The Church has Its Origin In Christ

It is not created, formed, or introduced by individual men on their own initiative, authority, or insight.

It is not the outcome of a free undertaking to analyse and come to terms with the self-revealing God by gathering together a community which confesses Him, by setting up a doctrine which expounds and proclaims His truth in the way that seems most appropriate to these men.

We can say quite simply that a church of that description is not the Church but the work of sin, of apostasy in the Church.

In other words, the Church has no reality independent of or apart from Jesus Christ…and it is because it lives by Jesus Christ.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2010), 213-14.

The Church as the Body of Christ

In the New Testament, specifically Rom 12.4f; 1 Cor 10.16f, 12.12f; Col 1.18,24; Eph 1.22f, 4.12, 5.23, 29f., the church is described as the body of Christ. Karl Barth draws out the following implications from this phrase.

1. One meaning of this description is undoubtedly this: that the existence of the church involved a repetition of the incarnation of the Word of God in the person Jesus Christ in that area of the rest of humanity which is distinct from the person of Jesus Christ.
2. The repetition of the incarnation of the Word of God in the historical existence of the church excludes at once any possible autonomy in that existence.
3. Those who live within the circumference of which Christ is the centre do not constitute, but they are such a single and indivisible whole. Each in his own place, as a member, is drawn into the identity of the boy body with its head.
4. The Church has a further point in common with the incarnate Word of God. As distinguished from the eternal nature of God, it has a spatio-temporal form and extension. It is therefore visible in the same way as any other soma.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2010), 215-220.

 

Loud Music

Mike Cosper has a good article about loud music in church at the TGC. A couple of comments.

First, he said, “The goal of music in the gathering isn’t great sound or even great music. It’s a church gathered and united in song.” If that is the goal then should not the primary sound be the voices? If not why else would be gather together to sing? I can hear loud music by myself.

Second, he helpfully pointed out verses for those who disparage loud music in corporate worship, “Shout to God with loud songs of joy!” (Psalm 47:1) and, “Praise him with loud crashing cymbals!” (Psalm 150:5).

Third, a good category to have in ones head is the law of unintended consequences. Loud music tends to drown out singers, which (might) cause them to not sing as forcefully, and not hear others sing. Therefore, it is not a question of whether loud music okay, but what does it produce.

Sing Even the Songs You Don’t Like With Gusto

A good word from Greg Gilbert:

I think we ought to encourage every member of our churches to sing every song in the service with gusto, even if they don’t particularly resonate with the song.  Every Christian has a certain set of hymns and songs that deeply resonate with them—the melody, the words, an experience they had when they first heard it—and our natural tendency is to give those favorites everything we’ve got . . . but then sort of check out when the next song is one we don’t particularly like.  But here’s the thing:  When you sing in a congregation, you’re not just singing for yourself; you’re singing for every other member of the congregation, for their edification and building up in Christ, too.  In I Corinthians 14:26, Paul tells us that when we come together, everything we do–including our singing–is done for each other.  Singing hymns is not just an opportunity for each of us, as individuals, to worship God in our own way.  It’s an opportunity for the church, as a whole, to worship God together.  That means that even if you don’t like a particular song, it’s likely that someone else in the congregation resonates with it deeply—they feel about it the same way you feel about your favorites—and so you have a responsibility to love that person by singing that song with all the heart you can muster.  In other words, don’t check out on songs that aren’t your favorites; sing them!  And sing them loud and heartily, not because you particularly like them, but because you may be helping to edify another brother or sister whose heart is engaged deeply with those songs.  Worship isn’t finally an individual experience; it’s corporate.  And everything we do–everything, Paul tells us, including our singing—should be done for the building up of the saints.

Shorter Services reply

Should we have shorter services?

Time is a complicated issue. More time does not correspond directly to more meritorious. That is making the mistake of thinking that if one is good, two must be better. But one movie is good, three at one sitting a waste of time.

Church on Sunday’s is good thing. Church every morning is not a good thing.

But time also indicates worth.We spend time on what we value. A Seinfeld fanatic will spend time watching episodes out of love for the show.

As with many issues, there is not a clear answer in Scripture regarding how long our services should be. Jesus never said that a short service will disqualify you from the kingdom, or that a long service would get you a bus pass. (however he did say that if “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”)

Therefore there is freedom here, but there is also wisdom.

