Good point

Jeff Weddle: "Doing what God says is not legalism, nor is it legalism to tell people to do what God says."

Gospels old and new

Kevin DeYoung writes persuasively about the danger of the New Gospel (HT). I particularly appreciate his conclusion:

Please, please, please, if you are enamored with the New Gospel or anything like it, consider if you are really being fair with your fellow Christians in always throwing them under the bus.

The whole article is worth reading.

Post-Christendom and sin

David Fitch writes about the challenges of evangelizing in a postmodern culture.

Preaching as pulling back the curtain

"If you want your sermon to stick, you must pull back the curtain to reveal who God is, who we are and what He really wants. It is too easy for preachers to slip into becoming moral teachers—religious instructors who pass out rules for spiritual living without pulling back the curtain on God and ourselves; pulling back that curtain is what our people need the most!"

- Ed Stetzer

Five levels of preaching

This is helpful: five levels of preaching a biblical passage.

What preaching is about

"One danger for preachers who understand the value of doctrine, is that we can lose touch with the practical focus of preaching. We do not want to be like many whose preaching is shallow and lacking in any biblical substance. This desire is correct, but it can then be easy to fall off the other side, turning preaching into mere lectures with our aim becoming simply the transfer of data. It is good- indeed vital- for our people to know doctrine, but not abstract doctrine for doctrine’s sake. We need to know truth so that we might live in such a way as to please God. We preach not simply to create skillful hearers of the word, or even experts in talking about the word, but to produce people who live according to the word because they deeply love God."

- Ray Van Neste

Each other and the church

Barry Maxwell has written beautifully about the Christian's need for the local church. Here's a sample:

Without a local church you can neither know nor believe the love God has for you to the extent God intends. A deeply-entrenched commitment to the local church is necessary to see God’s love manifest in us. God hasn’t left us to imagine he loves us, but to tangibly experience and taste his perfecting love in the Spirit-filled ministry of brothers and sisters in the local church. Those distant from the new covenant community struggle to see, know, believe, glory in God’s love for them. They’re left to imagine what God’s love might be like rather than tasting what it really is. How would Jesus minister to you if he were physically here? He would do what his Spirit-filled brothers and sisters now do in his name.

Amen. There's more at Barry's blog.

Five levels of doctrinal error

This is helpful: Seven Habits of Highly Effective Heretics (HT).

Pastoring to hell

Meditating on Matt. 23:15, Glen Scrivener comes to some sobering conclusions on pastoral ministry:

Here’s my contention: Pastoral care is not good in and of itself. If you ‘help’ someone according to your own Pharasaical gospel, you will do nothing more than spread demonic influence. In fact you will make the pastored person twice the son of hell that you are.

It seems to me, therefore, the question is not whether we do evangelism so much as which evangel we preach.

And similarly, the big issue is not so much getting your church to be pastorally minded. The real issue is making sure they know the gospel. ‘Pastoring’ that is not a thoroughly gospel pastoring will do incredible harm.

Yes, indeed.

Basic reminder

Covetousness is idolatry.

Internet and ephemerality

"I'm amazed at the amount of time people spend on the internet. I'm not against technology, but all tools should be used to their best advantage. We should be spending our time on things that have staying power, instead of on the latest thought of the latest blogger—and then moving on quickly to the next blogger. That makes us more superficial, not more thoughtful."

- J.I. Packer (via)

Loss of anticipation

With the beginning of Advent, I thank my friend Bob Spencer for a link to "The End of Advent" at First Things. Here's a sample:

Christmas has devoured Advent, gobbled it up with the turkey giblets and the goblets of seasonal ale. Every secularized holiday, of course, tends to lose the context it had in the liturgical year. Across the nation, even in many churches, Easter has hopped across Lent, Halloween has frightened away All Saints, and New Year's has drunk up Epiphany.

Still, the disappearance of Advent seems especially disturbing—for it's injured even the secular Christmas season: opening a hole, from Thanksgiving on, that can be filled only with fiercer, madder, and wilder attempts to anticipate Christmas.

More Christmas trees. More Christmas lights. More tinsel, more tassels, more glitter, more glee—until the glut of candies and carols, ornaments and trimmings, has left almost nothing for Christmas Day. For much of America, Christmas itself arrives nearly as an afterthought: not the fulfillment, but only the end, of the long Yule season that has burned without stop since the stores began their Christmas sales.

Whatever you may think of the liturgical calendar, you would probably benefit from reading Joseph Bottum's whole article.

In the air and water

Christians, are we one in Christ or in coffee?

Quiet down

Jeff Weddle takes a sharp look at Christians and dealing with problems. Here's how his essay begins:

Everyone has problems and they are always happy to share. Christians, being people, are no different.

The primary difference between Christians talking about their problems and other people is that Christians will end their whine session with a short, out of context verse that makes both sides smile and say “have a nice day.”

Ouch. What's Jeff's conclusion? Though not literally the bottom line, it's really this:

People with serious problems that they want solved get quiet and listen. Then they do what they were told.

I recommend Jeff's whole article.

Lighten up

Dan Edelen offers advice to Christians in the U.S. on lightening the load.

Sign of spiritual health

"The single most revealing measurement of a congregation’s health and spiritual vitality? Attendance at worship."

A note for preachers:

Resist.

More on the missional God

"The Bible does not align us to God’s purposes by giving us a book of answers and instructions. Rather, as we soak up the Scriptures, the Spirit works in our lives to renew our minds (Romans 12:2) and to change our way of thinking. Because of this, we need to remember that the Bible is first of all about God, not about mankind."

- Eddie Arthur

Asking questions, finding answers

This is a brief, helpful article on interpreting the Bible through asking good questions.

Building and planting

Keith Brenton has noticed something about the language Christians use to describe building the church:

I'm a little uncomfortable with the term "church planting."

I understand that it's trying to describe something more organic than building and filling church facilities; something that communicates growth and change, and that the alternative term "church-building" would have attached to it all of the baggage of "church buildings." But "church planting" isn't really a scriptural term.

True. I recommend Keith's whole article.

Revolutionizing our view of God

Glen Scrivener explains, succinctly and poignantly, why it really matters that "Jesus is God-sized and God is Jesus-shaped."

On being translated

"As Christ came to the world, so his people spread out across the globe spreading the Good News of a God who translated himself so that we could understand him. The centre of this Good News is the creation of indigenous redeemed communities expressing the Gospel manifold cultures and all adding together to create a symphony of praise to our God. The translation of the Scriptures lies at the very heart of this. Translation is not simply a way to convey the message: translation is the message."

- Eddie Arthur

Seeking first

Dan Edelen writes trenchantly about the failure of Christianity in the United States:

Our problem as Christians in America 2009 is not simply that we are more wealthy than 95 percent of the world’s population, but that every single aspect of how we live, work, love, commune, and bleed  MUST be “sold” to follow Jesus.

And we are simply unwilling to take that step.

Dan goes on to offer solutions at the link.

Meanwhile, another Dan (Horwedel) offers related thoughts on American civil religion: "too much of who we are as the church is wrapped up in preserving our country and/or way of life, and not near enough is about loving God and others."

I recommend the writings of both Dans.