If you don’t like being knocked down …
Stand for nothing.
Unless you are part of a functional local assembly of believers, I’m really not interested in your books and blogs telling everyone how to be or not be the church …
Unless you are out there doing actual evangelism and seeing people surrender their lives to Jesus and His Kingdom, I’m really not interested in hearing you tell everyone how they must or must not do evangelism …
Unless you are ministering redemption to actual people trapped in sin, I’m really not interested in your views on how Christians should or shouldn’t speak up about homosexuality or any other lifestyle of bondage …
Unless you are secure enough in your own gifts and motivations to honor God’s different callings in others, I’m really not interested in why you think He can’t send some to serve His Kingdom in academia, politics, the armed forces, government or the like …
Unless you are submitted to God’s plenary authority and truth of Scripture as His written Word, I’m really not interested in your “deeper life” revelations …
Unless you are an authentic disciple who has the integrity to sacrificially walk the walk and move beyond merely talking the talk, I’m really not interested in your attempts to distort Christ to reflect your own existential angst and narcissistic sensibilities.
Sorry if that offends …
But then again, maybe it’s time someone cared enough to offend and call you to repentance.
If it’s cool, hip or seeker friendly …
It ain’t worship.
Because true worship …
Is not about us.
Sacred cows make the best hamburgers.
You can’t change what you won’t confront:
Courage and sacrifice are the price we pay for freedom …
While evil thrives on lethargy and fear.
“The Pastor” of a church, ministry or whatever …
Is a phrase and a concept utterly absent from the New Testament.
Nope, not, nada …
Just ain’t there.
Instead, it comes from reading post-Biblical assumptions, presumptions and meanings not found in Scripture back into Scripture.
In the New Testament, some minister pastorally …
As simply one of many different functions expressed within a healthy church by a diversity of people.
More specifically, the New Testament references multiple elders in each church, each of whom is to function pastorally …
As well as teach, watch over and protect God’s flock together, among other things.
But no one is ever called a “Senior Pastor,” “Lead Pastor,” or any other form of “Pastor” in the New Testament …
And the word is never, ever used as justification for one person to be over a church.
Be a Berean …
Search Scripture to see if these things be so.
Then have the courage to follow what God’s Word actually says …
Rather than subsequent human traditions.
Anarchy begins when the State elevates the right to choose sin …
Over the right to choose virtue.
Biblical Christians who submit their sensibilities to Scripture …
End up trusting God and doubting doubt.
Existential “Christians” who submit Scripture to their sensibilities …
End up doubting God and trusting doubt.
Why are those who dismiss the need for sound doctrine …
So doctrinaire about it?
God blesses those …
Who are good stewards of His blessings.
I love a well staged performance as much as the next guy, but please …
Just don’t call it “church”.
In the New Testament, “worship” occurs when we respond to God’s ongoing sovereign presence by living ongoing lives of reverence and obedience …
Which might, at times, properly invoke emotions.
Pagan worship, however, starts by manipulating emotions to “usher in” a false sense of God’s presence through special effects and special “leaders” at special gatherings.
It is a concept foreign to how the New Testament says God’s people are to function together as His church.
Unfortunately, there’s way too much pagan worship, and too little New Testament worship, in our “churches” these days.
Blessed are those who give without remembering …
And receive without forgetting.
“Progressive” nonsense distorts love by affirming life-controlling sin …
And those who promote it.
The New Legalism:
Repressive progressive “Christians” who elevate their own sensibilities above Scripture in the name of “tolerance” …
While being intolerant of those who honor Scripture instead.
Saying Jesus is all about relationship and not religion …
Is narcissistic.
It’s an attempt to have Jesus on our own terms, without His Scriptural authority and the propositional truths, commands, precepts and moral imperatives He reveals there.
Yes, Jesus wants a relationship with us …
But on HIS terms, not ours.
Only reprobates call virtue …
The new hate speech.
It is narcissistic foolishness to twist the truth that all Scripture points to Jesus …
Into the lie that our own perceptions of Jesus therefore supersede Scripture.
Such non-sequiturs, and those who promote them, inevitably destroy all they touch …
Including authentic faith, discipleship and churches.
False “deeper life” spiritually has become a substitute these days for “real life” …
Among insular Christians too wrapped up in themselves to engage a messy, waiting world with authentic faith in action.
The viability of a church today typically depends on “the Pastor”.
How is that even Biblical?
You can’t find that anywhere in the New Testament.
Instead, the New Testament says we are to be the church – the multi-part Body of Christ – as each of us uses our diverse functions and gifts to minister to one another, encourage one another, and strengthen one another …
Including local elders who emerge among us to serve beside us by pastoring, teaching and watching over the flock.
The simple fact of the matter is that there are no favorable examples in the New Testament, as is common today, of one person primarily leading a church …
Unless you read your own post-New Testament presumptions, meanings, and traditions back into Scripture.
Nope, not, nadda …
Just ain’t there.
Which raises the question:
What else about “church” as we’ve come to know it …
Has nothing to do with church as the Bible actually shows it?
In life, faith and culture …
Without virtue, liberty is impossible.
God’s forgiveness is like a unilateral pardon.
Even though we are guilty, He does not hold it against us.
Being reconciled to God, however, is an entirely different matter.
It only happens when we respond with repentance.
You’ll never find viable “organic” or “simple” church among its post-modern hucksters, spinning their existential failures to gullible groupies.
But you sure gotta give them credit for something, because they do know how to tickle those itchy ears …
If it’s not real …
I’m not interested.
The Gospel works for none of us …
Unless it works for the worst of us.
But it’s only through Godly repentance …
That it works for any of us.
Plumbline Faith 