Why get involved in a church?

David shares Ten Reasons to Be Involved in a Church

1. Church involvement is evidence that you’re a Christian in the first place. It also helps keep you from abandoning the faith. According to the author of Hebrews, the antidote to developing an “unbelieving heart” that leads you “to fall away from the living God” is to “exhort one another” (Hebrews 3:12-13) — an activity that occurs most prominently in the church.

2. Gathering with a church encourages believers to love others and do good deeds (Hebrews 10:24-25).

3. A church is the main venue for using your spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:1-31). God has given you abilities and talents intended to help other Christians. If you’re not involved in a church, others are being deprived of what you have to offer.

4. A church helps you defend Christianity against those who attack it. When Jude told the early Christians to “contend for the faith” (Jude 3), he directed his instruction toward a group of believers, not a scattering of lone-ranger Christians. Answering challenges from coworkers, friends and family members is always easier when you can ask fellow church members for help and wisdom.

Click for the rest of Ten Reasons to Be Involved in a Church.

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It’s Wednesday. . . are you preparing for Sunday?

A word for all you who attend a church this week where the Bible will be preached:

It’s Wednesday, and Sunday is coming.

Many preachers are still recovering from this last Sunday, where they poured out their hearts and souls to present the Sacred Writings – and Jesus in them (Luke 24:27) – for their church families. And now they are preparing for yet another Sunday. They are digging in, pondering the text, writing notes and scribbling pictures, praying for the Spirit to illumine their minds and apply the text to their own hearts and lives. They are looking for Jesus, and his Gospel. They are thinking of how it might apply to their people. They are assembling potential illustrations. They are doing it all in the midst of a dizzying array of other demands upon their time and office.

I wonder, how are you preparing?

So often I think people walk into the meeting place on Sunday morning, thinking that the responsibility for hearing from God in the Sacred Text is the job of the preacher. While there is some truth to that (he must study to show himself approved unto God, a workman that must not be ashamed, rightly handling the Word of Truth), the listener has a grave responsibility.

Now click over to read the rest of Matthew Molesky’s “Let the Word Dwell In You.”

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Don’t let worship become just another activity

The words of worship flow so easily from our lips that we seldom stop to think about them: we casually talk about knowing the Lord; we say we talk to God and in one way or another hear from God. We attend churches on Sundays to have, as we say, fellowship with God and each other. There we celebrate the belief that he is our God with songs and hymns, but even these have become so familiar to us that our minds drift to other, more immediate concerns. And when we approach the Lord’s Table, to eat with God as it were, we often do not have enough time to appreciate what it means. In short, our worship services have become time-bound and routine. We have been so successful in fitting God into our important schedules that worship is often just another activity. But it should be anything but routine and ordinary.

After all, this God we say we know is the sovereign Creator and Lord of the whole universe, the eternal and ever-living God, all wise, all powerful, and ever present. Our attention to the Lord must not be an ordinary part of life; our worship of him should be the most momentous, urgent, and glorious activity in our lives.

~Allen P. Ross~Recalling the Hope of Glory: Biblical Worship From the Garden to the New Creation (Grand Rapids, MI; Kregel Publications; 2006) p. 35.

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Are we really losing 90% of our young people

Timothy Paul Jones writes,

Over the past couple of years, I’ve had conversations of this sort with hundreds of church leaders. The denominations have differed, the locations have spanned the globe, and the churches themselves have ranged from minute rural chapels to suburban mega-churches. Yet the script inevitably runs something like this: Eighty percent, maybe even ninety percent, of students are dropping out of church after high school! Can you help us launch a family ministry program to fix this problem?

In these statements, ministers and church members are simply aping the conventional wisdom that they’ve heard at conferences and read in Christian books. According to these widely-proclaimed assumptions, one of the most pressing ministry problems is the high percentage of students whose church involvement can’t seem to persist more than a year past the pomp and circumstance of their high school processionals. A recent Internet search revealed nearly a quarter-million references to the infamous evangelical dropout statistic.

