Hey everyone, Derek here (a.k.a. “Mr. THEOparadox“).

One of the oft-overlooked qualities essential for any pastor is that he “must have a good reputation with those outside the church.” (I Timothy 3:7). This past Sunday I heard a testimony that demonstrates the fruit of possessing this qualification.

In our men’s Sunday School class, our pastor’s neighbor shared the reason he recently started attending our church. He said that he had waited two years before coming to the church because he wanted to “see if this man really was who he claimed to be.” After observing and interacting with my pastor during that time, including a spirited dispute over a fence line, he saw something authentic and impressive (no doubt it was the image of Christ, unobscured by human pride). My pastor passed the reputation test, and he’s won the opportunity to effectively share the Gospel as a result. God uses the qualifications He requires.

For several years, I was part of a very solid family of Reformed charismatic churches. There, I discovered a peculiarly strong emphasis on the Biblical qualifications for church leaders. I saw these qualifications accurately described and defined, and I watched as my pastors were held accountable not only to attain the qualifications at the start, but to maintain them all the way through. I know of specific cases where church discipline was applied because leaders failed to remain “above reproach” in areas like finances and family discipleship. All of this was very refreshing, especially in light of my Pentecostal background. Back in my Pentecostal days, anyone who had a decent speaking voice, a strong personality, and something interesting to say, could be a preacher, teacher, or leader in the church. Everyone was considered “qualified until proven guilty.” But in the Reformed charismatic church, the qualifications sometimes seemed unattainable for common mortals.

The pastor of the small Evangelical Free church I’ve been attending for about a year now offers a radically different approach that brings a needed balance. He once told me: “Derek, if you can’t do what I’m doing, then I’m not doing the right things. The Biblical qualifications for leadership are the goal for all of the men in our church. When there is a need for leadership, there should be a large pool of men to choose from because we’re all learning to be leaders in our homes, and many of us will have attained to those qualifications.” In my previous church, leadership qualities seemed to be reserved for the elite few who dared to make a run at them, but here they are a universal goal and are viewed as the roadmap of growth for every Christian man. Although the bar has not been lowered, the grace to reach it is now much more sharply in focus.

To summarize, I have seen three different approaches to the qualifications listed in I Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1 . . .

1. Make them irrelevant by under-emphasizing them – ignoring or downplaying their significance.
2. Make them unachievable by over-emphasizing them – sometimes to the point of elitism (which makes them practically irrelevant for most people).
3. Aim to instill them by making them an achievable goal for all Christian men – by grace and through the ongoing work of sanctification.

Certainly there is a need for special gifting in areas like teaching, administration, etc., but I’m primarily considering the character qualifications. In the lists below, the only real gifting is “able to teach.” All the rest are issues of character.

Qualifications for Elders:

• must be above reproach
• must be blameless
• the husband of but one wife
• temperate
• self-controlled
• respectable
• hospitable
• able to teach
• not given to drunkenness
• not violent but gentle
• not quarrelsome
• not a lover of money
• must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect
• a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient
• must not be a recent convert
• must have a good reputation with outsiders

Qualifications for Overseers/Bishops:

• must be blameless
• not overbearing
• not quick-tempered
• not given to drunkenness
• not violent
• not pursuing dishonest gain
• must be hospitable
• one who loves what is good
• self-controlled
• upright
• holy
• disciplined
• must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it

Qualifications for Deacons:

• are to be men worthy of respect
• sincere
• not indulging in much wine
• not pursuing dishonest gain
• must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience
• must first be tested; and then if there is nothing against them, let them serve as deacons
• must be the husband of but one wife
• must manage his children and his household well
• their wives are to be women worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything

Here are the generally ignored qualifications for a deacon from Acts 6 . . .

• known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom

So . . . how are Biblical qualifications for leadership handled in your church?

~ Derek ~

The Music Man

Last year I told you about my daughter the director.  Now it appears that we have another budding thespian in the family.

My youngest son was selected last winter to play the part of Winthrop in a Sikeston Little Theatre production of “The Music Man.”  It was his first play.  He had always been a little shy, so I wasn’t sure how well he would handle being in the spotlight.

