A Clever Young Man

Can anyone find the place where the wheels come off his reasonableness?

Less is More

Ed Stetzer has lost a LOT of weight in the last year, so he's my hero for being a great personal role model. However, he just posted this piece on his blog about how to plant a church without losing your soul, and I commend it to you -- whether you are planting a church, attending a church, loving a church, or leaving a church.

Nice work, ed.

Not done lightly (5)

This topic sort of slipped away from me here, but I have a few minutes today to make some hay about where we left off.

The GTY statement then goes on to say this:

This is not to suggest that these are the only circumstances under which people are permitted to leave a church. This is not to suggest that these are the only circumstances under which people are permitted to leave a church. There is certainly nothing wrong with moving one's membership just because another church offers better teaching or more opportunities for growth and service. But those who transfer their membership for such reasons ought to take extreme care not to sow discord or division in the church they are leaving. And such moves ought to be made sparingly. Membership in a church is a commitment that ought to be taken seriously.But those who transfer their membership for such reasons ought to take extreme care not to sow discord or division in the church they are leaving. And such moves ought to be made sparingly. Membership in a church is a commitment that ought to be taken seriously.

And before I say another word, let me say this in favor of this part of the statement: it is a pastorally-motivated statement which points people to treating the local church with a certain degree of dignity in spite of its flaws, and which seeks to give people good advice about how to manage their own growth in the faith. You simply cannot fault GTY for seeking to do this for people – especially given the nature of its ministry and because they are serving the larger Christian community in a way many local churches will not.

You know: many local church will not make an exposition of Scripture a key matter for Sunday worship. They will not make the task of rightly handling Scripture a matter of basic discipleship. They will not. That is: they choose not to do it on purpose.

That’s spiritually criminal in many ways. But it’s not actually heretical: it’s merely pragmatic. It is not very edifying, but it’s also not the worst a church can do. But think about this: the approach suggested by this part of this statement is not really any more pragmatic by saying that you should do what seems, in a practical sense, "better".

I read the GTY statement, and I have sympathy for what motivates it, but I wonder whether or not it’s giving advice which takes into consideration the gravity expressed in the first half of the statement. What does it mean that leaving a church is “not done lightly” if “there is certainly nothing wrong with moving one's membership just because another church offers better teaching or more opportunities for growth and service”?

I’m not sure those things mix together well. I’ll get back to that later.

Just for reference ...

Video of the Democratic side of both houses booing the President during the State of the Union, 2005.



One man shouting "liar" is, well, an interesting comparison.

My Kids

New Pawn Shop Item

Click here for same lousy prices. Pheh.

Timely

Carl Trueman on the YRR phenomenon.

Here's one gem from the back half of the essay:

Carrying on from this danger of personality cults, part of me also wonders if the excitement surrounding the movement is generated because people see that Reformed theology has intrinsic truth or because they see that it works, at least along the typical American lines of numbers of bodies on seats (in Britain, we'd say `bums on seats' but that phrase rather gains in translation). Now, I am no member of that theological party which sees the Lord's blessing in the fact that every year its churches are smaller, its sermons more arcane self-important and tedious, and its people less friendly and more sour. Look, if I wanted a pretentious and incomprehensibly abstract theology with an impeccable record of emptying churches, I'd convert to Barthianism, wouldn't I? Yet not reveling in smallness and irrelevance does not require that I necessarily regard increasing numerical and financial size as accurate gauges of fidelity and truth.

As they say in respectable places, read the whole thing.

from the meta ...

OK, so this got said:

Frank and I have very different views on the place of ecclesiology. I have a very low ecclesiology, almost consumed by my Christology. Frank seems to have a much higher view of the church, its role and especially its leaders than I do. This really is a quite influential difference.

And the reason it needs to be addressed is not because of who said it, but because I'll bet a lot of people think this way about what I believe.

So in the spirit of a proper merciless beating, let's go at it one part at a time. Ignore the cartoons as they are merely ornaments and not commentary. I have a quote to keep up.

I have a very low ecclesiology, almost consumed by my Christology.

I have no idea what that means, but it seems to me that an actually-high Christology will put the affections of Christ in the right places. Mind you: I didn't say "affections for Christ but the affections belonging to Christ.

My opinion is that an adequate Christology amplifies all the christological consequences -- and in this case, that would be the church. What we think of it, how we relate to it, whether we believe in it, how we stand trial with it and toward it, whether we endure it or nurture it or abandon it.

So while Michael says his Christology overshadows the church, I would say my Christology causes me to reconsider the church from Christ's perspective. I think that's a difference of opinion based on a difference in perception about the incarnation, and to say more than that would be to say something easily misinterpreted as unkind. The "low view" of church is a classic anabaptist consequence, which many baptists share. I can't fault Michael for being in that gaggle as that is my gaggle, too.

Frank seems to have a much higher view of the church, its role and especially its leaders than I do.

