Taking every thought captive

Shane Lens made an interesting comment a few months ago on Michael Horton’s book The Gospel Driven Life. I think he’s right about the impact of segregating groups in the church, especially young people. If that segregation comes to take on a parallel life to fellowship with the whole body then it is certainly detrimental to the health of the whole. So many younger people now do not have meaningful relationships with older saints from whom they can learn so much.

I grew up in a church where there was an active work among the young people, but it never replaced fellowship with the whole body. And I also enjoyed meaningful relationships with all ages within the fellowship. Perhaps times have changed a great deal now that it may not be possible to pursue youth work in this way. Yet I wonder if it cannot be possible. The main obstacle is certainly the faulty notion that the world’s flawed view of how young people ought to be catered for in their supposed development is how the church ought to cater for their youth. We now have the same immaturity among young Christian adults that we see in the world at large. Is it just possible that there is a connection? It’s time to liberate the church from this developmental apartheid for the sake of the unity of the Body. Maybe in the early years of the twenty-first century worshipping with the church of all ages can really involve a church of all ages.

“Preach the gospel; if necessary use words” is like saying “Tell me your phone number; if necessary use digits.”

So says J. D Grear, and he’s absolutely right. The Gospel does not and cannot exist without words. Of course, there’s more to the Gospel than simply preaching, there needs to be a life and lifestyle that is compatible with it, and commending of it. But the Gospel cannot be communicated without words, ever. The Cross is not simply an event or action. It is an explained event, explained by the apostles in the New Testament, and by our Lord himself as he hung on it. No words, no Gospel.

HT. Justin Taylor

I’ve been catching up on my blog reading and realised the Justin Childers posted a challenging article on the Second Coming that is well worth reading: The Judge is Coming: Encouragement to Endure. It’s what Christians are waiting for, but as I mentioned the other day, I wonder how many of us are actually really waiting for it. I particularly liked his emphasis on the moral and spiritual aspects of the Second Coming that are so aften overlooked, despite the fact that it is not the timetable that is uppermost in the mind of the Scripture authors, but these important aspects.

Ben Witherington has an insightful post about death and the Christian. I’ve mentioned our culture’s denial about death before, and I think he’s spot on about the world’s thinking and how it can subtly impact Christian thinking.

I was struck by the old Southern custom of traffic stopping as a funeral cortege passes. I experienced exactly that situation one day a few years ago in Newry, Co Down. I suspect that the South probably preserves something of the widespread customs of a bygone age, just as more rural Northern Ireland does.

Since we live opposite a cemetery on the extreme outskirts of the city, I can’t escape the almost weekly occurrence of funerals right outside the window of the room I work in. But the invisibility of death has made considerable inroads among Christians in this part of the world. I was very surprised to discover my 17-year-old nephew had only been to his first funeral last year. By his age I had been to quite a few funerals, including that of my own mother. Distressing as the latter was, I suspect it would have been considerably more traumatic had I not been prepared by attendance at other funerals before. I’m not convinced that Christian parents are helping their children by shielding them from realities of life, like death. Christians, of all people, should realise that death is not a morbid subject that is off-limits for civilized folks.

Don Whitney has some helpful comments on improving worship in his three articles “Ten Ways to Improve Your church’s Worship Service“, “Ten More Ways to Improve Your Church’s Worship Service” and “A Third Ten Ways to Improve Your Church’s Worship Service“. What he has to say is certainly not “novel”, but a good deal of it is extremely challenging. It is easy to become complacent and routine in worship. We could all do with challenges to our worship lest is becomes substandard, and even fails to be true worship.

I was particularly in sympathy with his comments on taking care with the use of technology in worship. I’ve been in a few services over the years which ground to a halt while the technology caught up. But while I’m wary of including too much technology in worship, there certainly are positive benefits I would not wish to lose, like recording sermons and making them available on the Internet.

As someone who has had various responsibilities for the sung worship of the congregation I appreciated greatly what he had to say about that. There were also a few surprises for me in the things that he focussed on.

These are three articles that are worth reading and re-reading periodically.

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HT: Colin Adams (Unashamed Workman)

This week has demonstrated once again humanity’s inability to wait. We’ve entered on the last year of the decade, and almost the entire world has celebrated a new decade a year early. It’s a bit like the ingrained credit habit — buy now, pay later.

The UK is currently largely under snow. Just a foot to a foot and a half at most, but enough for things to grind to a halt in many places, and slither along in others. And we can’t accept that normality may not be resumed for a few days. It’s not necessarily anyone’s fault. I watched the evening news last night with incredulity as travellers at Gatwick Airport bemoaned the fact that they wouldn’t be able to take off on their skiing holiday. Didn’t the authorities realise that they had paid for ski passes? They weren’t going to accept that a foot of snow on the runway was a problem. They wanted business as usual — NOW!

Granted, younger people have never seen real snow in Britain. But many of the most vociferous complainants on what is euphemistically called “The News” should remember the conditions in 1963, 1955 and 1947. I recall my father recounting how he had to dig the family our in 1947. The snow was over half-way up the front door, and they lived in the city, not the country. And then he had to walk 5 or 6 miles to work, and then the same back. Somehow the trams couldn’t cope with the snow!

It’s ironic that so soon after Christmas the world has forgotten that waiting is part of the human experience. God has made it so. It took some 4000 years for God to fulfil his Garden Promise (Genesis 3:15). I often wonder just how small the band of those “waiting for the consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25) or “waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38) when Jesus was born. And as I reflect on the general impatience of contemporary society, I wonder just how many are truly waiting for Jesus coming again.