What Have I Learned Since Coming to RTS (Three Year Mark)

For over 20 years I have been a pastor.  I am still a pastor.  But for the last three years, I have also been a seminary president where we train pastors and leaders for the global church.

In my work, I now get to work with many churches and denominations.  We have over 60 denominations represented at RTS!  I am often asked what I have learned since I came.  Let me share six observations that I think you will find interesting.

First, I have learned yet again, that the gospel is greater than I knew when I started.  A disciple of Jesus is by definition a learner. I have learned all kinds of things in a seminary setting, by rubbing shoulders with brilliant yet godly teachers. But I’ve especially learned that the love of God is deeper than I realized.  Don’t get me wrong. I knew it was great. It’s just that I am more aware of my need for Jesus than ever. His righteousness, cross and resurrection are more important to me.  God’s grace is not just amazing grace, it is stunningly amazing!

Second, I have learned that the church is more wonderfully diverse than I realized.  I get out to preach at least two Sundays a month. I preach in small, medium and mega church settings, in Chinese churches, African American, Baptist, independent, Anglican, and all kinds of Presbyterian churches. This is a great privilege that I did not have when I had to preach each Sunday in one place.  Can I remind you that there are many wonderful, Bible believing churches out there.  It is often tempting to think “our” church is the only true church.  But I am an eye witness to the fact that we have many wonderful brothers and sisters in other parts of God’s vineyard.  Rejoice in that.

But here is something I cannot rejoice in.  Third, I have learned that the prayerlessness of the church is worse than I thought.  It is scary how little prayer accompanies most of the Sunday morning worship services I visit.  I often wonder what explains the powerlessness of the Western church.  My theory is that a great deal of our powerlessness is due to our massive prayerlessness.  God’s work goes forward by prayer.  But it seems that prayer is usually the last thing we do.  We are generally  too busy to pray.  And it’s showing.

Fourth, I have learned that the culture is turning faster than I thought possible.  When I started my pastoral ministry, people would say confidently that we are a “center right nation”—even “a Christian nation.” Now they say we are a “center left nation” and  “post Christian.”  Things have happened I never thought possible.   There has been a huge culture shift where we now pursue, not freedom under God, but apart from him.  But hear me.  While part of me laments this shift, another part is thankful for the privilege to be a minister of the gospel in a new cultural setting where to be a Christian means something.

Fifth, I have learned that the global Christian movement is more vibrant than I imagined. The hope of Revelation—where a people from every language, tribe and nation worship the lamb around his throne—is coming to pass.  I get to spend time with our  international students–some training to be pastors, church planters or apologists.   I also get to collaborate with amazing Christian leaders from around the globe.  Some of the people I met with this week are facing persecution, some are in the middle of wonderful spiritual harvests. But the good news is—God is raising up a global church and you and I have the privilege of partnering with them in God’s mission.

And finally, I have learned that the coming generation of students is better prepared for leadership than I realized.  It is always tempting for older people to criticize the younger generation.  But I’ve got to tell you—this rising generation of leaders will be uniquely prepared as gospel ministers in a new cultural landscape.  They are at home in a digital world.  They grew up on diversity and will be more effective in a pluralistic society. Globalization has shaped them to work with a global church.  They have a distaste for nominal Christianity.  They are passionately serious about truth and theology. When I see today’s students, I know Christ’s work will go forward with strength.

These are some of the things I have learned as a disciple of Jesus over the last three years.  What have you learned?  Do you ever sit back and reflect, about what God is doing in and around you?  As you take a break this summer, my prayer is that we would together grow as disciples and learners of Jesus.

Thoughts for the Week

A.W. Tozer (d. May 12, 1963) Called Many to Forsake Comfortable Christianity and Pursue God

Fifty years ago American pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer died (April 21, 1897-May 12, 1963). Tozer has been described as a 20^th century prophet who called the church back to God and godliness.

Think of it this way. Before there was the book The Holiness of God, by R. C. Sproul (1986), and Knowing God, by J. I. Packer (1973), there was Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy (1961), and The Pursuit of God, (1948).  True, there were other American evangelicals writing powerful single volume books on God before this—one thinks of A.W. Pink’s The Sovereignty of God (1918), and his The Attributes of God (1930).  But Tozer filled the gap for a generation and his books continue to draw many into a deeper knowledge of God.

