John MacArthur on How to Serve Christians Who Are Needlessly Restrictive

Andy Naselli has posted audio and a written summary of John MacArthur’s response to the question:

How would you approach a congregation trapped in years of legalistic tradition?

MacArthur’s call for patient loving instruction is helpful, providing a good portrait of shepherding.

"Education with Force"

In one of our Wednesday night classes we are reading and discussing Thabiti Anyabwile’s What is a Healthy Church Member? (which I have commented on here previously). Last night we came to this quote which Anyabwile cited from Jay Adams:

“When we are baptized into the church, we thereby matriculate into Christ’s school. Then, for the rest of our earthly life, we are to be taught (not facts alone, but also) to obey the commands of Christ. This is education with force, education backed up by the discipline of good order that is necessary for learning to take place.”

That is a great quote getting at the heart of what it looks like to mature in the Christian life and the role of the church in that maturation. Many today talk about the lack of discipleship, but often people fail to realize the missing link is “education with force.” The church has mirrored many of our schools- the removal of discipline has made it impossible for real learning and formation to take place.

Ryan Center Conference 2009

A few days ago I commented here on the need for Bible teachers in our churches. Aiding the growth of such teachers is at the heart of the Ryan Center for Biblical Studies here at Union University. As we say, we exist to encourage and enable sound biblical interpretation and application. One of the ways we do this is by hosting a conference for pastors and laypeople every other year that focuses on biblical interpretation.

Our next conference will be this coming Spring, April 24-25, 2009 and our plenary speaker this year will be Dr. D. A. Carson. Continuing the general theme from our last conference, Dr. Carson will discuss the connection between the Old and New Testaments by examining some key texts in Hebrews. Anyone who is familiar with Dr. Carson knows this will be a special treat. Dr. Carson combines great scholarship with a heart for the church and an ability to communicate to the person in the pew.

In addition to the three lectures from Dr. Carson there will be a number of breakout sessions led by Union faculty and guest speakers. Some of these sessions will further examine the relationship between the testaments and others will discuss key steps in studying the Bible well. These are not technical, academic discussions but practical studies aimed at helping people study and teach well.

This will be great opportunity for training, teaching and encouragement for pastors, Bible study leaders and anyone interested in studying the Bible.

The conference will go from Friday night (April 24) through Saturday afternoon (April 25). More detailed information will be forthcoming. You can get the latest news from the Center’s website and the Conference’s facebook page.

Need for Teachers

Last week after one of the services where I was preaching, an older man came up to talk with me. One of the joys of these situations for me is the opportunity to hear from such saints who have walked with the Lord for many decades. This man was 89 and told me how he was converted at a meeting held over 70 years ago just a few yards from where we stood. His testimony was encouraging.

At one point he leaned in closer and said, “Preacher, you want me to tell you what’s wrong with our churches today?” I responded eagerly, “Yes, sir!” He said, “We don’t have enough Bible teachers anymore.” I really was amazed. I hear people point to many things, but this dear brother who had served the Lord in this same area for seven decades put his finger on a key issue. He talked about how he reads the Bible and learns on his own but how much we need more teachers in the church, how we need people who will give themselves (pastors and lay leaders as well) to know and teach the Bible.

Brothers, take this as a cry from the pews. Those who are aware enough are crying out to be taught the Bible. Let us faithfully feed the flock and train others to teach the Bible also. This sort of training is the mission also of the Ryan Center for Biblical Studies which I direct. I will be saying more in coming days about an upcoming conference which will be a great training opportunity for pastors and bible study leaders to help fill the void pointed out by this dear elder brother.

Packer on Baxter’s Directory

The following lengthy quote is from J. I. Packer’s introduction to Richard Baxter’s Christian Directory.. The task of writing an encyclopedia entry on Baxter has given me opportunity to delve some more into the man who in the eyes of many embodies the oversight of souls. This quote provides a great contrast between the pastoral teaching of Baxter and much of what passes for instruction today.

