Dear Mission Surge Friends,
I wanted to give you an update of what has been going on with Mission Surge over the past few weeks and an idea of what the future holds so that you can join us in prayer.
First, we are grateful for how God has worked. A team of 4 men just returned from Southeast Asia and training Vietnamese pastors and lay leaders related to Operation Backdoor. Mission Surge was prepared to spend $600 for this training. However, just before we left for SE Asia, the number of pastors and lay-leaders increased so that we had to pay $1100 to cover the expenses (travel, food, etc). This took $500 out of our fund that we had planned to use to purchase laptops for our contacts in the Dominican Republic. We chose to follow God’s guidance step by step and trust Him for the funds for the laptops if He wanted us to have them. So, we spent the $1100 in SE Asia.
I returned from SE Asia and discovered that our DR trip (to deliver the laptops I could not afford) had to be postponed. In the meantime, God placed on someone’s heart the burden to purchase the remainder of the laptops. Through that time, the trip was rescheduled for a couple of weeks later. The trip was postponed in the Providence of God. God impressed someone to meet the need. The laptops have been purchased, and will be delivered Dec 6 to the DR God willing. God is Sovereign and He is our provider and we give Him thanks. When we learn to wait upon Him, He will accomplish what He wants done.
Last weekend we held our first ever Mission Surge Conference. We had many great men of God come and share with us over the weekend. Everyone was encouraged and challenged. Video and audio of the conference will be available in the near future.
I also want to inform you guys that the Mission Surge website is live. Please take time to go check it out. Over time we will be adding video of the sermons preached at the Mission Surge conference last weekend. We will also make available different Bible studies, resources, and helps to encourage you as individuals, families, churches, and in our mission to reach the world. Most of these resources will be downloadable and therefore free! The website is http://www.missionsurge.com/ Please go check it out and share the link with your friends, post it on Facebook, forward it through email, and help us get the word out.
Next week we hope to apply with the Federal government for 501(c)3 status. We have been approved by the state and given a state tax ID number, but we have not filed federally yet. That process is supposed to begin this coming week. Crossing this bridge will allow people to receive tax credit for their gifts to Mission Surge. Pray that it goes smoothly and that the funds necessary are made available.
Pray that God’s will be done concerning the timing of our upcoming DR trip Dec 6. Many important things are going to take place on this brief trip that will lay the groundwork for the future. The DR is our most stable work and we need this trip to solidify some things. You can learn more about our work there at: Reaching Santo Domingo
Lift up those pastors and lay-leaders trained through operation backdoor. Continue to pray for God to raise up individuals to support the financial needs in that ministry. You can see these needs at: Operation Backdoor
Finally, please be in prayer about a possible open door in Kenya. Mission Surge has the opportunity to be involved in the training of 400-500 Kenyan pastors in April of 2011. We have been quietly praying that if this is God’s doing He will call out the right pastor to go. One of our board members has indicated that he is feeling led to take on this training opportunity in Kenya. Now, we are waiting on God to prepare the funds to host the conference (transport, feed, and house these Kenyan pastors who do not have the funds to attend otherwise). The cost is estimated at $5000. I know that is a big chunk, but when you think about it, we can train 500 pastors in Kenya for a week for $10 apiece. Not too bad? Please pray that God will raise up 10 people to give $100 a month for November, December, January, February, and March. That will provide the needed funds to do the work. Pray that God would put it on someone’s heart to contribute the total amount, or on 5 people’s hearts to give $1000 each. If He wants this to happen in Kenya, He will raise up the needed support. Please pray that He would do His will in the matter soon so that we can begin making preparations on this end to go.
Finally, forward this around to your praying friends. If you are reading this on the Mission Surge blog, through Facebook, or if a friend has forwarded it to you and you would like to receive email updates directly from Mission Surge, please email kevin@missionsurge.com and put UPDATES in the subject line and you will be added to our email list.
Thanks for praying for us.
In Christ,
Kevin
kevin@missionsurge.com
http://www.missionsurge.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Florence-MS/Mission-Surge/145423062144598?ref=ts
kevinivy.com
Showing posts with label Sinner's prayer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sinner's prayer. Show all posts
Friday, November 19, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Is the Altar Call / Invitation Essential to Biblical Christianity?
