Shuffle Growth is the Plague of Danville Churches

Despite the fall in overall church attendance, only one in six regular churchgoers thinks the church he or she attends is declining in numbers. Two-fifths think their church is growing. Perhaps some people are in denial about falling church numbers. But it may also be that many churches are growing but mainly through transfer growth. A declining number of Christians are consolidating into growing churches. It is still possible to grow a church by offering a better church experience than other churches. Whatever the merit of this, it is vital for us to realize that this is not evangelistic growth. It is possible to plant a church and see it grow without doing mission. "People can be attracted to a church by what it offers," says Jim Peterson, "but ... increase of this sort isn't church growth at all. It's just a reshuffling of the same fifty two cards."

~Everyday Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis

The Freelance Christian?

The freelance Christian, who follows Jesus but is too good, too busy, or too self-sufficient for the church, is a walking contradiction. In the old covenant, God set his people apart from the nations. In the new covenant, he sets us apart as we live among the nations. But all of Scripture testifies that believers cannot be godly or fruitful without joining God's family and realizing some form of separation from the world. 

~Daniel M. Doriani, I Peter Reformed Expository Commentary

you must have a doctrine

In his epistle to the Romans, Paul mentions predestination in close proximity to God's foreknowledge: "Whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren." (Romans 8:29) Christians who seek to be biblical in their thinking must have a doctrine of election and of predestination. These concepts were not invented by Augustine in his debate with Pelagius, or by Luther in his debate with Erasmus, or by Calvin in his debate with Pigius, or by Edwards in his debate with Chubb. These concepts of election and predestination are found in the text of Scripture. If you really want to be biblical as a Christian, it is incumbent upon you to hold to the biblical doctrine of predestination and of election and not some other construction. 

R. C. Sproul, St. Andrews Expositional Commentary on 1 - 2 Peter

The first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord.

I have been reading the book Desiring God, by John Piper. This morning I came across a lengthy quote of George Mueller's that I feel compelled to share with you:

While I was staying at Nailsworth, it pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, irrespective of human instrumentality, as far as I know, the benefit of which I have not lost, though now... more than forty years have passed away.

C.S. Lewis on Praise

I have probably quoted this before, but bear with me as I find the need to quote it again ... I am typing this (not copying and pasting) from the book Desiring God by John Piper. (I type it because it helps me to consider each word in the phrase.) This particular Lewis quote comes from that book, though he is not the only one who has revisited this quote. Lewis' insight on Praise in this quote has, I am sure, helped many in their understanding of the strong connection between God's love for His people and His command that they praise Him.

... the most obvious fact about praise -- whether of God or any thing -- strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness of the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check on it. The world rings with praise -- lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game -- praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least ...  

I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: "Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?" The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what in deed we can't help doing, about everything else we value.  

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. 

Like I said, this is C.S. Lewis speaking. It comes from his book Reflections on the Psalms. The portion that I quoted came from the book Desiring God. You can also read an article on this by Sam Storms on the Desiring God website, by clicking here: Praise: The Consummation of Joy.

not for incarnation's sake

"... Jesus did not become incarnate for incarnations sake, as if the incarnation were itself sufficient to save his people. Our plight is not that we are finite, that we are not-God; and the remedy for our plight is not some new metaphysical connection to God. Rather, our plight is ethical: We have sinned, and therefore we are in a state of personal estrangement from our Creator. Jesus' in carnation was a means of bringing about reconciliation between ourselves and God."
~John M. Frame (pg. 899 Systematic Theology)

This is really important.

How the Gospel Brings Us All the Way Home by Derek W.H. Thomas - Book Review

I finished reading the book How the Gospel Brings Us All the Way Home on the bus, on my way to school this morning. I don't remember exactly when I started this book, but it was my "morning plug and chug" book.

How the Gospel Brings Us All the Way Home, by Derek Thomas is a book that is an exposition of Romans 8. Each chapter deals with a few verses from the chapter, explaining their meaning and their application in the Christian life, according to the larger context of the Epistle to the Romans.

The Gospel truly does bring us all the way home. The Gospel message is not just for those who are hearing it for the first time. It is not the message that gets you to be a Christian, but is never revisited... The Gospel is for when you were saved, when you are being saved, and for when you will be saved.  The Christian lives and breathes the Gospel. We are to preach it to ourselves and remind ourselves of the Gospel every day of our lives. This book does a wonderful job of highlighting how the Gospel flows to every part of the Christian's life and being.

