FAMILY DINNER....By Phil Ryken

The three years that Lisa and I spent up at Oxford were some of the best years of our lives. We had the time to study and the leisure to explore one of the world’s most beautiful cities, with opportunities to engage in gospel ministry and form lasting friendships. By the grace of God, we also had a balanced daily schedule that enabled us to set patterns for family life that prepared us for future service in the church. One essential part of that daily pattern was and is family dinner.Family dinner has fallen on hard times in American culture. Barely half of American teenagers say they have dinner with at least one parent most nights of the week. And whether they have dinner together or not, nearly one half of American families eat dinner with the television on. This is significant because the family dinner table is a bell-weather for our culture. The relevant research shows that children from families that eat together generally do better in school and are less likely to engage in risky behavior.The reasons for the decline of the family dinner table are not hard to find. Sadly, some families are not close to begin with, and would prefer not to have dinner together anyway. Some households are led by hard-working single parents who are not able to be home every night at dinner time. Other families have too many activities going on. With all the late nights at work, activities at school, practices for music and sports, and meetings at church, the faces around the table change from one night to the next. This is why Lisa and I are grateful for the basic pattern that was set during our time at Oxford, when we had dinner as a family almost every night at 6 o’clock, and when I was at home and available for the evening routine: play time, bath time, story time, and bed time, with singing, Bible stories, prayer, and of course, brushing teeth. Things are a little more complicated now. We have five children, instead of just one, and my job is more demanding. But family dinner remains a regular part of our daily schedule. There are exceptions, of course, but most nights we all sit down together between 5:30 and 6:00. We’re not slavish about our routine, but usually we have short family devotions (sometimes with singing), followed by all the other jobs that have to be done before bedtime. Many good things happen around the family dinner table. To begin with, there is healthy nutrition. Families that eat together tend to eat more balanced meals, with more fruits and vegetables, rather than snacking on junk food all night. There is also the opportunity for good conversation—for discussing the unexpected joys, the little disappointments, and the providential encounters of everyday life. Then family dinner is a civilizing process, as children learn what mannerly things one is to do (and not to do) when eating with other people. It can also be a learning experience in other ways: a place for engaging the mind and learning the Christian worldview by discussing important things that are happening in the wider world, including in the church. And whenever Christian hospitality is practiced, there is an opportunity to learn these things from others.But maybe as important as anything else is the sense of being together as a family. The people we see around the table are the first people God has given us to love. Every time we eat dinner together we are reinforcing the bonds of family connection. We tell the stories, use the nicknames, share the jokes, and learn the mutual respect that makes us uniquely who we are as a family. Our loving bonds of family identity are further strengthened when we spend time together in worship through singing, Bible reading, and prayer. In the same way that public worship helps us belong to the people of God, family dinner can establish a secure sense of belonging to a household. I say “household” because these blessings are not limited to nuclear families. They are extended from families to singles who are welcomed in Christian love. They are also available to singles who live under the same roof or even to people who live alone, if they are committed to healthy relationships and intentional about pursuing godly patterns of community life that include the sharing of common meals. The Scriptures do not give us any specific command to have family dinner. Strictly speaking, the only required meal on God’s plan is the Lord’s Supper. However, the Bible places a high positive value on feasting and everywhere seems to assume that God’s people will share table fellowship. Indeed, this was a notable feature of the public ministry of our Lord, who loved to sit down with people for a meal.We see the same thing in the early church. When Luke described the community life of the first church in Jerusalem, he said that Christians were “breaking bread in their homes” and receiving “their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God” (Acts 2:46). Luke was talking about something more than the Lord’s Supper; he was talking about God-centered fellowship in the life of the Christian home. And he was talking about it in the context of a basic act of human companionship: sharing a meal. Are you making good use of whatever opportunities you have for family dinner? The people of God are called to take their eating and drinking seriously and joyfully. As we take delight in the abundance of God’s provision, we can also offer Christian hospitality, bless our children, strengthen the ties of family affection, learn what is happening in one another’s lives, engage in edifying conversation, make our households a place for prayer, and gratefully return our thanks to God.

