BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

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...

Salt losing its savor...

This is Dad's column from the June 1963 issue of Eternity magazine. Dad chose the title when the column was first published.

Men have long been claiming to hold to Gospel-centrality while running in terror from any declaration of God's holiness and authority. But now, instead of procaliming God's moral absolutes, Inter-Varsity staff workers here on the campus of Indiana University promote homosexual perversion. (TB)

* * *

This year, speaking to college students (as an Inter-Varsity staff member)—especially in dormitory and fraternity discussions—I’ve been asked once question again and again. It almost always takes this form: “Why is premarital intercourse wrong?”

Often there are explanatory or qualifying clauses: “—with the girl you’re going to marry some day;” “—when it seems to work out well in parts of Europe where it’s pretty commonly accepted;” “—if neither of you sees anything wrong with it;” “—since he may be shipped overseas any minute;” “—when it seems, like the psych professor says, to be merely a normal response to a human appetite.”

Those clauses reveal the more basic question, one that is foundational to the Christian religion: Are there such things as moral absolutes, or is everything relative, subject to the conditions of time and place and opinion? The latter view, probably held (consciously or unconsciously) by a majority on today’s academic scene, was expressed by the scientist Sir Julian Huxley in a recent issue of Nature...

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...

A wedding sermon for man and woman...

The Bible says it is better to marry than to burn with passion. But we say that it’s better to live with each other first to determine whether you are “compatible”. We say that it is better to burn with passion than to get married before you have established your career. We say that it is better to give ourselves to lust than to give up the prospect of two high-paying jobs. We even say that it is better to give ourselves to impurity before marriage than for people to think we are weird or to call us "legalists" or "prudes." - Joseph Bayly in a recent wedding sermon

Here's a wedding sermon that, across church history, would have been a yawn. But today it elicits anger and hatred--and from men and women claiming to be Reformed.

How have we gotten to the place that pastors leave out the word 'obey' in the woman's vow and preach sermons to brides that don't mention childbearing and submission?

Speaking in Toledo this past weekend at the Friday Night Bible Study at the home of Bob and Debbie Forney, I pointed out that the weddings I attend nowadays are entirely gender-neutral...

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...

With the souls of sodomites destroyed, children are next...

Hazael said, “Why does my lord weep?” Then he answered, “Because I know the evil that you will do to the sons of Israel: their strongholds you will set on fire, and their young men you will kill with the sword, and their little ones you will dash in pieces, and their women with child you will rip up.” (2 Kings 8:12)

Time and again, those who pastor souls are called by God to enter into the havoc and destruction caused by the sexual depredation of children. Sometimes it's the children themselves who initiate the sin; other times it's an older relative or some unrelated adult, both male and female. One tragic aspect of this ministry is watching how often sexualized children grow up into bondage to sexual perversion, themselves. Little boys molested by older boys or men grow up desiring men rather than women.

This simple fact needs to be forced out of the closet, into the light...

The Jewish problem of nice rabbis...

Here's a good post on that typically Jewish problem of nice rabbis. The post's written by a rabbi who got thinking about how destructive nicness has been to the moral authority of Jewish rabbis.

But wait a second; are we allowed to write "Jewish rabbis?" Isn't that a stereotype? And who says Jewish rabbis are the only religious leaders who are too nice and have lost their authority? Isn't that a negative stereotype of Jews? Where's Abe Foxman when you need him?

Anyhow, the revelation came while the author listened to Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki speaking on the marketing savvy of polarizing your audience. Give it a read.

(TB, w/thanks to Matt)

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.

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...

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...

"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...

"Suzy did not want a leader for a husband..."

(Tim, w/thanks to Michael F.) The men over at Pyromaniacs do excellent work. Read them regularly. Today, Dan Phillips posted "Are You Sure You Want a Husband Who...".  Don't miss it.

Old queens in chamois vestments...

(Tim) Good post on the dearth of men in pulpits...

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...

Luther on the Gospel-grace of the Law...

(Tim) At times, it seems best to promote a discussion to the main page. Readers lose track of discussions in the comments under old posts. Here's one such discussion that I'm promoting for reasons I hope are obvious.

