I love a good biography. It’s always fascinating and often inspiring to read the account of a life of special significance. Yet for all the biographies I’ve read, A Light on the Hill may be the first whose subject was not a person but a church. It surprised me what a blessing it was to read about that church and to see how God has seen fit to bless, preserve, and use it for so many years.

In late 1867, Celestia Anne Ferris, a young member of E Street Baptist Church in Washington, called her friends together to pray for the establishment of a church on Capitol Hill. Only a few people were present that evening and their specific prayers were not recorded, but it did not take long for God to begin to answer them. By 1871, they began a Sunday school in a rented building and by 1874 they were ready to purchase property and associate together as the Metropolitan Baptist Association. On February 6, 1876, nine years after their first prayer meeting, they dedicated a new chapel to the Lord—a chapel called Metropolitan Baptist Church. Though the building was later demolished in order to make way for a larger one and though its name has changed a couple of times, the church has remained ever since. Today it is known as Capitol Hill Baptist Church.

In early 2020, CHBC, along with almost every other church in the world, was forced to contend with the opening days of the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time Caleb Morell was working as Pastor Mark Dever’s personal assistant. Dever tasked him with finding out how the church had responded to the Spanish flu epidemic a century prior. Morell began to rummage “through the dusty pages of minutes, stored in filing cabinets in a basement closet underneath the baptistry.” As he did so, he “began to reconstruct the events of 1918 that led the church to cancel services for three weeks in response to the onset of the Spanish flu.” A few days later, he published the story at 9Marks.org and gained an overwhelming response that extended to the mainstream media. “I began to experience the firsthand impact narrative history can have on current events: to draw needed light from the past to put present challenges in perspective. For the next months, I spent any spare time poring over newspaper clippings and members’ meeting minutes.”

This study led to a class on CHBC’s history and, eventually, to this book. And what a book it is. While the great majority of the people who attended CHBC over the years were as ordinary as you and me, it has been home to a few outsized personalities. Through them and its strategic location, it has been able to have a significant impact on evangelicalism within the United States and beyond. In his foreword, Mark Dever highlights a few of the noteworthy people: “Joseph Parker, the abolitionist pastor who argued with Lincoln in person; Agnes Shankle, the faithful member who stood up to the pulpit search committee and perhaps, thereby, saved the congregation from liberal compromise; K. Owen White, the reforming expositor who later gained fame for a question he asked Senator John F. Kennedy when he ran for president. So packed with characters is this story that not all of these tasty details could be included. But there are so many more stories and so many interesting characters.”

There is the first African-American member who persevered through many challenges because she loved the Lord, loved the church, and loved its worship. There are the reforming pastors who pulled the church back from the brink of compromise. There is Carl F.H. Henry who was the founding editor of Christianity Today. There is the fallen leader who risked destroying the church even as he destroyed his own ministry, and tied closely to him, the godly man whose wife was victimized but who endured and forgave for a higher cause. There are those and so many others.

As he comes to the end of the book, Morell considers how the church remained centered on the gospel and rooted in its local community for 150 years. He offers a three-part answer: Pastors who preached the gospel, members who lived lives of quiet faithfulness, and a congregation that prayed. “Through the faithful preaching of the word, the selfless labors of godly members, and the prayers of God’s people, God has preserved a brightly shining beacon for the gospel on Capitol Hill.” May he continue to do so for another 150 years and far beyond.

Though every sermon necessarily needs a beginning, it does not necessarily need a formal introduction. Though it has to begin somewhere, there is no rule that it must begin with some kind of story or illustration. A preacher can jump straight into his text if he so desires. Some do.

However, many preachers, and perhaps even most, do choose to begin with a kind of “bridge” from the service to the sermon—a way of capturing the listeners’ attention and drawing them into the exposition. In this way, the introduction serves as a kind of hook to intrigue a congregation and motivate them to listen. H.B. Charles provides helpful guidance on doing this well:

Don’t start every sermon the same way. Be creative. Use different doors to get into the house. Tell a story. Raise a question. State a problem. Use a strong quote. Describe the background of the text. Do an object lesson. Try multimedia. Mix it up. Practice diversity. Change the way you come at them, especially if you preach to the same congregation each week. Practicing variety in the introduction is a simple but effective way to stay fresh in the pulpit.

In my experience, there are several “levels” of sermon introduction, each one more difficult to prepare, yet also more rewarding, than the one before.

The first level of sermon introduction is the one that simply begins the sermon and does not come up again. It may be a story from current events or a fable from history. It may be a poem or an experience from the preacher’s life. It helps ease the congregation from the song they have just sung into listening to a 40-minute exposition. The best of these introduces a note of tension that needs to be resolved or a question that needs to be answered. It is not trite, crass, or boring, but serious, appropriate, and interesting. The point of the introduction harmonizes with the point of the sermon which, in turn, harmonizes with the point of the text.

The second level of sermon introduction is the one that begins the sermon and then appears again in the conclusion. It introduces a note of tension that needs to be resolved or a question that needs to be answered and then circles back in the conclusion to explain how this has happened. This usually requires a stronger theme such as a particularly poignant illustration or an especially interesting anecdote. It might be a song whose first stanza comes in the introduction and whose final stanza comes in the conclusion. It might be a story whose first part is told at the beginning of the sermon and whose conclusion is told at the end. If the first level of introduction is a bridge into the sermon, the second level is a bridge into the sermon and then back out. It is a kind of bookend that resolves whatever theme, question, or tension was introduced at the beginning.

The third level of introduction is the one that not only begins and ends a sermon, but also appears throughout. It frames the sermon but also illustrates it in an ongoing way, providing a continual theme that engages the listener. Only the best illustration, anecdote, song, or motif is capable of doing this. And even then there is the danger that such a strong illustration can threaten to actually become the point of the sermon, displacing the point of the text that is being preached. If the first kind of introduction serves as a bridge in and the second serves as a bridge in and out, this one also provides the waypoints along the way. It is a bridge in, out, and through, if you will.

I believe H.B. Charles is right when he says, “The takeoff is arguably the most important part of the flight. Sprinters work to get a strong jump from the blocks to win the race. And the introduction is key to preaching a strong message.” While every introduction serves a function, some are merely functional. They are serviceable but not particularly skillful and they are practical but not especially memorable. A good introduction often requires extensive thought, research, and prayer, yet such labor is handsomely rewarded when that introduction blesses the listeners and serves them well as they listen to the preaching of God’s Word.

(Parenthetically, I am increasingly of the perspective that references to popular culture such as shows and movies are most often unhelpful and tend to fall flat. I say that because I don’t think there is enough shared culture now that one film or one show will be meaningful to enough people in the church that it can serve as a helpful illustration (unless it is given a lot of explanation). I don’t think we can assume people have seen most films and therefore can’t assume that people have any knowledge of them. Neither are there very many of them that a pastor can quote or refer to without offending at least one listener who deems it unsuitable for Christian viewing. Hence, other means of illustration tend to be superior.)

What is your church really made of? Or perhaps better said, who is your church really made of? This is something we all do well to ponder from time to time, for there are good ways and bad ways, better ways and worse ways to fill a church.

The best way to fill a church is by seeing the lost get saved. This involves the children of church members growing up and putting their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and it involves evangelizing the community so unsaved people hear the gospel and become believers. Wonderful.

The worst way to fill a church is to undermine and destroy other healthy churches and compel the Christians within them to come to yours instead. In the end, one church has died and another has grown fat by plundering it. Evil.

But there is a middle ground as well. It is not necessarily the worst way to fill a church but it is also not the best. It has been my experience and observation that many churches see their most substantial growth not by salvations but by transfers—by slowly drawing people from a variety of other nearby congregations. This was certainly and demonstrably true of the church growth movement but I fear it may also be true of Reformed churches.

We need to acknowledge that there are often very good reasons for transfer growth. Perhaps a family has moved from one city to another or perhaps a church they attended nearby has decided to close its doors. Perhaps they were true believers who realized they were in a false church and for the sake of their souls needed to move on. Or perhaps a core theological conviction changed and they decided they needed to politely slip away. Well and good.

More often, though, Christians move from church to church on the basis of matters that are less significant. They move because their previous church lacks a certain amenity or ministry. They move because they prefer the preaching or the music. They move because of relatively minor points of doctrine. They move on the basis of preference more than necessity.

I am not saying this is necessarily wrong. It’s possible that most of us have at one time or another left a church not because it was false or heretical but because another one seemed like it would better serve us or better align with our convictions. So I am not saying transfer growth is intrinsically evil.