As it turned out, he handled it pretty well.  In fact, I want to tell you a couple of “behind the scenes” stories.  If you’re interested in those, continue reading below the video.

This video consists of six excerpts from the play, beginning with the introduction just before the opening curtain (read by my son as Winthrop, with his trademark lisp).  The clip includes “Gary, Indiana” and a portion of “Wells Fargo Wagon.”  Keep in mind that this is a small town amateur theater; it’s a lot of fun, but it’s still amateur through and through.

Two things about my son’s effort during this adventure made me very proud.  The first was his unassuming attitude.

He was the youngest boy trying out for the part, and he knew that his age and inexperience probably put him at a disadvantage.  The kids were allowed to sing anything they wanted for their tryout.  Since Winthrop has a lisp in the play, my wife wisely selected “All I Want for Christmas” for his tryout.  As you might expect a shy eight year old boy to do, he stood on stage with his hands in his pockets, blinded by the bright stage lights and looking a little timid, and started to sing.

He blew me away.  He nailed every note, and by the time he got to the failed whistle attempt that comes right after “if I could only whith-le,” everyone in the theater roared.  That caught him off guard, but he quickly regained his composure and finished the song.  The audience clapped and cheered enthusiastically.  He seemed genuinely surprised at the response he received.  His unassuming child-likeness was the first thing that made me very proud.

(We found out later that they had intended to have 2 or 3 of the leading contenders for the part come back a few days later and read for the part.  But the directors were so pleased with Micah’s tryout that they didn’t call anyone else back.)

The second thing that made me proud also makes me wonder whether I did the right thing.  Micah started getting sick on the final weekend of performances.  He didn’t feel well Friday and came down with a fever Saturday.

That created a tremendous dilemma for me.  My first instinct was to pull him out of the play and let him rest, but there was no one who could take his place.  He only made it though the Saturday and Sunday performance with Tylenol and breathing treatments.  By the time we took him to the doctor on Monday morning, he was right on the verge of pneumonia.

I felt terrible.  I still don’t know whether we did the right thing.  But that leads me to the second thing that made me proud.  He was such a trooper.  He was extremely sick, but he was the one who wanted to keep going, and I think he gave his best performances those last two days.

Postscript

That was a grueling experience.  Since the “Music Man” was an adult play, the practices were long and late for a third grader.  We decided to take a break and sit out the next couple of plays.  But…

A few weeks ago, he auditioned for a part in a children’s version of “A Christmas Carol.”  I’m pleased to announce he’ll be appearing at The Sikeston Little Theatre this December as Ebenezer Scrooge.  Bah! Humbug!

Every year as Halloween approaches, a familiar controversy resurfaces.  Should Christians celebrate the holiday, or not?  Is Halloween a trick—a subtle doorway into the dark world of the occult; or a treat—a good time with family and friends and the neighbors we otherwise seldom see?

My blog spotting this week consists of posts (both old and new) written by Christians with widely divergent views on the origin, customs, and advisability of celebrating Halloween.

There are those who believe everything about Halloween is demonic and irredeemably evil.  I consider that an extreme position.  I thought about linking to a recent article as an example, but decided I didn’t want to take a chance on somehow dignifying it in the process.  (I’m still shaking my head over some of the mind-boggling statements in it.)

But setting aside bizarre and extreme views, I think there’s real value in hearing what godly men have to say about whether or how a particular holiday should be celebrated.  I think it’s a legitimate question:  Should Christians celebrate Halloween?

Some say NO, some say YES, some say…MAYBE

Dan Edelen doesn’t like Halloween, as he made clear a couple of years ago with The Obligatory “Halloween Is Bad” Post …he also doesn’t see much point in Halloween alternatives.  He tells why in this post:  The Church and the Halloween Alternative Party

Al Mohler also urges caution, reminding readers “that evil spirits are real”:  Christianity and the Dark Side–What About Halloween?

For three consecutive years, 2005, 2006, and 2007,  Tim Challies took a slightly different approach, expressing his conviction “that it is a very poor witness to have the house of believers blacked out on Halloween.”

Michael Patton got a little fired up in his post a few days ago, chiding those who consider Halloween irredeemably evil.  Lots of comments on this one: Jesus with His Lights Turned off on Halloween

Pete Wilson says he enjoys Halloween:  Can Christians Celebrate Halloween?