There are three things about this book that I would like to point out:

1) This book had a very "Pastoral" feel. While reading it, I felt as if I was being shepherded by a brother in Christ... someone sharing their learning experiences with this chapter in the Bible. I would assume that Derek Thomas is a pastor of a church, and I would make the guess that this book was an outpouring of a sermon series that he had worked (and preached) through at his church.

2) This book is very helpful. I suppose that this point could probably fit into the previous point, but not every helpful book is pastoral in nature. These two things don't always go hand-in-hand, but in the case of this book they were arm-in-arm. With each passing chapter, I found myself applying some point or other that Derek Thomas was making. Quite often there were aspects of the teaching that were directly applicable to that very day when I was actually doing the reading in the morning. Several times there were issues that sprang up one day, and the next morning, while I was reading, I found something perfectly relevant to the issue from the previous day. These are my favorite sort of books.

3) This book was full of relevant quotes. Sometimes when I read a book that is full of quotes, it is almost as if the author is attempting to show-off his literary prowess. It can feel bragadoscious to keep quoting obscure portions of text from famous authors. That was not the case with this book. I found many, if not all of the quotes that he shared to be very fitting for the occasion, and would often serve as a summary of one teaching or other that he was attempting to get across.

Mingling with Splendors

This is going to be an extended quote from the book How the Gospel Brings Us All the Way Home by Derek W.H. Thomas: (I believe it is worth reading all the way to the end.)

Derek Thomas introduces this lengthy quote by C.S. Lewis in this way:

Surely our vision of what lies before us is too small. Great things are in store for those who are in union with Jesus Christ. Allow C.S. Lewis to expand your idea of what glorification is:

And then he shares these thoughts from C.S. Lewis:

We are to shine as the sun, we are to be given the Morning Star. I think I begin to see what it means. In one way, of course, God has given us the Morning Star already: you can go and enjoy the gift of many fine mornings if you get up early enough. What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more -- something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. 

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words -- to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves -- that, though we cannot, yet these projections can enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image. 

That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can't. They tell us that "beauty born of murmuring sound" will pass into a human face; but it won't. Or not yet. For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendor of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, maybe very near the truth as prophecy. 

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumors that it will not always be so. 

Some day, God willing, we shall get in. 

When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch ... And in there, in beyond Nature, we shall eat of the tree of life.

I can't wait to enter the annex.

click to view on Amazon

I am currently reading the book How the Gospel Brings Us All the Way Home, by Derek Thomas. It has been an interesting book so far: well written, Biblical, and practical.

Today I ran across a quote in the book from John Calvin:  (John Calvin, commenting on I Peter 1:11)

The Church of Christ has been from the beginning so constituted, that the cross has been the way to victory, and death a passage to life ... The order is to be noticed; he mentions sufferings first, and then adds the glories which are to follow. For he intimates that this order cannot be changed or subverted; afflictions must precede glory. So there is to be understood a twofold truth in these words, -- that Christians must suffer many troubles before they enjoy glory, -- and that afflictions are not evils, because they have glory annexed to them.

Even as I type this, my thoughts are, "That is profound. Suffering is a hard truth, not a soft one... But what an important truth!"

If you are in the midst of suffering in your life, please heed the words of John Calvin. They are true words. Embrace your suffering as a preliminary to embracing your glory.

by no means

I just started a surprisingly good book. I just started it this morning, and I am already on chapter 4... or maybe it is chapter 5. Either way, I am working through this book quickly, but I say, "a surprisingly good book" because it has been on my kindle for a while. Usually when I get a new good book, I try to consume it right away, but this one has been hiding in the shadows.

The book is called How the Gospel Brings Us All the Way Home, by Derek Thomas. I will save a synopsis for when I am ready to give the book a full review, but I do want to share a quote from the book that prompted this blogging moment.

"Of course, salvation by grace rather than our performance can be seen as a license to sin (antinomianism). Paul's response in Romans is something like this: if we are not tempted to think like that, we have not understood the gospel."

