Avoiding Evil

Once Tolliver’s message ended we moved to Mike Green, the current president of the Missouri Baptist Convention. He seems like a nice guy but his ability to present a message is a bit lacking. I don’t really want to be mean or come off sounding as if I’m attacking the guy, but I think it should be said that he has officially given one of the most inconsistent and incoherent message I’ve ever heard. Like I said, I’m not trying to be mean-spirited, I am simply being honest. Our convention continually talks about how we should be centered on Scripture. We just spent the entire pastors conference learning about the pastor and biblical theology and how pastors should be ministers of the Word of God. Then the president of our convention gets up on stage, very briefly refers to a Bible verse and then launches into story after story after story. I’m sorry, but that isn’t preaching. That isn’t even a good presentation of a message in any setting. I’m not sure if he is attempting to be more post modern or if he was just trying to relate to the crowd in some way. There was never a solid point. He briefly referred to a verse in Matthew, said we need to be Kingdom focused churches and then told stories. After every story he would say, “We need to be Kingdom focused churches” and then move right into another story. If someone were to ask me, “What was Mike Green’s message about” I wouldn’t be able to tell them. “Oh something about being a Kingdom focused church or a Kingdom growing church or something like that. I was there but I don’t really know…” I took notes with all the other speakers but I couldn’t follow Mike Green’s message enough to even take notes. I wrote down one line with Mike Green’s message, “We need to be focused on Kingdom Growth”. What does that mean? What is Kingdom growth? What does God say about it? Who knows, cause all we got in the message after that was fun stories that I can’t remember and I didn’t write down. I may have laughed at a few of the stories and I’m sure I enjoyed a few as well, but I still can’t remember them. That style of message isn’t effective. It leaves the audience confused about what the speaker was even talking about because there was no continuity to his message.

The part that really bothers me is that many people around me were clapping and saying amen and carrying on about stories. Why do we make much of someone up there telling us fun stories that make our hearts feel warm and fuzzy but have no depth and no solidarity in the Word of Truth we claim to love? I can’t understand how a convention can say it is so focused on Godly Biblical preaching and then sit there and listen to that particular message from Mike Green. He’s a Godly man and loves Jesus I’m sure, but there was something seriously wrong with his message tonight. I am dumbfounded how anyone in our convention can look at how he moderates a meeting and how he presents a message and say “this man should be the president of our convention.” The honest truth…he shouldn’t be. He should be a pastor. He should be a D.O.M. He should continue his calling in ministry, but I don’t personally believe he is qualified to be the president of the Missouri Baptist Convention.

We did not get an early start this morning so we didn’t make it to the Pastor’s conference as early as I would have liked.  The theme of the Pastor’s conference was Building Healthy Churches.  Mark Dever, Matt Schmucker, and Jonathan Leeman are all part of 9Marks ministies.  At 9:00 a.m. Matt Schmucker’s message was “Display God’s Gospel by Listening to His Word”.  At 9:40 a.m. Mark Dever spoke on “Preaching and Biblical Theology”.  When 11:00 a.m. rolled around Jonathan Leeman spoke on “Conversion & Evangelism”.  Those are the three messages I was most interested and also the three I missed.

I arrived for Matt Schmucker’s message on “Membership/Discipline” and for Mark Dever’s message on “Leadership”.  I also stuck around for some of the Q&A which was quite interesting as well.

Schmucker’s message was focused on discipline that is only effective within a church with a proper and meaningful membership.  He said churches need to guard the front door.  We need to stop allowing just anybody to be members and start requiring that only Christians become actual members of our churches.  We can allow anyone to come to our church, but we should only allow actual Christians to become members and to be Baptized and to partake in the Lord’s Supper and business meetings.  We should offer church membership classes to show people what they are getting into if they join our church and we should have a church covenant that should be signed by those wishing to be members.  We should stop being churches that have 900 members on roll and only 400 showing up.  Only when we have such high standards for church membership can we discipline our members.