It's my conviction that the endless mantra of grace that permeates our Evangelical/Redeemer/Westminster/Campus Crusade/R2K/Covenant world leads to us knowing little of grace because we despise God's Law and repentance.

In the midst of a discussion bearing on this matter, the historian Darryl Hart asked me to clarify what I meant when I spoke of the grace of the Law--that to preach the Law is Gospel preaching and that the Law is our Gospel schoomaster or tutor? Here I respond:

Scripture says:

Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith" (Galatians 3:24).

This is the great failure of Gospel preaching in our time, and the reason for the absence of fruit within our churches. We fail to preach the Law, instead trying to save unregenerate sinners from the indignities of repentance. We preach grace without leading souls there through the Law. We repudiate the Schoolmaster. It's the habit of pastors only to address the regenerate within the Covenant Community while outside that Community we gag preachers, leaving Gospel proclamation and conversion to Campus Crusade...

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.

We're all gay, now...

(Tim) Many of the current changes in English usage are motivated by the hatred of sex that is a defining feature of the postmodern. He opposes distinctions, particularly that hardwired distinction between man and woman we used to call "sex."

At times, his hatred is directed against God Himself. Consider the decline of naming God "Father" in preaching, teaching, and prayer. Among pomos, this change often is the most direct way of ascertaining faith or unbelief. If when "we cry out 'Abba! Father!'" the "Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God," those who refuse to name Him "Father" are not indwelt by the Spirit, but remain lost in their rebellion against God. Jesus commanded us to "Pray like this: Our Father which art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name." Names have always been important to God. When we think to alleviate our own (or others') pain by avoiding addressing God as "Father," He yet remains the Father (pater) from whom all fatherhood (patria) gets its name. No other name will do.

Turning from God to man, the postmodern's attack on sex is a mishmash. The enemy can breach the wall as well by stealth and confusion and radar jamming as a ramrod smashing against the gates. Postmoderns are fuious that God made Adam first, then Eve; that He decreed Adam to be our federal head; and that He named our race "adam" rather than "adam-eve" or "eve," and this fury has led to changes in English usage which, in turn, have motivated thousands of deletions of the original Hebrew and Greek in our latest Bible products. It's not by frontal attack as much as by a thousand cuts: here a 'he' cut, there a 'him' cut, everywhere a 'father,' 'brother,' and 'son' cut. It's a tsunami of appeasement.

Then too, pomos obscure the nature of sex, itself. There's lots of talk about being sensitive to the queer...

Witchdoctors in Zambian Culture

(Tim: a series on beliefs about spirit beings in Zambian culture by David Wegener) 

** Editors Note: Readers in the US may not understand just how prevalent these beliefs are in African culture. Witchdoctors, or "Traditional Healers", are regularly consulted by Africans both inside and outside of the church. In other words, this report from David doesn't represent anything exotic where he lives. Rather, it's "business as usual". **

I’ve been teaching class on Spirit Beings this fall at our theological college. As one of their assignments, I asked the students to interview a witchdoctor and ask him a set of questions. They also interviewed a local pastor and asked him the same set of questions and then they were to evaluate the answers of both from Scripture and write things up in a paper.

The Players Association and search committees...

"He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep" (John 10:12-15).

(Tim) Last night I read an article about the sea-change in compensation that came during the seventies. Before then, stars--corporate executives, investment bankers, and baseball players, for instance--were paid reasonable amounts of money and couldn't simply tell their employers what they required. Then things changed.

Marvin Miller, a labor organizer, came to baseball's Players Association and told them it wasn't to their benefit simply and cheerfully to receive what baseball clubs' owners offered. But baseball was a gentleman's sport and the players didn't want a man representing them who might make waves. They were comfortable being told what was what, and not knowing what went on behind the screen.

As Miller tells the story, one time in a meeting early in his work with the Players Association, a "player stood up and hesitantly asked a question...

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.

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...

If the bride doesn't vow obedience, it's no Christian wedding...

Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac she dismounted from the camel. She said to the servant, “Who is that man walking in the field to meet us?” And the servant said, “He is my master.” Then she took her veil and covered herself. (Genesis 24:64, 65)

(Tim) The June wedding rush is over and December's secondary wave is still a few months off. So in the peace and quiet of August, here's a modest proposal.

When you officiate at a wedding, be Biblical and tell each bride and groom that you require the bride to submit to God, His Word, and His Creation Order by vowing to obey her husband--just as everyone requires the husband to vow to love his wife.

Explain to the couple that this has been the habit for a thousand years of Christian wedding liturgies; that it can be traced all the way back to Rebekah alighting from her mount and veiling herself when she approached Isaac, out in the fields; and that the modern repudiation of womanly submission is rebellion against God.

Inform each couple that your ordination vows prohibit complicity in rebellion against God's Word in any way, and therefore you must lead wedding ceremonies within the straight and narrow path God has ordained. So if you are to officiate at their giving and receiving of vows, those vows will include an explicit vow by the bride to obey her husband, and an explicit vow by the groom to love his wife.

And if you're not a pastor, what then?

Wedding liturgies: having sown the wind...

Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female... (Matthew 19:4)

(Tim) Saturday, Mary Lee and I attended a wedding that wasn't much different from the weddings readers of Baylyblog attend each week. Which is to say the wedding was unisex in everything but appearance. The woman wore a dress and the man, pants. The maid of honor and bridesmaids were women; the best man and groomsmen were men. But the doctrine?

Preached through the liturgy, it was scrupulously androgynous. The bride wasn't commanded to obey her husband and the husband wasn't commanded to love his wife. Every word was addressed to persons; never man or woman, husband or wife.

Until about thirty years ago, pastors presided over wedding ceremonies drowning in the beauty of sexual diversity...

The PCA all gussied up...

And it will be, like people, like priest... (Hosea 4:9b)

"A feminized Christianity may work to attract a certain type of man, but he’s probably not the man you want around when the local Imam starts practicing taqiyya on your congregation."

(Tim, w/thanks to Tim R.) Here's an article about the effeminacy of the Christian church, today. The piece approaches the crisis by noting the attractiveness of Islam to real men, making the point that a re-masculinized Christianity is necessary to hold off the forces of Islamic jihad. But if faith in Jesus is for this life only, we are of all men most foolish. We love, worship, and trust Jesus, not because it's useful, but because we fear the Holy God and know our sin, we dread Hell's worms and fire, and we ache for Heaven's joy and peace in the presence of the Lord. And yet...

Reformed men and women need to understand how focused the PCA is on gussying herself up for this effeminate age. As a denomination, we are all about perfect pitch rather than men making music to our God Who is a consuming fire. No Delta blues for us; it's all Julliard, violins, pianos, and maybe the occasional acoustic guitar or mandolin just to keep the audience off-balance. As with music, so with preaching: we allow no danger and take no risk. After all, women don't like danger. It could hurt their child.

But men? Real men don't wake up until they see why they're needed. And that need usually has something to do with danger--bullets, grenades, bombs, sexual predators, heresy, the wrath of God, death, and Hell.

But what have we done to Hell? We've turned it into the Narcissists' heaven. It's man getting himself forever, and what's not to like about that? No scared children. No women having hissy-fits over spiders hanging over the crackling fire. No worms eating a carcass. Just me, myself, and I forever...

Legal and illegal drugs...

(Tim, w/thanks to Yoseph) Psychotropic drugs have a place, I'm sure, but this short article (very unfortunately, where Arianna and her buddies huff and puff against God) demonstrates there are druggies on both sides of the legality fence. Whether the addict is getting his drugs from dealers, pain clinics, or psychiatrists, the cost to society and the drug-addled zombies and their families is terrible. Of course, like most sins of our culture, this one too is an epidemic among confessing Christians.

One in every forty-five adults of working age is getting money from taxpayers for a mental illness disability. And the number of children receiving federal payments for mental illness jumped from 16,200 in 1987 to 561,569 in 2007.

But maybe this explosion of legal drug use allows men to function as more productive members of society?

Apparently not...

Fencing the Table just prior to the Lord's Supper...

