For an excellent article from 9 Marks reflecting on various issues relating to gospel centrality in our church or any church click here.
Tag Archives: church
How to Question Officer Candidates
This Sunday evening at 6 PM at the SDA we will have a very important congregational meeting. Open to members and attendees alike, in this 90 minute gathering we will engage our three officer candidates in Q & A about their nomination for church leadership positions.
This is no small thing. Our bylaws require confirmation of all candidates by no-less than 75% vote of the assembled membership. That vote, Lord willing, will occur after the worship service on January 8, 2012. In order to be able to affirm or deny responsibly depends on having at least some knowledge of these men.
We have already sent out copies of their testimonies to everyone concerned, so unless you have some point of clarification on any of their stories, there is no need to question them about how they came to Christ. Where we must focus our attention in questioning each prayerfully, humbly, and respectfully is in terms of how God judges a man’s fitness for office, namely, character (including family life), doctrine, and philosophy of church ministry/leadership.
For those who find posing questions in a public forum in front of a microphone a bit intimidating but still would like to do so, feel free to email me your submission to me at revheff@gmail.com and the elders will do our best to take it into account. Child care will be provided for the little ones.
Hope to see you there!
The Masculine Mandate in the Church
Our Oxford Club for Men group resumes this Saturday, December 10, at 7 AM, at the church office, with our ongoing study of Richard Phillips’ book The Masculine Mandate. Newcomers are always welcome!
After breakfast (bring your own please) we will discuss chapter 12, The Masculine Mandate in the Church.
Here is a sample from that chapter to whet the appetite:
So it is the Word of God–by grace of God taught, heard, understood, and applied–that accomplishes all progress within a church. From this, one conclusion is abundantly clear: any Christian man who wants to serve the Lord, in any role and at any level, must begin by devoting himself to God’s Word. A man who is weak in the Word of God will be of little use for service, for we cannot truly serve God effectively in our own knowledge and strength. But God’s Word stirs up in us the faith and spiritual strength needed to serve Him (p. 137).
You can access a copy of the study guide for this chapter by clicking The Masculine Mandate – SG #12.
His Mission/Our Mission
Yesterday’s message from Luke 19:1-10 is now on the website. You can listen to the audio here.
Here’s how I wrapped things up:
Grasping Jesus’ rescue mission to even this world’s lost of the lost summons us to embrace that same mission as our own – grasping the interest He drew, the initiative He took, the irritation He made, and the inspiration He gave. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. He did that with Zacchaeus. He did that with me. If He has done that with you, then He lives within us with the same gospel-shaped, soul-stirring mission to engage lost people that they might be found even as we have been found. As we look to the opening of our building next year, let’s be all the more about making His mission our mission through the power of the gospel.
For more information of the book I recommended at the top of the message click here.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Pastor’s Preaching
Nancy Leigh DeMoss has written a helpful blog post for those who regularly submit themselves to the means of grace that is the preached word.
I particularly appreciated this pre-service exhortation at the top of her list:
Pray for your pastor as he prepares for Sunday. Pray that his schedule would be free from unnecessary distractions. Pray that God will give him understanding into the meaning of the Word. Pray that God will speak to him personally through the Word and that he will respond in humility and obedience. Pray that God will help him to communicate the truth with clarity, freedom, passion, and power.
I don’t know any preacher worth his salt that wouldn’t salivate over the prospect of a people who did half the things this sister advises, especially that kind of prayer.
You can read the entire piece here.
The Trouble with Community
That’s easy.
Christians. Saints by position in Christ who still act like pagans in sin. No matter how spiritual believers become, while in the flesh, the potential for relapse ever remains a threat.
In my role as a pastor, occasionally I take the heat for the local church body by receiving complaints about real and/or perceived breakdowns in its expression of community. These trouble me, especially the ones I cause by my own lapses into gospel amnesia that lead to legalism or license in my own life. I pray and labor to find ways to correct our imperfections.
