BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

Ugh, it's Christianity Today, again--this time weighing in against spanking...

Knives are necessary to cut meat and bread. Every once in a while, knives are used to kill people. Can we all agree knives aren't the problem? Please? Pretty please?

The abuse of a thing does not invalidate its proper use.

This truth has eluded the editors of Christianity Today. In a recent editorial they use the death of several children at the hands of their fathers and mothers as the spectre to soften readers up to their dogma that "corporal punishment ...should be employed miles short of abuse, without anger, and as an absolute last resort." From their perch in Moses' seat, these scribes declare about spanking that "the Bible does not require it" (emphasis in the original).

Think about this. The magazine that purports to be the voice of Biblical inerrancy and Christian faith in these United States has run an editorial declaring that the rod of discipline God Himself requires God Himself does not require. And if that sentence confuses you, all I can say is I couldn't figure out how to put it more clearly.

And if you're one of the pigheaded ones who balks against progress, just be sure you only use the rod as "an absolute last resort." 

But the Bible commands us to use the rod. God requires it...

After ClearNote conference, send your chilluns on a river trip...

This announcement just went out to our church family from our daughter, Heather Ummel. I've regularly recommended Al and Amy Parker's work of outdoor discipleship, Canoe Creation, to readers of Baylyblog. You'd not go wrong using them for your Christian school, home school co-op, church youth group, father-daughter or father-son church canoe trip, or taking part in Canoe Creation summer camps.

Here is something that may be more convenient for you since the date and location have already been set. Think about it and let Heather know if you're interested. (TB)

Canoe Creation Summer Camp

Some of our church family will remember Al and Amy Parker, who lived in Bloomington and attended church with many of us years ago. If you were reading my dad's blog this summer in mid-July you would have seen pictures of a camp experience our boys had with their ministry, Canoe Creation. The wonderful news is that they're going to bring their camp to us this summer! They will be offering a 3-day, 2-night canoe camp right after this summer's ClearNote Conference (I Believe in God the Father). The conference will be Friday and Saturday, July 6 -7 here in Bloomington. Then worship with ClearNote Church, Bloomington Sunday, July 8, followed by you and your wife taking a couple days R&R while your chilluns are off on the water with Canoe Creations...

Please help...

Will you please help me?

When the publisher of Dad's novel, Winterflight, decided to take it out of print, I bought the 3,000 copies they had left in their inventory. With shipping I paid about $3,500 for them and I need to recoup that money. I've given away many of these books--some to some of you. But I can't afford to keep giving them away and I'd like to ask you to buy some for Christmas gifts, your church library, your public library, or as presents for your pastors and elders and senators and congressmen and doctors.

Winterflight is the perfect antidote to President Obama's grand scheme to move all medical authority inside the Beltway.

The book is about a hemophiliac who is dying because of nationalized health care...

Another good review...

Here's an excerpt from another review of Good Shepherd Band's Repeat the Sounding Joy:

"Until three weeks ago I had never heard of the band from Bloomington, Indiana, but currently this album holds a firm spot in what I consider to be the most Christ-centered and worshipful of Christmas records.

"In a season where vapid holiday fluff by the likes of Mariah Carey can be heard cycling the local radio stations, Repeat the Sounding Joy is a welcomed proclamation of the coming of Jesus put to creatively beautiful musicianship." (read on)

If you haven't yet bought a copy for yourself or your loved ones, why not do it now? (TB)

Good Shepherd Band's Christmas CD reviewed...

Here's an excerpt from a nice review of Good Shepherd Band's latest CD, "Repeat the Sounding Joy:"

(Repeat the Souning Joy) is definitely heads and shoulders above most of the Christmas music you’ll hear this season. I make a mix for my mom every year called Christian Music That Doesn’t Suck for those times I ride in the car with her... (to continue reading)

If you haven't bought a copy for yourself yet, do it now. And get some more copies for your friends and loved ones. It will encourage our men in their work here at ClearNote Church, Bloomington. (TB)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING: Mary's song in a limestone mill, with crickets...

Woolery Stone Mill is the limestone mill where the Empire State Building's facade was cut; also where Breaking Away's mill scenes were shot. The place is now largely abandoned but there are two connections to ClearNote Church, Bloomington, that might interest readers.

First, about ten years ago our head elder, J Lee, and I went through the mill and it's office building considering purchasing them both to house our church and a church-school. Given the massive scale of the mill, though, we gave it up. Now we have a 220 acre farm, instead. (Yes, I'm chuckling.)

More recently the mill was the site where this glorious video recording of Mary's Song was filmed. It's a high definition video and it serves as the perfect introduction to the CD, Repeat the Sounding Joy, released a week ago. What a fitting setting for Mary''s Song--outside/inside a stone mill, with crickets.

Give a listen to the video. It you knew the musicians, the video might bring tears to your eyes as it does to Mary Lee's and mine. Tears of joy for God's kindness in allowing us to be led in worship each week by humble men and women who, like Mary, are wonderful instruments of God's grace in our lives. Gloria!

