Youth Ministry’s Tendency Toward Legalism

These observations from Cameron Cole from The Gospel Coalition are crucially important to youth ministry. His concern is that many youth ministries very naturally tend toward legalism in the content of their teaching.  He lists four reasons why this happens so regularly (you can read the rest of the article here):

1. We want to see results.  

Mark Upton, a former youth worker and current pastor at Hope Community Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, offered these wise words to me when I started youth ministry: “If anyone asks you about your ministry, tell them you will let them know in ten years.” Like any ministry profession, youth pastors want to see changed lives. At the same time, youth pastors need to view themselves as sowers, planting gospel seeds for harvest down the road. (I know this personally as in times of despair I just want to see the kids “do something” to affirm that my ministry has worth.) Wanting validation for their tireless labor, youth ministers occasionally focus on behavior modification as a means of providing tangible proof of the efficacy of their ministry. A kid carrying his or her Bible to school, signing a chastity pledge, or sporting a WWJD bracelet may appear like signs of spiritual progress—the fruit of ministry labor for a youth pastor—but if these actions come out of a student misunderstanding Christianity as a code of behavior rather than heart transformation through the Holy Spirit, then they do not necessarily reflect lasting life change.

2. Kids are as destructive as nuclear warheads.

All kidding aside, kids have skewed filters for risk management and make destructive decisions. Very few youth pastors go through a year without the death of a teenager in the community where they serve. Many youth pastors preach moralism over the gospel in order to protect students from self-destruction. Unfortunately, law-driven ministry often yields the opposite of its intention; law and pressure often inflame rebellion.

3. Parents want moral children.

A gospel-centered youth pastor in South Carolina once told me that parents were his biggest opponents to him fully preaching the gospel. After several years of teaching the radical grace of the gospel, parents complained about a lack of concentration on drinking, sexual abstinence, obedience to parents, and “being nice.” They viewed the message of grace as antinomian and as a license for kids to pursue hedonism. Parents rightly want moral children, as do youth pastors. Sometimes, families view the church exclusively as a vehicle for moral education, rather than spiritually forming them in Christ, and put pressure on youth and senior pastors to moralize their children. Many parents view the law alone as the catalyst for holy living, rather than law and grace, and want the youth ministry to embrace this same theology.

4. Many pastors are young in their faith and theology.

When I first started leading Bible studies as a volunteer, my messages usually included a reminder that we needed Jesus for salvation and then a list of moral directives. Over time, as I started to grow in scriptural and theological knowledge, I started to see the gospel of grace and the Holy Spirit as the drivers of sanctification. Tremendous mentoring from all of the pastors at my church and their encouraging and funding my seminary classes played the most influential role in this maturation.

And all of this reminds of me of one of my favorite Russell Moore lines…  We must be careful that we are not “creating an army of Protestant Liberals who will die and go to hell with signed True Love Waits Cards.”

The implications of dead…

Well done.

Perry Noble Sermon Illustration from Preaching Rocket on Vimeo.

Prayer and the Yellow Caution Light

Great sermon on prayer by Ryan Fullerton at SBTS Chapel on Tuesday. Listen as Fullerton talks you into blowing right past that inner yellow caution light when it comes to asking mountains to move… for the glory of God.

Mark 11:20-25 from Southern Seminary on Vimeo.

 

A Catechism of the Heart

Via Justin Taylor’s blog, I stumbled across this catechism of the heart written by Sinclair Ferguson at Ligonier Ministries.  Within the context of the heart, it addresses regeneration, indwelling sin, justification and sanctification to name a few.  Very rich:

Q.1. What is the heart?
A. The heart is the central core and drive of my life intellectually (it involves my mind), affectionately (it shapes my soul), and totally (it provides the energy for my living).

Q.2. Is my heart healthy?
A. No. By nature I have a diseased heart. From birth, my heart is deformed and antagonistic to God. The intentions of its thoughts are evil continually.

Q.3. Can my diseased heart be healed?
A. Yes. God, in His grace, can give me a new heart to love Him and to desire to serve Him.

Q.4. How does God do this?
A. God does this through the work of the Lord Jesus for me and the ministry of the Holy Spirit in me. He illumines my mind through the truth of the gospel, frees my enslaved will from its bondage to sin, cleanses my affections by His grace, and motivates me inwardly to live for Him by rewriting His law into my heart so that I begin to love what He loves. The Bible calls this being “born from above.”

