Tag: Church Planting

Categories
Church Clint Gospel Ministry

“Walking in the Fear of the Lord…It Multiplied”

2019 in Review at Calvary Grace Church

It is hard to believe the amount of change that has occurred in the life of Calvary Grace Church since last December. 

Yet through all of the changes, there has been an underlying principle. That principle was described by the apostle Luke in his history of the early church when he recorded:

So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. (Ac 9:31)

“Walking in the fear of the Lord”

Calvary Grace has had a season of ‘walking in the fear of the Lord’ in 2019. Many of us have had to count the cost of following Jesus in the midst of a culture that has grown rapidly hostile to our Lord’s truth. In living according to the truth and confessing the truth, we’ve had to have some difficult conversations with friends and fellow church members, in order to hold fast to the truth. We have been tested in 2019 with whether we would walk in the fear of the Lord or the fear of man. Happily, Calvary Grace has continued to walk in the fear of God, even when times have been hard. 

“The comfort of the Holy Spirit”

But we’ve also been walking in ‘the comfort of the Holy Spirit’ too. Palm Sunday of 2019 saw us bid a tearful goodbye to members joining together to plant Grace Cochrane Church. As we sent them off, we trusted that the Holy Spirit would be their comfort in their new work, as we seek his comfort in ours. 

Nobody could ignore the way that God galvanized the congregation of CGC in God-fearing prayer as we interceded for a church member during her hospitalization. Seeing God’s hand of mercy moving dramatically was a profound answer to our prayers. Such comfort from the Holy Spirit reminded us of the supernatural power of God to change things in our created world in ways that defy explanation. 

“It Multiplied”

After the planting of Grace Cochrane Church at Easter, Calvary Grace felt reduced, although we all were surprised that we didn’t feel empty.  The number of people who have come to Calvary Grace has begun to fill the sanctuary once again. 

What is even more encouraging than increased attendance, are the ways in which newer members have become integrated into the life of the church. Among these newer members has been a notable spirit of gratitude to God for Calvary Grace, and a thankfulness toward the members who had a hand along the way in helping CGC get established. 

Looking Ahead to 2020

We praise God for the generosity of church members to partner together in the ministry through the giving of their time, talents and treasure. As we look ahead to 2020, we prayerfully anticipate the path before us, as God wills. 

Stewardship

  • To continue to improve our financial position and pay down our mortgage. This will open up many more opportunities for local and global impact. 
  • To continue to ‘fix’ the remaining building needs now that the roof projects have been completed successfully (!).
  • To continue the retooling of our ministry structure, giving more delegation to deacons and ministry leads, and improving the processes that assist people to become healthy gospel partners, not merely attenders. 
  • To continue to support the Grace Cochrane Church, but also anticipating our next steps as Grace Cochrane becomes gradually self-sustaining. 

Spirituality

  • To get grounded in the gospel and the heart of the gospel, namely union with Christ. This is the theme of our January 24-25 conference featuring Stephen Yuille, Gavin Peacock and Clint Humfrey. 
  • To be equipped to live as exiles in our own land, yet with a heavenly destiny. 
    1. Pastor Josh  will begin January with a short series in 2 Peter
    2. Pastor Clint will resume his Daniel series on the prophetic visions. 
  • We will seek to grow in our Sunday School electives in the new year, with applied teaching, thoughtful questions and a culture of godly learning. 
  • We will aim to support the teachers who are working with our children in Sunday School, and offering to volunteer as needed.
  • We will keep praying together monthly, and having that prayer time as a high priority for our schedules, to seek the Lord– together.
  • To attend and support men’s and women’s bible studies, youth ministry, Oasis/Seniors outreach, mercy ministries, and much, much more.  

Remember that as the early church walked in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. 

We continue to look with expectancy for God to bring revival to Calgary. As we look to God for a special and intense work, we also trust him that he is working in ordinary and regular ways in our midst. All his ways are good and wise!

As 2019 enters its last days, we will celebrate the incarnation of the Son of God together. Let us remember how great a salvation we enjoy. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good works as we enter 2020. (Heb 10:24).

Categories
Church Clint Gospel Ministry Pastors Spiritual Growth Theology

Are You Making Progress?

“Do you feel like you’re spinning your wheels?” That’s the question I asked my elders last night. I was asking to see if they felt stuck, and not making progress in their ministry, marriages, families, and vocations.

As devotional meditation at the beginning of our elders’ meeting (we always start with prayer and the Word of God), I looked at the issue of “making progress” in Paul’s letters.

For Your Progress and Joy

My first question was to get at what was our reason for being in ministry at all. I asked the men, “Why do we remain and continue in this ministry?” That question is prompted by Philippians 1:25. Paul gave the answer in that verse when he said: 

“for your progress and joy in the faith” 

Phil 1:25

The Greek word for progress is prokopen (προκοπὴν). The idea likely had an early sense of cutting or slashing forward, but the word gained wide usage to mean simply ‘advance’ or ‘progress’.

