Why bother with church?

Why Bother with Church? by Sam Allberry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book begins with the question, “Why bother with church?” and ends with the question “Why on earth would I not bother with church?” It’s aim is to get us excited about church if we aren’t already. Allberry seeks to get us there by showing us two things: (1) what the church is and (2) who it belongs to.

Does he succeed? Largely, yes. The reminders from Scripture that the church is an outpost, a family, an embassy, and the bride of Christ, certainly excited me about the importance of church. "Lacking a church is not equivalent to lacking a decent supermarket or movie theatre; it is like lacking a hospital or a source of water. It is an utter necessity.” Necessary indeed, and also precious: "If you want to understand how committed Jesus is to the church, here’s your answer. He doesn’t just create it and let it be. He marries it.”

Along the way, Allberry answers questions such as: Why do I need church? How is church run? How do I survive church? As to that last question, he diagnoses what may lie behind someone’s boredom in church:

The focus is not primarily on what we do or don’t get out of attending our church, but on what we can give to others. Church is not there for your entertainment, as a consumer, but for you and others to find encouragement, as a contributor. If our “boring-ometer” for church is based on whether we sang songs we liked, or whether the sermon was relevant enough or short enough, or scratching where we have been itching this week, then it could be a sign that we’re going to church for our sake and not for the sake of others.

But the dominant note of the book is boredom with church but excitement for it. And so he concludes

Why bother with church? Because it’s the most important show in town. What goes on when a church meets is far grander than we tend to realise.

It’s God’s family.

It’s God’s embassy in this world.

It’s God’s way of preaching to the spiritual world.

It is, amazingly, Jesus’ bride, who will live with him in the next world.

And, in God’s great mercy, through faith in Christ, you get to be a part of it and to be part of the way God builds it. And if you remember this when you get up next Sunday, you’ll find yourself asking: Why on earth would I not bother with church?

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Discernment in church

Hokey dinah it's been a long time since I blogged.

Anyways, Alan Knox writes:

But, let’s be honest. For the majority of Christians who gather together (at least in the Western world), discernment is not and cannot be part of their gatherings. Usually, only one person speaks. If someone else speaks, that person must first be given permission to speak. Then, if someone has a question about what is said, or if someone disagrees, there are few avenues of asking questions, much less discernment. (Yes, I understand that some “preachers” or teachers allow for questions and disagreements. But, for most Christians in America and the west, this is not allowed or encouraged.)

I agree with Alan. How can this be remedied? Should someone teaching invite comments and questions during or after he teaches?

Read the rest of Alan's post.

Book review: The Veil is Torn

The Veil Is Torn: AD 30 to 70 Pentecost to the Destruction of Jerusalem by Ted Byfield

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


My knowledge of church history (and all history, for that matter), is embarrassingly sketchy, so I’ve been devoting my Sunday afternoons to remedying the situation. The Veil is Torn is the first volume of the Christian History Project’s series, The Christians: Their First Two Thousand Years. Series editor Ted Byfield introduces the series in his Foreword, in which, following Chesterton, he writes that “the most dangerous people…are those who have been cut off from their cultural roots” (vii). Byfield believes that the whole western world is in that dangerous situation. In our world Christianity is unfashionable, and yet “our founding educational institutions, our medical system, our commitment to the care of the aged and infirm, our concept of individual rights and responsibilities, all came to us through Christianity.”

So this series is all about getting us back to our foundations, and this first volume starts where it all begins: with Jesus, his crucifixion, resurrection, and creation of the Church in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. From there it progresses to other historical happenings that are familiar to readers of the Bible. We follow Peter in and out of the Temple (and prison!). The majority of the rest of the book is then devoted to Paul. The title of chapter 4 is far from an overstatement when it describes Paul’s conversion to Christ as “the conversion that changed history.” Here we encounter a man whose zeal against Christ is transformed into zeal for Christ. The attractiveness and reality of Jesus were so great to Paul that he was willing to endure anything for the sake of his Lord. Sometimes the opposition to him was such that only the Lord was left standing with him:

With Barnabas now, for the moment at least, aligned with the Jerusalem faction, Paul found himself almost alone and surrounded by opponents: by hard-line Temple Jews who saw him as a danger; by the Christian legalists, both Gentiles and Jews, ostensibly backed by the Church authorities in Jerusalem, who considered him reckless and misguided; by pagans, who regarded him as an unpleasant rival and annoying threat; by Greek intellectuals, who viewed him as unbalanced, if not deranged; and, increasingly, by Roman authorities, who viewed him as a disruptive nuisance. (116)

And like his Lord, people have been opposed to him ever since (184-185). Yet he accomplished so much! The Taurus Mountains were a formidable wall discouraging travel from Tarsus to the north east. One single crack, the Cilician Gates, allowed admittance. Through these gates Alexander the Great led his army onward to conquer the world. “Now, through the same pass, the greatest conquest Europe would ever know was about to begin, and the force that would accomplish it was an army of two—Paul and, beside him, his companion Silas” (118).