Good Shepherd Band releases "Repeat the Sounding Joy"...

Today I am pleased to announce the release of “Repeat the Sounding Joy”—a new album of Christmas carols by our Good Shepherd Band. This recording is the culmination of five years of creative work on the part of our musicians. The crucible for that work has been our annual Christmas Sing-A-Long. Every December, we hold a special evening service in celebration of the Incarnation of our Lord. It's a kind of contemporary take on the traditional Lessons and Carols service...

Free music and a little history lesson...

Our Good Shepherd Band is giving away a free track today from their forthcoming Christmas album, Repeat the Sounding Joy. This is “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” like you’ve never heard it. And I’m not just referring to the pizzazz-y arrangement. There’s actually a whole verse making its world debut here. Well, sort of.

Originally, “Hark!” had ten four line stanzas. Thanks to George Whitfield, who took the liberty of tweaking and republishing Wesley’s hymn (much to Wesley’s chagrin), most of us know “Hark!” in Whitfield’s revised, three-verse form. For their own rendition, the band harkened back to Wesley’s original and constructed a hybrid fourth verse from portions of his seventh through tenth stanzas. Here is that “new” verse…

Evangelicalism has betrayed the Word of God; let the dead bury the dead...

Another of the disciples said to Him, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.”

But Jesus *said to him, “Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.” (Matthew 8:21, 22)

Recently, a brother has been faulting me for writing that InterVarsity ought no longer to receive support from our missions giving--whether personal or congregational--and we ought to stop patronizing InterVarsity Press.

As he sees it, such recommendations display a number of spiritual defects in me including especially arrogance and overgeneralization. He points out that InterVarsity has many good chapters that have not yet evangelized for the sodomite perversion in the Name of Jesus and many staff workers who are still the old style of Evangelical Bible-believing Christian. As he sees it, I'm wrong to call for the end of InterVarsity and InterVarsity Press when there's still so much good being done by individuals on their payroll. So here's a short response that goes beyond the shorter responses I've made to him already.

InterVarsity has an illustrious past that includes both my father-in-law and my father holding key positions at the top of the organization. And even after leaving InterVarsity back in the early sixties, Dad sat on the board until around 1982. Then he resigned because he could no longer support the direction the organization was taking. That was thirty years ago and across those intervening years InterVarsity has gotten much worse. In what ways?

InterVarsity Press has been allowed to publish many heterodox and heretical books. Principally, InterVarsity Press has become a consistent advocate of the feminist heresy. It's not simply a matter of an occasional work here and there that pussyfoots around the boundaries on this issue, but rather a clear commitment to opposing God's Order of Creation. I've been party to several private e-mail exchanges between IVP's publisher and pastors and elders expressing concern over this rebellion deeply lodged in IVP's list for decades now, and the publisher has been dismissive of those concerns and the church officers expressing them.

This is no surprise since his parent organization, InterVarsity, has for decades been a proponent of the feminist heresy. IVP is simply a reflection of InterVarsity in this matter. Starting with my friend, Tom Dunkerton, back in the eighties, InterVarsity's presidents have been committed to rebellion against the Word of God's command that woman not teach and exercise authority over man...

For poor on'ry people like you and like I...

I've mentioned before how much our worship leaders, Good Shepherd Band, strengthen us in our corporate worship here at ClearNote Church, Bloomington. The highlight of the year is our annual Christmas Sing-a-long and coming soon is a CD of their Christmas music titled Repeat the Sounding Joy. The disc will be realeased November 11th--just a couple weeks from now--but you can listen to one of the tracks now.

Here's the olde carole, "I Wonder as I Wander." If you like it, drop us an e-mail to reserve your copy. (TB)

Grandview Elementary School evacuated to ClearNote Church, Bloomington...

Grandview Elementary Evacuates to ClearNote Church from Good Shepherd Band on Vimeo.

The past several hours here at ClearNote Church, Bloomington, we've hosted four to five-hundred children from Grandview Elementary School across the street from us. Around 1:30 this afternoon the children and their cooks, aids, teachers, and Principal Lily Albright were evacuated while the Bloomington Fire Department investigated a smell that seemed to point to a gas leak.

The bathrooms are entirely inadequate but the rest is working out fine. Although it's cold and raining outside, the children and their teachers are warm and dry and happy and singing in the sanctuary (sadly, not Rock of Ages or The Son of Man Goes Forth to War).

On the next page is a pic of our Monroe Country Community School Superintendent Dr. Judy DeMuth leaving the church...

A sermon from a dying man to dying men...

Is Holiness Possible Today (With a Warning from Esau)

Along with a number of other dear brothers (Ron Scates, Gary LeTourneau, Jim DeCamp, Terry Schlossberg, Ben and John Sheldon), my friend Rev. Marty Radcliffe continues to languish in the heretical PC(USA). Pray for him. Marty was a godly encouragment to me in the work of the ministry back in the early eighties when we both were ordained and served within the PC(USA)'s John Knox Presbytery up in Wisconsin.

