The gospel...plus (part three)

Culture is unavoidable. The language we speak, our interests, jobs, food, humor, etc is all cultural. The idea that that the church needs to avoid cultural fads is simply an excuse to choose one cultural expression over another. It is impossible for the church to do things the same way for centuries and it obviously hasn’t happened.

There is one thing that should not change. It is the central teaching that we are bad, God is righteous and we can only be made righteous by God saving us through Jesus. This is the gospel, the only teaching the New Testament has.

The battle though, is often not fought for the gospel, but for how the gospel is applied in culture. We keep waiting for the ‘right’ cultural expression of the gospel and when we think we’ve found it, a little time goes by, our culture changes, and we are searching for it again. Some examples:

The Salvation army seemed to have it right when they sought to enroll people in ‘God’s army’ in the post-WWII culture. It was well respected until a new generation grew up in a country no longer at war. It was then criticized.

Dressing up for church, standing during services, removing hats at the church door seemed to be part of the Christian life for those who grew up respecting royalty. Since we took off our hats, dressed proper and stood at attention when the queen came to town, so much more should we do the same when we are in God’s house. Now that royalty looks less and less like God we don’t think this is so important anymore.

Reformers like Martin Luther wrote lyrics to songs sung in the pubs and the puritans brewed beer. Alcohol and Christianity went together like steak and red wine until prohibition 100 years ago. When drinking was associated with criminal activity drinking was heavily criticized. Only recently has this cultural trend swung back again and Christians once again drink beer and talk theology.

Since culture is not right and wrong, there will never be a perfect expression of the gospel. Rather we should seek to apply the unchanging truth about the work of God to love us in every culture. The application should constantly be changing, but the message not. Drinking or not drinking isn’t always right, but applying the gospel to the current culture.

I find this to be detrimental when churches create a culture that is so different from the surrounding city that they demand the people’s culture change so they can be forgiven by God. They ask them to listen to a specific style of music, do certain activities, speak a certain way, dress a certain way, vote for one particular political party, etc. I hope that our church looks like the cultures of Kimberley, but with the marked difference that the gospel makes.

I believe in the gospel, not the gospel plus common interests, not the gospel plus my position on a specific non-essential issue, and certainly not the gospel plus some cultural element.

The gospel...plus (part two)

There are many issues that Christians do not agree upon, but that does not mean they should divide over them. Someone’s position on drinking alcohol, their understanding of eschatology, or which translation of the scriptures they read from are what we at our church call ‘open-handed issues’. They are not things that should divide us.

More importantly, if they do divide us, we add something else to the requirements for salvation. We are not saved by the gospel plus no drinking alcohol, or the gospel plus the King James Version. We are saved by the gospel. The testimony of the gospel is proclaimed by our practice of unity in the gospel.

I recently heard Don Carson speaking on 1 Corinthians 8’s teaching that we should be concerned for our brother with a weak conscience. He made the point that Paul is not at all meaning the person who believes the gospel plus his area of conscience. In the case of someone who believes that it is the gospel plus abstinence from alcohol, he says...’pass the port’. For in that situation it is most beneficial to defend the gospel’s sufficiency to save.

And I know it’s easy for a guy like me who likes a beer on the weekend to support this, but it is just as important for those who are teetotalers. For example, John Piper put his ministry on the line when in the early 1980’s he had his church remove the clause in their constitution about abstaining from alcohol. Our church has similarly removed statements about eschatology.

Are their issues in your head that you automatically add to the gospel?

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. -Ephesians 2:8-9

the gospel...plus (part one)

The gospel is the only thing that saves and we receive this life-changing truth alone. We don't need the the gospel plus anything else. Beware of falling into the many traps that involve us believing the gospel plus anything else to be saved. In a series of posts I hope to bring some of the common ways we fall into this error.

The gospel plus common interests is a lie that abounds in our fallen church culture. People leave gospel-believing churches for all sorts of reasons, but most of these reasons comes down to not finding common interests (ie: there is no one here my age, there is nothing here for my kids, I don't like the style of music...). Conversely, people stay at churches because they find a social network there. Now, the church is about people, but the common reason we have for committing to a local church is the gospel, not the gospel plus anything else. We believe a 'gospel...plus' theology when we stay at a church because others that share our hobbies keep us there, or we leave a church because there are not enough people who share our hobbies. The gospel is enough to unite us, we do not need the gospel plus anything else. Many people who are highly involved in para-church organizations will often find that it is not the gospel that connects them to those they work with, but the task of the organization.

When people leave a local church in search of people they can spend time with on the weekend they ultimately leave with a powerless gospel that cannot redeem the relationships that don't involve a common goal. If your church is all people who hike together, or read the same books, or work in the same office, or whatever, it is likely that it is not a church, but a social gather of people who like that activity.

Do you have relationships with people in your church with whom you have little in common but the gospel? Develop those relationships, love those people, reconcile any fractured relationships only because you have the gospel in common.

What kind of church should we be?

Often people ask about what kind of church we are, or what kind of church I would like our church to become. We are part of an association of churches by which our name "Fellowship Baptist" comes from, but such associations have less to do with our priorities than they used to. I get questions about how 'charismatic' we are, and some people have attended our church for several weeks in the end to leave because we are not 'charismatic' enough. If you have attended for a long time, in particular, if you were a part of the preaching in Jude, you will know that we don't put much emphasis either way on what we call 'non-essentials'. So what do we put much emphasis on? What kind of church are we? If we don't care about anything, we really aren't a church after all. I agree along with the men in the video I have posted below that we are and need to become a gospel-oriented church. This is the major point of everything the New Testament teaches. This is our work as a church, our focus, and the foundation of our church. Because God's word is absorbed with the gospel, then I want nothing more than for us to do the same. We sing songs about the gospel, take communion regularly (right now twice a month), preach from the Bible, and see the answer to all of our problems in what God has done. I will as your pastor work to make sure nothing else takes over the main emphasis in our congregation.