PresbyterJon’s Very Own Blog

My wife and I left the program with decidedly mixed feelings. On the one hand, the young people from our congregation we had gone to support did a bang-up job. The acting and singing was superb. On that level we thoroughly enjoyed the performance.

On the other hand we were, to put it mildly, bemused by the mixed message we’d gotten. I, in particular, was having a hard time processing what we’d seen and heard because of my background. The musical would have been totally inappropriate in the culture and country in which I grew up. In fact, the believers I know in that land would have been highly offended. They would have considered the musical blasphemous.

Perhaps one of the most perplexing conundrums people face is the notion of free will, on the one hand, and the sovereignty of God on the other. Unless people have true freedom of choice, how can God possibly be just in punishing anyone for doing evil? How can God hold them responsible for something which God made them do and in which they had no choice?

On the third hand, both good Calvinists and Muslims maintain that if things can happen which are contrary to God’s will, it means that God is not totally sovereign – His power is diminished.

The answer is, of course, that though God is totally sovereign, He has deliberately limited His own power, for a time, to allow people genuine choice. Nothing can happen that God does not allow, but He allows things which are contrary to His will. Because God allows people to choose He can also, with perfect justice, hold them accountable for their choices.

How being in covenant should impact us as a church.

In a previous post, I wrote about what it means to be in the marriage covenant. In this post I want to explore being in covenant relationship with God and what that means to the church. When we realize what it means to be in covenant relationship to God, it changes our whole perspective. We learn to look at God differently. We look at Scripture differently. We look at the world differently.

It follows that when people who have learned to look at everything through the lens of covenant, come together as a church, that church will also see things differently than it did before. Imagine a church filled with people who are alive to what it means to be in covenant relationship.

Before talking about that, let’s explore the concept of covenant a little more.

A look at the practical application of covenant.

Several years ago a friend of mine opened my eyes to the importance of covenant. He pointed out that we Christians can’t really understand our relationship to Christ and God without understanding covenant. He’s right. That’s how the New Testament describes our relationship. When you get right down to it, the Bible is not so much a record of history as it is a record of covenant history. In fact, the word “Testament” which we use to label the two major sections of the Bible is simply another word for covenant.

But what is a covenant? It’s my observation that even though we are in a covenant relationship with Christ and though Christ called the Communion we celebrate – many of us each week – a new covenant in his blood (1 Corinthians 11:25, etc.), few Christians really know what a covenant is. They would be hard pressed to define it or explain covenant to someone else.

Is God cruel or loving?

People have trouble enough dealing with the dilemma of why an all-powerful and loving God allows evil. Yet the Old Testament stories make it clear that God, not only allowed but, was very much involved in the events recorded there.

One mistake people make when reading the biblical accounts is to assume that just because God permits something, He condones it. However, if God allows free will, it follows that people will sometimes choose to do things which are outside His will. Not everything which occurred during this period had God’s blessing. He often rebuked people for what they did.

Though that is true, to a certain extent it begs the question. The fact is that God often, not only condoned but commanded massacres and genocide. What kind of God would do that? What sort of God would sanction bloody civil war, the destruction and looting of defenseless villages and the forced marriages of captive women?

Everyone has a message he or she needs to share.

There’s a saying in church circles that everyone has at least one sermon in him. What I mean when I use the expression is that each person, no matter how long he or she has been a Christian, is passionate about at least one thing, one topic. Each person has a message which he or she feels other Christians, or the church as whole needs to hear.

The message might be a very positive one, for example, an aspect of God’s blessing or His grace which this person understands or has experienced more than others. It might be a message of encouragement and hope when others are in despair. It might be a message of comfort in the face of distress and grief. It might be a message to motivate. Or, it might be a message of rebuke to the complacent or those who are drifting away.

What motivates us to do right?

My daughter aspires to a career writing children’s literature. I think she’ll succeed. She has a good imagination, she’s developed a unique voice in her writing and has the necessary discipline to park fundament in chair in front of computer for the requisite time to capture her plots. Where she may have some trouble is on the business side of things. You see, these days there are too many choices to make. It isn’t like the old days when there was basically only one route to publication.

We are works in progress. Jesus didn’t come for those who don’t need help.

One of the arguments I’ve heard against Christianity is, “If Christianity is true, then how come so many people who aren’t Christians are nicer than those who are?” I can answer that question because I happen to be one of those people who struggles with character flaws. You see, I tend to be a cynic. It’s easy for me to slip into the habit of seeing the negative and expecting the worst from people. It’s easy for me to be sarcastic and to make caustic comments. Occasionally someone has to take me to task for how I express myself. Then, there’s my temper. At times, even after almost 50 years of being in Christ, I still have to watch it. Bitterness has been another huge struggle for me. It’s all too easy to dwell on the wrongs and hurts which others have inflicted.

Why programs seldom produce expected results, and what to do about it.

Everybody knows what happens in a church service. Right? In fact, with only minor variations, the “order of service” is remarkably similar across denominations. And, most congregations hardly vary anything year in and year out. Drop a total stranger into just about any congregation at a random point in the assembly and he could probably tell you what’s going to happen next.

Why are our church assemblies the way they are? For the most part, tradition. We have a sermon as the filler in our “hymn sandwich” or its “contemporary” equivalent because that’s what we’ve always done. If someone were to ask why, most people would be at a loss to answer. It is something which just is.

An overview of training methodologies.

Re-stating the Problem

In part one of this series I talked about the shortage of leadership the church faces. For over 100 years, churches have looked to the Bible colleges and seminaries to train and provide their leaders. However, in spite of all the effort and money lavished on our institutions of learning, we still face a perpetual lack of people to fill leadership roles.

Not only do we face a shortage of leaders, the quality of the output of the colleges and seminaries is open to question. In my own experience, I’ve often been surprised, if not shocked, at graduates from the institutions who don’t seem to have a good grasp of basic Bible knowledge, let alone principles and foundational doctrine.