Category: Church Development

This update is from Ted Johnston, editor of Equipper and a regional pastor in GCI-USA.

I’m often asked to recommend resources for teaching the Bible to children in Sunday school or at home. For the last few years, my #1 recommendation has been The Jesus Storybook Bible. It’s available at a good price at Amazon.com, along with a related curriculum kit, and handout packs for the Old Testament and New Testament.

For recommendations related to ministry to children, teens, young adults, older adults, married couples and families, click here to go to the age-graded resource page on the GenMin website.

Looking toward 2016, many churches will be making plans to conduct outreach events. In doing so, it’s helpful to note the caution offered by LifeWay president Thom Rainer in “Three Reasons Why Big Events Are Ineffective in Most Churches” online at http://thomrainer.com/2015/11/three-reasons-most-churches/. In the article he makes this comment:

When I speak with church leaders and ask them to describe how they reach their communities, many of them point with pride to a major event, such as those that take place at Christmas, Easter, or the Fourth of July. But when I ask them to assess how many people are currently a part of their churches because of past events, most often I get an awkward silence.

Rainer goes on to stress the importance of using each outreach event, not as an end in itself, but as part of an overall disciplemaking strategy.

Here is a summary of a helpful ChurchLeaders.com article by Ron Edmondson on the topic of restructuring organizations (churches included).

When an organization’s strategy changes, restructuring is often necessary. Doing so, however, can be painful and disruptive if not handled carefully. How do avoid problems? Here are five suggestions:

1. The change should make sense with the organizational DNA.

Be careful altering something in a way that could disrupt the fiber, core or root foundation of the organization. DNA is formed fast, but changed slowly—and sometimes never. It’s who an organization is and who people have come to expect it to be. It’s hard to disrupt this without disrupting future potential for growth.

2. The structure added should not impede progress.

Structure should further enable the completion of the vision, not detract from it. Structure should consider the future potential for long-term sustainability of the organization.

3. It should accommodate or encourage continued future growth.

Structure’s purpose should be to help the organization continue to grow over time. Structure should make things more efficient—not less. Enable not control.

4. It should hit the center of acceptance.

Leadership is never about making people happy. But, at the same time, if you want the structure to be sustainable and helpful it must meet general acceptance—which leads to the last suggestion.

5. People should understand the why.

People are more likely to accept structure when they can identify its value and their area of responsibility (or at least the value to the overall organization). As Zig Ziglar often said, “If people understand the why, they will be less opposed to the what.”

Reproduced here is a recent post on The Surprising God blog. It addresses a topic of concern for all pastors and those who love and care for them.

In a chapter of The Shape of Practical Theology: Empowering Ministry with Theological Praxis, Ray S. Anderson addresses the very real danger of clergy burnout. Dr. Anderson notes that this phenomenon often is “a symptom of theological anemia” (p. 284). By that he means that when pastors burn out, it’s often because their approach to ministry lacks grounding in a robust incarnational and Trinitarian theology. In short, they see themselves working “for” God, rather than “with” the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit. Because of this, they tend to take too much upon themselves and that places them at risk of burnout. It’s ironic that the very people who have devoted their lives to sharing the message, My Redeemer Lives, operate as though Jesus is not truly present and alive, and not truly active in accomplishing, through the Spirit, his continuing ministry on earth in fulfillment of the Father’s mission to the world.

