Is the Gospel Funny?

Jim Elliff contributed an excellent article in Baptist Press yesterday. Many churches style their worship services like a rock concert followed by a stand up comedian. If that’s what you think church should look like, you should ponder the points made in A Funny Gospel?

Confession of Sins in Worship

I was recently asked about why we always have a time for confession of sins in worship at Redeemer. Dr. Mohler gives a great exposition of the necessity of this in Part Three of his series on worship.

Praying Beyond Health Concerns

Great article by David Powlison in the most recent email newsletter from 9Marks.

When God Is Small People Are Too

My friend Denny Burk’s post on whether embryonic stem cell research is murder prompted me to ponder this situation. Why should we be concerned about the destruction of these embryonic stem cells? After all, don’t women miscarry fertilized eggs all the time? 

They do: often fertilized eggs do not implant in the lining of the womb. It happens so early that women won’t even know they have “miscarried,” since they didn’t realize they were pregnant. So what’s the big deal with some well meaning folks wanting to try to do some good for the rest of humanity with embryos that no one wants and that are otherwise useless? 

Well, if you don’t believe in God, this probably isn’t a big deal to you. 

If you do believe in God, but the god you believe in isn’t directly involved in day to day life very much, this probably isn’t a big deal to you. 

If the god you believe in isn’t the only source of life, this probably isn’t a big deal to you. 

If the god you believe in isn’t the one to whom all moral agents will give account for their actions, this probably isn’t a big deal to you. 

If the god you believe in doesn’t take sin very seriously, just kind of lets things go, this probably isn’t a big deal to you. 

The destruction of embryonic stem cells will probably only be a big deal to you if you believe in the God of the Bible, who made the world, gave life, and therefore is the only one with the right to take life. 

The destruction of embryonic stem cells is a big deal to people who believe in the God of the Bible because we believe that God made human beings in his image. Therefore, it is no small thing to be a human being.

Human life is significant only because God is significant. To the degree that God is perceived as he is, human life will be perceived as weighty. Our light view of human life grows directly out of our light view of God.

Children’s Books that Clifton Baptist Church Recommends

We were blessed to be members at Clifton Baptist Church in Louisville when we were there, and my sweet wife found this list of childrens books they recommend. I thought maybe someone else might be as interested in this as I am.

• Douglas Bond’s The Crown & Covenant Series (Rebel’s Keep, King’s Arrow,War)     

• John Bunyan’s  Dangerous Journey 

• Edith’s The Big Picture Bible Time Line 

• Sinclair Ferguson’s  The Big Book of Questions & Answers about Jesus 

• David Helm’s The Big Picture Story Bible 

• Susan Hunt’s Big Truths for Little Kids and My ABC Bible Verses 

• Ella Lindvall’s Read-Aloud Bible Stories vol. 1, 2, 3 & 4 

• Carnie Mackenzie’s My 1st Book of Questions & Answers, My 1st Book of Memory Verses, God is Kind (board book), Stories Jesus Told series (2 board books) 

• Bible Wise & Bible Time series (2 books), The Followers of Jesus, and The Caring Creator. 

• Joni Eareckson Tada’s Hymns for Kid’s Heart (vol. 1) 

• Kenneth Taylor’s The New Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes 

• Catherine Vos’ Child’s Story Bible

We don’t have many of these, but I’m sure we’ll check them out in coming days.

Michael Haykin Gives Us a Window on Isaac Watts

Go read it here, and be sure to see the question in the comments section about Watts’s later Trinitarian language. Haykin says someone needs to study it.

Al Mohler Used to Be An Egalitarian

Read how and why his mind changed here.

Rob Bell Has Women Elders

A friend of mine sent me the link to this fascinating account of how Mars Hill Bible Church, led by their pastor, Rob Bell, voted to overturn the section of their original constitution that limited the office of elder to men. According to the article, two of their eight elders are women.

You can read my argument that the Bible clearly teaches that only men can serve as elders in an essay I presented at the 2005 Wheaton Theology Conference: What Women Can Do in Ministry: Full Participation within Biblical Boundaries.

Mark Driscoll

The Lord has used Mark Driscoll in my life over the past few weeks to be more conscious of how many lost and unchurched people there are in this country. According to Barna, between 1991 and 2004 there was a 92% increase in the number of unchurched Americans. If all the unchurched folks in this country were to start their own nation, it would be the 11^th largest country on the globe.

I haven’t heard many people more passionate about reaching these lost people than Mark Driscoll. In the mid-90’s, he planted a church in Seattle that has grown to the thousands. Most of this growth is the kind all churches want: new convert growth.

I suspect that many may still react to someone like Driscoll the way that I did. My attitude was, “Can anything good come out of the emerging church?” I was astonished to learn that he is speaking at the Desiring God national conference this fall, and only through Justin Taylor’s posts on him did my unwarranted prejudice against him gradually fade (I have repented).

I encourage you to check out this short interview with Christianity Today, the short videos that Desiring God has posted (see especially the one distinguishing “emergent” from “emerging”), and his notes on how a lead-elder should establish a plurality of elders in a church plant. He isn’t perfect, but he has shown himself to be humble and repentant when he sins. 

Driscoll bangs the drum of “contextualization,” which means that if you want to see folks from the hip hop scene come to Christ you have to send missionaries to that largely unreached people group who will learn the culture and communicate the Gospel in it—just as my dear friends are learning the culture of an unreached tribe in Papua New Guinea and figuring out how to communicate the Gospel to it. From what I’ve seen, as Driscoll contextualizes the Gospel he doesn’t conform it (in his book The Radical Reformission there’s a testimony from a former exotic dancer who got saved).

May the Lord use Driscoll to inspire you to seek and save the lost as he has me.

Rob Bell’s Houston Appearance

Here’s an article in the Houston Chronicle about Rob Bell’s “Everything Is Spiritual” tour. The reporter spoke with me about Bell. I don’t know a lot about him, and I didn’t make it to his Houston appearance.

I’m glad that people are taking the faith to the kinds of people that Jesus got criticized for hanging out with. May the Lord keep us faithful to the faith, so that we’re contextualizing the Gospel not just conforming to the spirit of the age. This is not a criticism of what Bell is doing–I don’t know enough about him to criticize him–it’s a general call for all of us to be diligent about taking every thought captive to Christ.