The Local Church Is a Distinct Biblical Entity

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

This post is part of a series on church membership.  If you missed the introduction, you can find it here.

It could go without saying that by and large, professing Christians have become very casual about the local church.  A common view is that membership in the worldwide body of Christ is the thing that really matters, and the local church is simply the gathering of nearby Christians who happen to share a doctrinal persuasion.  Because that view only represents a sliver of the New Testament’s teaching on the subject, people come or go, attend or stay home, invest or fritter, with no awareness of how one or the other relates to faithfulness.

I want to argue that the inspired authors of the New Testament actually put forward the local church as a real, distinct entity, one which serves critical functions, and that this has monumental implications for our life together.

Big-C, little-c

Most Christians understand and affirm the existence of the Big-C-Church.  This is the universal church, the people of God, past, present, and future.  Ephesians 4:4 says, “There is one body”.  This is the Church.  Simple enough.  The author of Hebrews speaks of “so great a cloud of witnesses”(Hebrews 12:1), which includes the great men and women of faith from the preceding chapter – Noah, Sarah, Abraham, Moses, and Rahab, to name a few.  One day all those of faith will sit down with them at a great wedding feast.  What a Church!  What a glorious prospect!

The little-c-church may be a bit foggier in our minds.  What exactly are these local assemblies of professed believers, these local churches where we have most of our eyeball-to-eyeball interaction with brothers and sisters in Christ? The New Testament sets forth a clear testimony of the local church as a distinct entity.

View of the inspired New Testament authors

–  1 Corinthians 1:2, Paul writes “To the church of God which is at Corinth”.  Can we agree that this is not the Big-C-Church? However the parameters are defined, it is clear enough that this is a church with borders.  This isn’t an open letter to Noah, Sarah, Abraham, Moses, Rahab et al.  It is a rather personal letter to a distinct group of people.  Later in the same chapter, verse 11, Paul bemoans the contentions that have been declared to him, and then in verse 13 he asks, “Is Christ divided?”  He means, “Is the Big-C-Church divided?”  This is a rhetorical question and the obvious answer is “No!”  At first glance it may seem like this argues against the local church as a distinct entity, but actually the opposite is true.  It gives us a picture of the local church that mirrors the character of God.  Is God one?  Yes.  Deuteronomy 6:4, “The LORD our God, the LORD is one!”.  Is God many? He is Three.  Genesis 1:26, Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image”; Matthew 3:16,17, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him [Jesus], and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him.  And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  Here in 1 Corinthians 1 we see the Church and the church, side by side, the one and the many.  This is not division, this is the design of God, founded on the nature of God.  Are we surprised to discover ways in which the people of God reflect the nature of God?

–  Acts 20:17 recounts Paul sending to Ephesus “for the elders of the church.”  Again, this is clearly the church, not the Church.  Paul is not sending for men who have an accountability for the souls of every Christian, as elders have for the souls in a specific local church.  He is summoning real men with real responsibilities as the God-appointed leaders of a local church.

–  Revelation 1-3, the letters to the churches.  In 1:12-16, our resurrected Lord, in the most glorious form, is walking among seven lampstands.  Then in verse 20 Jesus says to John, “the seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches.”  As the succeeding chapters unfold, we see with great clarity that these churches are indeed distinct entities, each with a personality, things to be praised, things requiring rebuke, commands to be obeyed.  A nebulous concept of the local church is a thousand miles away from the letters to the churches.

Hand-in-glove

I hope that these texts satisfy us on a critical point:  the universal church and the local church, the Church and the church, are both thoroughly Biblical categories.  The inspired writers of the New Testament speak of both, fluidly and without a hint of contradiction.  So far from being a single category, or two categories which stand in opposition, the universal church and the local church actually represent a compelling vision of how God intends to relate to His people, care for them, and equip them for the work of the ministry.  Like all things of His design, they fit hand-in-glove.

If we miss this, we undervalue an entity given to us by God according to the kind intention of His will, miss the blessing, and dishonor Jesus Christ.

In a few days I will engage Argument 2 in the series:  The Local Church Is a Flock.

Stay tuned.

Church Membership: an Introduction

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

Teaching means preparing.  Preparing means wrestling with what the Bible does and doesn’t say, along with the associated implications.  That process always imparts increased clarity, and I have recently been the beneficiary, having been given the privilege to teach on the subject of church membership.  At the heart of my preparations has been the careful consideration of two critical questions: (1) Is church membership Biblical? and (2) Is it important?

