Church Leadership

Teach a Man to Teach and He Will Feed Thousands

September 15, 2010 by Dennis

The Why

Your pastor went to seminary. During that time he learned the Bible, biblical languages, theology, church history, and how to preach. In other words, he was trained. When your church is preparing to select new elders and deacons, they are taught the basics of what the church is, how it is run, and their role in overseeing the church. In other words, they are trained.

Aside from the leadership, which group in the church would you say is the most important? My answer would be the teachers – on all levels. Think about the fact that these people are the ones we are entrusting with the very training of the next generation of your church. Do they deserve to be trained any less than those who oversee the church?

How would you respond to this? Your teachers come to you all excited about a new curriculum they discovered. The three basic truths taught are 1) Wisdom – I need to make the wise choice; 2) Faith – I can trust God no matter what; and 3) Friendship – I should treat others the way I want to be treated. Does this sound good to you? If it does, then you need more training than you know. These are not Biblical objectives, and you must know the difference if you are going to be able to protect your children from such teaching.

What biblical objectives should You be watching out for?

Great Commission Publications, our denomination’s official curriculum publisher, puts it this way:

An Interview with Anthony Bradley

September 1, 2010 by Editor

An Interview with Dr. Anthony Bradley

We recently read and reviewed the following book by our friend Dr. Anthony Bradley. Because we believe this is an important and timely book, to be read especially by church leaders, we asked Anthony several questions to lead into the book review. Dr. Bradley is presently visiting professor of theology at The King’s college, New York and serves as a research fellow at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. He has appeared on numerous TV programs.

Anthony has been a good friend, a scholar, and g rowing spokesman in our circles. His presentations at our 2008 discipleship conference were outstanding. (They are available from the CEP Bookstore).

In connection with his book, Liberating Black Theology, the Bible and the Black Experience in America, I asked Anthony the following three questions:

1. Would you highlight how your book can help us better understand and implement our desire to make a difference in reconciliation?

It is important to remember that black liberation theologians in the late 1960s and early 1970s had legitimate questions regarding the lack of attention paid to intersecting the Kingdom with loving one’s neighbor on issues of race. In those days, both mainline and evangelical Protestant theologians were generally silent on issues of racial justice and the need for the church to speak out against the dehumanization of blacks.

In my book, I highlight specifically the deleterious consequences of not acknowledging past social abuses and corporate sins for reconciliation. My sense is that those in the dominant culture are not sensitive enough to the importance of this issue for minorities. Even though the Bible clearly presents a model for confessing the sins of previous generations, there are some within the Reformed community who seem to want us to explain away the past racial oppression without discussing present implications. Some have suggested, for the sake of looking past those sins to “move on,” that we primarily accentuate the positive aspects of sinful history.

Thankfully, this is not the biblical pattern. Nehemiah 9:2 provides a fascinating standard of corporate confession and repentance: “And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers.” God’s people spent time repenting of the past sins of multiple generations within the confines of intimate covenant community because it was a necessary component of moving forward in sanctification. Perhaps some of the Westminster Divines were influenced by this aspect of the biblical narrative by calling Christians to repent specifically: “Men ought not to content themselves with a general repentance, but it is every man’s duty to endeavor to repent of his particular sins, particularly (chapter 15, paragraph 5). This is beautiful!

My book aids in understanding why this is important for both blacks and whites to suggest a way forward that maintains orthodoxy while making a case for the church to continue to speak publicly about sin like we regularly do with issues like abortion. The writings of Herman Bavinck have been particularly helpful to me in this regard. I hope that reconciliation does more than dismisses the opportunity to corporately wrestle with the gospel in community for the sake of embracing cultural norms to “hush up” about granddaddy’s sins.

Admittedly, I don’t have all the answers but I think the denomination will benefit greatly when men like Rev. Ligon Duncan and Rev. Randy Nabors help the denomination articulate confessing of past sins, repentance and reconciliation initiatives. Both Rev. Duncan and Rev. Nabors and others older and wiser than me, and who have been involved in reconciliation efforts in their cities, are better positioned to lead on this. For starters, Rev. Nabors says,”[o]ne thing I try to do at Presbytery exams on church history is to ask candidates if they know the ‘racial’ history of the PCA, and what have we done about it. I encourage all Presbyteries to make this part of their church history expectations. Those who are ignorant of history seem condemned to repeat it.” Knowing our own story and talking openly about it will help us not repeat it.

2. You have said that many of our attempts at reconciling blacks and whites are 50 years too late and outdated. I don’t want our efforts to be impotent. How can your book help us to be more effective?