Paul not only took criticism; he could also give it. Nero’s shenanigans were revolting to many of the Romans themselves; “they were un-Roman!” (218). But the Roman who most stridently denounced Imperial Rome was Paul himself in his letter to the Christian church at Rome. His letter “disclosed a distinct irony. For the Christians, who would be despised and persecuted by Roman officialdom for most of the next three hundred years, in fact stood for nearly all the virtues and principles which Rome had once enshrined” (219).

The last chapter, chapter 9, covers the fall of Jerusalem. It is a horrific tale. The citizens of that city had as much reason to be afraid of their own people as of the Roman army outside the city’s walls. Josephus says they ran out of both wood and room for crosses. Evil reached its lowest when an odour of fresh meat cooking came from the home of a woman named Mary. When a band of rebels demanded that she show her hidden store of food, she produced her roasted, half-eaten baby. The incident was so repulsive that “some Romans simply refused to believe such a thing could happen” (265)

I plan to continue reading through the rest of the volumes in this series. From what I have seen, each volume is well-written, interspersed with many attractive side bars, excurses, and pictures. I would highly encourage families to invest in this series. If Byfield is right, it will be an investment not only in history, but also in the future.

For more information see www.thechristians.ca



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The horizontal dimension of justification by faith

Here's a very important essay by Michael Bird on Justification by Faith and Racism.

A key quote:

To practice any form of ethnic or racial exclusion means that one either does not understand or does not believe in justification by faith.

The horizontal aspect of justification finds surprising emphasis in the NT.

Calvin on the world as God's theatre

Recently I reviewed Bruce Gordon's biography of John Calvin. This post is part seven of a short series of snippets from the book.

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Gordon summarizes:

“The world is the theatre of God’s glory most brilliantly seen in the Church, which lives in the certainty that it is grounded in God’s covenantal promise and has God’s protection. It will never perish” (p.286).

References:

Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven [Conn.] and London: Yale University Press, 2009).

Calvin on unity

Recently I reviewed Bruce Gordon's biography of John Calvin. This post is part six of a short series of snippets from the book.

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His great goal was to establish unity amongst the reforming church. To the Frankfurt community he wrote:

"Thus, my brethren, I beseech you in the name of God, increasingly to put in practice this lesson of Paul’s, ‘Let nothing be done from contention, nor from lust of victory’ as the word which he employs indicates. The moment each person backs his own quarrel people must of necessity come to a battle. Rather let each man admit his faults, and those who have been put to blame submit of their own accord…” (242-243).

Calvin’s minimalistic approach to requirements for unity and fellowship: “There was no one form of Christian community” (p.276).

References:

Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven [Conn.] and London: Yale University Press, 2009).

Calvin and N.T. Wright

Recently I reviewed Bruce Gordon's biography of John Calvin. This post is part two of a short series of snippets from the book.

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Some of Gordon's summaries of Calvin's teachings would surely coax an Amen from N.T. Wright!

“Christianity…is not about individual salvation but about the glory of God” (p.98).

“Salvation is not about individuals, but about the community of the Church” (118).

References:

Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven [Conn.] and London: Yale University Press, 2009).

How to disagree in church

Alan Knox has a good post entitled Disagreements without Separation.

The first of seven points is this:

Start with our agreement, primarily in the person and work of Jesus Christ, in our common relationship to God and to one another. When we start with our agreement we can recognize that most of our disagreements are insignificant compared to the greatness and immensity of our agreements.

The church as family

Alan Knox asks the question, "What would happen if your family acted like a church?" Maybe something like this?

Two young men walked in the den where grandma was watching her "stories". They shuffled their feet, made small talk, but finally got down to business.

"Grandma, we've all talked about it, and we don't think you're doing your job the way you once did - the way we need you to," the first man started.

"What do you mean, son?" the older lady asked, trying to see the TV around the two men.

"Well, you can't cook or clean anymore. You don't tell us stories of the old days. We haven't heard any wisdom from you in a long time. You usually just watch television and sleep. We're going to have to let you go," the second man said.

Grandma hung her head. "I realize that I'm getting older and can't carry out my duties that I once did. Will you at least give me a few weeks to find a new family?"

"We'll give you two weeks and a good recommendation. I'm sure that God is calling you to a good older family out there somewhere," her son said.

Read the whole thing. Of course, the question is not meant to drive us from church, but to drive us (the church), to Christ.

