Farewell to First Southern, Floyds Knobs

A significant season in my life is coming to a close. As I prepare to move into a new time of life and ministry, I want to share a few reflections and important things I have learned during my time of ministry with you. These are a few reasons I will forever cherish my time here and the wonderful ways God has used this church in my life.

Thank you, worship team, for being so talented and so willing to serve. We have all grown musically and spiritually over the past four years, and I only pray that the growth will continue.

Thank you, Travis and Brian, for your confidence, trust, support, and friendship. I could not have asked for better men to serve with or more faithful men to endure the trials of ministry we have together.

Thank you, everyone, for your patience with a young worship pastor. My thoughts, convictions, approaches, and style have changed and developed in front of you. My time leading you to rehearse the gospel in song and encounter the presence of God has been a formative time, laying the foundation for my future ministry. Thank you for serving me and my future congregation with your constant support and encouragement!

Finally, here are the most important lessons I have learned about ministry through serving you and serving with you:

1. Always trust God’s perfect provision and timing in every aspect of your life. My calling to this church in October 2008 was an enormous answer to prayer. I had just moved to Louisville and begun seminary classes, facing great anxiety from the uncertainty of how my time at seminary would be spent. God provided in a clear and decisive way when he opened the opportunity for me to join the staff here.
    
2. Always trust God’s protection over you when you are pursuing his will, and trust his correction and discipline when you stray. The last four years have had their ups and downs, both in the life of our church at large and for me personally. Looking back, I can see clearly God’s work in orchestrating events, experiences, and relationships that have caused me to grow and have revealed his purposes for me.
    
3. Always lead based on the conviction to please God rather than man, and always honor the Word of God above all else. Certainly this is never easy! I am so thankful to have served the last four years with men I trust will always have as their highest priority the will and Word of God. I am thankful that you have been receptive of this leadership and pray that you will continue to be.

The future is promising for the work that God is doing and will do through you in this community. Although he is calling me to serve elsewhere, my prayers will continue to be with you and your work of ministry.

Acceptance

Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. - Romans 15:7

Believer, you have been welcomed by God. Another possible translation is “accepted.” Paul wrote just a few chapters earlier, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God didn’t accept you after you got your life together. He didn’t welcome you after you cleaned yourself up. A popular saying tells us that “God helps those who help themselves.” This idea fits in nicely with our independent, self-reliant American values, but it horribly differs from what the Bible teaches.

So, the Holy Spirit, speaking through Paul’s letter to the Romans, tells us to welcome and accept one another, as Christ has welcomed and accepted us. This provides us with both the why and the how of our welcoming of others.

First, we are instructed to accept one another because Christ accepted us.  How quickly and easily we all fall into the lie of entitlement. The gospel reminds us that we are no better than anyone else, and the only thing keeping us from eternal judgment in hell is the grace of God given to us (see Ephesians 2:8-10). Therefore, show some of that grace to others. Take a minute to read Philippians 2:3, Colossians 3:13, and James chapter 2.

Second, we are called to accept one another in the same way that Christ has accepted us. In one sense, this is an impossible command, because no one can accept others perfectly as Christ did. Also, this is not about current popular notions of “tolerance,” or overlooking someone’s sin in order to fabricate a false sense of peace or fellowship. But especially in Romans 15, it is about showing grace and favor to those with different preferences or convictions than your own, so long as they do not violate your common doctrine or the clear teaching of Scripture. Christ’s acceptance is without pretense, arrogance, or hesitance. If you are a believer, God freely and independently helped you and accepted you because you couldn’t help yourself, and despite you being infinitely unacceptable.

As you pray for our church and Crossroad Church in this time of discovery and preparation, ask God to give you the grace and ability to welcome and accept new brothers and sisters in Christ because he has accepted you and in the same way he has accepted you, for the good of the church and glory of God.

Death, Taxes, and the Coming of the Lord

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.”  Times of significant change also bring with them great uncertainty. We are in the midst of such a time as a church. I hope you are excited at the opportunity before us to display the healing power of the gospel in our community. Even so, you may be uncertain about the future and how things will change or that the things about our church that you have grown to know and become comfortable with will be upset. Be patient.