Sadly, some (many?) pastors find themselves weighed down by a sense of inadequacy that, if unchecked, can lead to a sense of despair over never being able to satisfy the demands placed upon them. This becomes a vicious circle where, as Anderson notes, “the minister can only seek to atone for spiritual failure by throwing herself even more into the work of ministry.” Anderson comments further on the steps in this debilitating circle:

The demands of ministry produce a sense of inadequacy. Inadequacy carries the overtone of spiritual weakness. You turn to God in desperation, seeking some relief, escape, if not renewal. Failing here too, you find nothing to do but throw yourself more deeply into the work of the ministry. And the cycle repeats itself.(p. 285)

Faced with this burden, some pastors “grin and bear it,” feeling, in their drivenness, that this burden is a necessary (even admirable) aspect of pastoral ministry. Anderson warns:

“We are driven” is not only an effective advertising slogan for automobiles but a shrill echo of the divine call sunk deep into the psyche of a minister who seeks salvation through ministry. (p. 286)

“Salvation through ministry”—an absurd concept to all pastors (at least in their formal theology), but an operating principle for some in how they view their calling to pastoral ministry in practice. As Anderson notes, those entering pastoral ministry are encouraged to do so as a “divine calling,” with the implied understanding that this call, being unavoidable and thus inevitable, is one’s fate. “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel,” they proclaim to themselves and to others, quoting Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:16 (ESV). Unfortunately, rather than understanding their calling as a call “to ministry” it becomes a call “to the ministry.” Though this shift may seem innocuous, it can be devastating as the person hears a call “to do things for God” rather than their actual call, which is “to God” himself. Anderson comments:

Here, I believe, is the source of the “quiet despair” that can seep into our celebration of the sacred task and turn it into a joyless marathon of sheer endurance.” (p. 286)

With this misguided approach, ministry becomes “an insatiable and unrelenting master we serve in the name of Christ” (p. 287). In Anderson’s view, what is needed to break the vicious circle that leads to clergy burnout is the theology of ministry modeled by Jesus himself:

When [Jesus] reached the point of exhaustion from teaching and healing, he had the freedom to stop and to spend time alone or with his disciples. His instincts told him that his freedom from the [ministry] claims on him was upheld by the same gracious Father who gave him the freedom and power to teach and heal…. (p. 287)

In contrast to Jesus’ theology of ministry, many pastors, quite unfortunately, ground their ministry in a different, quite unhealthy, theology. Anderson comments:

It is bad theology to have to love the world more than God, and to confuse our service to God with our being sent into the world. It is bad theology to interpret the calling of God in terms of the needs of the world, rather than in our being sent to the world to do God’s work and reveal his glory….

A theology that cripples and destroys the self-esteem and sense of worth of a minister is not made better by “success” in ministry. A theology allowing no “sabbath rest” for the one who does the work of ministry is a theology of the curse, not a theology of the cross. A healthy theology contains healing for the healer and freedom for the fighter of God’s battles. A healthy theology, of course, is a theology of a loving God who knows that to be God is to be responsible, even for our faltering and fallible efforts. (pp. 287-288)

Anderson faced a time in his own ministry when he was on the precipice of the abyss of burnout. Thankfully, he came to understand Jesus’ theology of ministry and was delivered. Note some of his comments:

Through the realization of my inadequacy when only the grace of God could suffice, I experienced in a new way the reality of God as the source and sustaining power of my “call” to be a minister. My ministry no longer could be equivalent to my salvation or destruction….

No longer was I living on the edge of that terrible marginality in ministry, where the abyss always looms threateningly over and against every action. Driven back by obstacles, confronted with failure and frustration, attacked by symptoms of overstress, I experienced the healing of God’s goodness from within….

We who are called of God for Christian ministry are called first of all into the sabbath rest that Christ himself completed through the offering up of his own humanity in obedient, faithful service to God. With our backs straight up against the rock of his healed humanity, we reach out to meet human needs, do battle with evil and take the Word of God on our lips to proclaim his salvation. No temptation has ever overtaken us, says the Scripture, that has not already been experienced and healed in Jesus (Hebrews 4:15). I venture to say that no injury can ever be sustained in the work of God’s ministry for which there is not already healing waiting at home. (pp. 288-289)

Pastor, are you now experiencing or headed toward clergy burnout? If so, Anderson offers some advice from his own experience:

• Turn to Jesus. He is the source of all good theology. He is the paradigm for pastoral ministry.
• Explore the inner correlation between ministry and theology: “A ministry that produces dissonance and distress in the minister is theologically impoverished.” (p. 289)
• Consent to be one of the sheep as well as being the shepherd, thus “experiencing absolution for our sins of being a minister and the affirmation we need to continue to minister.” (p. 290)

I’ll close this post with a prayer adapted from Anderson’s comment on p. 290:

Father, we pray that you grant us all a healthy practical theology of pastoral ministry that rests on the truth that all ministry is your ministry, through Christ, by the Spirit. May this knowledge console, empower and equip us to live out the calling you have given us by your grace. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

As a denomination, GCI embraces the historic, orthodox, (western) Christian worship calendar. As a guide for teaching/preaching in accordance with this annual cycle of worship, we recommend that our congregations follow the pattern set out in The Revised Common Lectionary (RCL). The annual cycle followed there begins with Advent in November and proceeds as follows (dates shown are for the new worship year that begins in November 2015):

• Advent: November 29-December 20, 2015
• Christmas: December 25, 2015 (followed by the Christmas season that extends to Epiphany)
• Epiphany: January 6, 2016 through February 7, which is Transfiguration Sunday
• Lent: February 10 through March 13
• Holy Week: March 20 through March 26 (including Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday)
• Easter Sunday: March 27 (followed by the season of Easter that extends through May 8)
• Pentecost Sunday: May 15 (followed by the season of Pentecost that ends with Advent 2016, which begins the next annual worship cycle)

For help in planning worship and writing sermons in accordance with The Revised Common Lectionary, we recommend the following resources (note: our recommendation is not an endorsement of all content):

• The Revised Common Lectionary (Vanderbilt Divinity Library website)
• The Revised Common Lectionary, the Consultation on Common Texts
• Working Preacher
• Desperate Preacher
• Comments: Commentaries on the Revised Common Lectionary
• The Text This Week
• Handbook for the Revised Common Lectionary
• Feasting on the Word, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (for other Feasting on the Word resources, click here)
• The Lectionary Lab

This article by GCI pastor and GCS faculty member Neil Earle, tells about Neil’s cousin, Davis Earle, who contributed to a team that won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for Physics.

This fall marked the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s releasing his General Theory of Relativity to the world. That was in a speech at the Prussian State Library in Berlin in November, 1915. Einstein’s theory was that gravity bends both space and time, and that therefore the classical physics based on Sir Isaac Newton’s assumptions of predictable “straight line geometry” needed revision.

Einstein was already famous for his Special Theory back in 1905, which showed that time did not work the same way all across the universe, a further undermining of the classical view. Indeed by the late 1800s the anomalies of nature (e.g. why Mercury’s orbit was shifting) kept raising more and more questions about Newtonianism. By then, scientists thought they had nailed down the structure of the atom (Greek for “that into which nothing further can be divided”). Yet as the century wore on Einstein and his generation investigated so many new subatomic phenomena that the term “The New Physics” came into view. Where Einstein had led, Niels Bohr and others followed. Bohr discovered the “quantum leap” where movements of the electron circling the nucleus of the atom were shown to be virtually impossible to predict. By the 1980s physicists were familiar with a whole realm of invisible particles with names, said one journalist, like those from Lord of the Rings: hadrons, leptons, muons and quarks.

I had been teaching teens in Bible class since the 1970s that—relative to God—we all believe in things we can’t see. I cited Hebrews 11:3, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” But not being a scientist I had not realized how much truer that statement had become in the strange world of particle physics. The invisible was fundamental to nature, and extremely powerful.

Imagine my surprise and delight, then, this fall when my hometown paper saluted my cousin, the retired nuclear physicist, Davis Earle for contributing to a team that won the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2015, particle physics in particular. As Dr. Davis Earle he had been technical associate director on a project studying neutrinos one mile underground in an abandoned mine near Sudbury, Ontario. “Neutrino” is Italian for “little neutral ones,” millions of which pass invisibly through our bodies each second, part of that invisible universe.

