BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

For your tomorrow, we gave our today...

"The word of the LORD you have spoken is good,” Hezekiah replied. For he thought, “Will there not be peace and security in my lifetime?” (2 Kings 20:19)

This year Iain and Jean Murray write in their family letter...

Man, who is but a maggot...

Where is sin? I've been reading Job and it struck me that this truth is completely absent from the church:

How then can a man be righteous before God? How can one born of woman be pure? If even the moon is not bright and the stars are not pure in his eyes, how much less man, who is but a maggot--a son of man, who is only a worm! (Job 25:4-6)

Do your children know they are sinners? Do you and your wife know how desperately wicked you both are--that your hearts are unbelievably deceitful? Do you preach for conviction of sin in your flock? Do you share Jonathan Edwards' conviction that the doctrine of original sin is the key to conversion and revival? 

It's always struck me that the Reformed church seems incapable of preaching the sinfulness of sin. Yet doctrinaly, we continue to pay lip service to total depravity. How can we do this? What good is it to have a tool that we are in principle opposed to using? The demons have more faith in total depravity...

Amazon and pastoral care...

There are two views of the pastoral ministry that are diametrically opposed to each other and locked in conflict. The competing views, though, aren't spoken of or written about, and the conflict passes without public notice. Jeff Bezos highlights the conflict in this explanation he gave of Amazon's view of customer relations:

Interviewer: Two years ago, you bought Zappos. Was that an attempt to absorb their so-called culture of happiness and customer service?

Bezos: No, no, no. We like their unique culture, but we don't want that culture at Amazon. We like our culture, too. Our version of a perfect customer experience is one in which our customer doesn't want to talk to us. Every time a customer contacts us, we see it as a defect. I've been saying for many, many years, people should talk to their friends, not their merchants. And so we use all of our customer service information to find the root cause of any customer contact. What went wrong? Why did that person have to call? ...How can we fix it?

That, good reader, is the view of pastoral ministry prevailing in our Reformed churches today. I say this from long and close observation. Most Reformed men run from intimacy...

When to say goodbye...

Good advice for church staff and officers. Fire unbelievers. ;-> (TB)

Another (yawn) minced confession at the PCA's Redeemer Presbyterian Church...

"To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence." - G. K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men

Here we have a wedding ceremony of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Manhattan.

Presiding over the service on the congregation's right wearing a suit is a male pastor (Scott Sauls) who formerly held his credentials in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church--a Reformed denomination that approves of female pastors and elders.

Presiding over the service on the congregation's left wearing a minister's robe is a female pastor.

Wedding ceremonies not being sacramental among us Protestants, one might argue it doesn't matter much if female pastors co-officiate with male pastors...

What about women in combat...

Here is the Majority Report of the Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly's Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military whose recommendations were adopted by General Assembly in 2002. Being this report's principal author, naturally I commend this document to our readers. If biblical Christians today studied this report and by faith embraced its doctrine of Creation Order sexuality, it would be a significant step toward the restoration of the unity of the Church. Too, these United States would again have salty salt and lighty light in the public debate raging over the meaning and purpose of sexuality. (TB)

* * *

MAN’S DUTY TO PROTECT WOMAN

We, the undersigned, endorse the Consensus Report, while realizing that Report lacks unity on the crucial matter of whether the recommendations it contains constitute the church’s wise counsel or a Christian’s scriptural duty. Believing that this is a matter of scriptural duty, we have joined together in writing this report to the end that we might set forth with confidence and clarity the full counsel—both New and Old Testaments—of the Word of God concerning this matter. Our report attempts to summarize three areas of evidence, as follows:

First, God the Father wages war in defense of Israel, His Bride; Christ our Savior fights to the Death defending His Bride, the Church; the Holy Spirit calls men as officers to guard and protect His Bride; the duty to protect the Garden of Eden and the warning not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was given by God to Adam; husbands protect their wives, not wives their husbands. Thus we are taught the binding nature of man’s duty to guard and protect his home and wife.

Second, woman is the weaker sex and part of her weakness is the vulnerability attendant to her greatest privilege—that God has made her the “Mother of all the living.” Men are to guard and protect her as she carries in her womb, gives birth to, and nurses her children.

Third, we are to renounce every thought and action which tends towards a diminishment of sexual differentiation since God made it and called it “good.” [E.g. Scripture’s injunctions concerning women exercising authority over men (1 Timothy 2), women or men wearing clothing of the opposite sex (Deuteronomy 22:5), sodomy (Leviticus 20:15-16), etc.] Rather than a stingy attitude which minimizes sexuality’s implications, we ought to rejoice in this, His blessing.

It is our conviction that these areas, taken together, provide a clear and compelling scriptural rationale for declaring our church’s principled opposition to women serving in military combat positions.

When a man loves a woman, he will lay down his life to defend her, just as Christ loved His Bride and gave Himself up for Her. Men have proudly fulfilled this duty from time immemorial, demonstrating what A. A. Hodge in his commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith referred to as the law of nature, common to all nations, that is “unchanged” to this present day. Dying for their wives, regenerate and unregenerate men have done “by nature (the) things required by the law.”[1]

Hodge divides the Old Testament law into four categories...

National Presbyterian Church of Mexico meets and repudiates woman officers...

(Esta entrada del blog está dedicado al Sr. y la Sra. Josué Congrove.)

While Evangelicals of the mainline liberal Presbyterian Church (USA) are gathering in Minneapolis to figure out how to keep their precious woman officers and yet differentiating themselves from the wicked promotion of sodomy that their national association of churches has approved and will enforce, the two-million member National Presbyterian Church of Mexico (Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana de México [INPM]) is growing in obedience. Last week they held a special meeting to act on the ordination of women and voted not to allow woman officers by the margin of 158 to 14.

Redeemer promotes woman officers.

Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana de México opposes woman officers.