I haven't thought of it like this before. Now, Derek Thomas has just been explaining our salvation by grace and the reality that there truly is, "... no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Our salvation not depending on our performance is so wonderful, but it is a little unnerving when you begin to understand it. He goes on to say,

"Grace must raise the temptation to think we can sin as we please; if it does not, we have not understood the true extent of grace. However, at no time can we yield to the temptation to think this way, because Christians are called to a life of holiness -- holiness motivated by gratitude for all that God has done for them in the gospel of Jesus Christ."

This is so true. Like I said, I haven't thought of it this way before, but the Gospel is really scandalous! I can hardly believe it sometimes.

Blogging the Institutes #1

/begin_rambling

I have been wanting to blog more often. I find writing to be beneficial. It forces me to think, I mean, really think. Normally, thinking can seem fairly simple, but to think in such a way that would be able to convey the same thought, with all of it's nuances and fluctuations of feeling, to someone else, can be quite challenging.

Words must be picked accurately and meticulously in order to capture that firing of neurons in my brain. To then translate that sequence of fired brain cells into words that are then sent as impulses down my arms to my fingers to formulate those same words onto a computer screen on Blogger.com. And then to have this done in such a way that when all of the little 0's and 1's of the binary computer language are re-translated back into words that will show up on another's computer screen, after having traveled through the waves of the internet, as the light waves from those reconstructed letters, enter the eyes, the shapes that they create will make sense to this completely separate brain in such a way that the identical thought in the first brain will now be a new collection of fired neurons in the second brain. This is a marvelous thing.

But it has left me struggling with the blogging topics. For such a long time I simply blogged book reviews, but this blog originally had actual thoughts that I would attempt to convey through the blogging medium, though I did it quite poorly at times, that was my original intent. So... I am back at it, but needing to give myself some better direction.

I have been trying to simply blog what comes to my mind each day, when I have a chance, but have found that I have trouble picking which thought to run with. It isn't a shortage of thoughts, it is an overabundance of thoughts, but most of them are undeveloped thoughts. They simply are not specific enough to narrow it down to one blog post, and when I try to, they tend to become too burdensome to try to actually type out in a meaningful way. This post is because I am going to try something a bit different. I am going to blog through a big book... The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin. And... this is supposed to be the first post from the book, and I have already gone overboard on non-book-related conversation. Time to move on.

Since there are only two of you remaining that are continuing to read, instead of risking your loss, I will simply share a quote from the book and allow you to consider it for yourself:

Such is pure and genuine religion, namely, confidence in God coupled with serious fear - fear, which both includes in it willing reverence, and brings along with it such legitimate worship as is prescribed by the law. And it ought to be more carefully considered that all men promiscuously do homage to God, but very few truly reverence him. On all hands, there is abundance of ostentatious ceremonies, but sincerity of heart is rare. 

When you understand the nature of worship, and then couple that with the fact that it is commanded, we suddenly become acutely aware of our own need for genuine heart-change.

I promise that the next "Blogging the Institutes" posts will be more about the Institutes and less about why I am blogging about them.

/end_rambling

The Real vs. The Imitation

It shouldn't, but it always surprises me when I taste something real after I have had the imitation for a while.

I won't lie. I have gone to McDonald's and had their coffee drinks. They aren't bad. The cold ones are sort of like a milk shake... a milk shake with coffee-flavor added. I've had a few of these, but then:

A few minutes ago I ordered a small vanilla latte from Mad Goat Coffee. The picture I have posted here is after I have had my first sip. It is sublime. (Is that a good word to describe it? I am not sure.) It is blissful. It is tasty. It is coffee... not coffee-flavor added. It is the real stuff.

I am almost done sipping through it already. I am tempted to take another picture, just simply because it is almost gone... oh... I might as well... hang on...

There it is. Mostly finished... OH, and you can see my partially finished post while you are at it.

The enjoyment of this coffee left me thinking about the clear difference between the real and the imitation. As I mentioned, I don't mind that McCoffee stuff, but there is a clear difference when you taste the real thing. I know there have been times that I have grabbed one of those fast food blended drinks and thought, "This isn't that bad." But now I am sitting here wondering how I ever thought that there was a true comparison.

I don't want to make a stretch of illustration here, but this is true of churches as well. There are some great churches out there: The music team is amazing. The preaching is inspiring. The fellowship is uplifting... and so on.  But then you walk into something real, and you suddenly think, "How did I think the other thing was the real thing?"

