Blogs

(Tim) Conrad Mbewe serves as the pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia--one of the more vital reformed witnesses the Lord has raised up in our time. The congregation is known for reaching into the dregs of society in a non-patronizing way, doing frontline evangelism, training pastors at a pastors college they sponsor, planting churches around the country, etc. As I said, the Lord's presence and blessing are obvious to those familiar with the congregation. This is a reformed congregation with a large heart, no censorious spirit, expansive in its witness and hopes, and living in the fear of God.

Maybe that's the thing that most strikes me about Pastor Mbewe and his people: they have not used reformed doctrine as a pathway to cheap grace that silences the fear of God. Everything is not "grace, grace, grace" to them. Their harp of ten thousand strings does not harp on that one string so long.

This is a test. Read through Kabwata's prayer letter noting the parts we must admit would never be written; or, if written, never quite make it past the editor's keyboard of our own churches' newsletters. To help with the task, I've put several in bold italics.

If the letter piques your interest, here's Pastor Mbewe's blog where you'll find a truly Biblical apostolic African voice.

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KABWATA BAPTIST CHURCH PRAYER LETTER

“Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17)

March 2009

Dear brothers and sisters,   

We open this prayer letter with the words of Scripture, “Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him” (Psalm 126:5-6). That is our testimony as a church as we review the last few months of the year 2008, including the first few months of this year.

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The year 2008 was full of tears, as we lost precious church members who graduated from the church militant to the church triumphant. We also wept much over the excommunications that were necessary in order to avert the judgment of God upon the church...

(Tim) Steve McCoy does a great blog titled Reformissionary. Here's his latest post listing things we can do to connect with others in our cities/towns this summer.

On vacation last week, I regularly offered to take pics for the person holding the camera who was obviously the only family member who wouldn't be in the picture. I like Steve's idea, offering to take the pic on his own camera and e-mail it to them. As I said, Steve's suggestions are good.

(Tim) Over at I, Cringely, the buildup to the tablet Apple's rumored to be coming out with soon is the occasion for an excellent series of articles on publishing's past and present. As Jobs prepares to unleash Apple's latest, where have we been and where are we headed?

When I started blogging for World, lots of people told me to shorten my posts because no one wanted to read online content longer than a paragraph or two. As I saw it, though, the web was another gift from God allowing us to bypass The Suits at the wealthy Christian magazine and book publishers. It didn't seem right to waste this tool on the sort of once-over-lightly crud most blogs served up. Why not use the web as an extension of a pastor's calling to shepherd God's flock?

Sure, there was no pay in it. But if what we cared about was the Church; if what motivated us was Her protection and sanctification in the Word of God; then shepherds could use this new medium with joy, thanking God for the ability to publish without the transfer of money in either direction. Not being paid by any publisher was the perfect equation for us, wanting as we did to write some pieces no evangelical publisher would allow.

The wonder of it is that, once again as at the time of the Reformation when printing and pamphleteering hit, God has given us technology that makes it possible to bypass the compromised or corrupt powers that be...

...we’ve just replaced Bill Hybels and Rick Warren with Tim Keller and Mark Driscoll. -Bill Streger

(Tim) Maybe someone else saying it will take the heat off us.

(Tim) Below a recent post, we've been having a discussion of the nature of leadership and discipline in the church, and I'd like to call attention to this exchange in which I respond to a few comments. Likely, readers need to check out the larger context of the earlier post before they'll understand some of what's written, here, but it's not necessary.

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>>a) Carl Trueman is ordained in the OPC, which means he really doesn't have a reason for making comments about his PCA boss, Peter Lillback, one way or the other.

What? Whatever happened to the church and to church associations (which we call denominations) being confessional communities rather than institutional self-perpetuation machines? This is one of the principal things that disappointed me about the PCA: over and over on both the presbytery and general assembly level men would be zealous for their institutional interests in a way that bypassed or harmed the purity of the Church and Her doctrine. Trueman may not have the ability to discipline Lillback formally within his own denomination, but Lillback is much more accountable and vulnerable to Trueman than he is to the members of his presbytery. Behold, the two men work together! If Trueman thinks Lillback is in error...

(David/Tim) Comments are generally welcome, but unchristian behavior, including dishonesty, chronic false teaching, and unfair attacks on others will not be tolerated, nor will we seek to justify our actions as moderators. Those who lose their commenting privileges will never have lost them because they disagree with us, but almost always they will claim that's the reason.
 
Those who assume we haven’t corrected women who’ve spoken in an unseemly way against ordained officers of the Church on our blog simply think we must be as inconsistent as they are. The presence of bad stuff in the comments here, though, doesn’t mean we haven’t admonished or sought to correct behind the scenes--as we have also sought to do with Darryl Hart whose presence we’ve tolerated far longer than I (David) have liked.

(Tim) On the floor of Ohio Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of America, my brother, David, moved that the presbytery overture General Assembly to cut off the gravy train for the denomination's tiny circulation magazine, bYfAITH. The motion which easily passed calls for bYfAITH to be moved toward being self-supporting with all denominational funding to be cut off in 2012. bYfAITH responded this week with a piece leading one reader to comment: "The article is an excellent example of 'advocacy journalism,' albeit quite subtle, ecclesiastical-style."