Patience is the discipline to fight against our sinful urges for certainty and immediate gratification. James makes patience practical by warning against impatience’s most infamous tell: grumbling and complaining (5:9).  Before you pick up the phone to raise your “concerns” to someone about something that is happening around you, take a minute to pray and examine yourself to see if you are being driven by impatience and distrust in God to work out his purpose regardless of how the circumstances seem from your limited perspective.

James tells his readers to be patient “until the coming of the Lord” (5:7). That could be quite a long time.  He tells them, “Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.” Don’t be anxious and impatient, but establish your hearts. Why? Because the return of Christ is eminent.  Perhaps not “soon” in our limited view—our lives are but a vapor in the grand scheme of eternity—but certain.  No matter what changes sweep through your life, you can establish your heart by abandoning your limited perspective to look at things from God’s perspective. Benjamin Franklin left the most important thing off his list: from an eternal perspective, the only certainty in this world that matters is that God always wins, and his purpose always prevails. Therefore, be patient.

Holy Kissing

A “one another” command that is more frequent in Scripture than you might realize is the command to “greet one another with a holy kiss” (Acts 20:37, Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:12, 1 Thessalonians 5:26, 1 Peter 5:14).  Most people, understandably so, look at one of these verses and scratch their heads.

Of course, if you were to greet someone with a kiss on the cheek on Sunday morning, you may get a funny look—and you should probably get a much more severe reaction than that!  But don’t worry, you’re not in violation of this command if you refrain from the holy kissing.  This is an important instance in Scripture to understand the historical context.   Greeting people with a kiss was certainly a more common and acceptable practice in that time and culture.  It signified hospitality, warmth, good will, and the love of true fellowship.

But, there may be more to the story than that.  Although the culture of that time included a kiss as a form of greeting, it was usually reserved for close family members or as a formal greeting.  In other words, it was an intimate and honorific greeting.  When Paul first began instructing the church to greet each other in this manner, he actually was going against the grain of mainstream cultural practice.

I believe his purpose was this: the people who you call brother and sister in Christ are more than acquaintances.  Give them the same acceptance that you give your own family and honor that you give important leaders and dignitaries.

In our time, perhaps there is not a more appropriate form of physical greeting than a simple handshake—but be sure your words and actions convey more than just the routine of social convention.  Whenever you read, “Greet the brothers with a holy kiss,” it should remind you that you are called to extend to your church family the highest honor, love, and hospitality.

Do-It-Yourself Fellowship

“We must pursue what promotes peace and what builds up one another.” –Romans 14:19

The community of the local church is unlike any other kind of community.  We do a lot of things that look like what other communities do: we have meals and other social activities together, we meet to make decisions together, and we are unified under a shared mission and purpose.  Various clubs, companies, labor unions, and investment groups do those same things.  But one of the characteristics that radically sets the church of Jesus Christ apart from any other community is that we ought to pursue peace and actively seek to build one another up.

Pursuing peace means something different than just wanting peace or appreciating peace.  The word “pursue” means that we have control over whether or not our actions promote peace and that it’s not okay to simply be neutral.  Many people pat themselves on the back claiming, “At least I’m not one of the troublemakers,” but this is not the attitude Scripture demands.  The fellowship of believers is not one of maintaining civility by staying out of one another’s way or keeping to yourself.

Others stay inwardly focused by evaluating their experience in the church in terms of how they are being “fed” spiritually, or how well their own social needs are being met.  But the call of gospel fellowship is to focus not on being built up, but on building others up yourself.

We need to adopt a do-it-yourself sense of fellowship in which we stop sitting around waiting for our fellowship to become more meaningful and our relationships to become more nurturing.  Instead, we should each take the initiative in promoting peace, building relationships, and encouraging one another.

Getting Started

1. What existing positive relationships do you have with people who you can actively encourage?  Find new ways to encourage those already close to you: family members, Sunday school class members, Connect group members, ministry team members, etc.

2. Who can you begin a new relationship with by encouraging someone who needs encouraging?  Look around and find someone who is working hard and thank them.  Go out of your way to speak to someone you’ve never met or had a real conversation with.  You will honor Christ and probably make a new friend.

3.  Who do you have a bad or broken relationship with that can be restored by “pursuing what promotes peace,” such as apologizing to someone, praying for them, and asking them to pray for you?  This can be difficult, but the supernatural reconciling power of the gospel is real.  Pray for the courage and faith to pursue peace and build someone else up.