ROBERT SCHULLER AND THE SEEKER SENSITIVE CHURCH.....By Bob DeWaay

"For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1Corinthians 1:21-24)
Two men met another man as they were walking down a road. They were having a private discussion when the third man began questioning them. The third man soon dominated the conversation. Throughout the rest of their journey, the man began with the books of Moses and proceeded to explain to them, verse by verse, all of the Old Testament passages that pertained to the Jewish Messiah. It turned out the third man was Jesus the Messiah. The resurrected Jewish Messiah had joined them on their journey and preached a sermon from Old Testament messianic prophecy. Here is how the two described their experience of this talk on the road to Emmaus: "Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32).
We do not have a transcription of the exact passages Jesus cited or how He explained them. Yet we have enough information in the New Testament about Messianic prophecy to reconstruct a similar sermon. Did you know that in many of the largest so-called "evangelical” churches in America such a sermon would never be tolerated? Hundreds of thousands of professed Christians go to churches where Jesus’ sermon on the road to Emmaus would considered "irrelevant” to the "felt needs” of the congregation. The hearts of church-goers no longer "burn” in conviction, joy, or intense devotion to God and His Word, because it is seldom heard. If the pastor of one of these churches announced a sermon that would outline all of the Old Testament prophecies about Messiah, the likely result would be yawns, moans, and bewilderment over how the church lost its "vision,” or mass exodus to a church that understood the "needs” of modern "seekers.”
How did we get to this situation? I credit Robert Schuller as the key person to have orchestrated this previously unimaginable change in evangelical Christianity. It was Schuller’s bold move, beginning in 1955, to integrate the positive thinking philosophy of Norman Vincent Peale with savvy, business oriented marketing techniques that brought thousands into what eventually became the Crystal Cathedral. In the process he also developed his hugely successful television broadcast. Though he did not coin the phrase "seeker-sensitive,” his success and ideas have inspired many of the most successful "seeker” churches in America.
Robert Schuller and Old Fashioned Liberalism
Robert Schuller does not claim to be a liberal. He still is affiliated with a Reformed denomination1 and willingly calls himself "evangelical.” Yet when Schuller appeared on Larry King Live just before Christmas 1999, I heard him proclaim, "I am not trying to convert anyone from another religion, I am only try to reach people who have no religion.” If so, he has just ruled out billions of people as possible recipients of the gospel. The vast majority of Americans claim to be Christian and most of the rest claim some religion. So also the majority of the people throughout the world have some religious affiliation. The idea that one ought not try to convert others to the Christian faith is liberal to the core.
Dr. Schuller has other things in common with religious liberalism. In 1982, Schuller wrote a book claiming that the church needed to be reformed based on the psychological theory of self-esteem.2 He has often been quoted as suggesting that Christian theology ought to be more man-centered rather than God-centered. As we shall show, Schuller’s teachings have their roots in early twentieth century liberalism. Many people know that Norman Vincent Peale was a key person in the development of Robert Schuller’s ministry, but most do not know the roots of Peale’s and after him Schuller’s approach to Christianity.
In his book, Your Church Has a Fantastic Future,3 Dr. Schuller describes how he started with $500 and a dream. Eventually he built the Crystal Cathedral and his multimillion dollar Television ministry. He rented a drive in theater in 1955 and began to take Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s message of positive thinking to the people. He writes:
Then I proceeded to spend about $50 for brochures. Hoping to impress unchurched people, I wrote to Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote back a marvelous statement with his permission to quote extensively. So I grabbed hold of his coattails.4
In 1957 he persuaded Peale to speak at his drive in church.5 From Peale he learned a key lesson about appealing to the "unchurched.” The lesson was, "Jesus never called a person a sinner.”6 This insight led to Schuller’s philosophy of possibility thinking and self-esteem. Schuller writes: "[P]ossibility thinking and self-esteem theology can both be summarized in this single sentence: The ‘I am’ determines the ‘I can.’”7 His idea was that the key to making positive thinking work out practically was to develop high self-esteem. He imagines that people to not realize their full potential because of low self-esteem.
Dr. Schuller usually does not come out and deny any key evangelical beliefs. He says that he believes in the various points of orthodoxy. He even interacts with his critics who claim he skips essential aspects of the gospel. For example, when someone questions him on not preaching that we must deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow Jesus, he is ready with an explanation that possibility thinking is doing just that: "To deny yourself means daring to ask God, ‘What do you want me to do’?”8 This sets in motion God’s answer. Eventually the question leads to this: "[Y]ou’re going to get a dream. And anytime a dream comes from God, it is going to be humanly impossible to accomplish.”9 This all leads to his version of "faith” and success through possibility thinking and self-esteem. So through this clever process, taking up one’s cross and denying self actually means letting God make you more successful than you ever thought possible and having high self-esteem. He then goes on to scold those of us who still think that Jesus’ point is that the cross is an instrument of death and that we must die to our old sinful self. He claims such preaching produces "sick people.”10
Similarly, Dr. Schuller is ready with versions of the 10 Commandments and other Biblical issues that fit his theology. This is Schuller’s nice, user friendly version of the decalogue: "The answer is simple. The Ten Commandments are given to us in order to show us how to live in such an ethical behavioral pattern that we will feel good about ourselves. The Ten Commandments are not 10 negative restrictions.”11 The sin nature gets a similar treatment. While not denying its existence, Dr. Schuller defines sin as a lack of faith. Our sin is that, "We’re conceived and born without faith, without any belief.”12 So we need faith, and most importantly we need to believe in ourselves (and God of course). Since Dr. Schuller publicly claims to not seek the conversion of people from other religions, obviously faith in God need not be described in Christian terms. So whatever issue comes along, possibility thinking and self-esteem have the answer.
The Legacy and Roots of Dr. Schuller’s Ideas
Having settled these issues, the rest of the book tells us how to be successful and concludes with testimonies of dozens of successful pastors who got their church growth ideas from Dr. Schuller. C. Peter Wagner, a key promoter of modern church growth theory, sings the praises of Dr. Schuller in the preface of the book.13 Bill Hybels, the pastor of the now famous Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, is among many notables who claim to at least partially owe their success to Schuller’s principles. According to Hybels’ testimony, he got his inspiration from one of Dr. Schuller’s church growth seminars.14
It is undeniable that Robert Schuller started a trend that grew into a huge movement that is now engulfing much of evangelicalism. I know from personal experience that evangelical seminaries are promoting the latest seeker-sensitive approaches to church growth as if it were a do or die situation. During the last seven years, I sat through many classes and seminars promoting this approach. In preparation for this article I ran a search on the seminary library computer and found 400 books on the topic. As I paged through dozens of these books I encountered a confusing array of opinions. One book said that one should never call the church "the family of God” since families are closed units and people will not feel welcome. Then another said that young wandering souls are looking for a sense of family. Another suggested that if a church is going to ever have over 200 members, the pastor must make it clear from the beginning that he will do no hospital visitation, personal counseling, or personal, pastoral care of the members. His role is to build a team, with him as the manager.
Though confusing, there is a unifying theme: in America, nothing succeeds like success. When I was in Bible college in the 1970’s, the visiting speakers were often the latest successful pastors whose churches grew to 2,000. Many at that time succeeded by buying a fleet of old school buses and going around town offering to bring people’s kids to Sunday School so the parents could sleep in. We were expected to listen in envy of the glorious success of these contemporary church growth heroes. Soon the whole bus ministry thing became passé and something else took its place. When I went back to seminary, eighteen years after graduating from Bible college, I was confronted with a whole new generation of super-star pastors to emulate. These new heroes have found a new key, the "unchurched” are "seekers” who will come if the service is "relevant.”
The year I graduated from seminary (1999) I heard a young pastor in chapel who had managed to start a new congregation from scratch and had come back to tell us of his success. His message was entitled "Thinking Outside the Box.” Supposedly Jesus was good at thinking outside the box (notice the similarity to "possibility thinking”). The way this young man practiced his theory, was that he had a Sunday morning service with coffee tables and coffee. Those who come to the meeting view clips of Hollywood movies and discuss what point they think the movie is trying to make. Schuller got his start in a drive in movie theater preaching possibility thinking and look at his success. Maybe this young man is on to something!
What I think is this: most of those jumping on this modern bandwagon do not realize that this is simply old-fashioned liberalism. Sadly, some probably do know this and simply do not care. We shall see this by examining the roots of the movement.
The Harry Emerson Fosdick Connection
After the modernist controversy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a huge upheaval in American Christianity. The modernists denied the authority and inerrancy of Scripture. Those who opposed them were called "Fundamentalists,” so named after a document called "The Fundamentals.” These were simply the basics of the Christian faith that had been believed since the time of the apostles. Creation versus evolution was a key issue, but not the only one. Even the deity and resurrection of Christ were questioned. What emerged from this was the birth of many denominations we now know as "evangelical.” On the other hand, liberals took control of the seminaries and headquarters of most of the older, main-line denominations.
A key modernist of the early twentieth century who was perhaps the most successful of all liberals (at that time) in gaining a national audience was Harry Emerson Fosdick. Fosdick was able to take his liberal message to the masses at a time when most modernists were fighting behind the scenes battles to control denominations and their seminaries. Several historians have commented on this. For example, Leonard Sweet writes, "Suffice it to say that while a few modernist preachers like Harry Emerson Fosdick, Norman Vincent Peale, Ralph Sockman, and Robert Schuller pioneered in the use of mass communications media (radio, television, publishing ventures, computer mailings, etc.), by and large modernist clergy were content to remain inky-fingered, acting as if the communications revolution had never taken place.”15
Fosdick strongly believed in his modernism and was willing to battle for it. He fought battles in the Presbyterian and Northern Baptist denominations on behalf of modernism against fundamentalism.16 In the midst of the modernist controversy in the Presbyterian church, Fosdick wrote an article in the New York Times rebutting a previous article by William Jennings Bryan that had called evolution "unscientific and irreligious.”17 Fosdick promoted the theory of evolution. He soon after preached his most famous sermon, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”18 Fosdick’s point was to say that the fundamentalists could not "drive out from the Christian churches all the consecrated souls who do not agree with their theory of inspiration.”19 This was a key shot fired in the fundamentalist-modernist war. Fosdick was eventually driven out of the Presbyterian pulpit, but this was merely the beginning of his successful career. After other battles, and with the considerable financial help of John D. Rockefeller, Fosdick established the interdenominational Riverside Church in New York.20
A key question that comes to mind is: if you no longer believe in the inspiration of Scripture, what do you preach? Fosdick had no problems with finding sermon topics. For one thing, he did not deny everything in the Bible. He had his own way of believing it. As is typical with liberalism, rather than believing the Bible is the word of God, he believed it contained the word of God.21 So the Bible is still useful, but the preacher evidently decides which parts are useful. Fosdick believed in the resurrection, for he wrote "I believe in Christ, his deity, his sacrificial saviorhood, his resurrected and triumphant life, his rightful Lordship. . .”22 This sounds good, until one finds out that he did not believe in Christ’s bodily resurrection which the New Testament writers so steadfastly affirmed as necessary to the faith. Fosdick said, "I believe in the persistence of personality, but I do not believe in the resurrection of the flesh.”23 The following explanation by Fosdick’s biographer is enlightening:
Fosdick could not believe that Jesus was virgin born. He did not ridicule those who did, but he was adamant that such belief was not essential to acceptance of Christian faith. . . . Fosdick doubted whether Jesus ever thought of himself as the Messiah; perhaps he did, but more probably "Jesus’ disciples may have read this into his thinking. . . .”24
The modernist can still preach about God, Christ, faith, and even make use of the Bible. The key is to center the message on human needs and understand Christian ministry as a "helping profession.”
To this end, psychology is a key aspect of Christian ministry for the liberal or modernist preacher. Historian Glenn T. Miller sees religious liberalism as one source of the professional approach to religious education. He writes, "American religious liberalism was dissatisfied with traditional pastoral care.”25 This led to the, "understanding of the minister as an advisor on life’s way. . . .”26 Glenn Miller provides the following insight into Fosdick’s role in this:
Harry Emerson Fosdick in the North, and Theodore Adams in the South, incorporated counseling into their ministries. Both Adams and Fosdick consulted psychologists and psychiatrists, served their churches as counselors, and, more importantly, used psychological insights in their widely imitated preaching.27
So for modernists, helping people along the way with whatever means are available through the culture is a key to preaching and ministry. As for Fosdick and the Fundamentalists, Fosdick wrote "We won our battle.”28 His biographer, Robert Moats Miller shares an interesting insight on this matter:
[He] was correct only in the limited sense that the liberals were not driven from the churches. I may very well be that for tens of millions in every era Fosdick’s liberalism could never adequately answer the terrors of human existence. Nevertheless, when he added, "it was one of the most necessary theological battles every fought,” he was right on the money, for millions found in his evangelical liberalism the only religious answer possible for them.29
Robert Moats Miller wrote his biography on Fosdick from the perspective of an admirer. His understanding that there were many who needed Fosdick’s approach as "the only religious answer possible” is a key point. It likely is based on the fact that once one accepts a supposedly true theory of evolution and a historically and scientifically flawed Bible, one must either reject Christian religion or find a way to change its essence so that is no longer conflicts with the modernist understanding of the "facts.” Fosdick provided a way to simultaneously hold to liberal assumptions and still have a version of the Christian religion. Norman Vincent Peale, whom Fosdick knew and admired,30 carried on a similar version of liberalism geared for the mass media. Peale’s profound influence on Schuller is often attested by Dr. Schuller himself.
Robert Schuller has followed in the footsteps of Peale and Fosdick and provided a religious approach for those who normally would reject traditional Christian theology. He often has said (when asked about his version of church and Christianity) that he is a last stop for those for whom all other approaches have not worked. People will come to his church who have given up on church (or as he recently said on religion). Of course, the unspoken assumption is that the reason Biblical Christianity does not "work” for many, is that they refuse to believe its message. Schuller’s approach puts aside the message that is so undesirable to many modern religious consumers and replaces it with self-esteem and possibility thinking. This is squarely in the liberal tradition of having little to say about eternal judgment, the blood atonement, or the bodily resurrection of Christ, but having loads to say about how one can have a better life in this world.
What is Gained?
If Robert Moats Miller was right that Fosdick’s liberal approach is the "only religious answer possible” for some, then Schuller and the his new legions of pastoral followers are the current providers of that answer. Others have noticed this. For example, David Wells writes:
His [Harry Emerson Fosdick’s] theology of the person was built on the ideas of the immanence of God in human personality and the perfectibility of human nature. He spoke enthusiastically of the unlimited inner potential that only had to be found and cultivated. . . . From Fosdick the ideas traveled to Norman Vincent Peale and then to Robert Schuller, and now they have become commonplace throughout much of the evangelical world.31
The reason that the modernist approach is deemed the last ditch, possible answer for those who flock to what are now called "seeker sensitive” churches, is that so many contemporary people refuse to accept the Biblical answers to their questions.
Human potential as understood in Schuller’s twin foundations of self-esteem and possibility thinking is an alternative to the cross, not an expression of it as Schuller’s theological legerdemain would make us think. The Biblical message of the cross speaks of human depravity, the wrath of God against sin, the need for substitutionary atonement and the bodily resurrection from the dead unto either eternal life or eternal damnation. This is not a message of the unlimited potential of humans through positive thinking. "Seekers” as they are now mislabeled, are those who, according to Schuller himself, are not going to accept the two millennia old message of Biblical Christianity. But they will come to church under the right conditions.
This is what ties the modern seeker movement to historical liberalism. The goal is to get people to be "churched” even though the inspiration of Scripture and the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27) are set aside. The Bible only "contains” the word of God and the preacher is at liberty to ignore any Scripture that does not fit his purpose of church growth and religious success. Dr. Schuller has adamantly rejected any idea that he is obligated to preach everything in the Bible. Does he believe in a literal hell? This is very difficult to determine because one never hears him preach about it. At least Fosdick came out in public with all his beliefs and stood by them. Schuller is more of a politician, keeping a smile and a handshake always ready while skirting controversial questions. Schuller’s approach to his modernism has done what Fosdick’s could never do: brought evangelicals and liberals together.
The liberals of the 1920’s never thought of Schuller’s brilliant move. Rather than deny any Biblical doctrines and thus rile the ranks of the traditionalists and believers in Biblical inerrancy, let the doctrines die the death of neglect. Keep the congregation so enamored with brilliant homilies on "Five Ways to Deal with Stress in the Workplace” and "Nine Ways to Envision a Brighter Future” and they will never think about such matters as the wrath of God, eternal judgment, atonement, or heaven and hell. Does anyone seem to care whether Dr. Schuller and his hordes of evangelical copy cats really believe any of these doctrines? For decades liberals have claimed that most New Testament doctrines are irrelevant. Judging by how many modern evangelicals go to churches where doctrine is considered passé, contemporary evangelicals must have decided the liberals were right.

