Musing on my way to work....

• (David) On what planet does 25 years of failure translate into a paradigm for ministry? I keep seeing references on the internet to Bill Hybel's recent "confession" of Willow Creek's failure to raise up committed disciples. Whether that confession (prompted by the results of internal polling) is significant or not only the future will show. But in the meantime, what are we to make of those who suggest that this is important news for the American Church? Willow Creek's been passing itself off as a paradigm of modern ministry for decades. Now that they're admitting a small degree of failure we should suddenly listen to them? It's like making the ten spies who told the Israelites not to invade Canaan into oracles once they admit they were wrong. On such a basis Ahab becomes as worthy a messenger of God as Elijah. After all, Ahab repented. Elijah never had to. Shades of Eldridge Cleaver preaching at Wheaton Bible Church in the 70s enter the mind (yeah, it really happened). The only world where such news from Willow Creek amounts to squat is one that secretly worships the dog-in-heat goddesses of success and money.
• I fear that the replacement of dating with courtship across vast swaths of the Evangelical world has not been as successful in remedying the problems of modern pre-marital behavior as many would like to think--in fact, it sometimes seems to me that what we've accomplished has been the substitution of legalism for license. The problem is it's a vicious circle: legalistic narrowness ultimately leads back to license. The answer to license is not a program. The answer is Christian men behaving as true men, Christian women as true women, obedience to the Word--and recognition of the essence of marriage as a man leaving, a woman cleaving, the pair together bearing.... Parents, we need humility and faith in this process, not reliance on extra-biblical protocols which do little to keep our ungodly singles from sexual sin, but which often confuse and exasperate the righteous singles in our midst.
• It seems to me that a church which practices the "holy kiss" is probably freer from the temptation to unholy kissing than a frigid arms-length church.
• What's the essence of the seeker-sensitive heresy? Paul writes in 1 Timothy 1:8 that "the Law is good if one uses it lawfully." It is possible to use the Law unlawfully. To preach the Law to the "righteous" is unlawful, Paul writes in 1:9, because law is given "for those who are lawless." The reverse is also true: proclaiming grace to the sinner without first preaching the Law is equally unlawful. The essence of the Evangelical, seeker-sensitive heresy is that it uses the Law unlawfully in both directions. It tells the sinner God has a nice plan for his life. It tells the righteous he must obey the Law. When Willow Creek ceases preaching do-goodism to the righteous and begins proclaiming God's Law to sinners, I'll believe they've repented of something beyond bad polling data.