Q.5. Does this mean I will never sin again?
A. No. I will continue to struggle with sin until I am glorified. God has given me a new heart, but for the moment He wants me to keep living in a fallen world. So day by day I face the pressures to sin that come from the world, the flesh, and the Devil. But God’s Word promises that over all these enemies I can be “more than a conqueror through him who loved us.”

Q.6. What four things does God counsel me to do so that my heart may be kept for Him?
A. First, I must guard my heart as if everything depended on it. This means that I should keep my heart like a sanctuary for the presence of the Lord Jesus and allow nothing and no one else to enter.

Second, I must keep my heart healthy by proper diet, growing strong on a regular diet of God’s Word — reading it for myself, meditating on its truth, but especially being fed on it in the preaching of the Word. I also will remember that my heart has eyes as well as ears. The Spirit shows me baptism as a sign that I bear God’s triune name, while the Lord’s Supper stimulates heart love for the Lord Jesus.

Third, I must take regular spiritual exercise, since my heart will be strengthened by worship when my whole being is given over to God in expressions of love for and trust in Him.

Fourth, I must give myself to prayer in which my heart holds on to the promises of God, rests in His will, and asks for His sustaining grace — and do this not only on my own but with others so that we may encourage one another to maintain a heart for God.

This — and much else — requires development, elaboration, and exposition. But it can be summed up in a single biblical sentence. Listen to your Father’s appeal: “My son, give Me your heart.”

–

You can read the whole article here.

Book Review: The Gospel as Center by DA Carson and Tim Keller

The Gospel Coalition continues to prove to be a valuable resource to many pastors who share a common commitment to gospel-centrality.  They stand on the conviction that the cross is the culminating event in all of history.  Everything, past, present or future, flows from and through God’s purpose of redeeming humanity through the life, death and resurrection of Christ.  To put it another way, we have nothing to say about anything without grounding it first in the person and work of Christ.  The Gospel is far more than the “tipping point into the kingdom.”  It is pervasive:

Not only does the gospel of Jesus Christ gather into itself all the trajectories of Scripture, but under the terms of the new covenant, all of Christian life and thought grow out of what Jesus has accomplished.  This good news not only declares that God justifies sinners so that our status before him is secured but also that he regenerates us and establishes us in his saving kingdom (21).

The Gospel as Center is a book edited by Carson and Keller that aims to put to paper in one volume a gospel-centered understanding of a few key biblical themes.  The book devotes individual chapters to issues such as epistemology, hermeneutics, creation, fall, redemption, justification, new creation, etc.  Each chapter is written by a different author, but each chapter has the aim of demonstrating the centrality of the gospel as it relates to issue being discusses.

This is a book founded on the commitment that as the culture changes to a post-Christian society it is all the more important to keep central what God has meant to be central.  As some churches reconstruct doctrine to accommodate a changing environment and as others put up higher walls, The Gospel as Center aims be committed to gospel saturated theology that takes into account the culture in which individual churches find themselves.

Disclaimer:  I was given a free copy of this book by Crossway for the purposes of this review with no obligation of writing a positive review.  

WWII is No Excuse to Stop Doing What You’re Doing

C.S. Lewis preached “Learning in War-Time” at Evenson in St. Mary the Virgin during the early stages of WWII on October 22, 1939.  He preached the sermon to those struggling with whether or not they should or could go on with the task of learning given that the war weighed heavily on the minds and hearts of England.

His conclusion was that the war presented no new reality, only something that awakened us to a reality that was always there: “But there is no question of death or life for any of us, only a question of this death or of that–of a machine gun bullet now or a cancer forty years later.  What does war do to death?  It certainly does not make it more frequent; 100 percent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased” (61).  His point is to encourage Christians, no matter the circumstances, to get on with the task with which they have been handed and to perform their task as if they are working for the Lord.  There is no time to wait around on security and safety, or for things to become “normal.”  Life has never been normal.  It has always been filled with crises.

I certainly think about these things from the perspective of doing the work of a pastor, but they could just as well be thought about from the perspective of a painter, a plumber, a nuclear physicist, or a mother.  There are no trivial labors.  As Lewis points out, the apostle Paul even as he discusses the glorious truth of the imminent return of Christ, tells us to get to work in the mean time as we await his return (2 Thess 3).  The point is to stop waiting around for the perfect scenario to get on with the task handed to you by God.  The stars will never align.  There will always be distractions, so go do what it is that you do and do it for the glory of God, but by all means do it now.  Or as Lewis says about his task, the quest for knowledge during war time:

The best defense is a recognition that in this, as in everything else, the war has not really raised up a new enemy but only aggravated an old one.  There are always plenty of rivals to our work.  We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs.  If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly, they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable.  Favourable conditions never come (Weight of Glory, 60).

