BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

The world music of Alan Lomax...

At the height of the sixties civil rights movement, Alan Lomax put on a concert in Central Park. He was trying to close the distance between blacks of the south and white sympathizers in the northeast. One year later, in 1966, Lomaz recorded the Newport Folk Festival. But here are clips from Lomaz's recording of the earlier Central Park Concert. Check out numbers 43, 45, 48, and 50 by the Georgia Sea Island Singers from St. Simon Island. Then go exploring. By the end of February, Lomax's life work should all be up and ready. (TB)

Reformed pulpits today show Erasmus won...

In his Bondage of the Will, Luther opposes the Roman Catholic church's champion Biblical scholar, Erasmus of Rotterdam. In an earlier post, I put up an excerpt from the beginning of Bondage of the Will in which Luther tells his readers he will be making assertions because it's the character of the Christian mind to "delight in assertions."

One longtime Baylyblog reader who is a committed Roman Catholic thought to defend Erasmus here by placing a large quotation from Erasmus immediately under the Luther quote I had posted.

Reading the Erasmus excerpt, it was apparent Erasmus was saying one thing while doing another. The way Erasmus speaks in this excerpt is common among scholars today and, having put those scholars in charge of the training of our future pastors at our denominational seminaries, we've arrived at the place where preachers often are incapable of saying, "Thus says the Lord God Almighty."

Pastors preach for the approval of the lowest common denominator, scholars and the professional and chattering classes they manufacture, rather than the farmers, truckers, and coal miners who used to be Presbyterian but long ago left for Baptist and Pentecostal churches...

Man, who is but a maggot...

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

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

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

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

Amazon and pastoral care...

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

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

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

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

Roman Catholicism is a medieval heresy...

Under the post, Repenting of parachurch, Baptist childhoods..., one comment elicited this response from your scribe. I posted it as a comment, there, but also put it here for the benefit of those who don't keep track of comments. (TB)

Brothers, allow me a few responses, although they must be hopelessly brief considering the weight of these matters.

>>Be careful when you sling around words like apostasy, idolatry (Per Calvin we're all "fabricum idolarum") and heresy.

We are careful. That is, careful--very careful--to keep them alive. The proper word to use concerning Roman Catholicism is 'heresy'. Read Joe Brown's Heresies. Reformed pastors and elders use this word following our Reforming fathers's example because Roman Catholicism is a system of doctrine that leads souls to Hell. Systematically.

The center of Rome's system is the merchandising of salvation through...

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...

Vandy students have hissy-fits over open-air calls to repentance...

Back when I was an undergrad at UW-Madison, I was strengthened in my faith by the open-air preachers on Library Mall.

Once I was privileged to protect one of the men when the student body vice-president, Leon Varjian (see pic above from the famous Lady Liberty prank) assaulted him. Varjian was pelting the preacher with eggs. Clearly it hurt, so between Varjian's trips back to his wagon to stock up (he had many dozens), I picked the eggs out of his stash and smashed them on the pavement.

Varjian got mad, but back then I was a longhair and I think he realized if he could batter a man with eggs, I could batter the sidewalk. So he stopped what he was doing and I stopped, too.

Another time a man was picking the preacher up from behind and humping him while the law enforcement officers watched and laughed...

"For the wrath of man shall praise you..."

Here's the manuscript for the sermon I preached the Lord's Day following 9/11 ten years ago, and then again yesterday on its tenth anniversary. I should add that the manuscript usually serves only as my loose outline for the preaching of God's Word.

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 deafening silence...

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

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

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

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

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

-Maxims of Law

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

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)

Humility in deeds, not words alone....

It's important to remember that pride is made clear by both word and deed and not by words alone in assessing pride and humility. 

Neglecting this truth leads to false accusations. In Numbers 16, Korah, Dathan and Abiram lead a rebellion against Moses and Aaron saying, "You have gone far enough, for all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is in their midst; so why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?” 

They accuse Moses of lording it over the people by speaking for God. Moses "angrily" defends himself before God by saying, "Do not regard their offering! I have not taken a single donkey from them, nor have I done harm to any of them." His defense lies in his deeds. He is not proud simply because he speaks for God. He has done them no harm, nor has he profited from them in any way.

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.

Not to worry, Congresswoman Bachmann's resigned membership in her WELS church...

The Wisconisn Evangelical Lutheran Synod sees the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and raises them one. Or maybe ten.