Brother David made the motion because the denomination's administrators at the PCA's Atlanta headquarters have been pouring money into this failing venture year after year, all the while complaining that churches have not been faithful in funding their work. Turns out their shortfall each year has been about fifteen per cent of their budget, precisely the amount they have chosen to sink into a tepid, house organ that speaks only for the denomination's power brokers and the hip children they've spawned.

bYfAITH quoted David saying he didn't seek the end of support for bYfAITH because of dislike for bYfAITH. The motion had been written by others and was being taken before Central Indiana Presbtery. David was sent a copy of it, thought it had merit and when another church in Ohio Presbytery called for a study committee to address all AC publications and spending, David suggested the Indiana overture as a better alternative. It seemed like a good way to solve the chronic shortage of financial support the PCA's denominational apparatus suffers. Ohio Presbytery agreed and sent it on to General Assembly where the commissioners will watch as the Bills and Overtures Committee is lobbied by the good-old-boys and buries the overture.

So beyond its complete failure, financially, what's wrong with bYfAITH?

Legacy publishers are in trouble and no tears needed. As with seminaries, colleges, denominations, parachurch organizations, missions, and certainly churches, wealth and power corrupt. So it's good to see fresh faces committed to God's truth using the new media that are taking the publishing world by storm. Although those losing money and power will bear false witness against it...

Again he sent them another slave, and they wounded him in the head, and treated him shamefully. (Mark 12:4)

A reader personally unknown to me and my brother David wrote of his appreciation for Baylyblog, and then asked this question:

Having seen some of the comments you have made (on Baylyblog about anonymity), I wanted to ask if you believe it is wrong if I post a comment only using my first name? The reason I do so is that I am an engineering student and will be graduating ...and it would probably make it quite difficult for me to get a job since employers google names and mine is a rare one... Is that a bad reason?

To which I responded:

Dear John Doe,

I have mixed feelings about this, dear brother...

The blog of the Gospel Coalition men continues to show itself thin-skinned, circling its wagons and refusing to respond to readers. The "Minister with a scripture..." post has been updated with the latest. Scroll down to the bottom of that post to keep abreast...

(TB)

Dear Readers,

Again recently we've asked for identification information from those submitting comments that are personal in their criticism of the author of the post (usually David or me), a publicly known leader, or another commenter on Baylyblog. This has long been our policy: if a reader criticizes the character of someone, if he gets personal, he needs to identify himself by name—first and last, and verifiable.

We've also long said that men should identify themselves when engaging in public teaching and discussions of Scripture's doctrines. It's not good to be a closet Christian, to have a secret commitment to doctrines that are hated, and therefore a clear confession of Christ in this evil day. Unashamed acknowledgment and proclamation of everything Jesus commanded is integral to our fulfillment of our Lord's Great Commission. If we're not faithful in these small things, our Lord may well not find us worthy of the larger stewardship of the baptism of blood.

He has warned us of the consequences of being ashamed of Him, of publicly declaring His word that sodomy is an abomination against God, His word that greed is idolatry and greedy men will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven, His word that woman is not to teach or exercise authority over man because He created Adam first, then Eve.

Take those Biblical doctrines under the most intense attack today: it's precisely those places where our shame or zeal is best measured...

A brother who's ordained to pastoral ministry wrote: "I'd like to hear some real-life examples of how you and the pastors of Clearnote Church, Bloomington (or Christ the Word) are 'playing the man' for their flocks. Not the blogosphere stuff, important as it is...."

"Not the blogosphere stuff?"

The web is our lives, today--all of us. We do FB and e-mail and get our news and views there. Or should I say here?

So David and I view the web as a wonderful tool through which it's possible to bypass the suits of the publishing corporations and radio and conference ministries who will never do anything to jeopardize their moneymaking. We use the web to feed and guard and protect and admonish and warn our flocks.

The printing press was a central component to Luther and Calvin's reform of Geneva, bypassing the coffers of Rome. And the web is, we pray, a central component to the reform of Bloomington and Toledo...

This Wednesday Baylyblog's new design will go live. To help with the transfer we'll be shutting down comments for a day or so, likely starting Tuesday evening. So if you run into problems commenting Tuesday night or Wednesday, please be patient.

The work that's gone into the new design has been heavy since we're not simply switching from one blogging software to another--TypePad to WordPress, for instance. Baylyblog is being transformed into a site running on the open source content management platform, Drupal.

There are a number of features this will allow, but search is the big winner...

In my previous post, I introduced BaylyBlog readers to a few of the new features of the site. In this post, I will introduce a few of the technical details:

Again and again within the PCA, men sound the trumpet against the approaching enemy and immediately are shouted down by other men who say the blowing of the trumpet violated proper "process." Their claim is that sounding the alarm is not to trust the courts of the church where schismatics and heretics ought properly (and only) to be dealt with. They shush the buglers and their clear note.

This is to punish men for the very act of courageous obedience by which they serve our Lord and His Bride, and it's the same sort of punishment and condemnation Calvin, Luther, and Knox suffered. So buck up, men! You have a great patrimony! Calvin, Luther, and Knox blew their bugles, also, sounding the alarm house to house, city to city, day and night with tears.

Now to the details. When the Lord commanded Ezekiel to be faithful in his calling as a prophet, he called him a "watchman." Pastors today are watchmen, also, as indicated by...

If people haven't noticed, when the identity of a commenter is unknown to readers, I've started putting their names inside quotes to make it clear that readers don't actually know who they are. (This is not true of names like "Fr. Bill" and "Kamilla" for obvious reasons.)

I'm not doing this to be obnoxious, but to make a point of the anonymity of most of what goes down on the web.

This is not to say anonymity is not sometimes required. We had a case recently where someone identified with Baylyblog was threatened with termination at his annual evaluation because his identity could be traced to this blog. Please pray for our brother's protection. Still, we are convinced we should each do our best not to try to avoid shame over our idenitification with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

One further matter: we have men who consistently lie about their identities, and almost always they are the ones whose comments are viciously personal and lie about God and His Word...