Category: The Church

Christ’s church, posts relating to church and church issues

One Another Ministry

~ Bob Hayton

Yesterday I used the following list as a handout for an adult SS class I was teaching.  Over the years this concept of “one another” ministry has really been a blessing and a burden for me.  It has the potential of revolutionizing how we view the Christian life.  Spiritual growth is a community project.  Not serving others in the ways the list below indicates has a negative impact on the church as a whole and on other believers.  And pushing yourself away from the church and away from fellowship with other believers can result in you missing out on receiving many of the things below.

We need each other.  We need “one another ministry”.  Are you looking for a ministry or job title at your current church?  Take this and pin it to your wall.  This is your job description as a Christian.  May the list below (which is incomplete) be a blessing to many as they rethink the idea of church.  It’s about being “God’s people” together, worshiping Him together, and growing in the Christian life and in the Faith together.

ONE ANOTHER MINISTRY

  1. LOVE one another — Rom. 12:10, Gal. 5:13, 1 Pet. 1:22, 1 John 3:11
  2. ENCOURAGE one another — Rom. 1:12, 1 Thess. 4:18, 5:11, Heb. 10:25
  3. INSTRUCT / TEACH / ADMONISH one another — Rom. 15:14, Col. 3:16
  4. CARE FOR / SERVE one another — 1 Cor. 12:25, 1 Pet. 4:8-11
  5. SERVE one another — Rom. 12:10, Gal. 5:13, 1 Pet. 1:22, 1 John 3:11
  6. COMFORT one another — 2 Cor. 13:11
  7. FORGIVE one another — Eph. 4:32
  8. EXHORT one another — Heb. 3:12-13
  9. STIR UP one another TO LOVE + GOOD WORKS — Heb. 10:24-25
  10. PRAY FOR one another — James 5:16
  11. CONFESS SINS one to another — James 5:16
  12. BEAR With / BEAR the burdens of one another — Rom. 15:1, Gal. 6: 2, Eph. 4:2
  13. BUILD UP one another — Rom. 15:2
  14. LIVE IN HARMONY WITH / WELCOME one another — Rom. 15:5-7
  15. MINISTER TO one another — 1 Thess. 5:12-14
  16. WORSHIP GOD together — Rom. 15:6, Heb. 2:12, 13:13-15

On a few of the above verses, it may help to use the English Standard Version, where the phrase “one another” is usually found. For another look at this ministry, look at an earlier post “1 Thessalonians and the Church’s Greatest Need“.

For convenience, I have this available as a free .pdf download.

Dr. Russell Moore: A Gospel-Centered Response to the Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood

~ Bob Hayton

Dr. Russell Moore struck gold in his comments Friday on the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s reversal of their decision to remove funding for Planned Parenthood. I really appreciated his viewpoint and wanted to share some of his article posted on Christianity Today here.

Some pro-life persons might wish that the Christian churches had as much influence in the public arena as Planned Parenthood, that we were able to mobilize as many callers and threaten as many boycotts. Some might see this as a sign that we need more money and respect. After all, if some Christian foundation had more financial firepower than Planned Parenthood, Komen might have stood firm…

In all of this, though, we can gain an opportunity to see what the abortion culture is all about: cash. Planned Parenthood and their allies use the thoroughly American language of freedom of choice and women’s empowerment, but what’s at stake, as seen here, are billions of dollars…

The answer for those of us who cherish the lives of women and their children, regardless of stage of development, isn’t to long to compete with Planned Parenthood in the influence that comes with massive amounts of wealth. It’s instead to see, first of all, how our own captivity to Mammon devolves us in the same way…

We don’t need a Christian foundation to compete with the merchants of death. We don’t need one more coalition with enough signatures to counter the threatened boycotts of the abortion rights peddlers. And we sure don’t need to sell bumper stickers with a line drawn through a pink ribbon.

What we need, first of all, are churches who recognize that this isn’t all that surprising. Mammon is a jealous god, and he’s armed to the teeth….

And then we need to demonstrate what it means to believe that a person’s life consists in more than the abundance of his possessions.

Let’s stop highlighting how God “blesses” the millionaire who tithes. Let’s stop trumpeting the celebrity football players and beauty queens as evidence of God’s blessing. Let’s show that God has blessed us in a Christ who never had a successful career or a balanced bank account, but who was blessed by God with life, and with children that no one can number, from every tribe, tongue, nation, and language.

Planned Parenthood has won this one. They spent a lot of money, and they’ll make a lot of money. And they’ll do so off the shredded corpses of children and the raped consciences of women. If Jesus’ kingdom were of this world, we’d be fundraising to keep up with them.

But what we have is greater than that. We have a word that tells a pregnant young woman that we believe her Down Syndrome baby is a gift, not a health care burden. And we can offer the kind of gospel that cleanses the conscience and offers what outlasts money and power: life and that to the uttermost.