I think a sermon series like The Graces of Gospel-Shaped Community like we are giving ourselves to for the rest of this year at OGC can tend to spur us on to greater heights and depths of community. Certainly I pray and labor for that in multiple ways. But the downside of such an emphasis is that it can serve to highlight our failures and weaknesses in community too. And that can lead to discouragement, if we don’t take care to keep things in perspective.
Something helping me in that regard is to remember the nature of the first century church. We really can’t afford to romanticize the experience of the New Testament church. That kind of thinking tends to reveal itself in comments like, If we could only be like the church of the first century, that would fix everything wrong with our church.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The fact that we have so many one-another passages in the New Testament is due to the fact that the assemblies of the first century experienced their fair share of sinful dysfunction and more. In fact, we wouldn’t likely have some of the precious one another passages of the Bible, if it weren’t for the troubles of a church like Corinth for example.
This Sunday’s text from 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 illustrates this perfectly. The Corinthian saints got so out of whack in their fellowship that they abused one another in the taking of the Lord’s Supper. God got so miffed at them for their offenses that He judged some with sickness and death (v. 30)! If you want to know the cause of the Lord’s wrath on this occasion, don’t miss this Sunday’s sermon – The Grace of Waiting. I know, I have no shame, but I refuse to let the exegetical cat out of the bag before its time.
I could cite similar historical and contextual instances from other books of the New Testament, but I think you get the point.
So while we take seriously our failures in community with a view to allowing the gospel to shape us more thoroughly toward improvement, let’s remember that we have ample evidence from the New Testament that sinners living in community will trouble one another.
And that’s exactly why we need to be in community — gospel-shaped, grace-laden, Christ-exalting, Spirit-empowered community.
The Eternal & Cosmic OGC
Following services yesterday we took a picture of a good many of the saints that comprise Orlando Grace Church. Our Digo survey team intends to take a framed print to Kenya as one of our gifts toward forging and strengthening ongoing connections to the church and people there. We want them to have some idea of the community of believers here in the US that maintain a gospel love for these half way around the world.
I long as a pastor that we as a people would believe just how significant a movement we embody as part of the church of Jesus Christ on planet earth. Nobody said in better than John Piper way back in 1981.
The church of Jesus Christ is the most important institution in the world. The assembly of the redeemed, the company of the saints, the children of God are more significant in world history than any other group, organization or nation. The United States of America compares to the church of Jesus Christ like a speck of dust compares to the sun. The drama of international relations compares to the mission of the church like a kindergarten riddle compares to Hamlet or King Lear. And all pomp of May Day in Red Square and the pageantry of New Year’s in Pasadena fade into a formless grey against the splendor of the bride of Christ. Take heed how you judge. Things are not what they seem. “All flesh is like grass. And all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord (and all His family) abide forever” (1 Peter 1:24,25). The media and all the powers, and authorities and rulers and stars that they present are a mirage. “For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15). The gates of hades, the powers of death, will prevail against every institution but one, the church.
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God … because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the liberty of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8:19, 21).
Lift up your eyes, O Christians! You belong to a society that will never cease, to the apple of God’s eye, to the eternal and cosmic church of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
To read the rest of his message click here.
Oh for lifted up eyes to see and red hot hearts to believe all that God has for us and means for us to do in Christ Jesus among the Digo and beyond!
The Insignificance of the External
Last Sunday we kicked off yet another edition of Discover OGC, our newcomer orientation series.
Per usual I started by presenting a brief apologetic for why church membership is biblical. I took the group to 1 Peter 2:4-5.
[4] As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, [5] you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Peter uses the word picture of a temple, borrowing from Old Testament imagery of the Jews’ place for worshiping God, to describe 
the nature of the church. God is building a spiritual temple out of living stones. This describes the true nature of the church, not the sticks and bricks of a literal building.