My cousin Dave had totally bemused an interviewer by driving home what atomic and particle physics emphasized. “Our bodies are empty space,” Dave enthused. “I cannot emphasize how much empty space we are. It’s just the electromagnetic force that holds everything together.” Strange, humorous—but true. The electromagnetic force was uncovered by the Scotsman James Clerk Maxwell in the 1860s and Einstein had a picture of both Maxwell and Newton in his Princeton University office. How fitting. The drawings we see of the electron circling the atom are not true to scale. The circling electron has as much space as a bumble bee inside a cathedral. Empty space. Cousin Dave was just repeating what the New Physics had underscored.

The New Physics—a worthy phrase. The concept fully hit home to me in 2012, when I signed up for Dr. John McKenna’s “Scientific Theology of Thomas Torrance” class (as it was then called), taught at Grace Communion Seminary. The New Physics underlined how the most powerful forces known to us were invisible. Forces such as gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force, the weak force—these unseen realities were holding our bodies and the cosmos together. Paul’s words hit home—“what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

What came clear in Dr. McKenna’s class was how the Scottish theologian Thomas F. Torrance brought home to Christian theology parallels to the New Physics. Torrance saw that Einstein and his generation had opened up a whole new view of reality. In his book Space, Time and Resurrection and elsewhere, Torrance argued for a cosmos that was orderly enough to be investigated yet “strange and unpredictable” enough to allow for new and unexpected things to take place. “Far from being closed or predetermined,” he wrote, “the universe constitutes an open-textured system in which novel forms of order constantly emerge.”

This includes neutrinos and quarks. “Quarks”—a strange word, yet part of what Caltech’s Kip Thorne calls “Einstein’s outrageous legacy.” Here at the heart of the proton were those strange, whirring spinning creatures that were hard to measure and keep account of and given whimsical names such as Strange and Charm. The British journal New Scientist even admitted, “After quarks, believing in the Virgin Birth is a doddle (a snap).” I couldn’t help think of how my friend and amateur physicist John Halford would have enjoyed that. The most powerful forces were and are invisible and people such as Thomas Torrance saw the connections to Christian theology from such statements as Colossians 1:16. There Jesus is shown supreme over things visible and invisible. These were some of the new realities that flowed from General Relativity and Quantum Theory. All this allowed room for Torrance to argue for a universe geared to both the orderly and the unpredictable. In his theology—much more fulsomely argued in such works as Space, Time and Resurrection—this discovery about creation removed certain “scientific” arguments against Christian faith and seems to indicate how God allowed for the possibility of an Incarnation and a Resurrection to take place in his good creation.

On the trail of neutrinos and quarks, Torrance well knew, the ancient wisdom of Ecclesiastes 11:5 rang truer than ever “As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.”

These days we hear a lot about how to become a “great church.” Of course, the definitions of “great” vary, but typically they have to do with growing to a large size. Though size matters, it’s not the “end-all and be-all” of greatness. In a Leadership Journal article titled, “Four Steps to Becoming a Great Church—Of Any Size,” Karl Vaters notes that becoming “great” as a church boils down to four doable steps that can be combined into this short sentence:

Do the basics wholeheartedly and consistently for a long time.

To learn what that looks like, click here.

For other articles focused on small-church ministry, see Vater’s Pivot blog at www.christianitytoday.com/karl-vaters/

Here is part 8, which concludes an 8-part essay by Dr. Gary Deddo titled “The Christian life and our participation in Christ’s continuing ministry.” To read other parts, click on a number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. For all 8 parts combined in one article, click here.