Let’s work to legally protect women and children. And let’s grieve that old Mammon has won the day, again. But let’s not grieve like the pagans who have no hope. When it comes to the struggle for life, the color of victory isn’t pink like a ribbon. It’s red like a cross. [Read the full article]

What Can Fundamentalists Learn from Joe Paterno?

~ Bob Hayton ~ 48 Comments

By now, I’m sure most of my readers have heard that Joe Paterno was recently fired after more than 40 years of coaching one of the top College Football programs in the country. Paterno won more games in his coaching career than anyone else in Division-1 Football. Even now his Penn State’s Nittany Lions are poised to win the Big Ten Championship. By all accounts he should be respected and revered. But he was summarily dismissed, and turned out — and this at the end of his golden career.

Paterno is an illustration of a changing reality in the world today. A reality that Fundamentalists and other conservative Church groups must pay attention to, and learn from. Paterno lost the battle of public opinion, because today’s public has an entirely different opinion of child abuse, and potential child abuse, than yesterday’s generation.

In the old days, when the “Good Ol’ Boy” club reinged supreme. An allegation, was just that — an allegation. An alleged incident that may or may not be true. And someone in a position of leadership, would usually be given the benefit of the doubt. In Paterno’s case, his son made the following argument on his behalf:

“Unfortunately,” Scott Paterno said, “once that happened, there was really nothing more Joe felt he could do because he did not witness the event. You can’t call the police and say, ‘Somebody tells me they saw somebody else do something.’ That’s hearsay. Police don’t take reports in that manner. Frankly, from the way he understood the process, he passed the information on to the appropriate university official and they said they were taking care of it. That’s really all he could do. [source]

Thinking this through, I was inclined to give JoePa the benefit of the doubt. He did what he thought was right, and someone else goofed up and didn’t report like they should have. But the more I think about the situation, the more convinced I am that he really does share a blame. It’s convenient to pass a problem off on someone else, especially when the allegation concerns someone you know and trust.

While occasionally, innocent people do get falsely accused, overall, today’s culture which prizes the innocent victims is really to be praised. Isn’t that what the Bible advocates? Standing up for those who have no voice of their own? Ministering to the helpless and the fatherless? The following Scripture verses comes to mind:

Thus says the LORD: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. (Jeremiah 22:3 ESV)

Thus says the LORD of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart. (Zechariah 7:9-10)

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (James 1:27 ESV)

The Church is also to maintain a good reputation with the world, and particularly its leaders, the elders are given this charge: “Moreover [they] must have a good report of them which are without.” (1 Tim. 3:7a KJV) So, this changing opinion of the public in regard to allegations of child abuse is something that fundamentalists need to pay attention to.

Penn State University, when faced with the potential that some of their employees allowed child abuse to happen and didn’t report or ensure that a report was made to the police, quickly acted to remove all doubt about their stance against child abuse and to fire their high ranking, “good ol’ boys” who had come under a cloud of suspicion. But in Fundamentalism, this is not the road that churches and institutions usually take.

In Chuck Phelps’ case, he filed a report, but allowed the victim to flee the state while the police sought her in vain. He had done his duty by reporting, but didn’t go out of his way to help, because after all this was an allegation, one might say. The perpetrator of the abuse maintained his membership in good standing at the church, while the victim was viewed as a troubled teen who needed special care and who wasn’t worthy of being in the church-run school. Phelps wasn’t censured, that I know of, by any church or institution. He did lose a speaking engagement, and stepped down from the presidency of Maranatha Baptist Bible College (but we don’t know if that was related to this allegation), but he is still on the board of Bob Jones University.

In Fairhaven’s case, when CNN investigated allegations of abuse, there was no apology and no sympathy for the victims. They were said to be kids who caused a lot of trouble, or outright liars. Instead of apologizing and investigating the incidents, Fairhaven staff gave the CNN reporter a souvenir paddle in a mockery of the gravity of these allegations.

Thankfully, not all fundamentalist institutions react this way. The American Council of Christian Churches, a fundamentalist group parallel to the National Association of Evangelicals, publicly condemned Fairhaven’s actions – specifically referencing the giving of a souvenir paddle as an over-the-top and unChristian reaction to these serious charges. A fundamentalist mission board, ABWE, when faced with numerous people going forward about specific cases of abuse, launched an independent investigation, publicly apologized and took radical steps toward changing the culture of their organization in this regard.

Joe Paterno presents an example for fundamentalists that I hope they won’t ignore. The watching public won’t let us give the benefit of the doubt to the “good ol’ boys” anymore. We need to be as concerned as God is, over the victims of abuse. A man I respect, when learning of certain systematic abuse at a Fundamentalist institution that he had given years of his life to, reacted by confronting the leader of the church and institution, and then leaving. From what I’ve heard of this incident, he was told something to the effect of “Well, what do you want us to do about that? There’s nothing we can do.” He replied, “I’d dedicate my ministry to helping every last child who was harmed by the abuse that happened.”