A good category to have filed in ones mind is the law of unintended consequences.

The question is not whether it is right or wrong to have long or short services but rather what it will communicate and what it will do for both your congregation and your visitors.What will the unintended consequences be of shorter service?

I think they could be the following:

First, it will communicate that God speaking to us through his Word and through his servant is not as important as some of the other things to do during the day.

Second, it will communicate that we all really want this to be over with as quickly as possible.

Third, it will communicate that meeting with other believers, although necessary, is not all that enjoyable.

There are a bunch of other things I could list, but as I listed them I realized they all intersect.

In short, a shorter service could communicate a lack value in the gathering of believers and the preaching of the Word. Let’s not overcomplicate the matter by saying that it is not quantity but quality. Everyone, if they dig deep enough, realizes that time to some extent indicates value.

That is why I generally think it is wise to have longer services as opposed to shorter services. Now by longer I do not mean infinitely longer, but substantial. If they can spend an hour listening to President Obama address the nation, they can listen for an hour to a sermon. Also, enough of this nonsense about shorter attention spans. Train the people.

PS:

Regarding sermon length: It has become popular to think that the longer the sermon the “more” spiritual. After all Mark Dever, Mark Driscoll, Ryan Fullerton, and John Piper all speak for almost an hour. But these men are specially gifted by the Lord, so I don’t think we should all aspire to hour length sermons. Young preachers should probably shoot for shorter sermons at the beginning for the simple reason that they are not very good yet. If you were a Spurgeon, we would already know.

Is Less Church More Church?

There is a trend swirling. A trend that many of the newer churches are moving to like magnets.

The trend is less church.

Not so long ago, in Baptist world a week would look like the following: Sunday school on Sunday morning, Sunday morning service, Sunday evening service, Wednesday evening service, and then small groups at some time in the week.

Now some churches have cut it down to just a Sunday service and then small groups. In fact the booming church right down the road from me Sojourn Community Church, has this organization. They encourage their members to serve in one service, attend another, and then go to small group.

In the past six months, my church, Immanuel Baptist Church moved closer to this format. We have a prayer service (taking the place of Sunday school), the main service, and then small groups. We cut out Wednesday evening service, and have not had a Sunday evening service since I became a member.

Why are churches moving this way? Is this a good thing?

I think most churches are moving this direction because they recognize that people are generally busier, and that this format allows more time for the church members to go out into the secular world.

But of course there are pros and cons to a trend like this. I am confident some will think this is generally a bad trend, while others will applaud it. Here are some pros and cons of moving to a format of less church.

Possible Pros:

1. It allows people in the church to focus on the main services and mission of the church.
2. It frees up more time to spend with non-Christians.
3. It allows families to spend more time together.

Potential Cons:

1. It may not allow as much time for teaching or corporate prayer.
2. It may not facilitate as many “touches” in the week with the entire church.
3. It may cause the church (or church activities) to become less central in our weekly schedules.

So what do you think is less church more church? Is this a good shift? Let me know more pros and cons that you think of.

Preach the Point of the Text

Andy Naselli posted this a couple of days back and I cannot stop thinking about it. The honesty and humility of Leeman about this personal trial will be helpful to many young preachers.

“We don’t think your preaching will build this church. So we have decided not to nominate you as our next pastor.” That is what the elders of a church said to me toward the end of a three-month interim pastorate.

It was a Sunday. We had just finished the church’s evening service, which I had led. My wife had gone home. And the four elders and I were now sitting in the living room of the elder chairman. My wife and I had prayed that, God willing, the interim pastorate would turn into a full-time pastorate. Apparently, that was not going to happen.

What was wrong with my preaching? That was the obvious question. The four brothers focused their answer almost entirely on one thing: my faithfulness to the biblical text. They put it like this: “Your preaching has been fine from the standpoint of saying true things, and much of what you’re saying comes out of the text you’re preaching. The problem is, your sermons tend to be 20 to 30 degrees off the main point of the text.”

The evaluation surprised me. I had meant to preach faithful biblical messages. That was my goal. I had the same philosophy of ministry as they. In the first few weeks of the interim pastorate, I had preached Psalms 1, 2, and 3. Then, I had turned to preaching my way through the book of Colossians, section by section. But 20 to 30 degrees off the main point of the text? Really?