Advent

The season of Advent is a season of waiting.  It is designed to remind us and make us aware of God’s faithfulness—his past, present, and future actions.  During the season of Advent, we recall the prophecies of the coming of the Messiah as if they are addressed to us, because just as the people of Israel awaited the first coming of Christ, we await his second coming.  We identify with their waiting and hoping for his birth as we also anticipate and hope for his coming at the end of time.  We celebrate and give thanks for his birth, the greatest miracle of all time—“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”—as we hope for the time he will return.

Because of this tension between celebrating and hoping, when Advent began as a church tradition hundreds of years ago, it was a time for discipline and repentance in the confident expectation and hope of Christ’s coming again.  The second coming of Christ reminds us that there is an end and a purpose to our faith.

This year, we will include readings and songs that help focus our attention in worship around the implications of Revelation 22:7, “And behold, I am coming soon.  Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.”  As we anticipate Christ’s coming, let us take seriously our commitment to him and be renewed in our resolve to live lives of radical discipleship that proclaim his kingdom!

Worship and Thanksgiving

Genuine worship must, of necessity, be marked by thanksgiving.  Worship that is not driven by a sense of gratitude and dependence upon God is not genuine worship.  So what is thankfulness?

Thankfulness is rightly giving honor to God as the creator and provider of all things.  Simply acknowledging his existence is not enough! Consider Romans 1:21: God’s wrath is upon the unrighteous not because they are atheists, but because they “knew God, but they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.”

Thankfulness is the opposite of grumbling and complaining.  An attitude or temperament marked by grumbling is evidence of ingratitude.  In 1 Corinthians 10, grumbling is linked even to the serious and deep-rooted sin of idolatry!  Take a minute to consider if your grumblings are symptoms of seeking something before and above Christ.

Thankfulness is prayerfulness.  What is prayer if not a humble acknowledgement of our complete and utter dependence on God?  Thankfulness is marked by a sense of dependence that leads to prayer.  A lack of prayer is evidence of self-sufficiency and independence, and all of these come from a lack of thankfulness.

Pray right now that God would help you live as an expression of gratitude and honor toward God!

Worship and Theology

The only way we may worship God rightly and with a unity of spirit is to gather in unity and affirmation of common theology.  Theology matters because if we get it wrong, everything we call worship (which is the entirety of our lives, not just the time when we gather on Sundays) will be in vain.   A puritan theologian, Stephen Charnock, wrote in 1682, “Now it is impossible to honor God as we ought; unless we know him as he is.”  God-honoring worship must be driven by true knowledge (notice I didn’t say feeling, impression, or experience) of God, which is another way to say right doctrine or right theology.

Unfortunately, for many people, theology and doctrine are bad words which only indicate academic snobbery and condescension.  In fact, you may already be thinking that after seeing the title of this article.  In a recent book, pastor Joshua Harris address this very concern, saying,

I know the idea of ‘studying’ God often rubs people the wrong way.  It sounds cold and theoretical…But studying God doesn’t have to be like that.  You can study him the way you study a sunset that leaves you speechless…Knowledge doesn’t have to be dry and lifeless.  And when you think about it, exactly what is our alternative? Ignorance? Falsehood?  We’re either building our lives on the reality of what God is truly like and what he’s about, or we’re basing our lives on our own imagination and misconceptions.  We’re all theologians.  The question is whether what we know about God is true.

Another pastor and worship leader, Bob Kauflin, clarifies

We’re good theologians if what we say and think about God lines up with what Scripture says and affirms.  We’re bad theologians if our view of God is vague, unbiblical, distorted, or based on our own opinions…The study of doctrine isn’t opposed to studying the Bible; it is studying the Bible.  It’s how we find out what God is like, what he wants us to believe, how he wants us to worship him.

Worship God by seeking understanding.  Honor God by desiring to know more about him, his nature, and his attributes.  Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

We Are Family

Have you ever been somewhere with your brother or sister, or your parents and asked the question, “Am I really related to you?” I think everyone who has ever had a family has had that feeling!  But the thing about your family is that they’re your family, no matter what.  You didn’t choose them, God gave them to you and you to them.  And the same is true of the church.

