A Church In Trouble

This post is not about Ergun Caner, or Johnny Hunt. But before I get to what it is about, a few notes on what it’s not about. As you probably know, Johnny Hunt, of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, has invited Ergun Caner to fill his pulpit in July. What does this mean? Think about it. There are thousands of professing believers in that church, who have for better or worse entrusted some measure of oversight of their souls to Johnny Hunt. What does Pastor Hunt do with that tremendous and fearful responsibility? He invites a man in open and unrepentant sin to preach to the people for whose souls he will give an account, of course!A man who has lied and lied and lied some more. Caner lied in Dr Al Mohler’s face in public. He lied to untold thousands of Christians in public and on TV such as the John Ankerberg show. He lied to United States Marines, thus possibly putting their very lives in jeopardy. He used disgusting and filthy language in doing so and frequently uses very offensive terms about Muslims and Arabs. He lied to publishing houses like Kregel Publications, who published his book Unveiling Islam, thus enriching his own bank account by his deception. He sued fellow believers, righteous pastors, to cover up his own sin. He pretends to speak Arabic and instead just spouts gibberish in public. He acts with hatred toward his own brother. He thus has grievously wounded many evangelistic outreaches to Muslims, who watch with disgust as American evangelicals buy his book and invite him on the air, to their conferences, to their seminary convocations, to the presidency of their Bible colleges, and to their pulpits. He has been called on this, asked to repent, called to repent, pleaded with, many times, in private and in public. He is in open, unrepentant, grievous, repeated sin.

Will God look with favor upon Pastor Hunt and upon FBC Woodstock, as they not only stand idly by but actively seek such a man out and let him preach? They shouldn’t even let him be a member unless he publicly repents and confesses his sin, let alone preach from their pulpit! I shudder to think at God’s sentiments toward this action and toward those who made that decision.

Here is what this post is about.

I would like to propose an act of Christian service. Indeed, of worship of the Lord Jesus, of good to fellow professing believers, of benefit both to the universal Body of Christ as well as to the specific visible local church, FBC Woodstock. Pastor Hunt has failed his congregation. The leadership team has so far failed to rise up and put a stop to this foolish wickedness. The congregation has not (yet) arisen to call for an unconditional disinvitation to Caner and indeed a public rebuke and call to repentance, yet of course they are far less to blame than Pastor Hunt himself is, who clearly controls the invitations for his own pulpit.

If it should come to pass that this situation remain unchanged up to the very Sunday that Caner is scheduled to spew his nonsense at FBC Woodstock, without opposition, Christians who love the Word of God should rise up, show up, and speak up.
Members of FBC Woodstock, I hereby exhort you to call your leaders to repentance. Do it in love, of course. That goes without saying. True love obligates you not to turn a blind eye to sin. Do it. And if they will not repent, take a hard look at what the New Testament says you ought to do about it.
Members of other churches in the area, I exhort you – love your neighbors and the household of faith enough to make known your unwillingness to let sin rule the day.
Christians everywhere in the area – do not let the secular press and the world system do your job for you, of exposing evil in your own house.
If the leadership will not repent of inviting Caner, take to the streets outside FBC Woodstock, peacefully but with firm conviction. Think about ways you can communicate not only to those who choose to go in to sit under the teaching of a man who gives every indication that he does not know Jesus but also to the watching world that you love Ergun Caner and the people of FBC Woodstock too much to let this evil go unopposed! Use signs. Hand out pamphlets. Raise your voice to passing cars. Invite your whole church body out for this act of worship to the Lord Jesus. Sing songs of praise to Jesus while doing it. Teach the Word of God right there on the sidewalk. Ask your elder(s) to lead the way in this exposure of intolerance of unrepentant sin, of leaven within the Body of Christ.
If this seems like a radical step to you, consider that the Lord Jesus twice violently overturned tables on the grounds of the Temple. Consider that Jeremiah preached repentance from outside the gate of the Temple because he had been excommunicated and barred from entry to the Temple grounds, but refused to disobey the word of the Lord. Consider what your silence means. Consider that the opposite of love is not hatred, but rather indifference, and that’s exactly what you would be communicating not only toward Caner but also toward the people of FBC Woodstock and Pastor Hunt and the leadership team if you were to remain silent and just go about your normal business on that day. The opposite of love. The opposite of fulfilling the law. And why? Because you might be seen and recognised and you’d be putting your reputation on the line? Because you might lose friends? Because you are afraid? Because you are too occupied with your own Sunday morning rituals to go to the aid of those who badly need your voice and your call to holiness?

