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A GOOD CHURCH IS HARD TO FIND VOLUME

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A GOOD CHURCH IS HARD TO FIND

16 A Permanent Address A highly mobile culture, such as our own, does not afford our generation the sense of rootedness that older generations experienced. Even the church here below, the church militant, is at best a staging area for our permanent home: the church triumphant and the kingdom of glory.

by Michael Horton Plus: Why Do We Wander?

24 What Should I Expect From Church?

Choosing a church is no small task. The hosts of the nationally syndicated White Horse Inn radio program help readers think through the different questions they need to ask when choosing a church.

A White Horse Inn Roundtable Discussion Plus: Top Ten List and Five Questions

31 In the Church: Finding Common Ground Across Denominations One of the most common complaints about Protestantism is the fractured nature of our churches. New denominations spring up overnight. How should Christians in one denomination relate to those in another? Can we find common ground in the larger family of Christian churches?

by Ann Henderson Hart

SPECIAL CENTER PULL-OUT Our Family Tree COVER PHOTO BY STONE/BETSIE VAN DER MEER

Have you ever wondered what the difference was between a Free Methodist and a United Methodist? How does the Calvary Chapel in your town trace its roots? This special center section charts the growth and development of our modern denominations from their historic roots.

In This Issue page 2 | Letters page 3 | Between the Times page 5 | Speaking of page 9 Preaching from the Choir page 10 | Council Counsel page 12 | Ex Auditu page 13 | Resource Center page 22 We Confess page 36 | Free Space page 37 | Reviews page 40 | On My Mind page 44

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MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton

Survey Says!

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Executive Editor Mark R. Talbot

everal interesting books, including Paul Wilkes’s Excellent Protestant Congregations (Westminster John Knox, 2001) and Carmen Renee Berry’s The Unauthorized Guide to Choosing a Church (Brazos, 2003), have recently attempted to make church shopping

easier for the American public. With statistics showing that fully two-thirds of first-time visitors to any given church are active members of another congregation, the need for such books is acutely felt. But the weaknesses of these books and others like them are that they do not take into account those areas by which confessional Protestants have usually measured a church’s faithfulness and suitability for membership. Instead of evaluating a church’s confessional adherence, views of preaching and the means of grace, or understanding of church discipline, these books are more inclined to rate a church’s community atmosphere and the importance it places on training laity.

To help remedy this shortcoming, this issue of Modern Reformation offers several articles to help our readers find those elusive “good” churches. Reformed theologian and editor in chief Michael Horton starts off with an

Next Issues: July/August 2004: Covenant Confusion The tragedy of the current state of our churches is not that the gospel is taken for granted, but that it is being viciously attacked by the ministers who have sworn to protect it.

September/October 2004: The Christian Voter’s Guide Just in time for the fall election cycle, a guide unlike any other you’ll receive this year. Why should God appoint secular rulers over his people? What place does religion have in a civil society? Might secularism be a good thing?

November/December 2004: Peace on Earth The Christmas season is a season of peace, hope, and love. But the world’s vision of peace often differs from that of Scripture.

How can we speak of peace when the babe lying in a manger was born to die?

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explanation of what the church actually is: our home away from home. The importance that we give to this identification will help determine what we look for in a new church. A transcript of a classic White Horse Inn conversation—featuring Michael Horton, Reformed pastor Kim Riddlebarger, Lutheran theologian Rod Rosenbladt, and Baptist pastor Ken Jones—introduces us to the key issues that we must face when choosing a church. Staff writer Ann Henderson Hart then explores how Christians in one church should relate to Christians in another church or denomination: “What hath Wittenburg to do with Geneva?”

The sidebars in this issue explore the reasons churches give to entice “shoppers,” offer five important questions to ask of any potential church, explore our tendency to wander from church to church, and relate our reader’s “top ten” lists of characteristics that define a good church. A special center section traces the development of American church history and shows from where all the churches in your neighborhood have come.

On our website, we’re featuring an important collection of essays by our Council members and other leaders in several Reformed and Lutheran denominations introducing us to the key issues that these churches will be facing in their summer assemblies. Both the mainline and sideline churches have been wrestling with substantial issues for the past several years. It’s often hard to see the forest for the trees. These essays will acquaint you with the key issues and the consequences of certain referendums and proposals that will shape the nature and purpose of the wider church.

Managing Editor Eric Landry Alliance Council Gerald Bray ❘ D. A. Carson Mark Dever ❘ J. Ligon Duncan, III W. Robert Godfrey ❘ John D. Hannah Michael Horton ❘ Rosemary Jensen Ken Jones ❘ John Nunes J. A. O. Preus ❘ Rod Rosenbladt Philip Ryken ❘ R. C. Sproul ❘ Mark R. Talbot Gene E. Veith ❘ Paul F. M. Zahl Department Editors Brian Lee, Ex Auditu, Reviews Benjamin Sasse, Between the Times William Edgar, Preaching From the Choir Staff ❘ Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Staff Writer Diana S. Frazier, Contributing Editor Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Celeste McGhee, Proofreader Contributing Scholars Charles P. Arand ❘ S. M. Baugh C. Fitzsimmons ❘ Allison David Anderson Charles Arand ❘ S. M. Baugh Jerry Bridges ❘ R. Scott Clark William Cwirla ❘ Marva Dawn Richard Gaffin ❘ T. David Gordon Donald A. Hagner ❘ Gillis Harp D. G. Hart ❘ Paul Helm ❘ C. E. Hill Hywel R. Jones ❘ Peter Jones Richard Lints ❘ Korey Maas Donald G. Matzat ❘ Mickey L. Mattox John Muether ❘ John Piper ❘ Paul Raabe Kim Riddlebarger ❘ Shane Rosenthal Rachel Stahle ❘ A. Craig Troxel David Van Drunen ❘ William Willimon Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals © 2004 All rights reserved. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the twenty-first century church to a reformation that recovers clarity and conviction about the great evangelical truths of the gospel and that then seeks to proclaim these truths powerfully in our contemporary context. For more information, call or write us at: Modern Reformation 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 546-3696 ModRef@AllianceNet.org www.modernreformation.org ISSN-1076-7169

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As usual, I read the current issue (January/February 2004) cover to cover. In fact, I read the articles on “God’s will in my life” a couple of times. It really is a difficult issue to understand and I think the writers did a good job in presenting an explanation from several points of view. After reading the articles I found that instead of trying to understand God’s will in my life, it may be easier for me to focus on my life in God’s will. This way I can focus on getting my thoughts, words and deeds in line with God’s revealed will for me. I get that revealed will from Holy Scripture. Since there is no way I can know God’s secret will, I must just trust him by faith. For example, if I focus on God’s will in my life (in that order) then I tend to think I must take God’s revealed will in Holy Scripture and make it conform to the decision I am about to make. I could try to mold God’s will to what I am doing. No wonder I get confused and wonder why God does not reveal more to me about his will for the situation at hand.

If I turn the process around where I focus on making my thoughts, words and deeds conform to God’s will that has already been abundantly revealed in the Bible, I can live my life in a way that gives me much more confidence and peace.

Gene R. Baldwin Wichita, Kansas

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You create a perfect magazine, but I noticed an error in Charles Mallie’s recent article “My Father’s Voice”: “Does being the best father you can be to your children outrank climbing the corporate ladder? You are free in Christ to choose one, or the other, or both.” (January/February 2004). Jeez, that sounds bad. No Reformed, Lutheran, Baptist, or Anglican (at least not one associated in any way with the Alliance) would ever encourage a person to make a choice between the corporate structure and children! There is no either/or there. If one could climb the corporate ladder successfully, while at the same time being the best father possible, then so be it; more power to him. But if it’s one or the other, our theological stand would always be on the side of our (covenant) children. This seems so obvious as to not need explanation. It’s got to be a simple mistake on Rev. Mallie’s part, completely unintentional. By the way, the article’s excellent.

The gospel is clearly and beautifully presented, and for that I am thankful.

Greg Myers Anaheim, California

Charles Mallie responds: Mr. Myers is correct in his understanding of vocation.

No one in their right mind would chose climbing the corporate ladder over being a good father. In fact, the opposite is what I wish were true for most Americans. No, I was merely trying to point out that either course of action “when taken in isolation,” is not sinful. It could have been more clearly written

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if I had explained that the man who chose to climb the corporate ladder had no children and was not even married. If you had to compare two men, one who was being the best father he could and another who was doing well in the business world, who would you say was more ‘in tune’ with God’s will?

Here lies the crux of what I endeavored to explain. The answer is found when one looks at his station in life, or as we say, vocation. As a new father, I can appreciate Mr. Myer’s reaction. I wish that all men would so guard the children of this world. If a situation came up where one (who was a father) had to choose between the two, of course he would be morally obligated to choose his children over his job.

It is unfortunate that in an edition of Modern Reformation (March/April 2004) so full of the grace of the gospel your reviewer should take a spiteful swipe at The Purpose Driven Life (book review by D. G. Hart, pp. 45-46). We may question the forty day plan, and stylistically the book may not be your thing, but surely we should celebrate if millions of people are reading a book that contains nearly 1,000 Scripture references. D. G. Hart’s statement, “Would that these same readers would attend to the truly transforming words of Scripture,” seems short on grace at the least. It is clear that Warren’s purpose is precisely to get Christians reading and applying the Scripture. Warren’s opening two chapters, with their strong declaration that, “It’s not about you” but God, and pithy affirmation of predestination should be Reformational enough for anyone. You never know, it may even get some people into the Institutes.

Matthew Hosier New Community Church London UK

Join the Conversation!

Modern Reformation Letters to the Editor 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 215.735.5133 fax ModRef@AllianceNet.org Letters under 200 words are more likely to be printed than longer letters. Letters may be edited for content and length.

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Dear Reader, We're reshuffling the deck at the Alliance!

As you may know, our programs have been closely identified with East Coast and West Coast teams. The White Horse Inn radio program and Modern Reformation magazine were originally California-based and our Board unanimously affirmed that we could give more focused time and energy to expanding all of our vital programs if we were able to bring the oversight to where the teams are in the first place! This is a great move from my point of view, since I'm trying to concentrate all of my efforts from one home base. The same is true for our White Horse Inn hosts and our Modern Reformation managing editor. So it just makes sense. In the meantime, we'll be making the transition and hope you'll pardon our "dust." We will do our very best to deliver high-quality, biblicallygrounded and historically-informed insights without missing a beat. Please let us know if we can do anything to serve you better!

Sincerely,

Michael Horton

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Faith Comes By…Seeing!

In the run-up to the release of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, thoughtful cultural observers and ranting culture warriors have asked a host of pointed questions about the film: Is it gratuitously violent?

Is it anti-Semitic? (And for that matter, are the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion anti-Semitic?) What are Mel Gibson’s purposes? Has he managed to fashion a uniquely “Catholic” Jesus? What will Americans make of this Jesus, when the culturally popular Jesus is much less bodily, much more therapeutic—and, to quote the New York Times, much more like “Mr. Rogers”?

Perhaps predictably, evangelicals seem to have received the movie as an unmitigated good. They have been enthusiastic about all of the attention Jesus has been getting in Hollywood. And entertainment executives have returned the hug—expressing their own enthusiasm about all of the free marketing Hollywood has been getting in church.

(Okay, it hasn’t exactly been “free” advertising. A company called “Outreach Marketing,” for instance, was hired to invite 4,500 pastors to an advance screening of the film at Willow Creek Church in suburban Chicago. Each pastor was also given a promotional packet explaining how they could use the movie as part of their evangelistic programs. Ministers leaving the event were quoted by journalists as saying that they planned to encourage every one of their members not just to attend, but also to buy an extra ticket for a friend.)

In spite of all this attention and inquiry, though, few participants in the stories about the movie have raised a single question about the propriety of Christians making an image of God (or about patronizing those making such images). Few have asked if storing images of this Jesus in one’s mind will be good for the believer on Sunday morning while hearing the Word or drinking the wine. And amidst the hyperbole about “the greatest outreach opportunity in 2000 years” (see “Say What!” box), few are discussing the relative merits of the preached Word and a filmed account of Jesus’ suffering and death.

To add a few more Reformational perspectives to this

debate, MR asked seven theologians who have given some thought to the arts to tell us if they planned to see the movie, and why or why not. (One had already seen the film by the time we asked.) In their responses, we suggested that they might touch explicitly on whether and how the Second Commandment affected their judgments. Here are some snippets of what they told us about their plans.

Mark Dever, Pastor Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, DC The depiction of this unique death is of great concern to us as Christians. Our response should be thoughtful. Most Christians seem enthusiastic about it, with many calling the film an evangelistic outreach tool. Alternatively, some of my conservative friends have ruled it out as a violation of the Second Commandment, as they would any film about Jesus.

Where do I stand on this? I’m uncertain. It could be a violation of the Second Commandment (forbidding making images of God) but many conservative Protestants have long made an exception for temporary pedagogical representations—like Sunday school skits or Campus Crusade’s Jesus film. We don’t intend to use these images for worship.

Another line of concern would be simply the fact that God had me born at a time not during the life of Christ on earth, but now. I come to him by his Spirit through his Word.

There his passion is in the context of his teaching, and of the rest of Scriptures. And I note that even when I come to the Gospels, one of the things that is most striking is—in contrast to this picture—the sparseness of the description. In fact, other than his beard, you look in vain for physical descriptions of Christ throughout the Gospels. Is this unusual fact important? I think it may be.

The emotional impact of this movie, I’m told from people who’ve seen it, is huge. Emotional responses from many

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people—converted or not—will be natural and numerous.

So, if this movie is so emotionally engaging, I’m going to be very careful before I give it an entrée into my mind about the most important thing in my life.

And because I have a question of whether it’s sin, I probably shouldn’t go see it. But I can talk about Christ with others who have seen it, even if I haven’t seen the movie. In fact, that may be an advantage—I could get them to tell me about it!”

T. David Gordon, Professor Grove City College, Grove City, PA I don’t intend to see Gibson’s film, but I’m not launching a campaign against it either. Having lived through Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, I doubt the film will either aid or injure the cause of Christianity significantly.

I always find historical movies disappointing, and especially so in characterization. Any time I’ve seen a film about an historical individual that I already have read about, the character appears non-credible—either too angelic or too demonic, but not human. The curious blend of qualities that makes most of our significant figures significant cannot all be credibly re-created in the brief span of a film (Albert Finney’s Churchill, for instance, is almost comical; and Gods and Generals made Stonewall Jackson nutty in ways he wasn’t, and not nutty in ways that he was). Few actors have the capacity to present a nuanced role.

So now, throw into the bargain the reality that the historical person in question is (a) God incarnate, and (b) a sinless human—and you have to ask yourself what actor can pull it off? What little mannerisms and body languages disclose a person’s character, and how can an actor actually know how a sinless human would respond in each circumstance?

Further, there’s the additional problem that once you see a personage portrayed on film, it is almost impossible to think of him without that particular image dominating one’s thoughts. (Can anyone after 1970 think of George Patton without an image of George C. Scott?) Until two years ago, anyone who read about the Rings had their own imagination’s view of Frodo; now, everyone who reads the book already knows what Frodo looks like. Why would I want someone’s guess of what Jesus would have been like to dominate my thoughts about him?

I guess the question I’ve been asking is: Why would anyone want to see the film? Is there something soterically significant about the work of Christ that cannot be communicated in Scripture?

