Posted on 02/21/2011 3:04:22 PM PST by Gamecock
Hello and welcome to another edition of the White Horse Inn. Every mission statement needs a good strategic plan. If your mission is to make cars, then you need to figure out how you are going to design, assemble, distribute, and sell them. The one to who was given all authority in heaven and on earth entrusted his apostles with the message and the mission. He gave us the method to go along with the Gospel.
There are a lot of details given to us in the New Testament concerning the proper organization and execution of the church's ministry. However, all Christians have held that the Great Commission is marvelously simple and unambiguously clear: The means of fulfilling it are preaching, baptizing, and teaching-that's what the Great Commission actually says. Throughout the Book of Acts, the growth of the church is indicated by the phrase, "and the word of God spread," together with the report of baptisms and adult converts together with their households being baptized. They gathered regularly for the public ministry of preaching, teaching, fellowship, the Supper, and the prayers. The Lord added daily those who were being saved to the church (Acts 2:47). "So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily" (Acts 16:5). There is no distinction in the New Testament between being a disciple and belonging to the church-not just to the invisible church (i.e., of regenerate believers), but to the visible church. Membership in this visible body of Christ is identified by public profession of faith and baptism (in the case of adult converts, reversed in the case of covenant children).
On the basis of the Great Commission-and the many passages that unpack it-the churches of the Reformation affirm that the true church is visible "wherever the Word is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered."
Today this consensus is no longer obvious. Many of us were raised with evangelistic invitations that distinguished sharply between what happens inside us and what happens outside us, between "getting saved" and "joining a church"; a "personal relationship with Jesus" versus "church membership." And all of this goes back still further, to pietism and revivalism and before that to radical Anabaptist movements and still further back to monastic spirituality. The idea is that real disciples are "made" not in the theater of ordinary Word-and-sacrament ministry and the care of elders and deacons, but in the parachurch enclaves for super-spiritual saints.
We've talked before on this program about the "message creep" in the church today. The gospel has become a cliché for all sorts of things: many of them good, but not the gospel. Left to ourselves, the emphasis will always shift back from the Triune God and his saving work in Christ to us and our experience, piety, and activity. The same thing happens with the Great Commission. "Message creep" leads to "mission creep."
One of those places where mission creep often begins is at the level of strategies. Christ not only gave us a mission statement: "Go therefore into all the world and make disciples." He also gave us a strategic plan when he added, "baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you." You see, salvation comes down from God to us, not from us to God. Therefore, the methods he has instituted are designed to deliver his gifts. We've turned God's gospel delivery system into another series of methods for our self-improvement and world-transformation. How do you make disciples of all nations? Jesus says it plainly, "Preach the gospel, baptize, and teach." But we know better. Or do we? That's the question for this discussion at the White Horse Inn.
Okay so getting back to the discussion. :-)
It seems that it is one of man's characteristics to want to elevate individuals, or organizations, to higher levels then we should, or require credentials of them. I'm reminded of who Jesus selected to be His disciples. They were fishermen, tax collectors and other "lowly" professions. Maybe the point we should be learning is it's not important what the name on the door is, or where the person went to school, but what is being said.
If this is our guide then the issue becomes how do you measure their words.
The point he's trying to make, I think, is that there is too much overemphasis on the existential aspect of faith where people are no longer satisfied with the simple aspects of preaching and sacraments; dismissing church for other para-church organizations that they find more existentially satisfying.
I agree with him to a point.
Your concerns are equally valid and present the other side of the coin.
See this video of how Horton sees it. Enjoy!
‘To be a Christian the Trinity is not optional’ — I agree.
In the article we find the following sentence:
“On the basis of the Great Commission-and the many passages that unpack it-the churches of the Reformation affirm that the true church is visible ‘wherever the Word is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered.’”
This is, I think, a true statement. However, it should be borne in mind that there were really two reformations, a conservative one and, a little later, a more radical one. The point of the first was to reform the church, that is to say, strip away all the accretions that had crept in (mission/message creep) since the time of the apostles and that were either contrary to or distractions from the pure gospel of Jesus Christ. For the sake of discussion I will define the pure gospel of Jesus Christ, in condensed form, as that which the Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2:4-10. However, this is only a condensed way of speaking of the pure gospel. There is, of course, much more that could be said about the gospel, but it wouldn’t contradict what Paul has written here.
The effect of the first and conservation reformation was to leave many outward things in place: historical/traditional orders of service (i.e., liturgy) that revolve around and emphasize “the Word is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered” and a very strong emphasis on the ecumenical creeds (Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian) as the center of the church’s (i.e. disciples of Christ spoken of collectively) faithful and public response to the truth revealed in the inerrant and infallible Word of God, that is, the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. The basic elements of the service of Word and Sacrament and of the Creeds were to be the confession not only of the church collectively but of all its members individually. In other words, the distinction often made today between so-called “Churchianity” and Christianity did not exist. But two things were recognized: First, that man is sinful, corrupt, and flawed and so just as the visible church had become corrupt in the centuries leading to the reformation, so too could it become corrupt again. Second, that finally only the Good Shepherd Himself knows who are His sheep. All that the church collectively could do was to take individuals at their word (that is, their confession of faith), encourage them by preaching and teaching to live out the holy Christian faith in their own lives, and then trust that God the Holy Spirit will do what we cannot and what the Holy Scriptures say He will do.
The second or radical reformation went much farther in trying to prescribe who and what a Christian is and should be and then requiring of him or her certain behaviors.
As the reader may gather, I am an adherent of the first Reformation and not the second. The second, I would say, was an over-reaction, seeking to do in another way (from the bottom up, so to speak) what the Roman pope tried to do (from the top down): prescribe in detail what is or is not Christian behavior and then endeavor to implement it in the lives of each of its adherents.
It may be that some, perhaps most, participants on this thread will disagree with my description and definitions. But in the interest of disclosure and honesty, it is my sincere and strongly-held perspective. And I am willing to discuss it with, hopefully, a large measure of civility.
It is further my opinion that the visible church in the United States today is very much subject to “mission creep.” I would even say frighteningly so. To the extent the church adjusts its message away from the centrality of “we preach Christ crucified,” (1 Corinthians 1:23) it engages in “mission creep.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.