I want to post an article tonight that deals with one of the sacred calves of the modern church: the altar call/open invitation. It is something that I struggle with for a multitude of reasons. First, because there is absolutely no way whatsoever that adequate counseling can be done in 2 minutes at an altar while Just as I Am is blaring in the background. Secondly, there is a great chance that those who respond do so based on emotion, manipulation, or fear rather than because of the convicting power of the Holy Spirit of God. Thirdly, it seems that people think that the only place they can sufficiently respond to Christ is at an altar and the only time they can sufficiently respond to Christ is during the invitation at their local church. Finally, though an appeal was made for people to repent and believe in the New Testament, there is no indication that an altar call was offered.
The accusation will be made that without an altar call, we are risking the souls of men. After all, if we fail to extend a public invitation and then someone leaves our service without Christ and tragically dies, we have missed our opportunity. To this I would simply reply, God is in complete control. If He had been convicting the individual, the individual could have and would have responded at his seat or at the close of the service sought counsel from a pastor or elder. A man or woman's salvation does not depend on you or I offering a clever appeal. Yes, we should offer a persuasive call to respond (in repentance and faith), but not to walk down an aisle during the window of a hymn. Author Jim Elliff explains this much better than I could in his article, "Closing With Christ." I hope you will read it in its entirety and consider it carefully and prayerfully.
Closing With Christ, By Jim Elliff.
When modern evangelical churches seek to bring the unregenerate to Christ (and they should do so with passion), they often fall prey to a formula which produces disappointing results. The pattern runs something like this:
• Extending a public altar call
• Praying "the sinner's prayer"
• Giving immediate verbal assurance that one is in Christ on the basis of the sinner's sincerity and the
accuracy of the wording of the prayer
• Immediate, or near immediate, public announcement that this person is now in Christ
• Public baptism as a symbol of death to sin and life in Christ
This pattern has been passed down and repeated because few are taking the necessary time to examine both its flight from Scriptural precedent and precept and its dismal effect. When asked to give more careful consideration to its content and outcome, however, we are finding that many, thankfully, are rejecting this inept structure in favor of a better, more biblical one. The above list will seem familiar to every soul-loving believer, but the very evangelistic passion we have for our neighbors and unconverted family members should drive us to lay our present methods up against the truth for a well-needed examination. Like the short-of-breath fifty-year-old who has never been to the doctor, it is time for a major check-up. What then is wrong with the above list?
First, there is no biblical precedent or command regarding a public altar call. Whatever might be said for its use, we cannot resort to the Bible for support. Jesus nor Paul, nor any other early Christian leader used it. Did Jesus ask his listeners to come to the front after He preached the Sermon on the Mount? Did Paul say, "Every head bowed, every eye closed" as Luke quietly sang the invitation hymn on the Areopagus? Did Peter have seekers raise their hands as a sign of their interest in Christ at the end of the Pentecostal sermon?
Quickly it must be said that I espouse a verbal call to Christ in a most serious way and believe that the spoken invitation to come to Christ is a part of all gospel preaching. We "compel them to come in." When Moody failed to offer a public altar call on the evening of the Chicago fire, he stated a new resolve: "I learned that night [a lesson] which I have never forgotten; and that is, when I preach, to press Christ upon the people then and there, and try to bring them to a decision on the spot. I would rather have that right hand cut off than to give an audience a week now to decide what to do with Jesus." I could not agree more with his underlying sentiment, but this does not argue for an altar call. Evangelistic preaching does say, "Repent and trust Christ now." But there is nothing sacrosanct about getting people to occupy a certain piece of geography at the front of a building. Nor have I kept them from Christ by not having them respond to a public altar call. Rather I am offering them Christ without anything in between. I want nothing between their soul and the reality of Christ's offer. To put something in between is a practical sacramentalism.
Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875) popularized this method through his mourner's bench. There was a person here or there that used it in an occasional manner prior to him, but he put it on the map. Reacting to Finneyism's ineptness, theologian Dabney commented:
We have come to coolly accept the fact that forty-five out of fifty will eventually apostatize [fall away].