But what I am saying is that it can be deceptive and can mimic a sign of health. Therefore, a church should check itself from time to time to consider the nature of its growth. That’s because a church can gain size and, therefore, have an appearance of health even when it is evangelistically lazy and disobedient. It can be a church that grows and thrives at the expense of other churches rather than a church that grows by saving the lost.

God’s Kingdom doesn’t grow when we transfer members from that church to this one. We wouldn’t think much of the farmer who boasted of the size of his flock if we knew he had been hauling them over the top of the neighbor’s fence. We wouldn’t honor the angler who catches fish from a stocked pond when he claims he has been catching them from wild rivers.

What I fear we like to do in Reformed churches is cast our line into other church’s ponds. We cast it this way to draw a Presbyterian, cast it that way to draw a Baptist, and cast it a third way to lure someone who is Anglican, Brethren, or Dutch Reformed. We save people from the clutches of Arminius as much as the clutches of Satan and deliver them from the wrong position on the millennium more than from unbelief. We lure them with our worship or ministries or theological distinctions rather than the gospel. We entice them based on our adherence to whatever is popular in a Christian subculture at any given time—hymnody, liturgy, expository preaching, gospel-centeredness, and so on. We build our churches out of other churches.

Again, this is not necessarily wrong. A person who comes to embrace the Five Points should probably make their way to a Reformed church. A person who embraces cessationism will probably need to leave a church that is committed to prophecy. And then there is depth to the Reformed faith that is often lacking in other traditions and therefore attractive to those who have begun to grow in their faith. We understand this. But the church receiving such new members should be aware that they have not delivered souls from death but merely helped existing Christians mature.

The fact is, growing through transfers can mimic growing through evangelism. And if the Reformed tradition already struggles with faithfully sharing the gospel compared to many others—and I think it does—we need to doubly guard ourselves against being content to add members without baptisms, to add seats without salvations, to grow without evangelism.

The Apostle Paul refused to build on another person’s foundation, but we sometimes delight to. We take it as a mark of a healthy church that people want to join it and that may be true. But we cannot be truly healthy unless we are fulfilling the Great Commission which is not a call to go to the churches but to the nations and not a call to glean among the sheaves but to glean in the farthest of fields.

This was inspired, in part, by the writing of De Witt Talmage.

I have often been asked what I consider the greatest weakness of today’s church or what I would change about today’s church if I could. Such questions make for good discussion at a conference Q&A session but they are also pretty much impossible to answer in a compelling way. It’s not like any of us has the right to speak for much more than our own little congregation. It’s not like any of us has a broad enough knowledge to understand the whole church. And it’s not like any one of us has the ability to swing the rudder of Christendom and cause it to change its course.

Yet with all that said, there is one thing churches used to do that they no longer do, and I often wish we could recover it. So, if I could change anything about the modern church, perhaps it would be this: I would return the graveyard to the churchyard.

It used to be customary for churches to have a graveyard. If you visit older church buildings in Europe and North America, there is a pretty good chance they are either fully surrounded by graves or have a portion of their property dedicated to them. The people who once worshipped inside are now buried outside. In this way, there was an ongoing link between the saints triumphant and the saints militant, the congregants in heaven and the congregants on earth.

There are good reasons, I’m sure, that cemeteries became untethered from churches. Churches faded in their cultural importance as church attendance decreased. Cities pressed in and land became both scarce and expensive. And then, at least in my part of the world, funerals and burials passed from the jurisdiction of churches to the jurisdiction of specialized businesses. When we bury our loved ones today, it is more likely we are purchasing a plot of land from a corporation than a congregation. Yet I wish it was not so.

Imagine this. Imagine that as you arrived at church to worship God on a Sunday morning, you first walked past the graves of friends who had served the church faithfully before going to their rest. Imagine if over there was the grave of a former pastor who had led you to Christ, baptized you, married you, and preached hundreds of sermons that instructed your mind and bolstered your faith. Imagine if over here was the grave shared by your parents and beyond it the grave of your husband or wife, or even the grave of your child. Imagine if there was an empty plot that was waiting for you, a spot in which you would be laid with your people—your family and your church.

How would it change your worship if you were constantly confronted with the reality of death in this way yet also comforted by the proximity and the nearness of those who had gone before? How would it change your understanding of the church if the living and the dead maintained such a close distance? How would it change the way you prepare your heart to worship and prepare yourself to die? Speaking personally, I think it would be deeply moving and spiritually comforting. It would be a blessing to worship where my people are buried and to be buried where my people worship.

I doubt there is any going back to the old ways of connecting the churchyard and graveyard. Society has shifted and found new ways of doing things. This is not necessarily good or bad—it just is. But from where I sit today, if I had the power to wave my arms and change it, I would. And I can’t help but think the church would be better for it.

One of the great privileges of my life has been the opportunity to travel far and wide. While most of my travel has been related to either speaking at conferences or filming documentaries, my hosts have often invited me to deviate from the straightest course to explore and take in the area’s natural beauty. It’s an irresistible invite: “If you’re coming all this way, let me show you the sights…”

In this way, I have spent time in the Alps and watched the sun rise over Lauterbrunnen which, to my mind, must be one of the most beautiful spots in all the earth. I’ve driven mountain passes in the Alps, of course, but also in the Rockies and the Andes. I’ve stood on spines that separate two great mountain ranges and marveled at the peaks extending far beyond what the eye can see.

I’ve stood beneath and before some of the world’s great waterfalls and seen torrents of water pour hundreds of feet from towering cliffs above to dark valleys below. I’ve passed over reefs teeming with the most brightly-colored aquatic life and stood in the shadow of mighty volcanos.

I’ve traveled deep into fjords and visited isolated islands in Alaska and Scotland. I have seen savannah and desert, hill and plain, ocean and sea. I have encountered creatures that are magnificent and horrifying, massive and microscopic. I have seen the starkest kinds of beauty and the lushest, the gloomiest and brightest.

Besides all of this, I have been able to tour some of the world’s foremost museums and galleries, to study works of art ancient and modern—some of the greatest examples of art the human hand has ever crafted.

Truly, I have seen wonders more beautiful than tongue or scribe could ever tell. And yet. And yet none of this represents the greatest beauty I have ever seen. There is something more wonderful, still, something that delights my eyes and thrills my heart.

The greatest beauty I have ever seen is within the simple walls of a primary school gym. It is God’s people gathered to worship him as Grace Fellowship Church. Here we have people who come from many different walks of life, some of them young and some of them old, some of them wealthy and some of them just getting by, some of them executives and some of them laborers, some of them students and some of them retirees. Here we have people who were born in 30 or 40 different countries and who speak 50 or 60 different languages. Here we have people who have been following Jesus for decades and people who have been following him for weeks. Here we have people who would otherwise have no reason to know one another, to fellowship with one another, to love and care for one another. Except for this: They have been saved by God and called to be his church.

This is a spectacle I get to see every week. And Sunday by Sunday I stand amazed, my mind reeling and my heart thrilled by the sheer beauty of the masterpiece that God first imagined and then created—the masterpiece that exhibits the wonders of his grace and the uniqueness of what he is accomplishing in this world. I could do without the travel and live without the museums. I could easily bid them farewell and never leave my own city again. But my heart would fail and my soul would shrivel without the church and without the glimpse of profound beauty I can savor each and every time we gather.

What pleases God? What delights his heart? And what displeases God? What grieves his heart?

If asked, I think most of us would assume that if we ever grieve the heart of God it will be through denying the gospel or committing a grave moral scandal. Or if we do so as a local church, it will be by compromising to the culture or apostatizing altogether.

As for what delights the heart of God, I think most of us would assume that if we ever delight the heart of God it will be through great acts—giving tremendous sums of money or dedicating our lives to a difficult mission. Or perhaps on the level of the local church, it will be by sparking revival or leading thousands to Christ.

In other words, we are prone to believe that God is both grieved and delighted by what is extra-ordinary—great deeds of sin or great acts of service. The reality, though, is that we serve a God who finds great meaning in what we count as small matters—a cup of water for a thirsty man, new clothes for a ragged child, a gentle visit to a lonely soul. God is not pleased only when we accomplish what we might count as great things for him and not grieved only when we commit what we might count as great sins. Rather, he is pleased when we accomplish what he counts as faithful things and grieved when we fail to accomplish them.

This means that God may be grieved by situations that seem to us to be very mundane. Ephesians 4:30 warns, “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.” As we zoom out to the surrounding verses to gain our context we see that God can be grieved by our words, and especially the words we exchange with other believers. He can be grieved by situations we encounter every day—the words we exchange in our homes, the conversations we engage in online. Together we can grieve the Spirit in the fellowship time we have after church on a Sunday or the small group time we have on a weekday evening. We must be vigilant in these very common contexts because every time we open our mouths to speak to one another we have the ability to grieve the Spirit.