(Tim) This is the main part of the exhortation I give prior to our celebration of the Lord's Supper every other week at Church of the Good Shepherd. It's from an old, undated Scottish Book of Common Order. I've been asked for a copy often enough that I'm putting it up here for the use of others. Like most things worth reading and recommending, it's in the public domain and may be freely distributed.

* * *

The Order for the
Celebration of the Lord’s Supper,
or Holy Communion.

The Prayer after Sermon being ended, the Minister may give this Exhortation:

Dearly beloved,

As we are now about to celebrate the Holy Communion of the body and blood of Christ, let us consider how St. Paul exhorteth all persons to examine themselves before they eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For as the benefit is great, if with a truly penitent heart and lively faith we receive that holy sacrament (for then we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ, and drink His blood; then we dwell in Christ and Christ in us; we are one with Christ and Christ with us), so is the danger great if we receive the same unworthily...

Preaching to an effeminate age (IV)...

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires... - 2 Timothy 4:3

(Tim: this is fourth in a series, with the first here, second here, and third here.) Today, no issue illustrates the abandonment of the content and method of Apostolic preaching as clearly as sexuality. Few pastors, liberal or conservative, are faithful witnesses to this Biblical doctrine, leaving the pulpit impotent in the face of our effeminate age's direct opposition to God the Father and all good fatherhood pointing to His Image.

Liberal pastors are more obvious about it. Take, for instance, the Apostle Paul’s declaration concerning the connection between sexuality and authority:

But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. (1Timothy 2:12,13)

Seems obvious enough, doesn’t it? The teaching of the Apostles was that the order in which God created Adam and Eve, man and woman, was to be honored in our lives by woman not teaching or exercising authority over man.

But in the past fifty years, a great rebellion has flowed through the church. More liberal pastors have the honesty to say, with Fuller Seminary's Paul Jewett, that the Apostle Paul said it and he was wrong. [1] More conservative pastors claiming a high view of Scripture aren’t as brash or honest in their rebellion.

Rather than saying the Apostle Paul was wrong, they say they want to talk about what women can do--not what they can't do--and that the Apostle Paul has been misunderstood...

Preaching to an effeminate age (III)...

They went into Capernaum; and immediately on the Sabbath He entered the synagogue and began to teach. They were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. -Mark 1:21, 22

(Tim: this is third in an ongoing series, with the first here and the second here) Whether in classroom discussions, the dorm late at night, our accountant’s office, or coffee with a neighbor, the believer is hard pressed on all sides to give up truth. The radical relativism that permeates our world is absolutely antithetical to Scripture. Those seeking to preach Scripture faithfully will immediately face the world's dogmatic declaration that there is no truth--only stories, perspectives, and narratives; only my truth and your truth.

The intensity of the opposition we face is directly related to our faithfulness in preaching God’s Word with a form of delivery and content that is contextualized to the end that it appears radically authoritative to those acclimated to an effeminate relativism. Or, to put it another way, in our world one way to judge whether of not a preacher is a faithful servant of God is whether he is accused of arrogance. A faithful man will employ a method and content that bears witness to his faith that he is not communicating the words of men, but of God. With Calvin, he will declare that preaching is the Word of God. And the world has no way of understanding such declarations as anything but an arrogance that's sick and pathetic.

My wife and I were out for dinner one night. As we prepared to leave, we struck up a conversation with another couple at an adjoining table. In their mid-seventies, both were strikingly tall and dignified. During the preliminary small talk, we learned they had been married fifteen years, were from the Pacific Northwest, had several children from previous marriages, and he'd spent fifty years working as a computer programmer.

Our deeper conversation started with the woman exclaiming over the beauty of the ocean. She had learned I was a pastor and, trying to relate to us on a spiritual level, she told us how the sea gave her permission to commune with God as “she” rather than “he...”

Preaching to an effeminate age (II)...

(Tim: this is second in a series, with the first, here) It's in vogue for preachers to cop a posture of humility, today, but it’s almost always a counterfeit humility. While claiming to be speaking for God, they deny the very authority of God and His Word that forms the only foundation they can stand on when they say, “Thus says the Lord.”

