Tag Archives: Philosophy of Ministry

Glory of God, Understanding Christ at the focus of God's glory.

Making distinctions regarding the local church.

What does the local church look like and what does it do? Churches function according to their central core beliefs. They always do what they accept to be their mission and purpose. A church may have been founded to be a center for worship for local Christians, but over time it chose to become a center of recreation, a school, and a place to serve the needs of the poor. And the founding principles were lost.

The YMCA is the often-used example of an organization that was founded to “make disciples of young men” and it became a gym. Most fraternities were founded to be “little churches” on the campuses of colleges, where men learned to live the Christian faith, where prayer and study of God’s Word were essential to the fraternity’s values, and where Jesus Christ was exalted in their pledges and covenants. Today, of course, they are social clubs that have nothing to do with the Gospel of Christ at all.

Here are some distinctions between the Biblical Local Church and what we see almost universally in the local churches of our day. No church is perfect. But today, so many churches have become something different, something essentially alien to the Biblical model, that we hope to recover the Glorious Local Church, for the salvation of men and women, and supremely for the glory of God. Here are some distinctions. This is short-hand, and much more could be said about each of these. These are intended to spur your own thinking and reflection.

Churches don’t provide services for people. We serve God.
Churches are not commanded to have programs. We worship God.
Churches in Scripture did not advertise or sell services. The Glorious Local Church is captured by the Christian Gospel and we give all to advance the spread of Christianity in every way we can, even at the price of our fortunes and our lives.
Churches don’t convince or convert anyone. God redeems. God gives faith. God makes dead men and women alive. God gives grace. Jesus said, “I have come to seek and to save those who are lost” Luke 19:10.
Churches don’t seek members to join them. We gather those who are saved for instruction, for worship, and for ministry and mission.
Membership is not about the local church. Membership in the Church of Jesus Christ is governed by God. Men have nothing to do with it, other than to test the faith of those claiming to believe, so that the local church is kept as pure as possible.
The church is for believers not for those in need, not for the lost, not for those needing a class or an intervention.
The church may minister to those in need as God commands, but “confessing the good confession” 1 Timothy 6:12, is the standard for entry into the local church.
We must not confuse the local church with the Church of Jesus Christ. One is a human, broken, failing institution. But it is to come as close as possible to the Glorious Body of Christ as we can. We are the eternal Bride of Christ, the assembly of the victorious, the fellowship of the redeemed.
Churches do not entertain or provide performances in the name of worship. We are Christians that, as a gathering of the redeemed, worship God. We do not relegate worship to a few people standing up front.
Worship is the passion of our lives, the undergirding strength for facing every trial, our great joy, and our astonishing privilege. We will not delegate it to others, even if they sing better than we.

The Biblical Local Church grows not by programs or by structures. It doesn’t expand through marketing campaigns and targeting segments of the population. We grow by the faith and beauty of the lives of those who make up the worshiping assembly. People are changed by true worship. Our lives are enriched by coming together and all of us worshiping God together. Our minds are instructed. We learn about God. We hear his Word. We love one another as God loves us.

Churches can’t repair peoples’ lives. God alone can. We must decide what is first (the Worship of God) and what else should be done in obedience to God’s commands and instructions in his Word. We must never lose sight of our first duty to God: To worship and praise — to Give Glory to God in worship, in our lives, in prayer, in obedience, in service, in sacrifice, and in holiness.

True worship is the wonderful gathering of Christians, in which all believers stand before God personally praising, saying the content of our faith, listening to the Word of God, singing praise to our Redeemer, joining our song and confessions with others who love God and who have been transformed by his amazing grace, too. Worship involves everyone in the room. Christians must worship God alone. But we worship him together.

The essential point is this:

Churches are for believers. What we do in worship may be shared with friends and family who visit, but everything we do is focused on the Church coming before our Loving Redeemer God in worship, growing unto maturity so we can serve him, and living lives that bring honor to God and praise to Jesus Christ.

The highest and most glorious commitment of the Local Church must be the glory of God. When that is in focus, everything else becomes clear as to what we are to do, and how we are to do it. God is to be glorious among his people.

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Glory of God, Understanding Christ at the focus of God's glory.

Trinitarian glory.

From Jonathan Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption, 1774.

“It was his design that the Son should thus be glorified and should glorify the Father by what should be accomplished by the Spirit to the glory of the Spirit, that the whole Trinity, conjointly, and each person singly, might be exceedingly glorified. The work that was the appointed means of this was begun immediately after the Fall and is carried on until, and finished at, the end of the world, when all this intended glory shall be fully accomplished in all things.”

We are not, in this age of texting and uncomplicated paragraphs, as able as earlier readers were, to be able to follow such tight and weighty language from Edward’s pen. But this little paragraph contains some of the loftiest and most important information about God’s heart, what matters to him, and what he will do to ensure his glory is displayed and vindicated. This is the work of the Trinity. Edwards was saying that each Person in the Godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit would be working both for the glory of each other member of the Trinity and that they would each also be working for their own glory. There is nothing more important to the mind of God than his glory.

His glory will be fully displayed in all things that have been made and in all events and occurrences that have ever happened in the past or ever will take place in the future. This involves our lives, our choices, and our future eternity.

But this is the work of God to glorify God fully and absolutely. There is no higher purpose in God’s being than the defense and display of his glory. He is God and he would not be glorious as God if he did not defend and propound his virtues. How unlike people God is!

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Promises of God, The Word of God in the life of the believer.

Freedom of the glorious church.