Why do it this way? Well, do you have a better idea? Why haven’t you implemented your better idea? Is it not the case that many, many avenues have been explored, many solutions sought, and still this unrepentant liar finds his way to elevated positions, to fill the air with his worldly nonsense? Is it not the case that while the case against Caner is indubitable, there are those who simply don’t care? Why don’t they care? It is because they have bigger fish to fry, in their minds, than truth and justice. This is wicked, and we ought to oppose Downgrade in the pastorate.

If Hunt and his team will not respect truth, might they respect a show of love and sacrifice and outrage against the acceptance of sin within the Body of Christ? There is only one way to find out.

And once you’ve found that out, I pray you’ll be stimulated to think deeply about other kinds of things the church ought to be doing, is not doing, and ought to repent of not doing, and that you will take loving action.

Avoiding schism at all costs

The Southern Baptist Convention has for some years been troubled by internal strife between Arminians who want to kick Calvinists out of it, justifying themselves with stupid arguments (like "Calvinists don't evangelise") (and yet I'm a Calvinist), and Calvinists who ultimately waste time by saying stuff like "But the guys who set up the institutions that later became the SBC were mostly Calvinists" (instead of sticking with "But the Bible says your soteriology is wrong. Let's debate it")

There are those who are pretty invested in trying to keep this tension from developing into full-blown fracture and schism. Politicians. Their intentions may be laudable, to keep men they truly regard as brothers from doing what they ought not do - cause division among brethren. But in staring at the Calvinism question, it is all too easy to ignore other more problematic signs of Downgrade.

Take, for example, Ronnie Floyd. He of the confetti cannon baptistry. This kind of stuff also happens on his watch. And yet Dr Al Mohler has all but ensured that Floyd will be the next President of the SBC. Why? Probably because he'll be more or less acceptable by both Arminians SoBaps and Calvinist SoBaps, so the tension can remain to be dealt with another day. Meanwhile, we get another big-shot megachurch pastor in a position to be put on a pedestal and imitated by those who think the favor of God is evidenced by lots of butts in pews.

Some costs are too high.

That a Christian Assembly or Congregation has the Right and Power to Judge all Teaching and to Call, Appoint, and Dismiss Teachers, Established and Proven by Scripture

First, it is necessary to know where and what the Christian congregation is, so that men do not engage in human affairs (as the non-Christians were accustomed to do) in the name of the Christian congregation. The sure mark by which the Christian congregation can be recognized is that the pure gospel is preached there. For just as the banner of an army is the sure sign by which one can know what kind of lord and army have taken to the field, so, too, the gospel is the sure sign by which one knows where Christ and his army are encamped. We have the sure promise of this from God in Isaiah 55[:10–11], "My word" (says God) "that goes forth from my mouth shall not return empty to me; rather, as the rain falls from heaven to earth, making it fruitful, so shall my word also accomplish everything for which I sent it." Thus we are certain that there must be Christians wherever the gospel is, no matter how few and how sinful and weak they may be. Likewise, where the gospel is absent and human teachings rule, there no Christians live but only pagans, no matter how numerous they are and how holy and upright their life may be.

Thus it undeniably follows that bishops, religious foundations, monasteries, and all who are associated with them have long since ceased to be Christians or Christian congregations, even though they have claimed they are more entitled to this name than anyone else. For whoever recognizes the gospel sees, hears, and understands that even today they insist on their human teachings, have driven the gospel far away from themselves, and are still driving it away. That is why one should consider pagan and worldly what these people do and pretend.

Twisting the Calling

It is common in modern evangelical circles to speak of one’s “calling” to this or that.

A call to preach.

A call to mission work, and/or a specific country or people group.

A call to fulfill a certain ministry.

A call to carry out a certain task.

A call to speak to a specific person at a specific time.
Such language is sometimes used to explain why one is taking a specific course of action, or sometimes to defend one’s choice of behavior. Often it seems to me it is thrown out there with little thought to the necessary preconditions for the existence of “callings” as the term is used. Rarely do proponents of this idea wrestle substantively with the idea that such a thing would mean that God is specifically revealing His will in an extra-biblical way to the object of the revelation. And since the person who claims to have received the calling often refuses to consider that they might have been mistaken about what they received or whether they received it or whether it did indeed come from God, the calling is de facto treated as on par with Scripture, even though if challenged the claimant will almost always deny the equivalence.