Creative to a Fault

They pushed a little further. “Jonathan, we’ve known you for a few years,we love you, and we want to serve you, brother. So we’ve been asking ourselves how this could have happened. The main thing we have come up with is that you are very creative, and your creative impulse seems to show up almost every week. Half the time it works, and you say something in an interesting way. But half the time it doesn’t work, and you miss the point of the text.”

Hmmm, that hit home. I knew what they were talking about. In fact, I knew better than they did. Week after week I had labored to devise a fresh approach to the text. I could even remember saying to my wife, “These people have heard it all a hundred times. I need some new way to say it.”

Here’s an example. Our church was on the doorstep of a large state university, and we wanted to do a better job of reaching the university crowd. So I titled the Colossians series, “Philosophies of This World or Things Above,” based on the theme of worldly philosophies in the book (see Col. 2:8). I used the error of a major philosopher to set up the biblical text for each week:

• Week 1 on Colossians 1:1–14 was titled “Can Richard Rorty Know God’s Will?”
• Week 2 on 1:15–23 was called “What Kant (Be) Missed.”
• Week 3 on 1:24–2:5 was “Time, Hope, and Hegel.”

You get the point. Even aside from the slightly pretentious nature of this enterprise, the more significant problem was that it allowed the philosophers to set the agenda. Instead of asking the very simple question, “What’s the burden of this biblical text,” I used the text to answer the challenge posed by the philosopher. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it caused me to redirect the point of the text—I don’t know—maybe 20 to 30 degrees.

Not only that, I knew that something else had been quietly transpiring in my heart over the prior months. I had grown restless with the desire to impress the congregation with my originality and spiritual insight. I wanted them to think I was a great preacher. And I wanted to impress these four men especially. As a result, the process of preparing “creative” sermons became stifling.

Strangely, how many preachers walk down this road? And how those four brothers blessed me by refusing to hire me! With gentle and loving words, they gave me a gift which, I trust, will serve my ministry for as long as the Lord gives me one. The embarrassment of failure and the prospect of unemployment made the lesson burn, but the Lord meant for the burn to sear the lesson onto my mind. Thinking back now, I can almost hear the hiss of a divine cow brand—“Just preach the point of the text!”—and thank God for it. . . .

The cleanest definition of an expositional sermon that I’ve seen is Mark Dever’s: An expositional sermon is a sermon in which the point of a biblical text is the point of the sermon, applied to the life of the congregation. And to speak of “the point” of the text, I would add, we need to consider both the text’s content and its purpose.

Jonathan Leeman, Reverberation: How God’s Word Brings Light, Freedom, and Action to His People (IX Marks; Chicago: Moody, 2010), 105–7, 112:

Pictures of Jesus

I was first introduced to the idea that a picture of Jesus might be against the 2nd commandment while I was in college reading J.I. Packer’s Knowing God. He says:

God says quite categorically, “Thou shalt not make any likeness of anything” for use in worship. This categorical statement rules out not simply the use of pictures and statues which depict God as an animal, but also the use of pictures and statues which depcit him as the highest created thing we know–a human. It also rules out the use of pictures of Jesus Christ as man, although Jesus himself was and remains man; for all pictures and statues are necessarily made after the “likeness” of ideal manhood as we conceive it, and therefore come under the ban which the commandment imposes. (45)

At the time, rather than thinking through it carefully, I accepted it because of the novelty of the idea. But as I began to study more and talk to people about the idea I slowly changed my mind. Now this does not mean that I have pictures of Jesus all over my house. Nor does it mean that the first thing I would do when I got into a church was put up pictures of Jesus. What it does mean that I would not come into a church and immediately remove the pictures.

Of course I am not the first person to think through this, and I found out this week that John of Damascus had some good words about this issue in his On Divine Images. John lived around 650-749 A.D, and here is what he said about divine images:

Therefore, I draw boldly an image of the invisible God, not as invisible, but as having become visible for our sakes by partaking of flesh and blood. I do not draw an image of the immortal Godhead, but I paint the image of God who became visible in the flesh…

He forbids making of images because of idolatry…you see that the one thing aimed for is that no created thing can be adored in the place of the Creator, nor can adoration be given to any save Him alone…

It is obvious that when you contemplate God becoming man then you may depict Him clothed in human form. When the invisible One becomes visible to flesh, you man then draw His likeness.