It the book, Love into Light, the author is talking about how churches could benefit from having people who struggle with same sex attraction as a part of the community.  He goes on to say:

I fear that many Christians view their brothers and sisters who battle with SSA (Same Sex Attraction) as a threat to the community. Therefore, many SSA strugglers are phobic about homophobia. They agonize alone, for fear of rejection. However, the community needs their transparency - and they need the community. God surprises us with unexpected insights when the unspeakable is spoken. Our serene picture of community is shattered; the reality is more earthy, disappointing, and fruitful.

I love that: "... the reality is more earthy, disappointing, and fruitful." Almost sounds like a cup of coffee, doesn't it?

I hope that Edgewood Church has the great privelege of joining in community with those who struggle with SSA. I pray that God guides them to Edgewood. What can I say, I like the real stuff better.

Preach the Lion and the Lamb

As with most of the book, Chapter 7 of Love into Light by Peter Hubbard, opens with a focus and attention on Jesus:

My favorite Jonathan Edwards sermon is "The Excellency of Christ." Edwards homes in on two words in Revelation 5:5-6, where Jesus Christ is called "Lion" and "Lamb." These two animals differ greatly from one another. One "excels in strength, and in majesty of his appearance and voice." The other "excels in meekness and patience ... suitable to be offered to God." One is a hunter; the other is hunted. This unity of disparity leads Edwards to his thesis, "There is an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies in Jesus Christ." Characteristics that usually don't appear together merge in attractive symmetry: infinite exaltation and limitless condescension, highest glory and lowest humility, supreme sovereignty and perfect obedience. He is light and He is love. He is victor and victim in one. He is the just Judge and the merciful Savior. He confronted sin, overthrew tables, and walked out of His own tomb, yet He was born in a barn, ate with sinners and died as a criminal. This vision of Jesus is gargantuan and captivating, yet it is often concealed by the church. 

I love this big view of Jesus. To use his word, it is "captivating" my own preaching. Even though I still have applications in my messages, I am finding myself focusing more and more on the great worth and supreme  majesty of Jesus. But Peter Hubbard is saying that this view of Jesus "is often concealed by the church." Do you agree? In what way does he mean this? He goes on to say:

The body of Christ generally prefers a more manageable, monochromatic vision of Jesus. Our religious sensibilities seem to prefer either the Jesus who can "tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them," or else the Jesus who desires to care for rebels "as a hen gathers her brood under her wings." We want only one or the other, not both together.  

Whenever Jesus' followers exclusively reflect Lion-ness or Lamb-ness, the "admirable conjunction" dissolves into ugliness. 

It is so extremely important to maintain this focus on the true Jesus. Not a Jesus that we decide on, but the Jesus of the scriptures.

Upward I Look And See Him There

Before the throne of God above 

I have a strong, a perfect plea. 

A great high Priest whose Name is Love 

Who ever lives and pleads for me. 

My name is graven on His hands, 

My name is written on His heart. 

I know that while in heaven He stands 

No tongue can bid me thence depart. 

When Satan tempts me to despair 

And tells me of the guilt within, 

Upward I look and see Him there 

Who made an end to all my sin. 

Because the sinless Savior died 

My sinful soul is counted free. 

For God the just is satisfied 

To look on Him and pardon me...

(As quoted in Love Into Light: The Gospel, the Homosexual and the Church by Peter Hubbard) Song by Charitee Lees Bancroft and Vikki Cook, (c)1997 Sovereign Grace Worship (Admin. by EMI Christian Music Publishing).

But In Jesus We Are Renamed

I am currently preparing for a Wednesday Night Bible Study with my people at Edgewood, using the book Love Into Light by Peter Hubbard. (My review is here.) I have thoroughly enjoyed this book the second time through. I am only in Chapter 5, but I am remembering so many things I loved about this book.