Also, don’t worry about what the future may mean to the relevance or irrelevance of your present task.  Just do it.  Trying to guess where the sovereign hand of the Lord will have you tomorrow is a game you will never be good at, and not trusting him with the future only leads to a frustrated paralysis.  Our task is to be performed in the present with hard work done for the Lord, for his glory, trusting him alone.

If I say to you that no one has time to finish, that the longest human life leaves a man, in any branch of learning, a beginner, I shall seem to you to be saying something quite academic and theoretical… A more Christian attitude, which can be attained at any age, is that of leaving futurity in God’s hands.  We may as well, for God will certainly retain it whether we leave it to Him or not.  Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future.  Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment “as to the Lord.” 

So pastors, today is the day to prepare that sermon or that study for the small group meeting, regardless of how loud your critics are at the moment.  Fathers, now is the moment to play tag team wrestling with the boys on the bed regardless of how tired you are from a long days work.  Mothers, today is the day to take your daughter out for breakfast, regardless of who is coming over tonight and how long it normally takes you to get the house prepared.  Plumbers, go unclog something and support your family; who cares if the lab calls while you out.  Our tasks, our menial tasks, are to be performed for the glory of God now, unhampered by difficult circumstances and uncertain futures.  God is sovereign, and he is good.  That’s enough to get on with the task at hand.

Better to Honor God than to Win

Thanks Jim Hamilton for this reminder as I am currently raising two boys and two girls whom I want to enjoy the thrill of competitive sports without the idolatry that comes with them.  I certainly would love to have one all-state baseball player, one all-state middle linebacker, one all-state point guard, and one all-state volleyball player, as long as neither one of the boys has any interest in being the all-state volleyball player.  It should go without saying, but in our day in age, it really doesn’t. But I would trade a whole world full of athletic accomplishments for just four Christ exalting grown-ups.

Here’s a little snippet from Hamilton’s article on God and Sports:

One afternoon the summer before last my sons and I were playing wiffle-ball in the backyard with the kid who lives next door. Something happened that triggered a realization in my mind. Seeds planted by my mother, watered by the word of God, suddenly sprouted, pushing up through the soil of my thinking. I don’t remember if the game had ended and my son was on the losing side or if it was just a tight play that went against him, but he threw a fit like the world had ended and all was lost. I recognized the sentiments and the behavior, and I could tell you worse stories about my own actions when I was 15 not 5, things that took place in settings more significant than the backyard. Suddenly I knew, I think for the first time, what my behavior had implied, and what my son’s showed in that moment.

All at once I realized that the antics were announcing that the most important thing in the world was performance and the outcome of this silly game. As I took my son in my arms that afternoon, a phrase came to my lips that expressed something I should have known long before: it’s more important to honor God than to win.

If athletics are going to be anything other than a training ground for thuggery, athletes have to know that it’s more important to honor God than to win. For kids to accept the bodies they’ve been given and refuse performance-enhancing drugs, they have to know that it’s more important to honor God than to win. For us to be able to honor our opponents whether we win or lose, we have to know that it’s more important to honor God than to win. For sports and competition to bring out the best—rather than the worst—in us, we have to go at it like it’s more important to honor God than to win.

The Satisfying Gospel

The father who is currently playfully wrestling on the floor with his three children and the one who is laboriously wrestling through the house trying to find another bottle of whiskey both have something in common.  Sure the sights and sounds at both houses are completely different.  At one, there are children taking turns being gently tossed to the floor. The sound of laughter and playful grunts from dad fill the air.  At the other, empty bottles are taking turns being tossed out of a pantry, and the sounds of breaking glass and unquenchable agony are all you will hear.  But both men, the Scriptures tell us, are on a quest for something.  They seek satisfaction.  Indeed, as the author of Ecclesiastes wrote, “All man’s efforts are for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied” (Ecc 6:7).

Humanity throughout its existence has picked up on this quest.  Blaise Pascal wrote, “all men seek happiness.  This is without exception.  Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end…  The will never takes the least step but to this object.  This is the motive of every action of every man, even those who hang themselves.”  From the moment of birth, the quest is on for satisfaction. From the new born seeking milk to the home bound elderly woman seeking company, satisfaction is the common denominator of every demographic in every century in every corner of the earth.