In the former times God who is without form or body, could never be depicted. But now when God is seen in the flesh conversing with me, I make an image of God whom I see; I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take His abode in matter; who worked out my salvation through matter. Never will I cease honoring the matter which wrought my salvation!

Any thoughts? Do you agree or disagree? And most importantly why?

Is It Time to Write the Eulogy? The Future of Seminary Education

Here’s a little reflection on the future of seminary education from The Reverend Dr. Frederick W. Schmidt, Jr., an episcopal priest who is Director of Spiritual Formation and Associate Professor of Christian Spirituality at Southern Methodist University, Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas. The whole article is worth reading. Here are his suggestions for change at the end.

So, many will argue that what I have outlined below is impractical, but this is what I would do:

Candidates for ordination would be required to:

1. Attend seminary and complete a Master of Divinity.
2. Prepare in a residential setting.
3. Select their schools from a well-honed list of seminaries.
4. And perform at the top of their ability.

In exchange, the church would:

1. Help to pay for a significant amount of their education.
2. Provide close, caring, thoughtful, formative companionship along the way.
3. Support a handful of seminaries financially in their effort to prepare their ordinands.
4. Provide their candidates with an early, honest, responsible evaluation of their candidacy. (The ordination process should not take more years than the forming of doctors and lawyers.)
5. Abandon alternative approaches to ordination, confining its attention to preparing properly everyone it does ordain.
6. Do what it takes to see that new clergy receive a living wage.
7. Support the best and the brightest of their clergy in academic formation and pursuits, seeing them as an extension of the church’s teaching ministry

In return the seminaries would promise to:

1. Create a Master of Divinity that is lean and designed to do what it should do, covering a set of definable core competencies that were offered and taught—no more, no less. (The M.Div. is not a research degree; it is a professional degree analogous to the Juris Doctorate required of lawyers and it should be treated as such.)
2. Educate and spiritually form the students sent to them.
3. Enlist a faculty that is both willing and able to teach an essential body of knowledge and skills, as well as teach the faith.
4. Communicate effectively and often with the church about the preparation of its candidates.

The result would be fewer ordinands and students. There already are.

But if churches and seminaries focus on the rigorous formation of clergy we could produce a generation of leaders who, God willing, might change the world and save mainline Christianity. The alternative is to limp and wander into the future, trusting Darwin with the lives of our clergy, seminaries, and churches. If we do, others will preach the Gospel, but God will not compensate us for faithless, feckless, unimaginative neglect.

HT: Owen Strachan

Memo to Worship Bands: Five sound reasons to lower the volume

From John Stackhouse:

First, I know it’s breaking the performer’s code to say so (the way magicians are never supposed to reveal a secret), but cranking up the volume is just a cheap trick to add energy to a room. The comedic film This Is Spinal Tap showed us all the absurdity of using sheer noise to compensate for a lack of talent. (The knobs on the band members’ guitars and amplifiers were modified to go to 11.) Do not compensate for mediocrity by amping it up to MEDIOCRITY.

Second, when your intonation is not very good—and let’s face it, most singers and instrumentalists are not anywhere close to being in perfect tune—turning it up only makes it hurt worse. If I hear one more “harmony singer” have trouble deciding whether to hit the major or the minor third and instead split the difference at a scalp-tightening volume, I think my head will split also.

Third, the speakers in most church PA systems cannot take that much energy through their small, old magnets and cones, especially from piano, bass, and kick drum. So we are being pounded with high-powered fluffing and sputtering—which do not induce praise.

Fourth, consider that you might be marginalizing older people, most of whom probably do not like Guns N’ Roses volumes at church. And if you suspect older congregants may be secretly delighted behind their tight smiles, ask them. I dare you.

Fifth, let me drop some church history and theology on you. By the time church music matured into Palestrina and Co. in the 16th century, it had become too demanding and ornate for ordinary singers. So Christians went to church to listen to a priest and a choir.

I would add Sixth and most importantly, turn it down because we gather to hear one another sing.

Read the rest HERE.