Skipping to the punch line, I believe the answers are “solidly” and “vitally”.  Church membership is solidly Biblical.  Church membership is vitally important.  These conclusions are the output of several years of intermittent thought and study, though, so I don’t expect you to take my word for it.  I don’t even desire you to take my word for it.  I would be grateful, however, if you would give a fair hearing to the arguments that I think are most relevant.  At least to me, they are compelling and definitive.

My intent is to write a series of posts which establish these arguments from Scripture:

–  Argument 1:  The Local Church Is a Distinct Biblical Entity
–  Argument 2:  The Local Church Is a Flock
–  Argument 3:  Serious Obligations Require Order
–  Argument 4:  The Regulative Principle Requires Church Membership (not precludes it)
–  Argument 5:  Blessing Awaits Those Who Cross Two Lines

These core arguments build up to an understanding that church membership is Biblical and that it really matters in the life of a church.  As always, the Bible must be the first word and the final word.  The pragmatic arguments are interesting, but they are not the mind of God on the matter.  My hope is that by carefully handling texts which speak to the subject, God will give us unity and clarity.

Onward!

The Principle of Radical Amputation

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

This week we tackle Jesus’ exposition of the seventh commandment, “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14, Deuteronomy 5:18).  After expanding it well beyond the borders of the simple act of adultery, Jesus says, “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you” (Matthew 5:29).  Right arm, ditto.  Better that than to be cast into hell.  Wow.  That kind of preaching is in short supply today.  No wonder the people were astonished at His teaching.

A friend calls this “the principle of radical amputation”.  Rather than play with sin, entertain sin, negotiate with sin, try to manage sin, leave space for sin, we should act like this is war and sin is the enemy.  Because this is war and sin is the enemy.

In the fall of 2008, I delivered an address titled “Pure Men in an Age of Impurity” at the Hope Baptist father/son retreat.  I realize how narcissistic it sounds for me to say, “Spend an hour listening to my sermon”, but spend an hour listening to my sermon.  You will hear the hard-hitting counsel of Scripture in the category of sexual purity.  It may very well help you.

Here are the two main points:

1)  Knowing the overwhelming worth of Jesus Christ is the key.  When we dabble with sin – any sin – and give it leave to come and go as it pleases, we have either never seen the pearl of great price or have lost sight of it.  Anything short of selling all – for joy over this incomparable treasure – amounts to temporary self-help.  Treasuring Jesus is the only real antidote.

2)  The counsel of Scripture can be summarized as starve, run, and amputate.  This is what Paul means when he exhorts us, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1).

There may be things that have been your companion for a long time.  Things that need to be cut off and cast from you.  Enemies that have been treated as friends, coddled, spared, secretly nurtured.  For the glory of God, for your own happiness, for the eternal condition of your soul, subject them to the principle of radical amputation.

Beware the Religion You Can Do

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

How refreshing our time in the Sermon on the Mount has been!  In the most humbling sort of way, that is.  Week by week we are stripped bare by the text, and the result is (or ought to be) the refreshment of repentance.  We are seeing God as He really is.  We are seeing ourselves as we really are.  Pride is being peeled away and something very precious is being gained.

Jesus said, “For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).  We tend to read that verse and say, “How meticulous our obedience must be!”  But that isn’t the meaning here.  Weighed by Jesus’ exposition of the law, which gives us what it always meant and always will mean, the scribes and Pharisees are not commended as good law-keepers – they are condemned as hopelessly unfaithful ones.  Paul summarizes it this way:

“For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.  For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:3,4).

The deficiency of the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees is one of type, not degree.  In other words, they didn’t need more of the same, they needed an entirely different type.  They established their own kind of righteousness, which satisfied themselves but put them at enmity with God Almighty.  They needed Christ.  They needed His righteousness.  Through warped interpretation and distortion they had arrived at a religion that is like every other religion known to man.  A religion that satisfies us but enrages God.  A religion that can be done with a little rigor and self-discipline, not to mention careful concealment of the inward man.  Poverty of spirit?  Not required.  Mourning?  Nope.  Meekness?  Nope.  Hungering and thirsting for righteousness?  Not God’s kind.  Mercy?  Towards those “sinners”?