Chapter 5 deals with labels... our names... how we are identified. After going through some fascinating discussion on the Biblical history of names and naming things, from Adam being named by God and Eve being named by Adam, to the anonymous mass attempting to make a name for themselves at Babel and God choosing an unknown man named Abram and renaming him Abraham... He states an issue involved this way: "...who we think we are tends to reinterpret what we hear." He follows this statement with this paragraph:

"In our culture, formal names do not carry the same significance as in the Bible. However, we know what it means to be named. The 'wimp,' the 'fat kid,' and 'the loser' all feel the shame of living with an undesirable identity. The kids who are labeled 'gifted' and 'brain' feel the waves of approval and pressure that can shape how they view themselves and perform. As adults, these labels do not typically disappear. They become more subtle and convoluted. Our hearts long to 'make a name' for ourselves. We gather fragments of desire, reputation, and accomplishments and glue then together into an identity: 'rebel,' 'jock,' 'supermom,' 'entrepreneur,' 'life of the party,' 'chick magnet,' 'gay guy,' etc. Most of us feel a mixture of fatalism, assent, and chagrin about our not-always-chosen but fully operative identities.  

But in Jesus, we are renamed.

He leaves that last sentence as a paragraph in itself. He goes from there to explain how we are renamed in Jesus. It is fascinating. It is remarkable. And it draws me to worship.

Old People and their Technology!

I regularly rant (in my house) against the "evils" of video games and television. I do this, not primarily against the content of these technological advances, though that can be an issue, but against the time-wasting aspect that usage of these forms of entertainment are connected to. Don't get me wrong, I can enjoy a good show as much as the next person, but I have never thought to myself, "Wow. I should have spent more time playing games." or "Boy, I wish I could go back to my youth and watch more television."

This isn't just an issue with the young. There is no denying it, we all have seen many an elderly person waste away watching television, but even that isn't the prime issue. It is those who, in their 50's and 60's, are now living entirely for themselves. They feel that they have put in their time and now it is "all about me." I am sure they would not say these words, but their lives are vacation after vacation after vacation... in one form or another. We were simply not made to exist that way, and we do not continue to live and breathe simply for ourselves and our enjoyment.

J.I. Packer, hits on the realities of this in his book, Weakness Is the Way: Life with Christ Our Strength . The side-shoot of this topic is the resulting bleakness of life as one grows older. Many are simply "waiting for the end." Consider this quote from his book:

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast," declared Alexander Pope in his usual pompous way, but that is not all the story. For the first half of people's lives, spontaneous hope does indeed spur them forward. Children hope to do this and that when they grow up; teens hope to go places and do things when they have some money; newlyweds hope for a good income, a good place to live, and good-quality children; established couples hope for the day when the children will be off their hands and they are free to cruise, tour, and see the world. But what then? There comes a point at which the elderly and those who, as we say, are getting on realize that of all the things they wanted to do, they have done all they can, and the rest are now permanently out of reach ("life's too short," we say wryly). 

Yet life goes on. Today, indeed, people live longer than once they did, but the common experience is that extended and extreme age brings only bleak boredom and a diminished sense of the good life as consisting merely of three meals a day, television to watch, and a bed at night. Whether, as bodily health fades and minds and memories run increasingly amok, any better, more enriching experience of old age is possible is a question that secular social theory has shown itself unable to answer.  

But the Bible appears to have an answer... 

He goes on from this point to begin to describe the Bible's teachings combined with his own perspectives on aging and hope.

I am enjoying reading this book by Packer. I think it was free when I purchased it. It is a bit more expensive now, but it is definitely one worth picking up.

Moral Determination = FAIL

I am preparing for our Wednesday night Bible Study. We are currently ready for chapter 3 in the book, Love Into Light by Peter Hubbard. As I am reading through this chapter on "Change" I am once again finding so many connections between the topic of the book and our everyday Christian Struggles. More specifically the unbiblical/wrong methods of change are so familiar to me as the typical way that many in the church have attempted and hoped for change. The one I am noticing now is "Moral Determination." Read this quote and tell me if it rings true to Scripture:

Determination alone cannot lead us to God -- only to gods, individually constructed deities that are manageable and obtainable. If in myself I am determined that I will be able to please God, I am confessing worship to a false god -- either I am turning my aspirations themselves into gods, or I am creating a false version of the true God, a god whom I think will be pleased by my resolutions and performance. The God of the Bible is far different from these false gods: He is higher and holier than all my resolve could possibly obtain. ‘For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.’ The determined have their own plan. God dwells with the broken and humble, the powerless and planless.