On the other side of Finney was the veteran evangelist Asahel Nettleton (d. 1844), whose converts stood. For instance, in Ashford, Connecticut there were eighty-two converts, and only three spurious ones. In Rocky Hill, Connecticut, there were eighty-six converts and they all were standing strong after twenty-six years, according to their pastor. Nettleton rigidly refused to offer public altar calls, believing that it prematurely reaped what would turn out to be false converts. C. H. Spurgeon, the Victorian "Prince of Preachers," thought similarly. The long-term history is consistent on this issue; you may and should examine it.
Attached to the altar call (and to personal evangelism) in this model is the use of "the sinner's prayer." What can be said about this? Is it found in the Bible? The sad truth is that it is not found anywhere but in the back of evangelistic booklets. Yes the Scripture says, "whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved," but this means to evoke or place confidence in the name of Christ. The sinner may express genuine faith through a prayer, but to pray such a prayer is not the essence of the required response to the gospel invitation.
The typical "sinner's prayer" as evangelicals have come to express it, has three elements: (1) a mere acknowledgment of sin, which is not the same as repentance, (2) a belief in the act of Christ's death, which is far removed from trust in his person and work, and, (3) an "inviting Christ into the life." The last phrase hangs on nothing biblical (though John 1: 12 and Rev. 3: 20 are used, out of context, for its basis). It is considered, nonetheless, to be the pivotal and necessary instrument for becoming a true Christian. But God commands us to repentingly believe, not to invite Christ into the life.
Following the above, immediate assurance is given to the one who prayed on the basis of the sincerity of the person and the accuracy of the prayer. But it is the Holy Spirit who gives assurance of life in Christ, not the evangelist (Rom. 8: 16). We are to relate the basis of assurance but leave the actual assuring to the Spirit. This is rarely practiced in modern evangelicalism. We prefer rather to take the place of the Spirit in assuring the pray-er and therefore seal many in deception. It is not the efficacy of a prayer that saves; Christ alone saves. The well-quoted passage on assurance, 1 Jn. 5:13 states: "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life." "These things…written" are the tests in the rest of the letter which give a basis to determine if we are truly converted.
In many cases the next step is to publicly introduce the one who has prayed the sinner's prayer and has just been told that he or she is a Christian. I have cringed to find that some leaders turn around after five minutes of "Just as I Am" and announce that the persons coming forward are converted. Sometimes the person has not been known to the pastor until that moment! Regardless, his optimism is often not founded, since extremely high numbers of these never show any competent sign of being converted. I am not intimating that people cannot be saved immediately, but that our early acceptance of the persons coming forward has often led us to "eat our words" about their new life in Christ.
Finally, there is the last stage of public baptism. It is interesting to note that in much of evangelicalism which is Baptistic, the number supposedly "being saved" and those being baptized is vastly different. If a hundred were purportedly converted during some sort of evangelistic effort, then we might not baptize but thirty of them. But out the thirty, as seen among Southern Baptists as an illustration, statistically only ten or eleven of those thirty (34 %) would show up on a given Sunday morning and only four or five (12%) on a Sunday evening (in churches that have services at that time). They do not really love the brethren or the atmosphere of godliness. All of these, however, have prayed the prayer, walked the aisle, been told they are Christians by someone in authority, and were publicly declared to be such.
Would it not be better for a system to be re-instated which comes closer to recognizing only the smaller number of true Christians? Is it love for the lost that will perpetuate practices producing such damning deception in so many—or is it merely love for success? Or should we assume that most leaders have simply gone on with "business as usual" without ever thinking it through at all? I prefer to believe the later is true in most cases. Whatever the motive, however, those deceived on our rolls are still damned.
The more biblical way of "closing with Christ" is to focus on the gospel itself, without props. Whereas the altar call method can be tacked on to just about anything, no matter how absent the gospel, the biblical method demands the hearing of the Word. "How will they believe without a preacher."(Rom. 10: 14). It is the "by the will of God that they are begotten, through the Word of truth" (Jam. 1:18, emphasis mine). They are "born again…through the living and abiding Word of God" (1 Pet. 1: 23, emphasis mine).
It is interesting to note that the Bible account focuses attention on the object of our faith, Jesus Christ, and his life and work, when presenting the gospel to those who do not believe. There is virtually no explanation of the nature of repentance and faith; merely its mention seems to be enough. Why is that so? It is because of this wonderful reality. When the Word is preached and the Spirit is at work, the sinner is brought to conviction of sin and he cannot love his sin any more. He must repent. And when the Word presents Christ as the only hope and the Spirit is at work in the sinner, he sees no refuge for his soul but Christ. He must believe. Where else could he possibly go?
