ClearNote Fellowship

(Tim) Today, the ClearNote Fellowship Blog is up with its first post by Josh Congrove titled, Why Study Church History: The Myopia of the Modern. If you like Baylyblog, you'll want to add the ClearNote Blog to your bookmarks or RSS feeds. We'll have posts by people involved with ClearNote, posts by women for women, and posts by a number of pastors. I'll be posting there, too.

To whet your appetite, here are a couple paragraphs from Josh's piece posted today, the first day of 2010. We hope the work of ClearNote Fellowship will be a great encouragement to you and that you'll join with us in any way you're able. May God bless your new year!

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...Understanding Church history shows us that the most incredible, most sophisticated discoveries in the Christian faith were made long ago. It shows us that our great need today is not to let postmodernism inform the doctrine of the Trinity, but rather to proclaim its doctrine, already discovered, to a world that needs old truth explained, not new truth uncovered. Church history shows us that most of the new perspectives we think we've opened today are really little more than rehashing of old heresy. Open theism is nothing more than the posterity of Pelagianism; and its adherents, if more sophisticated, are only the degraded descendants of the man St. Augustine defeated 1,600 years ago. Feminism is nothing but...

(Tim) In response to the post, "The Pleasures of Patriarchy, part 1," over on ClearNote Women's Blog, my daughter Hannah Weeks wrote something that strengthened my faith. I hope it will yours, too.

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(Tim: This from Heidi Bayly and the ClearNote Blog)

"I am strong, I am invincible; I am woman!" -Helen Reddy

The majority of women would not admit to being fearful and anxious. We roll our eyes at the women of the past who fainted far too often and squealed much too high. Fear has become distinctly un-American. After all, in America, what do we have to fear except fear itself?

But if we're honest with ourselves, we realize our life is governed by fear: the fear that we'll never get married, never have children, our babies will die, our husband will stop loving us, our children will not repent, the pain in our back will not go away, we'll not have any friends, or that God will require too much of us. The list goes on.

So now, from the time we're little girls, we're fed lies that we can conquer our fears on our own. Or maybe with a little help from a medical professional. We're taught to think of ourselves as invincible, powerful, strong, independent, and fearless... (continue reading)

(Tim: This from our Worship Director, Jody Killingsworth, over on ClearNote Blog)

Lo, by the sons of hell he dies;

But as he hangs ‘twixt earth and skies,
He gives their prince a fatal blow,
And triumphs o’er the powers below.

                    ~ Isaac Watts

The most frequent metaphor Scripture uses to describe daily Christian life is the metaphor of war... (read more)

(Tim) Over at ClearNote Blog, my number two daughter, Michal Louise Crum, has people gasping for breath with her modest proposal that a college education isn't a prerequisite for godliness or contentment. Poor benighted Michal, barefoot but not pregnant. The most intense hissy fits are over at the bump: the inside scoop on pregnancy. Take a gander.

(Tim) Last year, we had an excellent turnout for our first ClearNote Fellowship Conference held each year the weekend following the Fourth of July. This year the conference will be Friday, July 9 through Saturday, July 10. I hope you'll make plans now to come. And bring your whole family.

For registration and more information...

(Tim) Our ClearNote Fellowship Conference is fast approaching, but there's still time for you to make plans to come. So, register now. The conferene is coming up the weekend after the Fourth of July; Friday and Saturday, July 9th and 10th. We're hoping to break 200 registrants this year and it's looking like God will give us that many (for which we're grateful).

And that's without some of you!

Pastors Curell, Baker, and I were interviewed about the conference. Watch the videos...

(Tim) This past weekend, many brothers and sisters and their children joined us for the ClearNote Fellowship Conference. The theme of our worship and preaching was, In the Godly, Fear and Love Embrace. The fellowship, preaching, and worship strengthened us all, greatly.

Then, following morning Lord's Day worship and a feast, we held the ordination service for my son, Joseph Bayly, to the work of planting ClearNote Church, Indianapolis. My brother, David, preached the sermon. Then we laid hands on Joseph and set him apart to the work of an Evangelist.

Soon, links to the sermons will be available and those of you who weren't able to join us will be able to listen to them. If you're wise, you won't miss them.