Considering the Anglican machinations of the past few years, one wonders whether INPM will consider taking on a theological presbytery here in these United States of congregatons leaving the PC(USA) and PCA? This would allow...

Church officers and fathers who cover up sexual crimes...

"Fathers need to know this: avoiding the potential shame by not providing justice for your daughter is a cowardly act that will be forever remembered..." - longtime PCA elder and father of little daughters just found to have been raped by a relative

Here's an e-mail we received responding to the post "With the souls of sodomites destroyed, children are next...". As you will see, the e-mail is filled with horrors--particularly the horror of Christians who refuse to recognize the horrors taking over our homes and churches and to respond to them Biblically.

Since posting this and the previous piece, it's become clear to me that readership of this post has been small. And I believe this means sexual sin and the rampant fornication and pornography that are its seedbed will live on in the church, gaining ground while church officers and household fathers abandon their flocks and talk exchange blog posts and comments about family-centered churches and post-millenialism.

The predators love this.

So please, look again at the pull-quote at the top and ask yourself if you and your church officers are beyond it? If you're such good fathers, pastors, elders, deacons, and Titus 2 women that you don't need to find out what it means or how to respond to this failure of fathers filling our churches with bitterness? I'm sure no one relishes reading such a rebuke, but then do we really think the Corinthians enjoyed the Apostle Paul's letters?

Note particulary the father's statement about the cowardice of fathers who try to cover up the crime rather than protecting their children. This is the reality of my pastoral experience, over and over again. Our session submits the criminal to the civil magistrate. Always. Immediately. And so must you.

Living in a university community, over many years, now, ClearNote Church has been blessed by God with a good number of opportunities to be servants of reconciliation in these tragic circumstances. We would be pleased to serve your church's officers by providing support and counsel when you need help with sexual abuse and crimes against our Lord's little ones. Please feel free to contact us.

Now, on to the account...

Perspectivalism and the sectarian political advocacy of R2K ecclesiastics...

It's glorious how God leads intellectuals to shout their blindness. Things the simplest plowboy sees clearly are obscured by the intellectual's highly nuanced mists and vapors, so the plowboy is left to his centuries-old occupation of making fun of them. He's not anti-intellectual--he's anti-intellectuals.

Plowboys aren't envious of the intellectual's degrees or salary or light teaching load or clean soft hands and time alone with books. And it's certainly not that the plowboy is careless with reason, logic, history, and right and wrong. He's as careful with his tax forms as any making-of-books man, and much more sophisticated.

No, it's not that the plowboy is stupid and thinks stupid is good. Rather, it's that he's got his feet planted squarely on the ground while the intellectual is up in the mists and vapors forgetting that he's made of dust and to dust he will return. The intellectual speaks from on high while the plowboy speaks from soil and manure. The Christian sizing both up may be able to grasp that the plowboy's perspective makes all the difference for his grasp of truth and his growth in righteousness.

Applications of these fundamental truths are everywhere.

R2K intellectuals are a special interest group hounding the nation's citizenry about their pet policy issue. They're a PAC whose primary work is not on K Street and in the halls of congress, but out across the land. They publish and yell and chivy and curdle and yap at and hector and dog their fellow citizens with their political dogma, and they do it in the Name of God citing His Word and Church as their authorities...

The deafening silence...

This piece, "The Deafening Silence" by Nathan Ed Schumacher, demonstrates that the silence of Emergent and R2K men in the face of the wickedness and oppression in our public square is of the same fabric. Fear of man is a principle that knows no boundaries. (TB)

You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. - Matthew 5:14

He that is not with me is against me. - Matthew 12:30

Qui non improbat, approbat [He who does not disapprove, approves]

Causae ecclesiae publicus causis aequiparantur [The cause of the church is a public cause]

-Maxims of Law

When Obama started his latest war in Libya, I wasn’t surprised – but I did start looking for some reaction from those in official senior positions of Christian leadership...

An exchange over at a blog hosted by First Things...

There's been an exchange concerning Cru/Campus Crusade for Christ International and parachurch organizations over at a blog hosted by First Things. Here's my latest comment. Really, someone should write a book...

Let us return to the Church, our Mother...

But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother. - Galatians 4:26

Until believers understand that Scripture teaches the Church is our mother; and that, as Cyprian and Calvin put it, the man who won't have the Church as his mother may not have God as his Father; until then, parachurch religious organizations like InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Navigators, and Campus Crusade for Christ International will continue to hold pride of position in college and university communities, devouring the lion's share of mission giving and prayer flowing to those communities from congregations around the country. And this is tragic...

2011 ClearNote Conference Audio is Available

If you missed the 2011 ClearNote Summer Conference this past weekend, you missed something special. You can still listen to the sermon recordings, though: just click here.

Sin, temptation, and the Campuscrusadification of the Church...

When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, “Then who can be saved?”

And looking at them Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:25-26).

Again, here's a response to a question asked by "Jay" under the post, "Must a gay man go straight?" I thought it best to put the response here on the main page as a post.

Jay asked: "I do know other men and women who struggle with homosexual temptation, who not only reject copulation but also gay identity and culture, but who do not have any heterosexual desires. Are they saved?"

Sorry for the lack of response. The post took all my time for the blog yesterday so I'm playing catch-up.

First, I'm doubtful these men and women you know who struggle with homosexual temptation actually reject gay identity and culture as clearly and with the finality you indicate. If we live in a culture that hates sexuality as God made it; if we pursue androgyny in the pulpit in the way we preach (see the category of Baylyblog titled "gelded discourse"), in our appearance--hair length and style, for instance; if our  men are physically vain (whether macho buff or femmie bling and piercings or a sweet combination of both); it's likely no Christian tempted by homosexuality has really turned away from androgyny to Biblical manhood and womanhood. Made an effort, sure, but today within the Church there are precious few heterosexuals who pursue Biblical manhood or womanhood.

