Church Life « Daniel Darling, Author, Pastor, Speaker

Posts Tagged ‘Church Life’

Jan

2012

Pastors, Love the Ones You’re With – The Gospel Coalition Blog

Category: Church Life, Leadership
2066No Comments2012-01-17+16%3A14%3A14Daniel+Darling

The Gospel Coalition graciously posted another of my articles. This one is about a new lesson I learned from a familiar passage:

I’ve read 1 Peter 5:1 many times. As a young pastor, I’m paying more attention to its straightforward directives for my calling as a shepherd.

But it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that the simple, often overlooked phrase “among you” leaped off the page and into my mind.

Why did Peter add this prepositional phrase? We know he wasn’t meeting an editor’s quota. And unlike so much of my writing, the inspired Word of God doesn’t contain throwaway phrases. No filler here.

So this means the phrase has significance. Peter could have easily said, “Shepherd the flock of God.” But he didn’t, because there is a lesson in that seemingly innocuous string of words.

via Pastors, Love the Ones You’re With – The Gospel Coalition Blog.

Jan

2012

Friday Five: Matthew Lee Anderson

Matthew Lee Anderson is the founder of the popular blog Mere Orthodoxy as well as the author of Earthen Vessels, Why Our Body Matters to Our Faith He was featured in Christianity Today’s Who’s Next column in December of 2009. Matthew sits on the editorial board of The City, and has been quoted on FoxNews.com, in the Wall Street Journal, and by the Associated Press. He is a frequent contributor to publications such as First Things, Christianity Today, and The Gospel Coalition. He is a Perpetual Member of the Torrey Honors Institute and a graduate from Biola University (2004).

You’re part of a wave of young evangelical intellectuals. Scholars like Mark Noll have lamented the lack of evangelical scholarship in the past, but do you sense a new renaissance in evangelical intellectual pursuits?

I hope so, but it’s very difficult to tell these sorts of things with anything approaching accuracy. I know we have made incredible advances in a number of disciplines, particularly philosophy, psychology and sociology. And I keep running into really intelligent Ph.D. candidates in political philosophy, which gives me hope for the future. But if we are experiencing a renaissance, it will only be because of the work of Noll and others in the generation previous. They were the true trailblazers, and my generation is simply lucky to stand on their shoulders.

In your famous paper, “The New Evangelical Scandal“, published in The City, you cautioned young evangelicals who tend to dismiss everything they learned from their parent’s generation. Why is this tendency so dangerous?

“Famous” is probably overstating it, but it was a fun piece to write! I think when the default mode of cultural engagement is that our parents were wrong and we’re out to fix it, we risk inoculating ourselves against any form of self-criticism. Myopia breeds only more myopia: if we don’t have the vision to see both the good and the bad of what we’ve inherited, we’ll never learn to truly see both the good and the bad of what we’re contributing. Chesterton once wrote something to the effect that love is blind–it’s bound, and because it’s bound, it sees more clearly than anything else. I think the same sort of thing is true of our cultural engagement: if we recognize the ways in which our lives our bound up in our parents, for both good and ill, we’ll see ourselves and the world more clearly and act more effectively in it.

Earthen Vessels is a thorough treatment of the intersection of the human body and faith. What inspired you to write this book?

A moment of insanity! Seriously, I have been ruminating on issues related to the body for a decade. I first realized that there were depths when I listened to a lecture on Plato by John Mark Reynolds. I also happened to be binging on the Apostle Paul and reading Dallas Willard’s Spirit of the Disciplines The result was the realization that the Incarnation changes everything, and that the problem that Christianity solved in the ancient world (which is pretty close to the problem it solves today) is the problem of the body.

Why do evangelicals need a more robust theology of the body?

For lots of reasons, not least of which is that it will help chasten the tacit secularism that many evangelicals have unwittingly adopted. Secularism isn’t always and everywhere bad, but it’s impossible to sift properly without pre-existing theological categories that will filter things out. Seeing how the Gospel shapes (and doesn’t shape) bodies is imperative for living in a world that has reduced the body to a question, and evangelicals are currently woefully equipped to do that. Developing a more robust theology of the body will help us know what shape our practices should take, see how those practices will affect our bodies, and help us resist and affirm the counter-practices of the world with greater wisdom and discernment. If it’s not my book, it has to be someone else. And I’ll sell their book as much (if not moreso) than I’ve tried to sell mine.

Lastly, I appreciate the lack of straw men in your writing. You really aim to present both sides of an argument fairly in a way I don’t often see even in people whose arguments I agre with. Has this always been a feature of your writing?