And speaking of being wise, I exhort you to...

(Tim: This article originally appeared in ClearNote Fellowship's newsletter. If you'd like to be added to our mailing list, please send us an e-mail.)

Each time we sat under the ministry of our much-loved Iain Murray at the old Banner of Truth conferences, the Bayly brothers could predict at some point during the Q & A sessions Murray would strike a plaintive note, asking, “Why is there no evangelism in Reformed churches?” After a while, we realized it wasn’t a question, but a lament.

No one ever suggested he was wrong. The question brought on a guilty silence.

But if Reformed congregations don’t have new births, why aren’t our churches dying? Some pollsters even say the Reformed slice of the conservative Christian pie is growing. Doesn’t this prove Reformed men have changed their priorities and are giving themselves to evangelism--that we're all missional, today?

Sadly not. Our converts have simply moved up the social register. To keep our pews filled, we depend upon men and women raised in Christian homes getting their graduate degree and trading in their parents’ Arminian church for a more respectable Reformed congregation...

(Tim) Churches mired in the conceit of being urban and cosmopolitan speak frequently of being "in the city" and "for the city." Leaving aside "in the city," what does it mean to be "for the city?"

There's no one better to take that question to than our early church father, Augustine. As Rome fell, Augustine wrote his magisterial City of God. It was a voice from the City of God to the City of Man--which at that time was the City of Rome. To Augustine, being for the city didn't consist of taking in a play, hanging at the local pub, or hiring Indie musicians to lead worship. He'd been down that road quite a ways prior to his conversion and he was younger than that now.

Instead, Augustine wrote against these things--relentlessly and as an insider. He'd spent his entirely dissipated youth...

(Tim, with tongue planted) Nearly every one of my friends is sending me a link to this Wall Street Journal piece announcing the earthshaking news that evangelicals are in love with hip and cool and dude and are trying to make their churches hip and cool and dude, also.

I'm floored. Someone quick call PCA and MNA headquarters so they can get a jump on battening down the hatches.

(Tim) Back in 1993, I wrote an article on a conflict over the policy of Westminster School in Atlanta that required board members of this private Christian school to be confessing Christians. The New York Times had done an article on the controversy and I took the piece as a jumping-off point to say a few things about home, public, and Christian schools. Since then, Mary Lee and I have educated our five children (as well as several other children who lived with us through the years) in each of those ways--home, public, and Christian school. This is the final year we have a child at home and Taylor, our youngest, is finishing high school at the school my wife Mary Lee, with a couple others, founded and served as principal--Lighthouse Christian Academy.

It's been years since we've had a child at LCA. When it put up a building, we watched its former commitments decline. It seemed bent on becoming the sort of Christian school that, from the beginning, we'd worked hard to avoid. But this is the ho-hum way of all institutions, Christian or otherwise, and there have been some encouraging changes at LCA the past couple of years--hence Taylor's presence there this year.

But as I point out in the article below, the best antidote to school decline is the founding of a new school. It worked with Yale as a reform of Harvard, Princeton as a reform of Yale, and it's still working with schools like New St. Andrews being a reform of Wheaton, Westmont, Gordon, and Covenant.

Tired and timid souls always laugh at the upstarts...

(Tim) Pastor Sam Andreades, a longtime member of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, now serves New York's Village Church affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America. Recently, Pastor Andreades did a five minute spot on WFMU's Seven Second Delay radio show concerning Village Church's willingness to help those "who are conflicted in their desires and their identity and would like to determine themselves differently." (Here's a pic from the occasion.)

Near the end, Pastor Andreades was asked if he wanted to lead in prayer? The interview begins around 18:30 and the concluding prayer at 23:30. Here's Pastor Andreades' prayer:

HOST: Sam, would you like to lead a prayer?

SAM ANDREADES: Uh, I'd be willing to pray if nobody laughs; if we can do it reverently.

HOST: Sure, let's give it a try and see what happens, OK? Ready?