“From this standpoint it is possible to see clearly the difference between the ‘how-to’ books that today’s evangelicals write for each other and the ‘how-to’ teaching of the Directory, which is so much wiser and digs so much deeper. Our ‘how-to’s’ – how to have a wonderful family, great sex, financial success, in a Christian way; how to cope with grief, life-passages, crises, fears, frustrating relationships, and what not else – give us formulae to be followed by a series of supposedly simple actions on our part, to be carried out in obedience to instructions in the manner of a person painting by numbers or activating a computer. Wisdom in role-play is all; ‘heart-work’ hardly comes into it. This wisdom is in Baxter, too, though usually in a more sober, searching, shrewd form than we superficial moderns attain to; but his ‘how-to’s’ are regularly concerned with the ‘heart-work’ that is involved in doing what has to be done with the glory of God as your goal, and love and compassion for the needy other as your motive, and a passion for holiness as your driving desire, and a vivid sense of spiritual conflict keeping you humbly distrustful of yourself, and constantly watchful against Satan’s devices, and deeply dependent on Christ every moment. Only a little thought about the models of godliness set forth in the Psalms and the moral teachings of the Epistles is needed to convince one that Baxter and the Puritans were right to zero in on the ‘heart-work’ of right action, and that our generation has been terribly wrong to neglect it. Had we remembered that what makes good works good, according to the Scriptures, is a right form, fixed by law and wisdom, allied to right desires, fixed by the gospel, we might have been spared the egocentric, zany, simplistic, degenerate, half-magic-spell type of evangelicalism which is all that the world sees when it watches religious TV or looks directly at the professedly evangelical community. Such evangelicalism neither honors God nor blesses man. Back to Baxter! would make a good and healthful motto for the Christian leadership of our time.”

The Real Lesson of the Da Vinci Code

I found this post still in draft form from last June. The point still holds, so I decided to go ahead and publish it.



There has of course been much talk about the Da Vinci Code- errors, distortions, how to respond, etc. However, I have not seen enough about what I think is the real lesson for the Church in the whole thing. Anyone with a decent awareness of the bible and history can see the distortions, oversimplifications, etc. In dealing with sources Dan Brown would receive a poor grade in an undergraduate class. The real question then is this: “Why then are so many church members caught up, confused and even convinced by the claims of this book?” Why do I regularly hear of people in churches who are swayed by the book?

A recent U.S. News story touched on this just briefly. At the close of the story a Catholic priest who was interviewed for the story said, "We've been given an opportunity to teach our people what we probably should have been doing a better job of teaching them all along," Indeed! This is the point. The only way such a book could gather such a following is for people to be uninformed of the Bible. In one way this book and movie can be a gift to the church to re-awaken us to the importance of teaching in the church. While pastors have pursued programs and entertainment to draw larger crowds we have largely abdicated our God-given responsibility to teach our people. The Great Commission requires us ‘teach them to obey all that I have commanded you’. We will not have done any good if we draw large crowds only to see them pulled away by false teaching. If we will have long term health and true growth, we, the pastors, must hold fast to the task of teaching our people.

Edwards, Feeding the Flock

This week in one of our church’s Wednesday night classes we covered J. I. Packer’s chapter on Jonathan Edwards in his book, A Quest for Godliness. It is a great chapter, but one line especially stood out to me concerning pastoral ministry. It was this description of Edwards from Packer:

“All his life he fed his soul on the Bible, and all his life he fed his flock on the Bible” (310).

May this be said of us in the end. If we just feed the flock other things will flow from that.

Leadership Equals Teaching

I have recently been sent the following quote from Great Leader, Great Teacher: Recovering the Biblical Vision for Leadership by Gary Bredfeldt:

"We have been hoodwinked. We have come to accept a standard for leadership that
actually robs the church of great leaders. The standing-status-success standard is not a biblical standard: it is the world's standard. Pastors are not to be CEOs, and our best models are not corporate executives, coaches, generals, and presidents. Far from it ... the biblical leader is, first and foremost, a skilled and godly shepherd-teacher ... Here then is an alternative standard of leadership effectiveness from the standing-status-success model offered by the world. It is a standard that describes leadership in terms of personal relationship, sacrificial care, and secure and abundant provision." (52, 54)

I don’t know anything else about the book, but I resonate deeply with this quote.