Well, that’s very kind of you to say. I don’t know if it’s always been a feature of my writing, but I’ve always tried to make it one. It’s a practice I take very seriously. My motivation has two sides to it. On the one hand, I want to be charitable to people, to represent them at their best because that’s what I want for my own work. But on the other hand, if we’re going to ultimately disagree on something, I want to really disagree–fairly, honestly, out in the open, and preferably over a good meal that you’re buying. It’s no fun having arguments when one side has been misrepresented: it’s a lot more fun when the disagreement’s over the substance of things, and that’s always the level to which I’m trying to reach.

Nov

2011

The Discipline of Going to Church

Going to church can become routine. I know it, because I grew up going to church three times a week (at least). It was not a choice my parents gave me. It was something we did, part of our regular routine.

As a 2nd Generation Christian, I know full well the dangers of making spirituality overly routine. I have experienced long stretches of dryness where I was “going through the motions” and filling a pew. This can be dangerous to spiritual health. Traditionalism can become legalism. We can be satisfied with doing what we are supposed to do and avoiding spiritual introspection and growth.

However, I have come to appreciate the discipline of merely going to church. I used to say that “you shouldn’t just go to church to go to church.” But I’ve reconsidered this. The discipline of going to church every week for the majority of your life is in itself an act of worship, of sacrifice. You’re saying to yourself and to the world that assembling with the called-out people of God, that the story of Christianity, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus matters so much that you’re willing to dedicate at least one day a week to it.

I’m glad, for instance, that my father and mother made us go to church every week, three times a week. My father, by this kind of leadership, demonstrated to me that faithfulness to the local body of Christ was paramount. By going to church every week we presented our bodies as a “living sacrifice” by getting up, dressing up, getting in the car, and going to church. In the eyes of those who watched our family, we “voted” to make God a priority by committing ourselves to church.

I think I understand this more keenly now that I’m a pastor myself. Every week a pastor wonders who will show up. There are those who consider church a nice and viable option on Sunday and there are those who consider it a priority.

To be sure, faithful attendance shouldn’t be all we achieve. We should seek to serve our fellow brothers and sisters. We should come to worship God. We should come to hear the food of the Word of God. But its the very discipline of going to church that sets the stage for those things to happen, for God to work powerfully in our hearts.

Sometimes we evangelicals eschew discipline because it smacks of legalism. We speak of Christianity as “rules” versus “relationship.” And this is true and right. But the spiritual disciplines (such as attending church with God’s call-out community) bring us closer to Christ, whose power can change us.

Year after year I attended church with my parents. There were many seasons where I went for wrong reasons (I had to go, I liked the social life). But two things happened when I went to church even on days I didn’t really want to go. First, I was building into my life a habit, a discipline that would put me in the place where God works, in the midst of His church. Secondly, there were times I dragged myself to church only to hear a life-changing message.

So, its a good idea to make a commitment to be in church every single week. You’ll be surprised at how this discipline will be a benefit to your life.

Aug

2011

What a Pastor Says

At Gages Lake Bible Church, we’re going through the book of James, in a series we’ve entitled, Authentic Faith. (You can listen/download the sermons here.) James is a section of Scripture that really makes you sit up and listen. And it’s written specifically to Christians in the church. There is no way to dance around it and maybe pass off James words as something not applicable to our culture or something we can ignore because it was written to the Israelites.

We’re going to start chapter three on Sunday, which is a chapter that deals with the tongue. Now most of us have read this chapter and know this chapter and come away feeling very convicted about the work God must do in us through the Spirit. Or we come away thinking that this passage would be great for someone else to hear. You know, that person we know who has a caustic tongue?

But here’s something about James 3 that I didn’t really notice until now. It begins with a very sober warning to Bible teachers. James basically says that the calling to teaching the Word is so sober that few should entertain the idea. He’s not saying, I don’t think, that to be a pastor or Sunday School teacher or small group leader is something we shouldn’t aspire to, but that before you get all excited about teaching and preaching others, consider the consequences.

Then James goes right to the tongue and stays there for the rest of the chapter. Here’s a lesson I think we often miss about this Scripture and one you can only get when you study the entire context. Yes, the passage on the tongue is for every Christian, but it’s especially pertinent for Christian leaders. What we say matters. The words we say when we speak in that pulpit or in that classroom or on that blog or Facebook post or Twitter feed matter. And they matter more because of our position.

The words of Christian leaders matter because people follow Christian leaders. People assume that what they say comes from God, that their quoting of Scripture and their exegesis and application are accurate. This is why we as pastors must be careful to study, to know the Bible, and to only say what the Bible says, nothing more or nothing less. This is so vitally important.

Aug

2011

The Ethics of a Church Protest Blog

It’s become more and more popular: a group of disgruntled church members set up a website to “protest” the church leadership of a big and established congregation. In the last two years, there have been protest sites set up against prominent megachurches like Bellevue Baptist Church in Tennessee (Adrian Roger’s old church), Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (once pastored by the late Dr. James Kennedy and now pastored by Tullian Tchivigian), The Crystal Cathedral (Robert Schuler), and Covenant Life Church (Josh Harris/CJ. Mahaney). I’m sure there are other situations that I’m not aware of.