We would expect, if God is in the business of dispensing specific callings to people about this or that ministry, to find guidance and wisdom about divine callings in the pages of Holy Writ, so that we could be sure that we were indeed hearing these callings from God and not the burblings of our flesh, fanciful imaginations, or the after-effects of yesterday’s burrito. To see if God has indeed left us any sure and solid guidance in His Word, I searched using Bible software for every single instance I could think of related to “calling”, “call”, “called”, “calls”, etc. I then threw out all the unrelated hits, such as Acts 28:1 – “After we were brought safely through, we then learned that the island was called Malta.” What remained I combed through and checked to see what it meant in its context. Did God intend to communicate in His Word that He would continually send individual people specific callings to specific tasks or ministries, going forward throughout the ages during which the church would subsist?

Before I continue, let me say that I think it is probably true that God does want people to carry out a specific ministry. In particular, in the United States, it is a far better work to carry out Gospel-centered agitation of the culture and of the church and to set apart assistance for helping women and children in the context of putting an end to the rampant murder and sacrifice of tiny image-bearers of God in the modern abortion Holocaust than it is to be in charge of your church’s laser light show, playing lead guitar for your church band’s rendition of AC/DC songs, or organising the helicopter-drop of 25,000 candy eggs on Easter Sunday.

My Findings

The point here, however, is that there is no indication in Scripture that individual believers should expect to receive direct divine guidance about whether to move to Country X, marry Person Y, or do Ministry Z. Such things are not communicated via internal “senses”, or “nudges”, or “impressions”. There is no biblical teaching that would lead us to expect that such is the case.
I organised my findings into categories that capture pretty well the meanings of each of the occurrences. Namely:

SPECIAL ONE-TIME CALLING FOR A SPECIFIC TASK

SPECIAL ONE-TIME SETTING APART AS APOSTLE

PAUL DISCUSSING HIS SPECIAL ONE-TIME SETTING APART AS APOSTLE TO THE GENTILES

INVITATION TO BE BORN AGAIN

EFFECTUAL CALL, ie, REGENERATION

SELECTION OF ISRAEL

A GENERAL COMMAND TO FOLLOW

INVITATION TO HEAVEN

There is a bit of overlap between some of these, particularly the setting apart as apostle and Paul’s discussion of his own calling as apostle to the Gentiles, and also the invitation to be born again and the effectual call, and I would not argue if someone desired a different arrangement of the passages contained therein.
What I did not find, however, is any indication of any kind that God “calls someone to preach” (ie, to be a pastor/elder), or that Christians should expect any other kind of divine revelation on a normative, recurring basis that God wants a specific Christian to perform a specific task or carry out a specific ministry.

You can see my organised data here. I also took screenshots for an alternative view.

Screen 1

Screen 2

Screen 3

Screen 4

What about 1 Corinthians 12?

This chapter was written to fulfill various purposes. One of them is to set forth the fact that the Holy Spirit “distribut(es) to each one individually just as He wills” the different spiritual gifts mentioned. Yet in what sense does this have to do with a “calling” as is frequently meant in modern churchianity? Someone who “felt a call to preach” could have any number of spiritual gifts. Administration, teaching, prophecy, word of knowledge, or some combination of those or of others. The same is true of one who “felt a call” to be a missionary in Morocco or Brazil. Spiritual gifts do not directly coincide with that action or ministry the person “feels called” to take or do. Rather, they are supernatural gifts that the Holy Spirit gives such that the gifted person may edify his or her neighbors and especially other Christians throughout their lives, no matter what they do.

The other main reason for this chapter is to build up in the sight of the Corinthian church the gifts that seemed to them less attractive. While they were, as Paul says later, to “pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy” (1 Cor 14:1), yet they were also to remember that “the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those members of the body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable, whereas our more presentable members have no need of it. But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another” (1 Cor 12:22-25). In the particular case of the Corinthians, they held the gift of speaking in tongues in too high regard, which may be why the Apostle Paul lists tongues last in the order of God’s appointments in the church in v. 28. It is not difficult to see how a church that is so captivated by the gift of tongues might overlook and dishonor another Christian with the gift of mercy, or hospitality, which are less spectacular in their exercise, especially since chapter 11 reveals that many, especially the rich, in the church were very prone to overlooking and dishonoring their fellow church members. We see the same thing today with the gift of teaching and those who excessively glorify the gift of teaching and the office of elder.

