Sadly, John Piper was unable to come to this years Shepherds’ Conference, due to the death of his father. I would encourage you all to read his journal entry on this event. Hello, My Father Just Died

The conference has been great so far. Steve Lawson’s sermon on Apostolic preaching was phenomenal, I love his passionate exposition of God’s Word, he is one of my favorite expositors and his sermon issued a much needed exhortation and call for passionate preaching in a time when exposition is often associated with boring unaffected preaching. Ligon Duncan continues to amaze me with his profound understanding of the Old Testament, his sermon at Together for the Gospel on the preaching from the Old Testament issued a huge challenge for me, and it was encouraging to hear him preach from the Old Testament in a way that brings the truth to life for believers today. Al Mohler, as always, brought it and his exposition of I Corinthians 2:1-5 was fantastic, I highly recommend reading his introduction to anyone who will be reading Corinthians soon as it does a wonderful job of setting the cultural context in which that church existed. Mark Dever’s message was one that all American Evangelical’s need to hear. He soberly warned the pastors that they need to prepare for the coming persecution and that they need to prepare their churches for the coming persecution lest they all fall away. I especially enjoyed his exhortation that pastors should prepare their wives to be pastor’s widows. I was incredibly thankful that he called the men to cease their reliance on Evangelical political activism to protect them from persecution and to begin relying on the Sovereign hand of God to uphold them during the persecution that is sure to come. Below are links to Tim Challies blog entries on the main sessions at the conference, if you have time please read them all. I will also be posting my notes from Dan Dumas’ lecture “Creativity Without Compromise: How to be Innovative Without Being Seeker Sensitive” and I hope you will read them and be as encouraged as I was.

Session I: John MacArthur “Why Every Self-Respecting Calvinist is a Pre-Millennialist”
Session II: Steve Lawson “The Passion and the Power of Apostolic Preaching” Acts 2:14-21
Session III: C. J. Mahaney Isaiah 66:1-2
Session IV: Ligon Duncan Numbers 5:11-31 (I Corinthians 10:1-13)
Q&A Session
Session V: Al Mohler I Corinthians 2:1-5
Session VI: Mark Dever The Book of Daniel
Keynote Panel
Session VII: John MacArthur Luke 18

For those of you who received my e-mail I appreciate you taking the time to come and read my thoughts. For those of you who did not receive my e-mail I would greatly appreciate and you would greatly benefit from listening to Ed Stetzer’s message Toward a Missional Convention. This was delivered at the Baptist Identity II Conference for those of you listening to the other messages. If you want to know more about Ed Stetzer I would recommend going to his blog (click here). Above all listen to Ed Stetzer’s message and I have listed suggestions of similar messages at the end of this post.

If you want to know my thoughts here, they are. While taking church history over the past two semesters and talking to others one of the things that has really stood out. Has been how the church has, during different periods in time, banded together to stand for Truth and combat error. The most obvious is when the Reformers, who disagreed on numerous aspects of theology, banded together to combat the works-based message of the Catholic Church. Even before that, the Nicene Creed and many other creeds served to affirm truth and refute error. In recent times, one can look to the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, where numerous Protestants across a wide range of denominations gathered to defend the validity of Scripture itself. While we may look to these as triumphs in church history I have began to see them as our most visible failures. The Reformation fell short of a true reform due to the Reformers inability to come to a consensus on various issues, and they inevitably committed some of the same atrocities that the Catholic Church committed, they just did so with a more Biblical Soteriology. While they gained an initial triumph, they were unable to bring about complete reform. In early Puritan America, religious freedom quickly became a freedom to practice Puritanism; however, thanks to Baptist ministers such as Roger Williams and John Clarke, who was arrested and whipped for preaching in a home, this is not still the case.

Do not miss understand me I am not one to shy away from controversy, just look at my previous posts or ask for my honest opinion on something, but I think over the past year I have grown frustrated with the lack of progress I see coming out of controversy (Ironically that statement may be controversial.). If you wanted me to, I could list off every “theological heritage” which I feel apart and if you want to challenge the Biblical validity of any of my views, I would quickly respond. However, I think I have grown to the point now where I realize that that is not the point. Perpetual theological debate is not the aim of theology, the glory of God is, and I do not think we glorify God when we ignore God’s commands to engage the culture so that we can retreat from culture and fight amongst ourselves. There are aspects of theology that we must contend for, others that we can agree to disagree on, and there are culturally contrived convictions that we must completely rid ourselves of. But are we willing to do that for the Gospel?

For more sermons addressing this topic, I would recommend:
The Supremacy of Christ and the Church in a Postmodern World by Mark Driscoll
The Supremacy of Christ and the Gospel in a Postmodern World by Tim Keller

For those of you who have not heard I highly recommend heading over to the conversation at Newsweek entitled “On Faith: A Conversation on Religion with John Meacham and Sally Quinn.” From Jon Meacham:

From the nature of evil to religious reformation, from the morality of fetal stem-cell research to the history of scripture, from how to raise kids in multi-faith households to the place of gays in traditional churches — of the asking of questions, to paraphrase Ecclesiastes, there shall be no end. We think that the online world, with its limitless space, offers us a unique opportunity to carry on a fruitful, intriguing, and above all constructive conversation about the things that matter most.