Oh, how often I have attempted to change based on my own moral determination to do so. And oh how often it has failed.

I love books.

I love books.

I am not sure if those of you who follow my blog regularly know this little tidbit of truth about me. Maybe you have noticed. Or maybe it has slipped past your keen, intuitive perceptions as you have followed my blogging over the past several years. I know it might be difficult to pick up on this infatuation of mine, but it is very true... I love books.

I will admit right now that I mostly love theological works. I am not saying this to say that I am any better than anyone else. This isn't a prideful, show-offy sort of statement. This isn't meant to be bragging because it isn't that I believe that all of the high, intellectually minded people read theology, I know that is not the case. I just mention it to say that this is what I enjoy: I love thinking about God. Who is He? What is He like? What are His attributes? How does all of this truth about God tie together? So, there is not intentional braggadociousness happening when I mention that I love reading theology. In fact, I don't believe that a person's intelligence can be defined by what they read. The truth is that there are plenty of idiotic people that read theology. It is equally true that there is plenty of idiotic theology out there that only serves to perpetuate the idiocy.

Second to my love of theological works, is my intense enjoyment of Science Fiction writing. I know that for some these two don't tie together very well. This is mostly because the overwhelming mass of SciFi is atheistic (or at least agnostic) in nature. But I have two reasons why I enjoy SciFi, and these two reasons are able to categorize the author's atheistic worldview as simply that: the author's worldview and not reality.

The first reason why I enjoy SciFi because it is imaginative. There are not many forms of literature (other than fantasy) that really unlock the doors of the creative imagination of an author as much as SciFi. All of the "what if's" can become "and then's" in SciFi. My other reason ties back the the author's worldview. In SciFi, worldviews are quite often played out. I love evaluating how authors decide what people will act like and what their real views of the human race and our universe look like. It is an interesting study in our perceptions of people and where we are all headed and what we are really about and why we are here to begin with.

My third favorite book type is fantasy. Specifically the older stuff. I am not much for the newer fantasy writings. I have enjoyed my Tolkien, Lewis, and Chesterton. I love the way these authors are able to create a world. I probably could have listed SciFi and Fantasy together as one genre of book that I enjoy, because my reasons for liking Fantasy are basically the same as my reasons for liking SciFi. But I listed them separately because there are far fewer fantasy authors that I have enjoyed.

The fourth on my list of book genres that I enjoy are historical biographies and autobiographies. This is new for me. I didn't used to enjoy these books at all, but lately I have found great enjoyment in reading about John Calvin, Martin Luther, Galileo Galilei, Augustine, John Bunyan, etc. It is those stories of the people that are famous in Church/Religious history that I find appealing. What were these people like? How did they live? What were their weaknesses?

This is not a list of the only types of literature that I read. I have enjoyed Poetry and the Classics. I have enjoyed the occasional Teacher book or the topical Christian perspective sort of book, but these four categories is where I always head first to find a good read.

There is no Kryptonite for God's Grace.

It is so natural and so easy to get bogged down in the idea that what we've done or what we've been through is simply too much for grace to overcome. We declare ourselves untouchable, unreachable, or un-healable. Remember Paul's words: "Forget what is behind." 

 Refusing to forget these things, in the end, this is just a subtle form of pride. In doing this we assume that we're the one person who is too much of a problem for Jesus. We're the one nut He can't crack. We've got the one situation for which the cross of Christ is inadequate.  

Oh sure, He can save Paul, He can deliver Peter, and He can make all things new. But not me! I've got grace's kryptonite. And this is how refusing to forget what lies behind is prideful.  

On the flip side of that, because of the cross and because salvation is from Christ alone, we can actually come to boast all the more in our dark pasts. No, we do not boast as a way of glorifying sin or championing ourselves, but instead to magnify the wonders of the grace and mercy of Christ.  

~ Matt Chandler in To Live is Christ

May God's grace speedily shatter such dreams...

You may have to read this quote twice.

This is so good and so important. I want everyone who is a part of the Edgewood Baptist Church Community to read and understand this idea. I added some emphasis to help get across the point. Read this a couple of times and let me know what you think.

Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christians life together should be and to try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.  

By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.  

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together)

Come to Edgewood... get your dreams shattered... and (by the grace of God) may we all discover a better/truer Christian Community.