Missions Blog

SBC Outpost » Marty Duren and Paige Patterson

This is a good read by Marty Duren over at SBC Outpost. I encourage you to take the time to read it. This is what I took out of it. Even well educated men who love God and have worked tirelessly for the kingdom for years cannot, often times, see past their own culture.

A young pastor is warned that by moving his church to contemporary worship he might end up in an affair. Honestly I consider this equal to saying “if you eat fruit loops you might become a crazed murderer.” In this example, it is possible for one to confuse his worship preferences with what is right and confuse his dislike for another worship style as sin.

The wrong reaction to hearing this is to get angry and bash that individual, but the problem is that we all have or all currently are doing the same thing with another matter in Christianity.

Basically this has inspired me to write a series of posts on Christianity and culture, because I believe it is becoming increasing important for us to understand the difference. So over the next however long I will be writing on the subject. If I can hold it together to actually do a series it will be proof that there is a God .

While I greatly admire much of the work he has done for Christ and was blessed by the one encounter I have had with him, I want to be just a little critical of Dr. Patterson’s line of thinking. My concerns are two fold. One, as a president of a seminary, I don’t want lessons like this taught to our next generation of pastors who in turn might not adapt to our ever changing culture. Secondly, as a person that is trying to set the agenda of the International Mission Board, it scares me that Dr. Patterson is unable to distinguish what is seemingly such a small cultural preference from what is “right and wrong”. Southern Baptist missionaries are having to deal with cultures so radically different from their own, the last thing they need is to worry about their agency and convention ostracizing them from the convention because they departed from western culture to bring people into the Kingdom of God.

Lord Jesus, help us all. May we not fight over foolish arguments and disputes. Reveal to us where we are erring and let us be a united body who displays your glory and love to this fallen world. Amen.

Mark Driscoll “Death by Love: Reflections on the Cross”

Matt Chandler “Gravity : The Weight or Pastoring and the Knowledge of Christ”

These are two sermons that I have been listening to lately and have ministered to me greatly. Check them out. Their videos, so you can stream them online or download them.

The following is a great post by a friend of mine about the things the Lord has been teaching her. I think that this pertinent to most believers, so I am reposting it here with some of their personal information taken out of it due to their future plans of working overseas.

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Hey guys! This is Nicole. I felt like writing down some things that the Lord has been showing me this past month. (Oh, and by the way, the amazing title came compliments of Mr. Ryan himself. He’s really cool.) Being here at boot camp has been a life altering experience. During one class a few weeks ago the Lord began to speak to Ryan and I both about the same issue. I wrote furiously everything God was saying, and have been meaning to type it up, but haven’t had a chance until now. So here goes… First of all, the Lord showed me how much I try to gain a status of holiness without the Holy Spirit. We spend so much time discussing, thinking & being taught about holiness, that often times we jump ahead of God and attempt to be holy apart from the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. “But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth.” ~2 Thessalonians 2:13

The result is that we look really good on the outside, but have not been changed by God nor rely on His strength and love. We might even do the things the bible says are good for the believer to do, and not do things that it says we shouldn’t do…all the while neglecting the heart issues and intimacy with sweet King Jesus. We might have all of these activities lined up, and have scripture to back up why they are good to participate in, yet what is our motive? I feel as if we try to earn God’s favor while acting like we are not. We are proud. We teach on holiness and how to live “holy” instead of encouraging and teaching on intimacy with God. From my experience, these teachings have not encouraged me to love Jesus with all of my heart, mind, soul, and strength. Instead they have caused me to judge holiness in my brothers and sisters in a way that breeds comparison, disdain, dirty thoughts, disfellowship, pride, a “holier than though” mindset, etc. I may have all of the activities to make me look good to my fellowship, and even the right lingo, but that does not mean that I am pleasing God by my actions. In fact I believe that God is disgusted by my actions and for sure the attitude of my heart (which I have become pretty good at hiding).

I often felt like our group at A&M was the “IT” Christian fellowship and that we were the only group in town who really heard from the Lord. Of course I would never say this out loud, these were mainly subconscious thoughts, but they came out in my negative talk about other groups on campus. These thoughts and unrighteous judgments are what God has been revealing to me. For instance certain Christian sororities have had a bad connotation in my head for a long time. I confess that to you and ask for your forgiveness. I judged those sisters wrongly, without truthfully even knowing much about them. I’m sure somewhere I heard a negative comment or judgment about them, and instead of praying for my sisters, I allowed hatred to gain a foothold in my heart. How gross is that!!! For a long time I have basically hated, and kept a distance from my sisters in the Lord!! How can we allow such dissension to take place amongst the believers? We need to join together to pray, seek the Lord, encourage one another, & fight the enemy. The truth is that we need all parts of the body of Christ, and no part is better than another. We are all dearly loved children of God. Praise Jesus!