(Tim) Under the post about Wheaton's quarter-billion capital campaign, a reader asked, "(If a man) wants to prepare to be an Old or New Testament Professor... (w)here would you recommend him to study for a Ph.D. and why is this a better place to go than Wheaton?" Taking this as a jumping-off point for some related thoughts, I commented:

The academy has taken over the Reformed church and needs to be pushed back to being a servant, rather than a master. And its service needs to be circumscribed to the end that, once its overreaching has been disciplined, it doesn't have an easy time taking back lost ground.

The first necessary act of discipline is to reclaim for the church the training of shepherds. The academic model has utterly failed. It turns out men whose basic orientation is to avoid conflict. Not to be too hard on seminaries, though; this is only what academic institutions are ordered to produce. We shouldn't be harsh on them for doing what they're made to do.

The academy in its current manifestation is set up to manufacture men committed to being good disciples (of their profs) who will be hired by good colleges and universities...

(Jody Killingsworth) Each year, our worship band joins forces with our adult and children’s choirs and fifteen or so orchestral musicians from Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music to lead the Bloomington community in celebrating the Incarnation of our promised Messiah. It’s exuberant, ecstatic, poignant, energetic, stirring, tremendous, resplendent; and best of all, participatory!

So come sing your Christmas hearts out with us. Then join us for Lord’s Day worship the next morning. We’d love to have you, especially if you’re from out of town. Let us know, and we'll do our best to find a home for you and your family while you're here.

When: Saturday, December 11 at 7pm 

Where: Church of the Good Shepherd          

Here’s a teaser to whet your appetite…

(Tim: Building on his series on Jonathan Edwards and the Atonement, here's another series--numbers one, two, three, four, and five--by our American African correspondent, David Wegener. But first, a note from David on the purpose of this series.)

Paul is a Zambian Christian leader, a graduate of the school where I teach. I’ve taken him as representative of one of my students so I can have a face to look at in my mind as I write these letters.

Often my students puzzle over what they hear coming from the church in the west. Much of their background has led them to accept without question what comes from western Christians. "After all, they brought us the gospel and keep coming back and helping us." My exhortation to Paul is the one given by his namesake: “Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess 5:21).

Letters to Paul: Language in the Emergent Church

Dear Paul: I want to write a few letters to you about the atonement of Christ, criticizing several teachings that are coming from the west. But first I need to write one about language and communication styles.

A number of American Christian writers today have adopted a style that feels very inviting. They ask a lot of questions. They word their statements in a way that seems humble. They admit that they don’t have all the answers. They show an admirable hesitancy in making truth statements. They don’t rebuke people but want to leave us all feeling affirmed, one of the group, encouraged, like a fellow pilgrim on a journey...

(Tim, w/thanks to Joseph) If you'd like to see into the future of churches that market themselves as Evangelical or hip and Reformed, this article gives a clear picture of how it will fall out next with sodomy. First we threw out God's Order of Creation concerning patriarchy and next we're going to throw out God's Order of Creation concerning heterosexuality. But the work will be hidden behind the high moral ground of past church reforms in slavery and male dominance, and the wreckers will be chattering on about love.

If we could deny the application of Adam first, then Eve, to anyone other than Christians, and only among Christians to tie-breaking votes at home, men preaching Sunday mornings, and women having voice but no vote in our elders meetings, the next step is only logical: we'll deny that God creating Eve (rather than Steve) for Adam bars practicing sodomites from church membership and we'll think it's progressive to refer to heterosexual marriage as "God's ideal" while approving monogamous sodomite unions as a worthy second-best. Outside the Christian home and Church, we'll seek to repeal laws against sodomy because, like patriarchy, heterosexuality is a private Christian truth.

Trimming God's Word and authority is a coherent strategy that moves on to the next project and giving away territory to Satan never causes him to be less aggressive on his next mission. Every last bit of territory we concede will serve him well as the staging ground for his next attack on God's Order of Creation.

Some complementarians have written about the inevitability of the feminist hermeneutic giving birth to the homosexualist hermeneutic. By this they only mean that the complete denial of Adam's headship over Eve will also result in the complete denial of God's gift of Eve to Adam and His limiting of sex to monogamous heterosexual marriage. They're right, as far as they go. But they fail to see the inevitability, also, of their own minimalistic complementarian hermeneutic giving birth to an equally minimalistic heterosexualist hermeneutic...

