Thoughts and questions along the church-size trajectory

by Dan Phillips

Happy new year. I think it's good that we start the year facing some of these questions together.

In my previous post I broached the question of church size and trajectory. Fond as I am not of verbosity, let's cut straight to what I hope are useful guidelines, questions, and answers.

My preface to these is that they are for you and me. I'll either ignore or delete questions like "So are you saying that _____'s church is too big/small?" I want you to apply this directly to your forehead. The happiest results I am aiming at are these:

1. Some leaders of churches that are big enough or oversized will conclude it's time to invest resources and personnel for planting daughter-churches in other locations. Note: "daughter churches," with their own pastoral leadership, preaching, and all.
2. Some attenders of massively oversized churches will conclude that a better stewardship of their gifts would be to find churches that are under-supported, rather than remain in a church where they are redundant by a factor of fifty.
3. People searching for a church will repent of their consumer mentality and look along Biblical guidelines.
4. Some leaders of smaller churches will find their spirits refreshed and be encouraged to stay the course and redouble outreach efforts.
5. Some attenders of smaller churches will repent of their inwardness, complacency, and indulgent laziness, and will catch fire for reaching out with the Gospel and with their church's ministry of the Word, and will permeate their local church with the investment of their gifts and time.

That said, then:

For Larger Church Leaders

1. What is "enough"? You know the Greek word translated "greed" or "covetousness" means simply wanting more. Can a church ministry be greedy? Are you sure that you are not erecting a monument to a gifted speaker, destined to be tomorrow's hollow, dead European cathedral, or compromised by the need to replace your current personality with an equal or greater crowd-drawer/bill-payer? This flows right into:
2. Why do you need more than a total of 217 people? That's a number I've plopped out there for years as the ideal church size, a bit more than half-seriously. But really: at around that number, you're large enough that you have the resources for some serious and worthwhile ministries, and still you're at a size where everyone could know everyone, and pastors could really pastor. Why do you need to be larger? How much larger? And while I'm asking...
3. Is your main talking head a pastor? Do you remember that Jesus describes a good pastor as one who knows his sheep by name, cares personally for them, is personally known by his sheep, and is willing to lay down his life for them (Jn. 10:3-5, 11-14). What percentage of the people he lectures does your speaking head know like that, serve like that? At what point of disparity do you conclude that it is no longer best either for him or them? Is he actually baptizing people he's never met, let alone heard their testimony? Which also flows right into:
4. Is your main talking head amassing, or reproducing? Remember that Paul always took apprentices, and he gave them lots to do. He even "shared billing" with them in writing his epistles (cf. 1 Cor. 1:1; 2 Cor. 1:1; Phil. 1:1, etc.). He famously told Timothy, "what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also" (2 Tim. 2:2). Who are your head personality's apprentices? Should he go to Jesus or a larger church today, who steps in? Which flows right into:
5. Are you keen on making your church as large as it can be, or on 
   
   spreading the ministry of the Word of God as broadly and deeply as you can? The latter, in my judgment, is the Biblical view (see first post and Acts' refrain). So these men your lead speaker should be apprenticing, are they regularly being sent to found other churches 10, 15, 20 and more miles from you? Are people from your congregation being called on to move and/or otherwise relocate to support these ministries?
6. Are there any passages, Scriptures, subjects, or activities that you are avoiding because of the negative impact it would have on attendance/prestige/cash-flow? Do you even need me to expand on that (Acts 20:27; 1 Tim. 5:21)?

For Larger Church Attenders

1. Are you attending your church primarily for what it does for you, or for what you can do for it? Or perhaps because it actually doesn't need you to do anything because there are already 10, 30, 100 volunteers ready to do what you can do? Can you coast because it's so big? Just go, have a great time watching a famous guy talk about God, select who you spend time with and to what depth, and get back to your schedule? Are you there as a consumer... while probably deriding consumerism when it comes to people like Warren, Hybels, Furtick and so on?
2. How are you investing your "talent"? Using Matthew 25:14ff., are you using yours somewhere where it's really needed and significant, or are you keeping it safe and sound because a dozen others already do it better anyway? Are churches around you struggling and scraping while yours sits atop multiple layers of redundancy? Which spirit more glorifies God and answers to the constant Biblical calls to give, stretch, sacrifice, love, extend?
3. How long would it be before you were even missed?
   
4. Do you care more about the spread of the ministry of the Word, or about you being comforted and coddled by well-stocked easy-reach shelves full o' goodness?

For Smaller Church Leaders

1. What is enough? Is it possible that your equally-faithful, equally-Christ-exalting, equally-Bible-teaching ministry is not being multiplied like Pastor Famoushead simply because that's God's will for your area, or because God sees you would be tempted beyond what you're able, simply because you aren't Pastor Famoushead? Is it possible that he's up to the pressure, and you just aren't, and the size of your charge is a divine kindness to you and to them?
   
2. Do you mistake smallness for purity? (See first post.) You shouldn't.
3. Have you given up? (See first post, and 2 Tim. 1:6-8, Greek.) You mustn't.
4. Have you done all you can to reach the lost in your area? You probably haven't.
5. Are you setting an example of outreach for your people? You should.
6. Are you setting an example of hospitality? You should.
7. Have you tried to teach your folks a Biblical vision of outreach with the Word? You must.
8. Are you investing in finding, encouraging, and cultivating reproducers in your fellowship? (This book is a great help.)
9. While you are still relatively small, are you exploiting that very smallness to build stronger, deeper relationships with those presently under your care? Beware sacrificing the unsatisfying but potential-laden present for the elusive utopian future.
10. Do you thank God that there's anybody who wants to hear you do what you love best? Because you really should.

For Smaller Church Attenders

1. Are you content, or even happy, that your church does not grow despite being surrounded by lost or ill-taught and deceived souls? Would you be just as happy if your church never lost or added one person, or baptized one convert? Because you really shouldn't be (see first post). You should repent, pray earnestly, change.
2. Whose job is it, primarily, to expand the witness and ministry of your church? Would your most candid response to my first question, "No, I really would like to see the pastor and other people bring in more of the right sort of person"? Or perhaps, "No, I really do hope Something does Happen, and more people happen by, wander in, and decide to stay"? After you do answer, read Romans 1 and 1 Thessalonians 1, and see if you need to revise your answer. Then read Ephesians 4:15-16, and reconsider. Leading to:
3. Are you doing your job faithfully? Do you evangelize, at work and while shopping and at home? How many friends have you told about how much you love your church and why, and have you invited, and have you brought? In the last month, the last year, the last five years? Or do you imagine that's someone else's job?
4. Do you look for newcomers when they actually do come, and make it your job to make them welcome and show them love?  Who is Romans 12:13 addressed to, do you think?
   