We are called to be holy, but holiness comes from the grace of God, not ourselves. We can’t conjure it up. All of this sounds obvious and these are all things that I have heard people talk about, but rarely seen people live out. One huge thing the Lord has shown me lately is how often I judge others, mainly in my thoughts, and that effects how I view them. Ask Him to reveal to you thoughts that you have that are not of Him, mainly about others. I have found that quite often I judge others by what I see. I think that discernment and dealing with sin has its place of course. I’m not saying we should be easy on sin. The key to what I’m saying is that the judgments I made did not lead me to want to help the people, pray for them, and desire them to know God on a deeper level. Instead I compared myself and first, felt good about how “advanced” beyond them I was in my walk with God, and second, looked down on them for not understanding or being “righteous enough”.

If we discern that somebody is dealing with something, is in sin, or may not have the revelation that we do yet about an issue, we should be led to LOVE them, pray, teach and exhort. When we see sin we should desire restoration, sanctification, obedience and the conforming of that person into God’s image. I think that in order to avoid the extreme of, “waiting on the Lord so long that we end up never talking to anybody about Jesus and really just use ‘waiting on the Lord’ as an excuse to keep from having to work for the kingdom”, we have overcompensated and become the other extreme of, “Go, Go, Go, do, do, do, who needs to use the gifts when we can talk about them, I don’t have time to spend with Jesus because by-golly people are dying and going to hell and I have to rescue them all by myself, although I have heard cool stories of men praying 10 hours a day and obviously if I am not doing that, than I am not a Christian, although last time I tried to pray for 10 hours, I ran out of things to say and I didn’t feel productive if I was just sitting with the Lord, so I stopped praying and later felt like a failure…I don’t know if I will ever achieve the “spiritual holiness” of John Wesley…I bet God is mad at me…I must have lost my salvation…maybe I was never saved to begin with?”.

OK…so maybe I went a step too far with that one, but I think it’s funny…and sad because there is a lot of truth in it. I have seen people, including myself, burn out because they relied on their own strength, and not on the Joy of the LORD! The Lord is a good Father and desires us to obey. We have to obey. However, I think many of us are allowing the enemy to influence and condemn us. Instead we should be in an intimate relationship with God, out from which our ministry flows. I have a lot more to say, but it will have to wait for another time.

Basically God is sooo good and full of love! He is the righteous judge, not us. We are called to LOVE above all else. I confess that I have not been doing this. Forgive me Lord Jesus for trying to earn my salvation by performing for you and for allowing hatred and bitterness to creep into my heart for others. Help us to receive your love and be able to extend it to our brothers and sisters. Thank you for being so patient, gracious, and merciful. Nicole

Chuck Smiths | TheResurgence

Mark Driscoll’s recent post discussed the growing gap between the founder of the Calvary Chapel movement and his son. Although I was interested in the post, I appreciated his comments on the Kingdom of God and the Rapture the most. These are things that I would love to write about more, but I will a let a man more educated than I speak to these things right now.

Rapture. The rapture, like the age of the earth, is an issue that Christians should discuss and debate, but not divide over. Years ago when I first read Smith Sr.’s book Calvary Chapel Distinctives, I was surprised to see that in addition to the Holy Spirit, Bible, grace, Jesus, and love, which all make sense, the premillenial pretribulational rapture of the church was an essential doctrine. Curiously, the rapture is a doctrine that has existed for less than two hundred years in the church’s history. The word itself started at a peculiar and possibly cultic charismatic prayer meeting where a women prophesied that the church would be raptured. From that simple beginning, the doctrine has now become the leading eschatological position in American evangelicalism. For more on this issue, the book The Incredible Cover Up: Exploring the Origins of Rapture Theories by Dave MacPherson is a fascinating historical read. Since the doctrine was not even heard of by men such as Athanasius, Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, and Wesley, we should not make this doctrine the litmus test of biblical faithfulness, otherwise we are saying there was no faithful eschatology for the first 1,800 years of the church.

