Read Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor

I’m reading Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor by D.A. Carson.  I’m enjoying it and recently read this interview (pp. 8-9) of the author on the book.  This question is one worth meditating on:

Crossway Books and Bibles: What could young pastors learn from your father’s day-to-day struggles in ministry?

D.A. Carson: Faithfulness, the importance of regular Bible reading, long-term commitments, gospel centeredness, maintaining good relationships and avoiding bitterness, the place of prayer, and transparent care for the good of the people in your charge.

You can see a description and endorsements of the book here.

Here’s one endorsement:

“Read this book and be strengthened. You hold in your hands history, humor, and an amazing amount of wisdom for the Christian life (especially for pastors!).”
Mark Dever, Pastor, Capitol Hill Baptist Church

If you’re in Queens, New York this Sunday and read this blog…

… then you are probably a member of a local church.

… then come visit Glendale Baptist Church this Sunday if you’re not a member of a local church in the area or if it would be ok for you to come (I’ll be preaching from Jeremiah 31:29-40)

Is anyone who’s reading this in the area?

If you’re a pastor, you need to go to this conference.

If you’re a pastor, you need to go to this conference in Septemper: the 9Marks Weekender.

HT: Ben Wright

Mark Dever on Separation

Mark Dever, my pastor, reflects on separation and the accusation from some fundamentalists that he doesn’t separate (from ecclesiastical apostasy?).

He asks three questions to discern separation:

1.  Is ____________ a sin?

2.  Is this sin (mentioned in #1) a sin we should separate over?

3.  If so, what should this separation consist of?  What should it include and what should it allow?

Read the whole thing.

Church History Resources (MP3)

I’ve been enjoying reinforcing my understanding of the big picture of church history. I’ve used 3 resources so far in doing it and wanted to recommend them with a fourth resource that I plan to use later this year.

Resource #1 – Dr. Andy Davis (pastor of First Baptist Church in Durham NC) has 7 lectures overviewing the whole history with good notes available online as well.

1. The Early Church: Spiritual Conquest of the Roman Empire (30-325AD) – mp3/notes
2. Christological Controversies and Augustine (325-590AD) – mp3/notes
3. Medieval Christianity: Popes, Monks, Crusaders, and Scholastics (590-1517) – mp3/notes
4. The Reformation: Luther, Zwingli, the Anabaptists (1517-1559AD) – mp3/notes
   
5. The Reformation: Calvin, the English Reformation (1536-1603AD) – mp3/notes/outline of English Reformation
6. America: Puritans, Two Awakenings, Slavery (1609-1900) – mp3/notes
7. 20th century: Fundamentalism vs. Modernism, Missions – mp3/notes

Resource #2 – Lig Duncan does a survey of church history in one lecture. He does an excellent job. I tried finding it on the web but couldn’t.  I downloaded it but I don’t remember where.  It’s Lig’s talk at Capitol Hill Baptist Church a few years ago.  If anyone knows where that is please let me know.

Resource #3 – Capitol Hill Baptist Church has a one overview lecture of church history. The manuscript can be found here.

Resource #4 – There is a 200 page book by Christopher Catherwood called, Church History: A Crash Course for the Curious which I’m almost done reading and found it very rewarding and insightful in fresh ways.

Resource #5 – Capitol Hill Baptist Church has a whole 13 week course on church history with the teacher manuscript and class handouts online for churches to use.

Vile Self-Centeredness

I just finished reading Isaiah 36-39 and was struck by my resonating with a sinful attitude in Hezekiah’s life. Hezekiah proudly showed off his wealth/power to Babylonian emissaries. God rebuked him through the prophet Isaiah and told him that a future generation would be conquered by Babylon and all that he showed the emissaries will be taken. Then Hezekiah says to Isaiah, “The word of the Lord that you have spoken is good” (v. 8). Then Isaiah tells us the reason, “For he thought, ‘There will be peace and security in my days’” (v. 8). That is not a humble response. Hezekiah is relieved and feels safe since it won’t happen to him and he responds with false piety and reverence.

D.A. Carson comments on this:

When Isaiah the prophet tells him what will happen, the king does not repent of his arrogance, or seek forgiveness, or intercede with God.  The threatened judgment is slated for the future:  Hezekiah refuses to accept any deeply felt responsibility.  He piously comments, “The word of the LORD you have spoken is good” — while the writer comments, “For he thought,’Will there not be peace and security in my lifetime?’” (20:19).  Hezekiah has become a moral and strategic pygmy.”

I get mad sometimes to think he got away with this. Then I realize how much I’ve gotten away with because of God’s grace in Christ’s atoning work for me and my self-righteousness is exposed. But as I read Hezekiah’s story every year, I’m always struck by the same selfishness in my own soul. I can’t help but feel the same sinfulness that Hezekiah felt when feeling relief that the discipline for his sin would not be carried out in his lifetime. I know this is wrong and I want to not feel some sort of relief that it wouldn’t be carried out in my lifetime. But I don’t feel that brokenness. I feel self-centered relief. How am I supposed to respond? I think there should be brokenness and a humble petition to God for forgiveness. There should also be a plea that the Lord would not punish the future generation but me instead. There should also be a thankfulness if the Lord chooses to not punish me in my lifetime, but a God-centered, humble, and broken gratitude, not a self-centered, relieved gratitude. Lord, please help me to have a God-centered heart and not a PJ-centered one. In Christ’s name, Amen.