Conclusion
The greatest problem with all of this is that we have radically changed the key categories in the minds of the contemporary evangelical church. For example, previous generations of evangelicals thought the key categories were "saved and lost.” Now they are "churched and unchurched.” When I came to Christ in Iowa in 1971, nearly everyone in our community was "churched.” At that time Bible believing Christians understood there to be two categories of people, the saved and the lost. Whether or not one was in church was immaterial. I grew up in a church that gave lip service to the facts of Christianity, but was told by a pastor when I was 16 years old that these were in fact false. There was no creation of the world out of nothing, no miracles, no virgin birth, and no bodily resurrection from the dead. Christianity and the Bible were there to help us live a better life. Not realizing what the categories were, I found myself in the middle of modernism and liberalism. My response was to exit the church immediately. Being "churched,” in my mind was quite worthless if none of the things churches supposedly existed to promote were true.
So as a new Christian four years later, I realized that the problem was that we had churches full of lost people who would go to hell if they did not hear the gospel, believe and repent. Nothing could be clearer. Many churches were pastored by individuals who were themselves unregenerate. That is the legacy that the fundamentalist/modernist battle had left. As Fosdick pointed out, the modernists stayed in most of the churches and controlled the seminaries. They won the battle in most old line denominations. Consequently, when people like I was in 1971 came to Christ, we never considered going back to those denominations. We were hungry for God’s word and wanted to be challenged week by week to grow into conformity to Christ’s purposes.
Thus it is with great alarm and sorrow that I write this article. Masses of churches and denominations who once were proud to have left the modernists behind and went out on their own to promote Biblical orthodoxy have now either wittingly or unwittingly joined the modernists. The categories that I now hear, not occasionally, but constantly in evangelical circles, are "churched and unchurched.” Evidently it is assumed that since we call ourselves "evangelical” (like Schuller) we have something to offer. If people are in our churches they are imagined to be better off than if they are not, regardless of whether or not they are being confronted with God’s word and His holy claims on their lives. This assumption is false. As in my personal experience, unregenerates are often further from the gospel when they are "churched” but not hearing God’s word than when they are "unchurched.” At least in the later condition they know they are not Christian. False assurance is worse than no assurance. "Seekers” are really unsaved sinners who may never find out they are unsaved sinners because they are becoming so adept at dealing with stress in the workplace through the help of the savvy, therapeutically oriented pastor. When life seems to be getting better with a little help from the church, who needs to concern oneself with heaven and hell, especially if one is never told they exist.
We must return to the only means that God has ordained for bringing salvation to the lost. It is outlined in the verses cited at the beginning of the article. It is the message of the cross: "[B]ut we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1Corinthians 1:23,24).

NEWTOWN REFORMED CHURCH

I had a wonderful time yesterday at Newtown Reformed Church, where I was asked to come and preach. My day started at Philadelphia Community Church where I was Abel to welcome new visitors and open in prayer before leaving for Newtown. Brian Bivans preached at PCC from 1john.

If you are interested in a copy of the message that was Preached in Newtown please contact my executive minister Joe Morrison at j.morrison@phillycommunitychurch.org The message was entitled Faith Beyond Foolishness the text was Galatians 3:1-5.

PRAYER REQUEST FOR PEG GREEN.

Please keep Peggy Green in your prayers,she will be having surgery on Friday for lung cancer. I spoke with Peg today she said she would be in ICU for two days and then in a private room for five days. She is in great spirits and fully trusting her Lord and Savior for His guidance.