In my former home of Pardeeville, Wisconsin, the WELS congregation was the dominant religious presence in town. When they called a new pastor, Mary Lee and I decided to invite him with his wife and children over for dinner. After a cordial introduction, we sat down at the table and I turned to him and said, "I've heard lots of things through the years, but let me ask you directly: do you pray, do I pray, or do we not pray at all?"

He answered, "You go ahead and pray and we'll sit by," and immediately his good wife turned to their children and said, "We're going to pray; fold your hands and close your eyes." God bless her.

We had a pleasant evening. During the conversation the WELS pastor told us his grandmothers was a godly Baptist and that he didn't pray with her, either...

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.

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...

Excellent comments...

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

(TB)

Elton John, preachers, and sodomy...

(Tim) Talented, absolutely. His eponymous breakout album back in 1970 was hauntingly beautiful and you knew he was here to stay. But since then, even more than his music John has taken his public identity from sodomy.

Two months ago out in Hollywood, John serenaded a few hundred $1,000 a plate guests at a fundraiser for the repeal of California's law banning sodomite marriage. Partiers included David Geffen, George W. Bush's Solicitor General Ted Olson, and the immediate past chairman of the Republican Party, Ken Mehlman. In other words, anyone who's made a name for himself and lots of wealth was there. Together they announced their commitment to this sexual rebellion against God that permeates Hollywood, Wall Street, Washington D.C., Las Vegas, and New York City. Also those two peas in a pod--the Democratic and Republican parties.

The entire world is getting along fine with Elton John. AIDS softened us up--it was the justification for the blather about "compassion" that provided cover for executive orders and legislation that normalized in one more area the rebellion against God's Order of Creation that is one of the defining characteristics of our culture.

Pastors too have learned our lesson...

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...

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.

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...

Bibleland: the cost of inerrancy's victory...

(David) Tim's and my father, Joe Bayly, used to say (in private and only to family members) that the price of inerrancy's doctrinal defeat of liberalism in the battle for the Bible of the 60s and 70s was the loss of the authority of God's Word.

Today I'm as firmly convinced that Dad was right as I am that the Word is without error. It is inerrant, but the battle to prove inerrancy transformed the Word from the roaring lion of Amos into a patient needing the care of experts, from public glory and present power into the private realm of reflection. 

Evangelical scholars were happy to come to the Word's defense. They put the Word under their microscopes in the search for vaccines against liberalism. Scholarly reputations were forged. And preachers all too willingly deferred--they were the students of these scholars, how could they tread confidently where their masters trod mincingly?

The result is a post-Reformation Protestant Church in which scholars and preachers illuminate the Word and usher people into the glories of the Word rather than preach the Word as a lamp for the illumination of glorious earthly paths. (If you doubt this, just take any of the most-recommended modern commentaries from an Evangelical or Reformed background and compare it to Calvin's commentary on the same book. Calvin respects and applies the Word while modern commentators explain, justify and generally try to support the Word.)

Thus, the modern Evangelical/Reformed world which is Bible rich but Spirit poor. The Word has become a walled garden, a magical mystery tour Christians enter into--BibleLand--rather than a map, a guide, a light for real life.

"Some of New York City's most prominent religious leaders" mourn city's aborted babies...

(Tim, w/thanks to Matthew M.) Religious leaders in New York City came together this past week to speak out against the pervasive slaughter of unborn children in their city. Of every one hundred babies given by God to women of the city, forty-one of these precious little ones are murdered by abortionists. (The figure is 48% in the Bronx, 38% in Manhattan; here are the stats.) The Sun reported:

Some of New York City’s most prominent religious leaders are making a public demand for answers as to why decades of social welfare programs aimed at making abortions a rarity have not only failed, but failed so dramatically.

The leaders — spanning Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant clergy — issued their demand at a press conference today at Manhattan. They said they are galvanized by new data showing that some 87,000 abortions were performed in New York City in 2009, a figure that accounts for 41% of all pregnancies across the five boroughs that year. That 41% rate is nearly double the national average.

“The Statue of Liberty should be the symbol of this city, not the grim reaper,” declared the current archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York, the Most Rev. Timothy Dolan.

Which religious leaders joined in the public lament? The New York Times...

Old queens in chamois vestments...

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

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...

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...

Don't vote for the bloodthirsty vampires...

(Tim, w/thanks to Dave M.) Kudos to Wayne Grudem for his article commending the Alliance Defense Fund's efforts to challenge the IRS rule prohibiting political speech by 501(c)(3) organizations--particularly pastors in the pulpit. If the First Amendment has any application at all, it should be the freedom of the preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As Dad said many years ago, churches must be willing and prepared to give up our tax exempt status. We must never allow fear of potential financial loss to gag us.