As we head into Jesus’ exposition of “You shall not murder”, I am praying that we will continue to be crushed.  The letter of the law, which the scribes and Pharisees were happy enough to have on the list (with a big fat check box beside it), is exponentially expanded by the spirit of the law.  “What about heart-murder?” says Jesus.  “What about tongue-murder?” says Jesus.  “Heart-murder?  Tongue-murder?” say we.  This is all very uncomfortable, of course, and I want to suggest that we should run towards the discomfort and not away from it.  The sooner we are free from any remnants of a religion we can do, the happier we will be, the humbler we will be, the more dependent on Jesus we will be.  That is indeed something to run towards!

Is this a case against meticulous keeping of the law?  May it never be!  We are called to meticulous law-keeping.  Again, the words of Jesus:  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone” (Matthew 23:23).  It wasn’t tithing down to the garden spices that Jesus condemned – in fact, He says they ought to have done that – it was their neglect of the weightier matters of the law.  But beyond that, obedience is not our righteousness.  Obedience is our response of gratitude to a redeeming Father.  A renewed round of self-effort wasn’t going to fix this for the scribes and Pharisees.  They needed to be redeemed.  Anything short of that leaves people with only the self-justification that setting aside a tenth of the mint has to offer.

May God use the Sermon on the Mount to make us this kind of people.  People who have been laid low by the impossible rigor of the spirit of the law.  People who have thrown themselves on the mercies of Jesus Christ for the only true righteousness.  And people who now look to the law to understand how to love God and love their neighbor out of profound gratitude to a mighty Redeemer.

Betting the Farm

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

Because of our commitment to sequential exposition, we spend the overwhelming amount of our time together on Sundays working through books of the Bible passage by passage, rarely even mentioning how essential family discipleship is to what we are doing.  This is good and right, of course.  The word of God should be central to our gatherings in such a way that the Head of the Church is heard without us narrowing things to any particular emphasis.  That is the beauty of sequential exposition, which is why we think it should be our steady diet.

That said, we dare not lose sight of how much we are relying on the practice of family discipleship.  We are all betting the farm with no “Plan B” in sight.  No one is waiting in the wings to pick up the ball if you drop it.  My view is that this is as it should be, but we need to remain conscious of the implications so that we continue to feel the weight of it.  Fathers – have you drifted from the terrifying realization that God put you at the head of your household so that you would direct everyone in that household to the LORD their God? God said of Abraham, “For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice, that the LORD may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him” (Genesis 18:19).  God did not pick a faithful man.  He made a faithful man.  And God did it so that Abraham would command his household to keep His way.  Fathers – have you considered that the work of God in your life is in some way related to this? That a significant part of His intent was to build things into you for the blessing of your household? If that is so, what will it be like to stand before God one day having been a poor steward of His deposit?  These are sobering questions.

Mothers – what about you? Have you lost sight of your glorious part in this? God has given you many hours in the day with these precious children entrusted to you.  May those hours be consumed in teaching the fear and love of the LORD, hour by hour, day by day.  Don’t be lulled to sleep by the mundane things that are interspersed with the mission.  Stay the course, be faithful, and the day will come when your children will rise up and call you blessed, and your husband will praise you. “Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all” (Proverbs 31:28,29).

Here is the bottom line:  God ought to be worshiped.  There is none like Him in heaven or earth.  His praise ought to be the central occupation of our homes.  We should see to it that we are bowing down before Him in worship every single day, together.  He is worthy.  Has there been a drift away from this in your home? Redouble your efforts.  Reclaim the ground.  Bet the farm.

“We Will Not Let Thee Go”

Greetings Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

It is so refreshing to be in the Sermon on the Mount, and especially in the beatitudes, where our minds are reset again to know that the ways of the kingdom of heaven completely overthrow everything that the world loves, thinks, does, and advocates.  Poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, hungering and thirsting for righteousness – all things despised by the world, and all things that make for the happiness of the children of God.

I have been particularly thinking about “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4), and yesterday I ran across a related statement from one of Samuel Rutherford’s pastoral letters.  In it, he laments the apostasy of the church in Scotland and longs for the people of God to mourn their sin and earnestly prevail upon Jesus not to depart.