So being "straight" in our sexuality as the Bible presents manhood and womanhood is exceedingly rare, today. Men are narcissists and refuse to man up, taking responsibility for themselves or others...

The Sacraments belong to the Church...

Now since this charge is expressly given to the apostles along with the preaching of the word, it follows that none can lawfully administer baptism but those who are also the ministers of doctrine. When private persons, and even women, are permitted to baptize, nothing can be more at variance with the ordinance of Christ, nor is it any thing else than a mere profanation. - Calvin on Matthew 28:16-20

Increasingly, the session of ClearNote Church of Bloomington has been receiving applicants for membership who have been baptized by Cru girlfriends, their parents, a parachurch aquaintance, or almost anyone other than a church officer administering the Sacraments as a fulfillment of his office.

We've worked through this carefully, finally coming to the conclusion that baptisms done privately by friends and relatives are not true baptisms. There are many issues, here, and the arguments are long and involved, but at the end of it there was no doubt in our minds that the Sacraments are given by our Lord to the Church--not to individuals and families--and that to be a fulfillment of our Lord's commands, they must be administered by the officers our Lord has called and set apart to lead His Church.

For those with ears to hear...

Defend your shepherds from slander...

Sure I am, if it were well understood how much of the pastoral authority and work consisteth in church guidance, it would be also discerned, that to be against discipline, is near to being against the ministry; and to be against the ministry is near to being absolutely against the Church; and to be against the Church, is near to being absolutely against Christ. Blame not the harshness of the inference, till you can avoid it, and free yourselves from the charge of it before the Lord. - Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, (Banner of Truth, Carlisle PA: 1974) p. 111.

When a man rejects the exhortations and admonitions of his elders over a period of years, the time will come when he will turn his back on Christ's Church. If he refuses to repent and continues to give himself to sin, his sin will bear fruit and he will be separated from the Body of Christ. He may find another church that will allow him to hide in his sin; that church may marry and baptize and bury him and his family as churches have done across the centuries; but his repudiation of the discipline of Christ's Bride is his repudiation of Jesus Christ. The binding of earth and Heaven is no game of Angry Birds or Where's Waldo...

Straining at gnats, swallowing camels...

(June 2--Please note that TypePad only displays the first hundred comments on a post by default. Comments past 100 can be displayed by clicking the "More Comments" link at the bottom of the 100th comment.)

Is Federal Vision theology (FV) worthy of the intense opposition Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) conservatives dignify it with? I suspect not. For a number of reasons, I suspect such opposition to FV theology in the PCA is a sign of conservative weakness rather than strength; opportunism rather than courage. But first a bit of history.

Four years ago when FV was first dealt with by the PCA at her 2007 General Assembly (GA), conservatives rallied in support of a report condemning aspects of FV theology. The report was adopted and trials of Federal Vision supporters followed, the latest of which is the upcoming trial of Peter Leithart in Pacific Northwest Presbytery. It would appear, then, that the PCA is dutifully reforming herself and the cleanup is mostly finished.

But perhaps as noteworthy as what happened within the PCA at the 2007 GA and following is what did not happen. To understand this, we must consider a pair of strange couplings that took place that year.

The 2007 General Assembly was notable, not only for its debate and subsequent vote on the FV report, but also for several mésalliances forged in the lead-up to that vote. On one side, the middle-aged lions of the Keller/Redeemer/hipster/missional party provided some support for the FV camp. On the other side, the old lions of the southern/tall-steeple/rich/broadly Reformed party provided some support for the Truly Reformed (TR) conservatives of the PCA.

When the heat of battle passed, though, both the hipster middle-aged lions and the rich old lions woke up to strange bedfellows. Neither alliance could last. Redeemer hipsters...

Excellent comments...

Several excellent comments have been made here and you'll want to read them.

(TB)

The need for missions reform...

(Tim) Pastor Doug Wilson wrote comparing the limitations on risk that missionaries are provided through our present missions support system maximizing the number of supporting churches and individuals to that same limitation of risk provided investors through diversified mutual funds. Doug wisely points out that this system leads to diffusion of responsibility, and that's bad for both missions and their sending churches. I'd add it may also be intentional.

Anyhow, I commented under Doug's post and sent the link on to several friends who are missionaries. In response, I received the following comments from a brother who's a thirty-year missionary to an Eastern African country where he's focused on training church officers. My friend's Dad also gave his life to planting churches in that same country, so there's a lot of missions experience behind his response.

My brother, David, and I have often talked about the tragic condition of missions, today. It would take a book, but as one instance, Operation Mobilization has turned its back on the Word of God, intentionally promoting the leadership of women over men. And this promotion of feminism is rife within Evangelical missions agencies. Sadly, the PCA's Mission to the World is moving in this direction, also. It's more obvious in the European fields, but like all viruses, it will spread.

This betrayal of God's Order of Creation by missions is simply one indication of the rejection of Biblical doctrine that is pervasive within the American church, herself, and therefore exported around the world through our American missionaries. We're not talking about nitpickey details, either. It's central doctrines of Scripture like whether churches even matter at all, whether Jesus is the Only Way, whether the Sacraments are too divisive to be administered, and so on. These commitments are being jettisoned after 2,000 years of universal affirmation by the Church.

But getting at these issues is almost impossible given the view held by most believers that missionaries have piety and have made sacrifices that pastors and elders haven't, and therefore are above questions or review, let alone admonition or accountability.

Not only are many, many missionaries bad, doctrinally, but they're also overwhelmingly committed...

IVCF, Grace Church, Gordon MacDonald and dispensationalist trajectory hermeneutic...

(Tim: this from our Munich correspondent, Pastor Steve Henderson) In the 1980s I was pastoring in Houston, in a church that was solid and active in world missions as well as local initiatives such as crisis pregnancy centers. One of my elders served on the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship board and he would often lament over the strange state of affairs at IVCF and Inter-Varsity Press. He and other board members were distressed over editorial directions and decisions--the most notable and public of which was the controversy over D. Gareth Jones' book on medical ethics, Brave New People.

