Quote of the Week . . .

. . . or whatever time period it is between now and the next time I find a quote worth posting:

"A Fundamentalism Worth Saving" was a statement about what kind of fundamentalism would be worth saving. It was not an argument that such a fundamentalism exists.

Kevin T. Bauder

More Indifference?

Here's a question—a sincere question. What happens when you give false doctrine* a platform? Do you leverage the stronger relationship to draw the person that advocates the false doctrine towards a more biblical position, or do you legitimize and perpetuate the false doctrine?

But of course, that's not the only question. Don't we also have to ask whether people who advocate false doctrine are worthy of being held up as Christian leaders? Isn't that what so many of us have grown up being taught? Didn't the historic neo-evangelicals think that they could move teachers of false doctrine towards orthodoxy by engaging them relationally and partnering with them strategically?

Surely we haven't reached the point where it's ok to say Scripture says things it doesn't say, just because folks aren't obnoxious or don't make a huge deal out of it. Have we?

*This old post develops my point about false doctrine a bit more, but here's the gist: I believe that claiming the Bible is the sole authority of your faith and practice while including in your statement of faith that you refuse to "accept" any translations other than the KJV is nothing less than false doctrine.

Dever: It Rhymes with Never

Not fever.

Fundamentalists, Admissions of Legalism, and Conservative Evangelicals

Last weekend the Minnesota Baptist Association hosted a men's fellowship with Kevin Bauder as a keynote speaker and panel moderator. The audio is all available for download here. The plenary session with Bauder is important to understand the context of the panel discussions. I'm not going to take the time to summarize it now.

So far I've only listened to that plenary session and the panel discussion with older pastors. The first 20 minutes or so of that panel was fascinating—older pastors admit widespread presence of functional legalism and peer pressure among Minnesota fundamentalist Baptists 20-30 years ago. I don't at all want to skewer them for that admission—quite the contrary. The frank admission of the elephant in the room that so many others want to deny is refreshing. These men are examples of leadership in many ways. They think the situation is much better now and give reason to believe that's true. I'm skeptical that all the roots of legalism have been eradicated, and maybe they wouldn't argue with that. In any case I'm grateful for the trend, for the pastors' courage, and Bauder's terrific questions that drew out this ground-breaking public conversation.

Then the conversation turned to Bauder seeking advice from these pastors as to how he should respond to a request from Mark Dever to write something for one of his publications. (He later identifies this request, which he declined, as an article in the 9Marks E-Journal on what fundamentalists look for in seminary education.

The responses were mixed. The first was a definite no, and the rest were more ambiguous. I was fascinated by what their answers revealed about their rationale, their motivations, and their fears. Their basic argument was that Bauder writing for Dever could function as an endorsement of Dever's ideas as well as other conservative evangelicals. The chief threats to them seem to be losing members of their churches to Bethlehem Baptist Church (pastored by John Piper) and younger generations of fundamentalists identifying more with conservative evangelicals than their roots.

What I'm about to say, I say with only the kindest of intentions to Minnesota Baptist Churches: What Mark Dever writes will not destroy your churches; it might save them. They are not ideas to be distanced from, but embraced. Implementing them will not drive people to Bethlehem; it will keep people from going there and perhaps attract people from Bethlehem who look for something more from a church. In other words, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church and The Deliberate Church and What Is a Healthy Church? and What Is a Healthy Church Member? will not create an appetite for a church with 4,500 people and three campuses.

Here's the absolute best thing I believe a Minnesota Baptist Association pastor could do:

1. Adopt a thoroughly expositional approach to preaching. (Dever and Piper offer vastly different models in the spectrum of expositional preaching. Pick approach within those parameters and you'll be fine.)
2. Encourage every member of your church to buy Piper's The Pleasures of God. Get small groups or Sunday School classes or pastoral staffs or deacons or people meeting one-on-one for discipleship to read and talk about the book.
3. Buy a copy of What Is a Healthy Church? and What Is a Healthy Church Member? for every member of your church. Incorporate those books in your teaching curriculum and strongly encourage all prospective members to read them.
4. Buy a copy of Nine Marks of a Healthy Church and The Deliberate Church for all church leaders—pastors, deacons, and other key officers. Create some sort of opportunity to talk through them with those people.
   

Here's the deal: If I lived in Minneapolis, I wouldn't go to Bethlehem, as much as I'm grateful for the amazing work John Piper has done in recovering the gospel in evangelical-fundamentalist churches. I'd go to a church that incorporates the best of Bethlehem and 9Marks. It just so happens, the church I know of in Minneapolis that does all those things isn't a "conservative evangelical" church. It's a church that has emerged very much from the stream of fundamentalism. It's a church I encourage people to consider when I hear they're moving to Minneapolis. When a younger guy was talking to me about a seminary decision, I counseled him that this church made it worth putting all his eggs in the Minneapolis basket. It's a church that's just down the road from one of Bethlehem's campuses. And judging by the size of the crowd when Mark Dever was speaking there on the evening of the Super Bowl, lots of people have found no reason to look elsewhere.