The Scriptures tell us that its not our desire to be satisfied that’s the problem.  Its our tendency to find satisfaction too easily.  We are those whom the prophet Jeremiah says have “dug out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer 2:13).  We are those who have chosen water that will make us thirsty again when we could have opted for water that would satisfy forever (John 4:13).  And yet, time and time again, we opt for lesser pleasures, pleasures that will never satisfy.  The satisfaction of a sexual encounter lasts but a moment before it turns to shame.  The satisfaction of a whiskey bottle makes problems go away, but when it has run its course, the bills are still piled on the dinner table, and the kids still don’t call.  The world is chalk full of counterfeit satisfiers.  From family, friends and short vacations alike, there is a sense within each of us that we were created for something more.

This is where the Gospel comes in.  The Good News.  The quest for satisfaction is not wrong in itself.  The problem, as C. S. Lewis reminds us, is that we are far too easily pleased.  The Gospel gives us the satisfaction we were created for.  It gives us the longings of our hearts.  It gives us God.  We were alienated from God because of our rebellion against him, a rebellion that could very easily be defined as an attempt to find satisfaction anywhere else but in God.  Apart from the Gospel, the good news of Christ’s perfect obedience, his dying, being raised, and his reigning at the right hand of God–apart from that good news–we would be left to the broken cisterns and the unsatisfying drink of fleeting pleasures.  But, now, in Christ, we have access to living water, water that satisfies, and the quest for joy finds its end not in an empty beer can or a box of Twinkies or a fragile relationship, but in the all-satisfying God of the universe.  And that’s good news.

We are beginning a sermon series here at FBC Wellington entitled, The Satisfying Gospel.  I expect that looking at the all-satisfying nature of the good news of the sinner’s reconciliation to God will ignite and reignite joy in those whose hope and trust are in Christ.  May we in the end be found “glad in the Lord… rejoicing… and shouting for joy” (Psalm 32:11) as a result of this all-satisfying good news.

Bethke: All of God’s Attributes Win

Youtube is abuzz over Jefferson Bethke’s poem entitled Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus. There have been a few who have offered analysis of the poem here and here.  In my personal opinion, I have never been a fan of trying to parse the difference between Christianity and Religion.  It seems more confusing than helpful.  However, when Bethke means religion, he is referring to self-righteousness, that is, the attempt to establish a righteousness of your own apart from Christ.  Perhaps he could have done without the cheap shot toward republicans to start off the poem and could have done a better job of explaining that acts of righteousness are not in and of themselves wrong.  Also, I have a sneaky suspicion that the fact that it currently has over 7 million views may stem from the fact that it appeals heavily to the non-believer because of its negative opinion of the church as a whole.  I wish he were a little more gentle with those remarks, because the Christ-exalting way he ends the poem makes it worth listening to.

However, this video that Bethke made back in April 2011… I thought was awesome.  If you haven’t seen the Rob Bell video he is remaking, scroll down to the end of this post and watch it first.  Here’s how Bethke describes the Rob Bell remake video:

“The beauty of the gospel is that ALL the attributes of God win at the cross, not just love. Gods justice is satisfied, His holiness revealed, His love shown, etc. The cross is a cataclysmic crash between all of God’s attributes showing that he is both JUST and JUSTIFIER of the one who does not work but trusts in Him.”

Book Review: The Resignation of Eve by Jim Henderson

The Resignation of Eve is wrapped up in a much broader debate over the role of men and women in the church.  Henderson’s stated aim in writing is to serve as a voice of reason in the debate in order to prevent a “break up” in the evangelical world over the issue of biblical manhood and womanhood (6).  However, I’m not sure he makes any headway in accomplishing that goal.   In the end, he proposes that the way to prevent that break up is to ascribe to his view and become an egalitarian (271-272).

Henderson argues in The Resignation of Eve that the church is oppressing women by preventing them from being able to serve in the church without restrictions as to how they should be able to serve (22).  This oppression, concludes Henderson, is the reason why some women are deciding to leave the church (22). While the data certainly indicates that there is some drop off in attendance among women, Henderson does not demonstrate that the drop-off is specific only to women.  He never compares the data to drop-off rates in men and drop-off rates in churches as a whole.  It would have been helpful to know if this was a problem specific only to women or if it was more of an indicator of an increased disinterest in the church from the society at large.

Regardless of the stats, the main problem with the book is that Henderson deals very superficially with some issues that demand more than just mere personal observations.  Whether by oversight or intention, Henderson does not deal with several issues that lie at the heart of the discussion.  His book focuses almost exclusively on a select few personal conversations he has had with women throughout the country.  There is no reason given as to why his personal conversations with only a few women are satisfactory in diagnosing what he perceives as a major problem in churches.  I am not against reading an opposing viewpoint.  In fact, I find it helpful to do so.  However, the major  problem with The Resignation of Eve is that it relies too much on Henderson’s personal observations.  He does not go through great lengths to back up his observations biblically, nor does he interact much at all with the opposing viewpoint.  We are just suppose to trust his diagnosis and prescription based upon his hand selected conversations and reflections on those conversations.