5. Is it more important to you to sit in "your" pew, or to sit with someone who could use the blessing of being shown love?
6. Do you attend your church prayer meetings, and is your voice heard regularly crying out to God to use your church's ministry to save the lost and disciple the saved? Are you a subscriber to the theories of the importance of corporate prayer and of sovereign grace, while never gathering corporately to beseech God to move in sovereign grace?
7. Do you do what the leaders can't do? Is the Word being preached and taught clearly, deeply, effectively, transformationally, to God's glory? Is Christ exalted in the church's priorities and ministries? Do your leaders follow Christ and love those they care for with integrity? If so, your leaders can't very well go around saying so, can they? ("Come to my church, I really preach the Word deeply and effectively!") So, do you?

I hope you find equal measures of help, head-scratching, and challenge in those thoughts. And by next Monday, everything will be different!

(Riiight.) 

---

Small and static versus larger and growing: opening thoughts

by Dan Phillips

Is a small church inherently virtuous and godly? Is a large church intrinsically venomous and worldly?

I come from a bit of prejudice on the subject, I'll admit. All of my earliest church experiences were small (by which I mean not merely under 100, but under 50), and I liked it. But then I also was part of larger churches (over 200, over 500), and I liked that too. That said, I do tend to see the need to be as large as possible as evil...but also contentment with remaining comfortably small as comfortable no less evil.

Oops, I've given away the conclusion, without so much as a Spoiler Alert. Well, let's back-track. Let's lay some Biblical framework.

First, one definition: for the purpose of these posts, I'll define a "small" church as 100 or fewer, assuming a town of 25000 or more.

One the one hand: small can be glorious

The Bible is literally riddled with stories whose whole point is to glorify God precisely because of the smallness of the beginnings. "Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him" (Isaiah 51:2), for instance. He was one, he was old, and he was married to an infertile woman. All this served to glorify God all the more by what God made of this old believing man with his infertile wife.

Moses did not free Israel from Egypt by amassing a huge army. It was just two little old men, and one great big God. That was part of the point, and the glory, of the story.

Very famously, there's the story of Gideon, raised up to liberate Israel from Midian. Though Gideon surely did not agree, Yahweh thought 32000 troops were far too many (Judges 7:2-3). In fact, he thought 10000 troops was overkill (v. 4). But 300 was just right (v. 7). Just right to reassure Gideon, or the three hundred themselves? Surely not. But just right to glorify God by the deliverance He'd work.

Many other stories make the same point. King Saul's son Jonathan decides to take on a whole Philistine garrison, just by himself and his armor-carrier, explicitly reasoning "It may be that the LORD will work for us, for nothing can hinder the LORD from saving by many or by few" (1 Samuel 14:6b). Then l ater, in the name of the God of Israel, little punk shepherd-boy David knocks down the giant that had a whole king and army trembling (1 Samuel 17). In many ways, the OT warns against despising "the day of small things" (Zechariah 4:10).

The New Testament has many such stories and many such teachings as well. Jesus famously warns that the popular and crowded road is the one that leads to Hell, while its opposite is narrower and vastly less popular (Matthew 7:13-14). He warns his spokesmen to expect rejection and persecution (Matthew 10:21-22), and that whole towns might reject them and their preaching (v. 14).

Jesus was glorified by feeding huge masses by supplies that were paltry and cheap (John 6:9ff.). But he had no problem teaching things that sent people running away in droves (v. 60ff.). When that was their reason for leaving, attrition didn't bother Him a bit (v. 67).

Fast-forwarding, Paul warns that the church age will not be marked by gradual grown and development into a glorious golden age on earth. No, he says that the latter days will be marked by rejection and unpopularity of truth, and love of error (2 Timothy 4:3-4). The man who would be a man of God must be prepared to preach doggedly and persistently and consistently, when it looks like the very worst time for it (vv. 1-2, 5).

On the other hand: explosive can be good, too

First we have to remember the passion to see God glorified.

People who love God as they ought can't be content just to see Him glorified a little, if anything can be done with it. Their vision is God's vision: to see the earth "filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea" (Habakkuk 2:14). Their sigh is, "Oh, that men would give thanks to the LORD for His goodness, And for His wonderful works to the children of men!" (Ps. 107:8 NKJV; cf. vv. 15, 21, 31). They long for God to be known and loved and marveled at and praised from pole to pole (Ps. 148:7, 13; Isaiah 42:10, etc.).

And people who love people as they should cannot be content to see their fellow-man living in darkness and despair, and skipping gaily off to a hopeless eternity under the relentless and endless wrath of God (cf. Matt. 7:12). They can't claim ignorance, and wouldn't dream of it (Proverbs 24:11-12).

So they're like Paul, who knew everything we know from the first section, and yet it was his ambition to preach Christ and His gospel everywhere, particularly where He was not yet known (Romans 15:20-24). You would search long, hard, and utterly fruitlessly to find in Paul any spirit of "Oh well, God's sovereign, I've done what I can, you can't save everyone."

So there are explosively big moments here and there in Scripture. The one that leaps to mind is the birthday of the church, on Pentecost. Growth from maybe the under-200 range to over three thousand, as a result of one sermon, is what most of us pastors would count a "really good day" (Acts 2:41; cf. 4:4 for another leap).

And something like this continues through Acts. There are persecutions and treacheries a-plenty, but there is also the constant refrain:

6:7 — And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

8:4 — Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.

12:24 — But the word of God increased and multiplied 

13:44 — The next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord.

13:48-49 — And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. 49 And the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region.

17:11 — Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

19:10 — This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

19:20 — So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

So, the combination: eager, inventive, tireless preachers + actual saving Gospel + lost men and woman + saving hand of God = spread of the Word among converts. 

Growth, in other words. Good, sound, holy, God-honoring, healthy, appropriate growth, built and based on the pure word of God. Faithfulness and fruitfulness.

The two problems we're left with

These facts of revelation leave us with two problems. The first is often insoluble.

First question: Why is this happening/not happening to me/him? You look at a work that is plastic, formulaic, and all-wrong. They don't preach the Gospel deeply, they don't teach the Bible very intensively; it's like toy-time for toddlers. But they grow explosively. You've heard the story a thousand times. "We started with three people, and in a year we had 1700." No big budget, just tons of quick and impressive growth. It's years later, and they're still going strong.

Or on the other hand, you're a preacher who preaches the whole counsel of God with everything you've got. Every prayerfully-formed-and-delivered sermon/lesson exalts God, edifies saints, points to Christ, to the best of your God-given ability. And your church has at least some people who evangelize, and show love. And you're in a target-rich location.

And you just. Don't. Grow.

Now, we can make guesses about both. About the former, we can prate on about "itching ears" and Zeitgeist and all — except it's not really a cult or a heresy. They do preach Jesus and gospel, if not very deeply. It's just not what we believe Biblically it should be.

Yet they multiply like bunnies, looking for all the world like a real work of God for explosiveness.

About the latter, we could say there's not enough evangelism, they're too young/too old, their style is too this or not enough that, and yadda yadda yadda.

But none of those items were factors in Acts. If someone's heart is touched by God, if he wants to know and serve God alongside genuine believers, this would be a perfectly fine home for him. In fact, a terrific home. And for such a work to grow would bring great glory to God.