Jonathan Edwards, the best-known preacher of the Great Awakening in Colonial America, points to the difference between true and false humility:

A truly humble man is inflexible in nothing but in the cause of his Lord and Master, which is the cause of truth and virtue. In this he is inflexible, because God and conscience require it. But in things of lesser moment, and which do not involve his principles as a follower of Christ, and in things that only concern his own private interests, he is apt to yield to others.

There are various imitations of (humility) that fall short of the reality. Some put on an affected humility. Others have a natural low-spiritedness, and are wanting in manliness of character. …In others, there is a counterfeit kind of humility, wrought by the delusions of Satan: and all of these may be mistaken for true humility. [1]

Edwards strikes an interesting note...

John Piper does even more good work...

(Tim) Speaking of the weaknesses of godly church officers, Jake Mentzel just passed this on:

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You may have already seen this, but yesterday on his blog, John Piper announced an extended leave of absence (May 1-December 31) from...

Preaching to an effeminate age (I)...

Then the Pharisees went and plotted together how they might trap Him in what He said. And they sent their disciples to Him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that You are truthful and teach the way of God in truth, and defer to no one; for You are not partial to any. Tell us then, what do You think? Is it lawful to give a poll-tax to Caesar, or not?”

But Jesus perceived their malice, and said, “Why are you testing Me, you hypocrites?” (Matthew 22:15-18)

(Tim: this is first in a series, with the second, here) A few years ago, I was speaking with a friend who taught theology at a respected evangelical seminary. We were discussing the response of some Christian leaders to being confronted over their abuse of Scripture. I expressed my conviction that the leaders’ commitment to turn from their sin was only pragmatic, and that in time they would proceed to do the very thing they had just promised not to do.

My friend was astounded that I could think these men capable of deception. He went on to tell me why he thought I was susceptible to such uncharitable thoughts: “Your problem, Tim, is that you spent too many years in the mainline denomination with other pastors who weren’t even Christians. But now, you’re back in the evangelical world and these men we’re working with are believers. You should never accuse another believer of lying.”

Really? Never?

Seminaries' true curriculum...

Then Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah made horns of iron for himself and said, “Thus says the LORD, ‘With these you will gore the Arameans until they are consumed.’” All the prophets were prophesying thus, saying, “Go up to Ramoth-gilead and prosper, for the LORD will give it into the hand of the king.”

Then the messenger who went to summon Micaiah spoke to him saying, “Behold now, the words of the prophets are uniformly favorable to the king. Please let your word be like the word of one of them, and speak favorably.”

But Micaiah said, “As the LORD lives, what the LORD says to me, that I shall speak.” (1 Kings 22:11-14)

(Tim) The purpose of seminaries today is to place their students in good jobs as pastors of good churches. But we live in an evil day when search committees want to hire men who will make a good show of honoring God and His Word while bending the Word at those places where the church's leaders are hard-hearted.

Say, for instance, the church has lots of women who have left submission to their husbands and service to their homes and children for submission to their bosses and service to their businesses and customers. Such a church will seek to hire a pastor who knows better than to preach on the Holy Spirit's sex-specific commands of Titus 2:3-5, that the older women are to teach the younger women to "workers at home" who are "subject to their own husbands." No one on the Search Committee will actually say it, of course--it's too important to be said.

So, search committee's doing what search committee's do, the secretary contacts Harvard Divinity School and asks for resumes. And when, depending on the church's building and location and terms of call offered, ten or two-hundred and fifty resumes arrive, the process of evaluating how precisely this or that man will posture himself between faithfulness to God and sensitivity to his congregation's hard hearts begins...

Church planters: process over substance, means over ends...

"Forget all the books. Forget all the men whose success you so desperately want for yourself. Forget Rick Warren. Forget Mark Driscoll. Forget Tim Keller. Forget Andy Stanley. None of them have anything to do with you."

(Tim) When I entered the pastorate, Dad's advice was sparse but memorable. Four offhand comments at different times, with no explanation.

• "Preach them down, then preach them back up again." (I had a yoked parish of two congregations.)
• "Don't use Pardeeville as a stepping stone." (Think William Still. Or better, Doug Wilson still out there in Moscow, Idaho.)
• "Go for the men and the women will follow." (Duh. We live in a day when wise men don't assume even the most basic truths.)
• "A visiting pastor makes a church-going people."