Recap of part 7

In part 7 of this series we saw how the indicatives of God’s grace always provide the foundations and motivation for our obedience to the imperatives (commands) of God’s grace. We saw how this means we need to make sure our understanding of God’s grace fits this pervasive biblical framework. In this concluding issue in this series we will continue to unfold what the grace of our union with Christ looks like in relationship to him. That grace is not a “sloppy agape” where anything and everything goes. God has far more in store for us than that. We conclude by noting that in our gracious union with Christ we live by faith, hope and love.

The grace of God’s “no” to our “no”

God is eternally and implacably opposed to sin, whether in the world or in us. In his divine providence, sin and evil have no future. God would not be gracious if he were not committed and able to bring to an end all sin and in the end make things right. God has said “yes” to us in Jesus Christ. When we say “no” to God and his grace to unite us and transform us, then God says “no” to our unbelief. He says “no” to the disobedience that comes from our distrust of God and his character as revealed in Jesus Christ and according to Scripture. God is opposed to all that is against us and against his gracious will for us. If God did not say “no” to what is evil, God would not be gracious. If God did not say “no” to our “no,” he would not be gracious. But note this: when God says “no” to our “no” to him, he is not changing his mind or his heart or his purposes towards us. By negating our negation of his grace, he is reaffirming his “yes” to us in Christ. He says, “No, I said yes!”

How strongly does God object to our rejection of him and his love and grace? Just as strongly as his love for us is. For it is because of his love for us that he rejects our rejection. If he did not love, there would be no reason for him to bother in objecting to us. His “no” to our “no” is just as strong as his “yes” to us because it is an expression of his “yes” when it meets up with our “no” to him. God’s love and resistance to us (his wrath) are not opposed to each other. His wrath serves his loving purposes. His wrath is to get us to see the error of our ways and to turn around and receive his grace. His anger serves the same purposes as his love: to bring us into right relationship with him through Christ and by the Spirit.

The grace of God’s judgments

And what about God’s judgment? We know God’s ultimate purposes because we see them revealed in Jesus Christ and hear of them in Scripture. Jesus came into the world because of God’s love. He did not come to condemn the world but to save it (John 3:17). God’s will and heart is that all come to repentance and receive his unconditioned grace—his freely offered forgiveness. He does not wish that any eternally perish. Christ died for all. So whatever we think about God’s judgment it should not contradict or call into question Jesus Christ and his revelation and accomplishment of the will of God. How can we do that?

God’s judgment is his “no” to our “no,” his “no” to our unbelief and disobedience. God’s judgment reinforces his gracious and saving purposes. God recognizes evil and is absolutely opposed to it. It will all be done away with in the end. But God, in his grace, judges our sin in Christ—he exposes it for what it is, shows us the truth about it, sorts things out so that we are released from deceit, even self-deception, so that we repent of it, let go of it, and turn to God to receive his freely given grace and forgiveness. God will use whatever means (judgment) to get us, sooner or later, to recognize our sin and our need for his grace and forgiveness and for him to make right what we have made wrong, sometimes very wrong. God judges unbelief and the sin and evil that comes from it—but he judges it because he is loving and gracious. God would not be loving and gracious if he did not sort out what is evil, what needs forgiveness and restoration and do all that he can to turn around and offer up to judgment the sin and evil we have done, or that others have done to us or to others.

But note this: God’s judgment is not the same as condemnation. Judgment is to prevent us from being condemned! God judges because he loves—judgment is God’s resistance and “no” to our sin, even to the sin in us, so that we turn around (repent, confess) and receive his grace and the power to resist temptation and evil. God’s judgment is gracious. His aim is to rescue and deliver us from evil, so that we might be saved and the sin and evil be condemned. God’s purpose is not that anyone eternally perish, but that all sin, evil and unbelief be eradicated, condemned to oblivion. Only God can separate us from our sin without undoing us—but that’s what he’s provided for in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ dies in our place as God does away with our sin and evil. But Jesus Christ is raised and ascends to eternal life with the Father so that we too may die and be raised with him into new life delivered from all sin and evil. Anything less would mean that God is not gracious. Only those who somehow might manage to reject God’s judgment will face the prospect of being condemned with their sinfulness.