Guidelines for Open-Air Preaching

Wise words from Kevin Williams:

1. How do I know I am called to street preach? 00:00:44
2. Taping yourself open-air preaching and putting it up on youtube, why? 00:03:40
3. What does bad and good open-air preaching look like? 00:05:43
4. Is “drive by” open-air preaching wrong? How important is a local church? 00:09:00
5. Is it important to be part of a local church and have accountability? 00:12:28
6. How do you respond to the hatred you are met with? 00:13:49
7. How important are one on one conversations? 00:16:15
8. Are you going out in love? 00:17:37
9. Is doing “shock and awe” evangelism biblical? 00:20:12
10. Do people understand the Christian terms that you are using? 00:24:25
11. How important is it to have scripture memorized? 00:25:32
12. Is it important to know the LAWS of the land? 00:26:11
13. Is Christ or Apologetics your Focus in Open-Air Preaching? 00:28:07
14. How do you engage a heckler? 00:33:17
15. Where is a good spot to open-air preach at? 00:36:01
16. Don’t let getting large crowds become an idol. 00:40:56
17. Are there open-air preachers who are lost and not saved themselves? 00:42:45
18. Be careful to not appear self-righteousness while open-air preaching. 00:46:17
19. Advice on answering people’s questions in the open-air. 00:49:35
20. What should the length of my message be? 00:53:56
21. What makes a solid gospel tract? 00:55:03
22. Is it biblical to hand out cartoon gospel tracts that are gimmicky? 00:56:04

HT: Reformissionary

Narrative or Propositional Preaching?

Should our preaching be narrative or propositional?

It seems to me that there is room for both.  Normally, for narrative sections of Scripture our preaching should follow more of a narrative style. Propositional passages would follow suit. But I think you also need to examine the needs and weaknesses of your congregation. No knowledge of this topic? Some knowledge? Easily excited by emotionalism? Brainy? Follow stories better than 3 points? Do they need systematic points here?

In sum, I am not sure if there is one right answer to this question.

Here is the quote from Doug Wilson’s blog that got me thinking along these lines.

For example, most books on preaching operate on the common assumption that sermonic organization evolves out of the logic of content . . . Truth is, to continue our example, a sermon is not a doctrinal lecture. It is an event-in-time, a narrative art form more akin to a play or novel in shape than to a book. Hence we are not engineering scientists, we are narrative artists by professional function . . . our best preaching does in fact feel like a story. It is indeed The Story, and our task is to tell it (Lowry, The Homiletical Plot, pp. xix-xx)

16 Ways to Demonstrate Love and Unity in the Church

From Mack Stiles book Marks of the Messenger: Knowing, Living and Speaking the Gospel.

On the eve of his death Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another” (John 13:34). This is by far the most important command for healthy evangelism. We are to love the church. . . .

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34–35). . . .

16 Ways to Demonstrate Love and Unity in the Church

1. Attend a church that takes the gospel seriously (Hebrews 10:25). Treat form as secondary, the gospel as primary. . . .
2. Become an actual member of a church. I’m serious; membership shows your loving commitment to one another. . . . And just think, the less cool the church the more opportunity to demonstrate real love!
3. Read C. J. Mahaney’s book Humility once a year. . . . Mahaney gives us practical tools for demonstrating love and unity in the context of community.
4. Turn down jobs that might take you away from church even if they pay more.
5. Arrange family vacations around your church’s schedule. Or better yet, take your family on a short-term mission trip with other members instead of a family vacation. This will blow people’s minds.
6. If your church doesn’t have a church covenant, think about developing one that expresses your love for each other.
7. Move to a house closer to the church and use your house as a place of hospitality (Romans 12:13).
8. Practice church discipline. . . .
9. Respect, even revere, the authority in the church (1 Thessalonians 5:12–13).
10. Turn heads—really practice the biblical teachings of giving and receiving forgiveness. . . .
11. Take care of people who are in need physically in your congregation (Romans 12:13).
12. Pray for each other (Ephesians 6:18). Don’t just say you’ll pray. Actually put into place some ways to pray for each and every member.
13. Sympathize with other believers (Romans 12:15). Check a critical spirit.
14. Focus on caring for one another spiritually by discipling one another (Galatians 6:1–2). . . .
15. Share your faith together (Philippians 1:27). . . .
16. Read Mark Dever’s 9 Marks of a Healthy Church.