“Would God we could stir up ourselves to lay hold upon Him, who, being highly provoked with the handling He hath met with, is ready to depart! Alas! we do not importune Him by prayer and supplication to abide amongst us! If we could but weep upon Him, and in the holy pertinacity of faith wrestle with Him, and say, ‘We will not let Thee go,’ it may be that then, He, who is easy to be intreated, would yet, notwithstanding of our high provocations, condescend to stay and feed among the lilies, till that fair and desireable day break, and the shadows flee away.” (Letters of Samuel Rutherford, Letter XXVIII)

There are several types of mourning encompassed in what Jesus is teaching in the beatitudes, and this is one of them.  It is the mourning that recognizes our coldness towards God and actually weeps over it.  The first and great commandment is to “love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37,38)  We dare not skim over the top of that.  All your heart.  All your soul.  All your mind.  Surely those who are truly born again can feel the crushing weight of that.  The Biblical vision of God makes it abundantly clear that He is more than worthy, and yet we find ourselves so divided in our affections.  We have much to lament, and God actually wants us to lament, so that we would turn away and turn towards, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.

Unless you mourn an order of magnitude more than I do, there is something essential and precious that has been lost to be recovered.  As Rutherford exhorts, let us weep upon Jesus, and cling to Him that He would not depart.  Is He less easily entreated in our day?  May it never be!  Let us humble ourselves, mourn for our sin, and cling to Jesus with this resolve:  “We will not let Thee go.”

“Give Us Youngsville, or We Die!”

Greetings Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

The great Scottish reformer, John Knox, was overheard by friends laboring in prayer for his country, repeatedly calling out to God, “Give me Scotland, or I die!”

Sovereign Redeemer Community Church is a month old now, and I am praying that God will give us the spirit of this man, the earnestness and urgency of his prayers for the people around him, and his boldness in proclaiming the gospel.  Maybe Youngsville is no Scotland, and maybe none of us are a John Knox, but the heart of our King is the same.  We may not be “God’s gift to Youngsville,” but Jesus Christ is, and we are some of His happy subjects.  Our being here is no accident, and we are under orders.

Ephesians 2:8-10 says this:  “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.  For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

Here we are, the workmanship of God, having nothing to boast in except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, with good works to do which have been prepared for us by God Himself.  As we walk in them, our neighbors will see and hear, and they “may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)

So whether we feel ready for this calling or not, it is upon us.  And maybe the questioning of our readiness can work in our favor by making us hungrier and more fervent in our prayers, so that we find ourselves relying more fully on God who is able.

Church planting is about God taking ground.  There is nothing remotely sinister about this, since wherever and whenever the government of God spreads, happiness and every good thing abounds.  Jesus is the best King there is, and to be His subject is to know a peace that passes understanding.  Youngsville needs this just as much as a thousand other towns.

May it be that God Himself has assembled us for this purpose, and that He will teach us – drive us – to labor in prayer, “Give us Youngsville, or we die!”

Church Planting Update

Greetings Hope Baptist and other friends.

The following is a summary of the update that was given during our quarterly meeting last evening.

The last time the elders addressed the church on this topic was in very late May.  At the time, Scott, Dan and I had decided to purposefully avoid making any decisions for three or four months, so that we could go through multiple cycles of praying, thinking, and talking together.  Thankfully, we all believe that we are beginning to have clarity about what we should do, and this is the next step towards solidifying a plan and getting in motion.

One of the most fundamental questions that has been resolved is whether this should be a local church plant, or whether we should be working to establish a church in a location where the principles of family discipleship and the Biblical relationship between church and home are much less understood.  Along those lines, we considered locations from Toronto to the gulf coast and many places in between.  In the final analysis, though, there are many compelling needs in our own church and community, and we desire to address those as best as we can through planting locally.

In an attempt to provide basic information about our current thinking, five core questions will be asked and answered.

1. Why are we planting a church?  There are many more answers to the question, but I will offer two here.  First, the growth our church has experienced over the past year is beginning to have an impact on the sense of community that we believe is vital to New Testament church life.  We value this sense of community to a great extent, and we want to nurture it and see it grow, not have it begin to erode as a result of having more and more people.  That said, let me speak out of the other side of my mouth for a moment – we are also praying that God would frustrate us, in the sense that He would pour out His Spirit on this community in an unusual way and outstrip our ability to have what we believe are ideal size churches.  We desire churches where everyone can be tightly connected and where the shepherding is sufficient for the needs, but we also recognize that the Church has more glorious objectives than this.  We know what we believe ideal church life looks like, and we also know that the outpouring of the Spirit in Acts 2, with the subsequent addition of 3,000 souls in a single day, challenges that notion.  Those two things need not be in conflict, however.  God gives the increase as He sees fit, and in the midst of that we should always be pointed in a direction to have churches which reflect the closeness that we see beautifully portrayed in the New Testament.  The church plant is an attempt to point in that direction.  Second, planting a church raises the bar for everyone.  There is an instantaneous doubling of the need for everything – elders, deacons, song leaders, musicians, sound team, setup, and on and on and on.  The number of people who can simply attend and receive goes down dramatically, and that is a very good thing.  We are normally happy in the local church to the extent that we are actually investing, so this will increase our happiness.  By way of personal testimony, I can say that I literally grew up through church planting.  Many of the things that I brought forward from my boyhood into my late twenties and early thirties disappeared as a result of participating in church plants.  Those things needed to be left behind, and the pressing needs of a fledgling church deprived me of the time to continue in them.  People are given opportunities to serve that never would have existed for them in their old church.  They are shaken out of their comfort zones and stretched and pressed on.  They grow.  I know, and I praise God.