Randy Alcorn offers a little food for thought in A Perspective on Halloween

Greg Koukl (unlike Dan) thinks alternative celebrations are probably a good idea:  Christians and Halloween (video)

Finally, in the interest of lightening up just a little, Ben Witherington thought if would be fun to re-post an article from The Onion (yes, that Onion) for Halloween a couple of years ago:  Just in Time for All Hallow’s Eve– Ezekiel’s Skeleton People Show Up

You might hate Halloween, or you might love it.  I think you have every right (and maybe even a responsibility) to argue your point, and argue it passionately.  But for those of us who are Christians, we need to be careful not to pass judgment on those brothers and sisters who might beg to differ with us.

One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written,

“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall confess to God.”

So then each of us will give an account of himself to God (Rom. 14:5-12).

What about me?  I guess I’m somewhere in the middle.  I think Halloween can be harmless fun.  And I think Halloween can be full of occultic darkness and godless debauchery.  In one sense, Halloween is what it is; but in another, perhaps, it is what we make it.

I’ve never met Tony Kummer in real life, although I now believe he’s a real person, and not a zombie, as I had once wondered aloud here on this blog.

Tony has been active for several years on various blogs and social networking sites.  He’s encouraged me, both directly and indirectly, to see social media as a good way to engage people in important discussions about Christ and the Bible.

In conjunction with the relaunch of one of his previous projects, Tony’s giving away a great selection of devotional books.  The website, known as Devotional Christian, is a combination of original articles and RSS feeds for some of the very best online devotionals.

Here’s just a small sampling of the books that will be given away:

1. Golden Treasury of Puritan Devotion: Selections from the Writings of 13 Puritans by Di Gangi, Mariano
2. Faith Alone: A Daily Devotional (Hardcover) by Luther, Martin
3. Search the Scriptures: A Three Year Daily Devotional Guide to the Whole Bible
4. Day by Day with the Early Church Fathers (Hardcover) by Hudson, Christopher D.
5. Teach Us to Pray: 365 Prayers from the Bible (Paperback) by Beals, Timothy J.
6. Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (Hardcover) by Keller, Timothy
7. The Fruitful Life: The Overflow of God’s Love Through You (Paperback) by Bridges, Jerry
8. In Christ Alone: Reflections on the Heart of the Gospel (Hardcover) by Sinclair Ferguson.
9. The Loveliness of Christ (Soft Gift Edition) by Rutherford, Samuel (foreword by Sinclair Ferguson)
10. The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians (Paperback) by Storms, C. Samuel
11. Lord and His Prayer by Wright, N. T.

I encourage you to check out Devotional Christian, and add it to your feed reader.  If you’d like to enter the giveaway, click here for details.

After a week of fall break, or “fall reading days”, things are once again back in full swing here at Southern.  Our latest lecture in Biblical Counseling concerned the putting off of pride, and the putting on of humility.  Dr. Scott, I believe, very accurately described pride as an “epidemic vice”.

The question we have to ask ourselves is not whether or not it exists in our lives, but where and how much.  Amy Carmichael once said, “Those who think too much of themselves don’t think enough.”  We can see this is a huge problem in our culture, and modern therapeutic methods have only thrown gasoline onto the proverbial fire.

The definition we used for pride is the mindset of self: a focus on self and the service of self, a pursuit of self-recognition and self-exaltation, and a desire to control and use all things for self.  (See any key terms here??)

We went through 31 different manifestations of pride, including a lack of gratitude, having an inflated view of our importance or giftings, perfectionism, lack of compassion, and maximizing the sin and shortcoming of others.  As we were going through these, we all kind of thought, “OK, OK, we get it, we’ve got pride in our lives.  Now let’s move to humility…”.  However, the professor stressed that we really need to linger here for a while and truly expose ourselves to  how deep this is running in our lives.

We each took a self-assessment on those 30 or so manifestations along with their descriptions and accompanying verses and gave each one a score from 0 (not an issue in my life) to 5 (life-dominating issue in my life).  Let me tell you, we felt pretty beat up after taking that assessment! But, beat up in a good way.

