Emerging/Emergent - He Said It Again

By the testimony of two or three witnesses, or more accurately the same witness twice now, I feel that the following notion is valid...

The Emerging Church is a distinct group from the Emergent Church.

I was listening to Mark Driscoll tonight at the Resurgence Conference. Watch it live here. He said that they are different. I wrote in my blog about this back in October after the BFC Ministerial Convention. Read that post here.

So again my question: can we the BFC feel comfortable trying this out at least on a trial basis without the fear of throwing in our lot with heretics?

I'd love your comments.

Fellowship News Article

T H I S I S S T I L L J U S T A D R A F T

Two articles have gotten my attention recently in Fellowship News. The first is “A Missionary Mandate for the 21st Century” by Colby Weinhofer (Sept 2007 and Oct 2007) and the second was “Having Missional Impact” by Dave Gundrum (Dec 2007). Without restating what these brothers have already written, I’d like us all to continue the conversation our denomination needs to have about effective, longterm outreach to our spiritually dead neighbors.

Our Fantastic Message

I believe that the Church has a phenomenal message. What Jesus brought to humanity is a beautiful thing. Namely, that I the rebel against God have received mercy by a lovingly gracious Creator. In that mercy, God satisfied His wrath against me by punishing His one and only beloved Son, who is our Savior, Christ Jesus. Not only has He soothed His anger against me, but He has brought me into His family, put His Spirit in me, declared me righteous, and continually makes me more like Jesus until the day He takes me home to be with Him forever. What a truly fantastic and (in many ways) unbelievable message!


Let’s Get The Job Done

In many ways, the Church is like the Jamaican bobsled team that has found itself broken down only a few meters from the finish line. We, who alone in the world have a great and lasting message of hope from God to mankind, have only a few steps to go before we finish what Christ commissioned us to do.

While we have only a few steps to go worldwide, it seems that the Church is losing footing in areas that once were shored up. Europe, once the bastion of Christianity, has thousands of beautiful, empty church buildings. New England, once the home of the Great Awakening and her sequel, now is a very spiritually cold area. America, wherever you turn does not seem very Christian. While much of the missional conversation discourages us with the onslaught of terrible statistics, I would like to encourage, uplift, motivate, and otherwise stir up our spirits.

At last, our job is nearing completion. Let us not grow weary in well doing. Let us send out our finest and brightest to the uttermost in missionary service! Let us plant Bible Fellowship Churches where Christ’s light in a community is all but snuffed out. Let us talk with our neighbor about Jesus. Let us stop merely memorizing that verse and begin to live it when Jesus said “let your light so shine before men that they would see your good works and glorify Your Father who is in heaven!”

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

I am convinced that our hesitancy in outreach is all about the “how.” We know the “why” of outreach. We know the “what” of outreach. We need work on the “how” because we do not want to look like door-to-door salesmen or cult members and we do not want to sell Jesus short of all the majesty and glory that is due to His Name. So the “how” is important.

There is a two-pronged approach to effective outreach. First, there needs to be church-wide outreach activities. We need to run events that are both “safe” enough that unbelievers will come and “safe” enough that our people will invite outsiders in. These events ought to have some perceived-needs addressed. Financial seminars, sports ministries, support groups, soup kitchens, and countless other ministries are perceived-needs-based ministries that let a spiritually sick and dead community know that we care and want them to be made whole.

The other, equally important, prong of effective outreach is one-on-one discipleship. All of us need to know our neighbors. We need to care about our neighbors. When you hear them fighting, let them know you pray for them. When your kids are in soccer league together with theirs, sit with them at the game. Have them over for dinner, let them return the favor. Be with your neighbors. This is, after all, what the Almighty God did when He took on flesh and dwelt (tabernacled) with us. “You shall call His Name Immanuel which translated means ‘God with us.’” People want to know that we care. Don’t you like to feel cared for? The lost are no different than you, except for their eternal destination.

