Month: February 2009

Defective Church: A Community of Convenience

Posted on February 9, 2009

Many people in America approach “church” as a community of convenience. The Bible, however, holds out a very different concept of church, a community of grace. The community of convenience stands in the way of a community of grace. Consider some of the differences:

Community of Grace

Community of Convenience
  • Assumes Imperfection
  • Begins with Forbearance
  • Moves to Forgiveness
  • Characterized by Grace & Love
  • Assumes Perfection
  • Begins with Consumerism
  • Moves to another “Church”
  • Characterized by Convenience & Selfishness

Community of Convenience

The community of convenience assumes perfection. It confuses the church with a product or service, demanding perfect customer service from the community. This person approaches “church” as something that exists to service their personal, familial, and spiritual needs, not as a community love and serve. The COC begins with consumerism and expects to be served. It believes that the church exists for their spiritual, relational convenience. People who approach church as a COC get upset, angry, and gripe when they don’t get their spiritual or personal needs serviced. When conflict emerges the COC simply withdraws or moves on. If the spiritual customer doesn’t receive his service, get his needs met, or get the precise theological package they are looking for, they criticize the leadership, complain to others about the community, and often move down the street to another church to get their needs serviced. No wonder people aren’t “going to church.”

Community of Grace

A community of grace, however, assumes imperfection. It understands that the church is people, people who are broken, imperfect, sinful, people who will complain and hurt one another. A COG begins with forbearance, “bearing with one another in love.” It is others-oriented. It puts up with others that are different, embraces inconvenience. When conflict arises, the COG responds very differently. The COG doesn’t remain at a place of forbearance but moves to forgiveness. The COG doesn’t hold grudges but extends genuine forgiveness towards those who have hurt them.

The COG is characterized by love and grace, but the COC is characterized by selfishness and consumerism. The Church is not a community of conveniences. It does not exist for you to get served. The church is a community of grace that exists to serve one another, to bear with one another, to forgive one another, to love one another! The church is not a perfect product or service with a money back guarantee; it is a community of imperfect people clinging to a perfect Christ who are being perfected by grace.

Deacon Interviews

Posted on February 6, 2009

I am finally getting around to some overdue Deacon candidate interviews. After three sessions of training (I, II, & III), I am meeting with each candidate. In preparation I am praying for each candidate, re-reading their reflection papers, and formulating candidate specific questions. During the interview I am looking for their understanding and commitment to Gospel, Community, and Mission.

In general, I begin by catching up with them and asking them the following questions:

  1. Communion with God: Describe your walk with the Lord. How is it going?
  2. Office of Deacon: From what you have learned about the office of deacon, what are you concerned and excited about in potentially serving the church in this way?
  3. Purity of Life: Are there any areas in your life that are out of step with the character of a deacon? Do you struggle with impurity in any particular area?
  4. The Gospel: Describe how the gospel is shaping your life and decision-making.
  5. Mission: How are you currently living out the mission of Christ?

These have been influenced by Tim Keller.

From Planting to Movements

Posted on February 6, 2009

This Saturday I will be co-presenting a workshop at the Missional Community Leader Conference on moving:

From Planting to Movements: The Role of City Networks

The purpose of the workshop is to explore and narrarate the role of city networks in facilitating a movement from church planting to a movement resulting in city renewal. We will share from theory and practice in order to inspire and equip people to think beyond their own church plant into movement ministry.

I will post our workshop notes after the conference.

Piper's Potential Writing Projects

Posted on February 6, 2009

  1. Make a serious beginning on a longer book on divine providence, perhaps called something like Sightings of the Sovereignty of God. The idea here is to encompass all of Scripture and show from it the hundreds of ways God reveals his absolute sovereignty over all things. This would probably take more than one writing leave.
  2. Write a shorter book called perhaps Reasoning with Jesus: Thinking for the Glory of Christ.I have most of the raw material for this already on paper in several messages. The idea would be to provide a plea, perhaps especially to younger people, to devote their best mental efforts to understanding and living out the Christian faith.But it would be for everybody and would be different from lots of books about the intellectual life in that it would be largely expositions of Scripture. What does it mean to love God with our minds? How important is education (which is not the same as “school”)? What are people doing with their minds today that makes Jesus angry?
  3. Preparing the Ruth cycle of Advent poems for publication without Christmas endings so that in the next year we can put together a suite of materials on Ruth including the book I just finished (Ruth: A Sweet and Bitter Providence) and a set of video messages on the book to be recorded next December.
  4. I dream of writing a children’s book. It may be as small as one of the old Arch Books, retelling biblical stories in poetry form. Or it may be a little longer and more substantial in parabolic form.
  5. There is churning in me a book on issues of race and ethnicity in the church and in America. If I live, it will be done. It’s a matter of timing. I never feel qualified to write it. But, as with marriage, I may just have to do it anyway and let the chips fall where they may.
  6. I might be stirred to do one more book on justification.What needs to be done to complete the picture I have drawn in the first two books (Counted Righteous in Christ and The Future of Justification) is a biblical exposition of how “works” function in relationship to justification. This would involve a treatment of the nature of the faith that justifies, and how it relates to works.
  7. Make a serious beginning toward publishing the Romans sermons in four volumes, possibly editing one volume per year for four years.

Read the whole thing here.