Whenever you hear of the IRS rattling its saber against pastors condemning, for instance, elected officials who promote the slaughter of our nation's babies or the deadly bondage of male sodomy, remember C. S. Lewis' warning that they'll tell us we can have our religion in private and then they'll make sure we're never alone.

Vote, and never ever cast your vote for a political vampire who lives off the blood of our nation's wholesale slaughter of unborn babies. As we enter the voting booth, every other consideration pales in significance to the defense of these little ones. When a nation refuses to protect those most vulnerable at the margins of life as they are slaughtered in the millions year after year, that nation's claim to living under the rule of law is utter hypocrisy.

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...

Luther: "almost all omit... to preach in His name repentance..."

(Tim) In his post below, David is right. We shepherds often sin by healing the sin of the souls under our watch-care superficially. We commend the grace of God without condemning sin. We drone on about forgiveness and never mention repentance. Luther saw the same thing among the shepherds of his day:

In regard to doctrine we observe especially this defect that, while some preach about the faith by which we are to be justified, it is still not clearly enough explained how one shall attain to this faith, and almost all omit one aspect of the Christian faith without which no one can understand what faith is or means. For Christ says in the last chapter of Luke 24:47 that we are to preach in His name repentance and forgiveness of sins.

Many now talk only about the forgiveness of sins and say little or nothing about repentance.

This is the church, this is the steeple, register now to see all the preachers...

(Tim) Lane Bowman, a recent graduate of ClearNote Pastors College, writes: "I've been holding on to this for months because of the Subject, and thought I should pass it along for evidence that images of men are central to the personality cults of the evangelical world... You would think they would have "thought" through the implication of using the word 'see' instead of 'hear.'"

A word says a thousand pictures. Here's the brochure...

The church in Zambia, the church in America...

(Tim) David Wegener teaches and serves as Academic Dean at the Theological College of Central Africa in Ndola, Zambia. David requests prayer for the Zambian church, then explains his request:

* * *

(Please pray) for the evangelical churches in Zambia, that the Holy Spirit would not leave us in our unfaithfulness.

Reflections on the Church in Zambia: I’ve been reading Old Evangelicalism by Iain Murray. His contention is that we’re wrong in how we’re preaching the gospel today and I see the evidence all around us in our Bible-believing churches in Zambia. Nominal Christianity is the rule.

• There is no fear of God.
• There is no fear of sinning.
• God’s grace is trampled under foot.

Why is that? Why does the gospel not come with power in churches that profess to be Christ-centered and Gospel-preaching? Murray tells us that churches from earlier generations did things differently.

They proclaimed the Law and then Christ. Today to preach the Law is legalism...

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...

Playing the preacher free association game...

(Tim) This morning I got an e-mail from my alma mater marketing her latest preaching conference and I noted that, as usual, her prof of preaching called himself one of the two (or was it three or thirty) "most influential" preachers. He didn't say where he had such influence but I'm guessing he wasn't limiting it to his little 'burb of South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

Can you imagine choosing this trademark to sell yourself to Christ's Church? A son of Joe Bayly and Ken Taylor, I find it repulsive.

Wondering where he snatched this claim to fame, I googled "two most influential preachers in the world" and came up with a web site where...

When in New York...

(Tim) What must a preacher in New York know in order to appeal to his listeners? How should he contextualize his worship services and sermons so they're on-pitch for Gothamites?

A recent article in The New York Times featured an interview with Sting. Knighting him their "Renaissance man," the Times caught up with him in his "sumptuous Central Park West duplex" where he was taking a break from his "Symphonicities" tour.

Referring to his nineteenth century aluminum double bass over by the piano, Sting indicated he plays it regularly: "one little piece of Purcell every day and that's it." Referring to a pair of chess sets on a coffee table, Sting reported he'd played grandmaster Gary Kasporov: "Of course he beat me every time. But you know, he can't sing."

The article concluded with Sting giving this sketch of New Yorkers...

Social class or the Gospel: pick only one (part 1)...

(Tim: This article originally appeared in ClearNote Fellowship's newsletter. If you'd like to be added to our mailing list, please send us an e-mail.)

Each time we sat under the ministry of our much-loved Iain Murray at the old Banner of Truth conferences, the Bayly brothers could predict at some point during the Q & A sessions Murray would strike a plaintive note, asking, “Why is there no evangelism in Reformed churches?” After a while, we realized it wasn’t a question, but a lament.