. . . [T]his kind of radical love leads to radical evangelism.

To be a healthy evangelist means to love brothers and sisters.

HT: Andy Naselli

Something We Can All Agree On

Kevin DeYoung posts about the differences between Roman Catholics, Liberal Protestant, and Evangelical Protestant:

Why can’t all the professing Christians in the world look past their differences and just get along?

Because some of those differences are irreconcilable. Most significantly and most foundationally, the three main branches of Christianity in this country–Roman Catholic, Liberal Protestant, and Evangelical Protestant–do not agree on the locus of authority. We don’t answer the question, “What is our final authority?” in the same way.

Every Christian acknowledges that in some sense our theology and ethics must “accord with Scripture.” But whether that means “Scripture along with Church Tradition” or “Scripture as redefined through personal experience” or “Scripture alone” is what separates us. And as long as we disagree on this matter of authority, we should not expect genuine spiritual unity among the three groups. There can be no unity where there is no agreed upon authority.

Let me show you what I mean.

Peter Kreeft (Roman Catholic):

Most Protestants reject all Catholic doctrines they cannot find explicitly in Scripture–for example, Mary’s Assumption into heaven–because they believe sola scriptura: that Scripture alone is the infallible authority. This is the fundamental reason behind all the differences between Protestant and Catholic theology. (Catholic Christianity, 20).

Gary Dorrien (Liberal Protestant):

The essential idea of liberal theology is that all claims to truth, in theology as in other disciplines, must be made on the basis of reason and experience, not by appeal to external authority. Christian scripture may be recognized as spiritually authoritative within Christian experience, but its word does not settle or establish truth claims about matters of fact. (The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity, 1900-1950, 1)

Michael Horton (Evangelical Protestant):

Ultimate authority always resides outside the self and even outside the church, as both are always hearers of the Word and receivers of its judgment and justification. The church is commissioned to deliver this Word (a ministerial office), not to possess or rule it (a magisterial office). Thus, the authority is always transcendent. Even when it comes near us, it is never our own word that we hear (Ro. 10:6-13, 17). (The Christian Faith, 194)

So it seems that whatever else we may disagree on as Catholics, Liberals, and Evangelicals, we should at least agree that it is our view of Scripture and authority that divides us.

Should Churches Train Pastors or Seminaries?

Wise words from John Piper.

Heresy Is Heresy, Not the Litmus Test of Gospel Preaching

Jason Hood has a good article in Christianity Today about Antinomianism.  Here is a taste:

Antinomianism is not hostility to gnomes, and it’s not fear of people from Nome, Alaska. Antinomianism is lawlessness, believing and teaching an obligation-free version of Christianity. In certain quarters of the evangelical world, being accused of antinomianism is increasingly considered to be a symptom of a healthy ministry. This belief has a long pedigree; no less an authority than Martyn Lloyd-Jones believed there was “no better test” of gospel fidelity than the accusation of antinomianism…

An accusation of theological heresy cannot be considered a fool-proof test of fidelity…

A number of Reformed leaders believe that legalism and moralism are far greater dangers to the church than antinomianism and a lack of holiness. Such assessments lead some to apply a slippery slope argument: one should not lay great stress (particularly in pulpit ministry) on the pursuit of holiness and radical descriptions of the requirements of Christian discipleship. These leaders almost always reject the label “antinomian,” and while some of them mute radical discipleship, others are faithfully and passionately pursuing personal and corporate holiness. But in these circles antinomianism begins to be seen as something one might need to brush up against, so that the charge of antinomianism is very much welcome, to the point of being a stamp of authenticity, or “a badge of honor,” as Paul Zahl puts it.

What If One of Paul’s Lost Letters to the Corinthians Were Found Today?

While reading through The Cradle, The Cross, and the Crown I found this sidebar helpful.  Here is a summary of what the editors say.

To be sure this document would be historically important, but there are still good reasons these letters, if discovered, should not be added to the NT canon.