It's this fourth word of advice I want us to think about...

Greater love hath no man than this...

(Jesus said) "I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep" (John 10:11).

(Tim, w/thanks to Todd W.) The NYTimes' David Brooks sets out to explain how a nation of five million won as many gold medals as our nation of three-hundred million at the Winter Olympics this year. So he tells a brief version of the story of Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian instrument maker who tried to get back into Norway to help the Norwegian resistance movement during the Second World War.

The account reminds me of the Apostle Paul. What courage and tenacity in the face of the most terrible danger and suffering these hardened men demonstrated!

Which prompts me to ask when it was, precisely, that the sign of godliness in a pastor changed...

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...

Are video recordings of famous men, used in corporate worship services, the true preaching of God's Word...

(Tim) This post was a comment by son Joseph under a previous post titled "Beware of Despising Preaching." I thought it should be a post of its own.

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Let's start with a book of sermons by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. These are actual sermons that he preached and were recorded onto paper. You read one of them. Is it a real sermon? Yes. Did M.L. Jones preach it? Yes. Was it the proper preaching of the Word when he delivered the sermon? Yes. Did he preach it to you? No. Therefore, you have not been "under" the preaching of the Word. You have indeed read a written record of the proper preaching of the Word, and it is more than likely to be beneficial to you, but not in the way that you would be benefited had you been present in the congregation when he originally preached the sermon. And similarly, although it might have been infinitely better preaching, reading it is not going to benefit you as much as attending a real church where you are a member, submitted to the authority of the pastor preaching *to* you.

Now let's move to radio/mp3 sermons. The same thing can be said. You've heard an audio recording of a real sermon, but it wasn't preached to you. There is a big difference between the two. (I will ignore radio "sermons"  that are "preached" to a studio microphone instead of a congregation as they are not even preaching in my mind.)

Now what about public video recordings (as opposed to private video feeds, which I will address next)? Here I would make the same argument. Watching a recording of somebody preaching is not the same thing as them preaching to you. And yet there is a big difference between audio and video, isn't there? One difference is that video makes you *think* and *feel* that the person is addressing you directly, much more effectively than audio does. Why?

And we think we're modern...

(Tim) This excellent exhortation to church planters and other pastors by son Joseph was just posted on the ClearNote Fellowship Blog. With his wife, Heidi, Joseph is planting a church in Indianapolis and I commend the work to our readers if they know residents of Indy looking for a church home. For more information, please e-mail Joseph.

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Currently, my wife and I are reading out loud together volume one of Iain Murray’s two-volume biography of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The First Forty Years 1899-1939 (v. 1). (By the way, reading out loud is an excellent way to pass the time, but more about that another day.)

Whenever I read history, I find myself wondering at my own stupidity... It's truly amazing I so easily forget the truth of God’s declaration through King Solomon that “there is nothing new under the sun.” But I always do, and this is why it's so important to read history. Whenever I read about the past, I find that it's just like the present. Only today we’re so conceited we honestly think we’re the first ones to…

The relationship between a pastor's private and public duties (part I)...

(Tim) Pastor Stephen Baker serves on the pastoral staff of Church of the Good Shepherd while also serving as Dean of ClearNote Pastors College--a sister institution to Christ the Word's Reformed Evangelical Pastors College in Toledo. Here is the first in a series of posts by Stephen on the necessity of training pastors for holiness--not simply the performance of public duties.

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Playing a musical instrument requires hours and hours of private practice and study before it can be done in public. A man who has never touched an organ would be a fool if he thought he could publicly perform a Bach fugue on the first try. The same is true with playing basketball. One does not learn to play like Michael Jordan simply by watching from the stands. A surgeon does not perform intricate brain surgery without years of preparation. In all of these disciplines, there is a direct connection between the quality of the private preparation and the outcome of the public performance.