Yet it just doesn't happen.

Why?

I have no idea. Worse, I know of no way to tell until the Judgment.

Well, that's a sucky answer, isn't it? Not what you come to Top Men to hear. Well, I'm not a top man, and I hate the answer too, but it's all I've got. How many followers did Isaiah have? Jeremiah? Ezekiel? What happened with Jonathan Edwards at his church? How wildly popular was he in his lifetime?

Why?

No clue, other than to say something like "because thus it pleased the Lord to deal with His servants."

Second question: Is what is happening to me as-should-be? Should I be happy, concerned, or...?

Ah, now, there I might have some help for you. Some help.

Friday, Lord willing.

UPDATE: this way to the Conclusion.

---

An Unforgiving World of Bumbles & Misfit Toys

by F. X. Turk

I have a little "file for future use" item that seems relevant this week.  I hope this will take up neither more than an hour of my time nor more than about 3 minutes of your time: the next time someone under 40 tells you about what a rotten church we all have here, please direct them to this piece of journalism from the National Review.  On the one hand, it's about something completely different than the problems of being a Christian church in a society which is insufferably Middle Class.  On the other hand, it is talking about the exact same problem and solution in a different context.

I bring it up because someone who is bucking to be a famous malcontent along the pedigree of the young and pretty Jefferson Bethke has written an essay getting a lot of "yeah, bro," comments concerning the idea that the church is something that is not a club and therefore he's leaving it for something else

(which I guess is supposed to be better, but he doesn't really say what it is or how it is better).  What always bothers me about these young fellers is that it seems really obvious to me that they think they are the first ones to come up with these ideas, the first ones who are going to strike out on their own like Hermie and Rudolph into a harsh and unforgiving world of Bumbles and Misfit Toys, and the first ones who will finally, finally, finally live the way Jesus intended people to live.

The biggest reason this bothers me is NOT that they are dissatisfied with the English-speaking church.  I think that the whole parcel of English-speaking churches is, by and large, disappointing for quite a laundry-list of reasons which all boil down to really one root cause: human beings.  Once you put two human beings together for anything to accomplish anything, the results are all of a sudden disappointing -- especially to the next 1 or 2 human beings who walk by and start auditing the results.

The bother comes from the idea that somehow we have finally found a group of fellas who are either more sanctified or more mature than anyone else has ever been, and these are the guys who are really ready to get down to the dirt of the thing and suffer for Jesus the way the NT says to suffer for Jesus.  And these guys are not yet 30 and not yet on the other side of the first time their circle of Jesus friends come up short against what's best next in their local community (which is to avoid saying it this way: "these guys haven't been pastors long enough to find out that every single person on earth is a disappointment, and every single church is populated with disappointing people, and those people are their own special kind of burden to carry").

What I think these guys need to do is not to read or to write a book.  They don't need to form another parachurch organization or a network of fellow disaffected young bucks who can't do church "like that" anymore.  They definitely do not need to start a podcast or a YouTube channel so that they can aggregate (again) all the ignorance of the internet to solve their problem.

Rather what they need to do is to re-read the letters of Paul to the churches he planted and the pastors he left behind to help these people to know Jesus and to love one another.  They need to know what is means to teach sound doctrine and also what accords with sound doctrine.  They need to learn how to come not for the sake of glory from other people, not for the sake of filthy gain, but to come as gentle and nurturing parents who toil night and day in order to be no burden themselves but to preach the Gospel.  And they need to stop, immediately, thinking that when they are finished they are going to end up looking like anything other than what faithful men who do this always look like: in disrepute. They should look hungry, thirsty, poorly dressed, persecuted, slandered, and the scum of the earth.

And it would probably serve them well to remember that the guys they think have completely blown it started exactly where they are right now, but 20 or 30 or 40 years ago -- and this is how well they were able to do it.  We're all hoping you do better, but we all remember where we started 20, 30 and 40 years ago and what those guys whom we were disappointed in looked like.  Here's to you becoming a better class of scum, I guess.

Closing note: I have picked this post, for personal reasons, to be the page my Twitter page sends you to as my "home page." It explains almost everything you need to know about me and why I am mostly on hiatus these days and not blogging. However, if you want to know what I think about everything, if you click on the "centuri0n" label below [it's an internet handle which originated in the days of dial-up that sorta stuck], you can find all the stuff I ever wrote here at TeamPyro. Good luck and God Bless.

---

Gurnall on the "heroic impulse," and how it is not a good thing

by Dan Phillips

[I have been reading (and tweeting) Gurnall's classic, CHRISTIAN IN COMPLETE ARMOUR, reading the Logos edition. It's a great and rich book, based on Paul's section on the spiritual war and the armor of God in Ephesians 6. Its strength is not so much in its exposition of that passage as in Gurnall's wide-ranging, instructive, and admonitory treatment of Christian living.

[In this section he is riffing on Paul's command to "stand" (Eph. 6:14), developing it by unfolding and by contrast. Specifically at this point he's been warning of the dangers of leaving the place God has given you. I reproduce this subsection whole and unedited, except for breaking it up into paragraphs, and added bolding.

[I think you will see a lot of personal application, as well as a lot of warning that applies to boastful, chest-beating, big-talking celebrity pastors — and to those simply unwilling to take on the yoke of discipleship, submit to qualified elders and local church ministry, be taught and corrected, demanding instead to be the biggest frog in the pond.]

It is an erratic spirit, that usually carries men out of their place and calling. I confess there is an heroicus impetus, an impulse which some of the servants of God have had from heaven, to do things extraordinary, as we read in Scripture of Moses, Gideon, Phineas, and others.

But it is dangerous to pretend to the like, and unlawful to expect such immediate commissions from Heaven now, when he issueth them out in a more ordinary way, and gives rules for the same in his word; we may as well expect to be taught extraordinarily, without using the ordinary means, as to be called so. When I see any miraculously gifted, as the prophets and apostles, then I shall think the immediate calling they pretend to is authentic. To be sure, we find in the word, extraordinary calling and extraordinary teaching go together.

Well, let us see what that erratic spirit is which carries many out of their place and calling. It is not always the same; sometimes it is idleness. First, men neglect what they should do, and then are easily persuaded to meddle with what they have nothing to do. The apostle intimates this plainly, 1 Tim. 5:13: ‘They learn to be idle, wandering from house to house, and not only idle, but busybodies.’ An idle person is a gadder; he hath his foot on the threshold, easily drawn from his own place, and as soon into another’s diocese. He is at leisure to hear the devil’s chat. He that will not serve God in his own place, the devil, rather than he shall stand out, will send him of his errand, and get him to put his sickle into another’s corn.

