Tag: Reformed Church Planting

Air Quotes

Nothing gets in the way of a good story like the facts.   Fishermen, as a rule, understand this maxim.   With every retelling, the great catch grows larger, the fight more dramatic.  Connoisseurs of fishing stories appreciate this dynamic and treat these tales as the figures of speech they are.  Indeed, the context of a narrative is the key to separating fact from fiction – both of which most include.   But those who fail to recognize context just ‘don’t get it.’   They are easily recognized.   They don’t laugh when others do.   Their brows are permanently furrowed, lips pursed and slightly askew.

Outsiders, of course, are excused.   And often a self-appointed lore-master takes them aside to explain the ‘context’ more fully.   Sometimes we try to clue them in with ‘air quotes.’  But for those who should ‘get it,’ but don’t, there is collective disdain — disdain that does not distinguish between challenged perception or personality.   While some genuinely do not understand, others understand perfectly, but look contemptuously on such conversation.   These are very different responses, though we rarely distinguish between them.   And our use of language reflects this

Words like ‘ignorant’ or ‘dull’ are often applied indiscriminately to those who don’t get it.   Even though the word ‘ignorant’ has more to do with an act of will rather than a lack of knowledge.   Refusing to know something by ignoring it or refusing to act on what you know is true ignorance.   This is quite different from a lack of knowledge.

The Wisdom Literature in the Bible (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon) carefully distinguishes between knowledge and wisdom.   Knowledge is what you know.  Wisdom, however, is what you do with that you know.   Not all who are knowledgeable are wise.   The Proverbs describe three categories.   The simple, the wise, and the fool.  

The simple is without knowledge.   The wise is the one who knows what is true and acts accordingly.   While the fool is the one who knows what is true and rebels against it.   The ancient word for fool is not synonymous with ‘simpleton,’ but rather ‘rebel.’  Foolishness is a matter of the will, not the mind.  For this reason, the Proverbs counsel us to treat the fool with discipline, not instruction.

The remnant of Judah had plenty of knowledge regarding the veracity and ferocity of God’s judgement.   Yet they refused to act wisely.    Their hearts were hardened.   Grief over God’s judgement, should have softened them.   And, indeed, they appeared repentant when they came to Jeremiah with a pious request in Jeremiah 42.

… all the people from the least to the greatest, came near and said to Jeremiah the prophet, “Let our plea for mercy come before you, and pray to the Lord your God for us, for all this remnant—because we are left with but a few, as your eyes see us— that the Lord your God may show us the way we should go, and the thing that we should do.”

Jeremiah 42:1-3

But their piety was only posturing.   The wanted the Lord to bless their plan.  When the Lord revealed a plan of his own, they rebelled.   In their anger and arrogance, they accused Jeremiah of lying, Baruch of conspiracy, and God of impotence.    They were rebellious fools, filled with knowledge of God’s works, but without wisdom or spiritual sensitivity to walk in them.

[They] answered Jeremiah: “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not listen to you. But we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we did, both we and our fathers, our kings and our officials, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no disaster. But since we left off making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine.”

Jeremiah 44:16-18

Their dullness to God’s Word and Spirit is shocking.   They profess an unqualified commitment to obey all the Lord requires.  But refuse to follow through.   The words of Isaiah a century before still rang true.

And the Lord said: “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me.

Isaiah 29:13

Despite their dramatic experience with God’s judgment, they persisted in unbelief.  And while it is easy to judge them for their rebellious folly, how have we acted any differently?   We have experienced God’s judgment and grace.  But has it made us more spiritually sensitive?  Have we learned to pray like the remnant, and mean it?   Are we growing in sensitivity to the leadership of the Holy Spirit and obedience to the Word?  Or are we, like Jesus first disciples, “yet so dull?”

Join us as we examine Jeremiah 42-44 and the dangers of spiritual dullness.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.    You can also join us on Facebook Live @RiverCityARP.

Come West, Young Man!

Come West, Young Man!