No one ever suggested he was wrong. The question brought on a guilty silence.

But if Reformed congregations don’t have new births, why aren’t our churches dying? Some pollsters even say the Reformed slice of the conservative Christian pie is growing. Doesn’t this prove Reformed men have changed their priorities and are giving themselves to evangelism--that we're all missional, today?

Sadly not. Our converts have simply moved up the social register. To keep our pews filled, we depend upon men and women raised in Christian homes getting their graduate degree and trading in their parents’ Arminian church for a more respectable Reformed congregation...

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...

Should pastors preach evangelistic sermons to their churches?

(Tim) Under "What is Gospel-centered ministry, really...," there's been a lengthy series of exchanges in the comments concerning whether it's proper to preach evangelistic sermons to established churches. This is an exceedingly important discussion and I want to encourage readers to go down and read those comments in their proper context. But knowing some won't go there, here is my most recent response which can, to some degree, stand on its own. Whatever else you don't read, make sure not to pass over the critically important quote from Luther here recorded.

* * *

Augustine said, "Many sheep without, many wolves within." From the founding of the Church, this has been the universal experience of pastors as we care for our flocks. Yes, the Epistles demonstrate a presumption that letters to believers are letters to believers. It's hard to imagine how they could have been written otherwise. "To those purporting to belong to Christ who are a part of that organization purporting to be a true church in Galatia?" It doesn't work.

But do the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles provide evidence that our Lord and His Apostles called the faith of those marked by the signs of the Covenant into question? The answer to that question is an emphatic, "Yes!" How long shall my list be? Think of those Christ contradicts, telling them their father is not God, but the Devil (John 8:38 & ff.). And if we want to let ourselves off the hook by dismissing Christ as our paradigm for pastoral care today under the rubric of His omniscience, let's move to the Apostolic warning given to Simon Magus in Acts 8. Or on to the many exhortations to baptized believers recorded in the Epistles carefully calculated to warn against and expose presumption--including the Letters to the Seven Churches (eg. Revelation 3:1-6).

So yes, we are to preach to our people normally addressing them as true believers. But we also must test ourselves to see if we are in the faith and call our flock to follow us in this discipline...

What is Gospel-centered ministry, really...

(Tim) What does it mean for a church planter to tell us he's "Gospel-centered?" Well, it means he's reading all the Acts 29 and Redeemer stuff. You can't stand in succession without talking the talk. But assuming "Gospel-centered" is a good thing, what does it actually mean?

Let's have the Apostle Paul define it:

And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:1-5)

If a church planter is Gospel-centered, he's determined to "know nothing among (his flock) except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." Now two things, here.

First, the Apostle Paul is specific about the "nothing" he's determined not to know. He doesn't know superiority of speech or wisdom; he doesn't know strength, but weakness; he doesn't know confidence, but fear; he doesn't know how to cop a suave posture, but he trembles...

Street preacher busted for hooliganism...

(Tim, w/thanks to David L.) If you find yourself wondering why Tim Keller would go through such machinations of equivocation at the Columbia University Q&A session when he was asked whether sodomy is a sin and whether a man could be condemned to Hell for it, here's an article telling of the arrest of street preacher Dale Mcalpine on charges of hooliganism for not equivocating on the subject.

One of our correspondents under this prior Keller post stated that he didn't believe Keller was afraid to speak the truth about sodomy, but only that he had forgotten that truth.

Uhhh...

Doesn't it seem like it would be mighty difficult to forget one of God's most basic moral laws when the whole world has that specific law in its sights and is blazing away? Tim Keller's simply forgotten what the Word of God says about sodomy? Really?

Today, the world has judged that anyone condemning sodomy and sodomites has committed a heinous crime against humanity for which he will receive his reward. It may be arrest. It may only be a civil suit. It may be the loss of friendships. It may be a rejection for tenure...

Veritas Forum's Tim Keller on sodomy: "It's not good for human flourishing"...

(Tim) My parents gave most of their lives to campus ministry. The first IVCF staffers in New England back in the forties, they lived in Cambridge and were responsible for all of New England. I grew up going to Bear Trap Ranch and Cedar Campus--IV's camps for student leadership training--and listening to Dad teach the Word of God.