Marty just commented under the post, "Death of an eighteen-year-old brother...," that he'd recently listened again to my Dad's final sermon given from the pulpit of College Church in Wheaton a few weeks before he died. After Dad's death, I had three-hundred cassettes of this sermon duplicated and sent them out to many friends.

This is the sort of preaching almost completely absent from the PCA and other conservative Reformed circles today. And it's tragic. Out of fear of being labelled a "pietist" by godless hypocrites who persecute those pursuing the sanctification without which no man will see God...

So what about anonymous comments...

Again he sent them another slave, and they wounded him in the head, and treated him shamefully. (Mark 12:4)

A reader personally unknown to me and my brother, David, wrote of his appreciation for Baylyblog, and then asked this question:

(H)aving seen some of the comments you have made (on Baylyblog about anonymity), I wanted to ask if you believe it is wrong if I post a comment only using my first name? The reason I do so is that I am (an) engineering student and will (soon) be graduating ...and it would probably make it quite difficult for me to get a job since employers google names and mine is a rare one... Is that a bad reason?

To which I responded:

Dear John Doe,

I have mixed feelings about this, dear brother...

I wanna talk about me, wanna talk about I, wanna talk about Number One...

Listen to the first minute or two and it's so clear what this video and at least two of these men are about. You'd have to be highly educated to miss it. Then the last minute or two, it surfaces again. As that patriarch of all things Evangelical, the late Vernon Grounds, said some years back, Evangelicals worship "the bitch goddess of success." Followers of Jesus Christ should have nothing to do with multi-site video venues.

And by the way, Mark Dever pulled in his horns after being whupped by the two alpha-males going two-on-one on him with fangs bared. Try to imagine the good doctor, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, agreeing to be part of this exchange. I apologize for posting it, but some things have to be seen if they're going to be properly condemned. (TB, w/thanks)

Multiple Sites: Yea or Nay? Dever, Driscoll, and MacDonald Vote from Ben Peays on Vimeo.

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...

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.

2011 ClearNote Fellowship Conference starts this evening...

Looking forward to seeing you all tonight at our 2011 ClearNote Fellowship Conference here at ClearNote Church in Bloomington. If you didn't bother pre-registering, don't let that keep you from coming. It all starts at 6:30 tonight. Lord willing, see you there!

(TB)

ClearNote Conference 2011: take some family holydays here at ClearNote, Bloomington...

It's almost here--a week away, now--so once more I invite you to come to the 2011 ClearNote Fellowship Conference. Our preaching will focus on our Lord's Great Commission. Musical adoration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; prayer, the breaking of bread, and fellowship will fill our holydays out! No big names--only small ones--so come join us! We'd love to meet you.

(TB)

The Great Comission and the Church...

The ClearNote Fellowship Conference is fast approaching and you do want to come. Last year I had the joy of sitting under these men's preaching and it was God's gift to me--that and worship and great food and loving fellowship surrounding each service through the weekend.

Register now! Here are the speakers and subjects...

Canned preacher, live musicians...

Driscoll is a popular pastor in the Pacific Northwest. He heads a group of multisite churches that regularly draw 10,000 parishioners a week across 10 locations. He preaches live at one location, and his sermons are sent out by video to the other locations the following week, when the services are held with live music...

Driscoll said the sermon this week will be pre-taped, in part so he can attend a baseball tournament his son is playing in. The message, he said, comes from the Gospel of Luke and is about Zacchaeus, a crooked tax collector who found redemption...

If the preacher's a digital image, why "live music?"

A year ago, Taylor and I were at a large church in Evansville, Indiana, where the preacher only showed up for the later services and used video to feed the early service flock. During the sermon, the large digital image hanging from the ceiling in front of us asked those present to raise their hands if...

2011 ClearNote Fellowship Conference: register now!

Let me encourage you to attend our ClearNote Fellowship Conference a month from now, July 8 & 9, 2011. As always, the food, fellowship, and worship will give you joy and strengthen you for your work in Christ. Early registration ends this Monday, June 13th, so register now.

This year our theme will be the Great Commission. We'll not be repeating the usual stuff heard from Evangelicals and Missionals on the subject. Likely few texts of Scripture have been so abused as this one, so we'll work to reform and encourage the Church to obey this key command of our Lord in all its particularity.

Starting Friday, in order here are the preachers and their subjects...

Standing in the gap; assassination of bin Laden...

Two posts from my son, Joseph Bayly, worth reading--the first on standing in the gap and the second on the assasination of Osama bin Laden.

Joseph and David Abu-Sara are leading a church plant in Indianapolis called ClearNote Church of Indianapolis. Listen to some of the sermons, here; I commend their ministry to you and your Indy friends and relatives.

(TB)

Blah blah blah blah blah I blah blah would blah blah blah definitely say blah blah blah blah blah...

Once again, we have that paragon among unreforming preachers asked about his take on sex--this time homosexual marriage.