This shocking dropout statistic represents a starting point for all sorts of demands for modifications in ministry practices—including the launch of family ministry programs. The logic throughout most of these references runs something like this: The standard for youth ministry effectiveness is retention of students beyond high school, and an overwhelming percentage of students are dropping out after high school. Therefore, current strategies for youth and children’s ministries are clearly not successful. If only churches could come up with more effective ministry practices, they could fix the dropout rate and become more effective.

Jones goes on to show where this 90% theory came from:

In the first place, when did conference speakers first begin to claim that the vast majority of youth were exiting the church before their sophomore year of college? And was their research reliable?

The first references to the dropout statistic come from the late 1990s. That’s when a well-meaning speaker reported a post-youth group attrition rate of 90 percent.

And how did he obtain this number?

The speaker’s information was based on the “gut feelings” that he gathered and averaged from a roomful of youth ministers.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with asking a few people how they feel about an issue. Yet the communal hunch of a single group rarely results in a reliable statistic. In this case, an informal averaging of personal recollections resulted in a wildly overstated percentage that received tremendous publicity. As a result, over the past couple of decades, many youth ministries have leaped from one bandwagon to another, driven by the unsubstantiated estimates of a few youth pastors. Another popular percentage—88 percent—has been traced back to the estimates of two youth ministry experts, based on their own experiences.

So, why do the dropout percentages represent an insufficient reason to reorient your ministry toward an emphasis on family ministry? In the first place, it’s because many of these dropout numbers—particularly the nine-out-of-ten ratio—have little basis in fact. This infamous evangelical attrition rate does not rightly describe the present reality, and it probably never described any past reality.

Read the whole thought-provoking piece “The Big Lie AboutNine Out of Ten.”

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Don’t give up on the church

“The church is not an incidental part of God’s plan. Jesus didn’t invite people to join an anti-religion, anti-doctrine, anti-institutional bandwagon of love, harmony, and re-integration. He showed people how to live, to be sure. But He also called them to repent, called them to faith, called them out of the world, and called them into the church. The Lord “didn’t add them to the church without saving them, and he didn’t save them without adding them to the church” (John Stott).

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7). If we truly love the church, we will bear with her in her failings, endure her struggles, believe her to be the beloved bride of Christ, and hope for her final glorification. The church is the hope of the world — not because she gets it all right, but because she is a body with Christ for her Head.

Don’t give up on the church. The New Testament knows nothing of churchless Christianity. The invisible church is for invisible Christians. The visible church is for you and me.”

–Pastor Kevin DeYoung in “The Glory of Plodding.”

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One thing that should excite you at church!

John MacArthur asks a thoughtful question and then gives a surprising answer:

When you think about coming to church, what aspect do you look forward to the most?

For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume your answer is something spiritually noble—nothing vain or selfish like wanting people to see you dressed in your finest clothes, showing off a new car, or trying to sell goods or services to friends at church. Instead, let’s assume the best—that whatever it is you look forward to most is somehow related to ministry.

Some people might say the teaching keeps them coming back each week. Others would say the music. For some believers, it might be the deep relationships with other Christians they find through their churches—relationships that they can’t cultivate elsewhere. Others might just appreciate the temporary relief from the pressures of life, work, and the world.

But let me suggest something to you: If we really understand Scripture—particularly some specific promises from Jesus—the thing you should look forward to the most is the offering.

Keep reading “The Abundance of Giving” by John MacArthur as he explains why giving ought to excite us!

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Where’s the Word in your church?

Jared writes,

“In speaking about God’s grace in raising up Samuel to be a prophet, Dale Ralph Davies writes:

If contemporary believers have a church where social activities, committee meetings, and nifty programs have not eclipsed the place of the word of God, if the teaching of the word of God stands at the heart of the church’s life, if there is a pulpit ministry where the Scriptures are clearly, accurately, and helpfully preached, then they are rich in the grace of God.

If you have such a church family, regardless of what else others might think is missing, give thanks to God for the grace of His Word!”

Many churches today have grown “word-less”–a situation which is lamentable.  Robert Godfrey points out,

Many American churches are in a mess. Theologically they are indifferent, confused, or dangerously wrong. Liturgically they are the captives of superficial fads. Morally they live lives indistinguishable from the world. They often have a lot of people, money, and activities. But are they really churches, or have they degenerated into peculiar clubs?