Scripture and its warnings, including the teaching of Jesus, leave open the possibility that some might face condemnation. It’s presented as a real possibility. But that is not because condemnation is God’s purpose and heart and mind towards any of his creatures—those created in his image, created in, through, and to (as an inheritance) Christ. No one has to face condemnation. But if anyone does, it will be because they somehow have come to a place where they reject God’s judgment and absolutely refuse grace, refuse his forgiveness, refuse to receive and live out their life of union and communion with Christ. That is, they somehow finally reject and deny the reality of who God is, who they are, and what he has done for them in Christ. They will not be condemned because of some kind of arbitrary limit to God’s grace, but because of their final and absolute repudiation and hatred of God and his grace, mercy, love and goodness. The reality is that God’s gracious judgment in Jesus Christ in our place and on our behalf is what God does to prevent anyone from experiencing final condemnation.

God’s gracious work of sharing in Christ’s sanctification for us

For those who are receiving God’s grace, the sanctifying work of Christ brought to completion in us by the Spirit’s glorification will leave no trace of sin in us. It will, one day, all be done away with, and that’s a very good thing! Think for a moment: what would it be like in heaven if it were full of people for whom God had made a few little exceptions here and there? Wouldn’t it be fairly much like the condition we find ourselves in today? The only difference is that we’d be in that condition of injustice eternally! Where would be the grace in that? Grace is God’s forbearance, God’s patience, God’s long-suffering. But in the end there will be no exceptions for sin. Evil has no future.

God accepts us where we are unconditionally, in order to take us where he’s going, just as unconditionally. No exceptions! Grace means that God is for us and will not give up on us, no matter how long it takes or how far we have to go, or how many times we fall. God would be less than gracious if he only met us where we are and then left us there! He’ll pick us up because our whole salvation is complete for us in Christ and we belong to him. United to Christ, all that is his is ours. So Paul tells us that Jesus Christ is our wisdom (about God) our righteousness, and he is our sanctification (1 Corinthians 1:30 ESV). By his indwelling Holy Spirit, we are meant to share even in his perfectly sanctified humanity.

What God in Christ has done for us, the Spirit works out in us. So Paul can say: “I live, yet not I, but Christ in me” (Galatians 2:20). We do not work up our own knowledge of God, our own righteousness, our own sanctification. But we share by the Spirit in what is his! This is all of what we receive when we receive him who gave himself for us (Galatians 1:4; Ephesians 5:2; Titus 2:14).

Grace is God’s faithfulness to see us through to his perfect end, even if we sometimes resist or are ungrateful, or only want his blessings because we prefer it to hell! The gracious love of God is implacably committed to perfecting us with Christ’s own glorified humanity. True love longs for the perfection of the beloved.

Can we preach too much of this kind of grace? No! We preach the inexorable love of God, who will not give up on us and has pledged himself to see us to the glorious end of being his children through Jesus Christ. Isn’t this the way to lead people to a faith, hope and love that trusts and believes that “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion” (Philippians 1:6 ESV)? We have a hope that knows God desires our sanctification, and believes as Paul tells us that, “He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24 ESV). Can we believe this promise too much? Can we count on God too much to provide us with even our sanctification in Christ (1 Corinthians 1:30 ESV)? The answer is no! God is abundantly gracious because he makes no exceptions. On that we can rely.

Conclusion: the obedience of faith, hope and love

The Christian life must be moved by faith, hope and love for God’s Word spoken and living—a Word that presents a God who out of his own graciousness promises to be faithful and to give us an inheritance as his children united to Christ, who invites unswerving confidence in Christ’s continuing work of ministry and the power and joy to enable us to participate in it. All our endeavors built on this foundation will reflect in word and deed the very character of God and exude a joyful trust in his continuing work.