Lauren Green of FoxNews did the interview March 28, 2011, as part of the Justice Event hosted by Redeemer's Hope for New York, Diaconate, and Grace & Race ministries. The place was packed, bases were loaded, bottom of the ninth, the pitch floated in waist high...

Sierra Trading Post...

Readers will note Baylyblog doesn't sell its content. There are only a couple links to stores in the sidebar to the left and those are links to Amazon lists we think readers may be interested in--specifically books written by our dad, Joe Bayly, and another list of recommended books on sexuality. Also, because of our appreciation for...

Legacy publishers' days are numbered...

Legacy publishers are in trouble and no tears needed. As with seminaries, colleges, denominations, parachurch organizations, missions, and certainly churches, wealth and power corrupt. So it's good to see fresh faces committed to God's truth using the new media that are taking the publishing world by storm. Although those losing money and power will bear false witness against it...

IV issues statement responding to inquiries concerning IU/InterVarsity event promoting sodomy (part VII)...

(Tim: this is seventh in a series of posts [one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven] responding to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's promotion of sodomy at an Indiana University campus forum they sponsored the evening of Monday, March 28, 2011.)

Below is a statement issued privately by InterVarsity yesterday, April 7th, in response to some who expressed their concern over IV's recent forum at Indiana University titled, "Jesus and the End of Homophobia." An individual who received this statement from IV kindly forwarded it to us and we post it here for the record (downloard a PDF). We will have a post responding to this statement in  the next day or so...

IV hierarchy approved William Campbell's leadership at IU/InterVarsity event promoting sodomy (part VI)...

(Tim: this is sixth in a series of posts [one, two, three, four, five, six, seven] responding to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's promotion of sodomy at an Indiana University campus forum they sponsored the evening of Monday, March 28, 2011. Pic on right.)

This past Monday, April 4, 2011, Jacob Mentzel and Lucas Weeks met with Mark Abdon, InterVarsity's staff worker for their undergraduate chapter here at Indiana University, to state their concern over InterVarsity's promotion of homosexuality at an InterVarsity forum the previous week, and to ask Mr. Abdon and InterVarsity to issue a public correction. As a courtesy to InterVarsity and its staff, prior to this meeting with Mr. Abdon InterVarsity's office of the president had been called and informed this meeting was going to occur later that day.

The following account was written the same day as the meeting and edited for accuracy yesterday (4/5) and today (4/6). It's posted here as one more part of the historical record. 

An Account of Our Meeting With Mark Abdon

by Jacob Mentzel and Lucas Weeks

On Monday, April 4th, we met with Mark Abdon, the undergraduate staff worker for InterVarsity at Indiana University, to discuss IV's recent forum on homosexuality. Mark had an undergraduate woman present with him who plans to go on staff with IV this coming year. It was obvious Mark knew what we wanted to talk about, so we asked him about how the decision was made to have former IV staffer, William Campbell, speak.

Mark told us the majority of the planning for the week's forums belonged to one of his undergraduate students and that the planning began in May of 2010. He made it clear IV's goal from the beginning was to live at peace with the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered Queer (LGBTQ) community in Bloomington. InterVarsity partnered with Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Equality (SAGE), a LGBTQ student advocacy group on campus, to sponsor the event. Mark did not mention the involvement of any other student groups. He noted InterVarsity campus groups were being expelled from universities around the country over the issue of homosexuality, and he was very concerned that the Bloomington chapter not face the same fate.

Because of these concerns, InterVarsity had adopted a policy that the event would be viewpoint neutral. It was decided there would be no "theological content" in the forum...

Another campus minister addresses IU/InterVarsity's promotion of sodomy (part V)...

(Tim: this is fifth in a series of posts [one, two, three, four, five, six, seven] responding to to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's promotion of sodomy at a Indiana University campus forum they sponsored the evening of Monday, March 28, 2011.)

ClearNote Campus Fellowship is, with IU/InterVarsity, an Evangelical campus ministry working on the campus of Indiana University. CNCF's pastor, Jacob Mentzel, has written a response to InterVarsity's promotion of homosexual sin, along the way making some good suggestions for how InterVarsity should correct the scandal.

IV gags the Bible at IU/InterVarsity event promoting sodomy (part IV)...

(Tim: this is fourth in a series of posts [one, two, three, four, five, six, seven] responding to to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's promotion of sodomy at a Indiana University campus forum they sponsored the evening of Monday, March 28, 2011.)

“The unique Divine inspiration, entire trustworthiness and authority of the Bible.”                         - InterVarsity’s Doctrinal Basis

Sola Scriptura is a cornerstone of Protestantism. From the beginning, Protestants have objected to the idea that we can know God and what He commands from any source other than His divinely revealed Word. As the Westminster Confession puts it: “The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture” I.10

Of the many things that were wrong with the event “Jesus and the end of Homophobia” hosted by Indiana University’s InterVarsity chapter, the most disturbing was the silencing of God’s Word. As a Protestant, Evangelical organization, InterVarsity is supposed to be committed to the Bible. It is supposed to be committed to the Bible because it is in the Bible that God speaks to us most clearly. If we have a question about Who God is and what He requires of us, the Bible is where Protestants turn for the answer.

