WiseReader

Ken Davis serves as Sr. Pastor at Thistletown Baptist Church, Toronto. We could do with a lot more men like him in our evangelical pulpits. He is a true pastor who loves and serves his congregation faithfully, and in a manner that truly glorifies the God he loves.

Today I read Ken’s blog post,  “Building in Vain” (May 20, 2010), a reflection on Psalm 127. It is one on which every pastor could profitably reflect.

Ken is a seasoned pastor & preacher with solidly reformed convictions, but he never advocates a passive wait and see attitude toward gospel ministry. He concluded his post with these words:

Use everything that God provides for the propagation of the Gospel and the sanctification of the saints. But never trust the tools that God gives you more than the God who gives them.

If you have a moment, visit the Thistletown Baptist Church site and benefit from the growing body of posts filled with wise, biblically-rooted counsel. And if you live in the northwest side of the GTA, and are seeking a church where Christ is honoured and the Word of God faithfully preached, Thistletown Baptist Church would be an excellent choice.

When decrying the precipitous numerical decline in the United Church of Canada (UCC), David Ewart, minister of North Vancouver’s Capilano United Church, said more than he probably intended, though substantially less than he ought to have said.

ChristianWeek columnist, Frank Stirk, writing about the dubious future for a status-quo UCC denomination, (“United Church losses projected to continue”, ChristianWeek, May 7, 2010) quotes Ewart, who believes that an “almost conversion-type experience” is required to save the denomination.

Ewart further says, “We keep hearing that people are spiritual and not religious. We’re (UCC) religious and, I would frankly say, not too spiritual … And for us to change, to figure out how to be spiritual as well as religious, that would be an act of God.”

Well, yes, Pastor Ewart, Christianity has always been a “conversion-type experience”, and genuine spirituality always involves “an act of God.” That, it would seem, is Christianity 101.

Without doubt, within the UCC there are true Christians, but the denomination as a whole has derailed, and that reality may just be breaking through the fog of relativism enshrouding the movement as a whole. People are leaving because the denomination has relatively little of biblical theological substance to offer.

Striking at the root of the UCC dilemma, is the response from Ambrose University College sociologist professor, Joel Thiessen. As for any weight given to UCC problems being theologically rooted, Thiessen counters that the UCC’s liberal values are attractive to many Canadians. He believes those liberal values resonate with “a specific market of the population that the conservative churches do not, whether evangelical or Roman Catholic.”

Thiessen’s conclusion is nothing short of sheer market-driven pragmaticism. Couple that with the admission of religiosity without spirituality and you have what one mainline pastor observed to me twelve years ago: “Let’s face it, the United Church is an apostate denomination.”

Ewart thinks the problems facing the UCC are beyond its ability to challenge – “secularism, individualism, consumerism, people being busy seven days a week.” But aren’t these the very challenges that face Christians, the very strongholds that the gospel is meant to tear down? Is this not what Christian ministry is about: challenging the idols of our culture, calling people to repent and return to God?

Saving a denomination from spiritual disaster surely will take an act of God seen in a conversion-type experience. It will demand repentance from the sins of denying the inspiration and authority of Scripture, the deity of Jesus Christ, the substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Jesus and his visible, glorious return to this earth - essential doctrines that seem open for debate in UCC circles. It will require a return to the clear teaching of Scripture, refusing to bend God’s Word to fit with the prevailing mood of our secularized culture.

Thank God for every UCC pastor and parishioner who already knows this. Though I would find it very difficult to remain in a denomination that denies the essentials of Christianity, for those genuine believers who do, I offer this biblical counsel:

“And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will” [2 Timothy 2:24-26 NIV].

Let us all pray for that “conversion-type experience”, that “act of God” Pastor Ewart sees as crucial to the spiritual well-being of the United Church of Canada.
 

As Professor of Evangelism at Southeastern Baptist theological Seminary, one should not be surprised that Alvin Reid cares about the progress of the gospel. 

In “We have reached the tipping point”, Reid blogs about the current state of the Southern Baptist Convention, noting the growing unease over how many SBCers view the Cooperative Program, the growing lack of cultural engagement by SBC congregations, and concern for the SBC’s future if the status quo remains. In a telling comment, Reid says:

“Many are concerned that the center of the SBC has moved from a theological core to a methodological consensus, and that consensus has collapsed.”

I suspect that leaders within many of our evangelical denominations would make similar observations about their own groups.

The post is lengthy, covering a wide range of opinion and conviction, but Reid’s passion for a healthy, spiritual future for his denomination jumps off the page. I recommend it to you.