What about those passages that deal with the nature of repentance and faith in detail? Those passages are there for the presumptuous. The Epistle of First John, James, and many other portions help the professing believer understand the nature of faith to test the quality of the faith he says he has. But on the main, evangelism, after laying out the awfulness of man and his sin, and the consequence and offense against God, focuses its gaze on Christ and His work on behalf of sinners. And the people simply believe. There is no emphasis on anything else. They just believe—no laboring of mechanics or methods or perfectly worded prayers, or walks to the front. They believe because it is all they can do.
The New Tribes Mission has been instrumental in giving us the best of missiological tools in their chronological approach to working with tribal groups. They teach the Bible from its beginning, laying out each story in sequence without revealing what is beyond that point. When they come to Christ, they do not present the gospel in its doctrinal entirety until it comes in the passage. In other words, they leave the person to experience the New Testament as it was experienced by those closest to Christ. In their video depiction of a tribal group in this process, the day to explain Christ's death comes. To the man, the New Guinea tribe visibly shows its sense of shame and remorse for the crucified Master. Three days are given before the group returns. Then the resurrection is explained. In the midst of the presentation, an older man jumps to his feet and loudly exclaims, "Ee-Taow," or "I believe." Others stand with the same exclamation, though this tribal group is normally reserved in their expressions. In time the whole tribe is chanting "Ee-Taow, Ee-Toaw," and jumping up and down. This went on for an extended period of rejoicing. A tribe was re-born in a day!
Such a response, with varying degrees of emotion, is the nature of believing in the New Testament. It was entirely incidental whether anyone prayed a "sinner's prayer" or walked to another place to take someone's hand. The powerful Word had encountered the people through the invincible Holy Spirit. This is New Testament evangelism.
You may not agree with my assessment, but it is my contention that our use of the altar call and the accouterment of a "sinner's prayer" is a sign of our lack of trust in God. Do we really believe that the Spirit convicts and regenerates, and that His Gospel preached and read is the ordained means He uses? Surely there is nothing unbiblical or non-evangelistic about the man who preaches the gospel forthrightly, prays earnestly, appeals urgently and places his entire trust in God to do what only He can do.
Copyright © 1999 Jim Elliff
Christian Communicators Worldwide, Inc.
Permission granted for not-for-sale reproduction in unedited form including author's name, title, complete content, copyright and weblink.
Other uses require written permission.
http://www.ccwtoday.org/
The accusation will be made that without an altar call, we are risking the souls of men. After all, if we fail to extend a public invitation and then someone leaves our service without Christ and tragically dies, we have missed our opportunity. To this I would simply reply, God is in complete control. If He had been convicting the individual, the individual could have and would have responded at his seat or at the close of the service sought counsel from a pastor or elder. A man or woman's salvation does not depend on you or I offering a clever appeal. Yes, we should offer a persuasive call to respond (in repentance and faith), but not to walk down an aisle during the window of a hymn. Author Jim Elliff explains this much better than I could in his article, "Closing With Christ." I hope you will read it in its entirety and consider it carefully and prayerfully.
Closing With Christ, By Jim Elliff.
When modern evangelical churches seek to bring the unregenerate to Christ (and they should do so with passion), they often fall prey to a formula which produces disappointing results. The pattern runs something like this:
• Extending a public altar call
• Praying "the sinner's prayer"
• Giving immediate verbal assurance that one is in Christ on the basis of the sinner's sincerity and the
accuracy of the wording of the prayer
• Immediate, or near immediate, public announcement that this person is now in Christ
• Public baptism as a symbol of death to sin and life in Christ
This pattern has been passed down and repeated because few are taking the necessary time to examine both its flight from Scriptural precedent and precept and its dismal effect. When asked to give more careful consideration to its content and outcome, however, we are finding that many, thankfully, are rejecting this inept structure in favor of a better, more biblical one. The above list will seem familiar to every soul-loving believer, but the very evangelistic passion we have for our neighbors and unconverted family members should drive us to lay our present methods up against the truth for a well-needed examination. Like the short-of-breath fifty-year-old who has never been to the doctor, it is time for a major check-up. What then is wrong with the above list?