But that is not what happened at last week’s event. Last week, InterVarsity sponsored an event where the Bible was not allowed into the discussion. God was not allowed to speak through His Word...

Remove IV from your church's missions budget: Indiana University chapter of InterVarsity promotes sodomy (part I)...

(Tim: this is first in a series of posts [one, two, three, four, five, six, seven] responding to to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's promotion of sodomy at a Indiana University campus forum they sponsored the evening of Monday, March 28, 2011.)

Back when David's and my father and mother, Joe and Mary Lou Bayly, were living on Mass. Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they were InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's (IV) first staff workers in New England, it would have sickened them to know their children would live to see the day when IV was advocating sodomy in the Name of Jesus Christ and His Word. That's what happened this week here at Indiana University.

IV brought in a longtime IV staff worker (he recently left IV staff) to speak against homophobia at a special attention-getting series of public meetings and that man promoted sodomy in the Name of Jesus Christ, His Church, His Word; and certainly in the name of that parachurch organization known in this country as IV. They're the sponsor of Urbana and they own the book marketer that does the best job of promoting the feminist heresy within the Evangelical world, InterVarsity Press.

Weird, isn't it? I mean, that an organization and its publishing arm would use the Name of Jesus to obliterate the meaning of sexuality in society, the home, and the Church concerning the relationship between the sexes would then go on to work to obliterate the meaning of sexuality also in the matter of how body parts go together? Check out the caption under the pic: the Indiana Daily Student got this one right.

Honestly, I thought IV would try to keep these two parts of Gods' Creation Order separate so the scandal of giving in on the second would not undercut the massive progress they've made in destroying the first. Do you think people might be on guard now that it's obvious its full-out sexual anarchy IV's committed to? Or do you think IV will be able to finesse the matter, claiming it's a one-off and purely accidental that in this particular chapter and speaker, feminism and sodomy are both promoted?

Yes, yes, of course. I know IV's leadership will claim that this is an anomaly...

Hide it under a bushel, yes! I'm gonna blur the lines...

(Tim, w/thanks to Tenile: One blogger produced a very, very rough transcript of Martin Bashir interviewing Rob Bell and I asked Tenile Victorsen if she'd give us a good one. Here it is. If you find an error, please let us know and we'll correct it. Interspersed in the text are a few comments of my own in black text between brackets, italicized.)

Bashir: One mega church pastor has ignited a theological firestorm by suggesting that our response to the Christian message in this life will not necessarily determine our eternal destiny. In his book Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, Rob Bell says that ultimately all people will be saved, even those who’ve rejected the claims of Christianity. He argues people will eventually be persuaded by God’s love, postmortem, in the life to come. [Note how straighforward Bashir is stating Bell's thesis. As we enter the murkiness of Bell's words, we must remind ourselves of this straighforward warning from God:  "...it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment..." (Hebrews 9:27)] Pastor Rob Bell joins us now. Good afternoon, sir. Before we come to talk about the book, just help us with this tragedy in Japan. Which of these is true? Either God is all-powerful but he doesn’t care about the people of Japan and, therefore, they’re suffering, or he does care about the people of Japan but he’s not all-powerful? Which one is it? [Do we really have to choose between these two, Mr. Bashir?]

Bell: I begin with the belief [Let the listener understand he means no offense to those with a different belief.] that God--when we shed a tear, God sheds a tear. [Hallmark card sentiment, but the scale of the senitment doesn't match the scale of the horror. Pastor Bell trivializes the massive death and destruction of the earthquakes and tsunamis, or the terrible suffering of the Japanese people. Just one tear? Whole cities destroyed and "a tear" for Pastor Bell and "a tear" for God?] So I begin with a divine being [Speaking to the Areopagus surrounded by the pantheon of gods, the Apostle Paul declares: “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth..." (Acts 17:24). Speaking to the world today in the midst of our pantheon of gods, Pastor Bell can't even bring himself to use the definite article to refer to his god. It's not "the God Who is there" but "a divine being."] who is profoundly [Adverbs weaken arguments but strengthen sentiment. Pastor Bell adores adverbs.] empathetic, compassionate and stands in solidarity with us. [Actually, God stands in solidarity only with those who, by faith, are "in Christ" and His Church. Concerning all others, the ax is at the root. Thus note how, by leaving "us" undefined, Pastor Bell denies the distinction between the Church and the world. This denial of distinctions is central to his false prophecies and is a defining prejudice of post-moderns--Pastor Bell's target audience.] Secondly, the dominant story [To speak of the work of redemption recorded in Scripture as a "story" reminds me of what everyone said when the planes took down the World Trade Center on 9/11: "It was just like the movies." The false images of movies helped our mind's eye to see...

Good Shepherd Band releases EP of ClearNote Church's worship music...