Secondly, it is pride and discontent that makes persons go out of their place; some men are in this very unhappy, their spirits are too big and haughty for the place God hath set them in. Their calling, may be, is mean and low, but their spirits high and towering; and whereas they should labour to bring their hearts to their condition, they project how they may bring their condition to their proud hearts. They think themselves very unhappy while they are shut up in such strait limits; (indeed the whole world is too narrow a walk for a proud heart, Æstuat infœlix angusto limite mundi; the world was but a little ease to Alexander;) shall they be hid in a crowd, lie in an obscure corner, and die before they let the world know their worth? No, they cannot brook it, and therefore they must get on the stage, and put forth themselves one way or other.

 It was not the priests’ work that Korah and his accomplices were so in love with, but the priests’ honour which attended the work; this they desired to share, and liked not to see others run away with it from them; nor was it the zeal that Absalom had to do justice, which made his teeth water so after his father’s crown, though this must silver over his ambition. These places of church and state are such fair flowers, that proud spirits in all ages have been ambitious to have them set in their own garden, though they never thrive so well as in their proper soil.

In a third it is unbelief: this made Uzzah stretch forth his hand unadvisedly to stay the ark that shook, which being not a Levite he was not to touch. See Numb. 4:15. Alas! good man, it was his faith shook more dangerously than the ark; by fearing the fall of this, he fell to the ground himself. God needs not our sin to shore up his glory, truth, or church.

Lastly, in some it is misinformed zeal: many think they may do a thing because they can do it. They can preach, and therefore they may; wherefore else have they gifts? Certainly the gifts of the saints need not be lost any of them, though they be not laid out in the minister’s work. The private Christian hath a large field wherein he may be serviceable to his brethren; he need not break the hedge which God hath set, and thereby occasion such disorder as we see to be the consequence of this. We read in the Jewish law, Exod. 22, that he who set a hedge on fire, and that fire burnt the corn standing in a field, was to make restitution, though he only fired the hedge, perhaps not intending to hurt the corn; and the reason was, because his firing the hedge was an occasion of the corn’s being burnt, though he meant it not.

I dare not say, that every private Christian who hath in these times taken upon him the minister’s work, did intend to make such a combustion in the church as hath been, and still sadly is among us. God forbid I should think so! But, O that I could clear them from being accessory to it, in that they have fired the hedge which God hath set between the minister’s calling and people’s. If we will acknowledge the ministry a particular office in the church of Christ,—and this I think the word will compel us to do,—then we must also confess it is not any one’s work, though never so able, except called to the office. There are many in a kingdom to be found, that could do the prince’s errand, it is like, as well as his ambassador, but none takes the place but he that is sent, and can shew his letters credential.

Those that are not sent and commissionated by God’s call for ministerial work, they may speak truths as well as they that are; yet of him that acts by virtue of his calling, we may say that he preacheth with authority, and not like those that can shew no commission but what the opinion themselves have of their own abilities gives them. Dost thou like the minister’s work? Why shouldst thou not desire the office, that thou mayest do the work acceptably? Thou dost find thyself gifted, as thou thinkest, for the work, but were not the church more fit to judge so than thyself? And if thou shouldst be found so by them appointed for the trial, who would not give thee the right hand of fellowship?

There are not so many labourers in Christ’s field, but thy help, if able, would be accepted; but as now thou actest, thou bringest thyself into suspicion in the thoughts of sober Christians, as he would justly do, who comes into the field, where his prince hath an army, and gives out he comes to do his sovereign service against the common enemy, yet stands by himself at the head of a troop he hath got together, and refuseth to take any commission from his prince’s officers, or join himself with them: I question whether the service such a one can perform, should he mean as he says, which is to be feared, would do so much good, as the distraction which this his carriage might cause in the army would do hurt

[William Gurnall and John Campbell, The Christian in Complete Armour (London: Thomas Tegg, 1845), 202–203.]

---

The Main Melody

by Frank Turk

This is a very good piece by @RevKevDeYoung http://t.co/AbwRs4143b But I have a suggestion about it, which will appear at TeamPyro
— ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (@Frank_Turk) February 6, 2015

First of all, Nice to see all of you.  Long time no see.  Can't wait for the audio from the conference to be up so you can see what you missed.  If you profit from it, that conference was offered for free by Copperfield Bible Church, and you should contact them to see how you can support their ministry to you and the rest of the interwebs.

OK, so Kevin DeYoung made a post that resembles something said long ago, and I endorse What RevKev wrote completely.  But: I have something to add.

I endorse the idea that joining a church is not merely coming and sitting, and that there is something sacrificial in becoming members of one body.  I don't just endorse it: I think I am not interested in the opinions of anyone who is not attempting it in some meaningful way.

What concerns me is this: the part "you personally need to join" is the harmony line in the spiritual song.  The main melody is this: "the church must welcome in believers."

I'm not going to unpack that for you except to say this: You can't read the first letter to the Thessalonians and not get the feeling that even under persecution, it would have been great to live with those people.  Your church ought to be the same way.  You ought to be making it that way.

---

Some Here, Some There — January 9, 2015

by Dan Phillips

Here we go. Remember, this is likely to receive updates through noon, TX time.

• Here's a thoughtful dad's-eye review of the recent Disney musical Into the Woods. Unfortunately it's a Roman Catholic rather than Christian perspective, but still instructive.
• I just saw, and loved, Through The Eyes of Spurgeon. Great film, joy to watch. I recommend it heartily.
• Only two nits would I pick. One is, I didn't love the suggestion that Spurgeon was bipolar. It struck me as anachronistic and, as one who knew well someone afflicted with that disorder, not a good fit.
• The other: I didn't love the suggestion that "Bishop" Vinter had lied to Spurgeon to get him to preach the first time. So I've put up the story in Spugeon's own words.
• So here's another step in America's march towards an Are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been-a-Bible-believing-Christian? society: Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran fired (no pun) for being a known Christian.
• Kevin Bauder has been doing a series on The Gospel Coalition, noting the oddities in its actual alliances and shunnings. Most recently, he notes its embrace of charismaticism. Bauder notes that "charismatic theology leads to some truly vicious extremes, a tendency that produces two other problems. The first is that even the more moderate charismatics (who may personally repudiate those extremes) seem unable to apply any sort of theological brake to charismatic thought as a whole. The second is that charismatics tend to embrace extreme figures on the basis of their shared charismatic experience." I do believe he's playing our song...or we, his. Either way, same song.