Yet surely if we can grieve the Spirit through our words, we can also delight him. God delights in a word that is well-spoken, a word that encourages, a word that builds up, a word that gives grace. It delights the Spirit when we allow life-giving words to flow out of our mouths to be a blessing to others.

There is so much evil we can do with our words. And there is so much good. There is so much grief we can cause when we speak; there is so much delight. For that reason, each of us ought to make it a habit—regularly, routinely, and prayerfully—to ponder this admonition: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

I know it broke her heart. I know it broke her heart to see her boys at odds. God had given her just two sons and from infancy to adulthood they were at odds. They were not like some brothers who have spats and then make up or who struggle with one another but still share a fraternal kind of love. No, these two genuinely hated each other. They resented one another and fought constantly. When their mother drew near to her final days, it grieved her to know that after her funeral they would go their separate ways and the family tie would be forever broken.

There is something so tragic about this kind of discord between siblings. The family unit is meant to be united by all it shares and all it holds in common. It is heartbreaking to see it disrupted by anger, spite, envy, or any other factor. Parents are especially distressed to see their children fall out and break apart. Many parents, even as they’ve experienced the aches, pains, and challenges of old age, have had this sorrow added to the rest—this sorrow that is far greater than the rest.

We know what it is to listen to music that is discordant, instruments that are out of tune, singers that are not in harmony. We know what it is to have our ears offended by what is supposed to be melodious but is actually irritating. We know what it is, then, to see relationships that are discordant, out of tune, and inharmonious. We know how difficult it is to be in a state of enmity with a friend or to be at odds with a spouse. We know how our hearts are grieved when love gives way to anger and friendship gives way to strife.

We should be able to easily understand, then, how much it grieves the heart of God when his children are disunited, when they bicker and quarrel, and when they go their separate ways. Conversely, we should be able to easily understand how much it delights the heart of God when his children are united, when they love and respect one another, and when they go their way together. We should be able to easily understand how important it is that we do our utmost to “love one another with brotherly affection,” to “live in harmony with one another,” and to “live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:10; 12:16; 12:18). If for no other reason, those two boys ought to have reconciled for the sake of their mother—for the sake of her joy, her peace, her well-being. And we as Christians ought to pursue every avenue of unity for the sake of our Father—for the sake of his joy, the obedience to his demands, and the accomplishing of his purposes.

Those who attend the orchestra will know that before a performance begins, the lead oboist plays a long, sustained “A.” All the other musicians listen attentively, then precisely tune their instruments to his. Soon every instrument is playing the same note and the same pitch. In much that way, Christ is the lead musician who gives us our note, who gives us our pitch. Each one of us is under obligation to tune ourselves to him, for he shows us the way to live, the way to love, the way to bless. The degree to which we tune ourselves to him is the degree to which we will love one another. The degree to which we carefully imitate him is the degree to which we will be beautiful, harmonious, and united in purpose and action.

There is never any justification for grieving the heart of our Father the way those boys grieved the heart of their mother. There is never any situation in which we can allow ourselves to be complacent about our lack of harmony. Every day and in every way, we are called to display our love for God through our love for one another, to “have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind” (1 Peter 3:8). May God make it so.

Inspired in part by the works of J.R. Miller

It always surprises me how quickly an idea can go from introduction to expectation, from mere inquiry to accepted standard. And once an idea has become mainstream in that way, it is difficult to revisit and evaluate it.

One of these is the idea that churches should livestream their worship services. What was rare in the days before the pandemic became almost universal during it as circumstances proved to be a kind of technological accelerant. Yet with those days now far behind us, the livestreams continue. I don’t know the percentages, but I’d say a church is now more likely to have a stream than not. It has somehow become almost intuitive to churches that they ought to stream their Sunday morning services. The video ministry has taken its place beside the children’s ministry, women’s ministry, men’s ministry, and all the other ministries a church is expected to have.

I’m sure it made sense for churches to quickly pivot to streaming in those early days of uncertainty. It made sense for churches to keep the streams going during days when meeting together was difficult or forbidden and perhaps also during the days when people were shy about being in big crowds or being in public with as much as a sniffle. I’m sure churches were wise to adapt.

But few churches considered the exit plan and whether the livestream ought to be temporary or permanent. Few considered when and if they would wind it back down. Several years have gone by and in most cases, it proved to stick around. Why? The most common rationale is that it proved valuable for shut-ins or others who legitimately could not attend on a Sunday morning. Once housebound people had grown accustomed to having access to a livestream, it seemed cruel to cut it off. It also proved helpful in helping prospective attendees gain a sense of how the church functions and worships—a sense that was superior to merely reading words on a website. And then, of course, it was affirming to see unknown and anonymous people tuning in from around the city and far beyond. For these reasons and others the streams stuck.

What most churches failed to do, though, was carefully weigh the pros and cons, something that is always a wise exercise when adding new technology to any part of personal life, family life, or church life. As always, the benefits tend to be quicker and easier to identify than the drawbacks. The benefits are exactly the ones I laid out earlier. But what how about the drawbacks?

Most obviously, this kind of ministry consumes resources that are often scarce—there are costs in time, money, maintenance, and manpower.

Of greater concern is the way streaming may change the very nature of the corporate gathering—the very meaning of what it is to be “together”—by extending it to those who are not physically present. This is an ongoing battle in a digital world and we have long claimed that churches are bucking this trend by remaining a place where people still gather physically. But a livestream both changes and complicates that dynamic.

And then there is the way preaching may change when a stream is present. When the preacher knows his words will not go beyond the room, he directs his words to his people, to his flock. This gives him the freedom to address their concerns and their needs. But when preaching to an anonymous group outside the room, he is now preaching to strangers. To whatever degree he preaches to this on-screen audience, he will be tempted to perform rather than preach.

Finally, there is the concern that streaming may enable disobedience. Many churches stream their services as a means of serving people who have no other church to attend. This sounds noble. But don’t you think it’s likely that the stream is also (or perhaps even primarily) enabling people who could attend a church close to their home but prefer the preaching or worship of a church they watch on a screen? It may feel affirming when we gather the statistics of people who are watching from far-off locations, but how do we know those people aren’t using our stream to foster their own disobedience? In most circumstances, wouldn’t the ideal outcome be that zero people are watching our livestreams because they are all in their own churches?

(On that note, it has often struck me as ironic that some of the pastors who are most adamant that watching services online should never displace or replace attending local services are the very ones who broadcast their services each Sunday morning. And they often have the budgets and personnel to create streams that are of the highest quality. The messaging seems more than a little mixed to me. Perhaps these influential men could model something positive to everyone by cutting their livestreams and urging people to find a church in their own setting.)

So here is my suggestion: The leadership of every church would be wise to take time to carefully consider the past, present, and future of their livestream. They can consider whether it is truly serving their own local church and whether it is truly serving the wider church. To that end, here are some questions they may want to ask:

• When and why did you begin livestreaming? What was the reason you began it and how do you currently evaluate its success?
• What is your biblical case for a livestream? What biblical principles support or contradict it?
• How is the livestream impacting your local church and how is it impacting the wider church? How certain are you that your stream is not enabling disobedience in Christians who ought to be attending a local church?
• If the ideal scenario is for zero people to watch your livestream (because they are all in your church or another good one) how can you help make that happen?

As the elders of Grace Fellowship Church, we evaluate our livestream on a regular basis. For the time being, we continue to offer it as a help to those who are legitimately unable to attend church due to illness. However, to ensure it is being used for only that purpose, we put it behind a password. Anyone who wants to watch it simply needs to email our sound team to receive that password. That’s probably not a great solution, but it is the one we have settled on for the time being.

My hope is that each church will evaluate its own livestream to consider if and how it furthers the mission of that local church and the mission of God’s wider church. May we all think carefully, pray earnestly, and be faithful to what God has called us to.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Christians only ever got along? Wouldn’t it be grand if all the discord we see in the world around us was completely foreign to the church? Wouldn’t it be heavenly if believers ever only experienced peace? I suppose it would be heavenly and, therefore, more than we can realistically hope for in this life. That being the case, we need to learn to deal with conflict—conflict within both the local church and the wider church.

I suppose we are prone to think that the battles that rage in the church today are unusual or unique, but the sad fact is that Christians have disagreed with one another in every age of church history. The sadder fact is that they have often done so in ways that are concerning, shocking, or even downright horrific. This is sometimes true even of people we count as heroes of the faith, people who have influenced us in such meaningful ways.

