Free Book Friday No. 2: Planting, Watering, and Growing

Planting, Watering, and Growing: Planting Confessionally Reformed Churches in the 21st Century — eds. Danny Hyde and Shane Lems

Pardon my posting only a partial free book once again. (Lots of full free books are on the way, I promise–stay tuned!) Nevertheless, I have a good excuse for another partial: the free downloadable portion includes an excellent essay by my pastor, Rev. Brian Vos of Trinity URC: ”The Fruitful Grain of Wheat.” He argues that, according to the Apostle John, clearly discerning the interrelationship between Christ’s humiliation and exaltation is the vital root by which a church plant receives its spiritual life and power.

Also included in the free download are:

  • “Forward: Was the Reformation Mission-Minded?,” by Michael Horton,
  • and “Introduction,” by Daniel Hyde and Shane Lems.

The confessional approach to church planting is an historically significant voice that deserves a serious hearing in contemporary Protestant discussions about what a church is and how to start one properly. Planting, Watering, and Growing is a timely collection of essays by Reformed pastors and theologians who themselves are on the front lines of church planting, practicing what they preach.

Sovereign Grace: New URC Plant on NE Side of Grand Rapids

This Lord’s Day evening I had the privilege of attending the inaugural service for Sovereign Grace URC, a new church plant meeting on the northeast side of Grand Rapids in the Vos Chapel at Kuyper College. If you live on the northeast side and are looking for a Scripture-based, Christ-exalting, God-centered church, then come join the brothers and sisters who are gathering for worship just off the Beltline.

The Lost Sola of the Reformation

 

Professor Mike GlodoProfessor Mike Glodo asks a used-to-be-not provocative, but sadly-is-controversial-today question about the doctrine of the church:

With which of the following statements are you in greater agreement?

  1. “Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.”
  2. “Away from [the church] one cannot hope for any forgiveness of sins or any salvation.”

For the average evangelical Christian the first statement may lack some balance, but the second sounds downright Romish. If this describes your reaction, then your ecclesiology is closer to the author of the first, Lenny Bruce, than to the author of the second, John Calvin (Institutes 4.1.1). Bruce, satirist of organized religion and nemesis to hypocrisy, a comedian notorious for his vulgarity and impiety, nevertheless expressed a common contemporary assessment of organized religion, while Calvin’s statement seemed to betray his role as one of the primary catalysts of the Protestant Reformation.

Sadly, evangelical America exhibits a proclivity for (unintentionally: e.g. parachurch world; intentionally: e.g “emergent” Christianity) cutting off the branch she stands upon in order to “bring revival” or “make a difference for Jesus” or “have a deeper spiritual experience with Jesus” outside of the very means God promised to bless with those specific blessings–Jesus’ body, His church. All too often the self-defeating (as far as Scripture is concerned) sentiment arises in such groups, “The church failed. The church wounded me. The church didn’t meet my needs. Therefore, we need a new non-church church.”Perhaps even more sad than evangelical America’s dissing on the church is when Reformed churches act likewise. When Reformed churches try to be “unchurchy,” they too are guilty of betraying what historically is at the heart of their identity (much more Scripturally too)–robust ecclesiology. Reformed brothers and sisters, this ought not be. Of all Christians, the Reformed ought to delight in ecclesiology, for none other reason than that Jesus Himself delights in His bride; To spit on the bride is to scoff the bridegroom. Though infinitely patient, our king does not take kindly to such mockery.

Reformed Perspectives Oct 21-27

Reformed Perspectives LogoEvery week Reformed Perspectives eZine puts out great articles on a variety of theological, ecclesial, and practical topics. Contributers include a mix of contemporary and classical Reformed pastors and thinkers.

