Snow Is Like...

"To those who send him,
a trustworthy messenger
is like the coolness of snow
on a harvest day;
he refreshes the life of his masters."

Prov. 25:13

(Keep in mind that harvest is in the warm season in Israel. Snow would've felt good then, huh? So faithfulness in doing one's task is like a refreshing coolness on a hot day to those for whom one does it. Nice to know that under Christ, this applies to our carrying the Gospel message for God too.)

Plagiarism: Does It Apply to Preachers?

I have heard various opinions from various folks on whether it was right or not for a preacher to borrow material from another preacher. Some people said, "No, I can't believe a preacher would need to listen to anybody but God in writing a sermon!" Other folks said, "Awww...its truth man, and it don't change. Therefore nobody is really stealing anything right?" And so the opinions went...

It is interesting that a preacher must interpret the text of the Bible in a way that bears the fruit of listener understanding, but at the same his words are supposed to be exactly those he has been told or read from the Bible (under the divine reminder of the Holy Spirit).

Interestingly, I have been listening to some material about the Puritans, and the speaker (JI Packer) put forward the statement that back in the days before the rise of modern methods of scholarship, nobody gave a hoot about plagiarism. To prove his point, he recited the following poem that used to be popular in later Victorian England.

There was once a preacher named Spurgie
Who hated the English liturgy
But his sermons are fine, I use them as mine,
And so do the rest of the clergy.



God bless!

Update on Ruthie

Dear readers,

My mother-in-law has underwent five weeks of radiation therapy, plus two extremely intense, compacted chemotherapy treatments. She is especially tired this week, because of the chemo, and will now rest until March at her house. She has had tests this week to see if the treatments are helping with results pending sometime next week. A preliminary encouraging sign of answered prayers is that her heart murmur (caused by the tumor in her heart) has lessened to the point of inaudibility. This means the tumor is probably shrinking--praise the Lord! Continue your diligent prayers for Ruthie as she rests that God would continue to bless and heal her. Our God can do anything and we continue to pray for our Father's miraculous intervention in this case.

God bless

New Name

Being that I don't keep up this blog at anything resembling a daily rate, I will be changing the name of the blog. I do promise, however, to henceforth post at least twice a week. Lately, I have had the flu, and have been enjoying my rest immensely, this is at least one reason for my tardiness in posting. God bless you all.

Throwing Evangelists a Bone

This quick post is an effort to balance what I said earlier in my post "Evangelists Feel the Heat." I must say that I thank God for revivalism and its evangelists in a few ways.

First, the passionate, powerful preaching of the Gospel, so long as the major biblical elements are included, is both necessary for the salvation of sinners and a wonderful grace of God.

Second, though revivalism has produced some unwanted side-effects, it has also been used by God to bring about the salvation of many souls.

Thirdly, many evangelists inflate their numbers and the quality of the responses at their meetings, but many do not. Those evangelists with integrity are to be commended as fruitful and Christlike members of the Lord's church.

Fourthly, evangelists focus on some of the most basic (and important) of Christian doctrines in their preaching. Not all Calvinists are like John Piper--passionate for the lost and the church. In fact, many a Calvinist church has not borne fruit, but nuts. This is a sad state of affairs, but many people who are attracted to Calvinism in our modern day do develop an un-biblical balance in their presentation of the Gospel, focusing more on the deep doctrines of the Bible (God's sovereignty/providence; God's decrees in the order of salvation; Covenant theology) than on the basic Gospel message that is continually found in the Scripture in the person and work of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, including God's holiness, man's sinfulness, the wrath of God against sinners, Christ's sacrifice for sin, the commands to mankind to repent and believe, and the importance of simple obedience and faith in practical, everyday living for average folks. Many Calvinist churches need to reclaim a sense of urgency for the lost in their basic presentation of the Gospel.

So, as with almost all things under the sun, there is good and bad in revivalism and the evangelists that support and practice it. We ought to thank God for the good and use our influence to address the bad with a Christlike mind and intention to change it.

New Poll: Salvation Experience

Much confusion exists in evangelical Christian circles about the salvation of children. Basically, a great percentage of childhood converts do not flower into full disciples (followers) of Jesus Christ and his Word. Some of these later become legitimate followers of Jesus Christ. I'd like to pick my readers brains a bit on this topic with a new poll (on the lower right). The purpose of this poll is to set up a future blog discussion on the difference between consciousness of sin and true conviction of sin in a believer's life.