Long before Horace Greely penned those now famous words, “Go West Young Man,” the Apostle Paul heeded the call of the Man of Macedonia to go west to plant churches on a whole new continent.  He had formulated another plan, he thought he knew where he was headed, but the Holy Spirit changed his itinerary.

And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Acts 16:9

Paul answered the call to ‘go west’ and the gospel was planted began to take root in Europe.  The cultures there were very different. Support was uncertain.  And Paul had to adapt his usual modus operandi to engage cities without synagogues or significant Jewish enclaves.  But he went.

What about you?  You have your plans to serve, but what if God is calling you to “go west?”  What if God is calling you to Arkansas?  Come over and help us plant and grow Reformed Churches in the west.  

River City Reformed Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, is looking for a church planter intern/associate pastor to work with an experienced pastor, Howard Wheeler, to increase engagement in our community, share the load of preaching/teaching, and provide pastoral leadership for our growing congregation. Find out more by checking out  why we need another church in Little Rock.  For more details or next steps contact us.

Taking Comfort

Children can get comfortable in virtually any circumstance.  Alone or in a crowd, stretched out on their bed or cramped in a car seat, circumstance seems to have little to do with their comfort.   For children, comfort is rooted in assurance, not surfaces or society.   If they trust that dad and mom have everything well in hand, they can sleep anywhere and everywhere.   Parenting experts have long pointed out that when children have trouble going to sleep or staying in bed, they are often anxious that dad and mom don’t have it together.    Without assurance, they take no comfort.  With assurance they find comfort everywhere.

Adults are quite a different matter.   We are good at crafting comfortable circumstances — softer fabrics, ergonomic chairs, and bags of meds and supplements that eclipse Santa’s pack.  And spend our time, energy and brass seeking comfort, but little time being comfortable.   If comfort could be acquired, we would have palliated long ago.   Our lives are littered with the right pills and the right pillows.   We have therapeutic socks and smart mattresses.   We have more advanced and available health care than most of the world, but poorer health.   And with 5% of the world’s population, the United States consumes 95% of the world’s opioids.   We are comfortably numb, but devoid of comfort.  

Perhaps what we know about our children, we have failed to learn about ourselves.   Maybe comfort is derived more from assurance than circumstance.   Children gain assurance easily.   They have an unshakable faith in their parent’s wisdom and power.   Even when that faith is misplaced and disproven time and time again.   The willingness of children to rest in their parent’s word is remarkable.  

But as adults we are leery of trusting anyone but ourselves.   And often, we don’t trust ourselves.  Experience has jaded us.  We have been burned.  We have learned never to be at ease.   Even when our mattress is perfect, our medications potent, and our climate control pleasing, rest eludes us.   Real rest.  Soul rest.   The best we can do is to become comfortably numb.  If only we could trust that Our Father has it all together, that His promises and power could be trusted, that his love for us was real. 

Jeremiah spent four decades warning of Judah of judgment and exile.   Through warning after warning, God called the people to turn back to Him, but they would not.  They sought comfort down every path except the path of faith and repentance.   But God did not forsake them.  When hope seemed lost, God gave the prophet Jeremiah a word of comfort.  In the midst of the longest, and most sorrowful book in the Bible, we find bright promises of God’s grace.    Jeremiah 30-33 is often called the ‘Book of Consolation.’ 

Last week we examined Jeremiah 30 and considered how God consoles us in the midst of judgement.  But to take comfort from God’s promises, we must receive them.   We must believe them by faith.   We must turn back to Him.   We must rest in the assurance that Our Father has it all together.  The Heidelberg Catechism underscores this as it begins its summary of Christian doctrine with the question.

What is your only comfort in life and in death?

That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me, that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live unto Him.

Heidelberg Catechism, Question 1

With this assurance, we find comfort no matter what, whether in life or in death. Join us this week as we examine Jeremiah 31:1-30 and consider how God calls us to receive and experience the comfort He offers.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.    You can also join us on Facebook Live @RiverCityARP.