AIM FOR CONVERSION IN OUR PREACHING.....By Jonathan Watson

For C. H. Spurgeon it was an axiom that God sends preachers into the world so that sinners may be reconciled to him. Admittedly, there may be some notable exceptions to this rule (e.g. Noah and Jeremiah), but for the most part, God has ordained the preaching of the gospel for the purpose of saving the hearers.
When King Agrippa asked the Apostle Paul, ‘In a short time would you persuade me to become a Christian?’, Paul’s reply gave vent to the spirit in which the true evangelist must always preach the gospel: ‘Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am – except for these chains.’ The Apostle’s clear aim in bearing witness to Christ before kings and their subjects was the conversion of all who were present with him.
Do you preach with the same clear aim? What exactly is your intention? What would you have God do? The conversion of one or two, a mere handful, perhaps, of your hearers? Or do you climb the pulpit steps praying, ‘would to God that every single one of my hearers may be converted through the means of this sermon’?
C. H. Spurgeon was truly apostolic in this respect, as in many others. He considered this such an important element in true preaching that he devoted one whole lecture to it during his Friday afternoon visits to The Pastors’ College, of which he was the President. In ‘On Conversion as our Aim’,[1] he clearly sets before his students their great goal: ‘The grand object of the Christian ministry is the glory of God . . .Our great object . . . is, however, to be mainly achieved by the winning of souls. If we do not, our cry should be that of Rachel, “Give me children, or I die.” If we do not win souls, we should mourn as the husbandman who sees no harvest, as the fisherman who returns to his cottage with an empty net, or as the huntsman who has in vain roamed over hill and dale. Ours should be Isaiah’s language uttered with many a sigh and groan – “Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” The ambassadors of peace should not cease to weep bitterly until sinners weep for their sins.’
For Spurgeon this was the great foundational truth, and having established it, he then turned his attention to the practical steps preachers must take if they are to be the instruments in God’s hands for the conversion of men and women. What is the preacher to do who longs to see sinners converted? Here is the considered counsel of an experienced soul winner.
1. Depend entirely upon the Spirit of God and look to him for power over the minds of men.This is absolutely necessary because conversion is a divine work. ‘Often as this remark is repeated, I fear that we too little feel its force; for if we were more truly sensible of our need of the Spirit of God, should we not study more in dependence upon his teaching? Should we not pray more importunately to be anointed with his sacred unction? Should we not in preaching give more scope for his operation? Do we not fail in many of our efforts, because we practically, though not doctrinally, ignore the Holy Ghost? His place as God is on the throne, and in all our enterprises he must be first, midst, and end: we are instruments in his hand and nothing more.’
2. Give prominent place in your preaching to those truths which are most likely to lead to conversions. Spurgeon names a number of these (several of which were being soft-pedalled or even attacked in his time – ‘there is nothing new under the sun’!). Doctrines which ought to be prominently preached, taught, explained, and applied, include:
a. First and foremost Christ and him crucified. ‘Where Jesus is exalted souls are attracted . . . The preaching of the cross is to them that are saved the wisdom of God and the power of God.’ Preach all those doctrines which cluster around the person and work of Christ – the evil of sin especially, which created the need of a Saviour. Be specific: ‘Let him go into particulars, not superficially glancing at evil in the gross, but mentioning various sins in detail, especially those most current at the time.’ ‘Explain the ten commandments . . . open up the spirituality of the law as our Lord did, and show how it is broken by evil thoughts, intents and imaginations. By this means many sinners will be pricked in their hearts . . .’ Quoting Robbie Flockhart, he adds: ‘It is of no use trying to pierce with the silken thread of the gospel unless we pierce a way for it with the sharp needle of the law. The law goes first, like the needle, and draws the gospel thread after it: therefore preach concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment to come . . . Aim at the heart. Probe the wound and touch the very quick of the soul.’
b. Teach the depravity of human nature. ‘Show that sin is not an accident but the genuine outcome of their corrupt hearts . . . It is an unfashionable truth; for nowadays ministers are to be found who are very fine upon “the dignity of human nature” . . . Brethren, you will not fall into this delusion, or, if you do, you may expect few conversions. To prophecy smooth things, and to extenuate the evil of our lost estate, is not the way to lead men to Jesus.’
c. Preach the necessity for the Holy Ghost’s divine operations. This will follow on as a matter of course from the previous doctrine. ‘Men must be told that they are dead, and that only the Holy Spirit can quicken them; that the Spirit works according to his own good pleasure, and that no man can claim his visitations or deserve his aid. This is thought to be very discouraging teaching, and so it is, but men need to be discouraged when they are seeking salvation in a wrong manner. To put them out of conceit of their own abilities is a great help toward bringing them to look out of self to another, even the Lord Jesus. The doctrine of election and other great truths which declare salvation to be all of grace, and to be, not the right of the creature, but the gift of the Sovereign Lord, are all calculated to hide pride from man, and so prepare him to receive the mercy of God.’
d. Set before your hearers God’s justice and the certainty that every transgression will be punished. ‘Paul preached of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, and made Felix tremble: these themes are equally powerful now. We rob the gospel of its power if we leave out the threatenings of punishment. It is to be feared that the novel opinions upon annihilation and restoration which have afflicted the church in these last days have caused many ministers to be slow to speak concerning the last judgment and its issues, and consequently the terrors of the Lord have had small influence upon either preachers or hearers. If this be so it cannot be too much regretted, for one great means of conversion is thus left unused.’
e. Be most of all clear on the soul-saving doctrine of the atonement. Preach a real bona fide substitutionary sacrifice, and proclaim pardon as its result. ‘This is the great net of gospel fishermen: the fish are drawn or driven in the right direction by other truths, but this is the net itself.’
f. ‘If men are to be saved we must in plainest terms preach justification by faith, as the method by which the atonement becomes effectual in the soul’s experience . . . Justification by faith must never be obscured, and yet all are not clear upon it.’
g. Preach earnestly the love of God in Christ, and magnify the abounding mercy of the Lord; but always preach it in connection with his justice. ‘Do not extol the single attribute of love in the method too generally followed . . . for God were not love if he were not just, and did not hate every unholy thing. Never exalt one attribute at the expense of another . . . The true character of God is fitted to awe, impress, and humble the sinner: be careful not to misrepresent your Lord.’
‘All these truths and others which complete the evangelical system are calculated to lead men to faith; therefore make them the staple of your teaching.’
3. If we are anxious to see souls saved, we must not only preach the truths which are likely to lead to their conversion, but we must also use modes of handling these truths which are appropriate for securing that end.
a. Instruct: sinners are saved out of darkness; shine the light of God’s truth into their eyes – ‘the entrance of they word giveth light.’ Instruction must precede exhortation. ‘I fear that some of our orthodox brethren have been prejudiced against the free invitations of the gospel by hearing the raw, undigested harangues of revivalist speakers whose heads are loosely put together. The best way to preach sinners to Christ is to preach Christ to sinners. Exhortations, entreaties, and beseechings, if not accompanied with sound doctrine, are like firing off powder without shot. You may shout, and weep, and plead, but you cannot lead men to believe what they have not heard, nor to receive a truth which has never been set before them.’
b. Appeal to the understanding. ‘True religion is as logical as if it were not emotional . . .Of carnal reasoning we would have none, but of fair, honest pondering, considering, judging, and arguing the more the better.’
c. Plead with sinners by way of emotional persuasion. ‘A man known to be godly and devout, and felt to be large-hearted and self-sacrificing, has a power in his very person, and his advice and recommendation carry weight because of his character; but when he comes to plead and persuade, even to tears, his influence is wonderful, and God the Holy Spirit yokes it into his service. Brethren we must plead. Entreaties and beseechings must blend with our instructions. Any and every appeal which will reach the consciences and move men to fly to Jesus we must perpetually employ, if by any means we may save some. But always do this in absolute sincerity; affectation is despicable.
d. Be careful to vary your tone – at times you need to threaten, at times to invite. ‘Let the two methods be set side by side as to practical result, and it will be seen that those who never exhort sinners are seldom winners of souls to any great extent, but they maintain their churches by converts from other systems.’
4. Think carefully about the times when you address the unconverted. More commonsense is needed in this matter. Don’t always address the unconverted at the same point in every sermon – ‘Why give men notice to buckle on their harness so as to repel our attack?’ Use the element of surprise; apply the truth and plead with them when least expected, or when their attention is awakened. Vary your services and don’t always speak to the saints in the morning and sinners in the evening – avoid falling into an evangelical rut. But never close a sermon without a word for the unbeliever. Think also about what season is best to wage a war against the unconverted. For Spurgeon, the winter month of February he found very useful for special evangelistic efforts.
5. Among the important elements in the promotion of conversions are the preacher’s own tone, temper and spirit in preaching.
a. Don’t be dull and monotonous – yes, it’s possible that God may choose to bless such preaching, but in all probability he will not.
b. Guard against a hard, unfeeling spirit in preaching. ‘Great hearts are the main qualifications for great preachers, and we must cultivate our affections to that end.’ But don’t let love degenerate into effeminate religious cant.
c. Preach believingly, always expecting the Lord who has sent you to bless his own word – ‘this will give us a quiet confidence which will forbid petulance, rashness, and weariness.’
d. ‘Preach very solemnly, for it is a weighty business, but let your matter be lively and pleasing, for this will prevent solemnity from souring into dreariness.’
e. Aim for conversions, expect them and prepare for them. ‘Resolve that your hearers shall either yield to your Lord or be without excuse, and that this shall be the immediate result of the sermon now in hand . . . Impressed with a sense of their danger, give the ungodly no rest in their sins; knock again and again at the door of their hearts, and knock as for life and death. Your solicitude, your earnestness, your anxiety, your travailing in birth for them God will bless to their arousing. God works mightily by this instrumentality.’
6. In addition to earnest preaching it will be wise to use other means. These may include:
a. Pastoral visitation – make yourself available to and converse with all your people
b. Special meetings for the awakened and anxious with a view to further instruction, prayer, and the sharing of testimonies by recent converts. But he adds a caution here: ‘There must be no persuading to make a profession, but there should be every opportunity for so doing, and no stumbling-block placed in the way of hopeful minds.’ ‘Doubts may be cleared away, errors rectified, and terrors dispelled by a few moments’ conversation’
c. ‘Seek out the wandering sheep one by one, and when you find all your thoughts needed for a single individual, do not grudge your labour, for your Lord in his parable represents the good shepherd as bringing home his lost sheep, not in a flock, but one at a time upon his shoulders, and rejoicing to do so.’
d. ‘Call in every now and then a warm-hearted neighbour, utilize the talent in the church itself, and procure the services of some eminent soul-winner, and this may, in God’s hands, break up the hard soil for you, and bring you brighter days.’
‘In fine, beloved brethren, by any means, by all means, labour to glorify God by conversions, and rest not till your heart’s desire is fulfilled.’

