New D. A. Carson message (MP3)

It’s the third on 2 Thessalonians.  You can find it on the Carson audio page.  Please click the link to the bookstore to support the site!

Russ Moore on Multi-site church campuses

Question: Regarding Churches with multiple campuses, what keeps them from being separate churches and being autonomous?

Russ Moore on Multi-Campus Churches (on The Albert Mohler Program, 3/19/08, beginning at about 8:30, almost verbatim):

I’ve seen multi-campus minister handled really well because it’s very tightly controlled. What this church is doing is saying, “Yes we have many campuses all over the city but we consciously meet together for congregational business, for Lord’s Supper,” on a quarterly basis I believe this church does it. I don’t have a problem with that anymore than I have a problem with churches having multiple worship services and many churches do. I don’t think that is inherently wrong. I think that can be done and be done well. That’s a different scenario though, from a church that has campuses all over the country where there’s not any kind of geographical unity to the congregation. That I would say, “yeah, there’s a problem with that.” Local churches are local assemblies. They meet in certain places. But whether or not a congregation has multiple campuses, I do not think that the Bible prohibits that. As a matter of fact I think that could be a keep aspect of the church accomplishing its mission in the great commission. But again, another key to this: I don’t think that these churches ought to do away with the preaching of the word and by that I mean the physical presence of pastors who are preaching. So I would see something completely different between a church who has multiple pastors preaching in multiple places from a church that’s kind of outsourcing the sermons through video tape. Those would be two completely different issues for me.

My thoughts: Having heard that I see that it is a matter of degree between multiple services and multi campus churches much clearer. I don’t think Russ did a good job of answering how multi-campus services keep from being independent, autonomous churches. He alluded to it with the congregational meetings once every three months, but he did not tease that out. My pastor Mark Dever believes that churches should have only one service based on the definition of ekklesia meaning “assembly” in the Greek (see The Deliberate Church, 86-88). So the church is an assembly and when you have multiple services you have two assemblies and in effect, two churches. Because I don’t think all the members are at any of the church gatherings (Bible study, morning service, evening service), I’m at the place right now where I think the church should have one gathering a week where all the church is expected to come. At my church, since we have an expectation that our members come for both morning and evening services, I think (different than my pastor at this point) that we could do two-services in the morning and our single service in the evening, thus fulfilling our one congregational gathering every week as a local church covenanted together. I think a problem with the multi-campus church Moore commends is that they only meet as a local church/assembly once a quarter which is 4 times a year. That is at best unwise and at worst a distortion of what the church is to be. So on the whole, I disagree with Russ Moore’s view.

In regard to the multi-campus model Moore commends, my friend Justin makes two good points. It seems that multi-campus churches thrive off of one good preacher and use videos. If Moore commends that church for live preaching, why not just have multiple churches? That makes a lot of sense to me.

Goldsworthy on Biblical Theology for the church (text and audio)

From Russ Moore:

In the past several weeks, Southern Seminary has heard four lectures on appropriating biblical theology for the preaching, witness, and ministry of the church. Graeme Goldsworthy, retired lecturer in hermeneutics and Old Testament at Moore Theological College, just finished Gheens Lectures entitled “And Beginning with Moses and All the Prophets: Biblical Theology in the Church, the Academy, and the Home.”

The printed text of each of Professor Goldsworthy’s lectures can be accessed below:

Lecture One: The Necessity and Viability of Biblical Theology

Lecture Two: Biblical Theology in the Seminary and Bible College

Lecture Three: Biblical Theology and Its Pastoral Application

(HT: Moore to the Point)

You can also download the audio:

1. “The Necessity and Viability of Biblical Theology” (MP3)
2. “Biblical Theology in the Seminary and Bible College” (MP3)
   
3. “Biblical Theology and Its Pastoral Application” (MP3)

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Biblical Theology by Graeme Goldsworthy

I hope to hear this later this week by my favorite biblical theology teacher/author:

The necessity and validity of Biblical Theology, Graeme Goldsworthy at SBTS (mp3)

(HT: Beginning with Moses)

Multi-site church campuses

I’ve been doing some thinking about multi-service and multi-site campus churches during my internship here at CHBC.  I still have to work through the issues, but Mark Driscoll will be presenting the argument for multi-site churches at an upcoming conference.  One article says:

Mars Hill Church founder Mark Driscoll hopes to answer “the why” of multi-site churches – including why it’s biblical and historical – in a theological and apologetic discussion at the April event.