In When Christians Disagree, historian Tim Cooper goes back in time to draw lessons from a sad episode from days past. He looks to the fractured relationship between two men we hold in high esteem: John Owen and Richard Baxter. Owen is, of course, the author of such enduring works as The Mortification of Sin and Communion with God. Baxter, meanwhile, wrote The Saint’s Everlasting Rest and The Reformed Pastor. Each of these books continues to bless, equip, and encourage God’s people hundreds of years later. Each of these men continues to influence the church for good. Yet each of them was hostile to the other and together they got locked into a long and ugly battle they never resolved.

The battle itself was over a relatively fine point of doctrine that I won’t get into in this review. There were important implications to it, of course, but it was not like one of the men was on the verge of utter apostasy and the other battling to protect the church from complete catastrophe. And, of course, it’s not like one of them showed the highest of godly character while the other behaved poorly. The reality is that both of them failed to display the kind of godliness we would have expected them to model on the basis of their books.

Cooper points out that “the fact that their story is an old one is to our advantage. We have nothing at stake in these two men, so we can observe them dispassionately and objectively. We can identify patterns and draw lessons in the hope that we can apply them to our circumstances.” And this is really the point of the book—to study their disagreement so we can better endure our own. At the end of each chapter, he pauses to carefully suggest what we might learn from them. These are helpful and nuanced observations and applications.

“The four hundred years of distance help separate us from the emotion of our own entanglements. Returning to our context, we might be able to see ourselves in a more detached fashion. Ordinarily, we are too close to our own conflict to easily understand the complex, unspoken, dimly recognized layers of what is actually taking place. Whether we are one of the protagonists or a disagreement is simply taking place around us, conflict is messy. It is difficult to see things clearly. But when we step back into the seventeenth century, we silence the emotional noise. In that relative stillness, it becomes possible to make observations and draw conclusions that serve us well as we return to the twenty-first century to negotiate our own context of conflict.” That is his hope for the book and he accomplishes it well.

“It is really quite remarkable,” he says, “that mature believers who are, in so many respects, magnificent examples of what it means to follow Jesus with faithfulness and sincerity can also be Christians with pronounced blind spots who demonstrate brittleness, selfishness, and ego in their relationships with others and who damage those around them. We are all human; we are each a mixed bag.” That being the case, may we all learn from these examples of godly but flawed men. May we learn to exemplify their strengths and flee from their weaknesses. When circumstances call us to disagree, may a book like this one teach us to disagree in a distinctly Christian way.

Quite a long time has passed since we witnessed the unexpected rise of a new kind of Calvinism. Few had anticipated that in the twenty-first century, so many millions of people spanning a host of nations and traditions would find themselves affirming such old and controversial doctrines. Yet many did so because they were wary and weary of the kind of big-box church-growth Evangelicalism that had been packaged and professionalized and very nearly franchised out.

As a movement grows from infancy to maturity, it becomes necessary to ask some questions about it. Particularly, it becomes necessary to ask if it is possible that it over-corrected in response to some of the concerns that caused it to grow in the first place. It becomes necessary to ask where it may need to change before those over-corrections become too deeply entrenched to ever change.

The purpose of Andrew Heard’s book Growth and Change: The Danger and Necessity of a Passion for Church Growth is to get church leaders thinking about the connection between the two terms—between growth and change. “This book is designed to help you think about a very important and very emotional topic: change. And not just change in some generalized sense, but a kind of change that could have great significance in your life: change to our churches, our gospel ministries, and our Christian leadership.” It is change that would spur growth.

Why is such change so necessary? He explains in the introduction:

I am convinced that many of the ways we are running our churches and ministries, and many of the ways that we are exercising our leadership within our churches and ministries, has become a significant hindrance to the fundamental growth of the church, both numerically and spiritually. Or, again to put it positively, I’m convinced that with some significant changes to church life and to our leadership patterns and practices, we will see a greater penetration of the gospel into the lost community around us and so see many more people saved. I’m convinced that we can see more men, women and children come to faith in Christ and grown to maturity in Christ.

Big if true, as the young folk say. But also challenging because “we won’t change the things that need to be changed until the pain of not changing is greater than the pain of changing.” The author’s task, then, is to help us see and feel the pain of not changing to such a degree that we actually begin what could be a long and difficult process. The greatest part of that pain is the pain of knowing that the people around us are perishing and that it is our responsibility to reach them with the good news that could save them. “Unless we share God’s heart for the lost in such a way that it pains us greatly to see people perish without Christ, and unless that pain exceeds the pain that we know will accompany our efforts to make changes, we will almost always opt for the status quo. Of course, this is not the only factor that will determine whether we work to bring about change. But it’s a significant and inescapable part of the equation.”

I need to pause here to say that Heard is one of us. He’s not some church growth guru who is writing from a completely different theological perspective. He’s not one of those guys who wants to be able to start a new movement with his name attached to it or a consultant whose over-priced plan is to water down the gospel to make it more palatable to unbelievers. Not at all. He loves the gospel and would do nothing to tamper with it or adapt it to modern sensibilities. Yet he is also concerned that many churches—many of our churches—have too little concern for the growth of their churches and, therefore, for the salvation of the people in their communities. “If we develop a passion for church growth without being aware that this is one of the most dangerous passions a person can have, then the passion will destroy us and our work. What’s more, it’s one thing for the leaders of a church to be passionate about growth, but when that passion extends to the members of the church, the situation becomes even more dangerous.” In other words, he wants us to consider growth with a prudent awareness of the temptations it can bring and the many ways it can go wrong.

So the goal of his book is to create a passion for growth and a heart that is willing to bear the pain of change. It is to commit to being faithful, but also to assess whether we are being truly fruitful—to think deeply about both inputs and outputs, the things we do and the results we see in response. It is to convince Christians that it is honoring to God to consider and do those things that will spur growth, yet always in such a way that God’s Word reigns supreme over both means and ends.

Acknowledging that such talk makes some people nervous, it is perhaps worth noting here that no less than D.A. Carson provided the foreword and proclaimed it the best book in its field. “Andrew Heard,” he insists, “is a reliable guide to the biblical, theological, evangelistic and pastoral issues that will confront all Christian leaders who aim for growth, recognize the need for change, and hunger to work out of a rich and faithful biblical theology. Andrew is well known and well trusted in Australia, his homeland. Now we pray that his influence may multiply exponentially around the world.” And having read Growth and Change, I find myself echoing both the praise and the hope. I read this book with a deepening sense of conviction and with a deepening sense that I need to go back and read it again, and possibly again after that.

It was one of those little pieces of information that helped clarify so much in my mind, that described through data what I had seen with my own eyes and experienced in my own ministry. It is a piece of information we all ought to be aware of and one we all ought to consider. It warns us that one of the most innocent things a Christian does may also be one of the most dangerous.

Ryan Burge and Paul Djupe spent two years conducting a large and comprehensive study of people who have “dechurched”—who once faithfully attended church but now no longer do. The results were published in The Great Dechurching and were widely reported in a host of media outlets. In one article, the authors list some common misconceptions about dechurching, and it was the very first one that especially captured my attention.

The misconception is this: People leave primarily because of negative experiences with the church. Our assumption as we consider people who have left the faith is that they had a negative experience within the church—that they observed or even faced abuse, or that they grew tired of scandals or politicking in the name of Jesus. Or we could assume that they began to critique their faith, perhaps under the tutelage of the many YouTube or TikTok deconstructionists. Then, as they began to doubt the faith, they began to distance themselves from it.

But that has certainly not been my experience. I have seen quite a few people leave our church and others over the years, and could count on one hand the number who left because they were revoking their faith. Burge and Djupe’s data bears this out. In fact, they found that the majority of people who have become dechurched continue to consider themselves Christian and continue to affirm a basic confession such as “Jesus is the Son of God”—hardly the profession of an acolyte of Bart Ehrman or Richard Dawkins.

So why do people leave? “Are you ready for the number one reason people stopped attending church? They moved.” The study found that around three out of every four people who left the church “did so casually, for pedestrian reasons including moving, the inconvenience of attending, kids’ sports activities, or family changes like marriage, divorce, or having a new child.” In other words, it was not their convictions that led the way, but their circumstances. They didn’t mean to leave the church, but inadvertently allowed their lives and lifestyles to hinder their attendance. Church got displaced by other priorities until it became little more than an afterthought. They became unintentional deconstructionists.

And this was the “aha!” moment for me because it is so consistent with what I have observed. We have had people join our church after moving to Canada from another country. They arrive with glowing recommendations from their former church. They were active, they were involved, they served in many capacities. But they are not with us long before their attendance begins to decline and we begin to see them rarely if at all. We do our best to reach out to them, but find they have stopped attending not only our church but any church. What happened? They moved, and somehow their faith was not equal to that move.