Arguing with a Madman

Long ago I learned an important principle regarding communication.   Mathematically stated, the effectiveness of our communication is inversely proportional to the number of communication devices we employ.   Put more simply, the more we talk, the less we communicate.  The problem is not new.  Scripture addresses the danger of idle words and of speaking more than we listen.   Scripture also warns us against the trap of Job who “multiplied words without wisdom.” (Job 38:2)   Yet we fail to heed this warning in our zeal for a good rant.  Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, messaging, email, Skype and all the tributary feeds that flow into the ocean of expression, more often than not, lead to a drought of actual conversation.  Social critic and communication theorist, Neil Postman prophetically warned of this long ago.

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

While syndicated news outlets have always led with a bias, most news is now presented, not by an anchorman, but by an angry forum of verbal combatants – an art form that culture at large emulates through social media.   Entertainment, not expression, is now the aim, as public discourse is replaced with the arguments of madmen.   Social critic, G. K. Chesterton, noted the futility of arguing with a madman.

“If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by clarity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” —G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: John Lane Co., 1909), p. 32

And so, we live in a world awash with outrageous claims and inflammatory statements.   Faced with the daunting challenge of distilling fact from fiction out of the mash, we may be tempted to believe everything or nothing.   But among all the outrageous claims, what if there is life giving truth?  What if there is truth we cannot live without?

No man made more outrageous claims that Jesus Christ.   He shocked the men of his hometown, by claiming to be the Messiah.  He challenged the religious leaders to point out a single one of his sins.  He pushed the limits with his disciples, commanding them to love enemies and offer unlimited forgiveness to offensive brothers.   But no claim of Jesus was more outrageous than his claim that “I and the Father are one.  He who has seen me has seen the Father.”   Jesus did not claim merely to be God’s servant, or God’s prophet.  He did not claim to be “a son of God,” but “The Son of God.”  Despite the best efforts of Arian heretics to erase Jesus’ claims to divinity, the Scriptures claim pervasively and decisively that Jesus is fully God and fully man.   Men who seek some value in Jesus as a mere man and moral example, but disbelieve his outrageous claim to deity must face C. S. Lewis’ scathing critique.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else He would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.  — C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

Jesus did not come to point out the way, the truth, or the life, but to be the way, the truth and the life.  This demands that he be both fully human and fully divine.  The Heidelberg Catechism, a time-tested set of questions and answers drawn from Scripture, explains why this is necessary.

Q16. Why must [Our Redeemer] be a true and sinless man?  Because the justice of God requires, that the same human nature which has sinned should make satisfaction for sin; but no man, being himself a sinner, could satisfy for others

Q17. Why must He be at the same time true God? That by the power of His Godhead He might bear in His manhood the burden of God’s wrath and so obtain for and restore to us righteousness and life. 

Join us this Sunday, December 8 as we examine John 1:1-18 and consider the indications, implications and invitations to us that arise from the truth Jesus full divinity.   We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions. Come with a friend and join us for fellowship and worship. We look forward to seeing you there.

Go West, Young Man!

Go West, Young Man!

Long before Horace Greely penned those now famous words, “Go West Young Man,” the Apostle Paul heeded the call of the Man of Macedonia to go west to plant churches on a whole new continent.  He had formulated another plan, he thought he knew where he was headed, but the Holy Spirit changed his itinerary.

And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Acts 16:9

Paul answered the call to ‘go west’ and the gospel was planted began to take root in Europe.  The cultures there were very different. Support was uncertain.  And Paul had to adapt his usual modus operandi to engage cities without synagogues or significant Jewish enclaves.  But he went.

What about you?  You have your plans to serve, but what if God is calling you to “go west?”  What if God is calling you to Arkansas?  Come over and help us plant and grow Reformed Churches in the west.   The culture is different.  The support is uncertain.  But the need is great.   Find out more by checking out  why we need another church in Little Rock. Or contact us.