I hope to hear the audio message and think through the issues better from hearing Driscoll’s take since I’m hearing the argument for single-site single-service here at CHBC and it sounds right.

A new message by D. A. Carson on 2 Thessalonians

College Church Sermons 2008 (on 2 Thessalonians)

1. The Supremacy of Christ (left click to download) from 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. This was preached at College Church on the first Sunday of March 2008.
2. Waiting for the Last Time (left click to download) from 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. This was preached at College Church on the second Sunday of March 2008.

Here’s all D. A. Carson’s sermons that I could find.

3 Lessons I learned from the Internship Discussion

1.  Liberalism always starts with evangelism.

Now this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t evangelize.  We discussed how once you begin to cut the offensive parts or find ways to contextualize that subtly shift a part of the gospel message that one may be quickly on the road to rationalizing the content of the message.

2.  Good contextualization always makes the offense of the gospel clearer.

This flows from the first lesson.  We need to contextualize to the people we seek to reach.  But we should contextualize so that they understand clearly the glory of God in the gospel which in some ways will be attractive to the hearer and in some major ways be offensive to the hearer.  At the end of the day, to “successfully” (read: “faithfully”) contextualize you need to clearly communicate the whole gospel message to the hearer.

3.  Tell the prospective members in a membership class that if they remove from this church to a church that does not preach the gospel that they will be excommunicated and their resignation will not be received.

This comes in the discussion of what to do with members who leave and are not faithful to keeping their covenant of joining a like-minded church.  If we know that the church they transfer to is dangerous to their soul because they do not preach the gospel, the pastors and church are still responsible to care for this member.  We will give an account to God.

New D. A. Carson MP3 audio sermon

1. The Supremacy of Christ (left click to download) from 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. This was preached at College Church on the first Sunday of March 2008.

To see all of the Carson audio I could find, please click here.

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Mark Driscoll on the Regulative Principle

Mark Driscoll taught a lesson answering this question: “Do you believe that the Scriptures not only regulate our theology but also our methodology? In other words, do you believe in the regulative principle? If so, to what degree?

Normative principle (Do things you want until the Scripture says no):

1. Strengths:

a. Sees the bible as principles and gives flexibility for methods.

b. Allows cultural contextualization

c. It treats gathered and scattered worship the same – same set of rules for life. When you live throughout the week you live by the normative principle (brushing teeth, wearing pants, driving cars – We don’t live at home saying I can’t do that unless the bible says so)

2. Weaknesses:

a. It can go too far and allow to pagan syncretism

b. It can make our enjoyment and not God’s pleasure the object of our worship

c. It can elevate unbiblical elements to the point where they squeeze out biblical elements

Regulative principle (Do not do something until there is Scriptural warrant to do so):

1. Strengths

a. It seeks to define worship by God and his Word

b. It tries to honor the Bible and hold it in high esteem

c. It draws a ditch between the world and the church keeping out syncretism, worldineess and paganism out.

2. Weaknesses

a. It separates gathered and scattered worship flipping the switch as soon as you gather as if Jesus is not Lord over all of your life – that is very peculiar

b. It’s not sufficient – it doesn’t answer the questions about announcements, technology, and seating.

c. It becomes legalistically applied making goofy rules sometimes with extreme applications that are not in the bible (like no instruments or like Psalms only worship)

Mark Driscoll says he does both.

Mark’s principles:

Missional worship principle: “All of Christian life is ceaseless worship of God the Father, through the mediatorship of God the Son by the indwelling power of God the Spirit, doing what God commands in Scripture, not doing what God forbids in Scripture, in culturally contextualized ways for the furtherance of the gospel when both gathered for adoration and scattered for action in joyous response to God’s glorious grace.” (worship as we perceive it biblically at Mars Hill Church)

I’ll post some of my thoughts later on.