Happy Birthday, George Whitefield

…for a more substantive assessment of Whitefield’s preaching, we turn to a fellow believer, and a fellow evangelical, a fellow Anglican, and a fellow Calvinist: J.C. Ryle (1816-1900). In his short book on Whitefield, Ryle gives six characteristics of Whitefield’s preaching:

1. A Pure Gospel.
First and foremost, you must remember Whitefield preached a singularly pure gospel. Few men ever gave their hearers so much wheat and so little chaff. He did not get into his pulpit to talk about his party, his cause, his interest, or his office. He was perpetually telling you about your sins, your heart, and Jesus Christ, in the way that the Bible speaks of them. “Oh, the righteousness of Jesus Christ,” he would frequently say; “I must bo excused if I mention it in almost all my sermons!” This, you may be sure, is the corner stone of all preaching that God honors. It must be preeminently a manifestation of truth.”

– See more at:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scriptorium/2009/12/happy-birthday-george-whitefield/

Failure to Live on Mission Is a Worship Problem – Desiring God

Lack of mission is rarely a knowledge problem; it’s a worship problem. We don’t have any trouble talking about the things we love most. Whenever we find something worthy of attention, we talk about it.

The same is true of our relationship with Christ. The more we are in awe of his worthiness, the more likely we are to speak of him to others and serve others in his name.

Read the rest here

Q33: Should those who have faith in Christ seek their salvation through their own works, or anywhere else?

A question and responses from New City Catechism. Our church plant small groups are going through these this year. Didn’t know about our church plant ? Check out the website :

www.coastalfellowship.com

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/ncc/2013/06/03/q33-should-those-who-have-faith-in-christ-seek-their-salvation-through-their-own-works-or-anywhere-else/

What is the true Church?

Could you spot a false “church”?

The Belgic confession helps to simplify the marks of the True church & to be able to identify the false “church”

The Marks of the True Church

• We believe that we ought to discern diligently and very carefully, by the Word of God, what is the true church– for all sects in the world today claim for themselves the name of “the church.”We are not speaking here of the company of hypocrites who are mixed among the good in the church and who nonetheless are not part of it, even though they are physically there. But we are speaking of distinguishing the body and fellowship of the true church from all sects that call themselves “the church.”The true church can be recognized if it has the following marks: The church engages in the pure preaching of the gospel; it makes use of the pure administration of the sacraments as Christ instituted them; it practices church discipline for correcting faults. In short, it governs itself according to the pure Word of God, rejecting all things contrary to it and holding Jesus Christ as the only Head. By these marks one can be assured of recognizing the true church– and no one ought to be separated from it.As for those who can belong to the church, we can recognize them by the distinguishing marks of Christians: namely by faith, and by their fleeing from sin and pursuing righteousness, once they have received the one and only Savior, Jesus Christ. They love the true God and their neighbors, without turning to the right or left, and they crucify the flesh and its works.

  Though great weakness remains in them, they fight against it by the Spirit all the days of their lives, appealing constantly to the blood, suffering, death, and obedience of the Lord Jesus, in whom they have forgiveness of their sins, through faith in him.

  As for the false church, it assigns more authority to itself and its ordinances than to the Word of God; it does not want to subject itself to the yoke of Christ; it does not administer the sacraments as Christ commanded in his Word; it rather adds to them or subtracts from them as it pleases; it bases itself on men, more than on Jesus Christ; it persecutes those who live holy lives according to the Word of God and who rebuke it for its faults, greed, and idolatry.

  These two churches are easy to recognize and thus to distinguish from each other.

Don’t let your church become a museum

How to become a succesful religion

(disclaimer.. not a real company. this is not a real letter to James the brother of Jesus)

A marketing consultant advises early church leaders.

by Mark Galli

original here

To: James, President of the Jerusalem Council
Re: Initial Impressions

Shalom Marketing Ltd. was recently contacted by a member of your council, asking us to tell you about our services. He said to make it clear that he was footing the bill for this initial evaluation, with the hopes that our sound advice will encourage the council to hire us to guide your marketing efforts for the next strategic stage in your movement’s life.

We have heard reports of your movement for some time now—who hasn’t?—and our initial impressions are very positive! You seem to have dynamic leadership, organizational flexibility, and a natural touch with the people. Add some sophisticated marketing—well, who knows how successful you can become! Naturally, this brief memo will, by its nature, point out areas in need of attention, but make no mistake: We have great optimism about what we call your “effectiveness potential.”

Let’s begin with one of your leading PR men, Peter, who is clearly a gifted communicator.

Tim Keller: Advancing the Gospel into the 21st Century Part II

GOSPEL-CENTERED – Acts 15: This is the next strategic principle for ministry in the 21st (and the 1st!) century. I do not simply mean by ‘gospel-centered’ that ministry is to be doctrinally orthodox. Of course it must certainly be that. I am speaking more specifically. (1.) The gospel is “I am accepted through Christ, therefore I obey” while every other religion operates on the principle of “I obey, therefore I am accepted.” (2.) Martin Luther’s fundamental insight was that this latter principle, the principle of ‘religion’ is the deep default mode of the human heart. The heart continues to work in that way even after conversion to Christ. Though we recognize and embrace the principle of the gospel, our hearts will always be trying to return to the mode of self-salvation, which leads to much spiritual deadness, pride and strife, and ministry ineffectiveness. (3.) We must communicate the gospel clearly–not a click toward legalism and not a click toward license. Legalism/moralism is truth without grace (which is not real truth); relativism is grace without truth (which is not real grace). To the degree a ministry fails to do justice to both, it simply loses life-changing power.

Text: 15:1-25 Here we see Paul, in the middle of a church-planting career, going to Jerusalem for a big theological debate. Now, why do that? Surely we ministers need to be about the work of evangelism, not going in for theological discussions! But Paul makes no bifurcation here. Chapter 15 is down the middle of Paul’s mission! It’s clarifying the gospel itself. (1) The cause of the debate is that the earliest Gentile converts to Christianity had already become Jewish culturally. That is, many of them were “God-fearers” who had been circumcised and/or abided by the clean laws and the Mosaic legislation. (2) Then Paul began bringing in real pagans or God-fearers who had not become culturally Jewish. And he was not demanding that, when they became Christians, that they had to adopt Jewish cultural patterns. (3) Then a group arose (15:1) saying, “unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved”. They had taken cultural norms and promoted them to be matters of virtue and spiritual merit. When they did that, they lost grasp on the gospel of grace and slid into ‘religion’. (4) The Council on the one hand in Peter, got hold of one end of the stick: v.6-11 No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we [Jews] are saved, just as they are.” (5) But, wouldn’t you know it- -James gets a hold of the other end of the stick. He agrees with Peter, but rightly asserts that Gentile Christians, though free from any requirements as to salvation, are not free to live as they like as members of a Christian community. They are obliged to live in love and to respect the scruples of culturally different Jewish brethren. So they are ordered (we tend to miss this) to live in such a way that does not offend or distress their brethren who are culturally different. (They are not to eat raw meat, they are to abide by Levitical marriage laws, and so on.) There could hardly be a better case study of the old Luther-proverb that expresses the balance of the gospel. We are “saved by faith alone, but not by faith that is alone.” We are not saved by how we behave, but once we are saved we behave in love.

So “religion” just drains the spiritual life out of a church. But you can “fall off the horse” on the other side too. You can miss the gospel not only through legalism but through relativism. When God is whoever you want to make him, and right and wrong are whatever you want to make them–you have also drained the spiritual life out of a church. If God is preached as simply a demanding, angry God or if he is preached as simply an all-loving God who never demands anything–in either case the listeners will not be transformed. They may be frightened or inspired or soothed, but they will not have their lives changed at the root, because they are not hearing the gospel. The gospel shows us that God is far more holy and absolute than the moralists’ god, because he could not be satisfied by our moral efforts, even the best! On the other hand the gospel shows us that God is far more loving and gracious than the relativists’ god. They say that God (if he exists) just loves everyone no matter what they do. The true God of the gospel had to suffer and die to save us, while the god of the relativist pays no price to love us.

The gospel produces a unique blend of humility and boldness/joy in the convert. If you preach just a demanding God, the listener will have “low self-esteem”; if you preach just an all-loving God, the listener will have higher self-esteem. But the gospel produces something beyond both of those. The gospel says: I am so lost Jesus had to die to save me. But I am so loved that Jesus was glad to die to save me. That changes the very basis of my identity- -it transforms me from the root.

read the whole thing here

The Myrtle Beach Muddle

Below is a video clip from Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Pres in Manhattan. In the clip Keller draws a distinction between Christendom and post-Christendom culture. Christendom reflects those cultures that still have “Christian furniture.” That is, they reflect a theistic worldview, with conservative morals, and are are comfortable with authority of the church. Post-Christendom reflects those cultures in the West that have either moved on from or deconstructed their “Christian furniture.” That is, there is no common ground for morality, theology, philosophy etc. To reach post-Christendom culture you are almost starting from scratch. And now we get ’round to the Myrtle Beach muddle. On Trinity side of the waterway, our traffic on a Sunday morning is principally “Christendom” traffic. However, as our young adults traffic from Carolina Forest or Coastal increases we are getting more post-Christendom traffic. So we’re caught in a bit of a muddle. Trinity will need to become increasingly flexible and creative if we’re to reach both groups effectively. Be sure to watch the clip.

Carolina Forest Church Plant

are you ready to serve at family movie night at the farm?

Some of you will remember a post here discussing a possible way to plant the Carolina Forest church by renting out a coffee shop and starting up the church from there. It turned out that this was a bit cost restrictive. Thankfully, the Lord has given us an even better option! “The Farm”, a farm themed development in Carolina Forest has invited us to begin hosting family events for them beginning in September. As some of you may know, “The Farm” is adjacent to our property in Carolina Forest. This is a great way for us to get to know our neighbors, as well as to begin to serve that community by creating safe, fun, family friendly environments for them. Perhaps in time, we may have some families wish to sponsor an intro to Christianity or a Gospel class but for now we are simply looking forward to serving them by hosting a family night.

We will be needing volunteers to help us coordinate and run this special event. Our first family night at “The Farm” begins on Sept 27, at 6:00 p.m. We will be needing a crew to volunteer with setup and serving from 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Please consider prayerfully whether or not God is calling you to this important mission. Volunteer sign up sheets will be made available starting this Sunday.

Carolina Forest: Who wants to plant a church for $2500?

Are you ready to get started?

Eight years ago some men and women of foresight bought eight acres of land in one of the most rapidly developing areas in the entire state of South Carolina.  This area is known as “Carolina Forest” and it is, strategically speaking, a key tract of land for the mission of the church.

In thinking through how we would utilize that land, it occurred to some of us who’ve turned our thoughts across the waterway that now was the time to think radical thoughts about church and church planting before we even began to talk about breaking ground.  Demographics are important.  Carolina Forest is populated by young families, first time home buyers, a significant population of snow-bird retirees, and college students.  The college students are perhaps the most interesting, not because of who they are but how they got there.  Carolina Forest is about a ten minute drive from Coastal Carolina University.  Entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on a booming college population have begun to purchase houses and condos and rent them out to college students. 

So how are we going to reach these people with the Gospel?