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Preston Graham, Pastor Christ Presbyterian Church, New Haven, CT My primary reservation pertains to what Marshall McLuhan meant when he said that “the medium is the message.” In other words, I am wary of the big screen as a medium to communicate properly the message of the gospel and especially an “image of Christ.” By its very nature as an entertainment medium (in Dolby sound no less), it is oriented toward dramatization and sensationalism in a way that can obscure reality even while at the same time “seeming so real.”

Again, as a medium, film must necessarily “frame” that which is in truth a frameless reality. The effect of all this is to reduce a given message even if giving the impression of enhancing that message. And for dramatic effect and decision in favor of one frame over another, there was necessarily an editorial decision that has less to do with “real reality” and more to do with someone’s own “subjective reality.”

In short, I am particularly concerned that whatever image is properly conveyed in Scripture by the medium of the “Word” will necessarily be obscured and revised by the medium of the big screen. And again, the fact is that while being portrayed as (and I quote) an “authentic movie about Christ,” it is in reality Mel Gibson’s image of Christ, not to be confused with the Scripture’s image as communicated in word.

To illustrate my point perfectly, one person who viewed the film later stated, “It has been nearly three weeks since I saw the rough cut of The Passion. It is still impacting my life. I can’t stop thinking about it. I have never seen a film that has so affected my life. It is powerful, moving, and disturbing. The film is true to the Bible and other historical evidence, yet it is alive with emotion and the harshness of reality. I do not want to see it again, yet I will be compelled from within to do so— not only again, but again and again. No one will be ale to leave the theater and not be moved at the core of their being.”

Hmmm. This sort of reaction scares me. I for one am not sure that I want to expose myself, much less my children, to this kind of “power” as clearly related to the medium’s message concerning Christ as per Mel Gibson’s interpretation. And yet, I notice that the impact is validated as being “true to the Bible and other historical evidence.” Here again, a “framed” interpretation “seeming so real.” And I wonder as well, after seeing it again and again in one’s mind, if not literally in a theater, what really is being “seen” as to impact the most important relationship of my life!

Having said all this, my concern ought not to be confused with my great respect for the usefulness of art as directed by and for a Christian worldview. Art will necessarily involve a

Say What!

Gibson’s Passion is “the greatest outreach opportunity in 2000 years.”

— Zealous evangelicals quoted in Christianity Today

“The best movie I have ever seen…The nearest feeling that I can compare it to was an altar call experience with God.” — Rev. Steven Usry, Harvest Point United Methodist Church, McDonough, Georgia

“There is no salvation for those outside the (Catholic) church. I believe it….Put it this way. My wife is a saint. She’s a much better person than I am.

Honestly. She’s, like, Episcopalian, Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it’s just not fair if she doesn’t make it; she’s better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the (papal) chair. I go with it.”

— Mel Gibson in a televised interview in Alabama in February, talking about why he believes that Protestants will probably not be saved

creative interpretation as for the sake of being properly provocative for the purpose of some good, as per our understanding of common grace/general revelation. And to be sure, many good people in our church and denomination will find it useful to view this movie, if only to participate in the cultural conversation that will be conjured up by it for the sake of Christian apologetics. Moreover, one could perhaps argue that the same respect for the power of big screen images that causes me pause, is from the reciprocal point of view, an argument in favor of its usefulness for the sake of getting one’s attention. Therefore, I do see that it could possibly be useful as a potential pre-evangelistic tool by God, even in spite of the medium issues raised above.

Finally, I should note that I honestly don’t believe the Second Commandment extends to the issue of non-liturgical art…

D.G. Hart, Director for Honors Programs and Faculty Development Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Wilmington, DE First it was The Last Temptation and now it is The Passion of the Christ. If I had read the new books by Richard Wightman Fox and Stephen Prothero on “Jesus as an American icon,” I should not have been surprised by the hype over Gibson’s movie. But I am not sure that the interest in the Christ of cinema is a further indication of the United State’s allegedly vast

religiosity. Instead, I worry that public portrayals of Christ elicit both widespread acts of devotion and allegations of malice because Americans lack categories other than evangelism or secularity in order to talk about a movie with Christian themes.

Of course, what plays into the debates over The Passion are the ongoing skirmishes of the culture wars. First we heard that the movie was anti-Semitic. Now the churches have jumped on board to an amazing opportunity for soul-winning. Never mind that Gibson’s Catholicism, his violation of the Second Commandment, the prominence of Mary, or the replaying of the Passion Play should give Protestants pause. Nor does Gibson’s own pre-Vatican II ambivalence about the Pope and the contemporary church seem to bother the average Roman Catholic. As long as the movie features Jesus then powers of discernment seem to vanish. And so, Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Tridentine Rite Catholics team up to show secularists and the liberal media that the Christian faith won’t go away and may be more popular than ever. No one seems to be asking though whether this is a good movie on cinematic grounds, or whether it is faithful to the Gospels or to Catholic or Protestant understandings of the faith. Instead, the movie appears to be a pawn in a shoving contest between the skeptics in New York and Los Angeles and the faithful in the heartland.

None of these larger meanings of The Passion can draw me to the box office. It is not because I am above it all. Nor is it because I believe the culture wars are without importance.

They are. But I like movies a lot, and I like to see movies not to be edified or indoctrinated or to shoot off a symbolic round in the culture wars. I like to be entertained sometimes mindlessly but more often by the qualities that film possesses uniquely and by a good story or intriguing character. I guess The Passion could qualify. The previews actually make the movie appear to be well made. But I’ve rarely seen a good movie based on the Bible.

Then there are the questions surrounding the Second Commandment and whether we should make images of Christ. Of course, in this case we haven’t made them, Mel has. I feel like I could go to see this movie just as I have gone to see movies whose themes violate other numbers of the Decalogue. But seeing this film may not be wise. As my wife has prudently put it, do I really want to have the images of Gibson’s Christ rolling around in my head the next time we receive the Lord’s Supper? Seeing as how we only observe the sacrament once a month, I could possibly time a viewing of The Passion to give my memory (which is aging) time to clear before the next first Sunday of the month. Even then I’m not sure I want to take the risk. Plus, the Coen Brothers have a new movie scheduled to open in a few weeks.

I’ll pass.

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Rick Lints, Professor Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA I do not think one can make a straightforward application to Jesus from the Second Commandment. The central issue in the Second Commandment is idolatry, which may have to do with concrete images of God but need not. Idolatry is worshipping an aspect of creation as if it were the Creator. So one could be idolatrous in worshipping a job as if it were the source of significance and meaning in life.

The secondary issue in the Second Commandment is using a part of creation as if it were God in concrete form. On this second issue, the concreteness of the golden calf is likely in view with respect to the commandment. God is not like the golden calf that can be made with human hands. This also appears to be Paul’s interpretation of the Second Commandment in Acts 17 when he preaches at Athens. As applied to Jesus, I don’t think pictures of Jesus need be interpreted as “idols” in the Second Commandment sense. The danger however, is that Jesus is easily misconstrued by pictures, and become fashioned after the mental picture of the artist rather than the apostolic witness. In other words, pictures of Jesus may well falsely interpret the real historical Jesus.

And so when it comes to Jesus, the danger in any movie about Jesus is that the visual medium will overpower the text of Scripture in such a fashion that the movie will interpret the Bible rather than vice versa. This would be bordering on idolatry. However, I don’t think the concreteness of the visual image (movie) is itself a violation of the Second Commandment. After all, Jesus is in fact, the image of God— and therefore already “concrete.”

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Finally I would add, that I am going to see the movie to be able to participate in the cultural conversation about the movie. In the same vein, I might visit a Roman Catholic cathedral in order to better understand the view of Christian faith which it exhibits, without thereby sanctioning the cathedral as the “biblical view of architecture” or some such thing. Clearly, I don’t think I should be worshipping in the Roman Catholic cathedral in the way Catholics might worship there. But as a “cultural visitor,” it would be entirely appropriate, I think.

David VanDrunen, Professor Westminster Seminary California, Escondido, CA I have not seen and plan not to see Mel Gibson’s The Passion. The most basic reason revolves around my commitment to the Reformed understanding of the Second Commandment, which has prohibited the making and use of images of Christ.

The rationale for the Second Commandment is laid out in Deuteronomy (4:12, 15-19), where God commands Israel neither to make nor to worship an image. God reminds his people there that on the day he spoke to them at Horeb they did not see any form. God retains his authority to reveal himself when and how he wills.

Deuteronomy 29:29 sets forth this principle in wonderful brevity: the secret things belong to God, but the things revealed are for us and our children. Since God did not choose to reveal himself in visible form to his Old Testament people, they were not to create their own visible form of God or gods.

With the advent of the New Testament, things changed, of course. In the Incarnation of his Son, God did reveal himself in visible form. “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” said Jesus to Thomas. Nevertheless, God chose to remove Jesus from the sight of his people at the Ascension. God revealed himself visibly in Jesus Christ (and in him only!), but has not made this revelation accessible to his church at the present time. Now is the time that we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7), and though we do not see him, we love him (1 Pet. 1:8). Where God does not choose to make himself visibly present to us, we are not at liberty to invent our own visible images. For the present time, I long to see Jesus face to face, but I must be patient in the meantime and be content with the revelation that he has given us, both in nature and especially in the Scriptures. And we must not forget that Christ has not left us entirely without visible knowledge of him, for he gives us the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper.

(A more detailed and theologically rigorous argument for this view of the Second Commandment can be found in David VanDrunen, “Iconoclasm, Incarnation, and Eschatology: [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 1 5 ]

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Speaking of...

P ity the nations, O our God, constrain the earth to come; send your victorious Word abroad, and bring the strangers home.

Isaac Watts, “How Sweet and Awesome is the Place,” 1707

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he whole world is a theater for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power, but the Church is the orchestra...the most conspicuous part of it.

John Calvin, Commentary on the Psalms, 5.178

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unday feels odd without church in the morning. It’s the time in the week when we take our bearings, and if we miss it, we’re just following our noses. Of course, there’s a lot about church that can be aggravating—empty sermons and smarmy people and a certain comfy, complacent feeling. And then you have that organist in your face, destroying quietness wherever he can and then cranking up during hymns and assaulting you with the trumpet stops so you can’t hear yourself sing. But believing Christians are the people I want to be among. And every word of the Creed is true. And the organist shuts up during the prayers at least. And you think about your considerable sins. And you go forward to partake of the Savior’s death and resurrection, and that’s the whole thing. Isn’t it?

Garrison Keillor, The Lutheran, January 2002

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t’s famous. The pastor and the minister of music don’t agree. Worse, they coexist in a

Besides these principia, a few practical tips may be constant, unhealthy tension. The pastor wants old favorites, the musician wants to helpful. If all things are to be done decently and in order, it innovate. The pastor doesn’t like to plan his sermons too far ahead, the musician needs makes sense to plan ahead.

Churches work best when to know the main themes months before, so he or the staff meets regularly in order to map out the she can rehearse. The pastor doesn’t remember the liturgy, weeks, if not months in advance. Each music being as intrusive in the service as it has service should have its own internal integrity, become. The musician doesn’t remember a pastor always with the standard elements, adoration, with such weak aesthetic standards, and resents the humiliation, confession, edification, and so forth. growing verbosity of the liturgy. I know of one But then there may be variation on a theme. A prominent church in which the organ would start a series may be put together based on the “cipher” (a note sounding for no reason) in the instructional burdens, the needs of the middle of a prayer or a sermon. By strange congregation, missions outreach, and occasionally coincidence, half the church, including the seasonal appropriateness. This kind of planning organist, wanted a new organ, and this “accident” allows both pastor and musician to work together. was their proof. The other half thought the Flexibility is not prevented by such planning, but is instrument would cost far too much merely for the more easily achieved.

Finally, education, education, education. Pastors luxury of music.

Fortunately, the ministers and music leaders in ought humbly to be willing to learn about music many churches work very well together. But when history, about the difference between authentic and difficulties do arise, what is the problem? Is it only kitsch, about the many ways to honor the Lord with that pastors lack musical training, or that musicians the sounds of trumpet and lute and pipe (Ps. are so glued to their work they cannot appreciate 150:3–5). Music helps understand theology! pastoral challenges? Usually, the problem is deeper. Musicians ought humbly to be willing to learn Both sides may have forgotten that worship is, first, about pastoral burdens, about how the arts are for the praise of God, second, to edify the church, servants of worship, not its masters. Theology helps and third, to reach out. The pastor may have understand music! The time has come to give up the forgotten that every aspect of worship, from the default modes of sermon-driven worship or musicwords to the prayers to the music, should translate driven worship, and turn to God-centered worship, the word of Christ dwelling in us richly into mutual where both words and music are in their place. edification, not just the sermon (Col. 3:16). High aesthetic standards are not optional, but required, William Edgar (Dr. Theol., Universite de Genéve) is professor for the honor of God (1 Sam. 16:16–18). The of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary musician may have forgotten that a high standard (Philadelphia, PA) and an accomplished musician. is not an end in itself, but for the greater purpose of worship. Music should be the servant of prayer, not its rival (Acts 16:25). It should also be clear, so as not to bewilder the outsider (1 Cor. 14:6).

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A Journey of Rediscovery Not long ago I saw a sign in an antiques store that captures the recent history of church music. The sign read, “My grandmother saved it, my mother threw it away, and now I’m buying it back!”

The Baby Boomers often threw out the hymns in the modern quest for relevance but there is a movement growing among college students rediscovering rich hymn texts and setting them to music that resonates with their generation. In my work as a campus minister I am finding more and more students who are longing for worship that connects with tradition, that gives voice to the whole range of emotions, and that can engage our minds, our hearts, and even our imaginations! Hymns have unique power to do this because they are mini-meditations upon the mysteries of the gospel that drive us to worship.

Augustus Toplady captures this well.

“O love incomprehensible, that made Thee bleed for me. The Judge of all hath suffered death, to set His prisoner free!” Similarly, John Wesley helps us to cry, “And can it be? that Thou my God shouldst die for me?” Rather than taking the gospel for granted we get to sit and gaze upon Christ in his beauty until it begins to melt our hearts and orients our will toward his kingdom agenda.

When we recorded our CD, Indelible Grace (see www.igracemusic.com), I had no idea of the impact it would make. We’ve been amazed at the way these hymns have resonated with people and we’re thrilled to discover people all over the country who have been doing the same thing for years! Young people are being stirred to set these old hymns to music that resonates with them. This shouldn’t upset us.

After all, hymnals have a metrical index to encourage mixing and matching of tunes. Music is its own language and we shouldn’t be surprised that a tune that expresses gravity to one generation may express melodrama to the next. (For more on the issue of musical style see my paper at www.modernreformation.org.) But we don’t need to rewrite people’s favorite hymns—there are hundreds and thousands of

wonderful texts that have fallen out of use. I love to give copies of Spurgeon’s Our Own Hymnbook to my students. There are one thousand texts in just this one book, and they love to pour through it in search of words that help them pray and sing to God the feelings they don’t often know how to express.