The last two chapters of the book wrestle with the complexities of applying the gospel in a multi-ethnic, global Christian context like we live in today. Therefore, cultural anthropology and contextualization matter when it comes to applying the gospel to people’s lives.

First, many of our efforts at reconciliation have been too narrowly focused on reconciling whites and blacks as if it were 1970 on the heels of the civil-rights movement. There is still work to be done in this area because many of the white Christians who promoted segregation are still alive today. However,America’s current demographic reality-14.4 percent Hispanic/Latino, 12.8 percent black, 4.3 percent Asian-calls for ethnic initiatives that move the church forward in reconciling various tensions and past sins between all of those groups and sub-cultures. For example, there has been so much emphasis on reconciling whites with blacks that may be missing the need to also reconcile whites with Native Americans or heal the deep tensions between blacks and Koreans.

The black/white focus is too limited and often leads to a false sense of accomplishment. I think conservative evangelicals are among the only communities in America who would consider a church of blacks and whites in 2010 extraordinary.

Second, many of the reconciliation efforts are merely cosmetic and still represent old paternalistic paradigms where a white male is in charge and has a congregations of black and Latinos who are less educated and socio-econoimcally subordinate. Churches where there is a class-based power dynamic of upper middle-class whites with working and lower class blacks and Latinos have been coined “plantation churches” by some blacks I know in the PCA.

If we take cultural anthropology seriously, in the ways I suggest in the book, we would expect the result of racial reconciliation efforts to produce in the future ethnic minorities in denominational leadership as agency heads, seniors pastors of more and more churches, presbytery moderators, and so on. I have an ongoing dream that one day the PCA have a Mexican American serve as Senior Minister of the First Presbyterian Church (in whatever city) with a session of blacks, Asians, Native Americans, and so on, wherever possible. Minorities in leadership will be a powerful witness to our world of the socially subversive and transformative nature of the gospel as was demonstrated in the books of Acts, Galatians, and the early church.

Those yearning for revival and another “Great Awakening” in America will only see it come when the church leads the culture on issues of racial diversity in leadership.

3. You have an unsually perceptive grasp of a kingdom world and life view prespective. You demonstrated that so clearly and effectively at our 2008 conference on Kingdom Disicpleship. Would you give us a few things to consider as we read your book and think about our challenges and opportunities as a church and as kingdom people wanting to genuinely make a difference? Can you help us not to be outdated and too late with the challenge?

The PCA has an opportunity to lead on race issues in ways that no Presbyterian denomination (or any other evangelical denomination, for that matter) has experienced in American history. Despite the racial inconsistencies with the gospel in some aspects of Southern Presbyterian history, the PCA can tap all of her denominational resources to provide an astounding witness of the Kingdom of Christ to the world as we move forward.

The denomination’s churches and educational institutions, like Covenant College and Covenant Theological Seminary, missions agencies, college ministries, Christian Education and Publications provide excellent pipelines to raise up new denominational leadership to America’s truly multi-ethnic reality.In 1900, Europe and North America accounted for 82 percent of the world’s Christian population. In 2005, that number is down to 39 percent. To date 60 percent of world’s Christians are in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Moreover, by 2023, half of America’s children will be non-white. As these trends continue, America will likely have a white minority by 2050. By taking cultural anthropology seriously–as was necessary as the gospel spread to Gentiles–carefully applying Scriptures, holding fast to our confessional standards, practicing particular confession and repentance, embracing new vistas for denominational leadership, and so on, the PCA can position herself to build a church that bears witness to the fact that in Kingdom of Christ includes women and menfrom every tribe and language and people and nation (Rev. 5:9) who earnestly live for the glory of God.

To begin this process, every member of the PCA should listento Rev. Randy Nabors’ August 1, 2010 sermon on unity and reconciliation in Galatians 3:26-28 titled “Right Sight” at New City Fellowship in Chattanooga on their website. Nabors’ sermon is the best first step in seeing the claims of Christ pressed everywhere in a culture like ours where diversity is the norm as we press the claims of Christ everywhere in our world. It is leadership like this that will equip us to reach God’s diverse people.

Anthony, thank you for your insights and candidness. CEP is in the process of planning its third reconciliation for February 2011. Details will be posted on our website as the Atlanta Conference comes together.

2010 Reformation Insert: Liberation of the Church

August 23, 2010 by Editor

Reformtion10v1_Page_1 - 220.jpg The 2010 Reformation Inserts are here! This year we celebrate Reformation Sunday on October 31st. Reformation Sunday is a time to celebrate our theological roots. It is a great opportunity to educate our congregations on the importance of what the Reformers did and the implications that it has for us today.