It can happen with former members of our church as well—that they move away, perhaps to study, perhaps to work, perhaps for economic reasons, and when we follow up to try to ensure they are integrating into a church in their new community, we find that they are not attending church at all. They moved and it somehow undid what seemed to be a thriving faith.

Neither of these scenarios is universal, of course, and we have had many people move in and move out who commit to their new church and thrive there. But both of these scenarios are common enough that we need to be aware of them.

Every journey begins with a single step and that is true of so many of those who leave the church. They leave by inches. They leave without meaning to. They leave because they have not been adequately cautioned about the coming challenges—that what seems like a time of exciting new experiences and new starts, may actually be a time of unintentional dechurching and inadvertent deconstruction.

I think the caution for all of us is that moving or other major life transitions can be an unexpected enemy. We need to caution ourselves when we prepare to significantly change our lives and we need to caution others when they do. We need to understand that one of the most common things we do is also one of the most perilous. We need to know that one of the most dangerous things a Christian can do is move.

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that in the past few weeks, you have probably not gotten rip-roaring drunk nor participated in a debauched drinking party. You have probably not given yourself over to rampant sexual immorality or a life obsessed with sensuality. At least, I hope not.

I raise these particular issues because Paul raises them in his letter to the Romans. As he helps the Christians in Rome understand how the gospel is meant to work itself out in life, he lists three pairs of sins that are unfitting for Christians. “Let us walk properly as in the daytime,” he says, “not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy” (13:13). It seems to me that if he went to the trouble of listing such sins, we should go to the trouble of considering them—and not only as vague representative sins that other people may be tempted to commit, but as actual sins that may be present in your life and mine, whether subtly or explicitly.

It is my understanding that what binds these sins together is that they are a failure to love. After all, Paul makes clear that the great implication of the gospel he has outlined in the opening chapters of Romans is love! Your duty, your calling, your responsibility, your privilege is to love others as a display of God’s love for you. And each of these sins represents a failure to do so.

And so you can’t love others when your life is marked by drunkenness or partying. And what stands behind these sins is a desire for escapism. It could be bingeing on alcohol or on Netflix, on video games, or on social media—whatever causes you to lose control of your time and devote too much of it to pursuits that are ultimately vain and distracting. If you are utterly devoted to addictive substances or addictive entertainment, that will necessarily diminish your willingness and ability to love others.

You also can’t love others when you’re given over to sexual immorality and sensuality. By definition, when you commit sexual immorality you are using other people instead of loving them. You become captivated by that sin so that your focus in life becomes satisfying yourself instead of blessing others.

And then you can’t love others when you are quarrelsome or jealous. That’s because you are failing to love others with your words and attitude. I think I’ve met more quarrelsome people in Reformed churches than anywhere else in the world. Quarrelsome people usually think they are wise or discerning or otherwise gifted by God, but more often they are prideful and rebellious. They get pleasure from an argument, they gain satisfaction from playing devil’s advocate. And often at the root of it is jealousy—they are jealous of what other people are or what other people have. If that’s you, you need to consider that being quarrelsome is not some minor peccadillo, but a major transgression that is listed alongside drunkenness and adultery. You need to put such sins to death and direct your passion, your time, and your intensity to loving other people and devoting yourself to their good.

I recently found myself pondering this: How many men could be serving as elders in any given church, except that they have sold themselves out to sexual immorality? Or how many men and women could be serving as deacons in any given church (if that church opens the office of deacon to women), except that they’ve devoted vast amounts of time to hobbies or games that just don’t matter that much? Or how many church members could be leading important ministries, except that they spend hours on social media thinking that some daft controversy on Twitter in any way impacts the real world? And all the while there are people right before them who need to be loved and cared for and shepherded. The local church desperately needs qualified elders, committed deacons, and faithful ministry leaders, but so many have disqualified themselves.

What does it say about you if you know more about the controversies in the wider church than the needs in your local church? Hear it from me: the real troubles of the real people in your real church have nothing to do with what happens on Twitter or YouTube. The more time you spend clicking and scrolling and swiping, the less you’ve got to give to the people you have covenanted with, the people you can actually impact, the people who need to be loved. Your church needs people who are experts in love, not experts in controversy and celebrity. Put away whatever is captivating you when you should be captivated by Christ. Stop swiping and start serving!

Indulgent sins, sexual sins, social sins—all these are a failure to love. If you’re in bondage to any of these sins, plead with God for his help in putting it to death. But don’t stop there. Consider how as you labor to diminish the power of that sin in your life, you will at the same time increase love in your life. Consider how you can replace self-indulgence with expressing love to others, self-centeredness with a life of blessing and serving others. For this is why God made you, why he called you, and why he saved you—so you could live a life of doing good to others for the glory of his name.

It is one of the realities of the Christian faith that people love to criticize—the reality that there are a host of different denominations and a multitude of different expressions of Christian worship. We hear it from skeptics: If Christianity is true and if it really changes people, then why can’t you get along? We hear it from Roman Catholics: If the Protestant faith is biblical, then why is it splintered while the Catholic Church remains unified? I do not deny that both skeptics and Catholics ask valid questions.

But while believers have become accustomed to responding to this criticism with a sense of shame, I choose to see it in a different light. I choose to see each tradition as highlighting different aspects of God’s purpose for his people. This is what I consider “optimistic denominationalism.” It admits that the church is, indeed, divided along many different lines. But it looks for the good in it. Instead of focusing on the matters that divide us, it focuses on what each tradition chooses to emphasize.

The various paedobaptist traditions, for example, emphasize welcoming children into the full life of the worshipping community as did our Old Testament forebears. “Let the children come,” they say, “and come all the way by being baptized and received.” The Baptist traditions, on the other hand, value the beauty of the children of believers being raised in the church, professing faith, and being baptized on the basis of it. Only one of the two traditions ultimately has it right and only eternity will finally resolve the debate. But today, rather than focusing on matters of disagreement, why not take the optimistic approach and appreciate what each emphasizes? Both do what they do to honor the Lord and celebrate his grace.

Some Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed traditions sing only Psalms in their church services. They are convinced that unless the New Testament explicitly prescribes an element of worship, they should avoid it. Most other traditions will gladly sing psalms, hymns, and “spiritual songs” (such as modern worship or choruses). They are convinced that we must avoid what the New Testament explicitly forbids, but otherwise have a measure of freedom. Only one can be right, but both can be fully seeking to honor God and each can show us something beautiful: Those who hold to a strict interpretation of the regulative principle can emphasize the beauty of allowing God to regulate our worship while those who hold to it in a looser sense can emphasize the many ways in which God is pleased to receive our worship. We can face the disagreement with optimism and appreciate what each tradition brings to our experience of Christian worship.

Brethren churches traditionally celebrate the Lord’s Supper each Sunday. Worship without the Lord’s Supper is hardly recognizable as worship, they insist, for they understand Jesus to command it and the early church to model it. Churches in several other traditions celebrate the Lord’s Supper on a monthly or quarterly basis, some even insisting it is so important an occasion that they must spend weeks in proper examination and preparation. In the former tradition, we see the desire to commune with the Lord briefly but regularly while in the latter the desire is to commune with the Lord at such depth and length that it must be done infrequently. Rather than criticizing those who take an opposite viewpoint, why not appreciate what they choose to emphasize and respect their reasoning? Though their convictions may lead them to different denominations, we can see that distinction with optimism rather than pessimism.

This applies to any number of matters for which Christians have varied understandings—using instruments in worship or singing a cappella, permitting female deacons or reserving the office for men, keeping young children in the service or providing age-appropriate programs for them. In all of these ways, we can look to other traditions as observers rather than critics, to appreciate that while others may differ from us in our convictions, they do so for the best of motives. And instead of criticizing the differences, we can appreciate the varied emphases.

Some time ago I reflected on all this and suggested that as a prism refracts the light and separates it into its component colors, the differing traditions refract the Bible’s varying commands and emphases. As long as those traditions and denominations love Jesus, honor the Bible, and preach the gospel, we can love and respect them, appreciating what they add to our understanding of Christian worship.

A couple of years ago I listened to a podcast that featured a critic of Christianity. He was a person who claimed to love Christ, yet who seemed to have little use for Christ’s church and little good to say about Christ’s people. There was one critique that especially stood out to me.