A NIGHT WITH JOEL OSTEEN....... By Melton Duncan

True confession: I came with expectations in hand that “An evening with Joel Osteen” would be bread and circus for the spiritually impoverished. If you want to know my conclusion you’ll have to keep reading through to the end, though in fairness I tried to leave my ref21 hatchet at the door.
I assumed that I would meet those unfortunate souls who at the opening of Joel Osteen’s fifteen city, four nation road show were what we (Reformed types) are so often befuddled by, those teeming hordes of sweet semi-Pelagians who seem to make up the bulk of the American Christian ghetto.
I was expecting to see the poor, uneducated and easy to command, as the Washington Post once famously described evangelicals. People who couldn’t help themselves from being there because they were put under a Vulcan mind meld from their local pastor. I expected to find ancient women with blue hair in attendance from nearby towns like Greer with pre-trib glossy magazines in hand connecting the “ten horns of Revelation” to the activities of nearby Bob Jones University.
I arrived early (taking “Jack Bauer type” precautions that I wouldn’t be followed, and notifying a Ruling Elder in my “CTU friendly” church a head of time), while searching in vain for someone who understood Carl Trueman and had heard of the Ante-Nicene fathers.
Just who exactly comes to a Joel Osteen confab?
I came expecting to find Benny Hinn people and I found instead a Tony Robbins seminar drawing a good representative sample of my community. Indeed, demographically speaking it was astonishingly integrated. It was full of upper middle class Gen X couples (and late boomers) with kids. They came in their tribes of tens and twenties with iPods rather than NIV’s.
My guess is that I was face to face with “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” free-market fundamentalists who were blissfully unaware of the Federal Vision, undecided on the importance of the OT, but definitely unamused by those rascally Calvinists causing trouble in the SBC. Simply because I could, I bought popcorn and Coke and enjoyed the spectacle of Christian roadies doing sound checks on the coliseum floor.
The overall production value of the stage, set and imagery was very good, while at the same time simple and in most ways not overly distracting. There was the obligatory dry ice machine, a few multicolored spotlights and images of the Osteen “rotating open globe thing” that seems to be the symbol of Lakewood Church. In the center of the stage there was RC Sproul’s famous nemesis, the dreaded “portable plexiglass pulpit.” It had one spotlight on it all times (except when the blonde worship leader was singing). There was a box of tissues inside its casing.
The pre-game music was surprisingly toned down (really not unlike that of an RUF meeting). I sensed that the organizers were more worried about turning folks off then they were about meaningfully engaging in crowd prep. I was somewhat proud that those present from my community were on the whole not participatory in the music and theater. Most did not know the words well enough to engage in correct contemporary praise posture. Maybe people at an Osteen event just come to watch?
Why were all these people here? What were they looking for? How had Joel Osteen come to be so important to them? These were the questions I was trying to understand.
My guess is that they came to see this strangely alluring man with his emotionally charged appeal for brotherhood, good works, and hopefulness, who is touching a raw post-modern nerve in the culture; that’s why I came. They also came –unknowingly I think—because Joel Osteen has found a new way to treat their spiritual maladies: ignore root causes and tackle the symptoms.
From the start of the event it was a family affair. The night was opened by Joel Osteen’s brother-in-law, and at different points most of his family present held forth on various matters. His mother, the Venerable Dodi, juxtaposed some classic old school “name it and claim it” with some new fangled power of positive thinking in a moral exhortation centered on recent health issues in her life. She had the line of the night, “If you have a problem, find a verse in there (the Bible) and tell the Almighty what you need.”
Victoria (the Difficult) spoke to us on the fascinating subject of what exactly it means to be married to Joel Osteen. Her story is complicated. She used to work in a jewelry store and then one day (((Joel))) came in to get a watch fixed. She ended up selling him a new watch and soon came marriage and a baby carriage. Joel’s brother (a doctor) asked people to give money to the ministry, after challenging those in the audience to give their tithes first to their local churches. At other points in the show his family in attendance including children, nephews and nieces were recognized to applause. The Osteens, it would seem are the Kennedy’s of the Charismatic Nation.
What would Joel speak about when all the introductions were over with I wondered?
Osteen would speak not once but many times throughout the evening in a succession of unscripted 10 minutes pick–me-up-talks. Each presentation was a variation on the previous theme: “Things are gonna get better... Keep positive.” It was almost entirely bereft of Scripture. In a superfluous way it was very encouraging! I found myself throughout the entire night waiting for the shoe to drop, and saying to myself is this it?
Osteen tells his life story, which in many ways is a classic American success story. He inherited his father’s position (without wanting to) and with one week of preparation takes over the family business. The church grows from 6,000 to over 40,000 in 5 years and has recently bought an $80 Million dollar sporting arena. Osteen strikes me as being amazed as everyone else at own his success and very proud of the family business, Lakewood Church of Houston, now the nation’s largest. Only in America.
The story of Osteen’s success would be a fantastic story of God’s providence if he believed in such a thing. For years he watched the ministry behind a camera, editing and overseeing the development of media. In many ways Joel understood the ministry better than most because he was involved with it in a way that would one day be instrumental in its growth. He also learned a good bit about the charismatic and Pentecostal way of preaching because he listened to these messages everyday in a studio, editing them for television and radio.
Joel’s own sermons are not like those of his fathers (the late John Osteen). They strike me as the next generation of the Charismatic movement. They aren’t about experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit in your life; they are just about encountering your feelings. He talks over and over again about your relationships with other people and in the end he doesn’t really ask you to do anything - except try to change. His language is a mix of manifest destiny and late night infomercial. If I had to characterize the 600 words “sermonettes” I heard I would say “Charismatic emergent, non-threatening, non-spritualized therapeutic language.” Maybe American Idol with Paula as the lone judge.
Never once did I hear the words Gospel, Jesus Christ, Trinity, Sin, Cross (except in Scripture songs sung by performers and in a video testimony played before the Osteens arrived in arena)
So what conclusions can be drawn from An Evening with Joel?
Joel Osteen is the slick and polished face of non creedal American Evangelicalism. Joel is youthful, exuding Opie from Mayberry, aw shucks Americana that is uplifting, believable, and even to this cynic, soothing. Joel Osteen is wonderbread.
Now I recognize that everyone (whether we realize it or not) probably has someone in their life like Joel Osteen, a relentless optimist, who simple mindedly prods one to excellence, selflessness, and endurance. I’m just thinking Joel Osteen is not actually doing this with his people. At the end of the day, Osteen encouraged his crowd not to seek Christ as the solutions to their problems but something else. That something else seemed to be a clever but highly charged view of self. Self-interest, Self-gratification, Self-fulfillment, Self-realization, Self-actualization, with a little bit of sanitized obligatory righteous buzz words thrown in to make it appear evangelically kosher for the uninitiated.
What took place at Osteen’s erstwhile crusade in my city can only be described as the next step in Post Modern Pentecostalism. It is the health and wealth gospel for healthy and wealthy people. If the Christian religion is medicine for souls that are poor and needy than Osteen is a bottle of vitamins in an operating room.

SPURGEON ON SELFLESSNESS........ By Phil Ryken

Especially since we have a feature on Charles Spurgeon in this month's issue of Reformation21, it seems like a good time to quote from that worthy London Baptist once again. As I have been preaching through Luke over the last several years I have tried to read all of the many sermons that Spurgeon preached on that magnificent Gospel. This quotation comes from his sermon

"The First Cry from the Cross":"My brethren, you must not live to yourselves; the accumulation of money, the bringing up of your children, the building of houses, the earning of your daily bread, all this you may do; but there must be a greater object than this if you are to be Christlike, as you should be, since you are bought with Jesus' blood. Begin to live for others, make it apparent unto all men that you are not yourselves the end-all and be-all of your own existence, but that you are spending and being spent, that through the good you do to men God may be glorified, and Christ may see in you his own image and be satisfied."

REJECTING SYNERGISM AND RETURNING TO MONERGISM

Recovering Reformation Theology Rejecting Synergism and Returning to Monergism
by Bob DeWaay