(Tim, w/thanks to Eric) Our Lord, the Apostle Paul, and economists are agreed that money matters quite a lot. For instance, check out the comments on this blog responding to the news that, in China, a law is being proposed that would make an adult child's failure to visit his parents actionable in court. If the law passes, parents could sue their child for failure to visit and the child could be fined and directed to submit to a visitation schedule. What wonderful visits that would produce! Beyond the question of banks, pensions, and Social Security, though, there's another set of numbers worth noting, here.

We have a fair number of international students who attend ClearNote Church, Bloomington (our new church name), and some are from China. Due to China's one-child policy, these students rarely have siblings or cousins. Picture it: one father and mother had one child--a son; another father and mother had one child--a daughter; that son and daughter married and had one son who married someone else's daughter--again, an only child. Now what do you have?

You have a married couple who themselves have one child who will grow up with two parents, four grandparents, and eight great-grandparents. It's entirely conceivable he'll have some of his great-grandparents live to the time of his marriage, at which time he'll take on through his wife another set of two parents, four grandparents, and eight great-grandparents. Let's assume only half of that couple's great grandparents survive to the time of their marriage; then that couple each has two parents, four grandparents, and four great-grandparents, which brings the total number of aging relatives on the shoulders of that young couple to twenty. And if all their great-grandparents are still alive, the total is twenty-eight.

Which is to say that, beyond the hundreds of millions of little babies slaughtered by the one-child policy and forced abortions of China in the past century, they now have a rapidly aging population. It's estimated one in four adults will be over the age of sixty-five by 2050.

Let's be practical about this. When my mother-in-law and mother want to move into someone's house...

(Tim) ClearNote Press today announced a free MP3 recording of Horatio Bonar's Words to Winners of Souls. We're grateful to the men who did the work of recording and puting the file up on the server. We're especially grateful to Jeff Ewer for his reading. The audio is free to anyone who registers and I trust many will find it helpful.

Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, Ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name; Bring an offering, and come before Him; Worship the LORD in holy array. (1 Chronicles 16:28-29)

(Tim) Young men reading the stuff published on worship today would be quite justified in fearing that worship is very, very complicated and only the people who buy lots of books and read lots of articles and think very deeply about this matter could possibly design and lead a worship service that does what it's supposed to do. Why, simply the debates over what the Regulative Principle prohibits and requires are endless! What's a poor boy to do?

In the interest of cutting through some of the verbiage and helping Reformed pastors who want to follow the early Reformers in worship as they follow them in preaching God's Word, here are a few reforms which take their cue from Geneva.

1. The main method of restoring congregational participation within Reformed worship was to call congregants to sing. Thus the music had to be (and was) quite simple. Under Calvin, the congregation sang only the melody; it was plainsong with no parts. Certain men of our time debate endlessly over whether popular tunes known outside the church were used during early Protestant worship. Both sides have their scholars, but my recommendation is that you not waste time on the argument. Leave it alone.

Following the Geneva pattern of repudiating the high style of the idolatrous Roman Mass and cultivating a simplicity that would encourage the common man to join in the singing, we ourselves should repudiate high classical style that communicates our most-excellent taste while masquerading as being all about reverence for God...

Jesus answered and said to them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. 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 6:43,44).

(Jesus said) "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:42-44).

(Jesus said) "Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28).

(Tim) We've warned against Rob Bell before here and here. That second link is a post titled, "Just one more savage wolf..." alluding to this warning to the Ephesian elders by the Apostle Paul:

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. (Acts 20:28-31)

If possible, that savage wolf, Rob Bell, becomes bolder in his wickedness. Watch this video:

"...it's indie or classic rock that moves our spirit."

(Tim) You all know ClearNote Church is filled with classical musicians but we worship mostly under the leadership of amplified instruments. This EP just released by our worship musicians gives you a good feel for how we're led. What distinguishes our worship leaders is that they use instrumentation and tunes and rhythms that are familiar to those who attend. We're not asked to go back into genres of previous centuries when we sing God's praises and pray.