This year’s insert focuses on the Liberation of the Church. The insert explains how the church had reached a point that was outside of God’s creation design for it, and had actually even come to have a tyrannical hold on Christianity. To read more about how God sovereignly has worked through history to redeem his people, click here to read the entire text of the insert.

Click here to order the Reformation Insert

The Gospel of Mark: The Mystery of the Kingdom Revealed Leader’s Guide

July 29, 2010 by Editor

Click on the link below to download the leader’s guide to accompany The Gospel of Mark: The Mystery of the Kingdom Revealed by Charles Dunahoo.

The Gospel of Mark: The Mystery of the Kingdom Revealed Leader’s Guide – by Charles Dunahoo

The study is available for purchase at the PCA Bookstore:

The Gospel of Mark: The Mystery of the Kingdom Revealed

By Charles Dunahoo. From all of the New Testament, but especially from the Gospel of Mark, Christ the King and His Kingdom of grace comes into full view. The secret of the Kingdom was revealed by Jesus but was concealed in parables to those who were outside the Kingdom. Even His inner circle [at times] seemed to miss the message.

This study will thematically explore Mark’s Gospel with particular emphasis on Jesus “the Son of God, the Suffering Servant, His authority, and His message” which was the “Good News of the Kingdom.” Questions for discussion at the end of each chapter.
Perfect for small groups and Sunday school classes!

Read the Table of Contents and Chapter 1

Charles Dunahoo Responds to Recent Article in Christianity Today

June 8, 2010 by Charles

Editor’s Note: The article Life in Those Old Bones, referred to below, was written by Ed Stetzer and can be found on page 24 of the June 2010 edition of Christianity Today. You can check back to Christianity Today’s website periodically to see if the article has been added online.

We have said many times, if you are really interested in discipleship, you have no better avenue than Sunday school. I know that cuts across much emphasis on the individualistic approach for many, but in reality it has been and in many cases continues to be a great venue for the process. If your Sunday school is not contributing to Jesus’ commission to make kingdom disciples, it’s not the Sunday schools fault.

In a similar manner I have just read from the recent Christianity Today an editorial by Ted Olson and a feature article my Ed Stetzer that effectually says what we have been saying for years and with every opportunity that we have regarding denominations. Both articles deal with the church and denominations and both conclude, in spite of what some have tried to say, if you want to be effective in discipleship and its means, namely missions, you have no better approach than to work through the local church and the denominations to which that church belongs. Contrary to popular opinion, denominations are not pass

Rescuing the Church from the Arms of Digital Deity – Returning to the Authority of Scripture

May 28, 2010 by Editor

By Dr. Dave Garner

Editor’s note: Dr. Dave Garner is professor of theology at Westminster Theological Seminary Philadelphia. He has been very much in the forefront of challenging the church to maintain its commitment to the sufficiency, inerrancy, and authority of Scripture. We asked him to write on this topic.

They thought they were going to die. Already begrudging the outdated notion of wilderness camp hundreds of miles from home, the vanload of teenagers was jolted by the ground rules at their non-virtual form of distance education. Posted at the wilderness camp’s entrance gate was the media bouncer barking authoritatively, “No MP3 players. No I-Pods. No DVD players. No cell phones. No laptops. No kidding.” The prehistoric demands aroused sleepy youth from their digital slumbers. Disappointment heated into outrage; outrage ignited panic, and I-Pod toting teens banded into a digitally mastered surround-sound symphony: “How can we possibly survive for 10 days without our music?!”

Does this camping scenario manifest a harmless reality of twenty-first century adolescents? Is it merely laughable that these Generation Next-ers see no possibility of survival apart from their electronic gadgetry? Is it a negligible trend that the digital world has created virtual friends with virtually no social skills, that texting and sexting are now components of daily life, and that I-Phone apps, Facebook, and On-Demand video are no longer conveniences but expectations?

Child and adolescent psychologists, socio-logists, and cultural analysts are now speaking openly of quantifiable effects of the Digital Age. Their concerns are largely clinical, as they present trends, expectations, and the measurable effects of media upon the minds of the post-Millennials. Others perceive the longings of the I-generations as watershed cultural shifts that beg for creative solutions educationally, socially, economically, and technologically. But what of the Church, what of Scripture, what of the hearts and souls of those in the pews whose eyes, ears, and hearts thump with digital expectations? Electronic media trends raise serious questions for the life of the Church, and the lack of deep, thorough, critical and immediate analysis may tangle us in a worldwide web of irrelevance.

Click here to read entire publication in PDF (Acrobat Reader required).