First, there is no biblical precedent or command regarding a public altar call. Whatever might be said for its use, we cannot resort to the Bible for support. Jesus nor Paul, nor any other early Christian leader used it. Did Jesus ask his listeners to come to the front after He preached the Sermon on the Mount? Did Paul say, "Every head bowed, every eye closed" as Luke quietly sang the invitation hymn on the Areopagus? Did Peter have seekers raise their hands as a sign of their interest in Christ at the end of the Pentecostal sermon?
Quickly it must be said that I espouse a verbal call to Christ in a most serious way and believe that the spoken invitation to come to Christ is a part of all gospel preaching. We "compel them to come in." When Moody failed to offer a public altar call on the evening of the Chicago fire, he stated a new resolve: "I learned that night [a lesson] which I have never forgotten; and that is, when I preach, to press Christ upon the people then and there, and try to bring them to a decision on the spot. I would rather have that right hand cut off than to give an audience a week now to decide what to do with Jesus." I could not agree more with his underlying sentiment, but this does not argue for an altar call. Evangelistic preaching does say, "Repent and trust Christ now." But there is nothing sacrosanct about getting people to occupy a certain piece of geography at the front of a building. Nor have I kept them from Christ by not having them respond to a public altar call. Rather I am offering them Christ without anything in between. I want nothing between their soul and the reality of Christ's offer. To put something in between is a practical sacramentalism.
Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875) popularized this method through his mourner's bench. There was a person here or there that used it in an occasional manner prior to him, but he put it on the map. Reacting to Finneyism's ineptness, theologian Dabney commented:
We have come to coolly accept the fact that forty-five out of fifty will eventually apostatize [fall away].
On the other side of Finney was the veteran evangelist Asahel Nettleton (d. 1844), whose converts stood. For instance, in Ashford, Connecticut there were eighty-two converts, and only three spurious ones. In Rocky Hill, Connecticut, there were eighty-six converts and they all were standing strong after twenty-six years, according to their pastor. Nettleton rigidly refused to offer public altar calls, believing that it prematurely reaped what would turn out to be false converts. C. H. Spurgeon, the Victorian "Prince of Preachers," thought similarly. The long-term history is consistent on this issue; you may and should examine it.
Attached to the altar call (and to personal evangelism) in this model is the use of "the sinner's prayer." What can be said about this? Is it found in the Bible? The sad truth is that it is not found anywhere but in the back of evangelistic booklets. Yes the Scripture says, "whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved," but this means to evoke or place confidence in the name of Christ. The sinner may express genuine faith through a prayer, but to pray such a prayer is not the essence of the required response to the gospel invitation.
The typical "sinner's prayer" as evangelicals have come to express it, has three elements: (1) a mere acknowledgment of sin, which is not the same as repentance, (2) a belief in the act of Christ's death, which is far removed from trust in his person and work, and, (3) an "inviting Christ into the life." The last phrase hangs on nothing biblical (though John 1: 12 and Rev. 3: 20 are used, out of context, for its basis). It is considered, nonetheless, to be the pivotal and necessary instrument for becoming a true Christian. But God commands us to repentingly believe, not to invite Christ into the life.
Following the above, immediate assurance is given to the one who prayed on the basis of the sincerity of the person and the accuracy of the prayer. But it is the Holy Spirit who gives assurance of life in Christ, not the evangelist (Rom. 8: 16). We are to relate the basis of assurance but leave the actual assuring to the Spirit. This is rarely practiced in modern evangelicalism. We prefer rather to take the place of the Spirit in assuring the pray-er and therefore seal many in deception. It is not the efficacy of a prayer that saves; Christ alone saves. The well-quoted passage on assurance, 1 Jn. 5:13 states: "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life." "These things…written" are the tests in the rest of the letter which give a basis to determine if we are truly converted.
In many cases the next step is to publicly introduce the one who has prayed the sinner's prayer and has just been told that he or she is a Christian. I have cringed to find that some leaders turn around after five minutes of "Just as I Am" and announce that the persons coming forward are converted. Sometimes the person has not been known to the pastor until that moment! Regardless, his optimism is often not founded, since extremely high numbers of these never show any competent sign of being converted. I am not intimating that people cannot be saved immediately, but that our early acceptance of the persons coming forward has often led us to "eat our words" about their new life in Christ.