My question is this. Is it biblically ethical to publicly post complaints about your experiences at another church? It may be your “right” as an American, but as a follower of Christ, can you justify putting the dirty laundry of the family of God online for all to consume? I’m not so sure it is.

We all know that churches will have, from time to time, conflicts. Some are major that rip asunder an entire congregation. When this happens, it is tragic. Suddenly God’s people are less worried about engaging the enemy in the battle for lost souls and more concerned with engaging each other. And it happens across theological and denominational lines. There are a variety of reasons for church conflicts: bad leadership, rampant gossip, moral failure, bad theology. But ultimately, it boils down to sin and pride. James 4:1 nails it. Conflict comes from the old nature, that sinful flesh within us that likes to battle for supremacy.

Today church fights are going public. New and easy forms of technology make it easy to take your “cause” online and attract a following. It’s too easy for disgruntled church members to forget the New Testament’s commands to love and forbear and forgive and turn their lives into a giant crusade against what they perceive to be failed leadership. And to be fair, there are examples of failed, often sinful leadership in churches. At times this needs to be exposed, but how should this be handled?

I think Matthew 18 seems to suggest that these matters are first handled privately and then if those concerns are not addressed, they should be brought into the full life of the members of the church.But a website? A blog? A public shaming of someone? This may be the way things are done in this generation of Wikileaks and citizen journalism, but it doesn’t seem to fit the mature, spiritual behavior of a follower of Christ. Of course, I’m not talking about cases of abuse or moral failure that are continually being covered up. I’m talking about the typical disagreements, the petty squabbles that hobble a church’s ministry.

Perhaps I’m biased because I’m a pastor and I’d hate to see it done to me. But I would never want to be a part of an online group seeking to defame or hurt another ministry. I may have had differences, at times, with brothers or sisters in Christ, but to let temporary hurts turn into a bitter public crusade is a bridge too far, in my book. Simply because you have some juicy “dirt” on someone, doesn’t mean you should post it. And those who run these protest sites might consider their own hearts, that perhaps they are guilty of the very same offenses of which they accuse others.

There are very legitimate reasons to leave a church and at times there are times when the Scriptures call for spiritually mature members to affect change in a church’s direction. There are times when abusive leadership needs to be exposed. But each situation should be taken prayerfully, carefully, and with much soul-searching and counsel from others.

In a world of wikileaks and Drudge and gossip, followers of Christ are called upon to act differently than the world.

Apr

2011

Friday Five Interview – Dr. Johnny Hunt

Dr. Johnny Hunt is a well-known pastor, especially to America’s largest body of evangelical churches, the 44 million member Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. Hunt is the Senior Pastor of one of the largest SBC churches in America, 1^st Baptist Church of Woodstock (Georgia) and has served as President of the Pastor’s Conference. In 2008, he was elected as President of the Southern Baptist Convention and served from 2008 to 2010. He has disciple thousands of men through his popular men’s conference and is a mentor to pastors, who regularly attend his Timothy/Barnabas retreats.

I’m honored to chat with Dr. Hunt, who stopped by for today’s Friday Five:

Apr

2011

Leading from Bitterness

A few years ago I read a few books on the life of President Richard Nixon. I have always been interested in American history, especially Presidential history. I’m fascinated by the inside look at leadership at the top levels.

But the one enduring lesson I gleaned from Nixon’s life was his inability to forgive. It ruined his entire leadership. Since he lost to John Kennedy in 1960 in an election that was possibly stolen from him, he vowed to never let anyone steal anything from him again. So even as he won two Presidential elections convincingly, that wasn’t enough. He was convinced all kinds of people were trying to sabotage him. He couldn’t enjoy his success, because he led from bitterness. It’s something that has sort of haunted me since. And now that I’m a leader of a church, a husband, and a father of three (almost four), bitterness is something I must keep a check on.

Feb

2011

Friday Five – Jason Dukes

jason c dukes

My friend, Jason Dukes, stopped by to answer a few questions for The Friday Five. Jason is the founder and senior pastor of Westpointe Church in Central Florida. Jason planted this church seven years ago and now they are experiencing great growth as God has blessed their ministry.

Jason has also had an influential role in creating the Restoration Concept, House Blend Cafe, the Reproducing Churches network, and the Church of West Orange. He is also the creator of humanitybeautiful.com, a website devoted to telling the great stories of God’s people serving on mission around the world.

Jason is the author of Live Sent, published by New Hope Publishers.

Jason and his wife Jen live with their five children in central Florida.

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