"Yes" before the comma, not so much after the comma. I have a high view of what the leaders are called to do. I have a high view of what a man must be -- by command of Scripture -- to lead the church, spiritually and personally.

But here's the thing: I have also spent the last 20 years leading people. There is nothing worse than leading people who, frankly, will not be lead. In a secular environment, you can just fire those people when they are sufficiently insubordinate -- something I have only had to do twice. You can't fire someone from the church -- even though bad pastors do it all the time.

In that, I think that the commands of Scripture to us are really very clear: be in submission to your leaders. They are men, and they will always make plenty of mistakes. You should love them for trying to serve Christ with their whole lives rather than with just their sunday mornings and wednesday nights. When I talk about how the layman should relate to the elders of his church, it's from the perspective that these men are called to do what it says in Titus and Timothy to do, and they can't do that if they people around them have their own ideas of how to accomplish that and fight them at every turn.

The back side of that, of course, is that they are actually called and required to be good leaders who are humble before God, and humble to men, and do not lord it over people, and take the commands to Titus and Timothy seriously. It's a one-way street, with Christ directing traffic, and we all need to follow Him or else it's just a wreck.

So again, I think a high Christology, which sees Christ's incarnation as a real thing that causes the church and requires the church as a necessary consequence of Emmanuel, causes a radical view of membership and leadership which, frankly, is a wrecking ball to the CEO pastor.

My wife and I joke all the time that a pastor is more like a kindergarten teacher than a CEO. He's more like a shepherd than he is like a king. Or at least he ought to be -- and the sheep need to follow him for their own good.

This really is a quite influential difference.

I do agree with that. I'd welcome a discussion about that.

Two, no Three things

[1] John in the comments of the last note decried the "pissing match" going on at the ol' blog, and while I think he's only about half right I take his comments seriously, therefore this particular post.

[2] Michael has said that I have taken a private e-mail from him and turned it into a blog post. I've been through all the posts for 2009, and I can't find it. If someone can point out to me what he's talking about, I'd be grateful.

[3] Michael has also said that I am "obsessed" with him, and that I only blog for the traffic. I own the second half of that, as should any blogger who can report his traffic, for example, in order to gain sponsers for his blog or to sell a book deal. However, until I reviewed the last 8 months of blogging, I did not realize how much like clockwork my posts about him have been. Most of those this year have been sympathetic, but facts are facts. To my own state of mind, it was convenient to find topics at BHT and IM, and I have been especially limited in time this year. I would call the practice: sloppy; lazy; convenient; myopic; drive-by. There was by no means any ill-will intended as the content of all but the last 5 or 6 would testify (I would argue that all but that last one testify to that; but I am honestly not trying to argue now). However, it has plainly caused Michael to be offended. I stand by the content; I reject the practice. I apologize to him for making him a truck stop for my blogging benefit. It was an ill-considered practice, and I will avoid making a habit of commenting on his blogging in the future.

And that's the hat-trick

From the BHT:

Turk’s closing swipe at me from the 5th post fisking me in the last two weeks:

..so my examples of you being “not Gospel centered” would be for the benefit of trying to explain something else to you — something which, after years, you simply cannot hear. And it’s a shame, really.

What should trouble the reader here is what the elipsis covers -- which is (as you can see below), 'Well, I think that I have listed some pretty specific content here. Anyone who calls you "not Gospel centered" should cite an example, and we can gage it from there. I could cite an example of such a thing, but oddly I wouldn't call you "not Gospel centered"'.

And for the record, it was iMonk who said I "have to fisk him 3 times a week". I hadn't really done anything to or about him for quite a while before that -- and his randy comments about John Piper. It's been fun, but as you can see, it doesn't work really for Michael's sense of well-being. It's slander, you see, to tell him he's not half as generous or credible as he thinks he is.

Obviously, the key to my spiritual life is to receive Godly counsel from a man who continually lies and slanders me, misses no opportunity to claim knowledge of my life and motives and who entertains delusions of being God’s agent to get truth to me.

Ah. The lies and the slanders. Like the lie that your interpretation of Timmy Brister's reading list is that it is too narrow -- not diverse enough.

I am sure neither you nor Timmy will be the same. For the record, Michael has e-mailed me his denial of that statement by me, and I accept it. We'll keep that on file for the next time he goes off on Young Reformed types and their narrow vision for the theological world.

Since we're setting the record straight, I see myself as a fellow blogger who, frankly, thinks you have never once in your life received a citicism you thought was constructive -- especially when you're wrong. Your tolerance for people who think you are honestly wrong can only be measured in microvolts -- which is why I send criticism in megawatts. I like to see your meter ping.

Frank, go find a pastor. Show him what you’ve written about me these many years. All of it. Look at him and tell him that you are in the will of God when you’re doing this, and I am out of it for not listening to you.

Mine always has -- and still does even as I am seeking a new church. Thanks for asking. When you can return the favor, and find a pastor you can tolerate who will also tell you the truth, let the rest of us know and we'll be glad to receive your high-handed rebukes with a light dusting of credibility.