”For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8, 9)
A key idea in the contemporary evangelical movement is that revival can be engineered. The Purpose Driven Web site says, “Peter Drucker called him [Warren] ‘the inventor of perpetual revival’ and Forbes magazine has written, ‘If Warren’s church was a business it would be compared with Dell, Google or Starbucks.’”1 The Purpose Driven movement can cite this business management guru approvingly only because they have a faulty theology of human ability. For example, Rick Warren says, “It is my deep conviction that anybody can be won to Christ if you discover the key to his or her heart. . . . It may take some time to identify it. But the most likely place to start is with the person’s felt needs.”2 If this were true one could use modern marketing principles to sell people on their need for Christian religion and convince them to convert in order to find satisfaction of their felt needs. But it is not true.
Furthermore, it might surprise many people that this idea is not new. Charles Finney first proposed it one hundred fifty years ago. Finney wrote, “A revival is not a miracle according to another definition of the term ‘miracle’ — something above the powers of nature. There is nothing in religion beyond the ordinary powers of nature. It consists entirely in the right exercise of the powers of nature. It is just that, and nothing else.”3 Finney wrote more: “A revival is not a miracle, nor dependent on a miracle, in any sense. It is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means — as much so as any other effect produced by the application of means.”4 Finney’s position that there is some innate power in man that can be motivated by some discoverable process makes an engineered revival plausible.
So how does one create a revival by the right use of means? Finney tells us: “There must be excitement sufficient to wake up the dormant moral powers, and roll back the tide of degradation and sin.”5 Finney and Rick Warren claim that revival can be engineered by human efforts. This belief is grounded on the idea of human ability. It is plausible to them only because Finney and Warren believe that there is some principle, be it a “dormant moral power” or “felt need,” that can be excited into action to cause people to become Christians and live godly lives. Neither Finney nor Warren would deny that the Holy Spirit’s work is necessary. But in their theology, the Holy Spirit is always everywhere doing His part. It becomes our business to find the key to unlock something in sinners to get them to do their part.
This theological perspective is fully at odds with the doctrines of the Reformation. The Reformers taught human inability and bondage to sin. They taught monergism (that salvation is fully an act of God) not synergism (that salvation is a cooperative effort between man and God). They taught that only a sovereign work of grace (grace alone) brought salvation. The ideas of Finney and Warren suggest that man has some innate principle or ability that could be stirred up by the revivalist with the right method, and thus anyone could be saved. In this article we will discuss this belief system and suggest a return to the doctrines of the Reformation.
Synergism
The technical name of this theology is “synergism.” Those who teach synergism believe that salvation is a cooperative effort between God and man. In my last article I discussed this and cited the Roman Catholic Council of Trent which teaches synergism. Here is another citation of Trent from the Canons on Justification: “If any one shall affirm, that man’s freewill, moved and excited by God, does not, by consenting, cooperate with God, the mover and exciter, so as to prepare and dispose itself for the attainment of justification; if moreover, anyone shall say, that the human will cannot refuse complying, if it pleases, but that it is inactive, and merely passive; let such an one be accursed.” 6 This canon was a direct attack on Luther’s doctrine espoused in The Bondage of the Will.
Most people, based on their own perceptions, assume synergism to be true. They assume that though God made it possible for people to be saved, it was something in them, apart from any special work of grace, that caused them to “accept Christ” as they say. That’s what it seems like. I understand this because from our perspective we do accept Christ. When I was converted in 1971, I had to answer to my co-workers who heard me railing against Christianity and blaspheming God the night before. The next day I was converted. When I went back to work they noticed that something appeared different about me; but no one dared ask. Finally at the end of our shift, one of them asked what had happened. I answered, “I accepted Christ,” which shocked them. What I did not realize was that though it may have seemed that way, what really happened was Christ accepted me by providing forgiveness of my sins through His blood and apprehending me on the scene of history through the gospel.
We must gain our theology from the Bible, not from our interpretations of our own experience. The Bible does not teach synergism, but that salvation is an act of God: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). Paul also wrote, “But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption” (1Corinthians 1:30).7 In both of these passages, the contexts contain warnings against boasting (1Corinthians 1:29, 31; Ephesians 2:9). If being saved were the result of something we did through some innate ability that all humans have, then these passages would make no sense.
Let us consider the following analogy to illustrate synergism. Developers purchase some undeveloped land to create a new housing subdivision. They hire contractors to build houses on the land. The contractors hire electricians to wire each house for electricity. The power company is hired to bring electric power to the subdivision and hook each house up to the power. The houses are sold and occupied. If one drove through the subdivision at 11:30 p.m., and noticed that the lights were on in some houses but not others, who would they consider responsible for that fact? Since every house was equally wired with power and occupied by a person capable of turning on a switch, the only reason the lights would be on in some houses but not others is that in some cases the occupants turned them on. The occupants are the responsible parties.
We could imagine many other analogies for synergism, but they all lead to the same conclusion. Whether it’s called the “prevenient inspiration of the Holy Spirit” as it is in Trent, or something else, synergists claim that God has already made it possible for every person to be saved. God has done his part, like the power company that wired the houses. Turning on the switch is up to the individual. The person with the lit house may say, “Thank God for the power,” but they were ones who decided to turn it on. If it is on for them while their neighbors sit in the dark, the difference is only attributable to human actions, not to anything the power company did.
Likewise, the synergist must admit that the reason he or she is saved and someone else is not is found only in themselves, not in God. Why? Because in their system, (a cooperative effort between God and man), God ALWAYS continually does His part. Some synergists claim that fairness requires that God MUST do everything He can to save everyone. Since they assume this as an a priori belief, they will not accept any Biblical evidence to the contrary. But a logical corollary to their belief is that if God is indeed always doing everything He can to save everyone, and yet some are saved and some are not, then the reason some are saved has to be found in them, not God.
Synergists may say that salvation is 99 percent from God and 1 percent from man, but the 1 percent part that is man’s doing determines who is saved and who is not 100 percent of the time. Back to the analogy—God wires the entire human race to the Holy Spirit power source and humans either turn on the spiritual light through a free will choice, or they do not. That is the essence of a synergistic system of salvation. This is what most of the evangelical world believes today. It is, however, a rejection of Reformation doctrine including the solas that we will discuss later in this article.
Synergism and Prevenient Grace
The reason Roman Catholicism, and other synergistic theologies teach prevenient grace is to avoid Pelagianism (a system of doctrine that denies that Adam’s sin nature is passed down to His descendents). The Bible has so much material on universal human sinfulness, that teaching human ability would embarrass most people who claim to believe the Bible (though it did not seem to bother Finney). To avoid teaching that sinful man is fully able to come to God without a work of grace, the doctrine of prevenient grace was introduced. “Prevenient” comes from the old English term “prevent” that meant “go before.”8 The idea is that God universally sends prevenient grace to all humans that undoes the sin nature just enough to make it possible for them to choose to believe the gospel. After discussing the fact of spiritual inability as taught in the Bible, Millard Erickson discusses prevenient grace as a proposed solution:
It is here that many Arminians, recognizing human inability as taught in Scripture, introduce the concept of prevenient grace, which is believed to have a universal effect nullifying the noetic results of sin [how thinking is affected], thus making belief possible. The problem is that there is no clear and adequate basis in Scripture for this concept of universal enablement. The theory, appealing though it is in many ways, simply is not taught explicitly in the Bible.9
This does not mean proponents of the concept do not look for proof texts. The most common one proposed is: “There was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man” (John 1:9) Those who teach prevenient grace often prefer the King James translation: “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” As some interpret this, Christ gives light to everyone at their birth. The Greek could be translated as Christ coming into the world or every man coming into the world. But in the context of John 1, it is Christ who is coming into the world in the Incarnation that is central.10 Likewise, the context of John is not teaching that Christ enlightens every person at their birth. John 3:19 says this: “And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil.” Since Jesus is the light that comes into the world, John 1:9 should be translated and interpreted accordingly. And, if Jesus actually enlightened every person at their birth, how is it that they love darkness? A much better interpretation is that Jesus, in His Incarnation, brought God’s light into the dark world. The world is aware of this light through the fact that God displayed His saving purposes publicly. But in its sinfulness, the world preferred darkness. John 1:9 does not teach prevenient grace.
Thomas Schreiner also disagrees with the interpretation of John 1:9 that claims it teaches prevenient grace: “The light that enlightens every person does not entail bestowment of grace, nor does it refer to the inward illumination of the heart by the Spirit of God. Rather, the light exposes and reveals the moral and spiritual state of one’s heart. . . . John 1:9 is not, therefore, suggesting that through Christ’s coming each person is given the ability to choose salvation.”11 Schreiner provides a good summary of various ways the passage has been interpreted and also discusses other passages sometimes used to support prevenient grace. His conclusion is that the concept of prevenient grace cannot be justified by Biblical exegesis. Schreiner is surprised at how little exegetical effort to justify it has been put forth by people who claim to believe this doctrine.12
The alternative to synergism and prevenient grace is monergism and efficacious grace. God effectively saves, by his power alone, all those who He has elected for salvation. Rather than believing that God is trying His best to save every individual but failing most of the time, the Reformation doctrine is that God’s purposes do not fail. Since salvation depends on God alone, through Christ alone, by faith alone, through grace alone, it ultimately gives all glory to God alone. These beliefs are found by holding Scripture alone to be God’s authoritative revelation. These are the solas (Latin for “alone”) of the Reformation.
Consequences of Synergism
Before examining and defending the solas of the Reformation, I want to describe some of the negative consequences (perhaps unintended) that attend the rejection of Reformation doctrine in favor of synergism. No matter how badly synergists13 want to portray their doctrine as Biblical, their attempt to do so fails on some key points. The other problem is this: synergism creates a temptation to compromise.
The Doctrine of Election is Compromised
Synergists who affirm the authority of Scripture have to find a way to explain the many Scripture passages on election. It is beyond the scope of this article to deal with their many attempts and refute each of them.14 But every one of the synergistic explanations come to the same conclusion as illustrated with my power company and light switch analogy—man, not God, determines who the elect are.
In some versions of synergism, man elects himself through a free will choice, and may unelect himself by subsequent free will choices. Most synergists do not say it exactly like that because it sounds crass, but this is what they believe. To be fair, there are synergists who affirm the security of the believer, though they must ignore the fact that if we are secure in Christ, it must be through His doing and not ours that we have the security of our salvation. If we are secure in our salvation and it is also true that apostates will be damned, then in some sense God must be working to keep all of His elect from falling into apostasy. The free will doctrine that we discussed in the last issue of CIC cannot account for the security of the believer, but the Reformed doctrine of grace alone can. God keeps by His power and grace all whom he saves by His power and grace because salvation from beginning to end is of God alone.
The Authority of Scripture is Compromised
Though Protestant synergists affirm the authority of Scripture, they nevertheless diminish it in the following way: when the Bible says, “But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth” (2Thessalonians 2:13), they say it really means something else. They do the same for over forty other passages that use terms like “chosen, elect, predestined,” etc.15 Synergists have to believe that when we are told that God chose us and we are His elect, the Bible really means something entirely different. It means that we are God’s elect because of our free will choice in history, not His choice in eternity. Should God be charged with speaking unclearly if indeed these verses do not mean what they say? Since there are so many passages that teach election, synergists apparently are willing to give their own theological assumptions priority over Biblical teaching.
A Temptation to Change the Terms of the Gospel is Created
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, once human ability is affirmed it becomes reasonable to appeal to something already in the sinner to convince him to become Christian. Since the cross and the blood atonement are deemed foolish and offensive by sinners, according to 1Corinthians 1:18, preaching the cross will not appeal to any human ability. Rather, the cross destroys any idea of human ability. But the synergist has to find some principle in the sinner to which to appeal to motivate the sinner to make a decision to become Christian. To be fair, I have known Arminians who are committed to the preaching of the cross accurately, and God uses their message to save sinners as He said he would. But their doctrine makes it tempting not to. Many other Arminians fall into the “seeker” movement because they believe they have to have an appealing message to attract people to Christ. The doctrines of the Reformation give no logical place for the seeker movement. If salvation is monergistically from God, one might as well preach the gospel with purity and clarity, knowing God will use it to save whoever is going to be saved. He will use the message of the cross to call forth His elect out of the mass of perdition.
A Temptation To Give Glory to Man is Created
Synergist Christians want to give glory to God and mostly do not want to boast (though sometimes you would not think so given the lyrics of so many man-centered “worship” songs one hears). But their doctrine creates a temptation to boast in man because ultimately their own decision is the only reason they are saved and someone else is not. The doctrine itself does not give all glory to God no matter how sincerely motivated the synergist is to give all glory to God. James Montgomery Boice describes this situation well:
A well-taught Arminian knows that salvation is “not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:9). But if what ultimately makes the difference between one person who is saved and another who is lost is the human ability to choose God—call it free will, faith, or whatever—then boasting is not excluded and all glory cannot honestly be given to God alone.16
Boice also made this point about Calvinists: “But I need to add that even Reformed believers need to recapture this true gospel, since even those who insist most strongly on the doctrines of grace cannot give God glory if they are, above all, struggling to build their own kingdoms and further their own careers as many are.”17 So it is possible to have a doctrine that does not give all glory to God as do synergists, but be personally motivated to give God the glory and it is possible to have a doctrine that does give all glory to God but personally fail to do so. But the best place to start is with sound doctrine that does give God the glory and then ask Him for grace to live that out in a practical way. Starting with bad doctrine is not the way to go.
Recovering the Doctrines of the Reformation
The solas of the Reformation are an expression of theology that is fully God-centered. Monergism gives God all the glory in salvation. It also humbles humans in that they are faced with their total inability to please God and their need for an unmerited act of God’s mercy. The same cannot be said for most modern theology.
It is undeniable that the trend in evangelicalism is to be more man-centered. Robert Schuller issued a call in the 1980’s for a reformation based on man-centered rather than God-centered theology.18 The most popular evangelical writer and pastor today, Rick Warren, presents his version of Christianity as a journey to discover one’s purpose that reads like a journey of self-discovery. It stands to reason that if we believe that salvation is a cooperative effort between God and man like Rome taught, we end up with a man-centered theology.
If salvation were in the hands of man, then the church could dispense and control salvation as Medieval Rome attempted to do. Luther and the others knew that if monergism were true and expressed through the solas, then the church no longer had abusive power over the people. Justification was not in the hands of ecclesiastical prelates to dispense on their terms, it was in God’s hands to dispense on His terms. The church’s job was to declare those terms through the Word. The doctrines of the Reformation taught that people must look to God, not the church, for salvation.
But the doctrines of the Reformation have been abandoned by a large part of Protestantism including evangelicalism. As I showed at the beginning of this article, this is not a new development because one of the most radical rejecters of Reformation theology was the 19th century evangelist Charles Finney. This abandonment is having a serious, negative impact on the evangelical movement.
James Montgomery Boice asserts that the solas of the Reformation are necessary for the church to be what God intended: “Without these five confessional statements—Scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone, and glory to God alone—we do not have a true church, and certainly not one that will survive for very long.”19 These doctrines are ultimately about justification. Boice writes, “We may state the full doctrine as: Justification is the act of God by which he declares sinners to be righteous because of Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone.”20 The reason for the “alone” phrases was to preserve the work of God from being added to by the traditions of the church and the work of man. Rome would affirm Scripture, faith, grace, Christ, and God’s glory as true and important. But when the Reformers added “alone,” they were cursed to hell by the anathemas of Trent. We need to get back to these doctrines.
Scripture Alone
Recovering Reformation theology must begin by returning to a full belief in the Scripture as the only authoritative revelation from God and a practice that reflects this. Nearly every evangelical church has a statement that affirms the authority and inerrancy of Scripture in its official documents. It is the domain of liberals to reject the authority of Scripture. But nevertheless the Bible mostly is not given the place it should in the practice of many churches. We say “sola Scriptura” and practice the Bible plus the wisdom of man.
The sales success of Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life is evidence for this. The biggest selling book by any contemporary evangelical is an ungodly amalgamation of bad Bible translations, misused Scripture, human wisdom, and approving citations of New Agers, and other worldly writers.21 Many churches are changing their programs and practices in order to become Purpose Driven. This is incompatible with the doctrine of Scripture alone. Many will protest what I am saying and point to their statement of faith. But if we say we believe in Scripture alone, yet relegate the Scripture to merely one of the authorities in our public preaching, the message of the evangelical church becomes indistinguishable from the message of a liberal church that denies the inerrancy of the Bible.
Boice, who led the charge in the 1970’s to protect the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, says that now what is being denied is the sufficiency of Scripture.22 I have heard from people whose churches converted to the seeker approach. One of them sent me a tape of a sermon from what used to be a Bible based Baptist church. The entire sermon referenced no Scripture and consisted of a story about a preacher going on vacation and being stressed out. The point of the sermon was that modern, suburban Americans are under too much stress and need to slow down. My friend said that in a previous Sunday sermon there was a passage from John 10 printed in the bulletin about Jesus coming to give abundant life, but the entire sermon was from a psychologist giving a talk about having better marriages. John 10 is about coming to Christ for salvation, not having a better marriage. This church, which abandoned Bible preaching from the pulpit ten years ago, now has 8,000 people attending every Sunday morning. How exactly is giving psychological pep talks from the pulpit a reflection of a commitment to Scripture alone? It is not.
Whatever a church has in its statement of faith, if the Bible is not accurately and fully proclaimed from the pulpit, the Reformation doctrine of Scripture alone has been abandoned. If we want to see the power of the Holy Spirit change lives, we must repent and return to sola Scriptura. People, according to 1Peter 1:23, are born again through, “the living and abiding Word of God.” Human wisdom has no power to save anyone.
Christ Alone
The Reformation doctrine of solus Christus was asserted to refute the Roman Catholic doctrine that added works of man to the work of Christ, claiming to add to the merits of Christ. As with Scripture alone, nearly every evangelical will agree with Christ alone. We know well that salvation is provided fully by Christ and is “not of works.” But again, there is a great problem in practice that seriously diminishes the impact of this great doctrine.
A key part of this problem is the failure to publicly fully proclaim the person and work of Christ. We often hear, “Jesus died for your sins.” This is true but so much is left unsaid. For example, most people know that a religious leader named “Jesus” existed, but they have never heard the doctrine of Christ proclaimed. They know Jesus was a religious leader who died, but so was Mohammed and others. They do not know that Jesus existed from all eternity with God and as God. They do not know the doctrine of the virgin birth. They do not know the many attributes of Christ that are unique to Him (such as He was fully human and fully God; He lived a sinless life, He was the only one to ever predict His own resurrection from the dead and actually arise on the third day as He said). Furthermore, hardly anyone knows WHY God sent His Son to die because they have no clue about the blood atonement. They also do not know that the wrath of God is directed against their sin that can only be averted through the blood atonement. So lacking these facts about the person and work of Christ, they are told, “Accept Jesus who died for your sins.” This watered down practice shows a lack of respect for “Christ alone.”
Again, Boice has an astute observation:
The “gospel” of our day has a lot to do with self-esteem, good mental attitudes, and worldly success. There is almost no preaching about sin, hell, judgment, or the wrath of God, even less about doctrines that center on the Lord of glory and his Cross: grace, redemption, atonement, propitiation, justification, and even faith.23
This lack of preaching and teaching causes people to hear about Jesus but have no substantial doctrine of Christ. Furthermore the doctrine of substitutionary atonement is coming under attack even within so-called evangelicalism. This can be seen in the teachings of the Emergent Church. I debated one of their leaders and could not even get him to affirm that he believed in future, divine judgment.24 The lack of full-orbed teaching on Christ and the atonement is also evident in the previously mentioned Purpose Driven Life. Boice says, “Any ‘gospel’ that talks merely about the Christ-event, meaning the Incarnation without the Atonement, is a false gospel.”25
The Reformation doctrine of Christ alone is in shambles in our day. The remedy is the preaching of the cross which includes the Biblical truths about the person and work of Christ.
Grace Alone
The Reformation doctrine of sola gratia is pertinent to our discussion of synergism and monergism. A salvation that is a cooperative effort between God and man is not a salvation by grace alone. There is no logical way to argue that it is. Grace plus something man adds to it, whatever that might be, is not grace alone.
Again Boice’s fabulous book explains this with utter clarity: “When the Reformers spoke about ‘grace alone,’ they were saying that sinners have no claim upon God, none at all; that God owes them nothing but punishment for their sins; and that, if he saves them in spite of their sins, which he does in the case of those who are being saved, it is only because it pleases him to do it and for no other reason.”26 He also explains how modern evangelicals undermine this doctrine: “Today, large numbers of evangelicals undermine and effectively destroy this doctrine by supposing that human beings are basically good; that God owes everyone a chance to be saved; and that, if we are saved, in the final analysis it is because of our own good decision to receive Jesus who is offered to us.”27
To whatever degree we put confidence in human ability, we destroy the doctrine of grace alone. Most evangelicals will at least give lip service to the other solas. This one, if it is explained in the sense it was taught by the Reformers, is outright rejected. The idea of the bondage of the will as taught by Luther is rejected. The idea that God owes salvation to no one is rejected.
People assert that God is morally obligated to do everything He can to save everyone. They believe that all humans have a claim upon God’s mercy (i.e. that showing mercy to all, or at least trying to, is God’s moral obligation). What they do not realize in their zeal, is that their ideas come from human wisdom and speculation and are not taught in the Bible. For example, God says this, “For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Romans 9:15). This is grace alone and is not really that hard to understand. Many just don’t like it.
God uses means by grace alone to save sinners. Boice explains, “Apart from those three gracious actions—the act of God in electing, the work of Christ in dying, and the operation of the Holy Spirit in calling—there would be no salvation for anyone. But because of those actions—because of God’s sovereign grace—even the worst of blaspheming rebels may be turned from his or her folly and may find Christ.”28 The Holy Spirit’s calling also has means—the preaching of the gospel to all. God uses the preaching of the gospel to graciously call forth His own from the world of sin and death.29 God then uses His ordained means to graciously sanctify and preserve in faith all of those who are saved. All the “called” (effectively) will be glorified (see Romans 8:29-30).
Faith Alone
The doctrine of sola fide is near and dear to all evangelicals—historically. There are those today who doubt the reality of damnation and future judgment. Such persons have a much different notion of what salvation means. If salvation means finding a better life in this world, then “faith alone” does not make much sense. It doesn’t take faith in Christ to find a better life in this world. Unbelievers often do that. But for those who take damnation to be real, salvation by faith alone is a glorious and cherished doctrine. This doctrine is rarely lacking in published statements of faith.
But, as with the other solas, this one is being compromised. Non-Catholic synergists assert that “faith alone” is a true doctrine. But they usually deny that faith is a gift from God given to the elect. In this denial, again they depart from the teaching of the Reformation. They usually claim that everyone has the ability to believe, only some choose to exercise it and others do not. This gets us back to human ability again, which is the root cause of many theological problems.
Finney continually railed against the doctrine of inability. He took it as axiomatic that God never commands anything that a person is not fully able to do. The following statement is typical Finney: “It is this speculation about the inability of sinners to obey God, that lays the foundation for all the protracted anguish and distress, and perhaps ruin, into which so many are led.”30 Finney’s error has infected various parts of the evangelical movement for the last 150 years.
The assumption is that if God commands us to repent and believe, this implies that we are fully able to do so. I dealt with this faulty thinking in the last issue of CIC. The universal call expresses God’s moral will and is issued to all. The internal call is heard by those who do believe. This is by grace alone and through faith as Ephesians 2:8 says. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:44). The word “can” is dunamis in the Greek, and it is the word for power or ability. No one has the power or ability to come to Jesus unless God acts to draw (this word means “drag” not “attract”) him. Further proof that “draw” does not mean “woo” as many claim is shown in the result: “I will raise him up on the last day.” The synergistic doctrine holds that God has universally “drawn” everyone through prevenient grace or some universal work of the Holy Spirit. But if this is what is meant in this passage, it would be teaching universal salvation because the “drawn” ones actually come to Christ and are raised on the last day.
Since we are saved by faith alone, faith by which we come to Christ is not possible unless the Father first draws us. This is a necessary implication of John 6:44. Saving faith is not an innate human ability that is actualized by a free will choice. It is the gift of God.
Faith is also more than mere mental assent to facts. Some synergists who want to preserve the doctrine of faith alone and also teach human ability, do so by truncating the meaning of faith. Faith as understood by Reformation doctrine contained three elements: notitia (knowledge of the truth), assensus (assent to and belief in the truth), and fiducia (trust and commitment).31 By asserting that believing the facts about Jesus and nothing more is all that is needed for salvation, some make faith easily accessible to all (human ability).32 We need to recover the Reformation description of faith and the doctrine of faith alone as understood by the Reformers.
Glory to God Alone
The fifth sola of the Reformation is soli Deo gloria, which affirms that everything, including the work of God in salvation, is for His glory alone. Earlier in this article I discussed how synergism mitigates against God receiving all the glory. In his commentary on Isaiah 48:11, Luther discusses what he calls “the battle between God and the self-righteous concerning glory.” Luther called those who think that salvation is found through anything but grace “robbers” because they robbed God of His rightful glory. Here is what Luther wrote:
The self-righteous man thinks that God will give him rewards for fasting and labor. He thinks that without these God will give him nothing. He thinks precisely that God is someone who will save him through his works, not for the sake of free grace. To this fiction, “God will save me through my works,” he attributes salvation. This is the most persistent struggle and battle of the world against God. No one wants to rely on God’s glory alone and repudiate all his own merits.33
Reformation doctrine indeed gives all glory to God. The first four solas lead logically and necessarily to the fifth. When God though Christ alone and by grace alone saves sinners through faith alone as taught in Scripture alone, God alone receives the glory. This is where we must stand with Luther and the other reformers. Our modern movement is severely lacking in this regard.
Conclusion
We began this article discussing engineered revivals based on stirring up some innate ability in sinners by man-made means. Boice comments on this tendency in his chapter on Glory to God alone: “Spiritual work must be accomplished through God’s Spirit. So it is not you or I who stir up a revival, build a church, or convert even a single soul. Rather, it is as we are blessed in the work by God that God by the power of his Holy Spirit converts and sanctifies those he chooses to call to faith.”34 No one who believed what Boice wrote would accept the designation, “inventor of perpetual revival.” This gives glory to man, not God.
There likely are complex reasons that the contemporary evangelical movement has for the most part left behind Reformation theology. The one that seems most apparent is the success of certain people in building huge churches and movements through man-centered theology and man-made techniques. We can build institutions and movements through human effort, but the true church of Jesus Christ is built by God’s work through Christ. It is built as sinners are saved. Whether Christians believe Reformation doctrine or not, if they are truly regenerate, they are so because God alone saved them and He did so monergistically. How much better it would be for the church and the preaching of the gospel if we would return to the solas of the Reformation and give God all of the glory.