21-27 Oct 2007 Edition:

The Truely Proclaimed Jesus Is Stronger and More Satisfying Than Ultimate Fighting

Speaking of why adult men don’t go to church, one pastor makes a poignant observation:

The [mixed martial arts] fights [in Vegas] were sold out and all fifteen thousand seats were filled.
The sport has exploded and is selling out arenas all around the
country. With the UFC also recently buying out the Pride Fighting
Championships league, the sport is certain to only skyrocket.
Curiously, it is most popular with men ages eighteen to
thirty-four–the exact group that most churches are abysmal at reaching
and retaining, in part because most churches and pastors have no idea
what to do with men who are not motivated by a weepy worship dude(ish)
singing prom songs to a Jesus who is presented as a wuss who took a
beating and spent a lot of time putting product in his long hair.

Case in point: Somewhere along the lines Evangelicalism made the Lord of Heaven and Earth into a sissy Mr. Rogers Jr. (Anyone hear “Shine Jesus Shine” in the background with people swaying side to side?)

This same pastor later concludes:

I would strongly encourage all pastors and Christian leaders to spend
some time familiarizing themselves with the fast-growing sport that is
capturing millions of young men and ask yourself why.

The point is worth making, but this line of thinking is short sighted. In terms of numbers I’d bet my right arm that pornography captures millions more young men and women than does mixed martial arts. Accordingly, perhaps our need is not to ponder the power of martial arts, but to ponder the infinite power of the Son of God, who is strong to save, who always defeats his enemies, even mocking them, whose word cannot be overpowered, who fights holy war for His people, who sets captives of sin free to worship the Father, who offered up Himself as the perfect sacrifice, who mediates that sacrifice now to His people before the Father, who is coming again bearing the sword of ultimate judgment.

If our (the church’s) means are wimpy, it is because our theology is wimpy. Beef up theology, and the means will strengthen too. (Preachers who know Jesus’ infinite glories can’t help but preach Jesus in all His radiant power!) But, beefing up the means alone–as has already been done before–leaves you with bigger biceps, maybe bigger crowds, but not a bigger Savior.

Unveiling Facades of Expertise and Critiquing the Emerging Church

Carl Trueman’s latest post, The Theatre of the Absurd, in Reformation 21′s e-zine gives a needed kick in the pants to theological bloggers who pose as scholars and draws a parallel between the “blogging attitude” toward expertise and the emerging church.

What’s the Big Deal?

Trueman’s basic beef is this:

To cut to the chase: the danger of the web is this: where everyone has a right to speak, everyone ends up thinking they have a right to be heard; and when everyone in general thinks they have a right to be heard, then you end up with a situation where nobody in particular is listened to.

Basically, since the Web allows anyone to publish their ideas on any area under the sun to a worldwide audience regardless of expertise, many wannabe theologians are posing as experts when they should be sitting in a classroom. These wannabe intellectuals are “self-acclaimed scholars” who boost their egos by hanging out “with mutually-affirming virtual friends all day” and dreaming that they are “real player[s] in the serious scholarly world beyond the blogosphere.” (Hmm, sounds like me sometimes! :-)) They have no real authority or expertise, yet they write as if the church ought to bow to their glorious insights.

Examples

For example, such posing “experts” often fail to see their own glaring contradictions, probably due to their lack of rigorous interaction within a community which will honestly critique their ideas:

One was a blogsite which railed against “self-appointed watchdogs” who do nothing but offer negative criticism of others. Well I never. An attack on negative, self-appointed watchdogs launched by–umm–a negative, self-appointed watchdog. Yet the apparent absurdity of the situation was entirely lost on the blogmeister who was engaged in this activity, oblivious to the obvious contradictions of his activity and attitude.

A more direct example highlights a common trend which can lead easily to heresy: People who exalt themselves as experts and authorities who either do not have proper training or do not have enough experience and interaction with their ideas to have true authority. This type of thing can be seen in the case of the “survivalist nutcase out west who gathers with his wife and kids every Sunday and has a webpage entitled ‘The Presbyterian Church in America (Reconstituted).’” This “nutcase” claims equal authority with the true PCA and purports to have an equally authoritative existence. In other words, this guy raises himself to the level of expert and uses his Web site as his bully pulpit. Or to use Truman’s phrase, he asserts his “right to be heard” though he has no true authority to back up what he is saying.

Posing While Writing Papers Too?