Putting our trust in ourselves, our programs, commitments, convictions, techniques, skills, training or our sophistication and formulas, no matter how ideal, morally ambitious, or spiritually sincere, can only lead to lives that indicate a God who wants slaves not children, a God who depends upon us and who cannot be more faithful than we are, a God who begins with grace but who somehow ends with conditional blessings. The good news is that this is not the God of the Bible, nor the God we worship today. Rather, God has united himself with us, and us with himself, so that all that we think or do, we do as his children, participating with him in all that he is doing in our world now through the continuing ministry of Christ by the power of the Spirit.

The Christian life is nothing but the gracious gift of daily thanksgiving for our real union with Christ, sharing in his glorified humanity and participating by faith in his faithful and continuing ministry to us and all those around us. On this we may surely build our lives in Christ’s name and live to the praise of his glory!

Here is part 7 of an 8-part essay by Dr. Gary Deddo titled “The Christian life and our participation in Christ’s continuing ministry.” To read other parts, click on a number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8. For all 8 parts combined in one article, click here.

Recap of part 6

In part 6 we looked at how we ought to preach, teach and counsel others to participate in their union with Christ. The danger here is that we would highlight the commandments, simply telling people to do things for God because he said so. This leads to misrepresenting the character of God and to legalism, a wrong relationship with God. We always need to bring about the obedience of faith by showing the foundations for any call to obedience. And that foundation is built up from all the indicatives of grace that always form the basis of the obligations of grace. This time we’ll explore more of the antidote to legalism and the real meaning of grace.

Legalism

For every act of desired obedience, we must present and focus on the character of God manifest in Christ that corresponds to that imperative. That is because all obedience that gives glory to God must arise out of faith, hope and love for who God really is, both in himself and towards us. The apostle Paul says both at the beginning and the ending of Romans that his whole ministry is to bring about the “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5; 16:26). He explains that any obedience that does not proceed from faith is sin (Romans 14:23).

We often think that legalism is the problem of someone who is committed to consistent obedience who needs to be corrected by allowing for their inconsistent obedience! But really, legalism is obedience that does not arise out of faith, hope and love in the character of the gracious Lawgiver. Legalism is obedience without faith. James Torrance often reminded his students of Calvin’s concern to avoid legal repentance (repentance without trust in the gospel of grace), focusing instead on evangelical repentance (repentance in light of the grace and forgiveness of God that is offered to sinners out of God’s sheer goodness, righteousness and mercy).

It is a grave mistake to merely preach the commandments by addressing the will of the Christian and calling for volitional conformity to the standards of God. Concentration on the requirements of God or even the ideals of God may tempt hearers to a faithless obedience. It is even more dangerous to misrepresent the character of God by speaking as if God had two sides to his character, as if God was two-faced or double minded, first offering grace and then switching to a concern for moral and spiritual conformity to his will and threatening the withdrawal of his grace. Preaching this way communicates that although we are first saved by grace, we are really sanctified by works. It says the Christian life may have begun by grace but is essentially lived out in a conditional and contractual relationship with God. Under such guidance many, I think, see their lives under a great impossible burden.

I’ve known of some who wanted to be non-believers again so they could become Christians all over, experiencing afresh the grace of God. But such admonishment, undoubtedly concerned for faithful and consistent lives, obscures the truth and actuality of Christ’s gracious and unconditioned continuing ministry and our union with him. It regards Christ as at a distance, sending us out to do for him what he is unwilling or unable to do himself, becoming somehow dependent upon us. We end up communicating that, at least subsequent to our conversion, God can no longer be more faithful than we are!

Preaching the commandments apart from the promises of the unconditional and unconditioned grace of God is like putting people in a windowless room with the door shut and the lights off and telling them, “On the count of three start enjoying the sunset!” Few have such imaginative powers! But if we could take someone to the top of Sentinel Dome on the 3000-foot-high western-facing ridge of Yosemite Valley, just at sunset, all we would need to do is declare, “Watch!” and their joy would be irrepressible.