If Paul had said "forbid not to babble gibberish" or "despise not irresponsible hit-and-miss pop-offecies," Charismatics wld have a point
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) January 5, 2015

• Fred Butler attempts to bring logic, facts and consistency to some LGBT advocates. Hilarity ensues. Fred is as nuanced, careful, helpful and sensitive as ever.
• And as a Freddie Double-header, a wonderful little piece on scientific atheist scientist Sam "Science" Harris.
• N. T. Wright, always helpful. Blogger Rachel Miller notes that Wright has considerately wrapped up the essence of everything that's wrong with his theology and approach in one chapter-heading.
• Everyone knows I love DBTS and their blog, and respect and enjoy the writings of Mark Snoeberger. Not so much his recent defense of functionalism, as you will see by my pushback commentary and the good doctor's response.
• Apostate Church is apostate. (h-t reader Robert Sakovich)

• If you think you'll never hear a professed Christian trying to weekend-at-Bernie's the concept of shacking up... well, enjoy your stay in Neverland. Meanwhile here on Earth, Lyndon Unger begins a series on the subject with a robust affirmation of the sufficiency of Scripture.
• On that topic, seriously, openings for the Sufficient Fire Conference are dwindling and unlikely to last too long: so register, and come.
• Remember how the PCUSA jumped the sharked decades ago when it defrocked faithful witness J. Gresham Machen? And you know how relatively Biblically faithful people still choose to stay-in, you know, to be "witnesses"? You know what the PCUSA does to folks like that when they get too noticeable? Well... it defrocks them.
• Duh!
• Think of all the things the PCUSA doesn't care whether its ministers do. And it doesn't care if you disagree... as long as you keep the money coming in. But wait... shouldn't the Machen matter have taught us that?
• So: are you not feeling enough of a cowardly, rutted failure at personal witnessing? No? Here, let me help:

• You're welcome. (H-T David Murray)
• Thom Rainer offers a post with a looong meta on the topic of church announcements. Years ago a pastor-friend's announcements seemed to go on forever, and I commended shortening them since he was simply restating what was already in the bulletin. He did shorten them, and said the result was that nobody knew what was happening, because they were used to not reading their bulletins.
• One's tempted sometimes to say "We have a variety of meetings through the week. But you already know that. So let's pray and take the offering."
• As long as we're dealing with things-that-are-bring-reconsidered, here are Bob Hayton's thoughts on the Sunday Evening Service. Hayton leans against, but links to arguments of the opposing view.

"Elected because I selected" remains one of the most appalling, horrifying things I've seen a professed Christian say, ever.
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) January 5, 2015

---

Top Ten Pyro Posts of 2014

by Dan Phillips

It was a good year for Pyro, thank the Lord. Reports of our death were premature. Our traffic just about doubled over 2013, which is not too shabby for some "middle-aged white Reformed guys."

Lists! Everyone's doing it and it looks like fun. So I asked Frank, and he was kind (and smart) enough to figure out which were our top ten posts of 2014. Actually, he figured out the top 100, but I'm only listing the ten!

Note: these aren't necessarily the top ten written in 2014, though the second, third, fourth, fifth... well, some are.

Here you go:

1. Pornographic divination. Really terrific post by Phil from 2011; really upset a lot of people; really prescient. Pity it wasn't heeded more robustly.
2. John Piper and Mark Driscoll: Lessons Not Learned? Hated by the Top Men's egoguard, but others found value in it.
3. Seven revelations of Ferguson. Finding preventative answers in the Gospel and God's Word, not in endless fuelling of bitterness, resentment, self-pity, statism, and career victimism. Yet Bryan Loritts says (white) evangelicals are silent on such matters, and no one challenges him. Ditto Frank Turk's powerful posts on the subject.
4. Truth worth dying for? Anyone? Bueller? Today, anyway? About the vital nature of truth, and the airy chatty indifference of professed leaders in dealing with truths for which our theological forefathers actually and literally died.
5. Some here, some there —” September 12, 2014 (special #TGCBlockedParty edition). More fun than Bibley types should be allowed to have. Yet have it, we did.
6. A. W. Pink: glorifying God by disobeying Him? This one continues to gather a trickle of angry attempted comments. Invariably they reflect no interaction with the post's contents, and can be reduced to "But he's A. W. Pink! He was a great man, because: books! How dare you! You're guilty of horrible sins!"
   
7. The most offensive verse in the Bible. This actually is our most popular post, ever, if I'm reading the stats right. It's been used by Dr. Georgia Purdom of AIG, reprinted, and noised about. Even some whose official position is that we don't exist in any significant way noted it, which is nice. For my part, it just feeds my slow-coming conclusion that I can never predict a post's impact. This one just bubbled up and was easy to write, and quickly written. Other posts that I was sure would have a far greater impact fizzled with a muted pop. Thank God for the uses others have made of it.
8. Of leprechauns, mermaids, and "loving homosexual couples." Biblically cutting through the gooey squish of modern religious thought.
9. Answering Todd Friel about the emblematic charismatic Michael Brown. 
10. Pyromaniacs: Some here, some there — September 5, 2014. Not sure why; maybe it was The Elitists' Crisis Management System flowchart?

Thank you all for reading. We appreciate you, and we're looking forward to meeting some of you in person for the first time in a few weeks!

---

A word of advice, young feller

by Dan Phillips

Since age is a matter of math, and not maturity, I qualify as an old guy. It comes with lots of aches, lots of pains, and lots of regrets. I figure there have to be some perks to it — one of which is the right to issue sagacious lectures to yoots.

Like the one that follows.

A while back, a young feller doing a sort of intern ministry in a church confided to me, a visitor, that he felt like some people were despising his youth (cf. 1 Tim. 4:12). Without even having to think, I replied that looking back I think the problem was that people didn't despise my youth nearly enough.

Here's the thing: when you're young, often matters look a lot sharper simply because you don't know as much. The picture is crowded by fewer details, and far less experience. It's like looking at the most rudimentary map, on paper: this dot is where you are, that dot is where you're going, and there's just this line with a few jogs and curves connecting the two dots. How hard can it be? Enough with the planning and providing and deliberating — let's go!

Take this satellite shot of a secret fishing place I've known for decades.

The trail is off in the trees to the right. The lake is on the left. As you look at this shot, you think, "Should be easy as pie. Just leave the trail, head straight west, and bang, you're there." Yeah, except no. For one thing, there is no trail to this lake. For another, no sign says where to leave the main trail. For yet another, the trail is in tall pine trees. No landmarks are visible from the trail, indicating where the lake is. What's more, the whole trek is through pine trees, over shifting boulders, through scratching bramble, and off into another little forest.

Also, the terrain is much more rugged and uneven than it looks in the picture. The rocks are a lot more challenging, the trees a lot thicker and more blinding. It's a rough slog, and what really is easy is to shoot too high or too low — and once you do that, you don't know which you've done. Is the lake further up, through brambles and bushes? Or is it back down, over rocks and between trees?

"Wow," you say, "it doesn't look like that at all. It looks flat, straightforward, simple. How do you know all that?"

Because I've been there. Again and again, since my father took me probably 45+ years ago. I've made all those mistakes, and I've finally worked out a system.

Everything looks easier on paper, and let's be honest: to a young guy, most things still are on paper.

The "plus" of the clear-eyed, goal-oriented, let's-go-get-'em perspective of yoots is that old guys can get bogged down in the process. They (we) can get overly concerned with nuts and bolts and details, and they can lose sight of the objective — lose sight of it, and, buried under the necessities, lose the joy and excitement and insistence of it. This makes young guys lose patience with old guys, and sometimes provokes them to over-correct. They may bellow "Blast the details! You sit and figure! I'm going!" The old guys shake their heads, roll their eyes, and get back to listing and calculating, or maybe just to shoring up and maintaining.

