The Music And The Dance

I just received these aerial pics of the Wednesday night picnic at Christ Community Church Daytona Beach Florida. Dennis Prox took them, that is Greg Prox’s dad. Pretty neat. See how many people you can identify, sort of like, “find Waldo”.

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You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. - Galatians 3:26-28 

So often I feel and act like an orphan, as if I’m on my own and it’s all up to me. It gets old. The truth is there is not only true sonship through faith in Christ but with that, as part of that, complete cleansing and stunning clothing. Consider the following from two of the old preachers who have gone before us.

“I ought to go to Christ for the forgiveness of each sin. In washing my body, I go over every spot, and wash it out. Should I be less careful in washing my soul?

I ought to see the stripe that was made on the back of Jesus by each of my sins. I ought to see the infinite pang thrill through the soul of Jesus equal to an eternity of my hell for my sins, and for all of them.

I ought to see that in Christ’s bloodshedding there is an infinite over-payment for all my sins. Although Christ did not suffer more than infinite justice demanded, yet He could not suffer at all without laying down an infinite ransom.” - Robert Murray M’Cheyne

 

“It is a great sin to think any sin little; but it is a greater sin to think the righteousness of Christ is not above all sin. Our disobedience is the disobedience of man; but Christ’s obedience is the obedience of God: therefore, our believing in Christ doth please God better than if we had continued in innocency, and never sinned. The least sin is unpardonable without this obedience and righteousness of Christ; and the greatest is pardonable by it. Therefore, O seek in to Christ, to be clothed upon with this righteousness.”  - Ralph Erskine

I recently came across this picture and it reminded me of both the challenges and beauties of starting new churches. This is the baptism of my middle son, Adam a little over ten years ago. He’s wearing a swim cap because he had had an ear operation and wasn’t allowed to get any water in his ear. But what’s more interesting is he is being baptized in the rented gym of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

We held services at the Seventh Day Adventist Church Gym  for several years before we could buy land and build our present facilities. In the picture above Adam is being baptized in a galvanized horse trough behind the little screen that says “He is Lord”.  Church planting requires flexibility and creativity.

Why go through the challenges?  Ultimately the only answer is love for Christ and obedience to God. But why does church planting express both? Here are some quotes that give part of the answer.

New churches best reach the unchurched–period. [T]he average new congregation will bring 6-8 times more new people into the life of  the Body of Christ than an older congregation of the same size. Why Plant Churches, T. Keller

“Planting new churches is the most effective evangelistic methodology known under heaven.” C. Peter Wagner, Strategies for Growth (Glendale: Regal, 1987), p. 168.

[E]xperience has shown, and the Bible would support, that new churches are one of the most effective means of evangelism. Introducing All Nations Christian Fellowship, A Church Plant of Bethlehem Baptist Church By John PiperFebruary 5, 2006

I am thankful that Tim Rice from Trinity PCA in Lakeland can come to Daytona and speak at Christ Community Church about church planting in Acts 13 and also about his church’s journey down the church planting path.

There is more that could be said and we have a number of materials at our website. Here’s the link:  http://www.cccdaytona.org/church-planting/

If you haven’t already seen it check out the video on church planning in America here. Hit this link and then click ”play” to watch the video: Church Planting in a post-Christian U.S..

Be sure to give it time to load after you hit “play”. On my computor it takes about twenty seconds. Check it out and let me know what you think.

We’re in the Keys. We’re here for some family time, reading, fishing and just resting. Last night we caught about a dozen mangrove snapper which we will grill and eat tonight. Tomorrow we go out to snorkel on Looe reef/key. Looking at the beauty of God’s creation I keep thinking that creation is beautiful because God is glorious!

We’ve brought a lot of good books and hope to find a rhythm between reading, resting and playing. 

I’m sorry I’m going to miss hearing Tim Rice at church on Sunday. He’s the pastor of Trinity PCA in Lakeland. He’s known as a speaker who is Scriptural, Christ-centered and honest. Trinity PCA is about the same size as Christ Community and they have already planted three church basically using the same model that we are using. He’s going to speak from Acts 13 about churches multiplying through church planting and share some of their lessons learned and experiences gained in the process. This is a great opportunity for us to hear from someone who has been there and is excited about continually planting churches, which is exactly what we believe God is leading us to do. 

I was thinking about “the word of His grace” that we spoke of in the last sermon and the recent post on preaching the gospel to yourself. Here’s another quote along the same lines by Tim Keller who speaks of the gospel as the “A-Z” of the Christian life.

I think it was Jim Coffield, who in a recent conversation said that people need to learn how to “sooth themselves”. I’m not sure it was Jim who said this but I like the thought. I remember reading in the life of David how David “strengthened himself in the Lord”.  Jack Miller used to talk about “preaching the gospel to yourself”. A Scriptural example would be David in Psalm 42 when he says, “Why are you downcast O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”  

Here is some helpful counsel from Ralph Erskine about how to preach the gospel to yourself.

