Jesus Unfolds His Plan For The World
Matthew Series | Matthew 16:13-23 | Pastor Duane Smets
This week is an exegetical sermon on Matthew 16:13-23 where Jesus is declared the Christ and Son of the Living God, Jesus says he means to start a church and will be the one to build, protect and lead it, and Jesus speaks of his plan to accomplish that task and defeat Satan by dying and rising again. This takes a special look at the Catholic form of church government and classical Protestant interpretations, as well as church growth strategies and the centrality of the cross. This sermon was originally preached on July 11th, 2010 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.
Church Planting Success
In my final study of the book of Nehemiah I came across a paragraph from theologian J.I. Packer’s book on Nehemiah on church growth. There are a lot of ideas and practices at work in the landscape of churches across the US and beyond. With mature spiritual insight and keen cultural perceptivity Packer speaks into what makes a church plant a success.
I have found that churches, pastors, seminaries, and parachurch agencies throughout North America are mostly playing the numbers game – that is, defining success in terms of numbers of heads counted or added to those that were there before. Church-growth theorists, evangelists, pastors, missionaries, news reporters, and others all speak as if (1) numerical increase is what matters most; (2) numerical increase will surely come if our techniques and procedures are right; (3) numerical increase validates ministries as nothing else does; (4) numerical increase must be everyone’s main goal. I detect four unhappy consequences of this.
First, big and growing churches are viewed as far more significant than others. Second, parachurch specialists who pull in large numbers are venerated, while hard-working pastors are treated as near-nonentities. Third, lively laymen and clergy too are constantly being creamed off from the churches to run parachurch ministries, in which, just because they specialize on a relatively narrow front, quicker and more striking results can be expected. Fourth, many ministers of not-so-bouncy temperament and not-so-flashy gifts return to secular employment in disillusionment and bitterness, concluding that the pastoral life of steady service is a game not worth playing.
In all of this I seem to see a great deal of unmortified pride, either massaged, indulged, and gratified, or wounded, nursed, and mollycoddled. Where quantifiable success is god, pride always grows strong and spreads through the soul as cancer sometimes gallops through the body. Shrinking spiritual stature and growing moral weakness thence result, and in pastoral leaders, especially those who have become sure they are succeeding, the various forms of abuse and exploitation that follow can be horrific.
Orienting all Christian action to visible success as its goal, a move which to many moderns seems supremely sensible and businesslike, is thus more a weakness in the church than its strength; it is a seedbed both of unspiritual vainglory for the self-rated succeeders and of unspiritual despair for the self-rated failures, and a source of shallowness and superficiality all round.
The way of health and humility is for us to admit to ourselves that in the final analysis we do not and cannot know the measure of our success the way God sees it. Wisdom says: leave success ratings to God, and live your Christianity as a religion of faithfulness rather than an idolatry of achievement.
Packer says it was studying the book and life of Nehemiah which helped him see and learn these principles. Nehemiah ends his book of memoirs with the phrase, “Remember me, O my God, for good (Neh 13:31).” May we be aware of the motives of our heart that would find satisfaction in others seeing us as good for what we have accomplished numerically. May God help us not to define success in terms of numbers. May we count success as looking to and trusting Jesus. The numbers are his job to do what he wants with them for whatever way will bring him the most glory.
- Pastor Duane
Nehemiah Series (Part 7): “Completing the Groundwork of God’s Vision”
This is the seventh week of our sermon series, “Nehemiah: Building God’s Church in the City.” Part 7, this week is an exegetical sermon of chapter seven and is about Completing the Groundwork of God’s Vision. This sermon addresses the following issues in the context of church planting: the light of mission, plural Godly leadership, potential church planters, defending what we’ve built, and giving money to the work. This sermon was originally preached March 8th, 2009 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.
What is a Healthy Church?
Last week while I was at the conference I had the privilege of sitting under the teaching of Mark Dever for three sessions. On the way back on the plane I read his little book, “What is a Healthy Church?” which is essentially a condensed version of his larger treatise called, “9 Marks of a Healthy Church” which is on our book table. In addition, our church is listed on the 9 Marks website of churches who meet and believes in the nine marks, you can check it out HERE. So I thought I’d write a entry reviewing the 9 marks and summarizing Dever’s little book.
Often, questions of church health and growth get reduced to a conversation about numbers. At some point I plan to specifically address that issue biblically and systematically…but for now let me just introduce the nine marks with Dever’s words. He says churches who are healthy often can tend to grow more slowly and that regardless of the rate of growth, God is to be the church’s chief concern. He writes, “Let churches be big. Let them be little. Let them be urban or rural, or traditional or contemporary. Let them meet in houses, buildings, schools, or storefronts. Just let them display for the world what our holy and loving God is like.” Dever sees these marks both as what must be in place for God to be displayed and what will be cut short in an attempt to grow or be healthy merely through seeking to be “relevant” or “timely.” With that here’s the 9 marks and a brief summary of each.