So, dear Minnesota pastors, you have nothing to fear from 9Marks. You have everything to gain, not only for the size of your church, but for the souls of your congregation. Beat the conservative evangelicals at their own game! If fundamentalism really is the closest thing to authentic biblical Christianity, as so many argue, there's no reason to be threatened by the church across town unless you don't trust the Spirit of God to work in his people's hearts to lead them to the place that will best serve their sanctification. I believe that could be your church.

And even if it's not, the kingdom of Christ is not coextensive with your church or your association. The question shouldn't be about whether principles are good for your circles of fellowship, but whether they are true. Don't be short-sighted.

P.S. If you want to learn more, you'd be welcome at a 9Marks Weekender in DC. You won't be the first fundamentalist to attend and benefit from it (or the last), and probably not the most hard-core right-wing. Registration for May opens soon. Hope to see you there. (And if you want to know what church in Minneapolis I'm talking about, e-mail me. Or Paul, feel free to just tell everybody.)

[Update: Contact 9Marks for quantity pricing on the books I recommended. Just mention my name and . . . well, then you'll probably be out of luck.]

Crusaders and the Cross

How the impulse was aroused among Christian schools and colleges to adopt the nickname "Crusaders" is a mystery to me. A charitable analysis might infer that revivalists of decades past took the nickname from the evangelistic "crusades" of the 19th-20th century. But that doesn't explain the fundamentalist revivalist "Crusaders" who wouldn't want to be caught within sniffing distance of a Billy Graham Crusade.

I think the better explanation is that both the revivalist evangelists and the academic institutions wanted to identify themselves with the fiery militancy of the armies that battled their way to Jerusalem. I've seen a few Crusader logos with a knight with a lance on a horse, but a preacher silhouette with a big Bible and a pointy finger? Not so much.

But those armies were Roman Catholic mercenaries. They raped and pillaged their way to Jerusalem. To say that they were advancing the Kingdom of Christ would be to misunderstand fundamentally the nature of the Kingdom and, frankly, to blaspheme the name of Jesus Christ.

In other words, it seems to me that complete historical ignorance is the best possible motivation behind associating the Crusaders with institutions that profess to be biblical and Christian (to say nothing of the added irony of fundamental and Baptist).

At least one institution known as "Crusaders" recognized the incompatibility I've described. Duane Litfin, president of Wheaton College, had this to say about the Crusades:

It was not until I became aware of how offensive the image of the Crusades is to large segments of the world that I was forced to take another look at these historical events, and what I discovered was anything but ideal. Christians massacring Muslims; Muslims massacring Christians; Western Christians killing Eastern Christians and vice versa. We are hard-pressed to find anything in these disastrous waves of fighting that our Lord might have approved, despite the fact that the conflict was ostensibly carried out in His name. Try, as I did, reading up on the Crusades, searching for anything with which you would be willing to identify; you will find it an eye-opening exercise. It is little wonder that so many view these unfortunate historical episodes so negatively . . . .

[Some might respond that] that the cross is offensive too; are we going to abandon that? To which, of course, the answer is no. We will stand or fall with the scandal of the cross. But we must not complicate that scandal by introducing our own scandals into the equation, scandals that may block others from seeing Jesus in our midst.

Under Dr. Litfin's leadership, Wheaton abandoned its Crusaders mascot. Here's the statement that summed up the rationale:

Wheaton College exists, so we claim, "for Christ and His Kingdom." I have become convinced that making this change is a simple matter of faithfulness to Christ.

Read the whole statement here.

Friends, former classmates, former co-workers, and people I've never met: I can imagine three possible responses to this argument among those who have relationships within institutions that retain the Crusader mascot.

1. You can deny that identifying with the Crusades is incompatible with faithfulness to Christ. If that describes you, commit yourself to give careful study to what really happened in the Crusades.
2. You can agree and do nothing. If that's where you're at, consider whether you value peaceful indifference more than pursuing faithfulness to Christ through what might be a difficult and uncomfortable conversation with someone in a position to effect change.
3. You can agree and commit yourself to do something about it. This might include contacting a pastor of a church with a Christian school, a college president, a board of trustees member, an alumni relations coordinator, or an athletic director. This doesn't mean you blow your top. Let's be humble, knowing that we were too ignorant and too apathetic for too long. And let's certainly remember that the people in a decision-making capacity right now are most likely not the individuals who were responsible for the unwise choice. Don't demand an immediately positive response. The responsible individual may have to take time to get other key leaders to agree. Or he may want to wait for a time when he does not appear to bow to external pressure. But our objectives must be that Christ's name be honored, not that we get the credit, and not that change take place on our timetable.