The postmodern world values experience and story and embodied truths. Students are longing to connect to something real, authentic, and solid, and full of passion. And the hymns connect us to all of these things! In them we find some of the richest Christian experience ever expressed and we have an opportunity to “try on” the story of a saint who has gone before us and see how it fits. When people sing a hymn that says “Dear Refuge of my weary soul, On Thee when sorrows rise. On Thee when waves of trouble roll, My fainting hope relies,” they are connecting with a real woman who suffered tremendously and yet found grace to cling to the hope of the gospel in the midst of it. The author, Anne Steele, an English Baptist from the eighteenth century, was engaged to be married, but the day before the wedding her fiancé was drowned! She never did marry and lived most of her life as an invalid, and yet she wrote the most profound hymns of suffering and longing to know Jesus in an experiential way. When my students sing her hymns they realize that they can resonate with her story, and the kingdom of God becomes so much bigger for them! Students today want to know if Christianity has the backbone to support them in the midst of trials, and yet too often they go to churches who only sing the “happy-clappy” songs.

Let us celebrate what God is doing! Early in my Christian life I read A. W. Tozer’s claim that next to the Bible, the best devotional book we could have was a good hymnal. It took me fifteen years to discover he was right!

Kevin Twit (M.Div. Covenant Theological Seminary) is the Reformed University Ministries campus minister at Belmont University and founder of Indelible Grace Music (www.igracemusic.com and www.belmont.ruf.org and www.ruf.org)

Resource Review For those interested in the large, difficult question of the meaning of music and its relation to theology, two volumes from Cambridge University Press are a must read. Daniel K. L. Chua, a lecturer at King’s College London, has published Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning (1999). The author believes music was emptied of its meaning and its history somewhere in the nineteenth century, and now pretends to exist in a pure, timeless form, a sort of pure architecture in sound. Impossible!, argues Chua, for far from restricting music’s meaning, context, associations with images, biology, and especially theology, are the only clues to its place and significance. A wonderful read.

The second volume is Jeremy Begbie’s Theology, Music and Time (2000). Begbie, who works both at Ridley Hall and the University of St. Andrews, is not so much interested in how theology helps understand music, but in how music can benefit theology! Music, because it is in time, and grounded in sequence, themes, development, and especially tension and release, offers ways to open up theology to correct our modern impatience and our tendency to make cold abstractions. Not without certain problems, this argument yet helps us “hear” the way God works both in creation and redemption.

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The Promised Seed

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s the word ‘seed’ in Genesis 12:7 and 13:15 singular or plural? It seems to make a great deal of difference when reading Paul,

For more information on the especially Galatians 3:16-19, but recent Bible translations have confused the issue by using the plural word ‘descendants.’ history, meaning, and scope of zera‘ I I often gasp in praise at the One who, speaking recommend you read T.D. Alexander’s From Paradise simple words, created this intricately, complex to Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch, 2nd planet. This same Trinitarian God is also the author edition, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002). of the written Word we revere. Under the Holy But without faith in Jesus Christ, as the literal Spirit’s highly expert exertion, the human authors of representation of the seed metaphor, and without Scripture often choose words layered with more seeing Jesus Christ as the sole focal point of the meaning than meets the eye. In order to capture the Scriptures, the One who is both object and fullest and clearest sense of the Bible’s language, fulfillment God’s promise in Genesis, we will miss however, the faith of Bible readers must focus on the not only the genius of this word, but we will miss central and centrifugal message of Christ, cradled also Paul’s point in Galatians 3:16. Namely, our JOHN NUNES within these inerrant Scriptures. Responding to God is the promise-keeper. In typical rabbinical Scripture interpreters who experienced difficulty style, Paul leads us to a messianic conclusion, Senior Pastor with a certain passage in Genesis, Martin Luther opening to us the particular linguistic feature of this St. Paul once quipped, “To read Holy Writ without faith in Old Testament concept of the seed.

When death slithered into this world through Lutheran Church Christ is to walk in darkness” (What Luther Says, 83).

Dallas, TX Without Christ at the core of our reading, we’ll Adam and Eve’s sin, our beautifully complex planet end up in confusion also with how to handle this became beastlike in its complexity. The natural simple, yet ambiguous, little word, zera‘. Like the world as well as our human nature was corrupted word sheep, zera‘ is both singular and plural. “We are forever. God again spoke up. His words included a considered as sheep to be slaughtered” (Ps. 44:22, promise referencing zera‘ in Genesis 3:15. A Rom. 8:36) in the plural; or, “as a sheep before her snakehead-crushing Seed will come. He will put Council Counsel is shearers is silent” (Is. 53:7) in the singular. Zera‘ can death to death. He will give life instead. Through a column featuring refer both to singular and plural offspring in its the Word and Sacraments, he will plant and preserve questions from our occurrences in Genesis 22:16-18. English translations saving faith in human hearts. He will tread our sins readers that capture best this dual possibility, without adding underfoot and, by doing so, hurl all our iniquities into and answers from a distinctly plural form, include seed and offspring. the depths of the sea (Mal. 7:19). This promise was the Council members A cursory translation of zera‘ in the verses in the spoken again and again, to the patriarchs, through of the Alliance of question above, Genesis 12:7 and Genesis 13:5, the prophets and apostles, in the church, and now, to Confessing turns up several renderings: descendants or descendents the world through us: “Hail to the Lord’s anointed, Evangelicals.

(NKJV, NASB, TEV, Jerusalem Bible), offspring (NRSV, great David’s greater Son!” He is Jesus the Christ!

If you have a quesESV, E.A. Speiser, Anchor Bible Commentary), family tion you would like answered in (CEV) and seed (KJV and H.C. Leupold). In the one John Nunes (M.Div., Concordia Lutheran Theology this space, please hundred and sixty eight other occurrences of this Seminary, St. Catherines, Ontario) is the Senior Pastor of St. send it to modword in the Old Testament we find zera‘ translated Paul Lutheran Church in Dallas, Texas. He also serves as ref@alliancenet.org further as children, family, grain, semen, line, and people. the Visiting Professor of Urban Studies at Concordia Again, seed would likely suffice best in all these uses. College—New York.

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The Bread of Life

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fter God had delivered the children of Israel from their slavery to the Egyptians, they

him? Because of his signs, which he performed on those traveled in the wilderness for forty years. In this barren wasteland they would have who were diseased (v. 2), even as Moses had performed and soon died, except that God miraculously provided announced great signs in food for them, bread from heaven. Each morning Egypt, the ten plagues. And when they awoke they found a small round just as Moses went up Mt. Sinai From substance, as fine as frost on the ground. This thin with the elders of Israel, and AARON A. KOCH bread they called manna. By it God sustained them they saw God and ate and until they entered the Promised Land. drank, so also Jesus here Here in this sixth chapter of John, Jesus compares ascends a mountain with his himself to manna and says that it was a sign of his disciples, and in him the people Pastor Mt. Zion coming. “I am the Bread of Life,” (v. 35) Jesus would see God and eat and Lutheran Church proclaims; and again, “I am the Living Bread which drink (v. 3). Furthermore, it is Greenfield, Wisconsin came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this written here that the Passover bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall was near (v. 4). In this way the give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the Lord seeks to teach you that he is your greater Moses. world” (v. 51). Jesus himself is the bread of God, He alone is the One who sustains and leads you safely which we feed on through faith, which nourishes and across the wilderness of this fallen world through sustains us in this world, and which he gives us to death into eternal life and the Promised Land. share in his eternal life in the Promised Land of Bread Not Bought heaven.

So when we hear of a miracle like the feeding Seeing the multitudes coming to him, Jesus asks of the five thousand, in which Jesus multiplies Philip a question to test him, “Where shall we buy bread for his followers, we know that the bread, that these may eat?” Philip replies in significance of this miracle goes beyond the earthly hopelessness, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread bread of that time and place. Ultimately, it has to is not sufficient for them.” In other words, “We do with him who is the Living Bread which came couldn’t even come close to having enough money down from heaven, Jesus Christ, and the Bread of to feed this huge group of people.” Jesus asks this Life which he continues to bless and distribute to question to show you that the bread of life that he us in the Sacrament of the Altar, his body and has to offer cannot be bought or bartered for. You blood given for the life of the world. cannot purchase this heavenly bread or pay for it.

It was Moses who led Israel during its forty-year For God freely offers it to you in the ministry of his journey. In this Gospel Jesus shows you that he is the Word and Sacraments. His forgiveness and New and Greater Moses, the eternal leader of God’s salvation are granted to you without cost. They baptized people. Just as Moses led the children of cannot be earned or merited by your own Israel through the Red Sea, so also John records that goodness but must be received as a gift from him.

Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee (v. 1), and a great As Isaiah says, “You who have no money, come, multitude followed him. And why did they follow buy and eat” (Isa. 55:1).

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Only those can receive the bread of life, then, who acknowledge their spiritual bankruptcy before God, who recognize that their worthiness doesn’t make them deserving of God’s eternal gifts. As Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Those who try to “buy” their way into heaven, so to speak, bartering with their own works and spiritual qualifications, will not be given life from this Living Bread. For they seek a righteousness of their own. Only those who hunger and thirst for the righteousness of Christ will be satisfied.

So it is that the Scriptures say, “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy?” (Isa. 55:2). In the pursuit of a full life and peace and happiness, you are tempted to invest yourself and your time and money in the things and the pleasures and the prestige of this world. But those things do not satisfy. In the end they leave you hollow and lonely. Therefore, Jesus says, “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you.” (v. 27) It is written, “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near” (Isa. 55:6). For those who come to him shall never hunger, and those who believe in him shall never thirst.

The Abundance of His Loving Power One of Jesus’ disciples, Andrew, said to him, “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are they among so many?” (v. 9). On the surface it appeared that this bread and fish would be useless to help feed the people.

But with Jesus it was more than enough to do the job. So it is in the Sacrament of the Altar.

Someone might ask, What good can a little bread and wine do? How can these elements help my soul or give me any eternal blessings? But with Jesus, such elements are more than enough. For what counts is not the impressiveness of bread and wine but the miracle that our Lord is able and has promised to do with them. You must focus not on the elements only but also on the Lord who stands behind them with his gracious power.

“Then Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down.’

Now there was much grass in the place“ (v. 10).

The Lord bids you also to do the same today, for the psalm says, “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.” The grassy pasture in which the Lord makes you sit is this very place. For it is here that he calls you to come to him for rest. It is here that he leads you beside the still waters of his living Word. And it is here that he prepares a table

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before you, spread for you with heavenly food.

“And Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks he distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted“ (v.

11). Here is the great miracle, that as the disciples handed out this food given them by Christ, there was always more and more. The more they handed out, the more there was. First there were five loaves in the basket. Then, as this was distributed, the disciples would reach in and find more and more loaves ready to be given out. And likewise with the fish. Thousands upon thousands of people were fed, and the food never ran out. In fact, everyone had as much as they wanted. They were thoroughly filled. By his loving power, the Lord had multiplied the bread and fish so that all the multitude would be fed.

Is this not also how it is with the gifts that Christ gives in Holy Communion? In bread and wine he multiplies his body and blood, and through his ministers he distributes them to his people, that you may receive all that you want of him who is the Living Bread from heaven, and that your souls may be thoroughly satisfied. There is always more and more of this Bread of Life to be given out. For Christ’s gifts of life and forgiveness are limitless and eternal. Our Lord’s love is everexpansive. The more that he gives, the more that he has yet to give. So when you come to the Lord’s table in penitence and faith, you need never fear that the sin you bring is greater than the Lord’s forgiveness. For his mercy is without measure.

When you receive the Living Bread from heaven in the Sacrament, you receive the fullness of Christ’s life and pardon, all that you could ever need or want. And there is still more even beyond that.

For you cannot put a boundary around our Lord’s love. It never fails; it never runs out. There is always more.

This is so because the gifts of Christ are distributed to you from his holy cross, which is an everlasting storehouse of love and life. For it was there that the Passover Lamb of God was sacrificed to take away the sins of the world. Jesus said, “The bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world” (v. 51). As the eternal Son of God offered up his own flesh and blood on Calvary, he won for you eternal salvation, forgiveness without limit, and life without measure.

There’s no confining these gifts of Christ. The Bread of Life continues to come to you in abundance from the cross, delivered to you in the blessed supper of our Lord. What you are given at the altar is nothing other than this living body and blood of Christ that was offered up for you on the

cross and raised on the third day. Therefore, Jesus said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed” (vv. 54–55). Truly, Jesus is the Living Bread from heaven, come down to you from above.

The Law Fulfilled Finally, when the disciples gathered up what remained, they filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves. Five loaves became twelve baskets. Five is the number of the Law, for there are five books of Moses. Twelve is the number of the apostles, for Christ chose twelve men to follow him. From this miracle, then, we learn that Christ has fulfilled the law and has formed a New Israel, the church. Christ’s church is founded not on the Law of Moses but on the doctrine and ministry of his apostles, as we say in the Creed, “one holy Christian and apostolic Church.” So it is that we hear the following description of those who were baptized on Pentecost Day: “They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42). This is the meaning of the five becoming twelve: that, having been freed by Christ from the judgment of the law, you also are to continue steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking and receiving of the Bread of Life, and in the prayers for this is the life of the church.

Brothers and sisters of Christ, the feeding of the five thousand is not only a temporary, one-time miracle. It is an eternal miracle that is still going on in the church, for you. God grant you ever to receive him who is the manna from above and to be filled with his life.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Aaron Koch (M.Div., Concordia Seminary) is pastor of Mt. Zion Lutheran Church in Greenfield, WI, and is the sermons editor of the Lutheran journal Gottesdienst (www.gottesdienst.org).

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Toward a Catholic Understanding of the Reformed Doctrine of the ‘Second’ Commandment,” International Journal of Systematic Theology, April 2004).

Though I am curious about how Christ’s passion has been depicted, especially in the light of present controversies, I will refrain from seeing this film. I would rather not give support, financial or otherwise, to this endeavor. Nor do I wish to have the apparently powerful images conveyed in this film intrude upon my own thoughts in time of worship, prayer, and meditation.

Paul Zahl, Dean Cathedral Church of the Advent, Birmingham, AL Let me offer a few thoughts of orientation for when you see Mel Gibson’s movie. I say when rather than if because it is kind of a “must” for Christian people at this particular moment in cultural history.

The movie is very “Catholic,” in the Roman sense of that word. Particularly, the mother of Jesus is the second main character. She accompanies the Son through every step of his journey. I myself didn’t mind this, because the film as a whole carries one idea, an idea around which traditional Protestants can all rally, without condition.

What is the idea of the film? It is one idea, not several, and it is the blood atonement of Christ.

The magnitude of the sin-problem, made absolutely explicit through the devil’s dialogue with Jesus at the start of the movie, evokes the magnitude of the solution. The reason for all the suffering and blood is one: sin needs to be atoned for in this one man’s act. That point, the blood atonement, is shocking, true to the New Testament, true, I think, to the core gospel, and utterly unifying for all who are appalled by “what evil lurks in the hearts of men.”

Finally, is the movie too violent? Well, for myself, I might have pared the violence by fifteen percent, especially on the Via Dolorosa section of the film. But the violence is in service to the Idea: that Christ vanquished, in his person, the hold of sin, inward and outward, on the human world.

That idea—which I consider to be the heart of our common faith—is expressed with total artistic courage by the filmmaker.

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A GOOD CHURCH IS HARD TO FIND

A Permanent Address ne of the stories my much older brother tells me about the old days recounts the day when the family had just moved to a Los Angeles suburb. I should say, another L.A. suburb, since, all told, we moved about thirty times over the course of my childhood. No, my father was not in the military, nor was he on the lam. He just had wanderlust. The grass was always greener just up over that hill up yonder. So here we were (according to my brother, who is not always a reliable source), driving through the new neighborhood.

