Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Should you see "The Shack?"

My family and I went to see a movie together over the weekend (Lego Batman, which was very good), and one of the previews for coming movies was a rendering of the book, The Shack, which many people, including many Christians, loved.



I remember the many conversations when the book first came out and that is why I read the book at the time. Many people claimed that the book helped them get closer to God and / or understand God better, especially the Trinity. I suspect that this movie will have a similar impact, and so I wanted to encourage Christians to use discernment when evaluating whether to go to this movie and how to use it or the book.

Frankly, we need to use discernment with all the media that we consume, because none of it is neutral. Every bit of media has a perspective and we should be aware of the messages, however subtle they are, because if we don't we might end up accepting as true things that are wrong or that contradict other things we believe.

In this case for instance, "The Shack "teaches" about the doctrine of God's nature, salvation, good, evil, and dealing with grief to name a just a few ideas. Now one of the reasons I think the book had such a wide reach is that in the western world we do not often think it is appropriate to talk about such topics. People who are really hurting like the main character of this book, often do not have safe people in their lives with whom to discuss their pain. Further, questions about the ultimate nature of things and who is God are often too controversial to bring up in polite company, so we never discuss them with anyone.

Therefore, the book or the movie might be a good tool to start a conversation with someone who has questions or who is hurting. On the other hand, if you are using as a guide to learn who God is and what the Trinity is like, then you need to compare it to what the Bible has to say about these topics. Rather than dismissing its message as heresy or accepting its message as truth without knowing why, use it to educate yourself from biblical and theological sources that make things more clear. It is simply not true that no one understands these doctrines, rather it often takes effort to understand any idea that is true, but knowing the truth about God is worth the effort. Knowing the true God personally through His son Jesus is more than worth any effort!

To that end, here are a couple of links that discuss the book in more detail:

Tim Challies has a thoroughly review here.

Albert Mohler has a shorter review here.

If the book or movie spurs any thoughts that you want to discuss more personally, please email me at my personal email littlemas2@gmail.com or my pastor account pastormike@oaklandefc.com .

As Mohler says in his review, Christians do not need to fear any book, but we must be ready to answer them. Let this movie spur you to go deeper into the true nature and character the God of the Bible.

Friday, March 3, 2017

When to Leave a Church?

My next few posts are going to be from a friend of mine, Pastor Tom Starkjohn of Louisville Evangelical Free Church in Louisville, Nebraska. He has recently help start the church there and they are going through the process of inviting people to become members. Therefore, he has written several emails to his church family about membership that have some interesting thoughts. I present them here for your learning.

From Tom Starkjohn to Louisville Evangelical Free Church:

Did you read my email last week? I tried to encourage you to think of a good reason to not become a member. My point is that if you are a Christian, you should be moving towards membership in our church or another church. Perpetual church attenders are like people who date but never get around to marrying – it misses the point of dating. As one pastor said, “Stop dating the church and fall in love with the family of God.” When you chose to love the people, you commit to the people.

What I'm going to think about with you today is when to leave a church. The people I'm writing to here are those who are or want to be members. Members are the ones who have committed to the church, and they are the ones who need to take seriously the matter of leaving a church. Attenders, on the other hand, have never taken the step to communicate that they committed to the church, and their leaving (though likely painful to all) is not of the same kind.

When I do premarital counseling with a couple, one of the questions I ask them is, “So when might you divorce one another?” Awkward question, yes? I assign some reading and Scripture passages to study on the topic. We process it together. I do this because marriage is vitally important, and it's foolhardy to think that one might never encounter a time when a separation or divorce is needed. A young couple needs to think through the Scriptures before things get rough, because when things get rough the impulse is just to get out.

Leaving one good church for another good church is NOT the same as leaving a spouse. Leaving a church for anther religious would be like spiritual divorce, but that is not my present concern. Yet leaving one church for another is painful, and there are many bad reasons to leave. And yet there are RIGHT reasons to leave, and those are the first things we should think upon.

It is right to leave a church when Doctrinal Purity as been lost or gravely compromised. A church is a church when the truth of the Gospel and God's Word is rightly proclaimed and walked in. If the leadership do not teach and walk in a manner worthy of the Gospel, it is time to remove your affirmation of the church by leaving it. This must be taken slowly and with repeated efforts at clarification – it could be that you yourself are making a theological mountain out of a molehill and need to put down your theological sword. Or it may be that you will help the church repent of it's ways and come back to the truth. There is no completely pure and true church. Nonetheless, if your leaving helps to protect the truth by removing your affirmation, then you should leave.

Second, it is right to leave the church when Leadership abuses their authority. “Abuse” is a loaded word, and such allegations should be carefully looked into and addressed. But suppose someone in a leadership position is a bully or worse. Following Scripture has taken a back seat to following a person. Instead of showing Christ-like service, humility, and other-centeredness, authority is demanded. If, in such a situation, efforts at pointing out the sin and seeking for help is rejected, then a person must leave. In such a situation (like when doctrinal purity is lost), it is not the one who leaves that is in the wrong. It is the one who stays who is in the wrong.

Third, it is right to leave when you are sent out to a new work. Yes, this is a positive thing! We see in the book of Acts how Gospel-work spreads by people being sent out from their mother church to start a new work elsewhere. When this happens, it's not a leaving but a sending. It's a wonderful thing when a church recognizes that God has raised up workers in their church to be sent out in ministry to another church. This is not just a reason if you are the pastor or on the core group – it's helping in any way get a new work started.

Fourth, it is right to leave a church when you've moved to a new location. The local church is meant to be local. If you've moved from one location to another, the distance may demand that it's time to find a new church (or, better yet, move to a place where you've already located the right church).

Fifth, it may be right to leave when church unity is severely compromised by your staying. This is the most subjective reason I've listed. It's the reason that could be most easily misappropriated. I'm going to refrain from examples here, but imagine someone who is vocally committed to a certain program, relatively minor doctrinal point, or ministry. There has been prayerful discerning among the leadership as to whether to pursue this thing, but they have chosen not to. But the person can't accept their decision. He or she continues to promote their agenda, and the church begins taking sides. It may be that in this case leaving for another church is warranted. Maybe.

This list is not exhaustive. There are other reasons to leave a church. And there are a bunch of terrible reasons to leave a church. In future emails I plan on writing about some of these insufficient reasons to leave and how to go about leaving should it get to that point. For now I'll leave those questions alone.

I'll end with this: I want you to think about leaving because I want you to think about what a commitment to this church implies. It implies you are not going to leave without thoughtful, biblically-informed cause. It implies that you will take the responsibility to leave if our church is unfaithful. It implies that you are committed to making the relationship work and will not be easily dissuaded from this task.