Timmy Brister’s review of Thabilti Anyabwile’s What is a Healthy Church Member? Julie read it and really enjoyed it

* Five Steps to Becoming Gospel-Saturated *

1. Know the Gospel

“The gospel or good news of Jesus Christ is that God the Father, who is holy and righteous in all his ways, is angry with sinners and will punish sin. Man, who disobeys the rule of God, is alienated from the love of God and is in danger of an eternal and agonizing condemnation at the hands of God. But God, who is also rich in mercy, because of his great love, sent his eternal Son born by the Virgin Mary, to die as a ransom and a substitute for the sins of rebellious people. And now, through the perfect obedience of the Son of God and his willing death on the cross as a payment for our sins, all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ, following him as Savior and Lord, will be saved from the wrath of God to come, be declared just in his sight, have eternal life, and receive the Spirit of God a a foretaste of the glories of heaven with God himself” (40-41).

2. Desire to Hear the Gospel and Preach the Gospel to Yourself

“We must cultivate and protect a ravenous desire for this message. Regularly bearing and plumbing the depths of the gospel increases our knowledge of the message, our affections for the Savior, and our skill in sharing the message” (41).

3. Order Your Life Around the Gospel

“As church members, our aim is to understand the gospel so deeply, so intimately, that it animates every area of our lives. We want the gospel central to our communication with others, central to how we encourage and correct, central to individual career and relationship decisions, central to the decisions the church makes corporately, and central to all our habits of life. We want the gospel, the God of the gospel, to take priority in every area of life” (42-43).

4. Share the Gospel with Others

“If we would contribute to the health of our local congregations, we must be committed not only to harvesting the gospel for ourselves but to shipping it to others as well. We must do the work of an evangelist. With urgency and love we must tell the non-Christians among us to repent of their sins and to believe on Jesus Christ… . A gospel-saturated life is a life that splashes out onto others with the good news. A healthy church is built, in part, on healthy gospel-motivated members” (44).

5. Guard the Gospel

“The healthy church and church member fight for and protect the apostolic gospel delivered and preserved in the pages of Scripture” (45). This chapter on being gospel-saturated, I would argue, is the most important mark of a healthy church member. The importance and sufficiency of the gospel for believers could not be emphasized enough. Anyabwile has done a great job in laying out five incremental steps in the path of becoming gospel-saturated, and we would all serve our churches well to consider ourselves in light of these important truths!

Powerful challenge from Greg Gilbert

Not many of us will ever have the opportunity to sit face to face with a terrorist and have to decide what loving that person might look like. But we do have to decide whether we’ll take pleasure in the thought of that person being in hell—or whether we’ll pray and genuinely hope for that person’s salvation and forgiveness. Putting it all together, I think the best and most Christian response is probably this: to be glad when a terrorist is brought to justice and punished, even executed, by the state, but at the same time to pray that someone, somehow, in those final moments is telling him the Gospel of Jesus, and to hope that one day you’ll stand next to him praising Christ as two forgiven sinners who, if it weren’t for him, would both be in hell.

Colin Adams post on the care of the church in 1 Timothy 5

1 . Pastoral care is the responsibility of everyone (v 1-2)

“Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.”

2. Pastoral care should have a particular focus on those in real need (v 3-15)

“Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need…”

3. Pastoral care should be administered within families wherever possible, so as to lessen the burden on the church (v 16)

“If any woman who is a believer has widows in her family, she should help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who really are in need.”

4. Pastoral care should extend to leaders too (v 17-18 )

“The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honour…”

5. Pastoral care should include pastoral discipline, even of leaders if necessary (v 19-20)

“Those [elders] who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning.”

6. Pastoral care should be administered with an awareness of the potential of falling into sin (v 22, 24-25)

“…and do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure.”

7. Pastoral care should often involve practical, as well as spiritual advice (v 23)

“Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illness.”

Reading J.I. Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God completely changed my outlook on evangelism and helped to make Reformed Theology clearer to me. I highly recommend it. Here are some great blog posts on Evangelism

Ligon Duncan’s The Gospel and the Local Congregation speaks of a culture of evangelism

1. that your whole congregation would be able to articulate the Gospel, personally, in a compelling and understandable way;
2. that your whole congregation would understand the importance and necessity of their lives, their prayers and their participation in Gospel witness;
3. that your whole congregation would deeply care about conversions (and I would lay stress here, that we are talking about real conversions, not numbers; disciples, not decisions; changed lives, not merely prayed prayers);
4. that your whole congregation would earnestly and regularly pray for conversions, talks about their own conversions and the conversions of others, and put a priority on people coming to know God; and
5. that your whole congregation would be excited about the Gospel itself, and not simply about a method of sharing the Gospel, or a training program.

He then defines Evangelism

To bear witness to Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, so that

1. people may come to put their trust in God, through Christ;
2. to acknowledge Him as their Savior; and
3. to serve Him as their King,
4. in the fellowship of His Church.

…

The Gospel must be shared with words. It is a message. We can’t tell it with our deeds (though our lives must reveal it effects). There is no such thing as wordless evangelism.

His follow-up post features a helpful comment from P.J. Tibayan

“I like the definition of evangelism and think that it is accurate. I think the “so that” helps us remember what we’re aiming at. I do want to say, however, that putting the “so that” in the definition might make someone think they are failing at evangelism when the aim is not realized. So though I’d use that definition, I’d be quick to emphasize that our responsibility, and therefore the standard of failure or faithfulness, is explaining the news clearly so that they understand the news. We aim at true conversion, but we understand that we are not responsible to convert, but to faithfully witness with love and honesty.”

Mark Driscoll posted at The Resurgence about Evangelism

Evangelism is the speaking and showing of the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to people who do not yet know Him. Evangelism is the natural overflow of a life lived in joy as a worshiper of God.

…

As Christians, our love for Jesus and people should cause us to delight in speaking and showing the transforming power of Jesus’ grace at every opportunity.

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Regarding evangelism, it is Jesus Himself who set an example for us as The Evangelist.

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Second, perhaps the most thorough treatment of the doctrines of predestination and election are to be found in Romans 9–11. But in the middle of that breathtaking theological treatise that shows how salvation is fully the work of God, we also read Romans 10:14–15: “But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news [the gospel]!’”

God has not only determined who will be saved, but has also determined how He will save them—and this often includes using our evangelistic efforts, though God can also save people apart from us as He chooses. God often chooses to allow us to be involved in the process so that we might share in the joy of seeing people’s earthly and eternal lives forever transformed through Jesus.

…

Practically, this means that by understanding that God is already at work on the elect, we are able up to do evangelism with the greatest amount of freedom and joy. We can share the gospel of Jesus in full confidence that God will use it to save some people because they are elect. On the other hand, if some people should not respond to the gospel in faith, we should not take that personally but rather pray that God would open their blind eyes to see His love and also humbly trust God’s will and timing in all things.

Lastly, the fact that Jesus remains to this day an active evangelist is of great encouragement to me personally. It means that children who are aborted in the womb, those mentally incapable of understanding the gospel, and those people who have lived in times and places that missionaries did not visit are not necessarily beyond the hope of salvation. Indeed, Jesus could visit and save anyone anywhere because He remains The Evangelist.

I echo everything from Josh Harris’ article The Next Generation  

Most of us know that mentoring the next generation is a good idea. And of course it’s unarguably biblical. Proverbs 13:20 calls the young to be companions of the wise — the implication being that some wise person will be willing to let the less-wise be their companion. The Psalms speak of one generation commending the mighty acts of God to the next (Ps. 145:4). And of course, the New Testament example of Paul teaching and training Timothy models the importance of mentoring in the spread of the Gospel and the building of the church.

So we can agree that mentoring is good. But do we do it? And if we don’t, is the problem that we’re too busy? Or could it be that we don’t mentor because we lack real conviction? And could our lack of conviction be the result of failing to apply the truth of the Gospel to our view of the next generation?

How does the Gospel relate to this topic? First, it’s the essential motive for Christian mentoring. As Christians, we have a message — one composed of true facts about real events — that is bigger and more important than any one of us. The good news of Jesus and His death and resurrection for sinners is the world’s only hope. It’s the only way of salvation for mankind. The obvious implication is that passing this saving message on to people who will be here after we’re gone is the most important thing we can do during our lifetime. Our legacy, our reputation, our heritage is really unimportant. A building or company or denomination with our name on it will do the world little good. But if we can teach, train, and disciple men and women to trust in, love, and proclaim the message of Christ and him crucified, then we’ve accomplished something worthwhile.

This kind of Gospel-centered view of life leads to proactive mentoring. And this is exactly what is needed today. Members of the older generation need to take it upon themselves to pursue younger Christians to mentor and disciple them in the faith. Let’s be honest. They might not be beating down the door to sit at your feet. They might not look to you with adoring eyes, amazed by your knowledge. You might not be a “cool” old person. Don’t let that stop you. If you’re motivated by the Gospel, it shouldn’t stop you. Remember, it’s not about you. It’s about the Savior. It’s about what He has done. Whether or not you have the added fuel of feeling wanted, needed, and in demand, you can go out and seek to serve.

But what if you can’t relate to the younger generation? Again, this is where the Gospel comes into play. The Gospel strips away the façade of “generation gaps” and reminds us that, regardless of our age, we all have something in common — we’re all sinners in need of the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The Gospel smoothes out the bumps of cross-generational friendships. It reminds us that, regardless of our age, we have a lot in common.

It was God’s grace that led me to realize as a young man that I needed a mentor to advise and train me in ministry. And it was God’s grace that prepared a godly older man to be that mentor. Two decades earlier, in the early days of his ministry, C.J. had made a promise to God. He had always longed for but never truly found a godly, older mentor for himself. And so he told God that if he ever had the chance to be that mentor to a younger man, he wouldn’t pass up the opportunity. He wouldn’t be too busy.

When I came along he didn’t see me as a nuisance. He didn’t see me as a threat. His first concern wasn’t preserving his position. He saw me as a young man in whom he could invest in so that the most important truth — the truth of the Gospel — could be passed on. What a refreshing perspective. Our job isn’t to fend off the next generation. Our calling as lovers of the Gospel is to equip the next generation to surpass us in faithfulness and effectiveness.

Somewhere there’s a young man or woman praying for a mentor. Get ready. You could be God’s answer to that prayer.

• Does getting rid of a policy preventing the financial support of overseas abortions get presented by liberals as reducing abortions
• Would the company who manufactures a widely available abortificant advertise it during a show which follows around a large, conservative family

From Gerry Breshears talk at the 2008 Xenos Summer Fellowship

Exodus 34:6-7 (English Standard Version)

6The LORD passed before him and proclaimed,(A) “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and(B) gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast(C) love and faithfulness, 7(D) keeping steadfast love for thousands,[a](E) forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but(F) who will by no means clear the guilty,(G) visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

7 characteristics of God

1. Merciful
2. Grace
3. Slow to Anger
4. Love
5. Faithfulness
6. Forgiving
7. Just