Some complementary links

Andy Naselli has an interesting interview with Andreas Kostenberger on his views on 1 Timothy 2.12 and women's roles in the church. Elsewhere, John Koessler writes

While I am not ashamed of complementarian theology, I am sometimes ashamed of complementarians.

I'm fairly confident that Kostenberger is not one of those complementarians.

Peter, if you love me, get fed by the best shepherds out there

How many times I have thought to myself: "I would really be a stronger Christian if I could meet with THAT church over there in ____. And becoming a stronger Christian is important right?" Now that I've opened the window for you and shown you the mindset I have at times, you're prepared to understand how hard Alan Knox's last post hit me. His post starts off about walking, but by the end it was speaking to me more about kneeling. I realized this: that when I begin to think the way I mentioned above, I'm really viewing my brothers and sisters as hindrances-to-me when I should be viewing myself as a helper-to-them.

Be sure to read Alan's thoughts.

Under the essential reading heading

Alan Knox has written a superb post entitled "Won't Get Fooled Again". A couple excerpts:

Once upon a time, God gathered people in fields, and on a mountain, and in a valley, and in homes, and in a school. How foolish! Not today. If people want to meet with God today, they can come to his house - a church building. Wouldn't it be foolish for people to think that God would come to them when he has beautiful buildings now?

Once upon a time, God used pagan prophets and philosophers. How foolish! Not today. Nothing good can come from culture. Today, God wants his people to read Christian books, watch Christian movies, and listen to Christian music. If God has something to say, he would never be so foolish as to speak through a pagan.

Alan's post is part of a synchroblog on the topic "God's Call to the Fools". I'm looking forward to being part of a synchroblog very soon. Stay tuned...

Teach Us to Teach

The interplay between Christians and their emotions, and between Christianity and human psychology, has been floating through my mind constantly for likely a year now. Almost every time I read the Scriptures, or a related article, these matters surface in my thoughts at some point. I suppose this is largely due to the climate of our day. The stuff of psychology is everywhere: school, work, media, even the Christian bookstore. But it's also due to my exposure to several conversations and debates about this interplay.

One of the results of my mind being engaged on these matters is that I have been reevaluating our teaching when the church meets together. The relevance of teaching to this discussion is that, often, those who are getting help from professional counsellors find teaching irrelevant. And those who are all against Christians going "outside" for help hold up teaching as the only thing (almost) that is relevant.

So teaching in the church is something I want to make a New Testament study of in the near future. In the meantime, my hypothesis is that the concept of teaching in the NT is decidedly different from that held by many of us Christians. In my circles at least, teaching is considered to be the impartation of truth (doctrine) that forms up what Christians believe. That's it. Nothing more. Thus we will invite each other to come and hear a gifted teacher speak on some subject like the Church, Spiritual Gifts, or Justification by Faith. I'm starting to wonder if, in addition to this aspect of teaching, the NT further views teaching as including training. Training takes us beyond the question of what we believe to the questions of how we live.

In other words, what I'm suggesting is that the biblical concept of teaching embraces not only belief-modification, but also behaviour-modification. When Matthew tells us in Matthew 7:38 that "the crowds were astonished at his teaching", does he mean to suggest that Jesus' words, "Do not be anxious about your life" (7:25) constitute teaching? I think he does. We wouldn't call it teaching, but the Holy Spirit does. We would call it exhortation, encouragement, or practical ministry. Matthew calls it teaching.

In Luke 11:1 the disciples ask Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray." To which Jesus launches into a lengthy sermon on the difference in the Greek words of prayer, intercession, and supplication? No! Jesus, the great Teacher from a place farther away than Ireland, shows them how to pray by praying right in front of them, saying, "When you pray, say..."

None of this is meant to minimize the importance of what we typically call teaching. The impartation of doctrinal information is vital. But so is the impartation of how-to information. Thus a message on how a Christian husband can love his wife as Christ loved the Church belongs just as much under the rubric of teaching as does the sermon on marriage being a picture of Christ and His Church.

Incidentally, the secular world has much less difficulty with this concept of teaching. For instance, a basic Driver's Education course includes classroom instruction on the rules of the road and the functioning of a car, but it also includes instruction in how to drive the thing. This is how you parallel park. This is how you change a tire. In secular teaching, the rubber meets the road. Why should it not in the teaching of the local church?

How does all this apply to professional counselling, psychology, and emotional life? Well, if our teaching was more holistic in this regard, counsellees would likely find it to be much more relevant, and believers in the sufficiency of Scripture might actually see some day-to-day evidence for the Bible's sufficiency.

Biography of Robert Chapman

Just submitted to Scripture Forum. A while ago the Moderating Committee there graciously invited me to contribute book reviews to their forum. I have not been very faithful in contributing, but I hope to change that in the future.