He spoke about Christian leaders and expressed how often he had found these people disappointing. He looked at leaders in the political sphere, in the business world, and even in the sports industry and concluded that few leaders in the church could hope to match them in ability. Few Christian leaders, he said, had the same kind of bearing, the same kind of extraordinary leadership capacity. Were they taken from the pulpit to the board room, few could hope to attain great success. “Take these Christians out of a distinctly Christian setting,” he said, “And you would quickly see how very ordinary they are.”

I sometimes wonder if people actually read their Bibles. I often have to conclude they don’t, because the Bible makes it clear that God’s plan is not to carry out his will through the cream of the human crop. Has he not read of Moses who needed someone to speak on his behalf, of Gideon who needed to be prodded out of his cowardice, of David who was considered the least of his brothers yet was chosen as king? Or even Jesus who “had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.” While there are certainly some Christians of unusual ability, superlative talent, and extraordinary intellect, there are many who are not. In fact, most are not. We Christians, averaged out, are a pretty ordinary lot. Maybe even a sub-ordinary lot.

When Paul wrote to the church at Corinth he had to remind them of who they were. “Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth” (1 Corinthians 1:26). Said positively, they were a bunch of ordinary folk, of ordinary ability, and from ordinary backgrounds. But that’s a feature, not a bug. That has been God’s idea all along. He continues, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:27–29).

God’s plan all along has been to use ordinary leaders to accomplish extraordinary things. His plan has been to use people of average ability to accomplish matters of eternal significance. They may not have the kind of charisma that would allow them to elevate a small company into a major empire, but God has gifted them with what they need to shepherd a few souls. They may not have the skills to lead a billion-dollar business, but God has gifted them with skill to teach his Word. And as they do so, they shame the wise and shame the strong. They shame them by leading as shepherds instead of strongmen, by modeling themselves after Jesus instead of the latest business guru, by leading people toward eternal riches instead of what is merely temporal. Ultimately, they shame them by living for what actually matters. They take their little and consecrate it to the Lord instead of taking their much and consecrating it to themselves. And God is glorified in and through them.

An old writer once described a young man, a mere apprentice, who had collected bits of glass that had been discarded by craftsmen. They were judged as having no value, no worth, and no purpose, but with those bits—bits that had been cast off and tossed away—he built a stained glass window that to this day adorns one of Europe’s great cathedrals. And just like that, God is building his kingdom through what others regard as pathetic and insignificant. He is building it through those who are rejected and despised, through those of few talents and average ability. Yet through what the world counts as subpar and unimpressive, he is building a kingdom that will by far outshine even the greatest kingdom ever devised by men.

The experience of preaching is very different from the front than from the back, when facing the congregation than when facing the preacher. The congregation faces one man who is doing his utmost to be engaging, to hold their attention, and to apply truths that will impact their hearts and transform their lives.

The pastor, meanwhile, faces many people who are doing many different things. Some are scolding their children, some are checking their email, some are staring into space, some are taking a good nap. A man does not need to preach many sermons before he realizes he can have two tracks playing in his mind at the same time, one of them preaching and the other observing and analyzing what’s going on around him.

But what a preacher loves to see when he looks toward the congregation is listeners who are thoroughly engaged with his preaching. He loves to see people who are doing their utmost to fight through distractions, to set aside imperfections, or even to forgive downright boredom. He loves to see people who mean to glean all they can from his sermon, who mean to wring every little drop of goodness out of his feeble words. He comes to learn that some congregants minister to him even while he ministers to them.

It can seem at times like the communication during a sermon goes in only one direction—that the preacher only gives and the people only receive. But that’s not the case. The congregation also gives and the preacher also receives. He receives the messages they communicate through their posture, through their body language, and even through the words or sounds they verbalize. Many a preacher has been discouraged in his preaching only to be encouraged by a barely audible “amen.” Many a preacher has heard an internal whisper telling him he is preaching the worst sermon anyone has ever heard only to find himself buoyed by a nodding head or a grunted “mmhmm.” Many a preacher has learned that certain listeners are key encouragers.

And this is a ministry for any Christian—the ministry of engaged listening. It is one way that any Christian can be involved with the preaching and one way any Christian can minister to the preacher. You can listen deliberately and attentively. You can bear down and lean in. You can hold your Bible open in your lap and hold a pen ready in your hand. You can make eye contact and share a smile. You can nod your head in agreement and (if appropriate in your context) utter a subtle or resounding “amen.” In these ways and more, you can take up your part in the preaching.

Not all of us can preach, but all of us can listen. Not all of us can apply ourselves to diligently expositing the Word, but all of us can apply ourselves to diligently receiving it. And preaching is at its very best when the preacher and the listener alike take their role seriously and do their utmost to bless and serve the other.

So why not make it your goal to be an engaged listener? Why not make it your ministry to listen attentively and well? The preacher will thank you for it.

An election year is upon us and with it all the debate, suspicion, and rancor that is sure to accompany the culmination of another four-year cycle. Though the election is still months away, I’m already dreading the inevitable interpersonal struggles that will come with it and even the strains it may bring to the unity of my local church. What’s crazy is that we don’t even live in the country that will be holding the election. Yet because America is so close, so powerful, and so culturally dominant, its debates inevitably extend above the 49th parallel and across the world.

My concern is less for the unity of my nation than the unity of my church. An election like this one, or an election like the one Canada will face in 2025, provide a context in which people can easily begin to distrust and antagonize one another. Of course, there are many other issues that can provoke trouble—pandemic regulations, educational decisions, not to mention age-old issues like the discipline of children or the consumption of alcohol. In so many ways Christians are challenged to maintain a strong unity despite deep differences.

But I wonder if we often think wrongly about the challenges to our unity, and especially our unity within the local church. In Love the Ones Who Drive You Crazy, Jamie Dunlop insists that our differences are not so much a bug within the local church, but a feature, and not so much a problem but an opportunity. “The differences and disagreements that threaten to tear your church apart are filled with potential to proclaim the glory of our good and gracious God.” That’s the burden of his book.

That’s the burden of his book and he defends his position well. Leaning heavily on the words of the Apostle Paul, he shows that God means for the unity we have in Christ despite our differences to be a primary means God uses to display his goodness and glory. This means that

the differences that threaten to tear your church apart are opportunities to demonstrate that being “in accord with Christ Jesus” is all we need to be in “harmony with one another.” That’s how “with one voice” we “glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” If your church is about Jesus and immigration reform, you rob him of glory. If your church is about Jesus and homeschooling, you rob him of glory. Just as God gets greater glory through redemption than through creation alone, the glory he receives in your church’s unity is greater in disagreement and difference than if everyone were in the same place to begin with.

This perspective changes so much about the way we relate to our fellow Christians. It means we must center our church on Christ alone so that instead of pursuing complete conformity, we learn to tolerate differences (in the classical definition of the word “tolerance”). While obviously there are boundaries to our unity—we would not tolerate differences in the core doctrines of the Christian faith—we are to see other differences as opportunities to display the glory of God by loving each other despite them, through them, and even because of them. “Too many of us have never really grappled with the implications of a church centered on Christ alone. We applaud diversity in our churches and pray for more diversity, never contemplating the cost and challenge that comes when God answers our prayer.”

Dunlop unfolds his perspective and his challenge across eight chapters, each of which provides a thematic examination of a different section of Romans. He shows that unity has a unique way of displaying the glory of God; that the kind of love we must extend toward others flows from the mercy God has shown to us; that disunity in the local church tells lies about Jesus; that divine justice empowers us to extend full forgiveness; that people we dislike often act in faith and our worthy of our love and friendship; and so on. “Jesus is creating a stunning picture of his glory in your church, and no matter your flaws and failings, he will succeed,” he insists. “Jesus is creating a stunning picture of his glory through the faith of those you struggle to love, and he will succeed. Jesus is creating a stunning picture of his glory through your faith-filled love, as imperfect as it may be. And he will succeed. This is the hope we have through faith in Christ.”

Whether we are facing a year of political turmoil, a year of pandemic regulations, a year of outright persecution, or even just a very normal year, this book provides crucial instruction and encouragement for every Christian. I would be hard-pressed to find a book that is more likely to benefit you and your church in the year ahead.

It is one of the realities of the Christian faith that skeptics love to criticize—the reality that there are a host of different denominations and a multitude of different expressions of Christian worship. But while believers have become accustomed to responding to this criticism with a sense of shame, I choose to see it in a different light. I choose to see each tradition as highlighting different aspects of God’s purpose for the local church. As a prism refracts the light and separates it into its component colors, the differing traditions refract the Bible’s varying commands and emphases. And this is why I feel at home in so many different churches.