Schmucker also mentioned that we must stop and think before baptizing and admitting anyone into membership, especially children.  I thought this was an interesting concept.  Stop and think.  Is this person really saved? Sometimes that is not something that can be known right away.  We would have to watch their lives, see how they live and if any fruit is produced in their lives before we could be certain as to whether or not we should baptize them.  Later on Kendall and I were going down to the exhibits when we heard an elderly couple walking around saying “I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t baptize people immediately”.  Is this how we get so many lost people in our church membership? In many of our churches getting people baptized and into membership is as easy as working a computer mouse, point and click.  But should it be?  Should we not be more meticulous in who we allow to become members of God’s church?  Isn’t it an abomination before God to allow a lost person to be a member, vote, take the Lord’s Supper, and call themselves a Christian in our midst?  Doesn’t that dishonor the name of Jesus and cheapen his sacrifice?

Mark Dever’s message dealt specifically with leadership.  He feels that churches should have elders, deacons, and a congregation and each has their own function.  The elders (pastor, bishop, overseer) primary focus should be the ministry of the Word.  Pastors should protect their schedule and devote themselves to the study of God’s word and to prayer.  There are plenty of other people in the church that can do what all the little jobs the pastor is forced to do that can often distract him from his main priority, the Word of God.  He also mentioned that churches should have several elders, including men who are not on staff.  This group of men should continually meet together to discuss the direction of the church and deal with the discipline of the church.  The deacons are considered servants.  They should organize various ministries in the church and report to the elders.  The deacons should care for the physical needs of the congregation and by doing so they will be supporting the ministry of the word by taking care of many of the distractions for the pastor.  The congregation itself has many jobs as seen in Matt. 18, 1 Corinth 5, Gal. 6, and 2 Cor. 2:6-8.  Discipline is a major part of that job.

I enjoyed what I heard from the pastors conference.  I also got a free book by Mark Dever called “What is a Healthy Church” and a free CD from 9marks that is a leadership interview sampler.

This afternoon I was reminded of a class I took in college, which stirred a desire in me to go hunting for some of the information I learned in that class. I have tried to keep most of my papers and class work that I did in both my undergraduate and graduate classes. In our Discipleship and Evangelism class we read a book called “The Master Plan of Evangelism”. Churches tend to desire a well structured strategy or plan for evangelism, so the purpose of the book was to present eight different guiding principles that Jesus used in evangelism. Since we’ve recently been discussing evangelism I thought this might be an interesting addition to the subject. I’ll simply summarize the eight guiding principles of evangelism from the life of Jesus according to “The Master Plan of Evangelism”. The focus of the book is helping people who are leaders in the church realize that they need to be about the business of making more leaders. It’s the idea of multiplication rather than addition.

1. Selection - Jesus started by calling men to follow him, which revealed that his concern was not with programs to reach people, but with men whom the people would follow. Jesus chose men as his method for winning the world to God. The genius of Christ’s strategy was not for him to reach the masses of people by himself, but for him to devote himself to these few disciples, teaching them to be like him so that they would all go out into the masses of people and spread the good news.

2. Association - Jesus made a practice of being with these men, letting his disciples follow him, and by doing so he was teaching them everything they needed to know. It is vitally important that our association is with Jesus, but it is equally important that leaders in the Church spend some personal time with others, building more leaders who will go out and build more leaders. This will ensure the message of the gospel will be spread to all nations.

3. Consecration - Obedience was required. Following Jesus meant that they had to give their whole life to him in absolute submission to his sovereignty. If the disciples were going to be fit vessels of service, they were going to have to pay the price, which is still true today. Just as Jesus wanted his disciples to be obedient to him, he set the tone and example of obedience by being obedient to the father. The church needs leaders who will lead God’s people by example, being completely obedient to God, showing and teaching it’s members how to be obedient.

4. Impartation - Jesus was constantly giving of himself. He came to serve, not to be served. The disciples saw this practiced before them in many different ways, and they saw how the master denied himself many of the comforts and pleasures of the world and became a servant. The disciples were to give as freely as they had received and love as he had loved them, in doing this, showing this love to the rest of the world, the multitudes would know that the gospel is true. Leaders in the church should be completely willing to give of themselves, and become servants among the people, to again lead by example. It is also noted that the Spirit of God is the one who enables one to carry on the redemptive mission of evangelism. We must be willing to be led by the Spirit.

5. Demonstration - Jesus led by example. When his disciples were with him they were able to see him pray to the father, they saw him use scripture, preach, heal, and do a variety of other things that were completely open for the disciples to see and learn. Practically everything that Jesus said and did had some relevance to their work of evangelism, either by explaining a spiritual truth or revealing to them how they should deal with people, and in fact the disciples were absorbing this wisdom without knowing that they were being trained to evangelize. It is a responsibility for the people in the church to live their lives in a way that those watching learn spiritual truth from it every moment, in everything they do. Knowledge is not enough. We are what we do, not just what we say.