Furthermore, he seems unaware of or at least unconcerned about the deeply rooted theological issues associated with the discussion.  He argues that Christians are commanded to share power and therefore should have identical roles across the board for men and women; however, when doing so he neglects to provide adequate support for his position and fails to address important issues of complementarity and subordination in the trinity, creation, and in the role of marriage which complementarians argue is designed to reflect the joyful submission of the church to the headship of Christ.  A serious discussion on the role of men and women in the church should at least acknowledge and provide some kind of defense against these points of opposition.

Also, the book takes the legs out from its argument nearly from the onset.  Henderson uses research from Barna and conversations he personally has had with women throughout the country in order to build his case.  However, the research from Barna indicated that women were by and large satisfied with their church’s position on women’s roles.  With the data not living up to Henderson’s expectations, he then downplays the research in favor of the evidence from his conversations he has had with individual women throughout the country (10-11).  He doesn’t seem aware that the fact that he hand selected these conversations may alter his conclusions.

He then categorizies these women that he’s had conversation with into three groups:  those who have “resigned to” their church’s teaching and have accepted that they will not be allowed to exercise all their gifts and abilities in a church setting, those who have “resigned from” the church out of frustration of the church’s view on women, and those who are “re-signing” their churches and are attempting to make changes in their church’s view on the role of women.  In these categories, his bias is clearly displayed: women who are complementarian have settled for less than what they are capable; women who are egalitarian are “following in the footsteps of Jesus” (5).  Never, does he seem to concede that these women who are “resigned to” their churches’ teaching may not just be ignorant and passive, but could be outrageously happy and confidently resolved not just in their church’s teaching, but in the Scripture’s establishment of clear patterns of church involvement for men and women.

Furthermore, he argues that our culture has evolved beyond the oppressive concessions made by Scripture to accommodate the culture of the Ancient Near East and 1st Century Palestine.  He compares these old views to Amerigo Vespucci’s first map of the Americas:

“The maps we use are subjective–they’re drawings of how explorers ‘see’ their world, city, or neighborhood.  Their maps represent how they think we should see the world.  Consequently, maps at times leave out details their creators simply didn’t know about…  For two thousand year, Christianity has been working off the mental maps that were created by our own explorers (many of whom lived during the same era as Vespucii).  Is it possible that, similar to Vespucci’s map, some of the maps we’ve inherited are also wrong–limited by the perceptions of their creators, including how God views women? (270).”

This betrays, I believe, the clarity with which the Scripture speaks on these issues.  They are not mere culture accommodations, but are applications that stem from established patterns laid out in creation itself (1 Timothy 2:13).

One final point of contention and perhaps the most significant, in a very short paragraph, Henderson provides the foundation for what he understands to be the biblical case for identical roles for men and women in the church:

“Christians who believe men and women have equal influence in the church have a pre-Fall paradigm, meaning men and women equally express the image of God.  For them, gifts, not gender, determine who does what in the Kingdom.  Those who hold a post-Fall paradigm believe that Eve reports to Adam.  Due to our fallen nature, they believe we need to focus on order.  Pre-Fall people are concerned more with freedom.”

He takes no time to explain how he sees his view as a “pre-fall” understanding of the role of men and women in the church, but just throws it out there while at the same time labeling those who he would disagree with as having a “post-fall” understanding.  Complementarians have routinely pointed back to the garden to demonstrate God’s intended purpose in male/female roles, namely that Adam was created first then Eve, Eve was created from Adam, Eve is said to be Adam’s helper, and Adam provides a name for Eve–all of which happen “pre-fall.”

In the end, I did not find this book to be a helpful resource for men, women and churches seeking to understand God’s intended purpose for the role of men and women in the church.  It provides some insight into the egalitarian point of view, but even this is limited as the work focuses primarily on his interpretation of the data he has gathered from his personally selected conversations with women throughout the country.  There is very little space devoted to bringing the Bible to bare on the discussion.  For this reason, I would not recommend this book as a valuable resource in understanding the issues more clearly.

On this issue, I would recommend Recovering Biblical Manhood and Woman by Wayne Grudem and John Piper.  For a balanced approach that gives a voice to both sides of the debate, check out Two View on Women in the Ministry.  

***Disclaimer:  I was given a free copy of this book for the purposes of this review.