I feel at home in a Brethren church. I feel at home because of its commitment to simplicity in worship and to the necessity of celebrating the Lord’s Supper on a weekly basis. Such churches are meek and humble and committed to honoring the Lord in ways that may be unflashy but are faithful to the Scriptures. They look with longing and pleading for the return of Jesus Christ. I always count it a joy to break bread with the Brethren.

I feel at home in an Anglican church. It feels familiar because its worship is so thoroughly steeped in Word and prayer. While there is always a sermon (though probably one shorter than I am accustomed to) and while there is always song (though often fewer than I am accustomed to) the service is structured around reading the Word and both corporate and private prayers. I love to participate in those readings and prayers knowing that as I do so, I am engaged in a tradition that wraps the world and spans the centuries.

I feel at home in a Presbyterian church because of its commitment to sound doctrine and expositional preaching. Few traditions have raised up as many powerful preachers as the Presbyterians or created as many resources to assist them. Few traditions have thought as deeply about what they believe and described it as thoroughly as Presbyterians have done through their catechisms and confessions. Few documents in the history of the Christian church surpass the Shorter Catechism and the Westminster Confession for depth and beauty.

I feel at home also in those Presbyterian churches that hold to a strict interpretation of the regulative principle. Such churches will only worship in ways the Bible explicitly commands. I admire them for their commitment to principle even as it extends all the way to singing only the Psalms and singing them without instrumentation. Where so many other traditions neglect the psalms, this tradition sings them exclusively and joyfully. I feel at home among them.

I feel at home in a Dutch Reformed church because it values simple, formal worship followed by warm and charitable hospitality. I admire the way they give such care to catechizing their children and often to building and supporting schools to educate them. Plus, almost no church sings louder or stronger than a Dutch Reformed church. (If you want to find men who still sing with confidence and gusto, this is where you will find them.)

I feel at home in many non-denominational churches as well, though most fit at least one of the descriptions above or below. Every church has its reasons to formally associate with other churches or to remain independent, and I respect those who choose to persist outside a denominational structure.

Of course, I feel at home in a Baptist church, for I myself am Baptist. As I search the Scriptures for its instructions on what a local church ought to be and how it ought to worship, I see it describing something very much like a church structured around the London Baptist Confession. I love the emphasis on evangelism. I love the emphasis on celebrating the baptism of one who has professed faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I love the balance of structure and freedom that permeates its worship services.

And while I am confidently and convictionally Baptist, I do love to experience other churches and consider it a blessing to worship among other traditions that teach the same Scriptures and preach the same gospel. I have worshipped in a host of churches spanning every continent and have found that I love to learn from them all, I love to observe what they do so well, and I love to see how God blesses their labors to build his kingdom and declare his glory.

Every now and again I jot down a thought that I’d like to ponder but that I don’t intend to tease out into an article. After all, not every idea is worthy of a full-length treatment. Hence, today I’ve got a long list of brief, random (and unsolicited) observations and pieces of advice related to the local church. I hope there is something here that benefits you.

You are a contributor to your church’s strengths and weaknesses. Your giftedness makes your church stronger and your sins and weaknesses make it weaker. Whenever you are tempted to grumble about your church, you need to remember that even if you can be part of a solution, you are also part of the problems. Be humble.

It’s no cliché that Sunday morning begins on Saturday evening. Your experience of church will be much different if you stay up late watching movies you shouldn’t be watching versus if you go to bed at a reasonable time after refraining from sinful behavior. If you want to get the greatest benefit from the worship services, you need to plan ahead.

There are no perfect churches. Every church has its unique collection of strengths and weaknesses. Though it can often look attractive to leave a church because of its weaknesses, the new church will have plenty of its own. Count the cost before moving on.

One of the best compliments that can be paid to a Christian is this: You are a good churchman.

Make it your habit to pray through the membership directory. You cannot help but come to love people as you pray for them. It’s also a great way to get to know names and faces (not to mention to the names and faces of children).

It is very common—but rarely a good idea—to change churches amid a personal crisis or immediately following one. In times of great difficulty, it is usually best to allow the local church to be a source of stability. It’s wise to distrust yourself in your most difficult times. Stay put for now and only consider moving when life has stabilized.

If and when it does come time to leave a church, leave it well. Most of the time that will involve seeking counsel and affirmation from trusted people, notifying the elders well in advance, expressing your gratitude to them, and then leaving without taking anyone else with you and without undermining other people’s confidence in their leaders.

One unheralded ministry in the church is the ministry of arriving early. In many churches, it is often guests who arrive first and they can feel awkward if they are alone. Those who get there early have the opportunity to serve in welcoming newcomers and engaging them in conversation. Conversely, those who continually show up late miss out on many opportunities to serve others.

Another unheralded ministry is the ministry of singing loud. Our culture doesn’t really know what to do with singing and few people have been trained to sing well and confidently. If you have a good voice and know how to use it, you can bless the people around you by singing out your praises in as loud a voice as is appropriate.

Far too many Christians move from one city to another without first ensuring there is a good church in the new location. Always make sure you are caring for yourself and your family by identifying sound churches in your new place.

Few people want to be part of a church that doesn’t pray, but few people want to attend a prayer meeting. You should ponder this conundrum.

The Lord’s Supper is for sinners, not perfect people. If you come to church deep in a sin that you have no intention of giving up, you would do well to refrain from participating in the Lord’s Supper. But if you have sinned through the week and know the sorrow and shame of it, if you are repenting of that sin before the Lord and pleading for his grace, then by all means, participate. This means of grace is for you!

Baptism takes on new dimensions of meaning when you understand it as not only as a personal act of obedience for an individual but as an ordinance that has meaning to everyone in the church. It is a communal rite, not a personal one.

The greater the number of churches in a particular area, the more each church can create a very defined identity around lesser matters. The fewer the number of churches in a particular area, the more the churches there may be well-served by creating a broader identity around the most important matters.

Church membership matters. It is a great privilege and a great responsibility of the Christian to be formally connected to a particular local church.

It’s okay to be on the losing side of votes or decisions in the life of the church, especially when they are over relatively mundane matters. When the decision is made by the leaders or the majority of members, don’t sulk or whine. Instead, become an advocate of that decision. After all, isn’t God likely to work his will through a prayerful majority?

If you have a beef or concern with the sermon, it’s always a good idea to wait until a few days have passed before approaching the pastor. Also, be sure to distinguish between a bad sermon and a weak sermon—a sermon in which the pastor preached error and a sermon in which he simply may not have been at his best.

There is a lot of gossip in churches. Make the commitment that whatever gossip you hear will never be passed on. Make sure it ends with you.

Churches can inadvertently (or even deliberately) slip into a posture of competition toward one another. One way to head this off is to deliberately and publicly pray for other nearby churches. Pastors do well to integrate this into their pastoral prayers.

It’s okay to clap or raise your hands in worship. It’s okay not to. A lot depends on the customs of the church you are part of. But if it is a custom within your church, it’s probably worth giving it a try as a means of physically expressing your worship.

It is far better to arrive at church each week as a worshipper than a critic. It is far better to determine you will seek out and enjoy whatever good you can find in the church than to identify and nitpick every weakness. It will be better for you and better for everyone else if you come to worship eager to enjoy every blessing.

It is a blessing when the adults in a church take an interest in the children. It is a blessing when parents know that the Christians around them love to befriend and influence their children. So do your best to forge relationships with some of those little people.

Try to make your church the kind of place where young preachers can confidently preach their very first sermons. Though those sermons are probably not going to be very good, ensure those young men receive a lot of encouragement and affirmation.

There is entirely too much unnecessary church-changing. Of course, there are times when leaving one church for another is necessary and good. But there is also something to be said for enduring through a church’s times of difficulty and having a long, faithful ministry among a particular people.

While there are many good causes and many great ministries that need financial support, make the local church the main priority in your giving. And do that giving with joy.

When there is a loud noise in church—a child who cries out, a disabled person who causes a disturbance, a member who drops their water bottle on the floor—be the person who doesn’t turn to look at them. They’re already embarrassed enough.

The one ministry that always needs more people is the childcare ministry. Get your name on the list to serve it!

When you are on vacation or otherwise far from home, make it a point to visit a church. And, if you can, try to make it a church that is true and strong but quite a lot different from your own. You will learn a lot about how Christians worship in ways that are the same but different. You may even spot a strength or custom that you would like to take back to your own church.

When you are on vacation or otherwise far from home in a country that does not speak English, make it a point to visit a church. In all likelihood, there is someone in the church who speaks English and who can help you get settled. You will be surprised and encouraged by how much you can still participate and how much you can still benefit even when you barely understand a word. Worship is a universal language.

When visiting a church that is not your own, do your best to attend as an observer rather than a judge. Some elements may appear strange or even wrong, but if you pay close attention and ask good questions, you may find that each element makes sense within the context of that church.