The same principle applies to the pastorate. A man who neglects the private duties of the ministry cannot expect to be fruitful in the public duties. Despite this clear reality, however, the emphasis in pastoral training at the seminary level is usually on the outward, public duties of the pastorate. In seminary, the vast majority of time and energy is devoted to making men capable shepherds, preachers, and counselors. But the emphasis in the New Testament is on making pastors holy men who meditate on the Word who do not shrink from suffering hardship. (To read the rest of Pastor Baker's post...)

Just one more savage wolf...

(Tim, w/thanks to David L.) What if a pastor were to take seriously the Apostle Paul's warning to the Ephesian elders:

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?

What if he were to read the Apostle Paul's prediction concerning what was about to happen in the church of Ephesus and assume this is also happening in his church right now?

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)

Would he test himself? Would he ask the Holy Spirit to reveal whether he himself is a hireling, or a good shepherd? Would he be on the alert? Would he look around for savage wolves? For false shepherds speaking perverse things in order to draw away disciples for themselves?

Would he wonder whether anyone in his own congregation could fairly describe his ministry as a "night and day" work of ceaselessly admonishing each of his sheep with tears?

Brothers, the church has always been under attack from both savage wolves and hirelings. And it's the failure of hirelings not to think about who the savage wolves are...

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.

"Joy and purpose and passion and pleasure and enthusiasm and hope and joy..."

(Tim, w/ thanks to Craig) Several years ago at the Acts 29 Lead Pastors Conference in Boulder, I heard Mark Driscoll talk about the irony of being invited to preach in the Crystal Cathedral and being embraced by its founding pastor, Robert Schuller.

Why would they want bad-boy Mark when they know he's going to punch them in the face with the Word, right?

Mark talked to sixty of us or so about how he'd not back down or compromise. He'd give it to them straight and see what happened. Robert Schuller posed no threat to his integrity.

So I was interested to be sent a link to his sermon given this past Lord's Day at the Crystal Cathedral. But before preaching, the prince of positivism, Robert Schuller, did a short interview to elicit Mark's credentials for speaking to his cosseted congregation in behalf of the Holy Spirit:

Robert Schuller: Your church has how many members?

The lost sheep and his shepherds...

(Tim) This is copied from the discussion under an earlier post, "If they desire his help...," and it may be helpful for readers to read that post and discussion, first. But the subject matter of the discussion is so important for the good of the Church and our readers' own souls and families that I'm posting this extended response here, on the main page.

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For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. (Jesus; Luke 19:10)

The issue is simple. Shepherds are gifted, called, and ordained to shepherd a particular flock of particular souls. This means going after the one lost sheep. Jesus our Good Shepherd came after us when we were His enemies and didn't welcome His interest and pastoral care. Remember, He died?

And if you've worked with sheep (or goats or cattle), you know that one lost sheep often is perfectly opposed to being brought back to the sheepfold. Sometimes he must be manhandled to get him to safety. This is the reason David, in Psalm 23, says...

"If they desire his help..."

(Tim, w/thanks to my Mary Lee) The July 18, 2009 issue of World ran an article about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's confession of adultery. The article is worth reading, especially if you're a frequent traveler, rich, or influential. Wealth is deceitful and pride goes before the fall.

Three statements stuck out to me.

First, why am I not surprised that YWAM's Virginia rep knew nothing about YWAM's ownership of the Fellowship's $1.8 million C Street home, and that when World asked them for clarification, the Fellowship declined to respond?

Second, the article admits it's common for politicians to have no church home or to skip church. This is increasingly true of missionaries, also, so here at Church of the Good Shepherd we've begun to implement standards with the missionaries our church supports. They must be a part of a local church, where they work, as well as hold permanent membership in an evangelical Bible-believing church that they and the church recognize as their home church.

Third, to the degree that Gov. Mark Sanford had a church, he claimed it was an evangelical congregation called Seacoast Church in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. He sometimes attended an Episcopal congregation when he was working in the capital, but Seacoast is his home church.

So, when Gov. Sanford publicly confessed to adultery, how did his Seacoast pastor respond?

Here's...

Five hundred years ago, he said...