Let’s remove our earphones for a moment and reflect quietly. Is it merely a dismissible fact that many flourishing churches flourish because they keep up with technological longings of their congregations, which expect, no demand, multi-media impulses to keep their attention? Should the demands of our congregations and culture shape twenty-first century ministry?

Can such shaping be done without weakening the authority of Christ and his Word? Knowing that the youth in our congregations now average 7 hours and 38 minutes per day (53 hours per week!) of entertainment media,^{^[1]}is it any surprise that their expectations of church worship center on their own desires?

I don’t mean to sound overdramatic, but we simply cannot bury our heads in our X-Boxes. As numerous studies attest, the relentless acquisition of cutting edge digital technology now lords over the Western cultural heart, extending across ethnic, gender, economic, and social boundaries. We must pause between texts, emails, and Seinfeld episodes to face the fact that technological lordship vies for the worship of God’s people in ourchurches. For too many, the knee is already bowed.

Neil Postman warned us in 1985. Bravely extending Huxley’s prophetic analysis of a new world shaped by technological, social and moral change, Postman delivered his own package of warning, alerting us that we were well on the way to Amusing Ourselves to Death. But blind to his foresight and deaf to his alarm bell, our eyes and ears greedily sought more media. We got what we wanted. And now the media playground is anything but frivolous, as instant, downloadable, and streamlined access to media has crept (in same cases, leapt) from servant to lord. Our new god is killing us. Oh, our souls may not yet have died, but the morgue musicians are warming up… or is it cooling down? Whatever the case, they are tuning their instruments, because barring repentance from our multimedia idolatry, we may soon die, drowning in our pool of instantaneous media pleasure.

Like a ping-pong ball in a raffle machine, we bounce from CSI-Miami to a rerun of Hogan’s Heroes, from Madonna to Mozart, and from Amazon to Facebook. We pay the electric company with e-pay, donate ten bucks to Haiti, download Star Wars from Netflix, stream Kenny Chesney on Pandora, and choose the news anchor we want to expose the sex and lies, and videotape of our choice… all with the effortless flick of a single finger. Yes, we choose the news, the noise, and the narcissism. This buffet of choices confirms the cultural conviction clutched deeply within our collective souls: “I am that I am. I am Lord. I am the god of my instantly-gratifying world.” The enticing image of the media goddess has also captivated the Western church with a sweetly persuasive vengeance: her voluptuous digital body overpowering, her kisses sweet, and her embrace irresistible. We got what we wanted, but so did she. She now owns us. Our seductive embrace of the media goddess has cast us into her suffocating vice-grip.

At the Reformation, Protestants enthusiastically esteemed the Word of God as the Word of God. From architectural changes which centered the preached Word in the life of the Church to Bible translation, which delivered the Scriptures to peoples’ heart languages, at the core of Protestantism is its love, respect, and elevation of the Scriptures. In the sixteenth century, the fresh recognition of Scripture as truly God’s Word, as the veryrevelation of the Triune God of heaven, promoted a countercultural movement that dismantled the idolatrous religious establishment of its day. As the Reformers grappled with the claims of the Bible about itself, they recognized that the Church sat under the Scripture’s authority rather than as its final judge and interpreter. The Reformation mantra sola Scriptura turned its culture upside down, and shaped the ministry of the Church in many ways against the culture, even the religious one.

In the twentieth century, liberal Protestants put the Bible on trial and found it guilty of error, abandoned their dependence upon God’s Word, and replaced it with the lifeless lyrics of their own wisdom. What social Gospel theorist Walter Rauschenbusch preached, Charles Sheldon popularized; “What did Jesus do?” became “What would Jesus do?”Morality and social justice supplanted redemption, and the living Christ died again, this time buried beneath unbelieving, yet captivating rhetoric. He was not to rise again in the liberal Protestant Church.

The dangerous irony of the twenty-first century Church is that while most Reformed and evangelical leaders contend vigorously for the concept of Scriptural authority, the sights and sounds of the Digital Age have lured many unsuspectingly from implementing the message and the methodsof the Gospel for this generation. While our hindsight on twentieth century liberalism is 20/20, our current blindness to the spiritual and idolatrous power of the Digital Age is pressing our ministries into a media-shaped, culturally determined mold. We need a fresh Reformation, in which we take seriously the authority of the Gospel as God’s revealed Word to our culture. We need a fresh Reformation, in which we take seriously the implications of the authority of the Gospel as God’s revealed Word in our ministries. We need a fresh Reformation, in which we take conscious reassessment of the lordship of the resurrected Christ, pondering repentantly how His authority bears upon our work of ministry in the face of the media temptress.

To that end, let me pose some non-virtual questions.