And now, for most of our ministry Mary Lee and I have served in college and university contexts. We started in Madison, Wisconsin; moved to Boulder, Colorado; then on to Boston; and now, for the past eighteen years, here in Bloomington, Indiana, where half the population of 70,000 or so is connected to Indiana University. Our church is filled with IU undergrad and graduate students, as well as profs and other IU employees.

So it's not from inexperience concerning the spiritual needs of the Academy that I say I've never been much of a fan of Veritas Forum. Well-intentioned, yes; but largely ineffective. Watching it over the years, including here in Bloomington, I'd say the main effect it has is allowing evangelical Christians who have been silent and compromised academics on their own campus to thump their chests for a week while hired guns come in and clean up the town. But with one exception--Walter Bradley, if you're curious--the hired guns seem pretty tame when it comes to their ability and willingness to pull the trigger. So, unlike the Apostle Paul's itinerant ministry, nothing much gets cleaned up.

Few places are as evil and so desperately need a clear and bold witness to sin, righteousness, and judgment--and then, to the wisdom and glory of the Cross of Jesus Christ--than the Academy...

Gospel-centrality: what it is and what it isn't...

(Tim) Our country is filled with non-profit religious organizations that call themselves a church and identify as “missional" or “Gospel-centered.” Such churches say they’re all about the Gospel, yet rarely do they speak of “good works,” “righteous acts,” “proving to be Christ’s disciples,” or the holiness or “sanctification without which no one will see God.” [1]

Usually, these churches claim this label in order to communicate that their leadership has made a conscious choice to focus on the entry point to the Christian life. They’re more than happy to leave it to others to deal with the deeper things of God—particularly those things they dismissively refer to as “piety” or “doctrine. This is an old technique with deep ruts across the prairie of twentieth century church history. For many decades, now, men have been using the fruit of evangelism as justification for their neglect of discipleship.

Fifty years ago, a poem by Sam Shoemaker called “I Stand by the Door” made the rounds of evangelical churches, and it remains a helpful summary of this keep-it-simple philosophy of ministry...

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...

Tim Keller on preaching about homosexuality: "Ummmm... it’s just... it’s just think about... you know... you know..."

(Tim, w/thanks to a faithful man) By now, when the President of our own Covenant Theological Seminary invites Tim Keller to model pastoral ministry to his students over in St. Louis, he should know precisely what he's going to get and not be left batting cleanup for him. But take a listen to this exchange from one of Keller's recent visits, there.

It's a Q & A session in front of men preparing for pastoral ministry. A Covenant student asks the Rev. Dr. Tim Keller this question: "How do you think the church is or should be proactive with regard to the issue of homosexuality? I see the prevalence of homosexuality, yet the church seems to be afraid to touch the issue. How do we actively speak to believers about this topic in truth and in love?"

Which question launched the Keller/Chapell duo into this session of semantic dodge ball, with protective pads and helmets.

Was Tim Keller's answer bad?

Yes, his answer was bad.

Why?

Because he's a preacher of the Gospel and he ought to rejoice at being used by the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. He ought to know God's Moral Law is man's schoolmaster, his crossing guard to the Cross. Pastor Keller's ministry is to singles in Manhattan, so he should (and easily could, given his gifts) excel at the proclamation of the wickedness of sodomy along with God's love and mercy for those ensnared in this foul pit...

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...”

Joe Sobran: preaching to the conscience and the Roman Catholic error of transubstantiation...

(Tim) Ten years ago, I read this column by Joe Sobran. Joe's declaration of faith gave me joy, but what struck me, particularly, was this statement:

Great as Shakespeare is, I never lose sleep over anything he said. He leaves my conscience alone.

Still today, I find myself wondering whether what's lacking in Shakespeare is not also lacking in my own preaching? Do God's sheep leave my proclamation of the Word of God each Lord's Day morning with easy consciences? Is their sleep always peaceful? If so, what an unfaithful minister of the Gospel I am.

Then we hit Sobran's promotion of the Roman Catholic error of transubstantiation. If you think it scandalous that I'd give any space to Sobran's defense of transubstantiation, never fear. Think about this.

Jesus didn't say, "this wine which is poured out for you," "this wine is the new covenant in my blood," or "for as often as you eat this bread and drink this wine...."

Rather, He said:

“This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood" (Luke 22:20b). And the Apostle Paul said, "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. (1 Corinthians 11:25-28).

Reformed Protestants have no need to fear the Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation. If their claim to hold to the literal meaning of these texts were true, it wouldn't be the wine, but the cup that becomes our Lord's blood. Have you ever tried to drink a cup?

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...

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...

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...