2.  Who is participating?  Anyone who wants to.  It is that simple.  Families will decide whether they should stay or go.  There will be no arm-twisting and no looking upon with furrowed brow.  It is understood that there are many, many factors that go into deciding what local church to covenant with, and we trust that heads of households are engaging with their families to weigh those things appropriately and to guide their families accordingly.

3.  Where will the church be located?  Two locations are currently being considered – Youngsville, and the Zebulon/Wendell/Knightdale corridor.  Youngsville is the absolute population center (ground zero) for Hope Baptist, and the Zebulon area also affords access to many.

4.  What will the church be like?  There are at least a couple of ways to answer this question.  We think choice of location is likely to make a difference.  If what we have observed historically is a reliable guide to how things would develop, we would expect that a plant in Youngsville will draw more people from Hope, which would in turn shape the demographics of the church going forward.  In other words, we would have a decent size group of people who have been thinking about and practicing family-integration for a good period of time, so others that we would naturally attract would be similar.  There are always exceptions to the rule, but that only proves the rule.  The Zebulon area, however, is likely to draw less people from Hope simply because of geographics, and we would expect that to create the opportunity to incorporate people who are on different points of the curve in terms of orthodoxy and orthopraxy.  If all that holds true (a very big “if” indeed), the Youngsville plant would be off to the races, while the Zebulon area plant would require time and attention to establish the foundations of the sufficiency of Scripture, the regulative principle of worship, family discipleship, etc.

Here is one thing the church plant is not – an opportunity to “fix” Hope.  Local churches are always a mix of things that are liked and not liked by everyone who attends, so I want to disavow anyone of the notion that this represents an opportunity to carry forward the things that are appreciated and to change the things that are perceived to be wrong.  For the foreseeable future, the church plant will be like Hope.  This is not to say that Hope is the end-all in local churches.  It is simply a recognition that the men leading Hope are unified and settled regarding doctrine and practice.  We are a confessional church (Baptist Confession of Faith, 1689), and we have spent hours, days, weeks, months, years thinking through what the Bible has to say about church practice.  Significant movement in either doctrine or practice is highly unlikely, and must not be an objective of anyone desiring to participate in the plant.

On that point, the church will initially be shepherded by the existing elder team (Scott Brown, Dan Horn, Jason Dohm), for as long as is necessary to raise up other elders.  The Dohms will be going with the church plant, and as soon as another qualified man who desires the work can be tested and installed as a co-elder, he and I will become the new elder team that shepherds the church.  We believe this is consistent with Titus 1:5, “For this reason I [Paul] left you [Titus] in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you”.  From this verse we learn two things:  that a church without a plurality of qualified elders has a lack and deficiency that needs to be set in order, and that the Apostle Paul was willing to begin churches in this deficient state and have the Biblical leadership structure catch up.  We recognize the gap and will be working to close it as soon as we can responsibly do so.

The church will be setting me aside to labor hard in the word, meaning that I will be doing much of the teaching, and I will be leaving my current employment to focus on that work.  The basis for this is 1 Timothy 5:17-18, “Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine.  For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain,’ and, ‘The laborer is worthy of his wages.'”

5.  When will the church begin functioning?  April or May of this coming year, if the Lord wills.  This will be upon us like tomorrow.  There is so much praying, planning, organization, and doing ahead of us, and all of those things will begin immediately.

So there you have it, all the basic information for the plans as they exist today.  Please pray that we would clearly discern the voice of God regarding all these things, that we would carefully and faithfully obey everything that He says, and that a church would be planted that lifts up Jesus Christ as crucified for sinners, and raised from the dead to be exalted above every other name.

If you are a member of Hope Baptist and know that you would like to participate, please let me know.