Throughout the New Testament, Paul and the other writers consider the people of the church to be more than strangers, more than casual acquaintances, more than friends, and even more than close friends! They address the other believers as if they are their own family.  A big part of biblical fellowship is encouraging and supporting one another.  1 Thessalonians 5:11 says, “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up.”  There is a sense here in which Paul is saying, “Look, you need to stick together, because things are going to be difficult.”

But in addition to that, the familial implication is that we are committed to each other.  When Paul spoke of the church, he didn’t have in mind that the church would consist of a few overly-spiritual, theologically-educated individuals hired to be ministers and to put on a show of singing and preaching every week for the religious entertainment of a group of casual attendees who view this gathering more as a social expectation than of worship in spirit and in truth.  Family is more than that.  What he did have in mind was a community of faith, a group of committed, devoted, serious disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ who gather together to hear the Word of God proclaimed and to grow in Christ-likeness together because of it.  That means that you commit to act humbly and lovingly toward everyone here.  It means that you are committed to resolve conflicts biblically and live at peace with one another.  1 Thessalonians 5:13 says, “Be at peace among yourselves.”  That’s not a description of the perfect church, it’s a direct command to the imperfect church.  The church is made up of sinners, yes—but those who are no longer slaves to sin, but are set apart as continually-repenting sinners.

This commitment also means that your first thought at signs of trouble isn’t to start shopping for a new church, or to withdraw from church altogether.  If you have a problem with something that’s going on in the church, it is your responsibility to lovingly and gently confront another person and search the Scriptures together (not your own opinion, feelings, or intentions) as the highest authority.  If you have a problem that has come up in your own life, your first inclination as a genuine follower of Christ shouldn’t be to leave the church or find another church. 

Are you hurting? Embrace the loving care of Christ and his body, your family.

Have you sinned? Repent and receive the forgiveness of Christ and his body. 

Are you ashamed or rejected? Come into the acceptance of Christ and of his body.

If God is for you, who can be against you?  This is not a house of shame, or guilt, or condemnation.  Of conviction? Yes.  Of repentance? Absolutely.  But equally of love—of genuine, gentle admonishment and encouragement—and of forgiveness.

 

I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God—

I’ve been washed in the fountain, cleansed by his blood!

Joint heirs with Jesus as we travel this sod;

For I’m part of the family, the family of God.

Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God

What is the proper understanding of the relationship between the truth of divine sovereignty and the task of personal evangelism? First, it must be settled whether or not all of Scripture may be trusted and believed equally and zealously.  2 Timothy 3:16 assures us that, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable…”  The Great Commission is the first commandment the church receives from the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ himself.  From a practical standpoint, it has been made clear to the church (that is, to individual believers as well as the collective institution of the church) that our task is to be evangelism and discipleship (which of necessity must begin with evangelism).

Once this responsibility has been firmly established (simply because it is true and biblical, not because it does or does not fit into a certain theological system), then the doctrinal truth of God’s sovereignty may be considered.  This is not to pit doctrinal understanding against practical understanding, or to diminish the importance of doctrinal implication, but it is to point out that Scripture gives us instruction in both.

We should constantly be making a connection between what we believe (theology or doctrine) and what those beliefs cause us to do (practice). But at times Scripture does this task for us, and this is the case in the task of evangelism.  It is true that it is very easy for many people to presume from a strong (yet biblical) understanding of divine sovereignty that evangelism is unnecessary.  Because this reality (complete divine sovereignty, yet the complete necessity for evangelism) is so difficult for finite humans to comprehend, we have been given these seemingly contradictory truths in order to help us, not confuse us.  These truths must be taken as equally true, side-by-side, not put at odds.

This conclusion helps us understand the gospel itself more fully and appropriately.  When God’s sovereignty in salvation is upheld, and our task of evangelism is seen as the means by which God intends to accomplish his work of election, regeneration, and repentance, the gospel is rightfully God-centered from start to finish.  God initiates the gospel, is the main subject of the gospel, and is the destination of gospel.  The gospel becomes the message of how “God gets us to God.”  The sinner is held in his proper place of humility where the fullness of free grace may be realized to the glory of God, while simultaneously the life of the sinner may be freely surrendered to Christ.  The evangelist is held in his proper place of humility where he is dependent upon the sovereignty of God, and the life of the believer may be freely surrendered to the task of evangelism and the glory of God.

[If you are interested in reading more in-depth on this subject, read Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God by J.I. Packer (InterVarsity Press, 1961).]