1. These letters were missing from the canon collection from the beginning suggests that, for some reason, the apostles–and ultimately God the Holy Spirit–did not see fit to preserve these documents.
2. The sovereignty of God in the production of the NT canon should be recognized.  If he did not see fit to provide the letter for 2,000 years of Christian history, why would anyone suppose that a new letter should be added to the canon of Scripture now?
3. Finally, the above discussion assumed for argument’s sake that such a document could be verified, but in truth this is highly unlikely.  If scholars cannot arrive at a consensus regarding the book of Ephesians, which is part of the existing NT canon, it is unlikely that they would come to a consensus regarding a “new” apostolic book.

Biofrost Arts

A new conference called Liturgy, Music, Space is being put on by Biofrost Arts on March 29-31 in St. Louis.

Here is their description of the conference:

Each week, we tell our congregations a story with how we use liturgy, how we use music, and how we use space in worship. Bifrost Arts has developed a curriculum for small groups and Sunday School classes entitled “Liturgy, Music, & Space” to help churches walk through a coherent, biblical view of how these elements of worship are forming us.

Join us from March 29-31 as we present this curriculum at a conference with lectures, workshops, and times of worship in St. Louis, Missouri with:

* Nicholas Wolterstorff
* Bryan Chapell
* Greg Thompson
* John Hodges
* Kevin Twit
* Betsy Steele Halstead
* Isaac Wardell
* & The Welcome Wagon.

Conference fee is $150. Discounts are available for students, campus ministers, and church employees from small congregations.

Click to watch the video below.  This video is well done and I think these guys propose a good idea. 

Bifrost Arts from josh franer on Vimeo.

HT: Reformissionary

Non-Christians on the Worship Team?

First let me say that I have a lot of respect and benefited much from Tim Keller’s ministry.  He is doing a great work in Manhattan.  I had heard rumors that Keller allowed non-Christian musicians to play in his services and it was confirmed by this paragraph in Worship by the Book.  I think I disagree with him on this, and will post some comments later this week on why I disagree. Let me know what you think about this.

We often include non-Christian musicians in our services who have wonderful gifts and talents.  We do not use them as soloists, but we incorporate them into our ensembles.  We believe this fits a Reformed “world and life view.”  The dualistic view in many evangelical churches is that a godly, sincere Christian who is an average musician is more pleasing to God than a non-Christian professional musician.  But Reformed theology teaches that God’s natural gifts in creation are as much a work of grace as God’s gifts in salvation.  In the film Amadeus, Antonio Salieri can see that Mozart, through “unworthy” in many ways, has been chosen by God’s grace to receive an artistic gift.  Musical talent is a gift of God, and to ask a musician to offer up that gift in a service of worship is a good thing both for him or her and for us.

Worship by the Book, edited by D.A. Carson, p. 239. 

The Aim of Church Services

What is the aim of public services?  Coming face to face with God is the main priority.  But to say we come together to meet with God exclusively is reductionistic.  Then why get together at all?  Let’s stay home under our warm sheets and commune there.  There must be some corporate element to it.  Is the church then exclusively for believers and their communion with God and one another?  I am close to resonating with this, but isn’t there some sense in which the corporate gathering is meant to be evangelistic.  Could it be that our church services have in mind God, believers, and unbelievers?

While reading Worship by the Book John Calvin, Tim Keller, and Ed Clowney had some helpful comments:  (these are Keller’s words)

Calvin’s refusal to choose between the glory of God and edification lays the groundwork for what Edmund Clowney calls “doxological evangelism.”

Clowney points out that Israel was called to make God known to the unbelieving nations (Ps 105:1) by singing his praises (Ps 105:2).  The temple was to be the center of a “world-winning worship.”  The people of God not only worship before the Lord but also before the nations (Isa 2:1-4; 56:6-8; Ps 47:1; 100:1-5; 102:18; 117).

God is to be praised before all nations, and as he is praised by his people, the nations are summoned and called to join in song.

In Acts 2, the nonbelievers initially hear the disciples praising God (v. 5) which leads them to ask what worship is all about (v. 12) and how they can find God (v. 37).  In 1 Corinthians 14:24-25, a nonbeliever in the midst of gathered worship falls down in conviction that God is real.

In summary, if the Sunday service aims primarily at evangelism, it will bore the saints.  If it aims primarily at education, it will confuse unbelievers.  But if it aims at praising the God who saves by grace, it will both instruct insiders and challenge outsiders.  Good corporate worship will naturally be evangelistic.

Worship by the Book, edited by D.A. Carson, p. 218-219.