Category Archives: Disciple-Making

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How to Use Your Church’s Confession

Confessions of Faith

Few church documents are more important that a church’s Confession of Faith (Statement of Faith is the more common contemporary moniker). Yet, at least in my experience, few documents are as little used as the congregation’s “pattern of sound words.”

In 2012 Carl Trueman did the entire church a great favor by publishing The Creedal Imperative. If you need any convincing of why a local church needs a confession, stop reading this post and go read his book. It’s that persuasive.

For me, as one already convinced of creedalism, the best part of the book was the final chapter where Trueman discusses why a confession of faith is useful. He gives eight reasons. Let me briefly mention them here, with any helpful elaboration, and then consider how a church can uses their confession.

8 REASONS WHY A CONFESSION OF FAITH IS USEFUL

  1. Delimits the power of the church.Church officers cannot just preach whatever they want. A confession “describes the message the church is to preach, and it limits the church’s power to what is contained in the document.”
  2. Offers succinct and thorough summaries of the faith.
  3. Allows for appropriate discrimination between members and office-bearers.“The bar for full communicant church membership is quite low: a simply but publicly coherent profession of faith in the line of Romans 10:9-10 is sufficient.” Yet, what biblical and theological competency is required of office-bearers? The simplest way to codify it would be to say they must fully subscribe (some denominations allow for exceptions) to the church’s confession of faith and be able to teach such truth.
  4. Reflects the ministerial authority of the church.
  5. Represents the maximum doctrinal competence that can be expected from a congregation. A confession “represents the church’s doctrinal and pedagogical aspirations.”
  6. Relativizes the present. Confessions are immune, in a good way, to the passing fads and tastes of the present. “Yes, the present is where we all live and breathe, eat and drink; but the creeds and confessions of the church connect us to the past and indicate that our identity is rooted in that past. This is in line with the thrust of biblical teaching.” Timothy was not to be innovative, rather he was to hold fast to the patter of sound words given to him by Paul.
  7. Helps to define one church in relation to another. A confession “serves transparency because it allows those outside to see what a particular church represents. . . . When someone visits the congregation, it is useful for congregants to be able to point them to a succinct summary of the church’s position on key doctrinal topics.
  8. Maintains corporate unity.A church is united insofar as it defines and agrees upon what is biblically true. A confession of faith is thus a document that fuels unity.

3 WAYS TO USE YOUR CHURCH’S CONFESSION

If a confession of faith is beneficial in all these ways, how then can a church use the confession in a way that brings doctrinal continuity and convictional harmony? Here are three ideas:

Use the confession in your church’s gathered worship.This is something I hope to continually do more of at IDC, but there is no reason why a church can’t regularly confess – through a corporate reading – some portion its confession of faith. It could be an article that has a direct link to the sermon, a clear expounding of a truth you are about to sing, or maybe it doesn’t have any clear link other than being a fantastic way to proclaim unity in Christ.

Use the confession in discipling relationships.A few of our elders have gone through the 1689 London Baptist Confession with different men in the church and been met with a great response. Many different churches I know of will use something like Grudem’s Christian Beliefs to train there members in systematic theology, but why not use the church’s confession of faith? A good and accurate confession is like a succinctly packed systematic. And all our members need resources succinctly packed with biblical truth.

Use the confession in elder and deacon meetings.We use the confession in all our office-bearer training, but we are growing in our consistent use of the documents in our actual meetings. It seems wise, for example, to consistently read a portion of the confession at your elders’ meeting and reflect together upon its truth. This further cements the doctrinal foundations in church leadership and helps fuel unified understanding of what the church confesses.

Confessions have a unique ability to promote clarity and unity in a local church. So why don’t you dust yours off and wield it to help build a vibrant witness to the world.

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Cross Centered Epitomes

Cross Centered

This is an excerpt from my recent sermon on Mark 8:27-9:1 entitled, “The Savior’s Demand.“

In 8:34 Jesus called “the crowd to him with his disciples,” indicating that what is about to follow is for all disciples, not just The Twelve. He says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself . . .” Self-denial here does not mean the mere resistance of material desires. It means the complete renouncing of self – ceasing to make self the central focus of one’s life. “. . . and take up his cross . . .” Cross bearing doesn’t refer to putting up with irritations or annoyances in life, but it involves the path to crucifixion. It was normal procedure for the condemned person to carry the crossbeam of the cross from the place of judgment to the place of execution. Crucifixion was view as the most ignoble of deaths. To bear the cross, thus meant obeying to the point of humiliation, extreme suffering, and death. “. . . and follow me.” Jesus is simply saying, “My path is your path.” I will suffer and die, you must be willing to follow in my footsteps. This is what disciples must do.