Passing the elementary school, my dad said, “Look, that’s where Mike will be starting kindergarten,” to which my brother replied, “No offense, Dad, but who are you kidding? Mike will never see the inside of that place.” He was right: I never did set foot on the property before we packed up and moved again. Yet no matter where we moved, the family was a constant. There are plenty of kids who grow up in the same place, but their parents are a million miles away in actual practice. Some, in fact, are so disappointed or even scarred from their childhood that when they leave home, it’s for good.

We call the church a family—the family of God. And like any family, it has its pluses and minuses. We know that there is an ideal church consisting of all the elect—the so-called invisible church—but precisely because it is invisible, affirming its existence does not mean that we can point to it and say, “There it is.” The only church we know is the visible church, by whatever form of church government we call it (local, regional, national, international, or all of the above). And we have to admit that if seeing is believing, we might be hard-pressed at times to identify the church we know with the uncompromised church in glory.

Jesus promised that when he left, he would send the Spirit to testify concerning him, bringing conviction and forgiveness through the gospel proclaimed. In the meantime, our Lord went “to prepare a place” for us to be together forever (John 14:3). It will be a permanent address at last. At its best, the church below is the

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staging area for the things to come: a kingdom of grace, not yet a kingdom of glory; a church militant, not yet the church triumphant. So the wheat and the weeds grow together until the Son returns to gather and make the final separation (Matt.

13:24–30). Until then, there is no pure church, but only churches more or less pure. For now, it is a “mixed body,” with no doubt some sheep outside it and some wolves within.

Augustine, one of the key sources for this invisible–visible church distinction, can be improved on by reference to eschatology. In other words, the proper distinction is not between two types of churches, one “inner” and another “outer,” but rather two eras of the one church’s existence: “this present age” and “the age to come.” This is the import of the parable of the wheat and weeds: Jesus will sort things out in the end. But for now, the visible church is a garden of wheat and weeds and sometimes we cannot tell them apart. In this age, the church is compromised; in the next, it is glorified—completely purged of being, as we lament in the hymn, “by schisms rent asunder, by

heresies distressed.” The distinction between the present and the future condition of the church is the corporate analogue to the paradoxical life of the individual believer as “simultaneously justified and sinful.” But just as we are definitively new creatures in Christ, despite our continuing battle with sin, the church really is the site of God’s covenantal grace. Like any family, it has its problems, but because it is Christ’s family, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). To this church Christ has entrusted the keys of the kingdom, so that “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (v. 19). Just as the individual believer is a work in progress, so corporately the church even in its weakness is the place where the age to come breaks in on this present evil age. It is not because of anything intrinsic to the church itself, but because the ministry of the keys has been entrusted to her. It is through its ministry of Word and Sacrament, as well as discipline, that the Spirit makes us taste the heavenly reality of God’s sabbath rest. Even the nonelect in the visible church

Why Do We Wander? Church A

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merican pastors face a retention hurdle every time they step into the pulpit. Recent statistics suggest that only thirty-five percent of new members stay in a church for more than five years. A significant percentage of the rest, unfortunately, often join the growing number of “de-churched” individuals who drop out of organized religion.

Their ranks are swelling: according to the Barna Research Group, over ten million self-described “born again” Christians do not attend religious services on a regular basis.

One Presbyterian pastor in Los Angeles calls this trend “apatheism”: without strong feelings of loyalty, duty, or need for church. The biggest threat to evangelical churches may not be the current bogeyman of postmodernism, but the apathy of their own members. Been there. Done that. Whatever. What drives apatheism? The answer can be found among cultural, personal, and ecclesiastical reasons.

The prevalence of nonchurch activities, especially amateur sporting events, is a key factor to many families. When Suzy has a soccer game at 10:00 a.m. Sunday morning, church often loses out to the pursuit of a league trophy. A recent report on MSNBC

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related how churches are responding to the conflict of interest.

Interfaith councils are petitioning public and private leagues to refrain from scheduling games before noon on Sundays. Other churches are conducting community surveys to discover the best (i.e., the least scheduled) time for a church service. The result?

Saturday at 5:00 p.m. Even a cursory doctrine of the Sabbath has all but disappeared from the American religious and cultural landscape.

A second reason churches are seeing unprecedented turnover rates is due to what pollsters call the consumer mentality among American Christians. The American religious life is now a spiritual marketplace. Believers and seekers alike are inclined to value church and religious community on the basis of their own personal feelings: how well the institution helps the individual achieve personal goals. “The autonomy of the individual believer . . . is greatly privileged” according to Wade Clark Roof’s book, Spiritual Marketplace. When individual needs are no longer satisfied by a particular religious body, the inclination to find a group that does meet those needs is the motivating factor to go church shopping. A church that may have sufficed while one was single may not have all the programs or activities one may desire as the par-

experience through this ministry some measure of the kingdom reality, as they have been “enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come” (Heb. 6:4–5).

It is difficult to identify the church in its present state with the bride of Christ, but the gospel says that this is in fact the case (see Rev. 21:2, 9; 22:17), so it must be whether we see that reality or not.

The church is our permanent address, despite appearances to the contrary. It is not a vague, abstract, invisible reality, but a tangible, concrete, visible one—amid all the counterevidence. If we are inclined to break bruised reeds and smoldering candles in our self-righteous zeal to create an absolutely pure church, it is comforting to know that the King of the church is not. If ever there were examples of corrupt churches, Corinth, Galatia, and the churches addressed in the Apocalypse would come pretty close to it. And yet they are all addressed as “the church,” warts and all (see 1 Cor. 1:2; Gal. 1:2: Rev. 2 and 3). As an

eschatological reality, the church—yes, even the one to which you belong—is an “already–not yet” form of God’s saving presence in the world in Jesus Christ and by his Spirit.

If this is so, is there ever a point at which a church ceases to be a church? In the examples just cited, warnings are given suggesting that these churches came awfully close to crossing that line.

As Paul’s stern warning to the Galatians shows, the most serious crisis comes when a church preaches a different gospel than the one proclaimed by the apostles. Confusion and distortion are bad enough, but when a church actually anathematizes the gospel, Christ anathematizes that church.

Local churches and whole denominations have crossed that line down through the ages, and perhaps most widely in our own time.

So the reformers seem entirely justified in their consensus that “wherever the Word is rightly preached and the Sacraments are rightly administered, there we have no doubt is a true church.”

“Rightly preached” and “rightly administered” did not mean for them that there could be no doctrinal

Attendance in an Apathetic Age ent of children or teens. Loyalty to a particular religious community lasts only as long as a need is being met. The result is that many churches have embarked upon a campaign of market segmentation, ensuring that their “brand” is attractive to every possible subgroup.

The current disdain among many evangelical groups for official membership also contributes to the problem. Churches that, in an effort to be sensitive to the changing needs of the community, downplay expectations of membership often find that many of their members have no compunction about leaving the church over the most trivial of matters. In order to counteract this trend, many churches have begun to purge old membership rolls, require membership for most leadership posts within the church, and offer rolling membership classes (often concentrating on particulars of doctrine, church history, and ethics) for newcomers to attend. In addition to formal membership, some churches now require the signing of a church “covenant,” detailing several specific requirements of members (see the example at www.9marks.org). This reemphasis on the third mark of the church, discipline, is an important antidote to the consumer mentality that grips most American evangelicals.

Undoubtedly, large churches are reaping the benefits of the evangelical migration from church to church. Although percentages of total people attending church have stayed the same, small churches continue to get smaller (average size down over ten percent in the last decade), and megachurches continue to grow (up over ninety percent over the last twenty years). But the same trend that feeds larger churches could help spell their demise: The U.S. Congregational Life Survey reports that sixty-seven percent of first-time visitors are regular attendees or members of another church. It is highly unlikely that those who wander will ever settle long enough to become a participating member of a local congregation.

Eric Landry (M.Div., Westminster Seminary California) is managing editor of Modern Reformation.

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confusion or error in biblical interpretation or that the Sacraments had to be administered in exactly the same manner in order to qualify as a true church.

But it did mean that to the degree that the gospel is compromised and the Sacraments are abused, a church is threatened with excommunication.

Within these parameters, then, no Christian can live without the church—in fact, the church is not just what you get when you have a lot of individual Christians, but vice versa. In Cyprian’s memorable

growing together, we do not yet have the luxury of a permanent address on earth, but we must be content with the next best thing for now.

Many of us have come from rather free-wheeling backgrounds in which church membership was regarded as secondary. The important thing was that we belonged to the invisible church, not to “some denomination.” In fact, many of these churches bend over backwards to assert that they are not part of a denomination, even though each of their local churches bears the same name and (in some cases) are ultimately led by …[T]o the degree that the gospel is compromised and the Sacraments are abused, the vision and sometimes discipline of one gifted and a church is threatened with excommunication. charismatic figure. Thus, a denomination emerges, all right, but one that has separated itself at least in practical words that Calvin echoed (see Institutes 4.1.4), “He terms from the wider body of Christ in the name of cannot have God as his Father who takes not the escaping sectarian denominationalism. For example, Alexander Campbell, who defected from the church for his mother.” The Belgic Confession adds, Presbyterian Church because of his Arminian sympathies, announced that he was forming a restored We believe that since this holy assembly and body of Christ that was no longer part of the “seccongregation is the gathering of those who tarian” world of Protestant denominationalism. But, are saved and there is no salvation apart from ironically, his followers came to be called it, no one ought to withdraw from it, content “Campbellites” and his nondenominational denomto be by himself, regardless of his status or ination—the Church of Christ (Disciples)—is now condition. But all people are obliged to join just as much a part of the mainline Protestant and unite with it, keeping the unity of the denominational landscape as the church he abanchurch by submitting to its instruction and doned. The restorationist movements of the ninediscipline, by bending their necks under the teenth century are alive and well in the twenty-first. yoke of Jesus Christ, according to the gifts All of this is to make the point that if in this God has given them as members of each world we wait until we find a permanent address, other in the same body…. And so, all who we will never find a home where we can grow and withdraw from the church or do not join it raise our children as part of the intergenerational act contrary to God’s ordinance. (Article 28) succession of the covenant of grace. For my father, In other words, against all inclinations of a mobile the grass was always greener on the other side. I society, where we often seem to be in not only one think he was pretty typical of our national characbut several transitions at any given period in our ter and industry. It is what keeps us looking up lives, we are called to belong. The church is not like over the hill, in the hope that tomorrow will be a house that we think we’ve outgrown or a neigh- better than today. But when it comes to the borhood that has lost its charm, much less a mall church, wanderlust is disastrous, both personally that offers consumers a panoply of choices, so that and corporately. After all, we are described in if we are not completely satisfied we can simply Scripture as pilgrims. Neither vagrants (the “lowtake our business elsewhere. If we find a church church” temptation) nor those who have arrived that truly preaches Christ and faithfully adminis- (the “high-church” tendency), pilgrims are on their ters the Sacraments, treating God’s Word as the way to a specific destination. They have provirule for life and doctrine, we should count our- sions for the journey and they expect to arrive safeselves “lucky” and bear the weaknesses that we will ly, not because of utopianism or itchy feet, but inevitably see once we get to really know the place. because they have been promised it, and that pledge Since the church is a body of people who are justi- is routinely proclaimed and sealed for them each week. fied yet sinful, definitively new creatures in Christ If the danger in a Roman Catholic ecclesiology is and yet making only partial progress in sanctifica- to see the visible church as already Christ’s spouse, tion, not to mention a garden of wheat and weeds the opposite danger rife in evangelical circles is to

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see it as a collection of individual people who have been truly born again and get together each week or so. The “already–not yet” character of the church’s present existence maintains, however, that the church is not yet Christ’s wife, but is certainly his bride—the beloved who is soon to be presented in royal splendor at the wedding feast for the world to behold. She’s not much to look at now, but she will “clean up nice,” as my grandfather used to say.

The often unreliable fiancée will be glorified.

This already–not yet way of looking at the church and her imperfections is implied in Hebrews. After spending ten chapters developing the superiority of the new covenant, the writer says, Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Heb 10:19–25) None of the author’s confidence is lodged in the empirical condition of the church, but in the objective, completed, unrepeatable work of Christ her living Head. And yet, just as Jerusalem was not the final resting place of God’s Spirit, so the church is only identified with heavenly Zion herself in this already–not yet manner. Abraham and the patriarchs, all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they have been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. (Heb. 11:13–16)

torn top to bottom when the only truly satisfying sacrifice was offered to the Father once and for all, and the temple was itself destroyed in A.D. 70, just as the prophets and Jesus had predicted beforehand. God sent his “address correction” in the form of his Son, who declared of himself, “One greater than the temple is among you” (Matt. 12:6).

Neither the temple in Jerusalem, nor the one in Samaria, is the true temple now that Jesus has come: Christ is God’s address (John 4:19–26). If God’s address is no longer One Temple Square, it is certainly not Riverside Drive in New York City, Wheaton, Costa Mesa, Canterbury, Anaheim, Orlando, Toronto, Grand Rapids, St. Louis, Geneva, Wittenberg, Vatican City, or Antioch.

Although the true Temple has come in flesh and has given us his Spirit as a down payment, but, as expressed in a memorable line from the band U2, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” Our permanent address is in heaven, at the Father’s right hand. Yet we need a pretty constant temporary address now where Christ really and truly is present for us in preaching and Sacrament, fellowship, and discipline. The city without foundations, whose builder and maker is God, cannot be wholly identified with any of our churches, and yet to the extent that our churches are genuine sites of “the age to come,” through faithful exercise of the keys, they are, whatever evidence to the contrary, already in part what they shall yet fully become at last. ■

Michael Horton (Ph.D., Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and the University of Coventry) is professor of apologetics and theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California).

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A GOOD CHURCH IS HARD TO FIND

What Should I Expect From Church? ne of the most frequently asked questions of Modern Reformation and the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals relates to finding a good local church. Several years ago, the hosts of the White Horse Inn discussed this very topic in their nationally syndicated radio program. The participants include Michael Horton (professor at Westminster Seminary California and editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine), Kim Riddlebarger (senior minister of Christ Reformed Church in Anaheim, California), Rod Rosenbladt (professor of theology at Concordia University in Irvine, California), and Ken Jones (senior minister of Greater Union Baptist Church in Compton, California, and a member of the Alliance Council).

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MH: Becoming revolutionized by biblical theology changes a lot more than theory. It’s one of the greatest upheavals in Christian practice for anybody. One of those big practical issues is how to find a church. It’s probably that question that I hear on the streets more than anything else. People are longing to discover churches where their faith can be strengthened rather than threatened.

Before we can answer that question, however, we need to know what the basic issues are. First, what is a true church? That’s a very practical question, isn’t it? But we don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. Both Lutheran and Reformed traditions have always said that a true church is where the Word is rightly preached and the Sacraments are rightly administered. But what does it mean that the Word is rightly preached? Does that mean that you agree with everything that is said from the pulpit? Does that mean that when you hear a bad sermon you

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consider voting with your feet? No, really, what it has always meant is that the gospel is present. You might not agree with everything and it might not be a perfect church. No church is perfect, but is the law preached there so that people will flee to Christ and be bereft of hope in themselves? Is the gospel preached there clearly enough for people to cling to Christ and not to themselves or to anything else?

Another question that should be answered is, How bad does it have to get before I leave? When do I know that enough is enough? Should I try to change things? Should I take up a Bible class?