Finally, there is the last stage of public baptism. It is interesting to note that in much of evangelicalism which is Baptistic, the number supposedly "being saved" and those being baptized is vastly different. If a hundred were purportedly converted during some sort of evangelistic effort, then we might not baptize but thirty of them. But out the thirty, as seen among Southern Baptists as an illustration, statistically only ten or eleven of those thirty (34 %) would show up on a given Sunday morning and only four or five (12%) on a Sunday evening (in churches that have services at that time). They do not really love the brethren or the atmosphere of godliness. All of these, however, have prayed the prayer, walked the aisle, been told they are Christians by someone in authority, and were publicly declared to be such.
Would it not be better for a system to be re-instated which comes closer to recognizing only the smaller number of true Christians? Is it love for the lost that will perpetuate practices producing such damning deception in so many—or is it merely love for success? Or should we assume that most leaders have simply gone on with "business as usual" without ever thinking it through at all? I prefer to believe the later is true in most cases. Whatever the motive, however, those deceived on our rolls are still damned.
The more biblical way of "closing with Christ" is to focus on the gospel itself, without props. Whereas the altar call method can be tacked on to just about anything, no matter how absent the gospel, the biblical method demands the hearing of the Word. "How will they believe without a preacher."(Rom. 10: 14). It is the "by the will of God that they are begotten, through the Word of truth" (Jam. 1:18, emphasis mine). They are "born again…through the living and abiding Word of God" (1 Pet. 1: 23, emphasis mine).
It is interesting to note that the Bible account focuses attention on the object of our faith, Jesus Christ, and his life and work, when presenting the gospel to those who do not believe. There is virtually no explanation of the nature of repentance and faith; merely its mention seems to be enough. Why is that so? It is because of this wonderful reality. When the Word is preached and the Spirit is at work, the sinner is brought to conviction of sin and he cannot love his sin any more. He must repent. And when the Word presents Christ as the only hope and the Spirit is at work in the sinner, he sees no refuge for his soul but Christ. He must believe. Where else could he possibly go?
What about those passages that deal with the nature of repentance and faith in detail? Those passages are there for the presumptuous. The Epistle of First John, James, and many other portions help the professing believer understand the nature of faith to test the quality of the faith he says he has. But on the main, evangelism, after laying out the awfulness of man and his sin, and the consequence and offense against God, focuses its gaze on Christ and His work on behalf of sinners. And the people simply believe. There is no emphasis on anything else. They just believe—no laboring of mechanics or methods or perfectly worded prayers, or walks to the front. They believe because it is all they can do.
The New Tribes Mission has been instrumental in giving us the best of missiological tools in their chronological approach to working with tribal groups. They teach the Bible from its beginning, laying out each story in sequence without revealing what is beyond that point. When they come to Christ, they do not present the gospel in its doctrinal entirety until it comes in the passage. In other words, they leave the person to experience the New Testament as it was experienced by those closest to Christ. In their video depiction of a tribal group in this process, the day to explain Christ's death comes. To the man, the New Guinea tribe visibly shows its sense of shame and remorse for the crucified Master. Three days are given before the group returns. Then the resurrection is explained. In the midst of the presentation, an older man jumps to his feet and loudly exclaims, "Ee-Taow," or "I believe." Others stand with the same exclamation, though this tribal group is normally reserved in their expressions. In time the whole tribe is chanting "Ee-Taow, Ee-Toaw," and jumping up and down. This went on for an extended period of rejoicing. A tribe was re-born in a day!
Such a response, with varying degrees of emotion, is the nature of believing in the New Testament. It was entirely incidental whether anyone prayed a "sinner's prayer" or walked to another place to take someone's hand. The powerful Word had encountered the people through the invincible Holy Spirit. This is New Testament evangelism.
You may not agree with my assessment, but it is my contention that our use of the altar call and the accouterment of a "sinner's prayer" is a sign of our lack of trust in God. Do we really believe that the Spirit convicts and regenerates, and that His Gospel preached and read is the ordained means He uses? Surely there is nothing unbiblical or non-evangelistic about the man who preaches the gospel forthrightly, prays earnestly, appeals urgently and places his entire trust in God to do what only He can do.