Yet one will search in vain through this chapter for any kind of promise that God will somehow directly reveal to people what specific ministry they should take up in their lives. Even verse 28 – “And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues” – does not help the pro-“calling” position, as it merely identifies the fact that God has appointed teacherS and such. It does not go on to say “…and God will make sure that each of them receives theopneustos nudgings and impressions, veritable burblings from deep within, confirmed by other witnesses, friends, and elders, that will confirm that’s what s/he’s supposed to do to serve Him”. Nothing of the kind is indicated.

Rather, what is the first qualification for an elder in a church? 1 Timothy 3:1 – “if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do.” If a man aspires to the office of overseer. If he does not, then he should not somehow be coerced into it; how well would he fulfill the responsibility in that case? Why does not Paul take the golden opportunity in 1 Timothy 3 or Titus 1 to explain that a man aspiring to the office of overseer must be called, must feel burblings deep within his soul that must be confirmed by external witnesses? Very simply, it is because Paul never had such a notion. It is a creation of human imagination from a later time, a human tradition.

What is the first move toward mission work? “And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age'” (Matthew 28:18-20). Why is more justification needed for going to seek out lost people with the Gospel and saying “we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20) than that Jesus commanded us to do so and that people are dying without Jesus every day and going to Hell? Why dress up a desire to move to Zimbabwe with a phony baptismal certificate that “God called me to go to Zimbabwe”? Why not look at that place and say “Golly, nobody in ___ even knows the Gospel. I intend to do what I can by God’s power and grace to rectify that situation”?

Talk Like the Bible Does

Let us be careful and make an effort to use biblical language when we’re discussing spiritual realities. It is one thing to talk about, say, the Trinity, since the doctrine of the Trinity is heavily supported all throughout Scripture, from the first book to the last and everywhere in between. There is nothing necessarily wrong with introducing new vocabulary to encapsulate biblical concepts (such as the word “regeneration” or “hypostatic union”) to assist in communication, but shouldn’t there be a goodly amount of biblical backing for such a move? Using the word “calling” in the way that so many evangelicals use it today is what amounts to twisting the word as it is used in the Bible, which we should refuse to do at all costs.

In conclusion, I invite you to reconsider that the Scripture instructs us nowhere to listen to internal urgings or impressions as coming direct from God. Rather, does it not teach us that “the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)? What are our instructions, given the untrustworthiness of our hearts? “Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:1-2). The murmurings of our hearts, which we can’t infallibly distinguish from fleshly lusts and desires, are most certainly things that are on earth. The Scripture is sufficient. Let us find our guidance only in it.

Psalm 19:7 – The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
8The precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
9The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the judgments of the LORD are true; they are righteous altogether.

After all, (and with a grateful hat-tip to Dan Phillips), how do you know I wasn’t called by God to write this article?

AHA Blog: Loving the Church - An Initial Reply to Justin Edwards

If the past is any indication, this will engender some whining on Facebook and zero substantive responses.
http://blog.abolishhumanabortion.com/2014/05/loving-church-initial-reply-to-justin.html

This kind of thing can just slip right by

From here, writing in reference to CS Lewis, Murphy says:

Not to mention that he wasn’t a Pastor or holding some office requiring Christians to really heed his words, he was an entirely different category.

What are we, Roman Catholics? Yikes. Neither John Piper nor anyone else is a member of some sort of Magisterium.
Let this be a brief reminder that we need to examine carefully our wording, and these days it's really important not to put elders and such on a pedestal like that.

Norman Abortuary, 14 May 2014

Larry Burns is still at it, murdering children.

Lemme talk to your elders!

I'd like to call attention to a pattern that I've seen for a while among many in Reformedigelical circles. I've indirectly alluded to it before, such as in my review of Tony Miano's Should She Preach?.
Many in Reformed circles these days default to some variation of "Are you a member of a church? What do your elders think of what you just said?" in Internet encounters, and at times the questioner even demands the name and contact information of the interlocutor's elders so as to circumvent the issue under debate, to contact the elders directly, rather than dealing with the interlocutor himself. This turn of events is quite unhelpful, is intellectually dishonest, and displays a very unhealthy view of elder authority. Let me provide two examples of what I mean below the fold.

Evangélisation en France

Are you depriving yourself and others of your witness?

“Cry loudly, do not hold back; raise your voice like a trumpet, and declare to My people their transgression and to the house of Jacob their sins” (Isaiah 58:1).

