Law first, law second

When God brought Israel out of bondage He could have done anything with them. He could have made them into a nation ruled by warriors like Sparta, presidents like America, tyrants like the surrounding nations, or whatever else we have invented to govern ourselves. He chose a judge. Then, He could have given them anything to have as their national identity, as their single most important thing, and again, He picks law. The first five books are the Law, not the priesthood, not the prophets, the law. And what comes next? The judges. When He wrote the Bible He could have put anything first, but what does He pick? The law, again the law.

God intended that if Israel faithfully read and obeyed the law they would become what they did in Jesus day, a place full of teachers of the law, scribes of the Law, and sects broken up by legal interpretation. Now at first blush people might think that was bad, but it's the non-belief of the pharisee that was the problem, not that he studied the books of Moses too much. What Ezra set in motion was not just the natural consequence of paying attention to the structure of the by design of God, it was a blessing. God gave the law so that men would start thinking in terms of the law. They needed to become law-experts, they must become a nation of judges because it’s the judge who is most familiar with justice. It’s the judge who can see when a substitute can be suitable. The people were given Moses as a judge, not a king, because the law was to teach them that the atonement would be one of law, not mercantile payment. 

In this light it's perfectly understandable. Yes Christ is indeed a King, but that comes after. Christ is a prophet, but not first. It's the law, the law that teaches us that Christ suffered an equivalent penalty, not an exact one, that shows us how He dies as a legal substitute, and how God the Father discharges the debt legally. If we were legal experts we would understand. The first thing is to remember, the law. Atonement through the eyes of the law!

Why Leave Our Current Church?

In light of the recent events unfolding at our church (as chosen by both the leadership and the congregation), we feel compelled to worship elsewhere on Sunday mornings. Our problem coincided with the arrival of Scott, although they were not his fault, nor did he have anything to do with them, but his hiring brought to light the realization that we had been troubled for some time by a number of things that are not going away.

The Executive Summary

The Bible commands us to be in subjection to our elders, but the leadership here doesn’t believe in either the authority or sufficiency of Scripture, and I can’t in good conscience submit to someone who disbelieves in such a fashion. If we stay we will be in violation of the Scriptures, which is a sin, but even if we could stay I still fear we would put our kids at risk for growing up in a doctrinally soft feel good mega church. That's a big order, so let me explain.

The longer Explanation

A little over a year ago The Bridge of Elk Grove (working title, they have not formally changed the name yet) decided to move away from any remaining historic Baptist roots and embrace a mega-church style borrowed from Willow Creek. Surveys became common, classic doctrines and preferences were replaced by the idea that to grow the church we need to find out what people want to hear and give it to them. That is, in order to achieve the leadership’s goal of “moving people closer to Jesus” we need to trade orthodox Christianity for a kind of moral therapeutic deism. The change has come so quickly because the leadership has decided the oldest generation, the one that likes hymns, expects the pastor to be dress in more than a Rick Warren Hawaiian shirt, and attends the 8:30 service is now neither the future, nor the present of the church. Their doctrinal and ecclesiastical preferences are seen as relics of a bygone era, and in ten years will die with them. As a practical matter the leadership realizes it must replace the generous departing old saints with larger numbers of younger givers if it is to survive, and it believes speaking to felt needs is the way to do it. Now while that’s a strong indictment, I will hasten to add that their bad thinking comes from a good heart. It’s not because they hate Christ or would deny fundamental truths like His divinity that they would do this, it’s just that they want to be culturally relevant and engaging, like Bayside of Granite Bay with its 12,000 attendees on a Sunday, and to get there you have to attract people by giving them what they want. Mature doctrines are divisive and keep churches under a certain number; feelings are unifying and allow a church to grow as big as possible.

This explains why we started preaching from the Story book for a year (the Story, if you’ll remember, takes away the boring sections of the NIV text and replaces them with Lucado’s personal thoughts). It’s why we invited John Jackson and David Harris to the pulpit on a number of Sundays so they could tell us their feel good, empty calorie stories and jokes while our executive pastor assured us that “Doubting is good, it’s healthy, and everyone does it.” It’s why we changed our new believer curriculum to Experiencing God by Blackaby. It’s why we opened the “helps center” bookcase and manned it with volunteers, so that if anyone had a problem, we could cry with them and tell them God isn’t mad, and hand them a life resource. It’s why we re-upped our partnership with World Vision, an organization run by a member of the PCA—because what really matters is not beliefs, but the fact that we are out here to “do something” for God, like stop bullying or bring social justice to the community. We went big on our coffee ministry. We replaced the sermons with musicals or dramas on occasion, because who wants to be lectured when you can experience an interactive presentation of the gospel? We partnered with William Jessup University to use our campus (their philosophy is that a minister is better served with an MBA than a M.Div). We changed our purpose from glorifying God and making people disciples of Christ to “moving people toward Jesus.” We changed our name from First Baptist Church, because people don’t like such antiquated titles anymore. It’s why we started to, and why we continue to do Willow Creek REVEAL surveys. It’s why we were told, “I don’t care if you don’t like it, God is on the move here.” It's why we brought in David Harris, emergent preacher in the style of Brian McLauren for eight weeks.