Title: Robert Chapman
Author: Robert L. Peterson

Review

Having wakened from whatever sleep I had last night with an obtrusive head cold, I took a sick day and settled down with this delightful biography of a delightful man.

In reading this book I encountered a remarkable servant of Christ. Robert Chapman (1803-1902) enjoyed a comfortable and cultured upbringing, but was converted to Christ in 1823. At the time of his conversion he held a promising career in law; after his conversion his business became “to love others and not to seek that others shall love me,” (p.13). He responded to criticism of his early preaching attempts by saying “There are many who preach Christ, but not so many who live Christ. My great aim will be to live Christ,” (p.29, original emphasis). Page after page reveals that this is exactly what he did.

The book records his tireless efforts in the gospel in Barnstaple, England, as well as his four missionary trips into Spain and his tour through Ireland on foot. We learn of his missionary zeal, financial dependence on the Lord, life of simplicity, and ministry of hospitality.

Of interest to many will be the accounts of his interactions with other leaders in the early Brethren movement. Darby could say of Chapman “He lives what I teach.” And again: “We talk of the heavenlies, but Robert Chapman lives in them,” (p.114). One thing that struck me was Chapman’s hospitality, a characteristic rarely associated with those who remain unmarried. He was “a missionary to missionaries” and many of God’s people found themselves refreshed and encouraged in his home.

Peterson writes as a careful and skillful biographer. He is careful by being well-researched, and by remembering that his subject had faults, even though, as in Joseph’s case, one must struggle to find them; He is skillful by organizing his material both chronologically and thematically.

Both Chapman and, it would seem, his biographer held more open views of reception than readers of this Forum would. But Chapman’s passion for unity—which lay behind his views on reception—is still good for us to hear. It should also be pointed out that Peterson does not have as much difficulty finding faults in Darby’s life as he does in Chapman’s; whether or not his criticisms of Darby are justifiable is a matter I am not qualified to judge.

Nevertheless, let us obey the command of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 2:29 (“honor such men”) by reading this biography. I recommend it to every Christian, especially to young men and women. In a day where Christian role models are those who show up at meeting nine times out of ten, we young people desperately need Christian biography of this calibre. Within these pages we shall discover the key not only to individual spiritual renewal, but to revitalization of our assemblies as well. Robert Chapman may have died over a century ago, but through this biography his love, life, and hospitality have today ministered to a worn-out Christian’s physical and spiritual needs one more time. May it not be the last time.

Resource Details

Number of Pages: 210
Publisher: Loizeaux Brothers, Inc.
Publication Date: 1995
ISBN: 0-87213-691-4

Hard-Hitting Questions on the Church

There may well be such a thing as a stupid question, but you won't find one among this lot. Here's one of my favourites:

When we meet with other believers, why do we spend most of our time looking at one person and the back of everyone else's heads?

A Time of Fellowship, Anyone?

Join me in asking myself: "How does fellowship as I define it compare with how the early Church and her Lord defined it?"

Amen to This

On a slip of paper from the late Mr. Robert Boyle, a great man of God. As his days on earth were winding down, his family graciously invited me to check over his library and take as many books as I wanted. I probably took half of a trunk full (including a bunch of Lange's commentaries)! In one of the books was this:

Do you say "Amen?"
When your brother sits,
After speaking to God in prayer?
Or does silence reign,
And there's not a word,
From those who are assembled there?

A hearty "Amen"
Is so good to hear,
And to God it must be so too.
For it shows our attention,
And fellowship too,
In all that we'd say and do.

So say "Amen"
When your brother sits,
After speaking to God in prayer.
Our hearts it will warm,
And our spirits unite;
We'll be blessed as we tarry there.
~ P.M. Weston

Entering the Blogosphere...

My first post, but first of how many? God only knows. If He should grant me a long and happy existence in the Blogoshere, this is what you should expect to see in future visits to my blog:

(1) The beauty, glory, and supremacy of Jesus Christ.
(2) Encouragement to read and study the Bible.
(3) A plug or two for learning to read the New Testament in Greek!
(4) Glimpses of what a local church should look like, and encouragement to join/remain in/re-shape one.
(5) Updates on life with Helen: how we're doing, what we're reading, where we're going, and who we're hanging out with.

I begin with a prayer.

Lord Jesus, I dedicate this virtual space to You.
You have so taken over my life that I can't even blog without You. Make this a place where everyone who stops by is loved and respected. Make this a place where Your people are encouraged, and where those who are not Yours are caused to give You second thought. I ask that You would save me from using this space to promote myself instead of You. Preserve me from causing others to stumble.
Give me Your wisdom, insight, and grace.