Parachurch

(NOTE: Some of the text of this post was sinful, so I've edited it and ask readers to forgive me.)

Fifteen years ago my brother David introduced me to the phrases "self-referential" and "self-appointed." Since then, these phrases have been foundational to my thinking about the church and the parachurch.

The phrases are helpful in understanding much church-planting today... 

Two weeks ago Prof. Carl Trueman wrote a short piece saying he doesn't like it that some parachurch organizations are dividing over father-rule. He asks why organizations divide over sexuality if they refuse to divide over the Sacraments? After all, he says, the Sacraments are “the very doctrinal differences which made Protestant confessions necessary in the first place.”

Well of course, the only reason the Sacraments are mentioned in Protestant confessions while sex distinctions and father-rule are not is that, back in past centuries when confessions were written, no one alive questioned father-rule. So when Dr. Trueman points out that the Reformers didn't feel the need to divide with egalitarian feminists, it might be helpful to point out to Dr. Trueman there were no egalitarian feminists pushing women onto Calvin's consistory or into Geneva's pulpits. 

In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit dealt with female rebellion so clearly and firmly that it took twenty centuries before it reared its head again. That's why the confessions of the Reformers written and adopted five centuries ago condemned Sacramental errors without condemning egalitarian feminism.

It's ironic that Dr. Trueman wrote this piece for his own parachurch organization which, itself, refuses to divide over the Sacraments.

Dr. Trueman has a dog in this fight. Why should he refuse to do parachurch with Christians who rebel against the plain teaching of Scripture that woman may not teach or exercise authority over man...

(Chancellor Richard McCartny explaining new non-discrimination policy to Vanderbilt University Town Hall Meeting)

MCCARTNEY: I’m Catholic. What if my faith beliefs guided all of the decisions I make from day to day? ...As a Catholic, if I held that life begins at conception, I’d have a very big problem with our hospital. Right? Would I not? . . . I would, but I don’t...

The Presbyterian Church in America's Reformed University Fellowship now stands alone in complying with Vanderbilt University's new non-discrimination policy...

(TB: This post is submitted by a calm and reasonable man who is himself the product of a large public research institution's school of law.)

As if breathing the breath that comes from their Heavenly Father’s hand weren’t enough, as if the fruit of the Holy Spirit and centuries of Christian spiritual capital deposited into education weren’t enough, Vanderbilt University leadership takes money from Christians hand over fist and then gags the Christian conscience. The money I’m talking about isn’t tuition paid by Baptist or Episcopalian students. It’s the nearly half billion dollars of federal money that Vanderbilt has steam-shoveled into its coffers. In 2009 alone. Vanderbilt even brags that it broke the Top 25 varsity ranking in its haul of federal collegiate pork. You can find more details on the webpage maintained by Vanderbilt’s “Office of Federal Relations.” Some relations.

So why is federal largesse (i.e., tax receipts and U.S. sovereign debt) Christian money? The vast majority of Americans who pay federal income, capital gains, excise, and a motley assortment of other federal taxes identify themselves as Christians. Further, it’s likely that our descendants...

We're hoping later to make available to you a movie documenting Doug Wilson's Gospel witness a week ago on the campus of Indiana University. Meanwhile, watch the very short video above. This video provides a clue why campus ministries have become gnostic societies sharing secret knowledge for their trusted initiates only.

God's Word, His authority, His Moral Law, His Judgment, His Hell are met with hatred and mob fury on secular campuses today. They've been publicly abandoned by campus parachurch workers making a living off church support, because not to abandon them is to run the sort of gauntlet you see Doug and Clearnote Campus Fellowship running in this video clip.

Knowing a bad thing when they see one, parachurch ministries have run for their lives. Few of them have any grid to understand the Holy Spirit's use of conflict and martyrdom as Gospel-centered, missional tools, so any hint of conflict or rebellion teaches them what never to do again. Thus no teaching on God's authority. No proclamation of fathers' authority. No declaration of Church authority. No discipline of members. No teaching on the Created Order  and the nature of manhood and womanhood. No warning and condemnation of sodomy. No warning against baby-slaughter (abortion). No mention of submission or repentance.

Just "the pure Gospel," which means the Gospel eviscerated of repentance...

For the sake of putting it to rest, let us one last time work to clarify why we raised the subject of money in our opposition to John MacArthur's New International Version 2011 Study Bible.

A wise brother put it this way. All financial motives aren't those of Silas Marner and Scrooge McDuck. When men build their ministries, they may well not be a Scrooge McDuck and yet kingdom and money and legacy are interrelated and money helps keep score. We're not concerned that publishing his life's work of study notes on the Bible provides John MacArthur the means to buy fancy suits and fast cars. We're sure John wears old suits and drives slow cars. If anyone thought our point was so shallow, we apologize...

One reader of this blog is a pharmacist in a western state who's struggling over whether to continue to dispense birth control pills from his pharmacy (he owns it). One of the methods birth controls pills work is by preventing the fertilized ovum from implanting himself on the wall of the uterus. Twenty-five years ago, a pharmacist showed me this truth matter-of-factly stated in his continuing education curriculum. So please pray for the pharmacist, that he will honor God and begin to refuse to take part in the murder of these unborn babies.

Another pharmacist I know, when faced with the growth in the use of ECPs (and if you don't know what those are, shame on you; they're the growth curve of the baby murdering business right now) changed his mind about when human life begins. Of course, like all life, human life begins at conception--the moment the egg is fertilized by the sperm. But to silence consciences, decades ago the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists changed their definition of conception, decreeing that from that point on human life would no longer begin at conception, but rather at the point in time when the fertilized ovum successfully implants himself on the uterine wall.

A pharmacist I used to consider a friend and brother saw ACOG one and raised them ten. A couple of years ago he changed his definition of the beginning of human life and now he has no problem fulfilling prescriptions for ECPs. But get this: he went further than ACOG. They say it's a human life at implantation, but he's decided it's not a human life until several weeks later. Maybe fourteen or twenty-one days--who knows?

Until then he thinks this living man bearing the Image of God isn't really living...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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