What has gone wrong? At the heart of the mess is a simple phenomenon: the churches seem to have lost a love for and confidence in the Word of God. They still carry Bibles and declare the authority of the Scriptures. They still have sermons based on Bible verses and still have Bible study classes. But not much of the Bible is actually read in their services. Their sermons and studies usually do not examine the Bible to see what it thinks is important for the people of God. Increasingly they treat the Bible as tidbits of poetic inspiration, of pop psychology, and of self-help advice. Congregations where the Bible is ignored or abused are in the gravest peril. Churches that depart from the Word will soon find that God has departed from them.

What solution does the Bible teach for this sad situation? The short but profound answer is given by Paul in Colossians 3:16: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” We need the Word to dwell in us richly so that we will know the truths that God thinks are most important and so that we will know His purposes and priorities. We need to be concerned less about “felt-needs” and more about the real needs of lost sinners as taught in the Bible.

Paul not only calls us here to have the Word dwell in us richly, but shows us what that rich experience of the Word looks like. He shows us that in three points. (Paul was a preacher, after all.)

Read the three points here.

In summary, if you have a word-centered church, express your thanks to God and your appreciation to your church leadership this week.  If you don’t, pray and discuss this with your pastors and ask God that they would see the need for living out the Colossians 3:16 model for a rich Word-dwelling-in -you ministry!

 

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No compromise

John MacArthur aruges that “compromised truth has no hope of rescuing the eternal souls of men and women who have been unwittingly ensnared by the trap of devilish deception.”  In “The Cost of Compromise” he writes,

“Undiscerning believers who partner in a common spiritual cause with unbiblical forms of Christianity or other false religions open the door wide to satanic corruption. The appearance of unity, no matter how enticing, is not worth sacrificing the clarity of the gospel.

Furthermore, embracing those heretical systems falsely reassures their followers that all is well between them and God, when actually they are headed for eternal damnation. Partnering in a spiritual enterprise with unbelievers helps Satan muddy the doctrinal waters, and it cripples our ability to preach the need for repentance.

Scripture is clear about how we are to respond when the very foundations of the Christian faith are under attack: our duty is to contend, not compromise.”

Read more here.

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Why listen to your preacher this Sunday?

”There is just one reason why I may possibly expect you to listen to me. I may expect you to listen to me if I can bring to you a message from God. If I can do that, then the very insignificance of the speaker may in a certain sense be an added inducement to you to listen to him, since it may help you to forget the speaker and attend only to the message.

It is just that I am trying to do. I am asking you to turn away from me and my opinions; I am asking you to turn away from yourself and your opinions and your troubles; and I am asking you to turn instead that you may listen to a word from God.

Where can I find that word?….Not in myself and not in you, but in an old Book that has been sealed by the seals of prejudice and unbelief but that will, if it is rediscovered again set the world aflame and that will show you, be you wise or unwise, rich or poor, the way by which you can come into communion with the living God.”

The Christian Faith in the Modern World, Gresham Machen, p12

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The folly of chasing after fads in the church

“Some people actually watch the undulating waves of fads in the evangelical movement as if these were the best barometer by which to discern how the Holy Spirit is working in the world. Many evangelical leaders actually seem to think the fads are a better gauge than the Word of God for giving us a perspective on what God wants to do in His church from season to season.

[...]

Faddism has begun to usurp the role of Scripture in contemporary evangelical thinking. Fads (not the Bible) are seen as the main instruments of growth and edification. Fads (not Scripture) also set the agenda for church ministry. If you want to discover what God is doing and formulate a working strategy for church growth, you have to get your nose out of the Bible and hold up a wet finger to pop culture. Take a survey and find out what people want, then give it to them.

That is the not-so-subtle message of a hundred or so volumes on church growth that have circulated among evangelical leaders over the past 20 years.

By definition, a Fad-Driven® church cannot be a church governed by the Word of God. Those who set their direction by following the prevailing winds of change are being disobedient to the clear command of Ephesians 4:14, which instructs us not to do that.”

Phil Johnson, of Grace to You, on “The Folly of Chasing After Fads”

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