Good advice for all of us. Don’t hide behind the fact that these are only “allegations”. Don’t refuse to investigate the matter, or have it investigated by a third party, for fear of what the high-up, protected and revered leaders would think– or what could happen to them. Stand up for the oppressed and the abused, and take a stand. A watching world wonders if we really are as much like Jesus Christ as we say we are.

“I Will Be Their God and They Shall Be My People”

~ Bob Hayton ~ 3 Comments

I mentioned in my last post that I found that variations of the following promise are found at least 28 times in the Old Testament: “I will be their God and they shall be My people.” Often it includes a promise that God would dwell with His people, or make His dwelling place among them. Seeing this great theme of Scripture and how it intersects with the Church – God’s people today, is both thrilling and educational. We can find our place in the narrative of Scripture and see the “already/not yet” fulfillment of these promises in our own experiences.

Today I thought I would just list these promises and let us meditate on them together.

Genesis 17:7-8 “And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”

Exodus 6:7 “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.”

Exodus 19:5-6 (with 20:2) “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Theses are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel…. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

Exodus 29:45-46 “I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the LORD their God.”

Leviticus 26:11-12 “I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.”

Deuteronomy 4:20 “But the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day.”

Deuteronomy 7:6 “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.”

Deuteronomy 14:2 “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.”

Deuteronomy 26:18 “And the LORD has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession, as he has promised you, and that you are to keep all his commandments,”

Deuteronomy 29:13 “That he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he promised you, and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”

2 Samuel 7:24 “And you established for yourself your people Israel to be your people forever. And you, O LORD, became their God.”

1 Chron. 17:22 “And you made your people Israel to be your people forever, and you, O LORD, became their God.”

Jeremiah 7:23 But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.'”

Jeremiah 11:4 “That I commanded your fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, Listen to my voice, and do all that I command you. So shall you be my people, and I will be your God,”

Jeremiah 24:7 “I will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.”

Jeremiah 30:22 “And you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”

Jeremiah 31:1 “At that time, declares the LORD, I will be the God of all the clans of Israel, and they shall be my people.”

Jeremiah 31:33 “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Jeremiah 32:38 “And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.”

Ezekiel 11:20 “That they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.”

Ezekiel 14:11 “That the house of Israel may no more go astray from me, nor defile themselves anymore with all their transgressions, but that they may be my people and I may be their God, declares the Lord GOD.”

Ezekiel 34:24 “And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the LORD; I have spoken.”

Ezekiel 34:30 “And they shall know that I am the LORD their God with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, declares the Lord GOD.”

Ezekiel 36:27-28 “And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”

Ezekiel 37:23 “They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. But I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.”

Ezekiel 37:27 “My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Hosea 2:23 “And I will sow her for myself in the land. And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people‘; and he shall say, ‘You are my God.'”

Zechariah 8:8 “And I will bring them to dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God, in faithfulness and in righteousness.”

Zechariah 13:9 “And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people‘; and they will say, ‘The LORD is my God.'”

2 Corinthians 6:16-17 “What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you,'”

1 Peter 2:9-10 “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

Revelation 21:3 “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”

Revelation 21:7 “The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”

“God With Us:” Jesus, The Temple & The Church

~ Bob Hayton ~ 2 Comments

Once again, I had the privilege to fill in for our pastor this past Sunday, and deliver the Sunday sermon. With it being Communion Sunday, I was asked to keep the message to around 30 minutes. So I ended up cramming a lot of content into 35 minutes. I apologize in advance for that!

The topic: the Temple and the Church, has been on my heart a lot lately, and was driven home as I recently finished reading a book on this same theme by G.K. Beale The Temple and the Church’s Mission (IVP). I begin the sermon with a romp through the numerous OT texts promising that God would be “God” for His people, and they would be His special people, and that God would make His dwelling place with them. I found this promise some 28 times in the Old Testament with three (or more) reiterations of this in the New Testament. That was the launching point for this brief look at what it means that Jesus Christ is the True Temple, and that we, His Body, are also “being built up” into a spiritual Temple. What does it mean and how should it shape how we live our lives?

I’ve included my notes for the sermon as a .pdf file here. But please download the sermon and ponder these texts with me. At around 14 minutes in, there is a minute or two cut out of the audio as the battery on the microphone died and the sound guy replaced it for me. (Sorry about that too!) Let me know what you think, I’d love some feedback.

Place: Beacon of Hope Church, St. Paul
Date: October 30, 2011
Title: “God With Us:” Jesus, The Temple & The Church
Text: Matthew 1:23 & John 1:1,14
Notes: Download PDF
Audio Link: Listen online or download (right click the link and save it to your computer)

Picture from TempleMount.org