The Great Game

One of the unexpected ways my two years in DC has shaped my thinking is local church engagement in missions. My church invests the vast majority of our missions-related resources in a region of the world that is unusually hostile to the gospel. That means there aren't many believers there, and it's difficult to get church planters into the region.

Bruce Ashford was my missions professor at Southeastern Seminary. It was about the theology, not methodology—a theology of the glory of God displayed in the narrative of Scripture, with particular emphasis on how God calls a people from all nations to exalt his name in worship throughout all the earth.

I read with interest his missiological survey of The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, which tells the story of the 19th century struggle between Britain and Russia for control of Central Asia. I had just read the book last year. It's a fascinating enough story if you like to fill in gaps in your understanding of world history. It's even more fascinating if you read it from a missiological perspective. Ashford's survey will help you do that. He writes:

Christians seeking to live and work in a Central Asian context will be wise to take note that Western “Christian” nations have been among the chief culprits in the bloodshed and exploitations of the past century. The phrase “Jesus is Lord” does not conjure up thoughts of a God of love and of life. Rather, for them, it evokes memories of strife and bloodshed. Among the Tatars, for example, who were conquered by Ivan the Terrible, to call a person “baptized” is to call them the one of the strongest curse words in their contemporary vocabulary. It is for this reason, therefore, that believers who wear the name “Christian” will need to work hard, through word and through deed, to fill that word with new meaning.

Community or Affinity?

About a year ago at some event in Peoria, Mark Driscoll discussed evangelicalism's fad du jour, "community." He says:

"Today the big buzzword is community. And really what it is, is affinity. Community is people who are different coming together. Affinity is people who are alike hanging out. We live in a world where, in the name of community, there's a lot of affinity."

So whether your church is full of 20ish dudes with soul patches wearing untucked black shirts and carrying ESVs with stylized crosses on the cover, or whether it looks more like a couple hundred 40 to 60-something white people carrying 18 pound KJVs and wearing sport coats and flowered dresses, you're probably looking at an unhealthy organism. To put it another way, your church is probably not displaying the character of Jesus Christ and his plan to call out a people to himself from all languages, tribes, and nations.

Ed Welch to Speak at CBTS Leadership Conference

Ed Welch, lecturer, counselor and CCEF faculty member, is slated to serve as a special guest lecturer at this year's National Leadership Conference sponsored by Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary.

For more on Welch, listen to Mark Dever interview him here.

HT: SI

Doctrinal Pride

I was just reading Jerry Bridges' recent book: Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate, for possible application to our church's Core Seminars. His discussion of doctrinal pride caught my eye:

Closely akin to moral pride is doctrinal pride, the asumption that whatever my doctrinal beliefs are, they are correct, and anyone who holds another belief is theologically inferior. Those of us who care about doctrine at all are susceptible to this form of pride. It doesn't matter if we are Arminians or Calvinists, whether we subscribe to Dispensational or Covenant theology, or perhaps have embraced some form of eclectic theology, we tend to think our doctrinal beliefs are the correct ones and look with some disdain on those whose beliefs are different from ours.

And then to complete the spectrum of this type of pride, there are those who don't consider doctrine important and so look with disdain on those of us who do. In other words, this form of pride is a pride in our particular belief system, whatever that may be, and an attitude that in our beliefs we are spiritually superior to those who hold other beliefs. (p. 92)

I think it's important to hold theological beliefs that you believe are correct, and Bridges discusses that in successive paragraphs. But he's right to point out the pride in assuming that you could not be in error, and that something must be true since you believe it. He's also right to focus on the disdain for those who disagree.

This is a pretty good book—very practical and useful for directing our attention to sins we don't think about quite as much. And there's a study guide available as well for classroom use.

Is Church Membership Biblical?

Greg Gilbert's post on the Church Matters blog answers folks who argue that the notion of membership isn't in Scripture. Here's some historical/etymological perspective I'd never considered:

I really don't understand how some Christians can object to the idea of church membership. I mean, Paul uses the word in Scripture. It's not like we have to deduce the idea from vague emanations and penumbras.

1 Corinthians 12:27: "Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it."

I know that's a metaphor, but that's also the point---The metaphor Paul uses here is precisely where we get the idea of membership. The word "melos" means "integral part, member." I think sometimes people have the impression that the church stole the idea of membership from Columbia Records or something. Not so. In fact, Columbia Records, the Rotary Club, the Lions' Club, and all the rest stole it from us!