Tozer was a self taught, evangelical mystic who cultivated a close fellowship with God and sensed God’s presence everywhere. He called the church to pursue God with head and heart.  He emphasized the Word and the Spirit. But he also warned that it would cost something to “walk slow in the parade of the ages” with other godly saints seeking God rather than doing what was popular or pursuing the American dream. Perhaps that is why such a broad range of evangelicals leaders, including Martin Lloyd-Jones, sought him out and appreciated his ministry and fellowship.

A.W. Tozer came from a small farming community in western, Pennsylvania.  As a boy he seldom attended church.  Because of his father’s ill health, the young Aiden assumed responsibilities for the farm, that is, until they sold it and he took up factory work in Akron, Ohio.

Tozer was converted in his teen years.  While on his way home from work at a tire company, he overheard a street preacher say: “If you don’t know how to be saved….just call on God.”  Upon returning home, he went up to his attic and did what the preacher said, soon thereafter joining the Methodist Episcopal Church.

At age 15, Tozer enrolled in high school, but after one day of school, he decided he could make better progress on his own by independent reading and study than he could by the school’s standard curriculum!

He began his public ministry preaching as an evangelist on the streets of Akron.  Later, he pastored three churches (in West Virginia, Chicago and Toronto) in the Christian Missionary and Alliance denomination (for a 44 year long ministry).

Tozer was one of that rare breed who did not attend Bible college or seminary, yet became editor of the Alliance Weekly magazine (the official publication of the CMA), authored over 40 books, and received two honorary doctorates.

Two of Tozer’s best known classics are The Pursuit of God and The Knowledge of the Holy.

Of The Pursuit of God, Tozer wrote, this book is a modest attempt to aid God’s hungry children so to find him. Nothing here is new except in the sense that it is a discovery which my own heart has made of spiritual realities most delightful and wonderful to me. Others before me have gone much further into these holy mysteries than I have done, but if my fire is not large it is  yet real, and there may be those who can light their candle at its flame.”

Tozer admitted that he wrote this book on his knees.  It is an easy-to-read book that should be read slowly.

He wrote, “We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit.  “No man can come to me,” said our Lord, “except the father which hat h sent me draw him” (p. 11).  God, he said,  is always previous.

But pursuing God is a life-long vocation.  “To have found God and still to pursue him is the soul’s paradox of love,” he wrote (p. 15).  Because our happiness is in God we must  pursue him.  So Tozer urged his readers to “follow hard after God.”

In The Knowledge of the Holy, Tozer wrote a study of the attributes of God and their meaning in the Christian life. He began his popular book with the memorable sentence–“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us” (p. 9).

The Knowledge of the Holy bears eloquent witness to God’s majesty, encourages reverent meditation on the being of God, and offers a way to bring back spiritual power to our lives.

When I first read these books, both of them helped me realize the greatness of God.  He was much bigger than I had previously thought!    I like books which make that happen.

Of course, there were other themes that Tozer wrote passionately about.  He said that the love and grace of Christ were a source of recurring astonishment in his life.  He wrote a lot about abiding in Christ. Tozer felt that doctrine and devotion must go hand in hand.  Correct doctrine without the power of Christ does not get us far.  For without Christ, Tozer said, we can do nothing.

Like every Christian leader, Tozer had his flaws and was a sinner who needed a savior.  I don’t agree with everything that he writes.   He vigorously opposed new Bible translations.   He was against Christian movies. His marriage to his wife Ada, is not something I’d seek to imitate.

Theologically, Tozer is an Arminian.  But he is one of my favorite Arminians.

He has been helpful to me and many others on our journey of discipleship.  He was a godly man who had a great love for God.  Besides that, he is a great writer with the gift of articulating deep spiritual truth clearly. That’s why I still recommend that people read his classics and devotional material.

And that’s enough reason for pausing on the 50^th anniversary of his death to thank God yet again, for the life of one who has helped so many catch a vision of God.

Theological Clarity in the Wake of the Boston Bombings – New TAKE5 Series.

This new series that aired this past week is meant to bring theological clarity and insight from a Biblical perspective on the reality of evil in this world, what God has to say about it, and the solution he offers. There are strongholds all around us, keeping us from experiencing the presence of God, and true community with each other. My hope and prayer is that these strongholds of pride, indifference, hate, superficiality, and fear will be broken, enabling the light of the Gospel will shine bright and true,  bringing healing and restoration.  TAKE 5 airs on weekdays on WTLN 950 AM Radio at 6:55 am & 5:55 pm. For more information visit www.rts.edu/takefive.

What do you say to your teenage daughter about the “Cleveland Nightmare?”

First Newtown, then Boston, and now we have the “Cleveland nightmare.”

So what do you say to your teenage daughter about this?