 The result of which has been a downward spiral for real spiritual maturity. A year ago we had something in the neighborhood of 5,000 visitors, and 600 something people who identified themselves as “mature or Christ centered believers,” while this year we had near 8,000 visitors and 400 something people who identified as mature. Most people don’t take their kids to service with them. The vast majority don’t do anything more than attend one service. And out of this we have selected new elders, which is why one of them exhorted us during a men’s group to “preach the gospel, use words if we have to.” 

Now this methodology, and the decisions that have come from it, was something we were willing to overlook while we didn’t have a senior pastor, so long as when we did hire someone, he would be a man of God who would repudiate the silliness. It didn’t matter to us if the elder board didn’t believe in the sufficiency of Scripture, as long as the senior pastor who drove the vision would. Is this sloppy thinking on our part? Shouldn’t we have recognized that the church already is a seeker sensitive mega-church? Shouldn’t we have realized that the elders had consolidated power in the absence of a senior pastor and things weren’t going back to the way it was before? Perhaps.

But it’s into this background that Scott Hansen comes, and his appearance was from the beginning problematic for us. He literally walked away from his church without telling them, and the reason for moving doing so was, “God called him, and he needed to be faithful,” which is either soft headed thinking, a violation of the third commandment, or more likely, just a non-answer. When asked how he would win the millennial generation he said, “through the use of technology.” When giving the alter call he summarized salvation as “God votes for you, Satan votes against, and you cast the deciding vote.” He told us we needed to become more seeker sensitive, that we needed to learn to speak the language of the world around us, if we wanted to win souls to Christ. Before he writes his sermon he asks himself, “What is the congregation struggling with, and what do they need to hear this week?” His sermon on John 3 was how we can reach men like Nicodemus by making them comfortable. And the leadership loved him. His style blended swimmingly with theirs because he worked through the same set of first principles they did. We decided it was extremely unlikely he would even attempt to swim against the mega-church current. I’m not saying he’s not orthodox, because he is. Nor am I saying he won’t make the Bible a part of his sermons, because he will. The Bridge Elk Grove might well experience great numerical growth under his watch, but fundamentally he agrees with the current leadership regarding both the sufficiency and the authority of Scriptures and that’s unacceptable.

I don’t expect our decision to be popular, or, for that matter, to have any of our friends agree with it. At the members meeting there was a tremendous backlash against the elders when they tried to change our constitution to give themselves more power and the postmodern growth philosophy full reign, but the few remaining dissenters are outmaneuvered. They’re holding onto hope in thinking Scott is going to be on their side, on the side of tradition, but he’s not, he’s pro-contextualization. But even if we are ostracized from our friends due to their anger (which I hope isn’t the case) the fact remains that the driving philosophy behind all of these decisions is expressly forbidden by the Scriptures, and represents a denial of other key doctrines of salvation. The church has now fully committed to growing using a method other than fidelity to the Bible. It grieves me to leave but the simple truth is I don’t want to attend Bayside of Granite Bay. I don’t like Saddleback Church. I don’t want to fill out surveys during a Willow Creek service. I want my hymns and my children to hear the full gospel message, the word of God unpacked faithfully every week. Not what someone else thinks they should hear, what God has chosen to say. Insofar as I am able, I must be faithful to Scripture. I know there are still churches out there that operate by faith in the foolishness of God, even if The Bridge of Elk Grove isn’t going to be one of them. So we must go in search of higher ground, lest we be swept away by the storm.

My Lament

Return to Part One: What is the Willow Creek Model
or Part Two: The Blight Cometh 

It’s one thing to point out the clinical problems that come with having your church blighted, it’s quite another to live through it. Reading Exodus 23:2 is easy (Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment) but standing up to society is decidedly hard. Watching my large church, to whom I entrust the souls of myself and my kids, turn into a Willow Creek church has been beyond exceedingly difficult. I mean, not just hard but really, really hard, sleepless nights of doubting myself, debating myself, and kicking myself in abundance hard. Because I’ve been alone in it. 

Mentioning my concerns to others only results in them looking at me like I have two heads, “Why do you care so much? Why do you make such a big deal about nothing? This place is great! The preaching is awesome! Don’t you see the work we’re doing for the kingdom?” And I do see it, and it’s not all without question bad. But my heart has sunk very low when I have seen my friends blighted into skipping church altogether in order to go to run races, attend ballgames.