To start, let’s be pragmatic. Can we really keep up? Can our churches and our budgets stay on course with Google search, Avatar graphics, Super Bowl commercial humor, and 3-D flat screen entertainment? As many churches are discovering, digital technology moves at warp speed. By the time we emptied our banks to purchase cutting edge technology for our churches, better technology has dulled our edge to oh, so last year. Most have neither the financial resources nor the collective cultural savvy to keep up with the digital Joneses.

But let’s move closer toward the mirror. To what degree has the authoritative voice of the culture – “Entertain me or lose me!” – drowned out the authoritative voice of Scripture? In what ways are we basing the what and how of our ministry on the media-intoxicated culture in which we live? Are not digitally captivated hearts the contemporary version of Paul’s itching ears syndrome (2 Tim 4:4)? If so, only a sober-minded response will do. Running the technology race may simply cascade us into the arms of the digital deity, which most in our congregations blindly assume exists for their full and safe consumption. Does our ministry in its content and method affirm their hearts’ idolatrous affections or draw them to the idol-crushing, freedom-bearing, divinely authoritative Gospel of Jesus Christ?

What about the Wii-wielding, Internet-savvy youngsters of our congregations? Do these children believe that Bible “stories” are any different than Harry Potter, Sponge Bob, and Alvin and the Chipmunks? Do not surf quickly over this question. Publications of Noah and the Ark, David and Goliath, Moses and the Ten Commandments, and Jesus and His disciples, employ cartoon characters and riveting animation, complete with catchy tunes and for-purchase figurines. Vacation Bible School curricula explore biblical stories from outer space, jungles, and wilderness adventures. At what point does the imaginative medium eclipse the transcendent truth? Does our simplifying and dramatizing of Bible accounts into modern themes reinforce the Scripture’s authority in the minds of our children or undermine it? Do moralistic cartoons, including the animation of vegetables singing silly songs, reinforce the uniqueness of Scripture or lower children’s view of the Bible to something indistinguishable from Aesop’s fables?

What about preaching? How has the self-consuming, self-centering instant gratification of the entertainment media shaped preaching, the preacher, and our congregations? Of course, certain American churches have essentially, if not entirely, replaced preaching with drama and video. These mega-hip mega-church ‘worship services’ frequently prize performance over worship; the attendee is spectator, not participant. Entertainment is why he comes, and entertainment he gets. In this theater, the larger-than-life actors on stage carry out their frenzy-inducing feel-good magic, giving the digital junkies their religious fix.

But what of the more conservative or traditional models of worship, where the regulative principle prevails and preachers actually seek to preach the Bible? Recently in a worship service I attended at a Reformed church, which staunchly defends the inerrancy and sufficiency of Scripture, the preacher apologized two times for reading the Bible to the congregation. He was serious. The very Word he heralded as both authoritative and relevant required pardon from the congregation for its reading! Why? Perhaps because he knows his Blackberry and YouTube crowd might get bored listening to biblical texts. Or perhaps because he subconsciously doubts the power of the Word of God to do what God claims – to accomplish its purpose even in the heart of one in the embrace of the digital goddess. Whatever the case, in one tragic moment, he affirmed what many media-drunk churchgoers have come to believe: that public reading of Scripture, which the Apostle Paul alerts Timothy not to neglect (1 Tim 4:13), is a necessary boredom to endure; that preaching Scripture is an irrelevant part of our church experience.

Do we really believe in the power of God’s Word read and preached? Or do we believe Paul was simply clueless to twenty-first century culture when he exhorted Timothy to preach the word in season and out (2 Tim 4:2)? Was his notion of Scripture read publicly and preached persistently a mere contextualized protocol for the first century? Does the media-saturated church really need something else?

We must tolerate neither laziness nor neglect to self-critical questions, because without conscious and deliberate address, media idolatry will shape our ministry at 3-G speed. If Scripture itself really is divinely authoritative, then decisions about how we worship and minister need scrupulous biblical reflection for twenty-first century ministry. Make no mistake. The tools of technology are extremely valuable to the kingdom of Christ and its mission; computer and Internet technology enable us to deliver the Gospel and ministry resources literally all over the world! However, the engagement of technology must occur with rigorous, conscious, and humble consideration: the benefits, the pitfalls, the consequences (immediate and long-term), and the heart-level costs.

We must reopen the package Postman delivered: medium and message are simply not disconnected. The how and what of ministry are joined at the hip. Paul’s recurring expression of Gospel ministry was by the Word preached, not by the Word dramatized, the Word PowerPointed, the Word YouTubed. We have no rightto minimize, marginalize, or moderate the biblical method of delivery. Preaching Christ crucified may be pass