Understand how radical this would have been for the disciples to hear. They understood Jesus role as Messiah to be one of political victory and triumph, they probably were thinking they’d soon have seats of honor next to His throne when He overthrew the Roman Empire. But Jesus said He would suffer and so they must be willing to suffer. Each of these phrases were like little sticks of dynamite blowing up the disciples’ notions of what it meant to come after Jesus.

8:35-38 now gives us four statements that put some practical meat on the theological bones of 8:34. Notice how each verse begins with the word “for”:

  • 8:35: For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.
  • 8:36: For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
  • 8:37: For what can a man give in return for his soul?
  • 8:38: For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

We need to see two ways these verses reason unto us a rethinking of what it means to be a disciple of Christ.

  1. Cross-centered discipleship demands us to rethink confession versus denial. 8:35 and 8:38 are linked on this point. It would have been a powerful temptation to the 1st century Romans Mark originally addressed to deny Christ in order to save their life. But Jesus is saying denying Him here on earth means losing Him there in eternity. So, confessing faith in Christ here – no matter the cost –means gaining Him there.
  1. Cross-centered discipleship demands us to rethink humiliation versus honor. Sin, Satan, and the world call you to strive for honor here and forego any humiliation at being associated with Christ.  But Jesus turns that notion on its head in 8:36-37. Would you flee the humiliation that often comes from believing in Christ to gain honor in this world, but in so doing forfeit your soul? Jim Elliot surely right to say, “He is no fool to give up what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”

Simply put, cross-centered discipleship will ordinarily demand earthly loss for eternal gain, and that pursuit flies against the common goal of “the good life” – saving one’s life and gaining the whole world. I wonder tonight what occupies your mind most, earthly profits or eternal pursuits? Are you striving for the honor of this world more than the humiliation that comes with faithfully following Christ? Are you quicker to confessing Him as Lord or hide your Christian convictions?

The section concludes with a somewhat puzzling statement, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.” It seems best to understand that Jesus is referring to what comes next in Mark’s gospel, which we will study next week, the Savior transfigured in glory on a mountainside.

Slowly but surely, Jesus is moving the disciples from being spectators to being participants. Participation means seeing who Jesus is, seeing what Jesus must do, and then seeing what disciples must do.

A CROSS CENTERED CHURCH

Do you see the centrality of the cross in this passage? In 8:31 Jesus says His Messiahship is necessarily barreling towards the cross. In 8:34 He says discipleship is summed up in self-denial and cross-bearing. Christian life and mission is all about a cross – the cross of Jesus Christ. This is thus necessarily true about a Christian church. Let’s begin to close by considering what this text tells us about a cross-centered church:

A cross-centered church knows Jesus intimately. It all begins with a confession of Christ, seeing Him clearly, knowing Him intimately. Faithfulness to Christ depends on accurate knowledge of Christ. If we are to be church that displays and declares God’s glory we must be about knowing Jesus intimately. One practical outflow of this truth is that we would be a people who help each other grow in our knowledge of the Savior. We would make it our delight to help our spouses, children, and fellow church members know the Savior intimately. That knowledge would lead to the second point . . .

A cross-centered church follows Jesus sacrificially. Jesus clearly assumes that His followers would suffer, be rejected, and even die. Faithful obedience requires sacrifice. In our culture that might not be the sacrifice of our lives, but it could mean the sacrifice of money, time, relationships, or reputation. Those sacrifices will ordinarily stem from our third point . . .

A cross-centered church proclaims Jesus eagerly. We are to model the plain, yet bold, teaching of Christ in 8:32. A crucified and risen Savior is the gospel that saves; it’s good news so glorious that we must proclaim it. It must be the sum and substance of our gathered worship time, but also the aim of our daily conversation.

Know Him intimately, follow Him sacrificially, and proclaim Him eagerly; three regular responses of a cross-centered church.

GOODBYE TO SELF-CENTERED LIVING,
HELLO TO CROSS-CENTERED LIVING

One of my favorite theologians is a Scotsman named John Murray. He was the youngest of eight with five older brothers and two sisters. When World War I came his older brothers were some of the first called to service. The unspeakable grief, for the families of such summoned men, is hard for us to capture today. When Murray’s brother Tommy was called to France his father said, “Goodbye Tommy, I’ll never see you again.” And Tommy indeed never returned home alive.

Jesus, the King of Kings, has called His people to Himself, opened their eyes, and is summoning people to the war of the ages as they follow Him. It’s a summons that demands we say, “Goodbye self, I’ll never see you again.”  He came to die that we might live and now calls us to the same, die to self that we might live to Christ. Because He went to the cross we are to carry a cross. Christian life and mission is all about a cross.

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3 Traits of a Disciple-Making Church

A Disciple-Making Church Slider

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” – Matthew 28:18-201

For the last twelve months or so I have been engrossed in studying the Cold War. We could say that the Cold War was a clash of cultures – capitalism on one side and communism on the other – and certain components contributed to each culture. A capitalist economy is based on private ownership, private profit and free competition. It encourages private individuals to own businesses and make profits. A communist economy, on the other hand, is controlled by the government. A country’s wealth and resources are owned by the state or government. The state controls and plans all economic activity so that everybody benefits.