A 52 year old former school bus driver in Cleveland held three women captive in his home for almost a decade.  It all would have stayed hidden were it not for Amanda Berry’s screams last Monday which alerted neighbors and police that something was wrong—deeply, horrifically, sadistically wrong.

Now Ariel Castro faces multiple charges of kidnapping and rape.  Ten years ago  three girls suddenly disappeared from the area when he lured them into his car, offering a ride home from school or work.  At that moment Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight’s life became, what the media described as “a descent into hell.”

The prosecuting attorney also resorted to theological language when he described Castro’s “premeditated, deliberate and depraved decisions to snatch three young ladies from Cleveland’s west side streets to use for whatever self-gratifying, self-serving ways that he saw fit.”

The girls were secluded and chained in confinement, beaten, starved, repeatedly sexually assaulted, and  threatened with death if they did not cooperate.  I hesitate to add the rest of the details because they are so terribly twisted.

So what do I say to my teenage daughter about this?  Mind you, it is all over the news.  No doubt her friends are talking about it at  school.

When she was younger, I deliberately shielded her from things like this.  Kids lose their “innocence” soon enough.  We did not want her exposed to the worst of the world.

But we did try to immerse her mind in the truths of the Bible.  By memorizing Scripture and reviewing basic Christian doctrine, she would hear things like this—

Q:  Into what estate did the fall bring mankind?
A:  The fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery.
(That is Question 17 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism.)

The verses attached to it included Romans 5.12:  Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.

So even though she was not exposed to details of heinous crimes, she learned a theology that gave her perspective before the inevitable exposure.  She learned that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick;  who can understand it?  (ESV Jeremiah 17.9).

“Sin and misery”?  At first, I am sure it sounded overstated to my daughter.  But as she has grown older, and heard of Newtowns, Boston bombers, persecuted Nigerian Christians, and the girls of Cleveland, let alone seen the unique depravity of middle school girls, I am sure she has a basic understanding of the darkness of the human heart.

And as we talk at the dinner table, we have told her that the world, beautiful as it sometimes looks, is in crisis. It is badly broken—radically disordered, morally and spiritually dislocated.

And on top of all this, we have told her that, just as there is a real Holy Spirit, there is also a real unholy spirit, diabolos, the Devil, our adversary who throws himself at the truth, and loves to destroy lives.

So, she heard that things were bad.  She may not have believed us as we taught these truths, but at least she had Biblical categories to process  wickedness.

And  now she is getting a sense of  just how corrupt the world really is.  It is hitting home.

So what else do we do?

We teach her the gospel.  We tell her that there is someone who will judge the world in righteousness.   There is one who can forgive sins and change the human heart.  And there is someone who will put away all oppression and injustice and remake the world.  For he has defeated the adversary.

We teach her to be discerning and understand the dark capacities of the human heart—while at the same time, we teach her that people are capable of kindness and decency.  In other words we try to strike a Biblical balance– we want her to love people and live with confidence, but we do not want her to be naïve and walk into a stranger’s trap.   We do not want her to be unaware of the nature of sexual violence and assault that is all too common in our land.

I suppose, one of these days, I may even have her take a class in self defense.  I want her to be courageous and to stand up to what is wrong.  But I want her to draw a deeper security from a gospel hope that is rooted in Christ and can speak to the most gruesome news and realities that come her way.

That’s what I say. What do you say to your teenage daughter about the nightmares like Cleveland?

President’s Forum with Dr. Michael Goheen on the Church and Religious Pluralism

How does Christ’s Church live faithfully amidst the World Religions

I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Dr. Michael Goheen, Professor of Missiology at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI, about how the Christian church can live faithfully in a world of religious pluralism, the responses offered by the Christian church, the theology of religions shaped by the Reformed tradition, and if there is truth to be found in world religions. In this discussion, Islam is used in view as an illustration to these issues.

Three Free Sins with Steve Brown

Last year I had the chance to interview Dr. Steve Brown on the the topic of his most recent book “Three Free Sins: A New Book and Thoughts on Radical Grace”.  I just realized I forgot to post this amazing video to my blog.  Steve has been a professor at RTS Orlando and had an amazing impact on our students. His love for Jesus and commitment to the Gospel comes out in everything he says, teaches and writes. After years of trying to teach people to be holy, Steve became fed up with reaching for the impossible. And so one day on his nationwide radio program, he offered the outlandish promise of three free sins. Sound too good to be true? The truth, Brown says, is that it is true.” This interview is full of humor and serious gospel truth. Enjoy.