Should I try to approach the pastor or the session or the council or the elders and try to change things? Or, should I pick up with my family and leave? If I leave, how should I do it? Should I try as much as possible to get up a group and cause some kind of division in the church or should I leave quietly? This is, really, where the rubber meets the road in practical terms, is it not?

Theology really does matter and the upheavals in one’s personal life show that.

RR: What you just said is very unusual. Picking a church does matter in a theological sense. The evangelical pretty much follows the adage, “Where I and my family are fed.” I don’t know what that means exactly, but it is a very common line. But the decision is not made theologically very often.

The Evangelical Migration MH: Why don’t evangelicals have any loyalty to a particular tradition? Why can they be raised in one church and then choose to attend a number of different churches during the course of their adult lives?

KR: Well, there are two reasons why people do that. One is the consumer mentality where people are looking for, as Rod mentioned, the diet of the day. They are looking to be fed. This week the issue in their family is finances so they are over here because so and so is doing a free seminar. Then their kids change into this so they’re over here because they have a program for their kids. A lot of people pick churches just based upon convenience, current issues in their lives, and their felt needs. Churches are all to eager and willing to pander to that. Then there is another group of people that I think, Michael, you and I fall into. We were raised in one tradition and spent ten years in process leaving that tradition, which was independent Bible church Fundamentalism, working through all the issues

related to the Reformation.

KJ: I agree with Kim up to a point But, I think there is a new category of people who have grown up in one tradition and by whatever process they have been brought to ponder for the first time certain theological issues.

KR: And it is not easy.

KJ: No, no, because we are not talking about people who just joined the church yesterday, we are talking about people who are going against perhaps two generations of bad doctrine and bad theology.

KR: Seven in my family.

KJ: Yes, exactly. So that puts you at a different point and from a different perspective when looking for a different church because now you are looking back at a whole heritage that is pretty much wasted and, you know, you really try to evaluate it because obviously God was at work in it, but the choice that you make in terms of where you go will be determined largely by, number one, what awakens you in the tradition you are coming out of.

RR: I think the number of letters that I have read from listeners, White Horse Inn listeners, where the theme was this almost killed us. You know, “We have embraced the doctrine of the Reformation, but it has really been tough on our family.”

KR: It is especially tough on those who do not live where there are good Reformed and Lutheran churches. And they are in a community where they do not have a Reformation church. Those are the folks that have to really struggle.

MH: Or where people live in South Holland, or Grand Rapids, or St. Louis, and actually do have to wrestle with a lot of Lutherans and Calvinists who do not want to be Lutherans and Calvinists. George Barna tells us the issue is brand loyalty. Just as in marketing these days people have to swallow the fact that people no longer buy Kenmores because their parents had Kenmores. So too, they are not going to remain in a particular denomination or even in a particular tradition because that is what they were raised in. In one sense, that’s good because you do not want people to have just, sort of, implicit faith in the church. The joke is, I believe whatever the church believes. Well, what does the church believe? Well, the church believes what I believe.

But, why do you and the church believe?

At some point, you have to step out of that.

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What we are seeing is, on one hand, a criticism of brand loyalty, which means hop from church to church and use it like a mall where you get one thing from this store and another thing from this store and if you get tired of that you move on. And yet, there is a whole group of people who are not looking around for the same reason but are looking to settle. They are looking for a church where they can hear the Word rightly preached and have the Sacraments rightly administered and raise their children there and their children’s children.

KJ: I think they have an advantage. That second group that you have mentioned, those who have been awakened in their tradition to a new level of theology. They have an advantage because now at least they have an idea of what they are looking for. They know what they are turning from so they are at least looking for a semblance of the gospel message or an understanding of the law. They have that to their credit whereas others who are changing churches for different reasons don’t even have an idea. You know, I had a lady proudly display to me the fact that she had found a new church home because they have a good youth program. And her daughter who happens to be six years old likes it.

Now what she is exposing that six-year-old daughter to, in terms of doctrine and theology she had no idea, but the child likes it.

RR: You know this can sound often pointy-headed, but it really isn’t. As you were saying in your introduction, this is a sort of thing in which a whole family hears the law of God preached and the gospel of Christ preached clearly and if that isn’t done regularly, it can squander the whole family.

MH: You can lose the whole family.

RR: You can lose the whole thing. This is not pointy-headed intellectualism, it’s will you tell me before the sermon is over if there is any hope for me and on what basis there is.

MH: Not one Sunday, not occasionally, but regularly.

RR: Right.

KR: And that’s the one thing the minister of the gospel can do that no therapist, support group or any other group that you can imagine.

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The Nature of a True Church MH: Ok, now let’s get down to the brass tacks of the questions then. What is a true church? Most people out there listening to us right now will say, “Well, a true church is a group of truly born-again folks.” So, that means you can say, “Well I go to such and such a church, but the action that really happens in my spiritual life takes place at the Bible study fellowship meeting or at the small group.

RR: What used to be called conventicles in the Scandinavian counties.

MH: Right. Now, when we say: What is a true church? When we even ask that question we have to start from scratch and ask what do we mean by church? First of all, isn’t that arrogant to say that there is, are we saying one denomination is a true church?

KR: No, we are taking Christ at his word when he says the gates of hell will not prevail against my church. Jesus has guaranteed to us that there will be a true church of Christ on the earth. And it is not, necessarily, any one denomination. It is his body where believers gather around the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the Sacrament. And that’s what Christ has promised.

MH: So it not just a place where a bunch of Christians get together. It is the place organized under the authority of the Word of God by the command and promise of God that where two or more are gathered, by the way that does not mean in small groups, it is in the context of Matthew 18, which is a context of church discipline, which means that it’s the context of an actual visible church.

KJ: You touched on two very important principles.

That is one: it’s an organization. It is organized; it’s not just random. It’s not just people going according to what we think or feel.

MH: We don’t like to hear that as Americans.

Another institution.

KJ: I know. It is an institution, but secondly it’s an institution that is governed by the authority of Scripture. So what we will have are different denominations based upon our understanding of Scriptures in particular areas, but whatever that basis is, it is still based upon the authority of Scripture.

RR: There is another point I think we should throw in here. We talk about a church being a

place where the gospel is preached. And I found out by teaching at an evangelical college for several years, that meant to many evangelicals that you have many evangelistic campaigns.

MH: And an altar call at the end.

RR: That’s right. And in a Reformation understanding what we are talking about is where you can depend on the pastor placarding Christ in his saving office before us every Sunday. Though we are believers that he will placard Christ before us as having died for us and that the death of Christ can even save a Christian.

MH: The Heidelberg Catechism asks the question, “If we are justified by faith alone where does this faith originate?” And the answer is, “The Holy Spirit creates faith in our hearts by the preaching of the Holy Gospel and confirms it by the use of the Holy Sacraments.” VanBergen, obviously not an Irishmen, is a theologian in the Netherlands who wrote a marvelous commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism.

He pointed out that there is a very good reason why the authors of the catechism did not say, “He creates faith in our hearts by the preaching of the Word, because there are two parts to the word.”

RR: Right and the law does not create faith.

MH: The law kills.

RR: Yep. MH: “The gospel makes alive.”

RR: Boy you guys do get some things right. [laughing] MH: That’s important for people to understand, this is how he creates faith in people’s hearts. The praise band, the choir, all that stuff can go the way of the dodo bird. As long as there is a minister of Christ standing in his stead holding out forgiveness of sins to the people, there is a true church.

KR: And Christians must hear that.

When Should I Leave a Church?

MH: Now how bad does it have to get before I actually leave a church?

KR: That’s a real tough question, because everybody’s situation is different. If you are not hearing the gospel, if you are not hearing that Christ died for your sins and his death is sufficient, chances are that it is time to be looking somewhere else.

Readers’ Top Ten Lists

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e asked for your top ten lists of things to look for when visiting or choosing a church. Here is a compendium of some of the responses from our readers (not necessarily in order of importance). Modern Reformation does not necessarily share all of the views expressed here.

Elements of the Service • Is the liturgy, including the music, carefully thought through in order to be biblical and honoring to God? • Is there an opportunity to sing at least some hymns?

• Is there an emphasis on congregational singing?

• Is the giving done in secret (including tithes)?

• Is there intensive, clear, and biblical preaching and teaching?

• Does the church provide an opportunity to say the Lord’s Prayer regularly?

• Does the church provide an opportunity to say the Apostles Creed regularly?

• Is the worship service reverent?

• Is the quality of the music good?

• Are the songs theologically sound and God-centered?

• Is substantial time spent in Scripture reading and prayer?

• Does the church provide gospel-oriented preaching (rather than law-oriented preaching that berates a congregation)?

• Is there something more than a memorial view of the Lord’s Supper?

• Does the minister offer expository preaching?

Congregational Culture • Is the congregation small enough that it would be possible to develop a close relationship with each family?

• Is there a high standard of feminine modesty in dress and behavior?

• Do many of the people enjoy rigorous study and discussion of spiritual matters?

• Is the leadership godly and male?

• Is there leadership by elders (rather than Congregationalism)?

• Is the congregation friendly?

• Does the church have single adults?

Church Activities • Does the church have Sunday school teachers that instruct children about Jesus and basic doctrines?

• Does it have a missions ministry?

• Is there a connection with missionaries and other ministries that goes beyond writing a check?

• Is the church active?

• Are the fathers challenged to take responsibility for the teaching and training of their families? Are the families encouraged to learn and participate together during the church’s meeting times rather than split up into age groups?

• Is there a place for our family to serve?

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RR: Yeah, not in the last sign-off of the sermon, the last twenty seconds, where it’s sort of, oh, remember Jesus died for you, too.

KJ: It’s not tacking on at the end of your sermon the story of the crucifixion, but it’s as you have mentioned earlier, Rod, the clear presentation of the law as the law. And a clear presentation of the gospel as the gospel.

KR: That’s the first thing. Then you have to deal with individual situations. All right, do I live in a town where there is such a place where the gospel is preached? There are many people listening to this show that live in communities where it’s difficult to find a place where the gospel is preached.

So, it really is a difficult situation and it is almost case by case.

KJ: But for a moment, Mike, just to go back to what you mentioned earlier to tie it together. This is why it is so important. You are talking about the preaching of the law and the preaching of the gospel by the preachers taking place in the church, but this is why that as preachers we do this. Because not only for the people who are in our congregation, but those who are coming from other congregations, because how many times do we get letters and phone calls from people who said, “Well, you know I listen to your program, I listen to Dr. Sproul,

Five Questions to Ask When Looking for a Church

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se these five questions to help gauge the health of the church you are considering.

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Does this church view Scripture as God’s self-revelation?

What is the goal of the preaching?

What is the general diet? What am I likely to hear?

Does this church emphasize human sinfulness and justification by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone?

What is the church’s confessional statement and is it a significant guide?

What is the driving force in the church’s style of worship?

and I realized I am not receiving the gospel in my church. So I go and I visit this ‘Reformed’ church and I don’t hear the gospel. It’s the same thing I am hearing in the church that I came from.”

KR: And nothing is worse than a Reformed church imitating an evangelical church, because the reformed cannot do it as well as the evangelical churches.

RR: We are right in there, too. You try to get a Lutheran church in the Missouri Synod guide to imitate well a Calvary Chapel. It’s not in us; we did not get the genes for it.

KR: Well, especially here in our neck of the woods in Southern California, where we have had Reformed churches attempt to go that direction and the genuine article is right down the street.

Who is going to visit the little corner community church with Fred and the guitar trying his best to do praise and worship when you got the genuine thing down the street?

KJ: But, that is why I agree with Kim. The first place you begin, when do I need to look for another church is when I am no longer hearing Christ crucified, when I am no longer directed to the cross of Christ for my justification and sanctification rather than looking within.

MH: Robert Godfrey, a friend of all of ours, has made the point, you don’t have to leave a church when it’s no longer a true church. A lot of people have interpreted the confession or the remarks of Calvin or Luther or others as suggesting that you can never leave a church that is still a true church.

And Godfrey made the point, and I think he is absolutely right here. First of all this is in a historical context of one church and what he means is that you cannot leave the visible church. In other words, you can’t stay home and decide to have your own religion.

RR: Right.

MH: We shouldn’t spend a lot of time trying to reform a church, I think. If it looks like we talked to the pastor we get a sense that this is just all he’s got in his bag, this is what he is going to do. I don’t think we should spend a lot of time mucking around with it. We should find another church and not do so with a lot of fanfare, but find another church.

RR: If it is possible to do.

Confession and Membership MH: Let’s take a question from a caller.

Caller: Basically I have two questions. Number one, it sounds to me that you’re really choosing a pastor rather than a church. And if you could comment on that, and secondly, if I am going to a new church, what do you think would be the minimal requirement to become a member? What kind of membership requirement should I expect to join a new church?

MH: Good question.

KR: That is a real good question and you could easily put that take on it that we are asking people to choose a church based upon the pastor, but unfortunately you cannot go by denominational labels anymore. You really are forced to pick an individual who is faithful to the biblical text. So you are not picking the pastor because you like him and are going to go to the church because you think he is a good guy and friendly and all that. You are going to this particular church because that particular pastor preaches Christ from the Scriptures.

MH: And aren’t you going because it has a confession and he says that he follows it?

RR: Yeah. And even though we don’t exercise that and if the layman doesn’t exercise that in principle, he would have the right to say to a pastor in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod what you are doing Sundays and through the week doesn’t match what our Book of Concord says. And they would have the right to do that.

KJ: You bring up an important issue with the confession, that’s one of the things that you will discover as you are awakened in an old tradition confession for the first time. So now that is a good guide in terms of looking for a good church. What is the confession of that particular church?

KR: But the question gets to the point that not all pastors are faithful to their confessions and preach the way they ought. You are not picking the pastors as a personality, you are picking the pastor who is faithful to what he is charged to do.

RR: Right.

KR: As far as membership requirements, a church should require some catechesis and there should be some explanation of what is expected and what you can expect from the church. And that ought

to involve some type of membership class. So that there are very clear expectations. If you join this congregation this is what is expected of you and this is the faith to which you must hold, and then you can expect this from us.

MH: And if they would discipline you if they have Lutheran or Baptist leanings? [laughing] RR: I wanted to comment on what you just said, Kim. When you say a brief catechesis, what confessional churches mean by that is not two happy Saturday morning meetings with coffee. And sometimes this is shocking to an American. But if you look back to the early church, catechesis was a very high calling—to teach the doctrine to those looking into the Christian faith.

MH: It took a long time, too.

RR: It took a long time and those of the Reformation are probably the strongest adherents of this: it is not two happy Saturday mornings.

KJ: Yeah, that’s something. As a matter of fact, a person from a Reformed church—a Christian Reformed Church—brought to my attention that in the Bible what we see is people received into the church immediately. Unfortunately we are not in those days and we must take the time to make clear what the church teaches because this is the message and the confession that you are taking a stand on.

A Lesser of Evils Guest: I would like to give you a hypothetical question. I am moving to an area where my church choices will be very limited and I will have a choice between a liberal Reformed or Lutheran church that has forsaken its confessions and is no longer practicing law and gospel and administers the Sacraments infrequently or an Independent Bible church with legalistic and Pentecostal leanings or a liturgical Catholic Church.

Which would you feel most comfortable with?

KR: Oh, I know families in towns like that. That is a really good but very, very difficult question.

You have to go where you hear the gospel.

MH: But remember you are not joining a local church. If you are talking about one on the Presbyterian or Reformed side—here you guys

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might disagree, you might have a completely different answer for this we would say covenantally you are participating in a visible church that is not just on Fifth and Main.