Every culture has unique components. I believe the Great Commission calls the church to have a disciple-making culture. A disciple-making culture is the product of many different components or traits. Here are three . . .

THREE TRAITS OF A DISCIPLE-MAKING CHURCH

First, a prayerful trait. Earlier in Matthew Jesus talked about how the fields are ripe for the harvest, but the laborers are few. What should his disciples then do? “Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Faithful disciple-making is marked by a prayerful disposition before the Lord of the harvest. I wonder if you have ever noticed how Paul often calls churches to pray for him, that doors would be opened for him to proclaim the mystery of the gospel. Our sovereign God is not only the one who saves sinners, but sends His laborers to proclaim that salvation. Thus, disciple-making people are praying people. This is a reason why, at our church, we pray so much in our gathered worship and spend much of our time praying for things outside of our body. This is why we regularly post links to Operation World to encourage our members to pray for the nations each day. Let us also be encouraged tonight to let our prayers have a particular accent on the glory of God being made known to all nations.

Second, an intentional trait. Disciple-making is ordinary Christianity. Like learning to count and say your alphabet in the natural realm, there is scarcely any part of the Christian life where discipleship does not touch. In his wonderful article Disciple-Making is Ordinary Christianity Erik Raymond provides the following examples of intentionality in disciple-making:

  • Intentional disciple-making happens when a guy wants to be married but doesn’t have a game-plan for how to go about it. He asks another brother for guidance and help. This brother takes him out for lunch and talks through some biblical and practical principles. He then commits to pray for him, to be available for questions, and to meet occasionally to talk about his progress.
  • Intentional disciple-making happens when a mom with two toddlers drops something off that she borrowed from another sister at church. During the exchange they get to talking and the young mom expresses her feelings of fatigue and failure to measure up to her perceived standards of motherhood. The other woman listens to her, reminds her of Scripture, prays with her, and then continues to come alongside of her for encouragement in the gospel.
  • Intentional disciple-making happens when a brother notices another brother is running hard after his job and neglecting his family and ministry. He comes alongside of his brother to remind him of the true and lasting treasure, and the proper perspective on work.
  • Intentional disciple-making happens when a mom is at the park with her children. At one point the kids become unruly and she patiently, graciously but faithfully, disciplines her children. There are many watching eyes around her. Both the believing and unbelieving women are intrigued. Conversations begin and soon the fruit of the Spirit points to the matchless worth of Christ.
  • Intentional disciple-making happens when a home-school mom breaks away with free time only to go to the same coffee house hoping to make new friends and open doors for sharing the gospel.

So, faithful disciple-making includes a prayerful trait and an intentional trait.

Thirdly, a disciple-making church will have a sacrificial trait. Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” That means that Jesus is Lord over every one of our lives and therefore has the right to do whatever He wants with our lives. You often may hear someone say, “I have decided to make Jesus the Lord of my life.”  Now that statement is often a sincere way of professing truth faith in Christ, but at a certain level it’s not true.  For Jesus says that he is already the Lord of your life. You didn’t really have a choice in the matter. The real issue is not if Jesus is Lord of your life, but if you will submit to His lordship over your life. Will you do it now or will you do it after it’s too late? What does it mean to surrender to the lordship of Christ? It means that we have surrendered – we have sacrificed – every right to determine the direction of our lives. No longer do we get to call the shots in our lives.  Men, if you have surrendered to Christ you no longer have the authority to call the shots as to what career you have, what you do with your money, in what direction you lead your family. As your Lord Christ looks at those rights and says, “Mine.” The glorious news from Matthew 28 is that we know what Jesus wants to do with your life, He wants you to make disciples of all nations! The sacrificial trait comes into play when His Lordship calls you to sell a house to give the money for a church plant, to take a job in a foreign country to be a Christian businessman bearing witness to our Lord and King, to leave the DFW to help with a church plant in another state, or to take the gospel to an unreached people group that are so hostile that you may lose you life in the process.

He is Lord of your individual body and Lord of this collective body. In what ways might he be calling you and calling us to live sacrificially for the glory of Christ in all nations?

Christ’s authority, command, and presence call us to be a disciple-making church. Those things ought to stir up within our midst prayerful, intentional, and sacrificial head, hearts, and hands. Henry Martyn, the great missionary to India said,  “The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions, and the nearer we get to Him the more intensely missionary we must become.” He promised to be with us to the end of the age, therefore a faithful church will be “intensely missionary.” Prayer, intentionality, and sacrifice are aids to such a disciple-making culture.

  1. This post is adapted from my sermon “A Disciple-Making Church.” ↩