This imagery remains a pertinent reminder as we draw now one month closer, Lord willing, to the opening of our facility on Maitland Avenue. Someone recently sent me this quote by J. C. Ryle that expresses the truth well:
Let it never be forgotten that the material part of a Christian Church is by far the least important part of it. The fairest combinations of marble, stone, wood and painted glass, are worthless in God’s sight, unless there is truth in the pulpit and grace in the congregation. The dens and caves in which the early Christians used to meet, were probably far more beautiful in the eyes of Christ than the noblest cathedral that was ever reared by man. The temple in which the Lord Jesus delights most, is a broken and contrite heart, renewed by the Holy Spirit.
Well said. May we not forget it even as we look forward to the fairest combination of materials we can assemble in a building to house our assembly of living stones.
Are You a Joy?
I thought this was pretty gutsy.
One of my sheep sent this shepherd a post from a counseling website labeled Excellent Evaluation Question.
Drawing from Hebrews 13:17, the counselor sometimes challenges his clients to ask their pastor, and other significant people in their lives for that matter, the risky question, Am I a joy?
The application gets unpacked this way:
This is a fantastic question for you to ask your pastor. And should you ask your pastor this question, then take it further. Ask him to give you specific areas in your life, where you have been a joy to pastor. But don’t stop there. Keep pressing the issue. Also ask him for specific areas in which you need to address or change. Can you imagine if your son came to you and asked you if he was a joy to parent? If so, then you can imagine how any pastor would feel if one of his congregants came and asked a similar question.
Let me press the application a bit further. Ask these questions if they apply:
- Ask your spouse if you are a joy to them. Why or why not?
- Ask your small group leader if you are a joy to serve, lead, teach and equip.
- Ask your children if you are joy to follow. Why or why not?
- Additionally, a child can ask a parent if they are a joy to parent.
Note the responses you get and share with a close friend. This should give you much to chat about.
Yes, I would rather guess so. Of course he could turn the tables on me with the challenge to ask Am I a joy to follow? Why or why not?
Again, risky stuff, but worth thinking about.
An Acts 9:31 Birthday Wish/Prayer for OGC
Our church turns 19 on Sunday. Thanks be to God. It pleases the Lord to grant us corporate length of days.
As we head toward the actual anniversary this Sunday, I want to share with you a personal birthday wish/prayer I have for our church each time of year our anniversary comes around. My hope is you will join in making it with me.
It comes from Acts 9:31.
So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.
By peace Luke means rest from persecution. The previous chapters record the hits taken by the fledgling church throughout Palestine in the form of heavy persecution. But now, following Saul’s conversion, she enjoys a widespread, relative peace.
But that’s not all the author tells us about the church in this season of blessed rest. He mentions two other significant realities about her. First, she was being built up. Edified. The Greek word gives us a word picture of a house under construction. We might say she was becoming more spiritual.
Second, she multiplied. The church grew. Numbers were added. Souls were saved. People were converted. The kingdom advanced.
How did these two things occur? Walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. Walking conveys the idea of an everyday kind of experience. It was second nature for this church of the first century to reverence God and to be strengthened by His Spirit. In other words they were a Godward people in every sense of the word. As a result, they were edified and multiplied.
G. Campbell Morgan, in his commentary on this verse, wrote:
It is impossible to read this verse without being reminded of the missionary vocation of the Church. Here the Church is seen going on its way, going in the way the Lord commanded it, going to the nations to disciple them, going into the cosmos to suffer in order to save; and going on its way in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. These two things are closely united. The first part of the verse ends “being edified”; the second part ends “was multiplied.” The underlying thought is exactly the same. Consequently if the Church is to be missionary, she must be spiritual; and if the church is to be spiritual, she must be missionary (The Acts of the Apostles, Fleming H. Revell, 1924, pp. 253-54.
Spiritual and missionary. Edified and multiplied. To be one or the other we must be both. That is my prayer for OGC as we move into our 20th year. May God make us spiritual and missionary, edified and multiplied, to a greater extent than we ever have before!
Will you join me in praying this birthday wish for our church?
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