(Tim) Here's a recording of a small part of the music ClearNote Church uses for our Lord's Day worship. The EP was just released a couple days ago. Give it a listen.

(Note to downloaders: check your email's spam folder if you do not receive a download code immediately)

 

Classic rock and manly zeal....

"...it's indie or classic rock that moves our spirit."

(Tim) You all know ClearNote Church is filled with classical musicians but we worship mostly under the leadership of amplified instruments. This EP just released by our worship musicians gives you a good feel for how we're led. What distinguishes our worship leaders is that they use instrumentation and tunes and rhythms that are familiar to those who attend. We're not asked to go back into genres of previous centuries when we sing God's praises and pray.

Then too, we believe our music should be characterized by masculine zeal. The congregation should have men pushing us to express our joy and firm commitment and worship for the majesty and glory of God. Faint spirits and cold hearts are challenged when singing God's praises, here.

So you'll notice how well-matched the music and instrumentation and beat are to our goal. If you were to worship with us one Lord's Day morning, you'd notice this is how we pray and preach, also--we don't give people space for unbelief and ambivalence...

No novelties; just agreeing with our fathers...

(Tim) When ClearNote Church was founded and her officers were exploring extending a call to me to serve as her pastor, I asked for something quite large from them. What I wanted was the freedom to hold to, live, and preach and teach historic Christian, Protestant, Reformed doctrine. Nothing new--just the old stuff. Were they willing to grant me that inestimably precious liberty?

They said "Yes," and on such a very simple question and answer hang the destinies of men and women across the ages and around the world.

Today, churches would do well to know the historic Christian, Protestant, and Reformed (which is to say the Biblical) faith and doctrine, and to fire any pastor or elder who wants to go a different way. Oppositely, churches should love and protect any pastor or elder who has those commitments and teaches truth, rebukes sin and false doctrine, and lovingly calls the souls under His care back to the Word of God.

This thought came to mind reading this from an e-mail just received from a friend who described his teaching and writing ministry...

Rob Bell's no servant of God; he's a peddler of postures hip and kool...

Jesus answered and said to them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day" (John 6:43,44).

(Jesus said) "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:42-44).

(Jesus said) "Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28).

(Tim) We've warned against Rob Bell before here and here. That second link is a post titled, "Just one more savage wolf..." alluding to this warning to the Ephesian elders by the Apostle Paul:

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. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. (Acts 20:28-31)

If possible, that savage wolf, Rob Bell, becomes bolder in his wickedness. Watch this video:

Another manly hero for our time...

(Tim, w/thanks to many) Joel Northrup wrestles for Linn-Mar High School in Marion, Iowa. Wrestling's big in Iowa--something like football in Massilon, Ohio--and Joel had done very well, making it to state. But lightning struck.

Joel drew Cassy Herkelman as an opponent and decided to forfeit. He released this statement explaining his decision:

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Cassy and Megan (Black, the tournament’s other female entrant) and their accomplishments. However, wrestling is a combat sport and it can get violent at times. As a matter of conscience and my faith, I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner. It is unfortunate that I have been placed in a situation not seen in most of the high school sports in Iowa.

Is anyone surprised a young man who's retained some modicum of sexual modesty today is a homeschooler? Is anyone surprised the secularists consider this...

Leading worship, I: singing praises...

Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, Ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name; Bring an offering, and come before Him; Worship the LORD in holy array. (1 Chronicles 16:28-29)

(Tim) Young men reading the stuff published on worship today would be quite justified in fearing that worship is very, very complicated and only the people who buy lots of books and read lots of articles and think very deeply about this matter could possibly design and lead a worship service that does what it's supposed to do. Why, simply the debates over what the Regulative Principle prohibits and requires are endless! What's a poor boy to do?

In the interest of cutting through some of the verbiage and helping Reformed pastors who want to follow the early Reformers in worship as they follow them in preaching God's Word, here are a few reforms which take their cue from Geneva.

1. The main method of restoring congregational participation within Reformed worship was to call congregants to sing. Thus the music had to be (and was) quite simple. Under Calvin, the congregation sang only the melody; it was plainsong with no parts. Certain men of our time debate endlessly over whether popular tunes known outside the church were used during early Protestant worship. Both sides have their scholars, but my recommendation is that you not waste time on the argument. Leave it alone.

Following the Geneva pattern of repudiating the high style of the idolatrous Roman Mass and cultivating a simplicity that would encourage the common man to join in the singing, we ourselves should repudiate high classical style that communicates our most-excellent taste while masquerading as being all about reverence for God...

Art ministry today: cool and hip...

(Tim) Whether in the U.S. or Western Europe, Reformed hipsters have fallen in love with art. For communicating the Gospel, preaching is out and art is in--it's the great white hope. Draw the Gospel. Sculpt the Gospel. Paint the Gospel. Use words only if you must.