Copyright © 1999 Jim Elliff
Christian Communicators Worldwide, Inc.
Permission granted for not-for-sale reproduction in unedited form including author's name, title, complete content, copyright and weblink.
Other uses require written permission.
http://www.ccwtoday.org/
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Why the Reformed Pastor?
I thought I might give some input on why I have titled my blog, The Reformed Pastor. The title was inspired by the Puritan pastor, Richard Baxter who ministered in 17th century England. God used Baxter to transform his parish of Kidderminster in a dramatic way. Baxter claimed that, when he first arrived in Kidderminster there was scarcely a family on a street that worshipped God. When he was ejected from the pastorate later however, he claimed that there was scarcely a family on a street that did not worship God. The whole parish had been transformed through his pastorate. Baxter wrote a book to encourage other pastors to follow his example of one on one disciple making ministry called "The Reformed Pastor." That is where the blog name comes from. I read the book and it was powerful! J.I. Packer described it this way: "The words of Baxter's Reformed Pastor have hands and feet. They climb all over you; they work their way into your heart and conscience and will not be dislodged." (J.I. Packer in A Quest for Godliness, Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990. Page 13).
There is more to it than just that though. I am fully convinced that, if the church in America, is to thrive for another decade, there must be some serious reformations in the pastorate, pulpit, churches, and families. If these changes do not take place, and soon, America will be another country that has fallen to humanism and postmodernism. I believe there must be a reformation in the pastorate first. Pastors must stop looking to numbers for success. We have been entertaining and weakening the message of God's Word for over 30 years now in order to increase the numbers. Some churches have succeeded and usually the pastor publishes a book to show other pastors how to follow suit. We must stop looking for increased numbers and begin looking for increased fruit. Fruit is much harder to come by, takes more work, and is a lot less glamorous. You wont get elected president of the SBC or be interviewed by Larry King in most cases if you are not producing the big numbers, but God has called us to strive for real, authentic fruit, not just numbers and definitely not position. The reformation must begin with the pastors.
Next, the reformation must extend into the pulpit. We must stop preaching a halfway Gospel and spend our lives, our ministries, studying the doctrine of God and His Gospel. If we miss this, we have missed everything, and I am afraid that we have missed it! God has been reduced to nothing more than love (John 3:16) and the Gospel has been reduced to praying a prayer to accept Jesus into our hearts so that we don't have to go to hell when we die. Give me a break!!! The fault lies with lazy, numbers hungry, biblically ignorant pastors who need to spend more time studying the Word then they spend preaching it. The reformation has to move into the pulpits of this nation or there is little hope! This will likely result in a decrease in numbers, but praise be to God, there will be an increase in real lasting fruit. To hear more go to (www.clearybaptist.org/sermons?i=30) and listen to September 20, 2009 a.m., September 27, 2009 a.m., and October 4, 2009 a.m.
Next, the reformation must extend into our churches. Churches must re-institute church discipline. There is more accountability at the country club and more reconciliation in most bars than in our churches. What is church membership even worth anymore? Church membership has to mean something. Also, churches are going to have to take the Great Commission seriously and stop taking mission vacations where all they do is sight see, prayer walk, and meet a few people. We are called to proclaim the Gospel! We don't have 5 years to waste learning the in's and out's of every people group. The need is the same in every people and the Gospel is the same too. Deliver it in a culturally sensitive way, but deliver it accurately and urgently.
Finally, the reformation must extend to families. For too long families have expected the church staff and Sunday school teachers to disciple their children. Families attend church and re-enter the real world on Monday. Children see Jesus as a part of their parents' lives, but they don't see Jesus AS THEIR PARENTS' LIVES. There is a big difference. Parents need to fulfill their Deut 6 responsibility of discipling their kids and being what they should be as wives, husbands, mothers, and fathers. To hear more go to (http://clearybaptist.org/sermons?i=0) and listen to January 10, 2010 a.m., January 17, 2010 a.m., January 24, 2010 a.m., and January 31, 2010 a.m. The family must stop disintegrating if we are to see a change in the church in America. Richard Baxter wrote, in his Reformed Pastor, "You are not likely to see any general reformation until you procure family reformation. Some little religion there may be here and there, but as long as it is confined to single persons, and it is not promoted in families, it will not prosper, nor promise future increase." Let us turn off the filthy TV, put up the violent video games, shut down the computer screen, put up our cell phones, and get our face out of the text messages and into the text message of God's Word!