The Gospelly truth of the matter — as I have preached and written at length — is that we need each other. The young man who impatiently sets out to find a church exclusively made up of and led by young people is a fool, to be blunt about it. But the old folks who dismissively wave aside youthful enthusiasm and energy are equally foolish, and shortsighted to boot. (Cf. Proverbs 20:29 for both.)

The solution to this divide is the same as the solution to racism: a strident and resentful sense of victimhood and entitlement!

Hah, just seeing if you're still awake and thinking. No, of course the solution literally and simply is the Gospel, and the graces born of the Gospel — graces of love and patience and forbearance and compassion and humility and longsuffering-without-acting-like-you're-suffering-all-that-long-or-all-that-much.

Now I speak often to the older folks, urging them to welcome and hear the young, not to exclude them. This time I want to target the young. I will remind you (as I did the young man mentioned earlier) that there's a reason why God named the leading office in church "elder" and not "younger." There's a reason why respect for your elders isn't just a 1950s value, it's a Biblical value (Leviticus 19:32; Proverbs 16:31; 1 Peter 5:5). For the sake of this discussion, I will assume (charitably) that you have things to say that the older folks in your church need to hear.

So how will you make it easier for them to hear what you have to say, with unpursed lips and unraised eyebrows? Simple. Three steps.

1. Introduce yourself to them all, learn their names, get to know them as people. Don't stand off in your youth-ghetto, until you want to come and ask for something. If you retort "But they stand off in their oldth-ghetto," I'd reply (A) yeah, real mature response, bro ("They did it first!"); and (B) they probably figure you'd be uninterested in them. They hear that message a lot in the culture. But we are supposed to be counter-cultural, where the culture sneers at God. So show them wrong. It really, really is to your benefit, as well as theirs and the church's.
2. Attend all the church meetings you can. Yep, you heard me. Think about it. That's where the life of the church happens. Learn what questions they're asking, what their concerns and needs are as expressed in prayer. Learn more about what your church is teaching and doing. Perhaps you can help. But more to the point, in this way show that you are part of the whole life of the church. You're not just some fly-by, strafing the church with opinions and demands and big ideas and projects, set to move off any second for marriage/college/job, leaving them to resume the heavy lifting — in addition to clean-up and repair work from your ideas. Otherwise, if you're not usually there when the family gets together, what's the natural conclusion? 
3. Volunteer profligately for service opportunities. You're young, you have time and energy. So use it to serve the Lord in your church. See, think about this: these older folks you may sneer at are the ones who built that church, under God. They paid for it all. They painted it, weeded it, maintained it, serviced it. They prayed for it, wept for and with it, bore with it, built it. They've hung in there through fads and movements and insurrections and dramatic comings and departures. They've borne the heat and pressure of the day. On unglamorous church work days, where there's yard-work or furniture moving or painting or suchlike, who do you think makes up the majority of volunteers? The under-thirty crowd? Or the over-fifty? And you just want to ride in, attend one service a week, never participate in fellowship, and tell them how they're doing this or that all wrong? Earn their respect before you insist on it. When they've seen you volunteer kid-watch detail, or painting, or weeding, it's a lot easier to hear your thoughts about the direction or messaging of the church.

I want to see youngers and olders listening to each other, loving each other, pooling their resources, and working together for the spread of the Gospel and the health of the local church.

This would help.

You're welcome. Er, y'know... dude.

---

In praise of small churches — and yet...

by Dan Phillips

I stumbled on an article titled Four Unexpected Benefits of a Small Church, by a church-member named Jonathan Schindler. He develops four "unexpected benefits and opportunities" that are "specifically related" to the smallness of his church, which has shrunk from 150 to the 70-90 range. They are:

1. Being in a small church has forced me to be in community.
2. Being in a small church has forced me to serve.
3. Being in a small church has forced me to reckon with diversity.
4. Being in a small church has offered opportunities I might not otherwise have had.

Most know that I on principle oppose megachurches, though in recent years I've grown a little wobbly. To be specific: Valerie and I got to talk to people serving at Grace Community Church, and were exposed to the many, many ways they leverage their greater resources to serve, disciple, love, care, and reach out. We agreed: "If you're going to be a big church, this is the way to do it."

That perhaps is a topic for another day; now let's get back to the small church, as Schindler describes it, and get to my own points. I would say three things, to get us going:

1. I basically agree with Schindler's enumeration, and could expand it myself. However...
2. If you want to make your pastor's blood run cold, and you want to set him to wondering whether he should move on, tell him you're really happy that your church is staying small, and signal that you'll be just as happy if it never, ever grows.
3. The content-to-stay-small attitude can be every bit as poisonous and God-dishonoring as the we-must-add-numbers-at-all-costs attitude.

Perhaps what I want to say can be best expressed as yet another list:

1. If you think that verses like Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 6:7; 12:24; 13:49; 19:20; Colossians 1:6; 1 Thessalonians 1:2-5, 8-9; 2 Thessalonians 3:1; 2 Tim. 2:9 and others all describe goals and values and events for a distant and fading past, as relevant to us today as tongues and prophecies, feel good about staying small.
2. If there aren't any unbelievers or mis-taught, untaught, immature believers living with ten miles of your church, feel good about staying small.
3. If the Gospel isn't anything you think your neighbors need, and you think that's okay with God, feel good about staying small.
4. If you feel like you have a note from God excusing you from finding ways to reach out with the Gospel, feel good about staying small.
5. If you haven't learned the Gospel well enough to explain it to anyone else, and you don't want to learn the Gospel well enough to explain it to anyone else, and you think that's okay with God, feel good about staying small.
6. If you just don't want to have to learn more names and think that's okay with God, feel good about staying small.
7. If you just don't want to have to accommodate people with different tastes, temperaments, and preferences than you, and you think that's okay with God, feel good about staying small.
8. If your pastor doesn't really preach anything anyone needs to hear, feel good about staying small.
9. If it doesn't matter to you that your church dies when the current crop of 50-to-80-year-olds dies, feel good about staying small.
10. If the sight of cults and false teachers growing like weeds while the truths you cherish lie unheard and unloved doesn't matter to you, and you think that's okay with God, feel good about staying small.
    
11. If you just don't want to have to deal with different skin-colors, and cultures, and accents, and ways of dressing, and hair-cuts, and jewelry, and educational level, and you think that's okay with God, feel good about staying small.
12. If you just don't want to have to deal with babies, and children, and teens, and singles, and people in their 20s and 30s who don't have it all together yet, and you think that's okay with God, feel good about staying small.
13. If you've got your church crafted exactly to mirror all your wants and your preferences and your styles and your opinions, and you don't want to risk any of that being challenged, and you think that's okay with God, feel good about staying small.