David Baker is a student here at ClearNote Pastors College who, with his wife Marta and their children, were raising support under the Presbyterian Church in America's Mission to the World when God led them to move to Bloomington and begin training for pastoral ministry. David's a painter and he'd been headed to Dublin, Ireland, where he planned to be a part of an MTW team there, and to focus on the arts community. Recently, David corresponded with another MTW missionary in a Western European country about the arts movement within MTW and the PCA.

* * *

Dear (John Doe),

I should give you a brief background and update on what we are doing. As you may know we were on the path to work in arts ministry in Dublin, Ireland with MTW. We took a 5-year leave-of-absence from MTW for education and because of some other issues that made it clear that the yoking with the Irish church was not a good one. I'm now a pastor in training at ClearNote Pastor's College in Bloomington, Indiana. I continue to make art and I participate in a local gallery. I love using God's gift of artistic talent to His glory. He gives us these gifts.

When we were working on support raising we spent time with various churches around the country and we got to hear and see a lot of what was going on in the the arts ministry movement.

ClearNote Resources: free MP3 of Bonar's "Words to Winners of Souls..."

(Tim) ClearNote Press today announced a free MP3 recording of Horatio Bonar's Words to Winners of Souls. We're grateful to the men who did the work of recording and puting the file up on the server. We're especially grateful to Jeff Ewer for his reading. The audio is free to anyone who registers and I trust many will find it helpful.

ClearNote Church, Bloomington, Indiana...

(Tim) Yesterday, Church of the Good Shepherd voted to change her name to ClearNote Church, Bloomington, Indiana. The new name comes from this text:

For if the bugle produces an indistinct sound, who will prepare himself for battle? (1Corinthians 14:8)

It will take a while to make the change everywhere it's needed, but announcing it here may help to avoid confusion among our readers.

Differences between small and large families...

(Tim, w/thanks to Eric) Our Lord, the Apostle Paul, and economists are agreed that money matters quite a lot. For instance, check out the comments on this blog responding to the news that, in China, a law is being proposed that would make an adult child's failure to visit his parents actionable in court. If the law passes, parents could sue their child for failure to visit and the child could be fined and directed to submit to a visitation schedule. What wonderful visits that would produce! Beyond the question of banks, pensions, and Social Security, though, there's another set of numbers worth noting, here.

We have a fair number of international students who attend ClearNote Church, Bloomington (our new church name), and some are from China. Due to China's one-child policy, these students rarely have siblings or cousins. Picture it: one father and mother had one child--a son; another father and mother had one child--a daughter; that son and daughter married and had one son who married someone else's daughter--again, an only child. Now what do you have?

You have a married couple who themselves have one child who will grow up with two parents, four grandparents, and eight great-grandparents. It's entirely conceivable he'll have some of his great-grandparents live to the time of his marriage, at which time he'll take on through his wife another set of two parents, four grandparents, and eight great-grandparents. Let's assume only half of that couple's great grandparents survive to the time of their marriage; then that couple each has two parents, four grandparents, and four great-grandparents, which brings the total number of aging relatives on the shoulders of that young couple to twenty. And if all their great-grandparents are still alive, the total is twenty-eight.

Which is to say that, beyond the hundreds of millions of little babies slaughtered by the one-child policy and forced abortions of China in the past century, they now have a rapidly aging population. It's estimated one in four adults will be over the age of sixty-five by 2050.

Let's be practical about this. When my mother-in-law and mother want to move into someone's house...

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...

The complementarian hermeneutic: Adam and Eve/Adam and Steve...

(Tim, w/thanks to Joseph) If you'd like to see into the future of churches that market themselves as Evangelical or hip and Reformed, this article gives a clear picture of how it will fall out next with sodomy. First we threw out God's Order of Creation concerning patriarchy and next we're going to throw out God's Order of Creation concerning heterosexuality. But the work will be hidden behind the high moral ground of past church reforms in slavery and male dominance, and the wreckers will be chattering on about love.

If we could deny the application of Adam first, then Eve, to anyone other than Christians, and only among Christians to tie-breaking votes at home, men preaching Sunday mornings, and women having voice but no vote in our elders meetings, the next step is only logical: we'll deny that God creating Eve (rather than Steve) for Adam bars practicing sodomites from church membership and we'll think it's progressive to refer to heterosexual marriage as "God's ideal" while approving monogamous sodomite unions as a worthy second-best. Outside the Christian home and Church, we'll seek to repeal laws against sodomy because, like patriarchy, heterosexuality is a private Christian truth.

Trimming God's Word and authority is a coherent strategy that moves on to the next project and giving away territory to Satan never causes him to be less aggressive on his next mission. Every last bit of territory we concede will serve him well as the staging ground for his next attack on God's Order of Creation.

Some complementarians have written about the inevitability of the feminist hermeneutic giving birth to the homosexualist hermeneutic. By this they only mean that the complete denial of Adam's headship over Eve will also result in the complete denial of God's gift of Eve to Adam and His limiting of sex to monogamous heterosexual marriage. They're right, as far as they go. But they fail to see the inevitability, also, of their own minimalistic complementarian hermeneutic giving birth to an equally minimalistic heterosexualist hermeneutic...