KR: That it has an organic connection to other churches.

MH: That’s right. And if you have a church like the Roman Catholic Church that officially anathematizes the gospel, then even if you go to mass where you could hear more of the gospel in the liturgy there than you could hear at many of the evangelical churches, you’re still joining and giving your children to an institution that denies the gospel.

KR: The other thing you have to factor into that whole question would be do any of these historically Protestant churches, even if they are liberal, still have the historical liturgies? If you were to go to a local Episcopal church where you had the Book of Common Prayer, even the modern additions, you would still get the gospel, even if the preacher did not believe anything.

MH: Don’t send them to legalistic Bible churches though, because then they will become atheists.

RR: The children will end up in unbelief, and the odds are very high on that. I think, Kim, you have raised a very good point. I have sometimes said to people bring a cassette with a good law–gospel Lutheran sermon on it, but just go where the liturgy is and where he sticks to the text of the liturgy.

It will proclaim the gospel to you well and accurately. Then when he gets up into the pulpit, nontheist that he might be, turn your Walkman on and listen to something of value. Then when he descends from the pulpit, turn your Walkman off and if he sticks to the script of the liturgy the way he should in the Lord’s Supper then the gospel will be delivered to you there.

KR: It is clearly the lesser-of-evils choice in that case.

The Place and Function of Parachurch Organizations Guest: My question is this: What place do ministries have in today’s Christian world and how should they relate to the church?

the ministry of service, which is deaconal and both are ministries of the church.

Caller: I would say such things as R. C. Sproul and his ministries.

MH: Or this radio program?

Caller: Yes, or this radio program.

MH: We would not call these ministries.

KJ: He is talking about parachurch.

KR: That raises the whole question of parachurch organizations and again, there are certain things that parachurch organizations like, what’s the world hunger one?

MH: World Vision.

KR: World Vision. Or like Wyclif Bible translators, that can do things that individual churches or individual denominations can’t do. But they are the exception rather than the rule. The local church’s biblical mandate is to preach Christ, administer the Sacraments, exercise discipline, and whatever the local consistory deems fitting and proper to the marks of the church should be things that are done in the church.

RR: In many cases through the centuries, the existence of parachurch ministries is really a condemnation of the church. That it is not doing what it ought to have done so it produces these things.

MH: And this gives us a good chance to say, this is not one of those. We are a bunch of guys who get on the radio and talk about Reformation theology. This is not designed to channel people in to any particular business. We are just a bunch of guys talking on the radio.

Don’t take this as an alternative to going to church.

KJ: The parachurch really gained prominence as a result of Revivalism, but I think that it presents a very real challenge to those of us who participate with any parachurch organization that we recognize that we are not a church and therefore we should not attempt to pastor people as if we were because we can make the work of the local pastor very difficult by trying to pontificate and act as if we have some kind of authority. In actuality, we don’t.

RR: Ministries . . .

MH: What exactly do you mean by ministries? I think that we would all say that there is only one ministry. The ministry of Word and Sacrament and

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KR: And nothing would make us any happier than to hear that you have joined a church as a result of thinking through the things you have heard on the White Horse Inn. ■

A GOOD CHURCH IS HARD TO FIND

In the Church: Finding Common Ground Across Denominations laywright E u g e n e O’Neil, who was reared on the road by actor/parents who were performing in various cities, lamented of his unstable life: “I was born in a hotel room and God-damn, I’ll die in a hotel room.” While O’Neil turned his tortured experience into great art, including the memorable Long Day’s Journey Into Night, he suffered greatly throughout with alcohol, broken marriages, and a suicide attempt. Sadly, his words proved prophetic; he died alone in Boston’s Shelton Hotel in 1953.

Admittedly, most of us will not lead O’Neil’s highly volatile life, but we all will face personal suffering. Who of us will be exempt from cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, the loss of a spouse or child?

Our fallen world is brutally defective because of sin

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and we endure the consequences every day.

Sometimes they are as subtle as a new wrinkle on our face, a first white hair; at other times they are as dramatic as the pains of childbirth or the sudden death of a friend.

Yet those of us who call ourselves Christians, bearing Christ’s name, do not despair. We see ourselves as pilgrims in this world, and the church as a place of comfort and nurture. God has promised to meet us there in a unique way and he gives special grace through the preaching of his Word and the administering of the Sacraments.

Our Fractured Common Ground f we worship in denominations that are selfconscious about the importance of the church, we recognize some profound scriptural truths:

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The church is divinely instituted. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. Christ gave himself for it. We are to grow up in it with Christ as the head.

The more we understand these truths, the more we should feel compelled to be in conversation with Christians of “like precious faith”—whether they are in our own denomination or not. How can we live in isolation when every Sunday many of us recite the Apostles’ Creed and repeat the phrase, “I believe in one holy and catholic church”?

Too often we can attend our denominational church, its camps, and other functions and never discover the broader “catholic church.” A ghetto mentality creeps in where we view different denominations as “the other kind.” My dear Christian mother, for instance, cried bitterly when the young Camelot president John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. A life of

an atheist who converted to Christianity as an adult, he was able to ask the hard questions and avoid self-righteous zealotry.

In his popular book Mere Christianity, Lewis offers some cautionary remarks on making too many concessions in relating to the wider church. He writes that a “mere Christianity,” where only those doctrines are discussed that we all accept, is an incomplete Christianity. He likens this kind of lowestcommon-denominator Christianity with living perpetually in the hallway of a house rather than entering one of its rooms, “where living is meant to be done.” Even though we may have to go through a hallway to get to a room, Lewis argues, it is the room that is our destination, not the corridor.

Thus, he encourages Christians to accept and embrace that set of particular doctrines that we find to be true upon investigation.

Yet I suspect many of this magazine’s readers would be much more comfortable in How can we live in isolation when every Sunday many of us recite the Apostles the rooms off Lewis’s great hallway. In fact, to build on Creed and repeat the phrase, "I believe in one holy and catholic church"?

Lewis’s image, I would love to see all of us who consider ourselves part of “the holy catholic church” to stay in great promise was cut down so violently. I have a this hallway for an evening and talk about what we vivid memory of her saying through her tears of have in common. Ideally, champagne would be the yet unidentified assassin, “Let’s just hope he’s flowing and appetizers in abundance on silver not a Baptist.” For my youthful ears, the subtext trays. Okay, there could even be Martinelli’s seemed to be, “better if he’s Presbyterian or sparkling cider for the hard-core teetotalers! But Lutheran, at least he would not be one of us.” We one rule would be enforced. You would have to are most at peace in our ecclesiastical comfort mingle, circulate, and get beyond your own zone. And we relish our internal shorthand about denominational experience. The Sabbatarians others, although it can be incredibly unloving and couldn’t stay in one corner and the theonomists in dismissive. If we’re honest with ourselves, many another. Christians in the mainline denominations of us have had thoughts like these: “The Episcopal would have to mix with “aliens and strangers” from Church elected a gay bishop. That’s the end of some of the most conservative denominations— the story for me.” “Presbyterians and Reformed like, arguably the Orthodox Presbyterian Church believe in election, well, that seems awfully cold or the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Church. A and uncaring.” “Lutherans really believe that you string quartet would offer an evening’s worth of eat Christ’s body and drink his blood during the music including great hymns, Psalms, and even Lord’s Supper?” some praise songs. Undoubtedly, there would be How do we move beyond our comfortable but music to upset everyone! And the uncomfortable often biased denominational assumptions to would gravitate inevitably toward their familiar embrace the wider Christian church? rooms. But they would be surprised. For this one night, the doors to their rooms, their comfort C. S. Lewis— zones, would be locked.

Compassionate, Christian Ecumenist “Back on planet earth,“ as Woody Allen would n a New York Times editorial at the end of last say, this will never happen in our lifetimes. Yet at year, marking the fortieth anniversary of C. S. the end of history, will the Marriage Supper of the Lewis’s death, writer Joe Laconte made some Lamb be that very different? There we won’t sit interesting observations about the English profes- by denominations. We won’t control the catering sor’s ability to relate to people of varying religious for that event or the placement of each table’s beliefs. He mused that perhaps because Lewis was name cards.

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The Disciples’ Baggage … and Ours ike Christ’s first disciples, we have a tendency to argue among ourselves and make selfaggrandizing comparisons. “Who will be the greatest?” “Who will sit at Christ’s right hand in heaven?” “Others may deny you, Lord, but not me!”

All these statements sound so pathetic and yet so familiar to our own experience.

In Christ’s profoundly moving high priestly prayer, recorded in John 17, he was thinking not only about his immediate disciples but also about his disciples of today and every other age. In this prayer, he asks his Father that his followers be characterized by unity:

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I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.

All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

Matthew L. Becker, a member of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), refers to this prayer when he challenges his own denomination toward greater unity in a paper called “Beyond the Open Door.”

[As] pilgrims, we can’t afford to be isolated from our fellow pilgrims as together we live in exile. Jesus prays in his high priestly prayer for the unity of all those who call upon him and confess him before others.

The LCMS is part of a much larger pilgrim band. We cannot forget this, especially so that we can comfort our fellow pilgrims, pray for one another, strategize with one another, take joy in one another, act with one another. But even in all of these actions, our focus is not upon ourselves; our focus is upon our common Christian mission and our common gospel witness to the world that does not yet know God in Jesus Christ. God has opened the door of His grace for us, and so now he wants to call others through us into that same marvelous light of His grace.

Must the “Holy Catholic Church” Mean the Catholic Church? ome Protestants have found denominationalism a major stumbling block and the lack of authority deeply unsettling. Author and professor Thomas Howard speaks for a segment of Christendom when writing about his personal faith

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journey from Evangelicalism to the Catholic Church. Although Howard writes with deep affection of his evangelical parents and Christian upbringing, he was still haunted by the lack of unity and authority in the Protestant church. He says: My happy Evangelical view of the church’s unity as being nothing more than the worldwide clutter that we have under our general umbrella was, for good or ill, not what the ancient Church had understood as the word unity. As an Evangelical, I could pick which source of things appealed most to me: Dallas Seminary; Fuller Seminary; John Wimber; Azusa Street; the Peninsula Bible Church; Hudson Taylor; the deeper life as taught at Keswick; Virginia Mollenkott; John Stott; or Sam Shoemaker…. It is disastrous if I invest any of the above with the authority that belongs alone to the Church. But then who shall guide my choices?

The question of church authority is a haunting one. But for those of us who consider ourselves children of the Protestant Reformation, we still see problems in the Catholic Church that have not been overcome. Instead, we embrace a confessional tradition—whether Reformed, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Reformed Baptist, or another, and are grateful for a full-orbed, rigorous expression of the Christian faith that sustains us and gives us profound truths through all of life’s challenges.

But do we need to feel guilty for working out our salvation in “different rooms,” in Lewis’s words, or can we defend denominationalism?

Do Denominations Threaten the Church? heologian H. Richard Niebuhr considered the disunity of Protestant denominations a stain on Christendom.

He wrote, “Denominationalism … thus represents the moral failure of Christianity…. Before the church can hope to overcome its fatal division it must learn to recognize and to acknowledge the secular character of its denominationalism.”

While Niebuhr’s critical words plagued several generations of Christians, Hartford Seminary Professor Nancy T. Ammerman offers a different analysis. She recently participated in a national study through The Hartford Institute for Religion Research, with funding from the Lilly Endowment.

Researchers conducted extensive interviews in 549 congregations in 1997 and 1998 with particular attention to eight denominations. These denomi-

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nations ranged from the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches to the Assemblies of God and Vineyard churches. The researchers found that virtually half of those interviewed said they no longer take their tradition for granted. The denomination they identify with is “no longer a matter of enclave and birth, but now a matter of faith and practice.” The study continues, “These congregations see their theological heritage as a gift, intentionally teach newcomers about the faith, and celebrate their own unique worship traditions.”

In conclusion Ammerman says, “Perhaps we need to reopen our dialogue with Niebuhr. These congregations in which distinct identities are being chosen and nurtured do not seem to be worse for it…. Unlike the denominationalism Niebuhr

self as serious about the faith and worships in an Episcopal church. Her show is well worth a listen to hear the range of spiritual hunger people experience. You must draw your own conclusions. In my listening, I am saddened to hear how few people talk about finding comfort in the organized church. Whether you agree with Tippett’s guest or not, you are forced to think in different categories.

This stretching should also characterize our reading habits. While we read Modern Reformation, we should also be skimming the pages of Christian Century, Christianity Today, First Things, Books and Culture, and other publications to see what others are saying about their faith.

Second, we should be able to laugh at ourselves.

This doesn’t mean that we are making fun of the great doctrines of the faith.

Rather, we can laugh about how God uses us, jars of clay, to hold his mysteries.

We are not the ones who have to discern the "invisible" from the "visible" church.

Perhaps the greatest example of one who can make fun of a faith tradition is Garrison Keillor’s take on Lutheranism. For almost 30 feared, they are building distinctions based more years, he has been delighting radio audiences with his radio program, Prairie Home Companion, where he on ritual and doctrine than on social divisions.” talks of his fictional boyhood home, Lake Building Bridges of Unity Across Wobegone, and the predominantly Lutheran comDenominations munity there. Robert Fulford wrote of some of n the early years of this new century, we should Keillor’s affectionate Lutheran bashing in an article make every effort to live in unity with called “Can Garrison Keillor make Lutherans Christians from other faith traditions. We are funny?” in the National Post. “To Keillor [Lutherans] not the ones who have to discern the “invisible” are the people for whom the word repressed was from the “visible” church. Instead, we must be will- invented. Their life goals are modest. A sign outing to give a defense of the hope within us. We can side a Lutheran church announces the topic of that also try to be characterized by three attributes to week’s sermon: ‘It could be worse.’ Keillor says that build the Christian community—curiosity, humor, Lutherans who go to psychotherapists for help are and humility. told to pull themselves together.” In another story, First, we should have a healthy curiosity about Keillor says, “Mother was a true Lutheran, and people from other faith traditions. Most of us are taught me to Cheer up, Make yourself useful, Mind time-starved and have to make tough choices in your manners and, above all, Don’t feel sorry for what we read and listen to. I think it is essential, yourself.” “Nobody is meant to be a star.” however, to develop listening skills and a curiosity Dr. Ammerman agrees about Keillor’s appeal. about how others express their faith. A good place “No one has described that old denominational to start is a new radio show on Minnesota Public world better than Garrison Keillor,” she wrote in the Radio called Speaking of Faith. It has been very well Christian Century. She also can’t help quoting him: received far beyond the heartland. In fact, the show now airs in six of the top ten markets nationI was raised in Iowa, went to Concordia, wide. Its format is simple and effective. Host Swedish, I’m proud to say.

Krista Tippett invites people to talk at length about Got a job at Lutheran Brotherhood, their faith. Tippett, the granddaughter of a And I never was sick one day.

Southern Baptist minister, was reared in the church We sit in the pew where we always sit, and quickly “shed” it when she went away to colAnd we do not shout Amen. lege. During those years, she described herself as And if anyone yells or waves their hands, an agnostic. But now, years later, she describes herThey’re not invited back again.

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Finally, a word about humility as a tool to building common ground with other believers. We see God reveal himself in creation and in special revelation in his Word. We are commanded to “work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil.