I want to be as plain as I possibly can be:

• Not one syllable of anything I just wrote should make any pastor or church member feel bad or inferior or self-reproachful about the bare fact of his church's relative smallness. It is perfectly possible for a church to be small precisely because it is being faithful to God (cf. 2 Tim. 4:1-4; cf. John 6:66).
• The only people who should feel a sting from what I just wrote are those content with not growing, not striving, not reaching out, not evangelizing, not making disciples, not penetrating his community, and not being impelled by love for God and man to get out of his comfort-zone — including saints who believe in outreach in theory, and think other people really should be getting on with it.
  
• I do not think a church should grow to be as big as it possibly can.
• Once a church gets beyond the point where shepherds can know sheep and where real fellowship is happening (Jn. 10:3, 11, 14; Galatians 6:2; 1 Thess. 5:11; Heb. 3:13; 10:24-25), they should plant other churches with their own apprenticed in-person on-site flesh-and-blood pastors. Then rinse, and repeat. Multiply Biblically-faithful, Christ-centered, Gospel-preaching, Bible-teaching churches.
• If a church is surrounded by unbelievers, and yet never or seldom baptizes converts, never or seldom takes in and loves and disciples not-there-yet believers, never or seldom grows outside of a narrow age/culture range, then every leader and every member should cry to God day and night for the spread of the Gospel, and that church should leave no legitimate stone unturned in its seeking for effective ways to reach out with the Gospel.

I think this should be the attitude of every member and every leader: If our church does not grow at all, God grant that it be despite our best and unceasing efforts and most earnest and continual prayers — and not ever greeted with smug complacency.

---

The sufficiency of Scripture and preaching

by Dan Phillips

Last week I launched a few Tweets on a theme I've hit in the past and mean to develop more in the near future. You may have heard of it: the sufficiency of Scripture.

The specific point I was making was that, if we really believed it, we'd start there, rather than making stuff up and then testing it by Scripture. Here was one of my tweets:

If we rly believed in th sufficiency of Scripture, we'd start with Scripture in the first place — not start somewhere else and "test by Scr"
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) May 2, 2014

Someone who doesn't follow my account (and thus understandably may not "get" where the shorthand of my tweet was coming from) responded, "So then why do we hear sermons in church instead of just Scripture readings?"

I take it that the idea is, if Scripture is enough, why say anything else? Why not just stand up and read it, and be good with that?

The question itself makes my brain itch. But the calmer DJP says "Teaching opportunity!" so, here we go.

The truth of the sufficiency of Scripture means that Scripture contains everything for which we need a word from God. That's what it does mean. It doesn't mean that, whenever we have a need, we whip out a Bible and read a passage at random without a moment's thought (before or after), and call it good.

The life of faith and obedience that the Bible (the Bible, the words in the Bible, the contents of what Scripture teaches) calls us to means that we read it, study it, understand it, think about it, and apply it.

So here's this "church"-thingie. What's it for? What am I supposed to look for in it? Who leads it? If I'm one of those leader-people, what am I supposed to do?

From what Scripture teaches me, I should start with the assumption that I don't have one clue, no idea whatever — unless I get that idea from Scripture itself. (If you're not clear on why that is, I can recommend something that goes to the literal heart of the matter in great Biblical detail.) So I consciously set aside my assumptions and biases and preferences, and go to the Bible, God's Word, believing that it contains everything for which I need a word from God.

So, let's fast-forward through decades of study and all, and get to the bottom-line: if Scripture is sufficient, then why do we preach sermons, in church?

Because that sufficient Scripture tells us to. See, for instance, 1 Timothy 3:2; 4:13; 5:17; and 2 Timothy 4:1-2; Titus 1:9.

See? That's how it works. It won't teach anyone who is unteachable — nothing does that. But it does give us everything for which we need a word from God.

Like to hear that opened up even further, live and in person? I know this conference that's coming up. We'd love it if you came!

---

Which you Allegedly Know

by Frank Turk

Dan did a great job yesterday pointing at the dog's breakfast which Donald Miller recently shared regarding his view of the local church.  However, because my hiatus is actually in large part about the local church in a very huge way for me personally, I have a few hundred words to add to the topic.

It has to get old eventually for anyone to claim they love Jesus and therefore the broad spectrum of all the people he saves BUT they can;t possibly spend time with the people God has called out together in any specific local church.  When I say "old," I mean like that vermin your cat killed and dragged under the sofa -- stinky, rotten, dead, and likely to make everyone sick.  What a complete pile of rubbish that somehow we get closer to Jesus by staying away from the object of his work and desire.

Let me start here, which is to say where the Apostle John started:

By this [that is: the sacrifice of Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit] is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4)

Right?  And just in case someone thinks that John means, "we ought to love them in theory and by some kind of epithetical formality, but not anyone personally," he also said this:

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3)

Not in talk or just with words, but in deed and truth.  That is: you should do something with this love you allegedly know and receive.

What that means is this: because we know what love is in Christ's death for us, it's a necessary consequence that we actually love people.  But look at the qualifier that John makes in that statement: "He loved us first."

He loved us FIRST.

Think about how that works.  The "first" means "before we were perfect and holy."  That is: God loved us while we were still sinners.  And John's call to love is to love "brothers" -- which here means "those who have seen God and know Him.

John's call, then, is primarily (though perhaps not exclusively) to love the people in the church you are in, without regard to how perfected they are right now.

That's what causes us to understand how fraudulent the claim that one can love Jesus but not any specific local church is: John says those who cannot do this are liars, and they have never seen God.

Because I am on hiatus, and I am really up to my armpits with things related to that, that's where I'm going to leave it with you: have you seen God?  Are you not a liar?  Then love the people God loves -- not in theory or merely with words, but truly, with your stuff, and with your person.

---

Donald Miller's "trinity" votes church involvement optional

by Dan Phillips

Good brothers Denny Burke and Todd Pruitt are writing about this post from Donald Miller in which is says he doesn't go to church much.

Why not?

Because: I, Me, My.

(That's shorter Miller, distilling a post [as our elders might have said] utterly innocent of the least allusion to Scripture.)

All I have to add is to say that you Pyro readers would have been already abundantly well-prepared to respond to Donald Miller decisively and finally, as well as to all the thousands of anonymous donaldmillers running about clutching their notes from "god" excusing them from doing what the actual living real God of Jesus Christ has called all believers to do for the last 2000 years.

"Freshen my memory," you ask? Sure, I'm here to serve. To pluck out just three:

Thinking like a slave

Thinking Biblically about church attendance, involvement, and membership

Why you need to be in church this Sunday

And then finally and specifically to Miller, there is the indispensable Open Letter to him by the indispensable Frank.

About all of these, and the use they could have been made of in a cooperative Christian blogosphere that was really about the issues concerning which we claim to be passionate rather than the petty maintenance of clubhouses membership lists, I have a great deal to say.

But not here, and not now.

ADDENDUM: Miller circles a bit around the theme of "intimacy with God," free-associating as if Scripture had nothing to say on the topic. But it does. Were anyone to read Miller, then work through sermons 17-24 on Proverbs 3 in this series, he might think they were preached in response to Miller's entirely erroneous notions... if it weren't for the dates on them.