Thankfully, we still had the second half of the class to talk about putting on humility.  Defined, humility is the mindset of Christ, a focus on God and others, a pursuit of the recognition and the exaltation of God and a desire to glorify and please God in all things and by all things He has given. (compare to definition of pride above)  Much like how the definitions contrast, we examined the 30 manifestations again but concerning humility. We then looked at practical ways to be intentional about moving from pride to humility:

• Praying for God to search our hearts by His Spirit and Word, and helping us to repent of pride and grow in humility
• Reading Psalms and the prophets to get a high view of God and proper view of ourselves
• Studying Jesus and his example
• Ask others where they see pride in your life
• Spending time focusing on God and the love demonstrated on the cross
• Practicing the 38 “one-another” commands of scripture.
• Going back through those manifestations and working with the Holy Spirit to put off pride and put on humility in our motives, thoughts, words, and deeds.
• Realizing that humility but become a way of life.

Needless to say, it was a very humbling class!  I would definitely recommend picking up Stuart Scott’s booklet From Pride to Humility and dig through these issues deeply.

Any thoughts on pride or how you have seen it manifest itself in your life?  What you have been doing to put on humility?

~ Isaac ~

I’m planning to take my 9 year old son to see the new movie based on Maurice Sendak’s 1964 Caldecott Medal-winning children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are. My son, who’s somewhat timid by nature, loved the book.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but since the book consists of only a few sentences and some exceptional artwork, I realize that turning it into a movie required a significant amount of imaginative story development.  From the reviews I’ve read it seems that Spike Jonze has done just that, and done it well.

Reactions to the movie vary widely, as they typically do to movies based on a book.  Here are links to some of the more thought-provoking, and occasionally poignant and/or informative reviews I’ve read.  All of these are written from a Christian perspective:

From WORLD Magazine:  Not so Wild

Carolyn Arends reviewed the movie for ChristianityToday movies. com

Brent Thomas writes a review at his blog:  Where the Wild Things Are

I don’t know who this is, but it may be my favorite review of all:  Where the Wild Things Are

Southern Seminary professor Russell Moore suggests the movie might not be wild enough:  Where the Wild Things Aren’t

Plugged In offers 3 different reviews (in an audio, video, or a more thorough print format):  Where the Wild Things Are

Have you seen the movie yet?  I’d love to hear your thoughts about it.

There have been times throughout my life, right up until the present, when I feel as if I’ve utterly failed to lead a holy life.  That’s sobering, since Hebrews 12:14 clearly admonishes us to “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.“  In light of passages like that, falling into sin can be disheartening, to say the least.

In his last post, Isaac gave a brief overview of some of the different ways Christians have interpreted (and attempted to obey) the biblical commands to be holy.  Isaac will resume his biblical counseling series soon, but in the mean time I want to follow up on a comment I made on that last post.

I referred to an illustration in Jerry Bridges’ book “The Pursuit of Holiness.”  It wasn’t a major feature of the book, but for some reason I’ve never forgotten it, even though I read the book over 20 years ago.  It’s encouraged me on those occasions when I’ve been deeply discouraged by my own apparent lack of progress.  I couldn’t find it online anywhere, so my son duplicated it for me in a Word document.  (This may be the only place on the internet where you can find it!)

Here’s the illustration, followed by Bridges’ explanation of it from the book.

Some feel that such statements of Paul’s as “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Romans 7:15) are too strong for a Christian walking in the Spirit.  But what Christian can deny that this is often his own experience?  The truth is, the more we see of the holiness of God and His law revealed to us in the Scripture, the more we recognize how far short we fall…

As we grow in the knowledge of God’s holiness, even though we are also growing in the practice of holiness it seems the gap between our knowledge and our practice always gets wider. This is the Holy Spirit’s way of drawing us to more and more holiness…

I hope you find that little illustration encouraging when you fall, and a great incentive to get right back up and resume the pursuit of holiness.

If you’d like to read another endorsement of the book, Union University professor Ray Van Neste (an elder in my pastor’s former church)  shared a few thoughts about it on his blog a few years ago.  You can read that here.

Sin clings closely to us.  We’ve got to set it aside and fix our eyes on Jesus.

let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)

Strive…for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:14)

Hey everyone, Derek here.