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...

Letters to Paul (I): language in the Emergent Church...

(Tim: Building on his series on Jonathan Edwards and the Atonement, here's another series--numbers one, two, three, four, and five--by our American African correspondent, David Wegener. But first, a note from David on the purpose of this series.)

Paul is a Zambian Christian leader, a graduate of the school where I teach. I’ve taken him as representative of one of my students so I can have a face to look at in my mind as I write these letters.

Often my students puzzle over what they hear coming from the church in the west. Much of their background has led them to accept without question what comes from western Christians. "After all, they brought us the gospel and keep coming back and helping us." My exhortation to Paul is the one given by his namesake: “Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess 5:21).

Letters to Paul: Language in the Emergent Church

Dear Paul: I want to write a few letters to you about the atonement of Christ, criticizing several teachings that are coming from the west. But first I need to write one about language and communication styles.

A number of American Christian writers today have adopted a style that feels very inviting. They ask a lot of questions. They word their statements in a way that seems humble. They admit that they don’t have all the answers. They show an admirable hesitancy in making truth statements. They don’t rebuke people but want to leave us all feeling affirmed, one of the group, encouraged, like a fellow pilgrim on a journey...

Giving thanks for true love...

(Tim) In the preface to his book, Alias Shakespeare, the late Joe Sobran wrote: "I would much rather be in the tradition of great American cranks like Thoreau, Ambrose Bierce, Lysander Spooner, and H. L. Mencken, than belong to the mass of scholars who, ever mindful of tenure, promotion, grants, and that last infirmity of ignoble minds, respectability, never deviate from scholarly consensus."

Everyone wants to have led a scientific revolution, but where's the man willing to lead one?

This Thanksgiving, I thank God for the nobility and fear of God that led Joe Sobran and Joe Bayly to deviate from the consensus and to oppose the regnant racism and sexism that deny the moral agency of blacks, women, and Jews...

Announcing our 4th Annual Good Shepherd Band Christmas Sing-A-Long.

(Jody Killingsworth) Each year, our worship band joins forces with our adult and children’s choirs and fifteen or so orchestral musicians from Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music to lead the Bloomington community in celebrating the Incarnation of our promised Messiah. It’s exuberant, ecstatic, poignant, energetic, stirring, tremendous, resplendent; and best of all, participatory!

So come sing your Christmas hearts out with us. Then join us for Lord’s Day worship the next morning. We’d love to have you, especially if you’re from out of town. Let us know, and we'll do our best to find a home for you and your family while you're here.

When: Saturday, December 11 at 7pm 

Where: Church of the Good Shepherd          

Here’s a teaser to whet your appetite…

Doug Moo assumes authority over the text of God's Word...

(Tim, w/thanks to a longtime friend of Baylyblog) Over at another blog, Denny Burk does a good job exposing just one of many hundreds of places where the recently-released New International Version 2010 deletes or changes God's words in order to make Scripture more palatable to postmoderns. The verse in question is 1Timothy 2:12 which has, up until now, always been translated in such a way as to make clear to English speakers that, through the Order of Creation and the Fall, God has made clear woman is not to "teach" or "exercise authority" over man.

Now, though, such a message is horribly embarrassing, so it must be changed. This, of course, is precisely what Doug Moo and his colleagues paid by Zondervan and Biblica are eager to do, so it's a serendipitous set of associations. Thus this latest Bible product they're trying to sell, the New International Version 2010, gives us a much more approachable text:

I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man;^b she must be quiet.

^b Or over her husband

Yes, it's one thing to "assume authority" and something else entirely to "exercise authority." That's the point, dear readers. But hey, you can justify your change with a whirlwind of words as Doug does in the comments under Mr. Burk's post...

The academy, the seminary, the church, and terminal degrees...

(Tim) Under the post about Wheaton's quarter-billion capital campaign, a reader asked, "(If a man) wants to prepare to be an Old or New Testament Professor... (w)here would you recommend him to study for a Ph.D. and why is this a better place to go than Wheaton?" Taking this as a jumping-off point for some related thoughts, I commented:

The academy has taken over the Reformed church and needs to be pushed back to being a servant, rather than a master. And its service needs to be circumscribed to the end that, once its overreaching has been disciplined, it doesn't have an easy time taking back lost ground.

The first necessary act of discipline is to reclaim for the church the training of shepherds. The academic model has utterly failed. It turns out men whose basic orientation is to avoid conflict. Not to be too hard on seminaries, though; this is only what academic institutions are ordered to produce. We shouldn't be harsh on them for doing what they're made to do.

The academy in its current manifestation is set up to manufacture men committed to being good disciples (of their profs) who will be hired by good colleges and universities...

Man vs. lust...

(Tim: Nathan Alberson writes) Dear Dad or Mom:

Your average teenage boy already knows about the birds and bees. But how on earth are you going to talk your darling child through all the issues that come along with it: from lust to porn... Wouldn't it be nice if there was some sort of book about sex written for young men...