These were the stormy days of sexual scandal in religious and political circles—Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, and Gary Hart; but also Gordon MacDonald who at the time was serving as IVCF's president...

Facebook, pastoral care, and intimacy...

For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me.

For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church. Now some have become arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I shall find out, not the words of those who are arrogant but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power. What do you desire? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love and a spirit of gentleness? (1Corinthians 4:15-21)

(Tim) In our semon this past Lord's Day, I was showing how utterly intimate the New Testament is, with names attached to commendations and failures, with I'm-your-father, you're-my-son declarations. The letters of the Apostle Paul inspired by the Holy Spirit are built around his knowledge of the particular sins of particular people. When he writes, he's not collecting royalties off his latest book or speakers fees for his participation in the latest intellectual debate among big Reformed brains disagreeing with one another over how many covenants can fit on the head of a pin. Rather, he writes his letters for the purpose of caring for souls, and thus the letters are fatherly, pastoral exhortations and admonitions and rebukes and threats--as well as ad hominem attacks on his own personal, pastoral opponents in Corinth and Galatia (for instance).

Doctrine has a point. God's prophets have always been accused of being impertinent because they're painfully pertinent in every last sentence and word. So the Apostle Paul might say:

"You're my beloved children. I'm not just a brain or a pedagogue; I'm not just a teacher, but I'm you're Daddy. You're not my sycophants or pupils; you're my beloved children. Now, dear sons, I command that you honor me as every son honors the father he loves: imitate me! I'm sending you Timothy. Like you guys, he's also my dear son. He'll help you imitate me."

But today, whether we have two or three hours a week in a megachurch or a small, tight Reformed congregation, it's unlikely we have anything close to early church intimacy. Tragically, though, with us it's a principle...

A young woman will lead them...

(Tim, w/thanks to Al) Live Action is the work of young men and women who use hidden video cameras to record those acts of Planned Parenthood that are still criminal. (The paid murder of unborn babies has been legalized.)

In this video, actors posing as a pimp and one of his women are coached by a Planned Parenhood worker in New Jersey on how best to carry out several criminal acts including how to bypass parental consent laws with their fourteen year old prostitutes.

Yes, Planned Parenthood is corrupt. We've always known that. There's no honor among thieves.

More corrupt even than Planned Parenthood, though, are the...

"He started disciplining me like I was one of his sons..."

(Tim, w/thanks to Taylor) Read this wonderful story and ask yourself where the church turns boys--undisciplined angry ones, at that--into men? Youth groups? Home school co-ops? Christian school science labs? Crew? Membership classes? Men's retreats?

You say your church is not a parochial school filled with inner city kids and your own fathers are the ones training their own sons. I say, "Yeah, right."

Face it. Each of our churches has a bunch of young men every bit as much in need of the discipline of playing on Bob Hurley's basketball team as the kids at St. Anthony High in Jersey City. In the ministry today, we're surrounded by man-boys whose fathers have turned their backs on them. These young men crave discipline--which is to say they crave fatherly love...

The good shepherd knows his sheep--by name...

(Tim) Two weeks from now, we'll be holding the ClearNote Fellowship Pastors Conference. It will go from Thursday dinner to Friday afternoon, so it'll be no problem for you to be home for Lord's Day worship. If you're an elder or pastor, or aspire to those offices, we invite you to attend. (Since God has ordered these offices be held only by men, please understand registration is limited to men.)

Our subject is pastoral care. Thursday night, my brother, David, will preach on...

2011 ClearNote Pastors Conference: Reviving pastoral care...

(Tim) ClearNote Fellowship is holding a pastors conference titled "The Reformed Pastor: Reviving Pastoral Care in the Church" on Thursday, February 3rd, and Friday, February 4th, 2010 here at Church of the Good Shepherd. If you are (or aspire to be) a pastor, elder, or deacon, I hope you'll come. And if you're not an officer, would you please encourage your own pastors, elders, and deacons to attend?

It's been a theme of Baylyblog that, in order for church officers to fulfill our callings, we must be intimate with the souls God has placed under our care. Not acquainted or familiar with them, but intimate. Sadly, Reformed churches lack the practice of hospitality and fellowship that produce that intimacy, and so we lack the Biblical context God has ordained for the protection and sanctification of His sheep.

Intimacy shows up everywhere in the New Testament church. There are tears, kisses, scrolls and parchment, household qualifications for officers, personal examination of widows and their families, specific rules for children, slaves, husbands and wives, name-specific rebukes and commendations; the New Testament has personal pastoral care woven in and above and below every word of doctrine. It's beautiful!

And think about it: among postmoderns who grew up in broken homes and think Facebook is friendship, what could be more attractive than true Christian fellowship and the organic...

Benedict XVI, woman officers, and the Creation Order...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kevin) Roman Catholic leader, Benedict XVI, recently responded to those critical of Roman Catholics for not having woman officers. He makes several simple statements you'd wait years to hear on the floor of most Reformed denominational meetings. When it comes to the foundational issue, though, he misses the ball.

The church doesn't have women officers, not because our Lord chose men as His Apostles, but because...

Discipline, denominations, and blogs...

(Tim) Below a recent post, we've been having a discussion of the nature of leadership and discipline in the church, and I'd like to call attention to this exchange in which I respond to a few comments. Likely, readers need to check out the larger context of the earlier post before they'll understand some of what's written, here, but it's not necessary.

* * *

>>a) Carl Trueman is ordained in the OPC, which means he really doesn't have a reason for making comments about his PCA boss, Peter Lillback, one way or the other.