The 20th Chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith reads in part, “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.” This principle of freedom of conscience means that no Christian can be bound to do anything that is contrary to the Word of God, not can there be any action permitted by the church for a Christian to do that is specifically forbidden by the Word of God. The freedom of the believer lies in those things which are not forbidden by principle or specific in the Word of God, and it allows Christians to refuse to be bound by the rules and regulations of men, where freedom has been given to them by God. A Christian is free to obey Christ; a Christian is free from any of the commandments of men.

Today freedom is assaulted when people require of us what God does not require. When well-meaning Christians obligate us to do those things which the Word of God does not speak about, and they do so for the loftiest of reasons.

An example would be teetotalism in reference to alcoholic beverages. The Bible forbids drunkenness and is clear about the dangers of strong drink, but it doesn’t require that all Christians abstain completely. It is silent regarding abstinence. Some church leaders would forbid drinking for any who wish to join their church, but such a prohibition is not contained in Scripture and should not be a Law for Christian people to obey. Christian freedom may allow drinking wine, but it would still forbid drunkenness. There are also rules about causing others to stumble (people who struggle with drunkenness should not be taunted by your freedom, but the law of love would require that you set aside your freedom for the good of your brother or sister, see Romans 14:20; 1 Corinthians 8:11). And a Christian is free to abstain if they wish. But where we get into trouble is requiring others to live like we want to live (usually forbidding something like drinking or playing cards, or dancing, or requiring actions that the Word of God doesn’t say anything about, like requiring people to serve in some specific project, or directing people to take some pledge that isn’t required in the Word of God).

Christian freedom was the central and most important element of Reformed theology. The Puritans were willing to die over the principle of the “freedom of the conscience of the individual,” and many did. Freedom is very important in the Christian life. Without it, we are going to be compelled to obey whatever our leaders dream up for us to do. But with freedom of conscience, we just politely ask them to defend their request from the Word of God and if they are creating some fiction for us, we politely refuse to do it. And that refusal is protected by our freedom in Christ.

The glorious church celebrates the freedom of conscience. We hold that we must never bind the conscience, require behaviors, or demand actions that the Word of God doesn’t assert and clearly set forth for believers to do. If God’s Word leaves freedom, we affirm that freedom and are willing to live with the consequences. If the Word of God is silent we, too, are silent. If the Word of God addresses a matter (fidelity in marriage, prohibitions of theft, forbidding lying, directing us to faithfulness in prayer, and the like) we will bind Christians to live as the Word of God instructs us to live.

The principle is this: The Church must never bind people to do things (even good things done for good purposes) that are not specifically commanded by God in his Holy Word. Christians are free from all the commands and rules of men. Our freedom in Christ is precious and it is worth defending.

The glorious church has freedom in Christ.

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Glory of God

The glory of God as the reason for all ministry in the local church.

The glorious church exists to praise God and to give him all honor.The focus on the glory of God means that people are worshipers and recipients of the grace of God, and they are never to be used. People bring their gifts and talents, their faith and their abilities, but what they give to God does not make God more glorious. It makes God’s people more aware how glorious God is. The church adds nothing to the glory of God. Since God has all the glory that exists, there is no glory to be extracted from God’s people. There is nothing from the efforts of people that will ever make the church greater in glory or more pleasing to God. The best it can do is experience the glory that God has made known about himself.

The church is great because of the Christ who is at the center of all we do. We believe that the Gospel has enough power in itself to provide for the needs of the glorious church. The Gospel doesn’t need the church. The church needs the Gospel. Only when Christ is our Substitute, our Savior, our Only Qualification, our Great Hope, are we pleasing to God.

The glorious church does not exist for greater numbers of people and for fabulous amounts of money. That implies that bigger is better in glory. But all glory is already God’s, so the numbers’ game is foolish.

In the glorious church, numbers never come into the equation in considering whether or not to create a new ministry or a mission. Practically, to be sure, there is an accounting of what is possible (do we have people with the gifts necessary to do this work? or do we have enough financial resources available to complete this work?). There will never be indebtedness for ministry. But we will be free from the love of money, knowing that God will never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).

Our ministry scope and reach is only calculated on the basis of the glory that God possesses, not on numbers and finances. This changes the reasons for which we exist and the purpose for every ministry. We never use the calculus that “if we could attract X number of people, then we could generate Y amount of money.” We may ask, “How can we tell more people about the glory of God?” “Who in our church has a vision-yet-unfulfilled that we can help bring into reality, so God’s glory will be praised, displayed, and experienced through these wonderful believers who have themselves experienced the glory of God and desired to tell others about this glorious God that they have known by faith in Jesus Christ?”

“For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

2 Corinthians 4:6

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Glory of God

The Savior of sinners is the great enemy of sin.

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“God in the Bible from the beginning to the end of it, appears as the most perfect enemy unto sin.”

Jonathan Edwards, “The Glory and Honor of God,” Works, Vol. 2, 36.

The culture holds that God is indifferent to sin; that he just doesn’t care about it.

But the Christian faith presents God who notices sin, is offended by it, and who intervenes against it. God’s character stands against sin. His holiness militates justice and judgment against it. Yet, most astonishingly, the Holy One also redeems. God’s fierce wrath against sin is focused upon his Son who dies for those he loves. He redeems his people from sin and its fearsome curse. That was a curse he demanded and instituted by his holy hatred of sin.

If God were indifferent, there would have been no cross. No Savior. No grace. Only God can take his holy, unmitigated enmity against sin and turn it into the grandest glory ever expressed. By his love for sinners and his resolve to protect God’s holiness, Christ died for sinners and he paid the terrible penalty for their sin.

This is the highest glory that can ever be known.

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