Elders

We've been saying that a father does nothing more important for his children than choosing a church. But our culture presses us into the mold of individualism, so Christians have come to think of religion as "just me and Jesus" with the church a sort of religious social club. But get this: across history, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants have all been in agreement that the Church is essential for salvation.

This is typical of what Roman Catholics say. It's from their 1997 Catechism:

All salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body.

Reformed baptists and presbyterians say the same. This is from our most loved doctrinal standard... 

We had our largest attendance at a pastors conference yet, this year. Over a hundred and it was a joy to be together, although the work was hard. So this post doesn't come out of disappointment in our numbers.

Sometimes a pastor needs to say to his people, "you blew it."

So, permit me to say to those of you who should have been here for the conference on child abuse and incest, you blew it. And I'll go further than that: it's my conviction that some of you didn't attend, not because you thought the conference wouldn't be helpful, but because you knew it would be. You're a pastor, elder, elder's wife, or women's ministry director and you simply didn't want to spend time thinking about how best to discover and minister to those children in your congregation who are being raped by their father, uncle, brother, or molested by their sister. 

It's easier not to know, isn't it?

Well, you can take a mulligan...

This year we hope women will attend our February 17-19, 2016 conference, The Enemy Within: Sexual Abuse in the Church. Previous years we called this conference a "Pastors Conference" or "Church Officers Conference," and only men attended—men who are officers and men who aspire to holding office in the Church.

This year, though, our subject demands the most intense work and wisdom on the part of pastors, elders, and deacons, and that work cannot be done and that wisdom cannot be gained without the help of wise women of the church, including officers' wives. So we've opened up registration, not just to the wives of pastors, elders, and deacons, but also to women, single or married, who obey the command of God given in Titus 2:3-5, to serve the church by "teaching what is good."

My wife Mary Lee and I will be talking about the necessity and helpfulness of church officers working with Titus 2 women in the protection of children of the church. If elders and pastors don't have...

...each one of you is saying, “I am of Paul,” and “I of Apollos,” and “I of Cephas,” and “I of Christ.”  - 1Corinthians 1:12, 13

So, apparently, the sin of some in the Corinthian church was saying "I am of Christ."

A year and a half ago, I was talking with a Presbyterian counselor who was counseling an older single man who had physically and sexually abused several young men under his authority. Despite this predator's pastor and several of his elders a decade ago knowing of the specifics of his abuse of one victim, they had allowed the man to keep his job on the staff of their Presbyterian church where he continued to have young men under his authority. When his corruption of his first victim ten years ago became known, his pastor and several of his elders had refused to ask other young men under this man's leadership if he had abused them, also; nor had they warned them.

Now, the church's pastor and elders were finally having their noses shoved into the sins they and their predecessors had worked hard to avoid. They were finding out their church staff worker had abused more than the one man who had been known. Two more victims had come forward and were calling the church's session to acknowledge their past failures and bring this ministry leader under discipline and I was hoping to get the counselor to help with that process.

In our initial conversation, this counselor said he was...

Paul Tripp just made a public pronouncement that Pastor Tullian Tchividjian "has filed for divorce." Paul goes on to say he agrees it is time for Tully to "move on."

A short time ago Paul made a public pronouncement about Pastor Mark Driscoll, Acts 29, and Mars Hill Church. A little later he made a public pronouncement about Pastor Tullian Tchividjian and Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. Now he makes a public pronouncement about Pastor Tchividjian filing for divorce and the breakup of the Tchividjian family. Here is Paul in his role as the sole proprietor of what he promotes as "Paul Tripp Ministries, Inc." making judgments without any reference to the courts of Christ's Church.

Such things should never happen. They are a reflection of the displacement of the Church by religious corporations and the celebrities who own them. For the record, here is a screenshot of Paul's corporate web site and the pronouncement he published there...

With our Clearnote Fellowship Conference a few hours away, I won't have much time the next few days to engage with this issue, but I've had some nagging thoughts as I've read the debates going on among church officers in the wake of Obergefell v. Hodges.

Any stand Christians take in opposition to the enforcement of Obergefell v. Hodges across the nation must be in light of God's Creation Order in its entirety. If we single out sodomy as the place we draw the line of civil disobedience concerning sexuality, we must ask ourselves why there? Is it really because sodomy has taken our culture to a whole new level of rebellion against God? Yes, but also no...

Brothers, when the subject was chosen for this year's church officers and pastors' conference, we knew it would be a hard-sell. If American culture hides death, why would we pastors be any different? We don't want to go to a conference on death and dying. We look at Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying1 and wonder who on earth came up with that title? Surely not the marketing department!

And if I tell you the book was published back in the late sixteen-hundreds and is one of the all-time best-sellers of Christian devotional works, we smack your foreheads and exclaim, "Well that explains it! Lots of people died back then. What was their life expectancy—like thirty-five years? They had to talk about death and dying, but today we live in a happier time and pastors conferences shouldn't depress me. I need encouragement! Life is hard! Serving a church is hard!"

So why did the Puritan pastor, Jeremy Taylor, title his classic Holy Dying?

Because Puritan pastors used to spend themselves...

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, I'm a Republican. - Joe Sobran

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a thousand times, I'm a pastor. - Soe Jobran

The news today from the national level is that the men and women of the Republican Party in Congress have backed down on their late-term abortion bill because they don't want to alienate female voters. The news today from our own Indiana state level is that a certain bill written to protect the unborn children of Indiana from being murdered by their parents is being treated with diffidence by the committee chairman because he and other Republicans don't want the wrath of Planned Parenthood to descend on them.

Now listen, these men and women—the Republicans, that is—are mostly publicly confessing Christians and therefore have pastors, elders, deacons, and older Titus 2 women who are called by God to admonish and rebuke and exhort and encourage them. But you and I know that their pastors, let alone elders, deacons, and Titus 2 women, will say nothing to them about their cowardice—about their selling out unborn children in order to stay in office. If the Church of Jesus Christ in these United States of America desired to stop the mass slaughter of unborn children; if we desired to see the bloodshed of little ones by their mothers end; if we feared God's judgement on our nation...