What? Whatever happened to the church and to church associations (which we call denominations) being confessional communities rather than institutional self-perpetuation machines? This is one of the principal things that disappointed me about the PCA: over and over on both the presbytery and general assembly level men would be zealous for their institutional interests in a way that bypassed or harmed the purity of the Church and Her doctrine. Trueman may not have the ability to discipline Lillback formally within his own denomination, but Lillback is much more accountable and vulnerable to Trueman than he is to the members of his presbytery. Behold, the two men work together! If Trueman thinks Lillback is in error...

Mutiny in the church...

(Tim, w/thanks to Steve M.) Read this post by Carl Trueman. It's almost excellent.

Almost because, sadly, the salient point to make about it is that there are no specifics mentioned, no men and their errors exposed. Sadly, that neglect says more than the good words Trueman has written.

To warn against theological and ecclesiastical and confessional and Biblical rebellion without warning against any particular man is to gnaw with gums instead of chewing with teeth. Until you name names, it's only one more hypothetical construct.

It wouldn't surprise me if reformation 21 had a policy against questioning or warning against any particular man's faith or practice--particularly if that man sells lots of books and is cited more than anyone else by Reformed pastors, today.

The Institute of Awesome...

(Tim) I've been privileged to attend several of the Ministers Conferences put on by Christ Church of Moscow, Idaho, and I commend them to you. So take a minute right now to go over to their web site and check out this year's conference. Speakers will include Doug Wilson, Ben Merkle, Toby Sumpter, and Nate Wilson--all speaking on the theme "The Institute of Awesome: Keeping Calvinism Sassy for the Next Fifteen Minutes."

And if you go, do as we've done and take an extra day to go up and hike in Glacier National Park, wondering at the beauty our Creator throws willy-nilly everywhere: the fall colors, the elk herds, and their bugling bulls.

Beware of shepherds justifying their heartlessness...

(Tim: I've made significant changes to this post since it first went up.) It's been my observation Reformed men who justify silence in the public square under the rubric of "two-kingdom theology" and "the spirituality of the church" are usually unconcerned about the sexual anarchy, oppression, and bloodshed of innocents that has long been the foundation of our civil compact here in these United States. They simply don't give a rip.

It's self-evident on any terms a civilized man accepts for the foundation of common law that sending wives, sisters, and mothers off to fight our enemies is evil, but see if spirituality-of-the-church men address the civil magistrate condemning this evil? It's self-evident on any terms a civilized man accepts for the foundation of common law that ripping unborn babies apart in their mothers' wombs is an evil as great as the world has ever known, but check out whether the two-kingdom men you know write about it on their blogs, speak against it in the public square, preach against it in their pulpits, or show up at the killing place to lift a finger to stop it.

And that, dear brothers, is the error. Thus, proving one has not fallen into this error is the easiest of matters. It only requires a two-kingdom man to give a regular witness against injustice and bloodshed in his public ministry. But if an officer of Christ's Church today is not...

Calvin: ministers and Sacraments are dead and powerless labor...

Moreover the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live. (Deuteronomy 30:6)

(Tim) In 1Corinthians 3:4 ff. the Apostle Paul is rebuking the Corinthians' party spirit. Different factions of the congregation were lined up behind this or that minister of the Gospel using this or that man to get a leg up on their opponents. So the Apostle Paul has the dicey job of defending his own apostolic authority and doctrine, honoring the beautiful feet of ministers of the Word while also opposing the hero worship at the heart of the Corinthian division.

He ends up saying, on the one hand, that ministers of the Gospel are the means by which God's people come to faith in Jesus Christ; but on the other hand, that ministers of the Gospel are nothing. So it's both ministers are God's chosen instrument and ministers are nothing.

For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not mere men?

What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. (1 Corinthians 3:4-7)

See the careful footwork?

Ministers are "servants through whom (the Corinthians) believed." Ministers are servants who "planted" and "watered as "God caused the growth." And...

Ministers are not anything (which is another way of saying ministers are nothing).

Our hearts are filled with love for the ministers of the Gospel who planted and watered so we might hear and believe the Good News, and be saved. But immediately, the faithful minister, the Apostle Paul, the Holy Spirit reminds us ministers are nothing at all. It is always God Who gives us the opportunity and causes the growth.

Now stick with me, here. I know it all seems so very obvious as not to need any comment, but follow the logic here, carefully.

Calvin comments...

Disciplining racism: It all came down to just a couple votes...

(In September of 2008, preaching in the midst of a raging controversy over racism that was dividing his own congregation) Pastor Bulkeley condemned the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, saying its leader taught that Nazism was the "racial order" of God and that Jews should be eliminated. "This teaching was evil," Bulkeley told his congregation. "It is heretical. It is from the pit of hell and it's a direct offense against the gospel. There should be no mistake about that. It is completely contrary to everything the Bible teaches."

(Tim, w/thanks to Joel B.) Here's an article and sidebar from the Summer 2010 issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report telling the story of good church discipline carried out in Friendship Presbyterian Church outside Asheville, North Carolina. The discipline ended up also being adjudicated by the congregation's appellate court, Western Carolina Presbytery (PCA). (And if you don't understand why I'd refer to a PCA presbytery as an appellate court, read Brother David's superb commentary on the state of the PCA post-General Assembly union, here.)

Racism was the sin, and thus the Southern Poverty Law Center this one time stood on the side of the angels. Both the article and the sidebar attempt to provide some of the historic context for the battle against racism throughout the history of the PCA--very much a southern denomination with its roots deeply embedded in "The Recent Unpleasantness."

These articles have both the weaknesses and strengths of their origin outside the PCA. I hope you'll take the time to read them.

First, though, one prefatory remark. Dealing with abortion or racism or feminism is a bloody work...

Reflections on GA: Dialogue with David Wallover, part 2...

