Category: Ministry & Church Health

Membership in the local church is increasingly seen as optional for Christians. Some churches don’t practice membership at all.

There are two primary ideas associated with this idea of optional membership, both of which undermine  the local congregation. The first is the notion that a person’s spiritual health is not dependent on gathering with other believers. In this view, someone can be Christian without attending corporate worship or Bible study regularly with the same group of believers, or without attending at all. The second is the idea that even if a believer is attending in some fashion, he need not be formally joined to that congregation through membership. In other words, she doesn’t need to be on a list of “members” to satisfy the communal aspects of her faith.

Continue Reading “6 Compelling Reasons for Christians to Join a Church”

I had heard for several years that among the various Directors of Missions for local Southern Baptist Associations there were some who took it upon themselves to weed out “Calvinists”, keeping them from consideration for pulpit supply or for open ministerial positions.

I had also heard that consultants from state Baptist conventions help train pastor search committees to avoid hiring “Calvinists.” One Director of Missions suggested to me that because of what school I attended (The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), I should include on my resume my understanding of the “Five Points of Calvinism.”

Smoking out the Calvinists

Apparently some Tennessee Baptists have taken up the cause of culling Calvinists in organized fashion, creating written guidelines and conducting training sessions. Tom Ascol, of Founders Ministries, has written about it here. In his article Ascol reprints the documents supposedly used to root out hidden Calvinist preachers (documents are entitled “Reformed Red Flags,” “Theological Differences Between Traditional Southern Baptists and Extreme Calvinists,” and “Belief Statement and Pastor’s Pledge”). These documents are obviously full of stereotypes, simplistic assessments, and mischaracterizations of Calvinism, Reformed doctrine, and the Doctrines of Grace.

Continue Reading “How to Smoke Out a Calvinist”

In my hopefully-soon-to-be-former profession [I was formerly a lawyer], I frequently encounter people upset about restrictive covenants.

Restrictive covenants are sets of agreements that homeowners in a particular subdivision or neighborhood abide by as a condition of owning a home there. Most of the restrictions are fairly simple, mostly common sense, and in south Alabama consist mainly of 1) promising not to put your car on blocks in the front yard, and 2) limiting yourself to 3 chickens, 2 goats or some combination thereof but not exceeding a total of 4 non-pet livestock (I can say this – in jest – because I have, at one time or another: had a car on blocks (in the back yard), raised chickens and rabbits, and grown a row garden complete with scarecrows, all only a few blocks from downtown).

People get very exercised about restrictive covenants, whether their apoplexy manifests in bristling at being told they must put white lights on a leafless tree at Christmas, or bristling that their neighbor two streets over did not put white lights on such a tree. We spend inordinate amounts of time and emotional energy stressing about whether the homeowner’s association – charged with enforcing the restrictive covenants – may, in fact, tell one of the members that his choice of landscape plants makes his house resemble a sunflower farm, and whether it should incorporate and purchase liability insurance to protect the ones unfortunate enough to tell a neighbor that his live-in RV, parked on the back patio and hooked in to the neighborhood sewer system, must go.

By significant contrast, it is virtually impossible in most congregations of Christian churches for members to become exercised about anything. Well, almost. But the things over which most congregations get exercised don’t quite seem righteous: someone sat in the wrong pew; preacher drives the wrong make of car; moderator has an “agenda”; teacher doesn’t use the right curriculum; pool hall across the street wants a liquor license.

The Bible has its own set of “restrictive covenants” for those who are truly neighbors, not merely in the geographical sense, but in the spiritual sense; those who have covenanted with each other to live kingdom lives under mutual submission to each other and to God through Christ. These covenants don’t tell us how many pets we can have, how many cars we can drive, or what sorts of decorations are approved. They do tell us that we are part of one another: rebuke one another, exhort one another, encourage one another, reprove one another. And we are not expected act a certain way so that our property values will remain high, but so that the witness of Christ will remain pure, the glory of God remain unblemished, so that we may “present every man complete in Christ” (Colossians 1:28-29).

If we were as concerned to present ourselves a living sacrifice, acceptable to God, as we are to ensure our hedges are trimmed, sidewalks are edged, and appraisals are high, we might see dramatic changes in the proclamation of the word we claim, in the sanctification of the neighbors we love, and in the glorification of the God we serve.