Pastoral Notes for Sunday, July 22, 2018

“So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.”—1 Peter 5:1-4

A month ago we entered into a nomination, training, and election season for new church officers. We began this season as we always do by calling upon you, the congregation, to set forward nominees—qualified men—as candidates for officership. Having received and reviewed the nominations, we are now in touch with all the nominees and will soon begin the process of training. At some point soon, I’ll share with you more about the training and how you can pray for the men entering this process.

In the meantime, I thought it might be helpful to distill our commitments and aims as under-shepherds of Cornerstone. As I do this, I want to acknowledge that we’re not where we want to be. There’s much room for improvement. Each elder and deacon will tell you that. But thanks be to God, we’re not where we once were! Advance is being made. We see glimmers of what we hope to be now, and we expect, relying on God’s grace, that we will continue to grow in the work of shepherding as we mature in the love and wisdom of God.

So, leaning on Peter’s words in 1 Peter 5:1-4 quoted above, our philosophy of pastoral care can be summarized under these five headings. 

First, we shepherd under the chief shepherd. That is, we believe that Jesus Christ is the head of the church and the source for all pastoral care. Though God is often pleased to use our gifts, wisdom, and craft as under-shepherds to effectively minister to His people, we recognize ourselves to be only His instruments. Any benefit coming through our pastoral care is to God’s credit alone. 

Second, we shepherd unto the chief shepherd. That is, in our pastoral care, we are careful to lead God’s flock not to us, but to increasing trust in, dependence on, and love for Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd Himself (John 10). We like to say that our shepherding is only as good as we are leading the sheep to the true shepherd.  

Third, we shepherd for the chief shepherd. That is, we believe that our love for Jesus Christ must both drive and direct our love for His sheep. It’s very easy in caring for the flock to begin focusing on pleasing the flock. That’s not a shepherd’s call. It’s our responsibility to carry out what Christ says is best for the flock. The way we like to say it is: “We love each other with the love of Christ.” Keeping this in mind, we keep the focus on Christ and His glory as we shepherd His flock.

Fourth, we shepherd like the chief shepherd. That is, we take all our shepherding cues from the chief shepherd Himself. Peter summarizes this care with the words “willingly… eagerly… being examples.” We believe those descriptors characterize the spirit of Christ’s own shepherding. In humble reliance upon the Holy Spirit, we strive to care for the flock of God with the grace, discipline, wisdom, and love of the Chief Shepherd himself.

Fifth, we shepherd until we see the chief shepherd. Weariness and discouragement in the work of shepherding is a given. Anyone who has regularly cared for anyone knows this feeling. It’s the same for church officers. We regularly need encouragement to not give up but keep on keeping on in the work of shepherding—even when it seems like what we do makes little difference. Knowing that an “unfading crown of glory” awaits us upon the chief shepherd’s return is a regular encouragement when shepherding morale is low.

Next week we’ll look at the second key passage for shepherding at Cornerstone, Ephesians 4:11-13

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, July 15, 2018

This past week I had the privilege of sitting under the ministry of Dr. Derek Thomas, Senior Minister of First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, SC. Years ago, Dr. Thomas was my systematics professor at Reformed Theological Seminary and a colleague in ministry at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, MS. Dr. Thomas has long been a mentor and friend in ministry, but it’s been a decade since I’ve had him in class.

This week we walked through John Calvin’s magnum opus, The Institutes of the Christian Religion in detail. As many of you will know, this work served as the theological backbone of the Reformation during the 16th century. There are so many beautiful things to say about the work, but one aspect that stood out again to me this week is the way Calvin understands and speaks of the Christian life.

Calvin summarizes the Christian life with the term piety. That’s not a term we use often today. In fact, as we think of piety today, we tend think pious—a term that carries the sense of being religious, self-righteous, and hypocritical. Of course Calvin doesn’t mean that. He uses piety to speak of the proper knowledge and attitude that we should have toward God. He says, “I call ‘piety’ that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces.”

What’s interesting is that Calvin joins together two things we often keep apart—love and reverence. Today, we often say that if we love God and know God loves us then there should be no fear, but that’s not true knowledge according to how Calvin sees it. Because God is God and is all-powerful, able to do whatever He desires, even if he loves us (and he does in Christ), there is a holy reverence that is still an appropriate and even necessary Christian response.

It’s the point C.S. Lewis was making in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe when, after learning that Aslan is a lion, Susan says to Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, “Ooh! I thought he was a man. Is he quite-safe?” And Mr. Beaver responds “Safe? … Who said anything about safe? Course he isn’t safe! But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Even the goodness of Aslan and his obvious love for Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy did not take away the sense of fear and reverence. For Calvin, this bringing together of love and fear is evidence of true knowledge and the spirit through which true godliness is formed.

So much to be said here, but let me sum it up. On the one hand, if your understanding of the love of God is not joined with fear of God, your relationship with God will come to be casual and flippant. On the other hand, if your understanding of the holiness and power of God is not joined with the love of God, your relationship with God is likely to be distant and cold. It’s only by holding these two equally important aspects of the nature of God together, that a loving reverence for God arises.

It has often been the case in church history that revival comes when a strong sense of the holiness and love of God are recovered. To that end, pray for us in this regard. Would it not be most glorious for God to grant to His church in our time a true sense of who He is? O that our love for God would be reverent and our reverence to be full of love, and that in pondering him we grow from one degree of glory to the next (2 Cor. 3:18).

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, July 8, 2018

In the past few weeks, our very own Greg Wilbur published an excellent piece on worship online at Christward Collective. I found Greg’s piece so helpful and thought provoking that I decided to republish it here for your benefit. Last week, the article focused on what confessional worship is and guidelines for how worship should be led to encourage the congregational and confessional aspect of it. This week, Greg talks about the role of beauty.

Guidelines for Worship, Part 2

God has placed us here in this time and place for a purpose, and our corporate worship should reflect that reality within the context of redemptive history. We are reformational, not revolutionary. We are confessional, not traditional or modern. In order to be truly contemporary, “with the time,” we must understand our place in the lineage of the Church—which necessitates an understanding of what has gone on before. We should appreciate and utilize the wisdom and artistic excellence of the past without worshipping the forms; we should seek to create new work, without divorcing ourselves from our history.

As we relate and communicate to the culture around us, we must use great wisdom to discern that which are “the patterns and customs of this world,” as opposed to those things that are biblically permissible. Instead of falling to the least common denominator, we should be accessible to our culture, yet excellent. Without creating artificial barriers to the Gospel, we should, however, move from the milk of the Gospel to solid food.

As we seek to follow the guidelines above, the distinctive aesthetic of worship calls us to pursue the beauty of Christ and to make Him known. Consider beauty in worship in the following ways:

· Beauty is an attribute of God and is therefore a theological issue. God is the standard of beauty as well as its source; therefore, there is an objective standard for what is beautiful. Aesthetics is the study of beauty and the ability to apprehend it. From a theological perspective, the Word of God is the rule by which we make aesthetic judgments. God speaks to the role of artists in the description He gives of the artists for the tabernacle: filled with the Spirit, ability, intelligence, knowledge, craftsmanship, and able to teach others. Good art and music should be the product of these types of characteristics.

· Beauty is best understood in its relationship and balance to goodness and truth—otherwise it can be trite, transient, trendy, temporary, deceptive, insubstantial, or gimmicky. There is a significance and weight to true beauty.

The very fact that something is beautiful is an apologetic of the Gospel and of the realities of truth and goodness. All beauty is God’s beauty. In addition, beauty can be a winsome adornment, and it can be a challenging stumbling block. Beauty can also open the heart to that inexpressible sense of the transcendence of God that causes great desire for the Truth.

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, July 1, 2018

This past week our very own Greg Wilbur published an excellent piece on worship online at Christward Collective. I found Greg’s piece so helpful and thought provoking that I decided to republish it here for your benefit. Enjoy!

 Guidelines for Worship, Part 1

 The concept the confessional worship creates an unfamiliar category that challenges the better-known ideas of contemporary or traditional. Practically speaking, what is called contemporary or traditional can be very subjective depending on time and place. As such, confessional worship offers a corrective which transcends both categories. The following thoughts may begin to help point us towards what that really means:

·       Worship is the work of the Church—all other ministry flows out of right worship.

·       Worship is coming before the throne of God and joining in worship with the Church visible and invisible.

·       Worship instills joy, rest, and peace. It is restorative and preparation for Godly living.

·       Worship is an efficacious tool in the process of sanctification.

·       Worship is an antidote to the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

·       There is no substitute for corporate worship in the Christian life.

·       Worship is about what God requires, not what we like or prefer.

Because worship consists of the above elements, our attitude and posture in leading worship should consist of the following:

·       Worship is not performance.

·       The role of leading and facilitating worship is for the purpose of encouraging the congregation in worship, not to worship “at” them.

·       Arrangements and songs should be chosen that are ecclesiastically appropriate—what is appropriate in other venues may not be appropriate for corporate. worship.

·       The criteria for what is ecclesiastically appropriate refers to text, music, the combination text and music, arrangements, and execution.

·       As leaders, we should be growing and stretching in worship even as the congregation is called to grow and stretch in the knowledge of God.

·       Worship should be accessible yet excellent.

·       As musicians, we should be growing in skill and depth—musically and theologically.

·       Craftsmanship is a biblical concept; originality is a humanist concept.

·       How we play and lead should be different than how we play and sing at a recital, coffeehouse, or concert.

·       God is the standard of beauty and excellence—our worship should seek after biblical excellence and objective beauty, goodness, and truth.

Continued Next Week…

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, June 24, 2018

The General Assembly (GA) of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) meets every June to conduct the national business of the denomination. This year’s GA was one of the more encouraging GA’s in recent memory.

One reason for the meeting’s efficiency and expediency was Dr. Irwyn Ince, the first African American moderator of the PCA. Dr. Ince serves as the Director of the Grace DC Network for Cross Cultural Mission and has been actively involved in the denomination the last several years—serving as chairman of the Study Committee on Women in Ministry from 2016-2017 and the Overtures Committee in 2016. When being nominated for election as moderator this year, Dr. Charles McGowan said of Dr. Ince, “The PCA is blessed to have chosen Irwyn Ince as her newly-elected moderator. We have done more than elect the first black moderator in the history of our denomination. We have wisely chosen a proven, capable young leader and a respected and faithful churchman. He will be a skilled moderator and represent the denomination well throughout the year.” Dr. McGowan is absolutely right. We are indeed blessed to have Dr. Ince as the 2018-2019 moderator of the PCA.

Aside from the historic election of Dr. Ince to moderator, here are two other items of note coming out of this year’s General assembly. First, an overture (item of business) was passed to strengthen our denomination’s commitment to a biblical definition of marriage. Though our confessions and catechisms already clearly set forward a biblical view of marriage being between one man and one woman for life, it was believed that by making our Book of Church Order’s (BCO) chapter 59.3 on marriage “constitutionally binding,” our position would be strengthened all the more and may serve as a needed protection for our denomination in the days ahead. The approved statement reads as follows “Marriage is only to be between one man and one woman (Gen. 2:24-25; Matt. 19:4-6; 1 Cor. 7:2), in accordance with the Word of God. Therefore, ministers in the Presbyterian Church in America who solemnize marriages shall only solemnize marriages between one man and one woman.”

Finally, two years ago the General Assembly Ad Interim Committee on Racial and Ethnic Reconciliation was formed to “…assess the current situation in the PCA concerning racial and ethnic reconciliation” and to “identify specific problems the PCA needs to address to promote racial reconciliation and ethnic diversity.” Further, the committee was to help the denomination “develop constructive guidelines and suggest concrete steps for the use of the PCA, including all presbyteries and sessions in order to make progress toward the work of racial reconciliation.” The committee’s report was biblically sound, thoroughly researched, and pastorally wise. The report’s suggestions for churches, academic institutions, and presbyteries for ongoing reconciliation and minority inclusion and development were well received and approved by the GA. This report will be published at some point later this year. When it is available, I will be sure to let you know.

If you have any questions about the items above or other actions of the General Assembly this year, do not hesitate to reach out. I would be glad to speak with you further.