This week I listened to C.J. Mahaney’s sermon, “Christ Our Mediator.” (Click here to download it free from Sovereign Grace Ministries)

C.J. quoted three definitive Gospel summaries . . .

“The glory of the Gospel is this:  the One from Whom we need to be saved is the One who has saved us.”   – R.C. Sproul

“Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice.”   – John Stott

“The debt was so great that while man alone owed it, only God could pay it.”   – Anselm

The results: God’s holy wrath is satisfied, so believers have peace with God and no condemnation from God.

Got nothing to add to that. Thank God.

One of the jewels I found browsing around a Christian bookstore in the mid-70s was C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.  In one of my very first blog posts, I quoted a line from the book, which, to my surprise, led to a lengthy and rather spirited discussion in the comments.  In a subsequent post I expanded the quote to include some of its surrounding context.

In the first chapter of Don’t Waste Your Life, John Piper offers a thoughtful and articulate assessment of Lewis’s impact both on his own life and on Christian thought in general.  I could try and try (and try some more) and still never express my gratitude for Lewis nearly as eloquently as Piper does here, although I have a sneaky suspicion that the depth of my gratitude may very well rival his:

Someone introduced me to Lewis my freshman year with the book, Mere Christianity. For the next five or six years I was almost never without a Lewis book near at hand. I think that without his influence I would not have lived my life with as much joy or usefulness as I have. There are reasons for this.

He has made me wary of chronological snobbery. That is, he showed me that newness is no virtue and oldness is no vice. Truth and beauty and goodness are not determined by when they exist. Nothing is inferior for being old, and nothing is valuable for being modern. This has freed me from the tyranny of novelty and opened for me the wisdom of the ages. To this day I get most of my soul-food from centuries ago. I thank God for Lewis’s compelling demonstration of the obvious.

He demonstrated for me and convinced me that rigorous, precise, penetrating logic is not opposed to deep, soul-stirring feeling and vivid, lively—even playful—imagination. He was a “romantic rationalist.” He combined things that almost everybody today assumes are mutually exclusive: rationalism and poetry, cool logic and warm feeling, disciplined prose and free imagination. In shattering these old stereotypes, he freed me to think hard and to write poetry, to argue for the resurrection and compose hymns to Christ, to smash an argument and hug a friend, to demand a definition and use a metaphor.

Lewis gave me an intense sense of the “realness” of things. The preciousness of this is hard to communicate. To wake up in the morning and be aware of the firmness of the mattress, the warmth of the sun’s rays, the sound of the clock ticking, the sheer being of things (“quiddity” as he calls it). He helped me become alive to life. He helped me see what is there in the world—things that, if we didn’t have, we would pay a million dollars to have, but having them, ignore. He made me more alive to beauty. He put my soul on notice that there are daily wonders that will waken worship if I open my eyes. He shook my dozing soul and threw the cold water of reality in my face, so that life and God and heaven and hell broke into my world with glory and horror.

He exposed the sophisticated intellectual opposition to objective being and objective value for the naked folly that it was. The philosophical king of my generation had no clothes on, and the writer of children’s books from Oxford had the courage to say so.

You can’t go on “seeing through” things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to “see through” first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To “see through” all things is the same as not to see. (CSL)

Oh, how much more could be said about the world as C. S. Lewis saw it and the way he spoke. He has his flaws, some of them serious. But I will never cease to thank God for this remarkable man who came onto my path at the perfect moment.

I suppose there’s nothing left for me to say.

The paradox in the title of this post is true.  It’s a dangerous thing to go through life playing it safe.  If you carefully try to preserve your life, you’ll lose it.  Jesus put it like this:

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. (Mark 8:34-38)

Give your life away for the sake of Jesus and the gospel, and you’ll certainly save it.  In this video clip Francis Chan exposes the folly of playing it safe by using an analogy from the Olympics.  As surely as Olympic gymnasts stand before their judges, we will stand before a greater Judge.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. (2 Cor. 5:10)

Watch the video, then scroll down for some additional links.

HT: Laurie

Few people address the subject of risk in the Christian life better than John Piper.  Here are a couple of good links:

Risk and the Cause of God

Don’t Waste Your Life – Chapter 5