Consider well, especially if you live in a city, that most of the people around you are not following Jesus, and are not headed for Heaven when they die. Consider also that, due in large part to the Modern Day Downgrade, most of them have never even heard the Law and the Gospel properly proclaimed or explained. Thus, humanly speaking, they have never even had the opportunity to repent of their sins and place their faith in Jesus to forgive them their sin and give them the gift of a new heart that loves to do good works and magnify Jesus as Lord and Savior as well as the gift of eternal life in the kingdom of God.

Consider well how many you can reach with your preferred methods of evangelism. How is that working for you? Are you close enough friends with your lost neighbor that you dare broach the topic of their sin and the Gospel, knowing full well (when you think about it) that the Gospel is an offense, and that you risk the friendship in talking about the fact that every day they live, their very soul is at risk? And how many will you share the Gospel with in 10 years, in this way? 20?

I do not mean to demean a strategy of evangelism that focuses on relationship. In some areas and in some countries, this is the only way. Yet consider this – hit the streets and you can share the Gospel with dozens, hundreds, even thousands in a single day. Because of you, the Gospel can go forth! You are a servant of the Most High God and you have been commanded to make disciples in all the world.

Consider this, too. We live in a time and place in which hitting the streets to share and proclaim the Gospel is by and large permitted and even most of the time ignored by law enforcement and government officials. That wasn’t always the case! Remember how the Apostle Paul and his friends were treated for their open-air ministry? With rare exceptions, such is not the case today.
So what are you waiting for? Jesus told His disciples to pray that the Lord of the harvest would send more workers out into the field. I have been praying that, myself, for years. You are the answer to that prayer! Go to your church, gather Christian friends, make a plan. Start by dropping dropcards (maybe like this one) during your daily life. Buy or make some tracts (or email me and I’ll give you a decent tract that I wrote), print them up, look around for a gathering of people, and give out your tracts. Invite people to converse with you about Jesus. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. “Hi there, my name’s Alan. I’d like to talk to you about Jesus for a minute. Would that be OK?”
What do you have to lose? Reputation? Standing in the eyes of the world? Suffering through anxiety leading up to the moment that you talk to your first person or hand out your first tract or, dare I say it, spit out your first open-air sermon? Count it all joy!

Do you have a testimony of how Jesus saved you from your sin? Do you know what the Bible teaches about how Jesus saves sinners? Do you think that people need to repent and trust Jesus? Then what’s stopping you from proclaiming such magnificent and glorious good news from the rooftops, or at least from atop a box or a street corner? (Yes, even if you’re a woman.)

Some years ago, I made a firm resolution that I was going to go out, on Halloween Reformation Day night and preach the Gospel in the open air. I didn’t want to, but I also did want to. I was terribly afraid. The day before, I had terrible anxiety and crazy stomach acid. I felt like I was developing an ulcer. The day of, the same. Fear, fear, fear, all the way up until I clambered atop the little stepladder I’d brought with me and belted out “Good evening, my friends, my name is Alan.” And then, just like that, the fear was gone. The grace of God flooded through me, and I thought “Whoa, this is awesome! I get to share the Gospel with 100 people at once!”

There has never been a time when the Lord Jesus has failed to bless me when I intentionally hit the streets to evangelise. The fear and anxiety have largely faded, such that sometimes I am barely even nervous.

Of course there are struggles. Of course one needs to know answers to some apologetic questions. Learn them!

Of course one needs to be accountable. Get accountable and gather a team or a partner, and go!

Of course one needs to go in a spirit of love. Pray, HARD, ask God to remove bitterness and pride from you, then go!

Of course one needs to know how to share the Gospel. Learn how, and go!
When will you ever get the opportunity to proclaim aloud / with people you’ve never met the glories of Jesus Christ, who bought you with His precious blood, if you don’t seek those opportunities out? How will you be better able to enourage other street evangelists who are, trust me on this one, usually quite desperate for others to join them as they hit the streets? How else will you be able to vastly multiply your outreach to the lost?

Let me just share with you a privileged moment I had just yesterday. I am currently in Paris, France on a trip that is half business and intentionally half mission, in cooperation with the good brethren at CEP Montreuil and other churches in the area. Here with my wife, kids, and an abolitionist friend, we got the opportunity to tract and preach at the Eiffel Tower and Champ de Mars in Paris last night. In a city of 15 million people, how can I be the only man lifting up his voice to glorify and magnify Jesus in the open air at one of the dozens of large gatherings of people? I don’t know, and I don’t mean to call others’ salvation into question or anything. I am asking you to examine yourself. Are you depriving yourself and others? Privilege and blessing await; God wants to pour out His grace on you when you step out in obedience.

What are you waiting for?

A meme