(Tim) "...nobody is fit to preach the Gospel in a hostile world, unless his mind has been prepared for suffering. Therefore if we are to prove ourselves faithful ministers of Christ, not only must we ask Him for the spirit of knowledge and of wisdom, but also for the spirit of steadfastness and of courage, so that we may never be broken by desperate suffering, for this is the lot of the godly." - John Calvin, Acts, Vol. 1 (Torrance) pp. 266--267.

During the bloodshed, what did Rwanda's pastors do?

(Tim) Below is an excerpt from Philip Gourevitch's history of the Rwandan genocide, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families. This book should be read by every believer committed to opposing the slaughter of the feeble, elderly, newborn, and unborn upon which our civil compact has been built for decades, now.

A few years ago, a godly Rwandan was preaching to us here at Church of the Good Shepherd and he took the occasion to rebuke us, saying we Americans had no authority to condemn Rwanda's genocide when we were slaughtering 1.3 million children in our own nation, year after year, with no sign of the bloodshed ending.

Truth is, many, many denominations, churches, elders, and pastors have endorsed the slaughter of the unborn here in these United States. And even among those pastors who claim to be pro-life, precious few are anti-abortion. Like the Rwandan priests and pastors, many of us...

Fear of judgement is God's gift to pastors and elders...

(Tim) Church of the Good Shepherd hosted Ohio Valley Presbytery for our Spring Stated Meeting a week or so ago. Here are my sermon notes...

Gratitude for recent comments made here by our wives and daughters...

(Tim) Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, "The cruelest lies are often told in silence," and as I noted a week or so ago, it's been interesting to watch how the recent post about Emergency Contraception (sic) Pills, birth control, and abortion has been carefully avoided by men, but embraced by women. There are lessons here, one of which I think is that pastors today are about as concerned about the blood guilt of our sheep as the chief priests and elders were about the blood guilt of Judas when he came to them in anguish, confessing...

Minced confessions...

(Tim) Since entering the ministry in 1983, countless times I've read statements like this in recently published evangelical commentaries by scholars highly esteemed within their own guild:

Doug Moo concludes that "there is reason to doubt whether any important part of the narrative in Matthew 27:3-8 has been created under the influence of Old Testament passages." -R. T. France, Tyndale Commentary on Matthew, p. 385.

Let me remind us that here in Matthew 27:3-8 we have in our hands the very Word of God as it has come down to us from Heaven through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So it is, and yet it really isn't a "narrative." And to say "there is reason to doubt" that Matthew "created" any "important part" of God's Word is...

Pastors' wives: honor only to whom honor is due...

A widow is to be put on the list only if she is not less than sixty years old, having been the wife of one man, having a reputation for good works; and if she has brought up children, if she has shown hospitality to strangers, if she has washed the saints’ feet, if she has assisted those in distress, and if she has devoted herself to every good work. (1 Timothy 5:9, 10)

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) In her new book, Marriage, Mitres, and Being Myself, First Lady of Canterbury, Mrs. Rowan (Jane) Williams, speaks of the hardships of being married to a bishop. In a news piece announcing the book, the Telegraph quotes Mrs.Williams in ways that remind me a great deal of the wife of the new provost of David's and my alma mater, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary:

(Mrs.) Williams said clergy and their families have to endure "poor boundaries" between their public and private lives, "laughable" job descriptions and "few opportunities to congratulate oneself on a job well done". She claimed the spouses of church leaders are expected to entertain guests as well as raising children and following their own careers, and admitted visitors to Lambeth Palace are sometimes "shocked" at how untidy it is.

Mrs Williams ...is a mother-of-two and theologian as well as the wife of Dr Rowan Williams... "Housework has never been very high on my list of priorities," Mrs Williams writes...

"The Church can be a thankless employer, with poor boundaries between private and public space, vague practices about holidays and days off, laughable job descriptions and few opportunities to congratulate oneself on a job well done and completed."

Mrs Williams, 51, said many bishops' spouses feel "bitter resentment" and "positively weighed" down by the expectations placed on them.

How David and I have been blessed by the wives God gave us! But also, by the wives of our fellow pastors and elders! Thank you Heavenly Father.

When Sydney Anglican, Phil Jensen, and his wife, Helen, were visiting with us some years ago, one of our conversations was about choosing staff members...