If there is not a serious increase in the number of reformed pastors, reformed pulpits, reformed churches, and reformed families there will be little to no hope of a reformation of the church in this nation and without a real, grass roots reformation, there will be no hope of a godly progeny and future. God, help us. God, stir us. God overwhelm us and burden us to pray like never before for revival, awakening, and reformation!
There is more to it than just that though. I am fully convinced that, if the church in America, is to thrive for another decade, there must be some serious reformations in the pastorate, pulpit, churches, and families. If these changes do not take place, and soon, America will be another country that has fallen to humanism and postmodernism. I believe there must be a reformation in the pastorate first. Pastors must stop looking to numbers for success. We have been entertaining and weakening the message of God's Word for over 30 years now in order to increase the numbers. Some churches have succeeded and usually the pastor publishes a book to show other pastors how to follow suit. We must stop looking for increased numbers and begin looking for increased fruit. Fruit is much harder to come by, takes more work, and is a lot less glamorous. You wont get elected president of the SBC or be interviewed by Larry King in most cases if you are not producing the big numbers, but God has called us to strive for real, authentic fruit, not just numbers and definitely not position. The reformation must begin with the pastors.
Next, the reformation must extend into the pulpit. We must stop preaching a halfway Gospel and spend our lives, our ministries, studying the doctrine of God and His Gospel. If we miss this, we have missed everything, and I am afraid that we have missed it! God has been reduced to nothing more than love (John 3:16) and the Gospel has been reduced to praying a prayer to accept Jesus into our hearts so that we don't have to go to hell when we die. Give me a break!!! The fault lies with lazy, numbers hungry, biblically ignorant pastors who need to spend more time studying the Word then they spend preaching it. The reformation has to move into the pulpits of this nation or there is little hope! This will likely result in a decrease in numbers, but praise be to God, there will be an increase in real lasting fruit. To hear more go to (www.clearybaptist.org/sermons?i=30) and listen to September 20, 2009 a.m., September 27, 2009 a.m., and October 4, 2009 a.m.
Next, the reformation must extend into our churches. Churches must re-institute church discipline. There is more accountability at the country club and more reconciliation in most bars than in our churches. What is church membership even worth anymore? Church membership has to mean something. Also, churches are going to have to take the Great Commission seriously and stop taking mission vacations where all they do is sight see, prayer walk, and meet a few people. We are called to proclaim the Gospel! We don't have 5 years to waste learning the in's and out's of every people group. The need is the same in every people and the Gospel is the same too. Deliver it in a culturally sensitive way, but deliver it accurately and urgently.
Finally, the reformation must extend to families. For too long families have expected the church staff and Sunday school teachers to disciple their children. Families attend church and re-enter the real world on Monday. Children see Jesus as a part of their parents' lives, but they don't see Jesus AS THEIR PARENTS' LIVES. There is a big difference. Parents need to fulfill their Deut 6 responsibility of discipling their kids and being what they should be as wives, husbands, mothers, and fathers. To hear more go to (http://clearybaptist.org/sermons?i=0) and listen to January 10, 2010 a.m., January 17, 2010 a.m., January 24, 2010 a.m., and January 31, 2010 a.m. The family must stop disintegrating if we are to see a change in the church in America. Richard Baxter wrote, in his Reformed Pastor, "You are not likely to see any general reformation until you procure family reformation. Some little religion there may be here and there, but as long as it is confined to single persons, and it is not promoted in families, it will not prosper, nor promise future increase." Let us turn off the filthy TV, put up the violent video games, shut down the computer screen, put up our cell phones, and get our face out of the text messages and into the text message of God's Word!
If there is not a serious increase in the number of reformed pastors, reformed pulpits, reformed churches, and reformed families there will be little to no hope of a reformation of the church in this nation and without a real, grass roots reformation, there will be no hope of a godly progeny and future. God, help us. God, stir us. God overwhelm us and burden us to pray like never before for revival, awakening, and reformation!
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