As soon as a worship service ends, make it your goal to meet someone you have never met or to spend time with someone you barely know. You can catch up with your close friends later. The first two minutes matter most.

The older you get and the more your children move away from your home, city, and church, the more you will treasure sitting in church with your family. So learn to enjoy it while your children are young, rather than dread it or complain about it. These are the good ol’ days and the time will come when you will find yourself wishing they would return.

Every now and again I like to share one of our worship services from Grace Fellowship Church. I do this to provide just one example of how a church applies the principles of Scripture to its public worship. If there is something you see here that would bless your church, you have permission to pilfer freely!

This service’s cast of characters included Patrick as our service leader, Dwight as the elder who prayed the pastoral prayer and read the Scripture, Allie as the lead worshipper, and Paul as the preacher. Our band consisted of piano and violin with two female vocalists. The various elements of the service are in bold with the name of the person who led the element in parentheses. Items in quotes represent roughly what the person said to the congregation. Items not in quotes are explanatory. The entire service took approximately 90 minutes.

Pre-Service Singing

In order to integrate a little more music into our time together, we often sing an extra song five minutes before our 10:00 AM start time. This year we are singing the same song for four weeks in a row in attempt to grow more familiar with it and to learn to sing it in parts. This week and month we sang “I Surrender All.”

Call to Worship (Patrick)

Patrick began the service with a call to worship. “‘Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: “To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.”’ This call to turn to God comes from Isaiah 45. The right day to turn to God is today. The best time to get right with God is now. Every single person will stand before God and explain their life. There are no exceptions. None whatsoever. So turn to Him now. And praise His holy Name.”

Singing (Allie)

• “Come Ye Sinners”
• “Grace Greater Than Our Sin”

Corporate Praise (Patrick)

“We have sung of our intention to come to Jesus and our confidence in His abounding grace. What else is true about God that should encourage anyone to approach Him today. He is gracious … what else? What makes us sure that any person can approach Him? What do we know is true about Him from the Bible that should encourage all of us to turn to Him? Just shout those out.”

For a few minutes the congregation shouted out their answers.

“The only thing that holds us back from God is our sin. Let’s use the words of that great Psalm of confession, Psalm 51, to sing our plea for forgiveness and our confidence that He will grant it.”

Singing (Allie)

• Psalm 51 (set to Crimond)

Pastoral Prayer (Dwight)

Dwight led the pastoral prayer. Each week we pray for some items that are urgent but also some that are “scheduled.” This week those scheduled items included one like-minded congregation in our city, the war in Ukraine, and one of our church members who was preaching at a nearby church.

Scripture Reading (Dwight)

“Please take your Bible and turn to Judges 2. We will be reading from Judges 2:6 to Judges 3:6. You will find that on page 188 if you are using one of our church Bibles. This is what Holy Scripture says…”

Dwight read the text, then closed with, “This is the word of the Lord,” to which the congregation responded, “Thanks be to God.”

Singing (Allie)

• “There is a Foe, Whose Hidden Power”

Sermon (Paul)

Paul preached the opening sermon for a new expositional series on the book of Judges. This sermon was, in my opinion, a master class in how to introduce a book. It was titled “We Need a Savior.”

Singing (Allie)

• “There Is A Fountain” (acapella)

Commission (Patrick)

Patrick tied the message of the sermon into a “commission” that challenged the church to live out its truths throughout the week. This commission replaces (and carries some of the content of) what would usually be labelled “announcements” or “notices.” It forces us to tie information we want the church to know into a call to action based on the truths of the Word.

Benediction

The benediction was 2 Corinthians 13:14: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.”

NPR recently ran an article about the future of the Christian church. Church attendance is in decline, they said, but some creative leaders are finding ways to keep it relevant in a new cultural context. Pastor Chris Battle has walked away from traditional church because it “was not connecting with people” and now leads a “spiritual community” called BattleField Farm & Gardens. Rector Billy Daniel and Pastor Caroline Vogel of an Episcopal Church in Knoxville use their sanctuary for yoga, breathing exercises, and other alternate forms of spirituality. “Just because you leave organized religion doesn’t mean the hunger to connect with the divine is going to cease,” she says. Bradley Hyde, a Methodist minister, sees churches like his hemorrhaging members and is also turning away from traditional services to focus more on community involvement.

It needs to be said: I care what NPR thinks of the church about as much as I care about what North Korea thinks of democracy or what Jehovah’s Witnesses think of the Trinity. But the article did have some tremendously revealing components to it and ones that are worth considering because they reveal universal human tendencies and temptations.

One of these comes courtesy of a participant in Chris Battle’s church who describes herself as “a refugee from fundamentalist churches.” When asked why she is part of BattleField Farm & Gardens she says, “Generally, I’m here because I want two things out of church … I want time to sit down, like we do on Sundays sometimes or around the fire, and, like, pray and re-center and figure out what we’re about in the world. Because the world is very noisy. And then I want a church to get [expletive] done with your community and for your community.”

The key part of her comment is not the bit about sitting around the fire and re-centering and it’s not the bit about getting [expletive] done within the community. The key part is at the beginning where she says, “I want two things out of church.” The assumption is that her desires are relevant, that what she wants out of a church is even the least bit consequential.

But then she is well-trained because the pastor, when he became convinced church was no longer relevant, said to himself, “maybe we need to begin to do church differently. But what does that look like? And I didn’t know until I got to the garden.” There’s no indication that he looked outside of himself for answers, but only that he looked inside. He asked what he wanted, not what God wanted. He indicates no source of authority beyond his own desires or his own reasoning.

Then Caroline Vogel says that just as we need food, shelter, and clothing “we also have to feed our souls in some way. … And so I think there’s this challenge of, OK, we’ve been doing it like this for so long, and it’s just not working for people in a way that meets them in a holistic way.” What apparently meets them in a holistic way is yoga, breathing exercises, a Celtic service. “Your human breath is infinitely connecting to the divine breath,” she says in one of these yoga services, “so that as you breathe you are being breathed by the Holy.” One of her new parishioners says “she and her husband stopped going to traditional church about six years ago because it wasn’t doing anything for them.” “The breathing linked with feeling the spirit is really important to me. And it stays with me more than just a sermon and some hymns.”

We may roll our eyes at such people and consider ourselves superior to them. But isn’t it possible that we can relate to church in a similar way? Isn’t it possible that we can join and depart churches on the basis of preference more than on the basis of God’s revelation of what a church is and ought to be? Aren’t we all tempted at times to leave a faithful church for an exciting one, a church that does things God’s way for one that does things in a fresh or novel way? Isn’t every leader tempted at times to change the way he does church not because he has come to realize it’s unfaithful to Scripture but because it no longer seems to engage the people around him?

The fact is that we are all prone to create a local church community or a worship service that begins with questions like “What do I want? What feels meaningful to me? What makes me feel fulfilled?” The Church Growth Movement essentially baptized this consumeristic impulse by building churches around the desires of their target demographics. Their constant question to the unchurched and de-churched alike was “What would it take to get you to come?” Rarely if ever did they ask, “What does God say a church should be?” Instead of scouring the Bible, they scoured the minds, desires, and requests of unbelievers.

If indeed it is true that church attendance is in decline, our key task is not to change what we do for the sake of regaining attendees. Our key task is not to survey people to find out what it will take to get them back in and it’s not to inquire what they might find spiritually meaningful. Our key task is to search the Scriptures to see what God tells us a church ought to be and ought to do. We will find that he is not silent. We will find that he prescribes how we are to worship him. We will find that we must remain faithful to him whether the church fills or empties, whether the congregation explodes in growth or stays static (or even diminishes).

Here’s the great irony in this story: The cure that these church leaders propose is actually indistinguishable from the disease. The cure they propose for this illness is to administer more of the illness! They are treating cancer with cancer, infection with infection, radiation poisoning with even greater doses of radiation. The reason their churches are crumbling is ultimately because they lost their confidence in the Word, in its guidance, in its core message. The way home is not to wander even farther, but always to return—to return to doing what God says, to doing what God makes clear.

What we want from church is utterly irrelevant, completely meaningless, entirely inconsequential. All that matters is what God wants. After all, he is the one who created us and the one who created church! Surely then we can trust his purpose and his design. Whether we are tempted to leave one church for another over a matter of mere preference, whether we are tempted to remove an element of our worship service because it no longer resonates with people, whether we are tempted to try something novel and new, we must always turn first to the Word, first to the one who knows exactly what we need. He will lead us, he will guide us, he will help us to worship in the ways that please him and that satisfy our hungry souls.