"We don't want our denomination to develop a master plan for us. With due respect, we don't need the PCA to plan seats at our table or safe places in our assemblies. What we want and need are faithful courts--bodies that will hold us to our biblical, confessional commitments..."   - David Bayly

(David) Below is the second installment of a dialogue with David Wallover, a friend and fellow PCA pastor. David Wallover's initial email was in response to this post giving my reflections on the Presbyterian Church in America's 2010 General Assembly.

Dear David (Wallover),

Your presence in the Ohio Presbytery was one of the reasons we chose to cast our lot there so I appreciate your taking the time to respond to my post about the PCA's recent General Assembly.

An initial correction: you speak of the three of us having been in the PCUSA together. Though you and Tim were in the PCUSA in the 90s, I was in a non-confessional Brethren denomination which we left for reasons centering around their acceptance of Open Theism and Inclusivism and their ordination of women to pastoral office rather than the issues that caused you and Tim to leave the PCUSA.

I suspect the differences between our views of the PCA today find their root in the unique circumstances of our respective entries into the PCA.

It was as the pastor of a new church with a functioning elder board and 150 members that I entered the PCA. We weren't searching for identity in entering the PCA, we were looking for a confessional home for an already-established church. We weren't lacking energy, history or character. We didn't need external vision to guide us in serving as salt and light in Toledo. We needed a denominational home that would, should we encounter difficulties beyond our capacity to solve, serve as a 21st-century expression of the Jerusalem Council for us.

Newcomers to the PCA are often surprised to hear...

Reflections on GA: Dialogue with David Wallover, part 1...

(David) I received the following email message from my good friend and fellow PCA pastor, David Wallover, after posting my initial reflections on the Presbyterian Church in America's 2010 General Assembly (GA). I've asked David Wallover if I could present both his thoughts and my subsequent response on this forum and he has graciously agreed. David Wallover pastors Harvest Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Medina, Ohio.

Hi, David (Bayly)-

I originally wrote the note below to be a posted reply to your blog today, but on reflection, thought I'd send it to you personally. You can decide if you want to use it on your blog or not.  It's not a contrary opinion, per se, but it is a perspective from a different angle.  Let me know your thoughts.

Your friend,
David (Wallover)
________________________________

My dear brother, David (Bayly)--

What's at stake here?  You, your brother, and I came up through the "bloodbath" of the UPCUSA/PCUSA.  Did you imagine when we each found our way into the PCA, that it or any other manmade denominational institution, could possibly remain focused?  What I said to my wife upon entering the PCA is, "Well, now we trade heresies on the left for heresies on the right"--my point being that fidelity to the truth, which is itself a fixed target, remains elusive because we are constantly shifting around the target. And even if the PCA falls prey to the old heresies on the left (which would be ironic in light of the whole "Federal" controvesy, which is a "heresy" on the right...), it still will be a result of OUR inability to stay fixed on the truth, veering as we do either to the left or the right.

Yup, Mabel, it's a fact: Redeemer has woman officers...

(Tim) To all those who write in to correct us when we refer to Redeemer of New York City's practice and promotion of woman officers, saying Redeemer "does not have woman officers," here is Redeemer's "Officer Nomination Form" downloaded today from their web site.

So, let's all stop playing word games and agree that, for years, Redeemer has maintained the practice of woman officers.

Who cares about the sheep...

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. - Acts 20:28

(Tim) I was discussing leadership with a friend who'd served a number of years in the Navy and Marines. A Viet Nam vet, he was wounded twice during the Tet Offensive's Battle of Hwa.

My friend said the military teaches men to make decisions, and that the worst thing an officer can do is to avoid making a decision. He illustrated the principle with a story about a patrol he'd been on where the men came under fire. Instead of maintaining command and assuring his soldiers' safety, the officer dove for cover.

From the way my friend told the story and the silence at the story's end, I knew this was about as bad a thing as an officer could do. "So what happened to the guy?" I asked...

TBN's false shepherds and Thomas Brooks' "Seven Marks of False Shepherds"...

(Tim) One of the themes in Scripture is false shepherds--those men (and women) who claim to speak for God when God hasn't called them and their message isn't from Him, but from the Evil One. As pastors, we should make careful note of the identifying marks of false shepherds, first for our own flock and souls, that we not be found to be false shepherds, ourselves. And as it is our duty to protect our flock from destruction at our own hands, it's also our duty to defend them against the hands of others. The good shepherd lays down his life in defense of his sheep.

A dear friend who's a missionary to Africa tells men there that he'd rather his children look at pornography than Trinity Broadcasting Network. They're strong words, but travel through townships and neighborhoods in Africa and see how many homes have it on. You may turn to strong words yourself if you love the souls under your care.

Trinity Broadcasting Network is the real deal--a group of men and women who claim to speak for God but speak for the Devil. They are false shepherds and shepherdesses, and every one of us who's been entrusted by God with a part of His Flock ought to have gone on record in our pulpit condemning TBN's heresies as well as their fleecing of their sheep. Without mincing words--think Jude or the Apostle John's Letters to the Seven Churches.

Here's a Facebook group intent on exposing TBN for what it is...

Priestly celibacy is the context for the sodomitic rape of children...

An investigation last year revealed that church leaders in Dublin had spent decades protecting child-abusing priests from the law while many fellow clerics turned a blind eye. (There were) decades of sexual, physical and psychological abuse in Catholic-run schools, workhouses and orphanages. ...a succession of archbishops and senior aides had compiled confidential files on more than 100 parish priests who had sexually abused children since 1940 (but the) files had remained locked in the Dublin archbishop's private vault.

...Clogher Bishop Joseph Duffy said resignations were not on the agenda in Rome...

In recent weeks, a new sexual abuse scandal involving Catholic clergy has erupted in Benedict's homeland of Germany. -read the AP story, "Irish Bishops meet Pope in summit on sex abuse"

(Tim, w/thanks to David C.) I've commented before that the Roman Catholic's unscriptural insistence on celibacy for the priesthood is directly tied to priests' predations against their flocks. Something about it's better to marry than to burn...