So in preaching, only the glory and the character of God can draw out of us a faith that leads to a faithful obedience. Otherwise, our sacrificial endeavors are most often driven not by faith, hope and love, but by guilt, fear and anxiety as we are thrown back upon ourselves and our own five loaves and two fishes while standing in front of 5,000 hungry souls. Only the presentation of the heart and character of God fully revealed in Jesus Christ can bring us to the point of faithful obedience. This is why all our preaching and teaching must take as its staring point the question of who this God is, not the questions of what should we do or how should we do it. However, this is often not the starting point for preaching, teaching and counseling in connection with living the Christian life. I think that contributes to the weaknesses of our churches and burnout in the Christian life and ministry. It will also erode any of the new initiatives intended to renew the church mentioned at the beginning of this essay.

Too much grace?

There is one further concern that I have seen James Torrance respond to on numerous occasions. Some professional theologians, pastors and laypersons fear that we can preach too much grace. They would counsel that we have to somehow counterbalance grace so as to prevent people from taking advantage of grace. But what are we going to preach and teach to substitute for and counterbalance what is perceived as over-generous grace? Will we offer some new means for us to condition God into being gracious? Or preach a stingy God or a God dependent on us? A God who cannot be more faithful than we are? If so, we will end up misrepresenting the true God of the Bible for all our good intentions to get people “doing things” for God.

Grace means no exceptions

The problem with such a project is that it assumes a very inaccurate view of grace. If it were somehow possible to preach too much grace, then it isn’t really grace that’s being preached! I think that our understanding of grace is unfortunately often quite insufficient. This is in large part due to the general, cultural understanding of grace. Grace is often taken to mean making an exception to the rule. So we have “grace periods,” and we say someone is gracious when they let us off the hook of responsibility. The grace of forgiveness can be taken to mean diminishing the seriousness of sin or pretending it never happened. But we cannot take our cues from these misguided understandings.

Following in the pathway of Torrance’s understanding, I contend that real grace makes absolutely no exceptions. If it did make exceptions, it would not be gracious! Grace provides everything needed, and by the Spirit transforms our hearts and minds to be more and more like Christ’s. Grace accepts us where we are as we repent and takes us to where he is going so we may be with him forever. Grace is God’s commitment to get us, in the end, where we belong, even at God’s own cost.

As James Torrance used to point out, the unconditional grace of God means the unconditional obligations of grace. But these are the obligations of being in a gracious relationship with God through Christ, not the conditions to get God to be gracious towards us. Presuming upon grace (as if it were some kind of commodity that God doles out) is not the same as living in and receiving grace. Living in fellowship and communion with God, in union with Christ, means going where he goes and doing what he’s doing, not going where he does not go and doing the kinds of things he is not doing or involved in. The obligations of grace are spelled out as imperatives, as commands, in the New Testament. Living according to these commands is the way we continue to receive daily God’s grace.

Saying we have God’s grace and thinking there are no obligations at all, is saying there is grace but I don’t have to receive grace. Disobedience is not receiving grace and not living in our fellowship and communion with Christ. Disobedience presumes upon grace, and so amounts to actually rejecting grace!

October is Pastor Appreciation Month in the United States and Canada. Here is the story of how one congregation showed its appreciation for their pastor.

On a recent September morning, Wayne Mitchell, pastor of GCI’s congregation in Seattle/Bellevue, Washington, headed for the hills (the home of Mike Hills, that is). There he met up with a “band of brothers” from his congregation. After sharing breakfast, the men took to the woods with chainsaws, pruners, and a four-wheeler, and proceeded to fell some trees. Four hours later they had cut, split and stacked a couple of cords of wood to be given to Pastor Wayne. The men wanted to show their pastor how much they appreciate him and all he does in serving the congregation. They also wanted to help keep Wayne and his wife warm and cozy this winter. Here are some pictures: