You never, never, never, never ... outgrow your need for the Gospel!

5 Indicators that Your Church’s Average Age Might Have Increased Without You Realizing

Here's an interesting list from Will Mancini that we would do well to think about very carefully, and urgently!

#1 The senior pastor has been there for over 10 years and is still preaching over 90% of the time. (No team presence)

#2 You could not tell the difference between the worship (music, praise, liturgy) last Sunday and a video of worship 5 years ago.

#3 There are no leaders under age 40 among the top twelve leaders.

#4 There is no one under age 40 participating in the worship planning, programming or leadership.

#5 A majority of the top leaders still laugh about the fact they don’t do social media.

Jonathan Edwards: a universe of personal relationships

The final chapters of George M. Marsden's biographical masterpiece, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, powerfully and effectively highlight the dominant themes of Edwards' life and ministry.  It may appear cliche'd, but the final paragraphs of the book are profound...

"Among other things, Edwards challenges the commonsense view of our culture that the material world is the "real world".  Edwards' universe is essentially a universe of personal relationships.  Reality is a communication of affections, ultimately of God's love and creatures' responses...

"God's trinitarian essence is love.  God's purpose in creating a universe in which sin is permitted must be to communicate that love to creatures.  The highest or most beautiful love is sacrificial love for the undeserving.  Those who are given eyes to see that ineffable beauty will be enthralled by it. They will see the beauty of a universe in which unsentimental love triumphs over real evil.  They will not be able to view Christ's love dispassionately but rather will respond to it with their deepest affections.  Truly seeing such good, they will have no choice but to love it.  Glimpsing such love, they will be drawn away from their preoccupations with the gratifications of their most immediate sensations.  They will be drawn from their self-centred universes.  Seeing the beauty of the redemptive love of Christ as the true centre of reality, they will love God and all that he has created." (p. 503, 505)

This day next week ...

Hopefully, events will not turn out like this ... (but there's no guarantee!)

'Heightening our sense of speechless privilege'

The good people hosting the 'Of First Importance' daily blog, encouraging us with short pithy quotes "to live each day in the good of the Gospel" - are currently on a roll!  What about today's offering from the pen of Don Carson regarding us being caught up in the perfection of love among the persons of the Trinity? Ecstatically wonderful indeed!

"The Son’s will is to please his Father, not just to save us; and the Father’s will is to have all men honour the Son, not just to forgive us. To grasp the divine relationships in the drama of redemption is to humble our pride and heighten our sense of speechless privilege. To be saved and renewed, to be recipients of new life, to be forgiven, all because we are caught up in the perfection of love among the Persons of the Godhead, is unutterably solemn, ecstatically wonderful."

Spiritual lethargy, apathy, stupidity ... and glory of Jesus

"Do any of us find decays of grace prevailing in us; deadness, coldness, lukewarmness, a kind of spiritual stupidity and senselessness coming upon us? Do we find an unreadiness unto the exercise of grace in its proper season and the vigorous acting of it in duties of communion with God? And would we have our souls recovered from these dangerous diseases? Let us assure ourselves there is no better way for our healing and deliverance, yea no other way but this alone, namely, the obtaining a fresh view of the glory of Christ by faith, and a steady abiding therein. Constant contemplation of Christ and his glory putting forth its transforming power unto revival of all grace, is the only relief in this case."
John Owen
HT:  OFI

Our hearts are no longer heavy, they are light!

This evening at the 'Wycliffe Live' missions event in Coleraine Baptist, the following video clip was shown.  It's the very moving record of the dedication service in which the Kimyal tribe in Papua New Guinea receive the first printed copies of the New Testament in their own language.  Notice the tears of joy at having God's Word for themselves.  

How complacent and ungrateful many of us, who claim to love the Lord, have become when we fail to spend time with the Lord by giving only a few begrudging moments - if at all - to reading our Bibles and meeting with God.  

"...you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia." 1 Thess 1: 6-7

How the New Testament Describes Conversion

Dane Ortlund has very helpfully complied a list of how the New Testament writers graphically draw upon ideas, both universal and from their contemporary culture, to describe this multi-faceted wonder of God's grace, our 'salvation'.  The following are what he considers to be the most important... 

• Justification – the lawcourt metaphor (Rom 5:1; Titus 3:7)
• Sanctification – the cultus metaphor (1 Cor 1:2; 1 Thess 4:3)
• Adoption – the familial metaphor (Rom 8:15; 1 John 3:1–2)
• Reconciliation – the relational metaphor (Rom 5:1–11; 2 Cor 5:18–20)
• Washing – the physical cleansing metaphor (1 Cor 6:11; Titus 3:7)
• Redemption – the slave market metaphor (Eph 1:7; Rev 14:3–4)
• Purchase – the financial transaction metaphor (1 Cor 6:20; 2 Pet 2:1)
• Liberation – the imprisonment metaphor (Gal 5:1; Rev 1:5)
• New Birth – the physical generation metaphor (John 3:3–7; 1 Pet 1:3,23)
• Illumination – the light metaphor (John 12:35–36; 2 Cor 4:4–6)
• New Creation – the redemptive-historical metaphor (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15)
• Resurrection – the bodily metaphor (Eph 2:6; Col 3:1)
• Union with Christ – the organic or spatial metaphor (Rom 6:1–14; 2 Tim 1:9)

Ortlund concludes:  "Inexhaustible richness. Luther was right--

If a person is without warmth about matters pertaining to God and salvation, as the common man does, then the devil merely laughs. But if your words are aglow in your heart, you will put the devil to flight. (LW 22:357)"

Grace - changing hearts, changing lives, changing destinies

In LIFE Groups we've been looking at the concept of 'grace' using Philip Yancey's "What's so amazing about grace?" to guide our thinking and discussion.
One of the classic illustrations of grace as God's power to change hard-hearted, sin-twisted lives (outside of the Bible itself!) comes from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.  Enjoy this scene, with Ballymena man Liam Neeson in the role of the convict, Jean Valjean.

Still growing...

Sunday's sermon's slides (9 October):

John 3:16

May God richly bless you as you watch and listen to this - and look to Jesus.

You, me, Adam and Eve: Practical Atheists

Continuing to think with Ruth Tucker (Walking Away from Faith) about the roots of unbelief, she writes:

"We should not be surprised that problems related to unbelief arise in the very opening pages of the biblical narrative.  The creation of human beings with capabilities of thinking and acting independently seems to lead almost naturally to a difficulty in believing in God.  That is not to suggest that Adam and Eve were atheists or agnostics in the modern sense of the terms.  They were not.  But they were - as was Cain, their son - practical atheists: that is, they acted as though they did not believe in God or at least that in God's omniscience [all-knowing] or omnipresence [present everywhere].  They conversed with the serpent as though God was not present.  They disobeyed God's command not to eat of fruit as though God would not know.  They hid themselves as though God could not find them. 

"The difficulties that Adam and Eve had in fully believing in God are the same difficulties that have been common to humankind ever since.  Even among those who would most fervently affirm their absolute belief in God, there remains that tendency toward what I term practical atheism - living as though one does not believe in a personal, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God.

"...Indeed, strange as it may seem, with all its stories of carnage and crime and immorality and intrigue, the Old Testament includes no explicit stories of people's denying the existence of God.  It comprises stories of disobedience, defiance and deception, but none of its narratives turn on the theme of doubting God's existence." (p.82-83)  

Our inclination towards unbelief

"The origins of unbelief are unmistakable.  The Bible opens in paradise, with unbelief only a temptation away.  From the Fall onward, God's people have an inclination towards unbelief.  Church historian, Martin Marty, writes:

'What is original in today's unbelief?  It is misleading or fruitless to ask this question as if unbelief itself were a new phenomenon... The Bible gives no license for its readers to draw the conclusion that belief came without struggle to man or that faithfulness prevailed in its time.  Even the most casual reading of medieval history reveals the extent of ignorance, faithlessness, apathy and rebellion in the 'Age of Faith'.  The Reformers, by their own admission, left the world and the church in many ways as they had found them, and faith did not prevail.  As a modern process, secularisation is now centuries old.' "

Ruth A. Tucker, Walking Away from Faith (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p.82

"Tell me about the 'god' you don't believe in"

Dave Bish has an interesting and helpful post about engaging meaningfully with those who declare faith in a 'non-god'.  Rather than often being simply silenced by the seeming trump-card of professed atheism, we should explore more fully the nature and character of the 'god' that they believe does not exist.  The response will invariably be to describe an ugly parody of the One True Biblical God, a 'god' that Christians don't believe in either. This leaves the door open to clarifying misconceptions about God generally and Christ in particular.
Great post, worth reading and musing on.

The Church that grows together ...

The slides from Sunday's sermon...

Crush on the thresholds of your mind: "I can't!"

Here is the extended quotation from Oswald Chambers I read on Sunday, slightly altered for clarity. I'm afraid that the original source is unknown.

Oswald Chambers:  1874 -1917

"One of the many dangers in work for God is to make natural temperament the line of service.  The gifts of the Spirit are built on God's sovereignty, not our ability.  We are apt to limit God by saying, 'Oh, I'm not built like that ..(or) I have not been well educated.'  Never limit God by those paralysing thoughts, it is the outcome of unbelief.  What does it matter to the Lord Almighty what your previous work or experience has been?  What does matter to Him is that you don't lean on your own understanding, but acknowledge Him in all your ways.  So crush on the thresholds of your mind any of those lame 'I can'ts!'.  The great stumbling block that prevents some people being simple disciples of Jesus is that they know they are gifted - so gifted that they won't trust the Lord with all their hearts.  You have to learn to break - by the power of the Spirit - the fuss and lethargy which alternate in your life and remember that it is a sin to be claim to be weak in the promise of His assured strength." 




See also Ray Ortlund's recent ruminatings on this theme here.

The 'Relevance' of a Cross-Centred Ministry

Re: 1 Cor 2:2
"Paul is here exposing to view the controlling centre of his ministry strategy.  "Jesus Christ and him crucified" was, for Paul, the ultimate criterion of what today call 'relevance'.  And with his typically refreshing outlook, the apostle defined relevance not as we tend to do.  For him, relevance had to be defined not in terms of meeting audience expectations but in relation to the centrality of the Cross.  His preaching agenda was set by that theological centre, not by his audience.  He determined not to be 'practical', if that meant limiting his message to subjects like time-management, self-esteem, stress-reduction and so on.  'Do such things flow from the Cross?' Paul would insist upon asking.  If a certain subject had no meaningful, unrestrained relation to the Cross, for all that that means, then Paul determined to ignore it, no matter how magnetic it might be for getting people through the doors.
"...We take it for granted that 'relevance' stands in relation to popular culture, so that a 'relevant ministry' tells us only that it is contemporary in style.  We have, perhaps, without even thinking, bent the direction of 'relevance' back down toward culture rather than up to the Cross."
Ray Ortlund, 'The Power of the Gospel in the Church Today', TrinJ 18NS (1997), 8.