The names and biographical information of the nearly seventy panelists can be found here among which is one of Evangelicism’s wisest leaders, Albert Mohler. I am quite pleased that there will be nearly seventy panelists involved in this conversation; as Evangelicals, we would do well to read them all, in hopes of better understanding the culture in which we must contextualize the Gospel message. Among the seventy panelists, I would recommend reading the posts by three particular individuals, in addition to Dr. Mohler of course. First, emergent church leader Brian McLaren, McLaren is known for writing the book A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN. By “generous orthodoxy” McLaren means no orthodoxy, he is up to his ears in ecumenism. Second, seeker sensitive church leader Rick Warren, Warren is known for writing the doctrinally ambiguous yet insanely popular books The Purpose Driven Life and The Purpose Driven Church. Third, leading philosopher and evolutionist Daniel Dennett, Dennett claims Darwinism as the “universal acid” that “eats through just about every traditional concept and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view.” He also asserts that natural selection accounts for and explains everything from microbiology to the formation of the family and societies.

Rick Warren and Brian McLaren are both members of movements that compromise the Biblical Gospel. All who love the Gospel would do well to understand where they have compromised the Gospel because their error is propagated globally through their writing and sermons. Daniel Dennett is representative of the culture at large, especially academia. However, my main recommendation would be to read the unompromising Biblical insight of Albert Mohler; especially the responses to his posts.

This week the LA Times published a review of an upcoming documentary entitled, Jesus Camp (the article is available here). The film documents “Kids on Fire,” a summer camp in North Dakota. The film focuses on three children Rachael, Levi, and Tory. I may take the time to see the film to learn what perverted distortion of Biblical discipleship is being presented as the status quo among evangelicals, as this documentary will likely play a large role of forming, or confirming, the public’s opinion of Evangelicism.

More important than the documentary itself is the following comment quoted by the reviewer: “I kept saying to myself, ‘OK, these are the Christian version of the Madrassas (those Islamic religious instructional schools in Pakistan and elsewhere, often financed by Saudi oil money) … so both sides are pretty much equally sick.” More and more individuals are comparing Evangelicism to radical Islam; what makes this comparison so important is the clarity with which it pinpoints the root issue. The root issue is that the problem with radical Islam has nothing to do with its violent tendencies but rather its intolerance of other viewpoints, a characteristic shared with Evangelicism.

If this does not serve as a siren to break the silence before the coming storm I am unsure what will. Earlier this month Stephen Green was arrested in Great Brittan for handing out tracts addressing homosexuality (some articles are available here and here). Just last week German parents who home school their children were being imprisoned. I am not going to make prophetic predictions concerning when we will begin seeing laws condemning the Gospel as hate speech or against following Christ[1] on the ballot here in America, although I think it will be soon.
Honestly, if God uses such persecution to shock the dead American Church to life, to rid the church of nominal Christians, and drive the Church out of comfort and complacency and into the nations; then I look forward to it.
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[1] I say following Christ instead of Christianity because I see a vast difference between the two; furthermore, I am trying to eliminate the term “Christian” from my vocabulary and replacing it with “follower of Christ.” I am doing this for several reasons. First, Christianity is an institutionalized religion, Christ did not come to establish an institution He came to establish His Church. Secondly, the world, especially America, is rife with self-professing Christians, very few of which truly follow Christ. The fulfillment of the Great Commission is not found in individuals from every race and tongue and tribe affirming a catechism or creed; but by individuals from every race and tongue and tribe submitting themselves, in obedience, to everything Christ has commanded (Matthew 28:18-20). In closing, I will leave you with a quote. “During the time of Christ, we would be known as followers of the way or followers of Christ and the surrounding culture would insult us by calling us ‘Christians.’ But now we call ourselves Christians and the surrounding world calls us hypocrites.” -Erwin Raphael McManus

While Rosie is seriously mistaken in her analysis, I think evangelicalism is largely to blame for her misunderstanding. The unbridled push towards greater evangelical political activism has lead to the misunderstanding that its aim is creating a quasi theocracy. An idea that many, if not most, evangelicals would embrace, depending on their eschatology and ecclesiology.

This misunderstanding has proliferated to the point that the primary dividing line between political parties is moralistic. With presidential, among other elections, looming just around the corner we must exercise due diligence in both how and why we vote. We must also be clear in explaining these convictions to others, lest others confuse the actions of the United States with the actions of Christ.

I see Rosie’s understanding of the situation as representative of the culture at large. I also think her understanding of the situation is representative of the international community as well; most internationals tend to view America as a “Christian nation.” While viewing a nation as “Christian” may be distinct from a “Christian Theocracy,” it is very easy to conceive of the US as a “Theocratic Democracy,” where Christ rules through the passions of the masses.

I think it is time that American Evangelicals embrace the fact that America is not a Christian nation; that we would stop reducing the Gospel to a moralistic message enforceable by legislation, that we would cease to belittle God by reducing Him to a political party, and that we would cease misrepresenting the name of Christ for the sake of political gain.

I think it is time that American Evangelicals realize that the gospel is not advanced on the back of public favor, that self-righteous legalism and enforced morality glorifies self and not God, that God is not a Republican, nor is He a Democrat, as He transcends all worldly institutions, that we have become Pharisaic in our quest for a political Messiah, and that failure to realize these things blasphemes the living God.

18For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” 20Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

26For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. 31Therefore, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” I Corinthians 1:18-31