Maybe what Trueman is saying relates to writing academic papers in seminary as well. My landlord is a librarian for my seminary. He is no average dude when it comes to theological research. He knows his stuff well, and he knows what it means to snowball bologna in a paper and hope it passes as serious academic writing. What he tells me about the supposedly “academic” papers he grades lines up with a previous comment on Reformation 21′s blog:

Grading term papers and hardly a footnote or primary source in sight here in Mississippi. Ad fontes indeed! Or as Del-boy might say, ad fundum.

What’s my generation’s deal? Have we lost the ability to do true academic research? My librarian landlord tells me that it seems students today would rather Google a few queries and call it good than to spend hours of “dirty work” in the library.

How the Church is Affected (i.e. Emerging Church Movement)

Back to Trueman, the heart of the issue for him is how the current attitude of everybody asserting their own self-proclaimed right to be heard is negatively affecting the church. While not specifically naming the so-called “Emerging Church” in his article, his comments obviously are aimed at this movement:

Let’s conclude by bringing the point home to the church: the danger of an uncritical attitude to the web and to blogging is that it comports very easily with the conversational model of theology which is now gaining currency among the advocates of advanced modernism (aka postmodernism) of the Western church situation, where ‘Thus saith the Lord’ is being displaced by ‘Come in, God, me old pal. Let’s have a cup of coffee and a chat.’ The absolute democratization of knowledge to which an uncritical attitude to blogging etc leads is, after all, inimical to any hierarchical view of truth, and thoroughly comfortable with the ‘this is my truth now tell me yours’ approach which is gaining ground even as I write.

Applications

I thought about pointing out that it is a little ironic that Trueman uses the Web to bash on those who are using the Web. But to do so would be to miss his point. It’s not about using the Web, it’s about authority. I myself often use the LOdown as if I’m an expert in theology, Webmastering, or any of the other things I’m writing about. I need to be careful to always keep in front of me that I’m no expert. Thus for me, my writing ought not to come from pretense of expertise.

What Trueman is trying to get us to see is that the irony of blogging involves people speaking as if they are experts when in reality they are plebes posing as scholars. We need to gain wisdom from Truemans’ distinction between the right to speak and the right to be heard. The former is a right given to American citizens which can be freely exercised by all. The latter is an expectation that is normally fulfilled by the process of gaining true authority and expertise in an area prior to proclaiming ideas. Expertise (i.e. the status of “scholar” as used in Trueman’s post) normally is achieved through diligent study, interaction within the academic community, and life experience (all by grace, of course).

For the Emerging Church, I think it needs a serious kick in the pants in this area. Much of the buzz for things such as “Emergent theology,” “missional worship,” etc. is blogger-based. This doesn’t make it bad, but if we apply Trueman’s argument to the Emerging Church, its blogger-based buzz borders on blurring the distinction that Trueman makes between the right to speak and the right to be heard (or true authority and expertise vs. pretense).

From my (admittedly non-expert) observations, it seems to me that many people in the so-called Emergent Church movement (following leaders like Stanley Grenz and John Franke) say things such as: “Truth today is no longer propositional.” (Such a statement is kind of funny since it takes a whole lot of propositional power to make such a claim.)

Furthermore, self-proclaimed leaders in the Emergent movement often give stories of being wounded by the church (especially modernistic mega-churches, legalistic fundamentalist churches, and cold intellectualist churches) as if by merely sharing their stories they are somehow instant experts on ecclesiology. Is this the type of “expertise” we are to embrace for today’s “post-modern” church? (I hope not.)

Other people who resonate with these self-proclaimed emergent experts’ sad stories seem to empathize with them and instantly honor them as experts since they were the first people to put into words what they have felt about the church too. These people get together and swap horror stories about their church experiences on their blogs (here’s the right to free speech). Others join in the conversation. After a good bit of swapping stories, before you know it a movement emerges with self-proclaimed experts who start making proclamations very much like the above self-contradicting proclamations. (Thus the right to be heard is asserted without much true authority and expertise.)

Bottom line: People of God beware of claiming too much expertise for yourself, and beware of following others non-critically who lack the true authority and expertise necessary to lead the church aright.