2:12). We can learn from church historians, the church divines, and systematic theologians. But there are mysteries we will never fathom. “God’s ways are not our ways.” We are just pilgrims in this world. But the place God commands us to worship him and to learn more about him is the church. It is there that we see him for who he really is and we see ourselves for who we really are.

In a turn of Eugene O’Neil’s haunting opening line, I hope we can all say, “Born or baptized into the church, and God willing, I’ll die in the church.” ■

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Ann Henderson Hart (MA, Temple University) is a staff writer for Modern Reformation. She is also a freelance writer and editor living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Copies of this article are available for purchase by calling (215) 546-3696 or by ordering online at www.modernreformation.org.

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Try It—You’ll Like It! A Collection of Top Ten Lists

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ehavescouredtheWeblookingforthereasonschurchesgiveto those considering a visit to a local congregation.

Herearetwoofthemostinteresting.

A great cup of coffee on Sunday morning.

A warm and friendly place where you will be accepted.

A group to go camping, picnicking, and have fun with.

A place for kids to receive a moral compass.

Lively and fun worship service.

No cost counseling (marriage, parenting, individual and youth).

An answer to what bugs you.

To meet someone who totally loves you.

To find real direction in your life.

Because God misses you.

(From a Christian Reformed Church in North Carolina)

10. Our minds are open. There are many interpretations of Scripture—questioners and seekers are welcome to join us in our journey of understanding!

9. Our hearts are open. If you are sick, in trouble, need sup port or encouragement, the people of _____ are here to help you.

8. Our doors are open. Our house is your house. Come in any time to pray, for fellowship, or to hang out.

7. Your kids may not want to leave! From music programs to Sunday school to youth fellowship, there are plenty of pro grams teenagers and children will love.

6. You’ll be humming all week! Music at _____ is excellent and covers a wide range of styles from classical to rock to international music.

5. You can dress as you like. Some people like wearing their “Sunday best” and some like to wear jeans. Be comfortable!

4. Our people come from all walks of life. Whether you are young, old, well-off, or struggling to make ends meet, you are welcome.

3. Worship is Spirit-filled. Choose Contemporary for upbeat family worship or Traditional for inspirational choral music and hymns in our gorgeous sanctuary. We have fun in wor ship. We laugh, we cry, we celebrate Christ’s love. Won’t you join us?

2. We care about the world. _____ puts a priority on outreach and service in our community and around the world. You can make a difference in people’s lives!

1. And the number-one reason is we want you to know that God loves you and we love you!

(From an United Methodist Church in Ohio)

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We Confess…

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his Church has been from the beginning of the world, and will be to the end thereof; which is evident from this that Christ is an eternal King, which without subjects He cannot be. And this holy Church is preserved or supported by God against the rage of the whole world; though it sometimes for a while appears very small, and in the eyes of men to be reduced to nothing; as during the perilous reign of Ahab the Lord reserved unto Him seven thousand men who had not bowed their knees to Baal.

Article 27, Belgic Confession of Faith (1561), “The Catholic Christian Church”

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e are reproached because there have been manifold dissensions and strife in our churches since they separated themselves from the Church of Rome, and therefore cannot be true churches. As though there were never in the Church of Rome any sects, nor contentions and quarrels concerning religion, and indeed, carried on not so much in the schools as from pulpits in the midst of the people. We know, to be sure, that the apostle said: “God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (I Cor. 14:33), and, “While there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh?” Yet we cannot deny that God was in the apostolic Church and that it was a true Church, even though there were wranglings and dissensions in it. The apostle Paul reprehended Peter, an apostle (Gal. 2:11 ff.), and Barnabas dissented from Paul. Great contention arose in the Church of Antioch between them that preached the one Christ, as Luke records in The Acts of the Apostles, ch. 15. And there have at all times been great contentions in the Church, and the most excellent teachers of the Church have differed among themselves about important matters without meanwhile the Church ceasing to be the Church because of these contentions. For thus it pleases God to use the dissensions that arise in the Church to the glory of his name, to illustrate the truth, and in order that those who are in the right might be manifest (I Cor. 11:19).

Chapter 17, Second Helvetic Confession (1566), “Dissensions and Strife in the Church”

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hat are the special privileges of the visible church? The visible church hath the privilege of being under God’s special care and government; of being protected and preserved in all ages, not withstanding the opposition of all enemies; and of enjoying the communion of saints, the ordinary means of salvation, and offers of grace by Christ to all the members of it in the ministry of the gospel, testifying, that whosoever believes in him shall be saved, and excluding none that will come unto him.

Question 63, Westminster Larger Catechism (1647)

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An Interview with Abe Opincar

Four-Star Worship MR: Abe’s column—a review of places of worship—is featured in the San Diego Reader and that’s about the only thing I read in the Reader. Every time it comes out, I look forward to seeing what Abe has to say because Abe is not a Christian, he is Jewish, and yet he reviews churches sort of like a music or a food critic.

AO: It was based upon the New York Times restaurant review.

ABE OPINCAR

Author and columnist with the San Diego Reader

MR: It’s a very entertaining and often very insightful look at churches. We thought it would be interesting to have Abe talk to us about churches outside of our usual orbit and also within our usual orbit and get some of his reflections from someone outside of the Christian family. First of all, can you give a little bit of your own background and where you stand in terms of your own religious tradition and how you got interested in doing this?

AO: Well, I started writing at the Reader when I was nineteen or twenty, and then I left for a number of years to study at Yeshiva in Israel. I came back and began writing for the Reader again.

By this time our daily paper, like many daily papers across the county, had slowly been cutting down on religion coverage. So my boss, the publisher at the paper, really wanted to have a regular religions feature. But he wanted it to be something that people would actually read. He didn’t want what is called a “faith and ethics” kind of feature. So he and my editor, Judith Moore, hit on this idea of making it in the form of a restaurant review. I would grade churches on their sermon, choir, architecture, snacks, and then come up with a star system where one could give them one to four stars. This idea of competition, my bosses thought, would encourage people to turn to this column. From what I understand, it has become the best read, or one of the best read columns in the paper.

MR: It is insightful as well as humorous. Speaking as an informed non-Christian, what do you think makes a church successful? What gives it the four stars?

AO: Over the past five years I have probably visited at least two hundred and fifty different places of worship. And a successful church is generally made up of the some of the things you would assume, before you went in, would make it successful. It often begins with a very committed pastor, because one thing I have learned is that it does all trickle down from the senior pastor. If you have a snotty senior pastor, you have a snotty congregation. [laughing] MR: It’s personality driven.

AO: Yeah, it really is. Who was it, I think Thoreau, made the famous statement about “the organization is the shadow of the man,” you know, who runs it. But apart from the leader, I look for a cogent sermon. It can’t be one of these prepackaged ones that people get really used to, like kindergarten worksheets where it’s like: Jesus came to blank, you know, humanity. [laughing] And then everyone writes “s-a-v-e.” The sermon has to be delivered in a fashion that addresses adults. Preferably, someone should be using humor, irony, and even sarcasm. The preacher needs to show a real familiarity with both the Bible and exegesis. Of course, friendliness is always a big deal. And like I said, how congregants greet people from the outside is truly a reflection of the senior pastor. Music is also important. If you are going to use rock music it better be really, really good rock music [laughing], and not this . . .

MR: Like imitation Carpenters?

AO: Right. I understand among your people, you

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refer to it as “Jesus is my boyfriend” [laughing] music. I have heard that term amongst the Calvinist sect. [laughing] But often, the churches that hit the mark most of the time are AfricanAmerican churches. Where the rhetorical style is still valued. You can hear these amazing sermons that can go on for forty-five minutes or longer and are cogent, funny, sarcastic, and so forth.

MR: Do you often find that you either have good communicators with no content or good content without great communication skills?

AO: There are certainly pastors that can hold the congregation’s attention by virtue of their own personal charisma, but even when I am hearing a great sermon, I am wondering how many people are actually listening to it in the pews. I am appreciating it because I am paid to sit there and take notes! But I don’t know how many other people really know what’s going on. I wonder how effective it really is. I don’t know what these congregants do when they get home, but I know for myself, that points I have heard in various sermons will stay with me.

MR: What are some of the changes you have seen since you have been writing, reviewing, and attending churches?

AO: Among the changes that I have seen, of course, is PowerPoint. I’m not a fan of PowerPoint!

I was just at a church where we sat for about ten or fifteen minutes and waited for the morning speaker to get the PowerPoint up and running. I have yet to see any sermon where there was any apparent reason why PowerPoint was being used in the first place!

MR: Why it made a difference! [laughing] AO: It’s like in the old Second City TV sketch they did where the producers wanted to do a 3D version of Midnight Cowboy and this women playing Pauline Kael says, “But why, it was a perfectly good movie in the first place.” It is a perfectly good sermon; I don’t see why they need these little PowerPoint spinning things!

MR: This is like Neil Postman talking about technology: we don’t ask “why” any more, it’s just there.

AO: It would not be so insulting if it actually worked! [laughing] Three-quarters of the time it doesn’t work. So, you sit there and it is very awkward because there is a lot of male pride and a lot of testosterone invested in getting the thing to

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run right. It’s a very charged and uncomfortable moment in church.

MR: How about the content in the preaching? What are your general impressions of Protestant preaching?

AO: It really depends where you go. There are still pockets of places—among the intellectual Calvinists—where you can find very thoughtful sermons.

But, of course, among the nondenominational evangelicals there is a lot of practical stuff about marriage. I can’t tell you how many “keeping the marriage alive” sermons I have heard! The scary thing that I have noticed is that on both ends of the political spectrum, there is this real hysteria now. It’s amazing. You can go to a very liberal church or a very conservative church and both sides see themselves as martyrs. Both sides think—for different reasons—that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. It’s strange because you can hear the same thing on both sides and this is in spite of empirical evidence. I was just talking with a friend about this. You can look at the statistics about teen pregnancy, abortion, illiteracy, and so forth—things are actually going pretty well.

But if you listen to the extreme right or the extreme left, you’re left with a very dire picture.

MR: So the sense that you are going to church to have an actual meeting with God—that sort of transcendence—is missing in a lot of the churches?

AO: In a lot of it. You can say that among the more politically committed conservatives and liberals what you have is a sort of a social gospel.

They say, of course, that they are addressing something theological, but essentially you could get the same thing by staying at home and watching the talking heads on Meet the Press. In a way, it’s another sort of entertainment. I haven’t ever learned anything in one of those sermons that I did not know already.

MR: What would you say to a pastor or a parishioner listening to the program who really thinks that the best way to reach out to non-Christians is for us to tell people what they need by addressing what they want? Give them their felt needs, give them what they want. If they have a problem with their marriage tell them that Christ is the solution of that. Dress it up that way and don’t get too theological, you don’t want to turn people off. What would you say to people who would encourage us to go down that road?

AO: There is a problem with that, as I see it— mind you I am an outsider. When you simplify things so much, they become a lie or they are a

misrepresentation of facts. You hear people say that people don’t want theology or that theology is a dirty word, but I find that is really dishonest and insulting because everyone obviously comes from a certain perspective. But there is no mention made and it’s never articulated. You can go up and ask, “Do you ordain women?” Well, “No we don’t.”

And you say, “Why?” They will always say, “Because the Bible says we don’t ordain women.”

Well, yes, the Bible says a lot of things, but you have someone interpreting it for you.

MR: So the assumptions are hidden rather than explicit.

AO: Right, and when you are dealing with something as intimate as religion, full disclosure is necessary.

AO: Right! It does get kind of pointless to constantly keep up with modernity. I was sitting at a humanistic Jewish service and they had done their own little liturgy. I asked them how is it that people who have never diagnosed their own illnesses or prepared their own taxes or written their own contracts feel that they are up to writing a liturgy? [laughing] They understand that people have jobs like lawyers, attorney . . .

MR: Expertise maybe? [laughing] AO: Right, but when it is liturgy, it’s a game the whole family can play! [laughing] I sit there and wonder about the thinking behind it because it makes you cringe. You want to ask these educated people, did you ever think that this is based on three thousand years of tradition?

MR: Truth in advertising.

MR: But now it’s just arts and crafts.

AO: You have to ask, What do you really want? Is it to get people into church? What, ultimately, is the goal? What is the point? There is a whole historical way of thinking that basically boils down to “get them in to the camp meeting!” Getting them there was the point. And then you let God sort them out. It depends on what you mean by success or what people want.

MR: Abe, you are often critical of traditional or confessional churches that sort of set aside their confessional identity. They strip it down to the bare essentials so that they can attract an evangelical audience. One of your great reviews, I thought, was of a mainline Lutheran church. You said that there was no liturgy; there was a sense of chatty familiarity with God; and there was really no content to the sermon. What would you say to those who are, say, confessional Reformed or Lutheran or traditional Catholics as they try to market their faith to the American culture and the mass-market culture?

AO: Right, now anyone can do it. It’s really not that hard. [laughing] But you wonder, why don’t you just diagnose your own illnesses, then? All that mystification about medicine and law, it’s needless—anyone can do it! [laughing] MR: Abe, you are even more delightful in person than you are to read.

AO: Thanks for having me.

[This broadcast transcript has been edited for clarity and length.]

Abe Opincar’s weekly column, “Sheep and Goats,” is published in the San Diego Reader. His most recent book is Fried Butter: A Food Memoir (Soho Press, 2003). For more information, please visit www.abeopincar.com.

AO: I would first ask them to really investigate their own motives. It is more fun to have PowerPoint and praise bands, but why are you doing it? Is it that deep down there is some discomfort, some insecurity, about their own theology? I would ask them, what is really motivating this desire for change? And then also to ask themselves, where are you going to end, what is the logical conclusion of this? I don’t think that there is just one way of coming to God, but when churches become so homogenous, I think you lose some very important things.

MR: Judaism would not be Judaism without Torah. There are some things you have to have or you don’t have that religion.

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BOOKS | Think Biblically! and Engaging God’s Word

How Firm a Foundation?

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especially the doctrines of Scripture, creation, fall, and denominations in North America has been the formation of Christian schools, redemption. The last eleven explore how these in many cases primary and secondary schools, but most notably colleges and foundational matters are worked out in particular universities. Questions inevitably arise as to the cultural issues and academic fields. Though the need and usefulness of such schools as well as to tone and quality differ from chapter to chapter, as their theological rationale, as these various is inevitable in a multiauthor work, some common Think Biblically! Christian institutions of higher education compete themes do hold this work together. Most Recovering a with each other and also with ubiquitous publicly prominent is the sufficiency of Scripture, which Christian funded institutions. Why should Christian youth MacArthur claims is perhaps the doctrine most Worldview forsake mainstream state universities and instead under attack in the present day. Though many of

by John MacArthur, opt for education at Christian colleges that are the authors reject the claim that the Bible is a with The Master’s usually more obscure and invariably more “textbook” on every particular academic discipline, College Faculty, eds expensive? These books, written by people heavily they all share the conviction that Scripture sets Crossway Books, 2003 invested in the world of Christian higher forth principles that are applicable and normative 368 pages (hardcover), $19.99 education, offer answers to this question that are for each academic field and cultural endeavor. clearly distinct, though not completely dissimilar. Many essays follow a common pattern of surveying Engaging Cornelius Plantinga, writing out of the Dutch- the whole of intellectual history from the God’s World: American Reformed tradition and on behalf of perspective of its own particular topic—decrying A Christian Calvin College, makes the kingdom of God his especially the Enlightenment, Darwinism, and now identifying and Vision of Faith, primary theme and the focus of a Christian postmodernism—before Learning, and education. John MacArthur and his colleagues, unpacking the relevant biblical principles. The Living writing from a conservative evangelical, somewhat essays are sensitive to assaults against the biblical

by Cornelius fundamentalist perspective and on behalf of The worldview they promote from both non-Christians Plantinga Master’s College, emphasize the idea that all and professing Christians. Warnings against aspects of culture and all academic disciplines Christians who have compromised with Eerdmans, 2002 169 pages (paperback), $15.00 ought to be grounded in Scripture. Despite the Darwinism and postmodernism, and have thereby difference of the kingdom- and Scripture-oriented reinterpreted or ignored the “clear teaching” or approaches, both books attempt to defend the “face value” of Scripture, are sounded repeatedly. distinctively Christian nature of all intellectual Perhaps the most admirable quality of this work study and the cultivation of a Christian worldview. is its shameless desire to adhere to Scripture, even Think Biblically! consists of seventeen chapters if that means bucking nearly every trend in the written by John MacArthur and faculty members broader world. The authors’ willingness to take a from different departments at The Master’s critical stand against harmful cultural and academic College. The first six, designed to address the movements that marginalize them from the world’s biblical foundations of culture and intellectual perspective is something that ought to impress and study, deal with some basic issues of theology, inspire Christian young people pursuing higher

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education. However, this same critical posture— itself admirable—contributes to the most substantial drawback of the work: its polemics frequently lack precision. The repeated cursory summaries of intellectual history seldom provide adequate descriptions of the views of any particular person or movement. Many of the Christian thinkers accused of compromising with unbelievers (some of whom would be familiar to readers of Modern Reformation) would certainly not recognize themselves in the descriptions of their views.

Most notable, given the primary thrust of this work, is a failure to provide a consistent description of the nature of the sufficiency of Scripture. The sufficiency of Scripture was, of course, one of the great and crucial doctrines of the Reformation. Yet the reformers did not wish thereby to compromise the reality of general revelation, the necessity of exercising wisdom, or the benefit of learning from unbelievers. To the credit of the authors, this book does acknowledge general revelation and the need for wisdom, and the corresponding fact that Scripture does not discuss a great number of topics in which a Christian college must inevitably provide instruction. But at the same time, the essays also speak frequently of Scripture as meeting every problem of human life, as the only completely reliable source of truth, and as the only place providing knowledge of God. Thus, this crucial matter for Christian higher education is left at best ambiguous, with the result that the posture toward non-Christian thinkers is always only critical. No positive model is provided for learning from the genuine, if flawed, contributions that unbelievers have made to culture and learning.

Engaging God’s World is a clear and elegantly written book which centers around the threefold biblical theme of creation, fall, and redemption. It ends with a call to see education as preparation for a specific calling to reform the world for the sake of God’s kingdom. Plantinga’s work is notably more favorable than Think Biblically! toward integrating Christian scholarship with the contributions of non-Christian learning. John Calvin is favorably described as learning from both Scripture and pagan authors, and college students are called to gain wisdom from many sources, seeking truth wherever it may be found.

Plantinga’s specific discussion of the relationship between general and special revelation is markedly different from that of the MacArthur volume.

Alleged contradictions between these two sources must be taken as only apparent, but honest and patient scholarship should not be compromised by excessive zeal to find a quick solution, as resolutions may be slow in coming. Plantinga also adopts the

view that Scripture offers helpful principles for all of life, but emphasizes that Scripture itself invites creative solutions in applying these principles— indeed, this is part of the adventure of Christian education. Yet these convictions about general revelation do not make Plantinga less committed to specifically Christian higher education. Instead, he expresses clear pessimism about the helpfulness of training at secular universities and stresses the unique contribution of Christian colleges in imparting to students a kingdom vision.

Undoubtedly, the kingdom of God is the key thread uniting his book: to get an education is to prepare for kingdom service. Plantinga picks up a theme that he perceives in Calvin and especially in Abraham Kuyper: the lordship of Christ over all things and the consequent hope of the redemption of the whole cosmos. He rejects any distinction between sacred and secular spheres.

The redeemed believer, he claims, embarks on a lifelong adventure to discover the ways of the kingdom in this world and his or her own vocation to advance it. This entails the reformation of all aspects of culture, motivated by the hope that our present achievements will be preserved into the next life in the new heavens and earth. The sweeping vision that he presents is certainly compelling and perennially attractive as an alternative to worldshunning interpretations of the Christian life.

Whatever the ultimate biblical fidelity of this vision, Plantinga’s treatment of it does raise some important questions. One is historical. Though Plantinga treats his kingdom theology as characteristically Reformed and exemplified in Calvin, the corresponding emphasis on the two kingdoms in Calvin and other Reformed thinkers is not explored. Calvin clearly distinguished the kingdom of Christ from the civil kingdom; he viewed both as legitimate and God-ordained, but applied redemptive categories only to the former and therefore emphatically warned against confusing the two, which is precisely what Plantinga does. Calvin and the early Reformed tradition is not the clear precedent for Plantinga’s view. Another important question concerns the consistency of his kingdom theology both internally and in the light of certain biblical teachings. Plantinga’s portrayal of a fluid transition between the present world and the world to come does not sit entirely at ease with his occasional warnings against over-optimism as to what Christians can achieve, nor with Scripture’s cataclysmic descriptions of the end of this age.

These two volumes offer much grist for reflection for those interested in the topic of Christian higher education. The two visions

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represented here are certainly those that a great many Christian colleges today are trying, in various ways, to implement. Both works have much to admire, though they remind us of challenges yet to be resolved. In the face of the somewhat monistic claims of these two books— Scripture answers every problem in the present world or the Kingdom of Christ encompasses every aspect of the present world—this reviewer wonders whether we still have things to learn from the Reformation’s both/and approach: both special and general revelation, both the kingdom of God’s right and left hand. A both/and approach may strike readers as the very kind of Roman Catholic perspective that the Reformation rejected, yet the reformers themselves believed that their affirmations of two kingdoms differed markedly from Roman distinctions between reason and revelation and nature and grace. Perhaps we, as heirs of the Reformation, have more work yet to do in appropriating their insights on these matters.

David VanDrunen Westminster Seminary California Escondido, CA

Jacob & the Prodigal: How Jesus Retold Israel’s Story

by Kenneth E. Bailey InterVarsity Press, 2003 225 pages (paperback), $17.00 Kenneth E. Bailey, prolific author and renowned professor of Middle Eastern New Testament Studies, sets to paper in Jacob & the Prodigal the mature fruit of decades of research and reflection on the much expounded but little understood parable of Luke 15. Stimulated by N. T. Wright, who links the Jacob and Esau saga with Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, Bailey composes a pioneering monograph that knowingly renders his earlier, extensive writings on Luke 15 outmoded (yet without dispensing with his patented cultural and linguistic insights). The result is the first full comparison of Jacob and the prodigal to date, identifying some fifty-one points of contact.

Following Wright’s valued synoptic gospel insights, Bailey’s interpretative thesis for the parable states that Jesus’ metaphorical theology deliberately creates a new story patterned after the Jacob story, which effectively offers Israel a revised identity with Jesus at its center. That Jesus addresses the scribes and Pharisees in chapter 15 is of twofold importance: first, Jesus speaks to the

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entire nation of Israel through them; and, second, the reader/hearer of the parable must be aware that when a scholarly audience—the scribes and Pharisees—is specifically mentioned, it can be assumed that “a sophisticated scholarly exchange is underway” (25). As a result, not a single meaning but “theological clusters” of meaning abound from new perceptions of Jesus and his message.

The author champions conservative perspectives on a variety of issues and substantiates his position with credible cultural details, intra-testamental evidence, and reliable scholarship. For instance, when the finely tuned nature of Jesus’ presentations to his contemporaries is examined within the world of first-century scholarship, Bailey avers that, “it is possible to see Jesus as the first mind of the New Testament and Paul as the second” (26). This is a significant point for those New Testament scholars who pit Paul as an innovator over against Jesus.

Bailey rightly presents the thinking of Jesus and Paul within the same circle, even when it comes to the heart of the gospel, and thereby manifests a relative independence from Wright, James D. G. Dunn, and others.

The book is divided into four parts. Part One establishes the author’s hermeneutical principles and methodology, as well as provides seasoned lessons on the importance of Middle Eastern culture, oral traditions, and the question of authenticity for New Testament interpretation. Bailey would have his readers understand that a biblical story is not simply a delivery system for an idea, but rather a creative worldview story that invites the reader/listener to dwell in its worldview and opens up multiple levels of meaning. Part Two explores fascinating Old Testament connections and cultural details of the first two parts of the parabolic unit (the Good Shepherd and the Lost Coin stories) in order to facilitate understanding of the Christology encased within the details of the parable of the prodigal.

Bailey works toward a well-articulated incarnational theology that leaves “open theism” proposals looking tired and passé. The third and longest part is given to comparing and contrasting the parable of the prodigal son with the saga of Jacob in Genesis 27 to 35. Though Bailey becomes a bit repetitious, the exegetical and theological insights keep coming.

Theological reflection on the “Evangelium in Evangelio” (the gospel within the gospel) embodies the brief but rewarding Part Four. Key elements include how sin is defined in the parable, what Jesus says about the nature of God, Jesus’ own Christological assertions, and the enhanced meaning of the interlocking themes of repentance/salvation.

Aside from the unsubstantiated claim that Junia (of Rom. 16:7) was an apostle (Bailey will have to do

more than merely cite James D. G. Dunn as an authority) and a ponderous distancing of himself from an Augustinian understanding of grace in order to uphold Jesus’ supposedly via media doctrine of repentance (which, as Bailey articulates it, comes out sounding like textbook Augustinianism anyway), the exegetical and theological infelicities are few and plainly overshadowed by innumerable textual insights and lucid exposition. Bailey’s thoughtprovoking new book comes highly recommended.

John J. Bombaro Dickinson College Carlisle, PA

BOOKS BY ALLIANCE AUTHORS: God’s Pattern for Creation: A Covenantal Reading of Genesis 1

by W. Robert Godfrey Presbyterian and Reformed, 2003 141 pages (paperback), $10.99 President of Westminster Seminary California (and Alliance council member) W. Robert Godfrey has written a book on Genesis 1 in the spirit of John Calvin, which is to say, it is nothing more than a brief and clear exposition of the text. Godfrey is clearly convinced that the contemporary debate among conservatives over creation is a problem that can best be solved by allowing God’s Word to both ask and answer the important questions. The body of this text runs just over eighty pages, and after an historical introduction, is composed of only three chapters: the first three days of creation, the final four days, and the message of Genesis 1. In the space of approximately seventy pages of exegesis, lay readers are confronted with the simple message of the biblical text, and most readers will probably be shocked at how much of its message has been garbled by overfamiliarity and polemical abuse. Helpful appendices set forth Calvin’s own reading of the text, summarize the Reformed confessions on creation, and contextualize the Westminster standards on this point.

No doubt some embroiled in contemporary creation debates will see this book as just one more datum to be incorporated into running arguments.

But fair readers will see this as a fine piece of biblical scholarship written by a nonexpert for a nonexpert audience. The result is a faithful meditation on Scripture’s witness to God’s work of creation that is

edifying for all and required reading for those wishing to broaden their understanding of Genesis 1.

Brian J. Lee Book Review Editor Alexandria, Virginia

Deconstructing Evangelicalism: Conservative Protestantism in the Age of Billy Graham

by D. G. Hart Baker Books, 2004 224 pages (paperback), $21.99 In Deconstructing Evangelicalism, Presbyterian historian (and contributing scholar to Modern Reformation) D. G. Hart joins both historical argument and theological prescription in his typically iconoclastic fashion.

Claiming that the recent resurgence of evangelical history is nothing more than a historical and sociological fiction papering over the differences in the creeds, polity, and worship practices of conservative Protestants, Hart urges everyone involved in the evangelical racket to give up the label and return to more basic denominational identities.

The result, he believes, would be more faithful Christianity and a more reasoned academic dialogue.

There can be no doubt that renewed denominational identity, centered on revitalized interest and commitment to distinctive creeds, polities, and worship would be a boon. Yet the “so what?” question haunts this book. Hart suggests that the damage done by a moratorium on the term evangelical would be negligible, and further that this indicates a weakness of evangelical identity. An evangelical might respond that this is to misconstrue the descriptor in the first place, which is not supposed to be about creeds, polities, or worship. Rather, it is about a certain attitude or style that flows from the recognition that the gospel of Jesus—his death and resurrection—has a worldhistorical significance that changes everything. Is there sufficient substance to this attitude or style to encourage the gospel-oriented piety for which John Calvin and the Reformed tradition are noted? Is there a substance here, regardless of its label, that we who are committed to a modern Reformation can say we earnestly desire? Hart clearly thinks not.

Sean Michael Lucas (Brian J. Lee contributing) Community Presbyterian Church Louisville, KY

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Practical Aspects of the Preached Word

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ver feel that churches are a mess today? Again and again, diagnosing the problem

preaching of the Word (in terms of themes, prayers, is most of the solution, and to diagnose the sickness in a church we have to have Scripture readings, and music). some idea of what a healthy church looks like.

4. Give a good amount of time to the sermon in the Ever since Melanchthon drew up the Augsburg service (congruent with your pastor’s desires and Confession, Protestants have identified the true abilities, and your congregation’s desires and church as “the congregation of the saints in which abilities). the gospel is rightly taught and the sacraments are 5. Have a moment of quiet at the end of your rightly administered” (Augsburg Confession, Article service to help people collect their thoughts, as VII). Though these days, music styles and youth they reflect on what they have seen of God’s Word programs may be of concern to more people, and his gospel that morning.

Christians of various denominations have 6. Whether you’re the preacher or a listener, historically adopted these two “marks”—right make your conversation after the service about preaching and right administration of the what you found helpful in the sermon.

MARK DEVER 7. Make the biblical text of the sermon the Sacraments—as identifiers, typifiers, and locaters of a good church. The church has the life-giving content of your small group in the coming week; Senior Pastor Word at the center, and the life-testifying spend your time in more searching application of it Capitol Hill Baptist Sacraments, repeating the Word and acting as the to your lives.

Again, let me urge the pastors reading this: Church living, visible boundary with the world.

Washington, D.C. As a pastor, I repeatedly find myself referring to Make it clear to your fellow church leaders, that these two marks. And I’ve found that more than the time you spend in the Word and in prayer, one conversation with fellow pastors has been especially when preparing the public teaching for clarified as we think together about the centrality the church, is the single most important way that of the Word in our churches and the administration God has called you to serve his people. Time, both in the pastor’s schedule and in the Sunday of the Sacraments.

With just a limited amount of space available, I morning service, should show how central the want to look specifically at the centrality of the sermon—and the public reading of Scripture—is Word in the local congregation. Ask yourself, to the service. This helps the pastor to live out How is the Word central in my church? Here are the right preaching of the Word as a mark of a seven ways to make the preaching of God’s Word true church. more central in your congregation’s life: These steps can begin to recenter a church on 1. Print the Scripture text and title ahead of time what should be at its heart, and should begin to for the members to use in their quiet time (for reestablish that life-giving, provocative distinction prayer and study) and to use in inviting others. between the church and the world. They should 2. Make sure that the preacher has the time and help us to determine what a true church is. And inclination to give himself seriously and prayerfully above all, such practical matters should aid us in in preparation of the sermon. giving glory to God. 3. Structure the whole service around the

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