6. Delegation - In his foreknowledge Jesus knew that he would not be in the world for very long, so he continued to build his ministry for the time when his disciples would have to take over his work. There came a point in time where the disciples had seen enough and needed to put into practice what they had learned so Jesus sent them out into the world to do what he had been training them to do. Jesus warned them of the hardships that they would face, and of the people that would reject their message, in doing so he made a point to them that this mission was not different in principle or method from his own and in view of this he began to give them his own authority and power to do his work. He didn’t send them out alone but in pairs of two providing needed companionship between the disciples. Jesus did not leave this work of evangelism subject to human impression or convenience, rather he has commanded it to be done. Just as it was then it is now, evangelism is not an optional accessory to our life, it is the heartbeat of all that we are called to be and do. It is not enough for this to be expressed as an idea, and it is not enough for this to be knowledge, but it must also be action. The church should provide evangelism assignments and instructions, and expect them to be carried out. There needs to be not only a time for teaching and learning but a time for putting into practice the thoughts and principles that are learned.

7. Supervision - Jesus did not just send his disciples out and forget about them, he made it a point to meet with them following their tours of service to hear their reports. He kept after them constantly, giving them increasingly more attention as his ministry on earth came to a close, and in doing this he continued to help them improve as they grew in knowledge and grace. In the same way the leaders in the church should watch over those who are going out to do the work of God. There is no point in training someone to do a job and then just letting them go and forgetting about them, we must keep them constantly learning and sharp at what they are doing, and bring them to full maturity.

8. Reproduction - . The whole purpose of everything Jesus did with his disciples in training them and teaching them, and choosing them is that he expected them to reproduce. His original intention for them was to produce his likeness in them so that they would go out and produce that in others, all of which would create a cycle that would reach the whole world. Jesus revealed that the whole purpose for not only himself but his disciples was to bear fruit. He ultimately sums it up in The Great Commission, saying that the church is to make disciples of every nation. This is where we are today, still left with the command to bring the gospel to every nation, making disciples that will carry on the work of Christ. Again we must go back to the question this book asked in the beginning, do our efforts fulfill this great commission and are there people who continue the work of Christ through our ministry?

In theory this book reveals an idea that shouldn’t fail since it is taken straight from the life of the greatest strategic man who ever lived. For us to take the bible, examine Jesus’ life and strategies and do what he did should be an unfailing plan of evangelism. Jesus has not only commanded us to evangelize but he has shown us and provided the means by which we can do it. Just as the disciples followed Jesus, and learned from his commands putting them into practice, we also should view what Jesus has done, learn how he has done it, and then put into practice what we have learned.

So is this it? Should the church continually be discipling people and making leaders who will also disciple more people and make more leaders who will also disciples more people and make more leaders? That sounds like a good start. While the book does cover a strategic plan for evangelism itself, it really lacks the element that we’ve been discussing on the blog, which is how should we specifically do the act of evangelism.

I hate to admit it, but I watch Boston Legal.  There are a lot of different reasons why I watch this show, but the most significant reason is I like to ponder the moral, ethical, and political quandaries they bring up in many of the court cases presented on the show.  For the most part Boston Legal makes conservatives look like idiots with mad cow disease and liberals are portrayed as the most sensible, logical, and tolerant people.  Allan (played by James Spader) always takes on the role of the sensible liberal.

This week Allan took a court case involving a young teenage girl with aids who wanted to sue her school for teaching abstinence only.  She was a 15 year old girl who had sex with her boyfriend (things got out of hand she says) and then she found out that she was HIV positive from that encounter.  She felt that the school itself was most at fault and she only took a small part of the blame in this.  Her school was teaching abstinence only in order to get government grants and she thought that the school should be required to teach safe sex education and that this safe sex education would have saved her life.