Then too, we believe our music should be characterized by masculine zeal. The congregation should have men pushing us to express our joy and firm commitment and worship for the majesty and glory of God. Faint spirits and cold hearts are challenged when singing God's praises, here.

So you'll notice how well-matched the music and instrumentation and beat are to our goal. If you were to worship with us one Lord's Day morning, you'd notice this is how we pray and preach, also--we don't give people space for unbelief and ambivalence...

(Tim, w/thanks to Tenile: One blogger produced a very, very rough transcript of Martin Bashir interviewing Rob Bell and I asked Tenile Victorsen if she'd give us a good one. Here it is. If you find an error, please let us know and we'll correct it. Interspersed in the text are a few comments of my own in black text between brackets, italicized.)

Bashir: One mega church pastor has ignited a theological firestorm by suggesting that our response to the Christian message in this life will not necessarily determine our eternal destiny. In his book Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, Rob Bell says that ultimately all people will be saved, even those who’ve rejected the claims of Christianity. He argues people will eventually be persuaded by God’s love, postmortem, in the life to come. [Note how straighforward Bashir is stating Bell's thesis. As we enter the murkiness of Bell's words, we must remind ourselves of this straighforward warning from God:  "...it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment..." (Hebrews 9:27)] Pastor Rob Bell joins us now. Good afternoon, sir. Before we come to talk about the book, just help us with this tragedy in Japan. Which of these is true? Either God is all-powerful but he doesn’t care about the people of Japan and, therefore, they’re suffering, or he does care about the people of Japan but he’s not all-powerful? Which one is it? [Do we really have to choose between these two, Mr. Bashir?]

Bell: I begin with the belief [Let the listener understand he means no offense to those with a different belief.] that God--when we shed a tear, God sheds a tear. [Hallmark card sentiment, but the scale of the senitment doesn't match the scale of the horror. Pastor Bell trivializes the massive death and destruction of the earthquakes and tsunamis, or the terrible suffering of the Japanese people. Just one tear? Whole cities destroyed and "a tear" for Pastor Bell and "a tear" for God?] So I begin with a divine being [Speaking to the Areopagus surrounded by the pantheon of gods, the Apostle Paul declares: “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth..." (Acts 17:24). Speaking to the world today in the midst of our pantheon of gods, Pastor Bell can't even bring himself to use the definite article to refer to his god. It's not "the God Who is there" but "a divine being."] who is profoundly [Adverbs weaken arguments but strengthen sentiment. Pastor Bell adores adverbs.] empathetic, compassionate and stands in solidarity with us. [Actually, God stands in solidarity only with those who, by faith, are "in Christ" and His Church. Concerning all others, the ax is at the root. Thus note how, by leaving "us" undefined, Pastor Bell denies the distinction between the Church and the world. This denial of distinctions is central to his false prophecies and is a defining prejudice of post-moderns--Pastor Bell's target audience.] Secondly, the dominant story [To speak of the work of redemption recorded in Scripture as a "story" reminds me of what everyone said when the planes took down the World Trade Center on 9/11: "It was just like the movies." The false images of movies helped our mind's eye to see...

(Tim: this is fourth in a series of posts [one, two, three, four, five, six, seven] responding to to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's promotion of sodomy at a Indiana University campus forum they sponsored the evening of Monday, March 28, 2011.)

“The unique Divine inspiration, entire trustworthiness and authority of the Bible.”                         - InterVarsity’s Doctrinal Basis

Sola Scriptura is a cornerstone of Protestantism. From the beginning, Protestants have objected to the idea that we can know God and what He commands from any source other than His divinely revealed Word. As the Westminster Confession puts it: “The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture” I.10

Of the many things that were wrong with the event “Jesus and the end of Homophobia” hosted by Indiana University’s InterVarsity chapter, the most disturbing was the silencing of God’s Word. As a Protestant, Evangelical organization, InterVarsity is supposed to be committed to the Bible. It is supposed to be committed to the Bible because it is in the Bible that God speaks to us most clearly. If we have a question about Who God is and what He requires of us, the Bible is where Protestants turn for the answer.

But that is not what happened at last week’s event. Last week, InterVarsity sponsored an event where the Bible was not allowed into the discussion. God was not allowed to speak through His Word...