The staff are no relief, in fact they are worse off than the blighted members since they are fully vested in the executive pastor (because otherwise they lose their jobs). I don’t judge them, they need to feed their children the same as I, and this is how they earn their bread, rather, I love them. They are wonderful people. But since I can neither condemn them for succumbing to the blight, nor admit it’s acceptable, I am left alone. And the blight whispers to me as well. “It’s not too late to go back. Go inside and believe it, put to death that part of you that is crying out.” I want it to be true that it’s harmless and acceptable, that if I lay down and sleep it wouldn’t corrode my soul. But I can’t, because two things have kept me half awake during the spell, like Puddleglum the marsh wiggle in the depths of the earth: AWANA and Alistair. The leaders at AWANA invited me to teach the junior kids for a year and they were very happy with my Scripture centric approach that challenged them to pursue the glory of God. I pulled no punches and taught them as adults, and was just sure the things I was saying would get me booted because it was the complete opposite of Sunday mornings, but it never happened. That encouraged me. The other thing was Truth for Life. The biblical preaching I get there has fed me enough to keep me from passing out.

So I sit alone by the river, unable to sing King Alphas song, groaning as the heavy wheels of providence turn over me. His sovereign hand has sorely pursued His servant to keep him from resting, and the pleas go unheard. The upraised hands are not seen, rather, He has increased my affliction, and multiplied to me sorrows. Well can I say with the Scriptures, it is not good for man to be alone. I cry with the Psalmist, have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my bones are vexed. My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O LORD, how long?  And again, How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? Forever? Oh, we see not our signs! There is no longer any prophet! neither is there among us any that knoweth. Alas that these evil days have come upon me.

But as Doug Wilson says, I hear in the hard snowy highlands the bagpipes of God’s sovereignty demanding I count it as joy, which comes with the morning. And even as some of the blighted poets have said, I take comfort in that “God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life.”

Faithful to only Half the Truth isn't full faithfulness

What’s the name of the error when the pastor opens the Bible and preaches through it, but strains everything through a grid and won’t let anything outside his focus get through? What’s it called when that grid is something as wholesome as evangelism? What’s wrong with the preacher taking John 3 and making it into practical tips about how we can reach people like Nicodemus, and closes with an alter call, urging people to cast themselves wholly on the mercies of Christ? On the one hand points must be awarded to such a man for having enough faithfulness to actually open up the Book and use it. On the other, points must be deducted because reducing the Scriptures to such simplistic terms is positively criminal. The closest term I could think of was “half-truth” but that doesn’t have the right fit to it.

Now don’t misunderstand, I don’t mean to say in this case that the gospel is distorted beyond recognition, I mean it’s shrunk to such an extent that it no longer nourishes anyone but babies. The preacher prayerfully considers that his audience is full of non-believers, and carefully distills the essence of the message, throwing out the non-essential elements until it’s a tasty milkshake ready to go. This is praiseworthy insofar as he’s cutting right to the chase and showing the non-believer their need of Christ, yet at the same time it’s destructive in that it brings the people right into the condemnation of Scripture: “You should be teachers by now! You have need of milk and not of strong meat!”

Imagine my surprise as I was considering this very question when I heard what Spurgeon said in his sermon “Preach the Gospel.” 

To preach the gospel is to state every doctrine contained in God's Word, and to give every truth its proper prominence. Men may preach a part of the gospel; they may only preach one single doctrine of it; and I would not say that a man did not preach the gospel at all if he did but maintain the doctrine of justification by faith—"By grace are ye saved through faith." I should put him down for a gospel minister, but not for one who preached the whole gospel. No man can be said to preach the whole gospel of God if he leaves it out, knowingly and intentionally, one single truth of the blessed God.

 Why, that’s it! That’s it exactly. And lo, Spurgeon goes on to hit the nail right on the head again:

In conversation, a week or two ago, with an eminent professor, he said to me, "Sir, we know that we ought not to preach the doctrine of election, because it is not calculated to convert sinners." "But," said I to him, "who is the man that dares to find fault with the truth of God? You admit with me that it is a truth, and yet you say it must not be preached. I dare not have said that thing. I should reckon it supreme arrogance to have ventured to say that a doctrine ought not to be preached when the all-wise God has seen fit to reveal it. Besides, is the whole gospel intended to convert sinners? There are some truths which God blesses to the conversion of sinners; but are there not other portions which were intended for the comfort of the saint? And ought not these to be a subject of gospel ministry as well as the others? And shall I look at one and disregard the other?

Marvelous. And to which I add the Scriptures themselves, (from Hosea 13:13)

 “He is an unwise son, for he should not stay long where children are born.”

Analogy of Faith

Quite by accident my sister gave this one to me.

She's having a boy (her first) and we're having a girl (our last). She called and asked if we could give her our old baby boy clothes that we have been storing since we won't need them anymore.
"Sure," we said, "that wouldn't be a problem."
But what if the ultrasound technician was wrong? They've been known to make mistakes before. What if we give her everything like she's asking and we've nothing left, and it turns out to be a boy for us too? Are we really willing to commit to a course where there's no going back?

That's Christian faith. Faith is reaching a point where there's no going back. It's not just saying 'yes,' it's mailing all the old clothes away. It's not assent, it's a total dependency on the word being true, and living accordingly.