"Pastor Be Honest"

Calvinism is a hot-button issue today, what with its promotion by John Piper and others in an America that often doesn't want to hear about this topic. A recent poll showed that 30% of graduates from a certain SBC seminary (Southern?) are Calvinist in theology.



Of course, many an evangelical Christian has unknowingly fallen in love with JI Packer's "Knowing God" over the years, and he is a staunch Calvinist (and a wonderful theologian).



So there is a conflict. Many churches do not want a Calvinist pastor, but many Calvinist pastors are going out into the ministry. My poll that has been up for a month is a question on how forthcoming a pastor candidate ought to be with a church about his personal views on these deep theological issues. This poll only got nine votes, but it was something like 8 to 1 in favor of total pastoral honesty on the Calvinism/Arminianism issue. The people who are reading my blog have spoken: "Pastor--be honest about your theological convictions with those to whom you minister ."

Evangelists Feel the Heat

These are turbulent times for SBC evangelists. The progress of modern culture has created a climate in which evangelism tactics from Great Awakening #2 are being questioned (the purpose of revival meetings, public invitations with heavy emotional/decisional emphasis, the use of evangelists for revivals, etc.) by many SBC pastors. At least two reasons for this are 2nd Great Awakening revivalism's lack of doctrinal depth and accuracy and inability to create a culture of intimate Christian fellowship in a today's society. More educated than previous generations and more disconnected from traditional community moorings than ever, younger folks hanker after doctrinal substance and true fellowship in the church. The Calvinist resurgence and the rise of the Seeker Sensitive movement parallel these needs.



Recently in my state's convention paper, 'The Western Recorder," there was an article in which a particular group of SBC evangelists that meet in association blamed both the rise of Calvinistic theology and the Seeker Sensitive paradigm in our day as culprits that have led to the decreasing success of revivalistic theology and practice. The problem with their criticism of Calvinism is that some of those involved with this evangelist meeting made inaccurate statements about the Calvinist movement. Some examples:

Hal Poe, professor of faith and culture at Union University in Jackson, TN, said about Calvinist pastor John Piper:

"...John Piper's version of Calvinism is not something John Calvin would espouse, or even that Charles Spurgeon would espouse."

Jerry Drace, evangelist, "told the group he currently is working with some young pastors who are "so leaning in this morphed Calvinism that they almost laugh at evangelism. It's almost to the extent that they believe they don't have to do it. So (Calvinism) gives them an excuse not to do evangelism."
(Western Recorder; January 22, 2008; pp. 2)

The first statement is a smear on John Piper because it paints him as a radical who is far different than Calvin or Spurgeon. I wonder how Poe would explain this major difference between Piper, Calvin, and Spurgeon in terms of soteriology? I don't think he can. Nor can Drace say all Calvinist pastors are unevangelistic. Perhaps he has encountered a few hyper/non-witnessing Calvinist pastors, but he is dead wrong about all Calvinist pastors being against evangelism. His statement is absurd. In fact John Piper says the following about evangelism for the Calvinist pastor:



"4. Make Spurgeon and Whitefield your models rather than Owen or Calvin, because the former were evangelists and won many people to Christ in a way that is nearer to our own day.

5. Be an evangelist and a missions mobilizer so that the criticism that Calvinism dulls a passion for the lost is put to silence."


Piper's writing on this is available at the following link: http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByDate/1998/1509_How_to_Teach_and_Preach_Calvinism/

Stupid criticisms aside, one strong positive came from this evangelist's meeting:

These evangelists have begun to examine evangelism as a practice and have concluded that there is a lack of integrity in their own ranks. Of particular importance are evangelist's inflation of numbers of respondents at their events and also evangelist's exaggeration the quality of decisions made by these respondents. These evangelists have begun to realize that many times, they emotionally manipulate people into one-time, shallow, non-discipleship, verbal commitments. This realization is good. Perhaps they will come to the next set of logical conclusions about their method of evangelism: 1) there is something wrong with it, because of the shallowness of so many "conversions," and also that 2) their soul-winning model has played havoc in a rapidly changing world over the last 60 or so years, as SBC pastors have imitated it in the local church, creating an army of dechurched, uncommitted, careless professing Christians who have loads of confidence in a one-time decision, but little biblical basis for their status as disciples (followers of Christ and His word's) in their day-to-day lives!