Go to God and say, O “do as thou hast said.” Consider what he hath said, and take him at his word, and put him to it, that he would do to you accordingly. Whatever your care be, surely there is some word relative to it.

Some may be thinking, alas! God hath said nothing to me, that I may put him to his word. Why, man, if the gospel, that is in this Bible, be preached to you, and if there be any word of grace therein suitable to your case, then put not away the word from you, but take it, and plead upon it, that God would do as he hath said. If you can see any word of promise suited to your case and to your need, then put to your hand by faith, and lay hold upon his word.

O, say you, is there any word from God about my case, who am a poor needy creature, like to starve for want of a spiritual meal and a hearty draught of the living waters that go out from Jerusalem? What hath God said, or hath he said anything concerning me? Yea, he hath said, Isa. 41:17, 18, “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I, the Lord, will hear them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will open rivers in dry places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry lands springs of water.” Hath he said so? Then take him at his word, and put him to it, saying, Lord, “do as thou hast said” (Ralph Erskine, “Faith’s Plea Upon God’s Word,”The Works of Ralph Erskine, vol. 2.)

What do you think about the idea of strengthening yourself through the truth of the gospel?

In light of the interest in art and culture that some of you have expressed I wanted to post some excerpts from the talks Connie did a few years ago at the Christ Community Women’s Retreat. The title and theme for these talks was “Redeeming Beauty”.  The first talk, “How Beauty Made the World”, Connie made the point that the created world “speaks to us”. Certainly there is a unique clarity in the Scriptures as the “Word of God”. However, without taking away from that we can truly say that creation communicates and in creation God speaks without words. Here is one excerpt.

Ephesians 3:14-15. “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and earth derives its name.” From the first time Larry preached on this verse, I have been set on a long thread of thinking. Here is why. When it says, “from whom the whole family (literally ‘fatherhood’) in heaven and earth derives its name.”  It means that the entire concept of fatherhood gets its existence and experience from God.

God did not create fathers and then decide to compare himself to a father. But he created fathers out of his existence and experience. There are fathers because he is like a father in some way. He is the archetype of a father. Because of this I started considering the world from a different angle. I no longer considered that things are just the way they are, things didn’t just end up the way they are, but I started to realize that the Great Being had been more intentional than I had understood.

When he created the world, he created it out of his nature. (I do not mean this in the sense that His substance is the physical material of the world but his essence is expressed intimately and essentially in the world) God is not like a father as an after thought. It is the other way around.

When an artist works with any material; words, musical notes, paint, video, they make what they can make, because in some mysterious way their work, if it is authentic, comes from who they are. Some part of God is “fatherish” so there are fathers. We are his workmanship as it says in Ephesians 2:10, or that can mean his work of art.

St. Augustine put it this way “the things of the world pour forth from God in a double way: intellectually into the minds of angels and physically into the world of things.”

Although I never would have said or really even thought our world was haphazard, Ephesians 3 helped me understand and take it to heart that saying that the world was created by God meant that it had its meaning strictly from him.

God, by the very fact of making the world, built meaning into its structure.

God reveals his splendor in the world he made

Now, let’s go on to Psalm 19:1-4: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the world.”

This Psalm, said by C.S. Lewis to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world is saying some amazing stuff. It is amazing if we begin to think that it could be more than impressive poetry, that it could be telling us about the actual reality of God’s material world. What it is saying is this, everywhere there are heavens, skies, the glory of God is seen. The Psalmist says this glory is being, “proclaimed”, “speech is pouring out”, “knowledge is shown”, in fact there are no people who do not get to hear about this glory.

This is interesting because language words are being used to describe something that is visual. Calvin in his commentary on this Psalm says, this is a language that addresses itself to sight. While we know we can not get a theological outline from looking at nature, real truth can be learned, such truth that Paul says in Romans 1:19 “that men are without excuse before God because since the creation of the world he has made know his invisible qualities, his eternal power and his divine nature having been clearly seen, by being understood from what has been made.”  The glory of God is not written in some small print, hard to see, but in large bright font, that all people at all times could read with ease. God’s heavens speak universally.

Here is a short story, told by James Calvin Schaap that shows what speaking universally means.

“Not long ago I listened to a woman from Laos tell a frightening story of her escape across the Mekong River. Five adults swam alongside a boat barely bigger than my desk, a leaky little skiff that filled with river water just about as fast as the children inside could bail it out. She prayed and prayed and prayed for deliverance, she said.

Only recently did she become a Christian. When I asked her who she was praying to in those days before she knew the Lord, she told me that she didn’t really know—not even then, up to her neck in the waters of Mekong. She says she didn’t know who was listening.

Now she does, she told me. Now she knows Jesus Christ.

On that scary night on the river, I’m guessing that she was praying to whoever it was she’d heard in the sermons preached by the sky.

And he was listening.”

This woman was responding to God through creation.

Psalm 19 goes on to talk in verses 7-14 about the laws, statues, precepts, and commands of the word. Here David is talking about the written word of God in the Torah. So in this one psalm we have God being revealed in creation and in his word, they are different but equally valid ways of God showing himself.