---

"Too many old people"?

by Dan Phillips

Preaching through Titus was eye-opening and encouraging for me in a number of ways. One of those ways was in reflecting on the brute force of the text in 2:1-8 (opened up here, here, here and here). In that passage, Paul casts a net that takes in the whole age-range of the congregation. Pride of place goes to seniors, to older men and older women, who then have a ministry embracing younger women and men.

If we let it, this has real impact on how we will view our local assembly. Think it through with me.

Many folks in their 20s and 30s would walk into a church featuring a lot of people in their 40s and upward, and would be concerned. I understand that, and I don't entirely blame anyone for the reaction. That is, if they see a church predominantly tilted to the senior years, they will wonder if it has lost vision. They'll wonder if it's dying.

They will be concerned that this may be a church "married" to a single point on the calendar, rather than to the word of God — as if the 1950s (or, for that matter, the 1850s, 1750s or 1650s) constituted an especially sacrosanct dot on a timeline, and everything coming after that dot is suspect, or probably even evil. Not sharing that timebound devotion, they'll wonder whether they'd find a home in this family, or whether instead they'd find themselves also suspect and marginalized.

Those are legitimate concerns, in themselves. I'm not writing to challenge anyone for merely having those thoughts. In fact, I would agree that there's no excuse for a congregation to wed itself indissolubly to some imagined Post-Biblical Golden Age in any given culture. Paul reflected no such concern or fancy, nor did he encourage it; nor should we.

What's worse, I know what it is when a congregation has the smell of death about it. It's just very, very sad. It is as if you've stepped into a time machine, in a way. In another, it's as if you've stepped into a funeral parlor. There's a feel of sad resignation and frustration; all is ingrown and cliquish; arms are already closed, not open. What you're seeing is a slow death. They're huddled together waiting for the end... and it's on its way.

So I'm not writing to say that anyone should feel wicked and guilty if he feels a concern at the initial sight of a senior-weighted congregation. But I am writing to urge you not to stop with those first impressions. I am writing to suggest other thoughts you should also have, other questions you should also ask yourself, in forming a decision.

First, I'd suggest the alternative: you should really feel concerned if you don't see many people 40 and up! After all, the leaders are called elders for a reason (cf. Acts 20:17; 1 Tim. 5:17-19). While that term isn't necessarily bound to a certain number of candles on a birthday cake, the least you have to say is that it isn't negative towards the higher numbers! In fact, Scripture (as opposed to our culture) is pretty much univocally positive towards advanced age (see the second sermon linked above). To have walked with the Lord for a great many years is a good thing, it's a blessed thing, it's a valuable thing. In a healthy congregation, younger people will seek out and value their seniors in the Lord.

And if there are few or none to seek out, that isn't a good sign, other things being equal. It really, really isn't. It could mean that this is a ministry that doesn't wear well. It could mean that this is a ministry for the moment, not for the ages. It could mean that the leadership is every bit as tunnel-visioned as the Golden Agers mentioned above. It could mean that seasoned saints who've been a few blocks with the Lord have weighed it, and found it wanting.

The fact that mature folks are not drawn to a ministry is not a selling point to a Biblically-minded man or woman. If you walked into a church in a multi-ethnic neighborhood and found a large group of one skin-hue, you'd wonder. You should also wonder if a congregation has few or no seniors.

Ironic aside: I've no doubt that many yoots who would be (rightly) utterly repelled by any congregation they suspected of racism have no problem at all with one characterized by ageism.

What's more, a church lacking the very folks Paul focuses on first in Titus 2 lacks vital resources. Young men won't have accomplished, seasoned models to look up to, won't have those resources to draw on or be cautioned or matured by (to dangle a preposition). Young women won't have those mature ladies to help them navigate the rocks and corals of their own passions or cultural blinders. Better to set out across the desert without water, than to try to navigate the world without mature, older believers in an assembly.

Look at it Biblically and matured saints aren't a red light, a warning sign, or an obstacle. They're a gold mine.

Second, before you draw a conclusion, inquire. If you're not seeing many under-40s, is it indeed the church's short- or narrow-sightedness? Have they reached out to the younger folks within their number? Have they offered classes, seminars, fellowship opportunities that are sensitive to their needs and concerns? Are they planning any? Are they willing? Or have they just given up?

I'm saying don't assume. What if you were to learn that the pastor had launched a number of initiatives that simply weren't supported at the time — because the younger folks who were present at the time had other things to do, didn't want to commit, didn't like having to show up at a particular time, a dozen other things? Or because there weren't that many of them... yet the church was trying to serve them equally with everyone else? Or what if you learned that other outreaches/inreaches were either in the works, in the planning stages, or held in readiness for when there was actually someone to benefit from them? Would that change your impression? If so, how will you know unless you slow down, take some time, and ask?

Third, again before you draw a conclusion, remember the besetting sins of your own culture. It is a consumer-driven culture. To their great shame, Christians look at the church as they look at retail businesses. They expect to be catered to. They expect to bring nothing but demands and requirements, and they expect those demands to be met and seen-to, now, on their time-table. Of them it could well be said, "I came not to serve, but to be served." They don't expect to commit, give, build, sacrifice, stay. You walk in, a store doesn't have what you want the way you want it, you walk out. As with Wal-Mart, so with church. Same-same.


You know, exactly like the Bible says.

The opposite of.

And so fourth, having remembered that, ask yourself the question: What do you expect? What do you demand? Is it your attitude that you won't stay if you don't already see a bunch of people like you already carrying the burden and doing the work? How would that even happen, if everyone else had your attitude? Really, think it through: what if everyone else who visited that church was unwilling to stay until someone else did the work they're unwilling to do, to provide the ministry they're demanding to receive? Like you're doing?

And how would that even happen? How does that happen? How do you think churches grow, ever? Have you asked yourself that question?

Do you think they drop down out of Heaven, fully-staffed with volunteers committed to doing what you're unwilling to do? Do you think pastors simply pick up the phone, dial 1-800-FLOATER, and order a set of 45 trained, equipped, qualified, committed 25-year-olds to be delivered next Sunday to create the ministry of which you wish to be a passive beneficiary?

I recall a man telling a story some years ago that led me to respect (and like) him even more than I already did. He was a black brother, who'd begun attending this predominantly white church. After a time, he felt a bit lonesome and discouraged. It was still pretty much just him and his wife amid a sea of lighter shade of pale, and they sometimes felt like they stuck out. After a while of no change in the collective epidermal hue, he was tempted to leave, to give up.

But then Bill asked himself, "So, if I leave, what does the next black brother find, when he comes? Same thing I found. Someone has to be first, someone has to stay, someone has to build. Why shouldn't it be me?" And he stayed; and in time he was not remain alone. In fact, when the pastor left, the church called a black brother to pastor the church. In part, because Bill asked himself, "Why shouldn't I stay and build?"

Good question, eh?

Bibley, in truth, wouldn't you say?

---