The question is, was the school at fault for causing this girl to suffer with HIV.  The obvious, logical answer is NO!  Regardless of what the school teaches in regards to sex, this girl was ultimately responsible for her actions.  If she wanted to have sex then it should have been her responsibility to find out all of the facts about sex before diving into it.  First of all, sexual education is readily available to teenagers and I find it hard to believe that this 15 year old girl would have been so naive as to now know that unprotected sex spreads disease.  Secondly it is her choice and she should be held accountable for that choice, instead she was attempting to blame someone other than herself for having aids.  She didn’t blame or sue the boyfriend who gave her the disease, she sued the school.  Thirdly, if she is going to sue anyone for blame other than herself then it should have either been the boyfriend for not telling her that he had HIV or it should have been her parents.  Sexual education should be something taught in the home and these parents should have been responsible as well.

Instead she passes the blame to the school and the school is only teaching abstinence only education in order to get a government grant and so ultimately it is the evil conservative religious finantics in government who are at fault for this 15 year old girl having aids.  Give me a break.  She made the choice to have sex.  It’s her fault.  Bottom line is that we don’t want to be held responsible for our own actions.

She won the court case and the school had to pay her 750,000 because they were at fault for giving this girl aids.  Ridiculous.

“So, if you were to die tonight…”

These are the opening words to what has become a widely used Christian pick-up line. In a perfect world, the conversation goes like this:

Christian witness: If you were to die tonight, do you know where you’d go?

Lost soul: I’m a pretty good person, so I think I’d go to heaven.

Christian witness: Really? Well have you ever lied/stolen/cheated/etc/etc?

Lost soul: Yeah, I guess. But everybody does.

Christian witness: Well, the Bible says that you’re going to hell. Would you like to know how to go to heaven?

Lost soul: Yeah, I suppose.

Checkmate

Christian witness: Let me walk you through this tract. [Go through tract.] You need to ask the Lord Jesus to save you. Now, if you want to be saved, then pray this prayer along with me…….but you have to mean it.

And we’re done. Another soul won for Jesus. Get in church, slap a Jesus fish on your trunk, and start listening to Christian radio and you’re good to go. But here’s the problem: is that person really saved or have we just maneuvered them into a position where they only admitted that they don’t want to go to hell? It’s like we dangled the carrott of heaven in front of them and they bit. Pray the prayer and they’re saved. The problem with that is that this style of evangelism and salvation is found nowhere in Scripture. Here’s some examples of what the Bible says you have to do to be saved:

Matthew 19:16-22

“Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”

“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.”

“Which ones?” the man inquired.

Jesus replied, ” ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, 19honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”

“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”

Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

So, go sell all you have and follow Jesus. Then you can have eternal life.

Next,

Mark 2:4-5

“Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

In this case, if you want to go to heaven, you have to have the right friends.

Last example.

Luke 23:39-43

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!”

But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

What did the thief on the cross do to get into heaven? He didn’t ask Jesus for it. All he did was ask Jesus to remember him. There’s many more examples where people are granted salvation without asking. Which brings me to my point. Is there anywhere in the Bible where a person was required to pray a prayer in order to receive salvation? As far as I have found, the answer is no. Then why do we do it? Why do we ask Jesus to come into our hearts when it seems that he freely bestows salvation onto people without them having to ask?

When I’ve had this discussion with others, here’s the response that I typically get:

“Well, I don’t think it hurts anything. God understands what they’re true condition is and that’s all that matters.”

I have to disagree. I think it does hurt in a variety of ways. First, it’s not Biblical. When we stray away from sound Biblical theology, it dishonors God and hurts people.

Second, I believe that tying salvation up to a prayer that you have to say to God leads to many false conversions. We simplify salvation too much. Rather than making much of the Savior, we make much of meaningless words. It’s almost like we’re going around telling people this secret code word to get into heaven. Pray this prayer (or something like it)………and mean it! We even confirm this later in the Christian life. If we ask a person how they know that they’re saved, the words that we’re looking for is, “I prayed to receive Jesus in my heart when I was 13″ or whatever. But is that person really saved?

Third, the idea that you choose Jesus and can request salvation from Him gets people off on the wrong foot. It makes the individual a shareholder in salvation. Think about it. We talk about salvation being a free gift that we don’t have to do anything to recieve. Really? Then why ask? Isn’t asking for salvation doing something? If we ask Christ to save us, aren’t we really saying that there’s some measure of good in us that made us choose Him? If so, we are speaking in a manner that is out of step with the Bible.

So, back to my main point. If “praying the prayer” is, in fact, out of line with a Biblical model for salvation, then why do we perpetuate it? Because that’s the way we’ve always done it? Because we don’t know of a better way? I hardly think that that’s a just reason to cling to the prayer.