From the study

I wanted to share a thought I had from the study in preparation for my sermon this Sunday. [Sidenote: One of my best friends has a blog called "From the Study" which is really helpful for pastors and seminarians training to pastor and preach to read and check out.] The verse I was meditating on was Jeremiah 31:34 which says, “And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” So here’s the thought on the distinction between the new covenant and old covenant that should’ve been understood by those originally hearing/reading Jeremiah’s prophecy:

I found it interesting that as I’ve done a BibleWorks search on forgive/forgiving with sin/transgression/iniquity that there is no blanket statement like the one in the new covenant stated in Jeremiah 31:34 in the old covenant (Exodus-Deuteronomy). There are some statements on God forgiving sins of particular incidents, but no promise of forgiveness of all their sins with the tone of finality and wholeness found here. It is found in descriptions of God’s character [e.g. Exodus 34:7-8] but not declared to the people. After this new covenant declaration it seems to be declared a few more times in Jeremiah and then over and over again in the New Testament. This seems to be one of the distinctive points of the new covenant from the old covenant (the one given at Sinai), God will forgive the sins of his people, finally and wholly, in a way that while still living on earth before glorification they can know him in a way that not old covenant saints could.

Any thoughts?

I’m trying to post more but…

I’ve been trying to do more posts on this blog because I really profit from writing out thoughts and am encouraged by those who find it useful or edifying. I’m trying to do one post a day now.  I won’t be posting anymore this week on Driscoll’s multi-site defense because I got to focus on the sermon I’m going to preach this Sunday on Jeremiah 31:29-40 at Lake Avenue Community Church in Averill Park, New York. I’ll post tomorrow on overviews of church history that I’ve been aided by to grasp the sweep of church history from the close of the New Testament until today. It’s part of the Capitol Hill Baptist Church interest to know and love church history. Please pray for my sermon if you God puts that urge in you.

Multi-Site Observation #2 – There are differences between videos and apostolic letters written

Driscoll’s Biblical Reason #3 (to see all of his reasons click here):

The NT itself is a demonstration of leadership that is not necessarily local – which is a reason for possibly doing video. Paul writes letters because he is not present with the churches, or else he would not need to write the letter. He speaks to multiple congregations through the technology of his day, writing letters. (1 Cor. 5)

Biblical reason #3 for multi-site reminds us that Paul speaks to churches when not present. To Driscoll, this is one fact that helps validate video preaching. The New Testament was written to communicate (preach) to the churches when Paul was absent. Video serves the same purpose. If Paul were present he would not write the letter but preach to them. This is an example of using the technology of his day to speak to multiple congregations. A few comments: (1) again, the fact that Driscoll says Paul is speaking to many churches shows that Driscoll confuses “networks of churches” and “churches”; (2) Paul is functioning in an apostolic role and not merely a pastoral role. Driscoll says that he is functioning in an apostolic role as well, but this is where I wish he were more consistent. If he is functioning in an apostolic role, then he should do it over multiple churches, maybe a network of churches, but he shouldn’t do it and call that network of churches a single church the way he calls Mars Hill Church a church. It is numerous churches. Why not fulfill his apostolic role the way CJ Mahaney does with Sovereign Grace Ministries over a “family of churches”? (3) While there are certainly similarities/parallels between video preaching to many churches and writing a letter to many churches, there are also differences. Paul didn’t write a letter to the churches every week that took the place of the pastoral preaching/teaching of that congregation. Granted Driscoll doesn’t preach every Sunday to all the campuses, he does about 40 a year and I doubt the letters Paul wrote replaced 40 sermons/opportunities for the main teaching of the church at Corinth or Thessalonica.

Multi-site Observation #1: I Think Mark Driscoll Confuses “Church” and “Network of Churches”

To see Mark Driscoll’s defense of multi-site church go here. I’m interacting with his first two biblical reasons why a multi-site church is ok.

Driscoll confuses the idea of church and network. I doubt the assertion that many of the NT epistles were written to networks of churches. When it is written to more than one church, like Galatians, Paul uses the plural. When Paul writes to the Thessalonians and Corinthians (more than once to each), he uses the singular word “church.” So there are epistles originally written to networks of churches, but the words make that clear. In the Corinthian and Thessalonian epistles it can also be written to one local church, and I think that this is more plausible then Driscoll’s reading. When Paul is telling the church to deliver a man over to Satan was that a comment to one local congregation in the midst of a letter written to many congregations? I don’t think so. What Driscoll fails to point out is that the word church when used with a city is in the singular and when it refers to a region it is used in the plural. This may allow for his view of multi-site, but his 1^st biblical reason for multi-site is an assertion based on the low probability of his reading of the NT church situation (low probability from a Baptist point of view and not a Presbyterian point of view).

Driscoll’s second biblical reason for multi-site fails to ground multi-site justification. The fact that there were letters “written generally to multiple churches within some sort of network of churches because it is written to various local expressions/congregations” misses the point he is trying to establish. If it was written to “multiple churches” as Driscoll states, then it is not one church with many campuses but many churches with many campuses. Here he confuses again networks with churches. Driscoll appears to be reading “churches” as campuses and “network” as church on this point.