and…

Kingdom. The problem with the older generation of strong dispensationally minded evangelicals was that they had an under-realized eschatology. By this, I mean that they saw the kingdom of God as an almost entirely future event. The younger generation of evangelicals are more prone to embrace an over-realized eschatology whereby the kingdom of God is essentially here already, so talking about heaven, hell, and the eternal state is not important. On this point, Smith Jr. echoes a drum regularly beat by McLaren and others affiliated with the Emergent group. The problem is that the kingdom of God is not yet here, but it does break in through the church, the preaching of the gospel, and the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, a balanced eschatology that holds the “already/not yet” tension of Paul is the only hope for a biblical position on this issue.

I am more and more concerned with a lack of understanding about the Kingdom of God in modern Christianity and in my own life. For one, I just love the teaching and, for me, how it brings the word alive again. I love the masculinity of a God who is crushing the kingdom of darkness and ushering in His Kingdom. For a good read on the subject, check out The Gospel of the Kingdom by George Eldon Ladd. You can read the first 5 chapters here for free.

PROVERBS - Are Bloggers Scoffers?

Adrian Warnock asks this question about himself and others. While it is a good question for us bloggers to consider, I thought that it also had some good questions for us all. Read away.
From the article…

How many of us seek out correction and welcome it? Do we not instead inwardly smart and find ourselves secretly hating the person who dared to correct us? “It’s my life,” we say, “I didn’t ask you for your advice!” Sadly, we are often only too willing to criticise others, often in an angry dismissive way — we who ourselves hate the notion of others correcting us!

When you read of the scoffer, don’t think about other people. Instead, ask yourself: “Am I like this — even just a little bit?” For the character of the scoffer is not set in stone.

Thanks for Challies.com for this one.

1. When you share something and people think it is strange and don’t like it, call it conviction. When someone shares something you think is strange and don’t like, call it discernment.

2. Assume that someone’s lust/gluttony/cursing problem is worse than your unlovingness/unkindness/just generally being a jerk. God is willing to overlook your sin because you hand out tracts, the good kind.

3. If something bad is happening to someone else assume it is because of sin. If something bad is happening in your life assume it is spiritual attack or persecution.

4. If you ever disagree with anything someone says, make sure to write off the 90% of good stuff they are saying. After all, a little leaven leavens the whole loaf. I don’t care if their book did point out a bunch of stuff I needed to hear.

5. Use the word heretic all the time. Don’t worry about whether it is true or appropriate. People need to know you are serious. Get really mad at people that call you one.

6. Establish a million extra-biblical rules. Make sure that everyone serves Jesus out of fear and “responsibility” and never cheerfully with grateful heart. You may be robbing people of their joy, but they can suck it up.

7. Preach the Bible as completely inspired and authoritative, but make sure to never talk about the verses that people “abuse”. Verses like “my burden is easy, my yoke is light” and “learn from Me because I am gentle and humble of heart” turn people into slackers. Don’t even get me started on Jer. 29:11.

8. Always believe the person that speaks the loudest and with the most certainty about their views. Become this person.

9. Always preach about the sins your not involved in. That way you can be really ungracious about it and not feel like a total hypocrite.

10. Preach a standard even you can’t keep. Preaching a standard twice as hard as you actually want people to keep will produce the results you’re looking for. People typically compromise and will only come halfway. Don’t worry about the condemnation they feel for the other half.

11. Never let people see you aren’t as spiritual as you portray. Don’t let on that you are feeling sad/depressed/stuggling with sin. This could cause people to stop esteeming what you have to say. You can suck it up and hold it together until Jesus comes.

Back with another list. People seem to like the lists. Thoughts just kept flooding to my mind. Thanks to the people that helped me with this one. Once again, I think that I have done all these things.

Writing lists like this can drag our sinful habits into the light and hopefully wake us up. Most people that read the last list seem to enjoy it and knew exactly what I was talking about and said they had done those things. But tonight I heard from people who asked questions like “does anyone actually think that way?” or “do you know anyone that actually does that.” Praise the Lord if you have no idea what I am talking about and have been fortunated enough to avoid this stuff.

Once again, I think this only offends us if we see ourselves in these things. Father, please continue to help us move from being just radical to radically loving. Help us to look like your Son.

Here is the Sermon that I talked about in class for you that are in it. Everyone else, this is a great sermon.

“The Knowability of God” - Matt Chandler