A CALVINIST FACES DEATH

Outspoken evangelical leader and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Albert Mohler Jr.

After roughly 200 years of decline, Calvinism, the faith of the Puritans, has made a modest comeback among younger Evangelical Christians. One of the movement's potent mentors is Albert Mohler, the influential, telegenic head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who made waves last June when he critiqued the religious claims of Presidential contender Barak Obama in an essay called Secularism With A Smile.

Mohler, a Calvinist, went into the hospital in December for a fairly routine stomach operation and suddenly developed pulmonary embolisms, a frequently fatal form of clotting, in both lungs. After emergency surgery and four days in the Intensive Care unit, he made a complete recovery. David Van Biema asked him whether his crisis could illuminate his brand of faith.

I'm happy to be talking to you!

And I'm happy to be talking to you! And thankful.

A few years ago you claimed that "everyone is a Calvinist in praying before surgery." Can you explain that?

Yeah. Absolutely. In this sort of crisis we all want God to be sovereign, all powerful — to be able to intervene decisively, to rule over every atom and molecule of the universe. My point was that lots of believers are more dependent on a Calvinist-style sovereign God than they realize when they make their theological claims.

Like who, for example?

The God of liberal theology — He's a linguistic symbol, or a vague kind of spirituality. I've heard liberal theologians who have said that in situations like mine God is basically active in helping you find our own inner resources. It was very apparent to me in the ICU that I had no inner resources. My trust was in the unlimited sovereignty of the God of the Bible. I shudder to think of going through that experience believing that there is no one in control.

Can you explain the nature of your prayer at that point?

I prayed to survive — but I think like most Christians, I prayed, "if it be Your will."

This may be rude, but what response would you expect from Calvinist friends in the event that you had died?

I'm human enough to hope they would grieve my loss, but praise God's mercy in allowing me to live as long as I had and to know that God's plan for me — and them — includes what we wouldn't have chosen, but that we know to be perfect and best.

At the most extreme moments, did you experience any unusual recognitions that reflected your theology?

Yes. In the ICU I couldn't make my brain work in the way I was accustomed to. I couldn't get the words and thoughts to work. But [somehow] I remembered Chapter eight, Verse 26, from the Book of Romans, that says that when we can't pray for ourselves the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with "groaning too deep for words."

Are you saying that that idea was meaningful, or that this was an example — that God placed that verse in your mind when you would not have been able to?

Maybe both. I had memorized it, but God provided it.

A keystone of Calvinism is predestination, and what most non-Calvinists may find odd is how you could be so sure that you were predestined for heaven if you didn't pull through. Or were you?

Yes. I do not see predestination as either a blind force. We have the assurance that "God chose us before we chose Him."

But what gives you that assurance? Isn't it possible for people to think that they believed, and be mistaken and not be saved?

It's not some kind of game. I believe it is possible for a person to wrongly believe they are saved, but it's because they don't really believe in Christ or otherwise confused the Gospel.

How do you know you're not one of them?

We are supposed to look for the signs in our lives, of regeneration and authentic faith, but we should not live in continual fear that we are somehow not assured of our salvation, because that too is a form of doubting God.

One misconception people may have about Calvinism is that it holds that Christians act as though they had free will— when God has orchestrated everything. Can you address that?

Calvinists believe that the human will is instrumental in the experience of salvation. We would take issue with the idea of absolute free will, where people are talking about the priority of the human will in salvation. The big question is whether it is possible for the divine and human wills to operate in absolute harmony. I believe it is.

How would a Calvinist have viewed your successful recovery vs. a non-Calvinist?

Some non-Calvinists might say, I'm glad he survived, but I'm so sorry this accident happened to him. A Calvinist would say "God had something for him to learn through this that will be important for his formation for eternity."

And you've learned...

A lot of things. I've blogged about it. One of the things I was really struck by was an empathy, recognizing that even as I was in the ICU, I may have been the healthiest person there.

Anything else?

I want people to know this is not the experience of Al the Calvinist, but Al the Christian. I wasn't reciting Calvinist principles to myself in the hospital bed, but I was very much trusting in the sovereign God any Christian can know and trust.

CONSIDER YOUR CALLING: THE CALL TO MINISTRY By Al Mohler Jr

Has God called you to ministry? Though all Christians are called to serve the cause of Christ, God calls certain persons to serve the Church as pastors and other ministers. Writing to young Timothy, the Apostle Paul confirmed that if a man aspires to be a pastor, "it is a fine work he aspires to do." [I Timothy 3:1, NASB] Likewise, it is a high honor to be called of God into the ministry of the Church. How do you know if God is calling you?

First, there is an inward call. Through His Spirit, God speaks to those persons He has called to serve as pastors and ministers of His Church. The great Reformer Martin Luther described this inward call as "God's voice heard by faith." Those whom God has called know this call by a sense of leading, purpose, and growing commitment.

Charles Spurgeon identified the first sign of God's call to the ministry as "an intense, all-absorbing desire for the work." Those called by God sense a growing compulsion to preach and teach the Word, and to minister to the people of God.

This sense of compulsion should prompt the believer to consider whether God may be calling to the ministry. Has God gifted you with the fervent desire to preach? Has He equipped you with the gifts necessary for ministry? Do you love God's Word and feel called to teach? As Spurgeon warned those who sought his counsel not to preach if they could help it. "But," Spurgeon continued, "if he cannot help it, and he must preach or die, then he is the man." That sense of urgent commission is one of the central marks of an authentic call.

Second, there is the external call. Baptists believe that God uses the congregation to "call our the called" to ministry. The congregation must evaluate and affirm the calling and gifts of the believer who feels called to the ministry.. As a family of faith, the congregation should recognize and celebrate the gifts of ministry given to its members, and take responsibility to encourage those whom God has called to respond to that call with joy and submission.

These days, many persons think of careers rather than callings. The biblical challenge to "consider your call" should be extended from the call to salvation to the call to the ministry.

John Newton, famous for writing "Amazing Grace," once remarked that "None but He who made the world can make a Minister of the Gospel." Only God can call a true minister, and only He can grant the minister the gifts necessary for service. But the great promise of Scripture is that God does call ministers, and presents these servants as gifts to the Church.

Consider your calling. Do you sense that God is calling you to ministry, whether as pastor or another servant of the Church? Do you burn with a compulsion to proclaim the Word, share the Gospel, and care for God's flock? Has this call been confirmed and encouraged by those Christians who know you best?

God still calls . . . has He called you?