are these things possible in the context of our present cultural situation?

This Is Exactly How I Feel

EXACTLY how I feel……..

You may have seen the link to this that Emily left last week in comments, but if you didn’t watch it now.

The Rant Is Back

For a while I was beginning to think the good old blog rant had been placed on the endangered list.  I was wrong.  Jared Wilson gives us a gospel rant that will have you scrambling to send the kids into the other room.  [Yes, he uses a few words you probably want to teach your children to avoid, so be warned.]

Here’s a little snippet:

You will not hear about dark nights of the soul from the likes of Benny
Hinn and Joel Osteen and Paula White (who, with her husband, is
treating their divorce this week like a hiccup that doesn’t matter much
to their "ministry" aims — which means keeping the gravy train
running). You will not hear about the real world and the real gospel in
response to it from these charlatans because they are afraid you might
actually become satisfied in Christ and tire of their lies. They need
you discontent so that you will still need them to pick you up.

And
if you think this crap is limited to the name-it-claim-it crowd, you
are mistaken. It has been creeping into our evangelical churches for
years, and you see this discontentment with the Gospel every time you
hear a message that treats the Bible like an advice column or a
self-help quote book or that treats worship like a performance. Any
time the purpose of worship is YOU, you might as well be getting the
holy spirit pixie dust from Rod Parsley. It’s the same false gospel,
just packaged for a different crowd.

That’s the tame part.  To read the full, uncensored firebomb go here.

[HT: Bill Kinnon]

Unity

On the importance of unity.