“I suppose many do not understand themselves, when they say they want assurance; for what better assurance would you have than the word of God? If you have his word, and take his word, you need no better assurance.

And though the assurance of sense be the sweetest, yet the assurance of faith is the surest assurance; for what you get in hand from God you may soon lose the benefit and comfort of it; but what you have upon bond in the promise, is still secure.”

- Ralph Erskine

Yes, good theology makes you strong but I feel tired right now.  The first intense summer class is over. The second class ends tomorrow. It’s been a pleasure interacting with the students but I’m more than a little tired from the process. Every day it’s up early to get squared away and off to an all day class. The first day I was lecturing for almost 8 hours and my voice gave out that night. The students have been a diverse group and there has been a lot of interaction. In the preaching class there was a Korean national who works in some secret capacity for the U.S. Army in Korea. Brian Sullivan, is a student from St. Louis who was connected with the Acts 29 church there and whose wife, Corrina, is the late night news anchor of Fox 35 Orlando. Chan Kilgore, the lead pastor of Cross Pointe Church in Orlando. He’s been involved in helping to plant fifteen churches and is on the board of directors for the Acts 29 network. Another student is an american working in China. Dan Brinkman was there for the first class. He’s a neat brother on staff with our sister church Eastside Community Church in Jacksonville. Then, of course, there were a number of interesting and committed students from all over the United States, some with pastoral experience and some with none.

While I was here I was able to meet with Dr. Futato one day and Jim Coffield also. I know I’m supposed to be the professor for these classes but I always learn a lot from the interactions with the students. Sometimes when I hear about the struggles of other churches and church staffs I’m thankful for the grace God has given us. It makes me want to work that much harder at preaching, pastoring, guarding and leading Christ Community. We have a lot of room for growth and a long way to go but a good foundation of health, grace and peace to build on.

I’m heading over to Orlando Sunday afternoon to teach two intensive classes at Reformed Theological Seminary. These intensive classes are always, well…. intense. One class will run from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday to Wednesday and the second will run from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Thursday and Friday. The first class is Introduction to Preaching (or Communications 1). The second is Preaching Lab 1. In spite of the long days and the intense nature of these compressed classes I usually find it to be a great opportunity for ministry. The students are basically together in a small group setting for one week. Many of them are in ministry and others are preparing for ministry. Please pray for my opportunity to support the students and help them prepare for Christian service.

I’ll be in class most of the day but I’ll be staying at Canterbury Retreat Center hoping to use my evenings for reading, prayer and reflection. Maybe even some fly-fishing in the lake. I’ll be checking my email and the blog as I have opportunity and will be back to preach next weekend. By the way Reformed Theological Seminary has a new informational video please check it out here. 

Now, I also wanted to end this post with a quote.  It might not seem to have anything to do with teaching courses on preaching at RTS but there is a link in my mind because it is from a sermon on Galatians by John Calvin. Calvin preached this: 

“God has declared in the gospel that whenever we come to him, we are to call upon him freely and openly as our Father, who has adopted us as his children. If we do not have this assurance, the thought of serving God will make us grind our teeth.

If, however, we are persuaded that God looks upon us favourably; if, though we are weak and can do nothing worthy of his approval, he accepts us in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, then we will surely be filled with courage.

We will be like a ship’s sail that has been stretched and filled by the breeze! Thus, our hearts will run to obey him, like a ship driven along by its sail, when we know that God delights in us and accepts our works, not wanting us to be compelled into servitude. He is happy for us to be his children, and that we desire to obey him.”

- John Calvin, Sermons on Galatians (preaching on Gal 5:1-3)

One of my core convictions for preaching is to preach the gospel, not only for non-Christians but for Christians. We all need the gospel, because we all need Christ and His grace, all the time. 

Corey and Andrea Sawchuck at the dinner hosted by the Nicaragua Mission Team . 

There is a lot of talk among Christian thinkers today about the church being a “missional church”. The idea of a missional church is that we don’t just have a missions program or a missions department but our whole purpose as a church is to be on the mission that God has given us right here in Daytona Beach Florida. Jesus said, “as the Father sent me so, I send you.” That is our purpose. So we look at our very existence as a mission. Having said that we also take seriously the call to send people on missions to places the rest of us might not be able to go. We send both long and short term missionaries. To learn more about missions at Christ Community Church check out our church website missions link here. 

The Nicaraguan Team is going on a short-term missions trip as part of a larger ministry having an ongoing impact for Christ in Nicaragua. The team from Christ Community consist of: John, Jessica and Johnny Gardella, Andrea, and Corey Sawchuck, Cheryl Geno and Cheryl Diorio. The trip will run from June 19-28th and the team members will be commissioned in the services they normally attend this weekend. Let’s keep them in our prayers. By the way the team wants to thank all of you who have supported this missions trip through donating money for shoes and or participating in the garage sale and the dinner. This really is a team effort. They are going as our representatives and as servants of Jesus and they need our prayerful support.