And now, let me offer a shameless plug. This October, your pastors are invited to attend the BFC Ministerial Convention. It is for everyone on ministry staff at your church. Our theme this year is “Reaching Your Jerusalem” in which we will answer the challenge of how we can fulfill Jesus’ commission of being His witnesses and making disciples of Him in our local communities. Make sure your pastors go.

As for all readers, pray about your level of involvement in the Great Commission. Pray that God would lay some soul upon your heart. Pray that God would stir in your church, our churches, and the Church Universal the burden to reach lost souls with the great message of hope that we hold within us.

Now more than ever, we, the Bible Fellowship Church, need to be “an expanding fellowship of churches united to make disciples of Jesus Christ.”

Church Growth

How does your church grow? Not with silver bells and conkle shells but with two important activities going on simultaneously. Many mega-churches have recently admitted that they have pushed one without the other. Will miny-churches admit that they have pushed the opposite one without the first one?

Act Like Acts

Acts certainly sets the tone for how the church should function. In reviewing some of my old sermons, I stumbled across this one taken from Acts 16:5-15. Verse 5 reads this way “the churches were being strengthened in the faith, and were increasing in number daily” (NASB). So we see that there are two elements to a healthy, growing church. First, the disciples are strengthened in the faith and secondly, the lost are becoming saved. For those who may think that this is an isolated incident and that the model throughout Acts is not this way, let us look at other instances of “strengthening” and “increasing” in the book.


Strengthening

9:22 But Saul kept increasing in strength and confounding the Jews who lived at Damascus by proving that this Jesus is the Christ.

9:31 So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace, being built up; and going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it continued to increase.

14:22 strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith,

15:32 Judas and Silas, also being prophets themselves, encouraged and strengthened the brethren with a lengthy message.

15:41 And he was traveling through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.

18:23 And having spent some time there, he left and passed successively through the Galatian region and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.


Increasing

2:47 And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.

4:4 the number of the men came to be about five thousand.

5:14 And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number,

6:1 Now at this time while the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint arose on the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Hebrews,

6:7 The word of God kept on spreading; and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem

11:21 the hand of the Lord was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord

14:1 spoke in such a manner that a large number of people believed, both of Jews and of Greeks.

Conclusion

Let us be diligent and faithful to strengthen the faith of those in out congregations. Let us equally be diligent and faithful to rescue the perishing and thereby add to our number.

Is This Still the Case?

I have been working on redesigning our denomination's Historical Society website. The old one is BFCHistory.org ... the new one will be there, but I am testing it now at my church site here. So I am reformatting all the library items and came across an interesting paper written for the Bethlehem Globe Times newspaper by one of our pastors, W.S. Hottel, in 1915. My question for you as you read is: would you still say that this statement is true of the Bible Fellowship Church as W.S. declared it true of our former incarnation, the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church. Listen to what he says:

So then, it is at once discernible that the name "Mennonite" has been adopted and is held to merely for the sake of distinction and historical continuance. With the Mennonite Brethren in Christ, it is no barrier to prevent the incoming of new light from God, by way of advance knowledge, because of a deeper and clearer insight in to Divine revelation. The Mennonite Brethren are not a church bound down to the traditions handed down from their forefathers, others than those which are in full and strict accordance with the Scriptures. They always welcome new light from God, upon his word, gladly following and obeying it. Their apparent narrowness is not Godward but manward; they holding with a firm and tenacious grip of faith to the Divine Authorship and Authenticity of the Scriptures. To them the Scriptures are the ground of faith, their creed, and also the rule of life. Whatever in word, principle and spirit the Scriptures enjoin, they hold it to be carried out and obeyed in every day life and practice. In short, they stand for the spiritual illumination of the mind, its transformation by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the truth, so that the principles of God's word are inwrought into the mind, will and character of man, so that those who really and heartily accept the divine "form of doctrine" became living epistles "known and read of all men."

Do we, the BFC, always have an ear open for God to grant some new light? Is ALL we have the Scriptures and them alone as our creed? Do we add immutable statements on top of God's Word -or- is it Scripture alone?

I'd love to hear our responses?