Compounding that error is the silence of Reformed men in the midst of this scandal...

And women rule over them...

O My people! Their oppressors are children, And women rule over them. O My people! Those who guide you lead you astray And confuse the direction of your paths. -Isaiah 3:12

If we wanted to describe the repudiation of Biblical sexuality spreading across conservative churches and denominations today, we'd have a hard time finding a better text than this curse of God recorded by the prophet Isaiah. Women lead men, those who guide the People of God lead them astray, and pastors confuse the direction of their flocks' paths.

It's everywhere, from Campus Crusade for Christ to Operation Mobilization to Columbia International University to Wheaton College to the Presbyterian Church in America...

A while back, the New Yorker ran an article by Malcolm Gladwell profiling Cesar Millan, the man behind the National Geographic show, Dog Whisperer. Titled "What the Dog Saw," the piece gave readers a spellbinding glimpse into the life of a man expert at disciplining incorrigible dogs. The central thrust of the article was an explanation of Millan's "phrasing," his ability to bring his body movements, hand gestures, tone of voice, and eye contact into perfect harmony so that dogs understand Millan says what he means and means what he says. In an interview following the publication of his article, Gladwell described Millan's good phrasing:

What we're talking about, when it comes to phrasing, is simply the ability to communicate with clarity. We all think that those around us have the ability to read our minds--and we get frustrated when our intentions are misunderstood. But the truth is that accurate communication is really hard, and only a very small number of people can do it well.

Gladwell's profile contained a number of examples of dog owners who hired Millan to tame their dogs. Here's the story of a dog named Beauty:

"I have forty-seven dogs right now," Cesar...idly scratched a big German shepherd. "My girlfriend here, Beauty. If you were to see the relationship between her and her owner." He shook his head. "A very sick relationship. A 'Fatal Attraction' kind of thing. Beauty sees her (owner) and she starts scratching her and biting her, and the owner is, like, 'I love you, too.'"

Near the end of his article, Gladwell told the story of a Chihuahua named...

Woman officers in the PCA: comments on one overture coming to Metro Atlanta Presbytery...

(Tim) Here's a proposed amendment to the Presbyterian Church in America's Book of Church Order. The amendment was adopted by the session of Atlanta's Westminster Presbyterian Church and will be presented to the January 23rd meeting of Metro Atlanta Presbytery.

The following is the text of the amendment, along with a few preliminary comments of my own...

The invisible woman...

(Tim) My friend Bob Patterson forwarded a pre-release copy of the Winter 2010 issue of The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy which he edits, and it's the point of this essay to get you to subscribe. For many years I've been reading this and other publications of what is now called the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society, and they've been foundational to my work as a preacher, pastor, and father.

This particular issue's cover article details how, over the past thirty years, homemakers have been forced to subsidize the lives of privilege lived by other women who have forsaken marriage, the home, and childbearing for degrees and professions.

Professional women with salaries high enough to allow them to pay for day care and still turn a profit have not simply been content to leave their homemaking sisters behind, but have built their lifestyle on the backs of those sisters and their hardworking husbands. To anyone who matters, these homemakers are invisible.

Equal Employment Opportunity laws have piled up a legacy of systemic injustice throughout the wage earning world, leaving half the fairer and weaker sex to raise the children the other half will depend upon for their Medicare and Social Security payments when their life of childless privilege is drawing to an end. Meanwhile, the husbands of these housewives and mothers are in free-fall, trying to support the mother of their children as she gives herself to work that, despite those bright boys and girls in Economics Departments, still hasn't shown up on their gross domestic profit tally sheets...

"She always feels regret when she sees her husband with a black eye..."

(Tim, w/thanks to Dan) The violence and victims literature tells us women are every bit as violent as men, and lesbian couples are the most violent of all. Even when asked to report on prior heterosexual relationships, lesbians report their present homosexual relationship to be more violent than any prior heterosexual relationship. I've written of this before, pointing out how religious feminists exploit spouse abuse as if it's a uniquely male crime and produced by biblical sexual order (hierarchy, that is).

This is one of the most wicked deceits of religious feminists, and many (if not most) of them do this knowingly. They are well aware women and mothers initiate violence and beat their husbands and children as often as husbands and fathers, but only the violence of men is of any use to them. So they write books about wife abuse--not spouse abuse--thereby exploiting half the victims of domestic violence for the sake of promoting their own rebellion against God.

Who cares about a man who lets a woman beat him up, anyhow; it's his own fault. If he were a real man, he'd put a stop to it, wouldn't he?

"Once you've lost that clientele"...

(Tim, w/thanks to DC) Ted Haggard is welcomed into a pulpit. Tragically, note this view of Gospel ministry unbelievers are left with:

"You could make a career out of your reformed fallen Christian life," said David Edward Harrell, a retired Auburn University history professor who studies charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity. "What you can't do is go back and do the same thing. Once you've lost that clientele, it's lost."

Semper reformanda: the next step...

(Tim: This from Rev. Andrew Webb) After two meetings of debate, yesterday (Oct. 27, 2009) Central Carolina Presbytery passed the following overture to the 38th General Assembly by a twenty-eight vote margin:

Overture to the 38th Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly
Amend Book of Church Order 9-7

1. Whereas the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) is grateful to God for the outstanding and selfless work done by the women of PCA congregations and freely acknowledges that the ability of the church to minister to a lost and dying world depends in large part on the self-sacrificing volunteer spirit of our female members; and

2. Whereas the PCA also believes that, the officers of the Church, by whom all its powers are administered, are, according to the Scriptures, teaching and ruling elders and deacons (Book of Church Order 1-5) and that in accord with Scripture, these offices are open to men only (BCO 7-2); and

3. Whereas the PCA believes that scripture teaches that the officers of the church are to be ordained not commissioned. (BCO 17,12-5, 8-6); and...

Christianity left behind...

(Tim, w/thanks to several readers) A prominent evangelical magazine just did a piece on the complaint by Calvin College faculty reps that Calvin's board has issued policy barring members of their faculty from promoting sodomy. The article starts this way:

The homosexuality debate that has torn apart mainline denominations is fanning faculty and student protests at Calvin College, and highlights a growing issue facing evangelical schools.

The magazine, published in Wheaton, continues:

The case is being watched with interest by other (evangelical) schools struggling to balance compassion and doctrine in their policies on gays.

"Struggling to balance compassion and doctrine?" What on earth are they saying?

Well of course, the point is that the evangelical world today is moving toward the normalization of sodomy and the rubric under which it's being done is the silencing of Scripture's denunciation of sodomy as an abomination before the Lord. Other abominations such as fornication, unbiblical divorce and remarriage, and adultery have already been normalized, and now it's sodomy's turn.

The path to normalization is cleared by much talk of compassion with only an occasional tip of the hat to sin and righteousness and judgment. Which is to say that the Holy Spirit is nowhere present in such discussions since "When He comes, He will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment."

There's no conviction of sin going on--none at all. Instead, we're busy balancing compassion and doctrine. Wheaton College's "sexuality scholar," Stan Jones, puts it like this...

The PCA should have resigned from the NAE a long time ago...

(Tim) Earlier this afternoon as a member of Ohio Valley Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America, I received the following letter from the stated clerk of our denomination, Dr. Roy Taylor. As background to the present controversy, readers should know that a number of PCA pastors and elders are not pleased with our denomination holding membership in the National Association of Evangelicals due to the increasingly liberal commitments of its leaders and their high profile public policy statements.

Here at Baylyblog, we've been careful to document this drift: see here, here, here, here, and here. Now, once more, the NAE is flexing its muscle in Washington D.C.--purportedly in our behalf. But this time, it's our own Roy Taylor who is largely claiming responsibility for the statement.

Compared to our readers here at Baylyblog, I'm guessing that I tend to be more liberal than most of you on the issue of immigration.

Still, I repeat: it's time for the PCA to resign membership in the NAE.

Here then is Roy's response to the criticisms he's received for what he and his NAE friends said to the civil authority in our name on this subject of immigration. Yes, I doubt Roy would agree that's what happened...

Rick Phillips reviews Tim Keller reviewing Bill Hybels...

(Tim, w/thanks to our Redeemer Manhattanite correspondent) Pastor Rick Phillips recently did a post critical of a review of Willow Creek written by the Rev. Dr. Tim Keller. Rick was apologetic as he got started:

Our poor friend Tim Keller suffers the fate of having his every word parsed over a thousand times...  For this reason, I try to avoid such parsing...

But fortunately, truth got the better of Rick and he quickly hit his stride. Check it out.

Me and Jesus, plus nothing...

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you. (Hebrews 13:17)

(Tim) The results of Trinity College's 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) are in and they confirm that the souls of Americans are not being lost to false religions, but to the complete rejection of the Church. This confirms my own experience.

Far and away the largest number of souls who have rejected Church of the Good Shepherd's doctrine in the past decade, investigating us but leaving for somewhere else, left because we require a believer be a member in good standing of some evangelical, Bible-believing church to join with us at the Lord's Table.

We fence the Table quite inclusively, really. I use the liturgy of the old Scottish Book of Worship and it's a balm for weak souls trusting in Christ alone for our salvation. But then, at the end, I warn off those who reject Christ's authority, rejecting the authority of elders over their own soul. If they believe they can relate directly to God, bypassing the ministry and authority of His Church, this rebellion disqualifies them from communing with us, I tell them.

Of course, I go on to show them how easily they may correct the matter...

SJC Officers try for a TKO of complaint against Redeemer's presbytery...

(Tim: the text below is contributed by our NYC correspondent) A letter from PCA Stated Clerk Roy Taylor dated September 9, 2009 states that certain officers of the Standing Judicial Commission ("SJC") have ruled that the complaint filed with the SJC objecting to the ruling by the Metropolitan New York Presbytery regarding certain diaconal practices was filed prematurely. The letter states:

"The Officers of the Standing Judicial Commission have met September 4, 2009 and considered the documents submitted by the complainants and the Stated Clerk of Presbytery. The officers found the case to be administratively out of order since Presbytery adopted Amends No.1, which nullified, rescinded, annulled and or retracted its previous action, and with Amends Nos. 2,3, and 4 being addressed by the Presbytery through further discussions, debates and actions, all of which indicate that the Case was filed prematurely."

Here are a few preliminary thoughts:

1. The officers of the SJC that ruled the complaint was premature constitute only a portion of the SJC and may not represent the views of the SJC as a whole. It remains the prerogative of the full body of the SJC to allow this ruling to stand or to overturn it...

In the godly, fear and love embrace.

(Tim) The problem with Evangelicalism is illustrated by our local Contemporary Christian Music station. Every piece of music ends with a crescendo. Sopranos screech, brass blares, tenors hitch into falsetto, and every word's either 'grace' or 'blessing' or 'peace' or 'Heaven.' Can't stand the stuff. Ain't real.

It's like touring the color house with my art director brother-in-law twenty years ago, back when they still used airbrush technology to remove wrinkles and moles. Peter did a lot of work with the company and they were proud to show us their twenty-thousand dollar drum scanner. Before we saw the scanner, though, they showed us the other work they did.

A lot of the color work for national glossy magazines went through their shop and we were shown each step in the process. It all went well until we hit the airbrush expert. All of a sudden, we were peering over the shoulder of a man removing moles and pimples and wrinkles from a certain well-known woman's naked body. Pop! There it was.

Or rather, there she was. But not really her--someone else. Someone who didn't exist and never had.

Since then, I've seen the puppetmaster behind every ad and picture and movie and I am not fooled.