So like Paul, the pastors can consider that their purpose for being in ministry at this time is for the progress and joy in the faith of others. 

Progress in Sanctification

Another way of putting it is to think that pastors serve the church to promote their progressive sanctification. As pastors shepherd people, they will make progress:

  • from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor 3:18). 
  • from immaturity to presenting “everyone mature in Christ” (Col 1:28)

So the pastors’ ministry is to serve in this Pauline way for people’s personal, joyous, progressive sanctification in the Christian faith.

The Progress of the Gospel

The personal progress which pastors promote for individual Christians doesn’t remain alone. That individual progress is part of the wider progress of the gospel. Paul outlined in the first chapter of Philippians, that various circumstances in his life were actually designed for the gospel’s progress. The ESV translates this same Greek word (prokope/ προκοπὴν) not with ‘progress’ but ‘advance’ in Philippians 1:12.

As much as we may care for the sanctification of the individual Christian, we can never lose sight of the fact that God is advancing the gospel, and pastors must shepherd people to carry that gospel forward. So as we “equip the saints” (Eph 4:12), we will see the gospel progressively advanced in the ever expanse reaches which Jesus commanded (Matt 28:18-20; Acts 1:8).

Pastors Must Make Progress

In order to serve the progress of others, we need to make progress. Paul exhorted Timothy to undertake a plan of personal development in gospel-born teaching and living. He commanded Timothy saying:

Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. (προκοπὴν)

1 Tim 4:15

As pastors, we aren’t aiming to display our learning, or show off our preaching, or parade our piety. Nevertheless, people should be able to see our progress.  They should see that we are changing and growing. They should see that as our lives change, the church changes, and the entire ministry landscape changes, we are making progress.

Some of the areas we should make progress in are:

  • persevering through trials old and new. 
  • theological knowledge leading to worship, or courage, or humility
  • skill in handling ministry, preaching, relationships, the brevity of time

Progress in Life and Teaching

There are many areas that Paul outlines in his pastoral epistles, which pastors ought to make progress in by God’s grace. A great summary of them all is stated by Paul in the following verse when he concludes:

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.

1Ti 4:16 

These are wide categories. When Paul warns to keep watch on “yourself” it is all of life, inside and out. When he focusses on “the teaching” he intends both the expansive content of the faith as well as the growing ability to communicate it better. 

As we ended this meditation on pastors making progress, for the progressive sanctification of Christians and the progress of the gospel, I asked two application questions. Consider them in your own life:

  1. In what area would you like to make some progress this coming year?
  2. In what area do you feel you’ve made progress in this last year.

unsplash-logoEmma Francis


Categories
Canada Church Clint Ministry Pastors Spiritual Growth

Planters Must Be Pastors First

Recently I spoke with a guy who worked for a denomination to promote church planting. The term “planting” is Christian jargon for establishing new congregations in new regions. The guy made an interesting observation which I completely agreed with: Planters must be pastors first.

As a denominational worker, this friend had seen many guys who became church planters, but who failed to be shepherds of people’s souls. I have seen the same thing also. When church planters are merely franchise operators, they tend to imitate the world. Since they are starting something, namely a new congregation, they tend to copy the world’s start-up culture.

Worldly Start-Up Culture

This summer I read a memoir about the inner workings of a technology company in its early “start-up” days. It was an expose of Silicon Valley and the start-up culture found in many of the tech companies in that industry.

The most prominent features in these companies were a combination of ‘bro-culture’, forced adolescence, and passive-aggressive conflict management.

  • ‘Bro-culture’ is an intentionally exclusive world where male programmers use insider language to mask frat-house crudeness.
  • The forced adolescence of these companies shows up in their kindergarten decor and nap rooms.
  • Conflict is not handled openly and honestly but is ignored under fake happy veneers. Then when the threshold is reached, the aggressive scorched earth approach takes over with no possibility of forgiveness.

Companies mature and change. But all you have to do is make a Google search for “Bro culture” and you will see articles relating to these features of the tech start-ups. Many church planters have tended to copy this worldly (that is unspiritual) world of start-ups.

Christian Start-Up Culture

The church planting culture in North America can be sort of like a Christianized version of this tech start-up world. The planters are the ‘bros’. The plants have an infatuation with adolescent style. And the conflict management tends to be to ignore minor issues and then blow up, quit, or burn others when everyone is not on board with the vision.

Of course, there are challenges to every church plant. And many people can look on a pastor in his twenties or thirties as inexperienced, belonging to the pastors’ fraternity, and not very good at handling conflict. Almost every pastor who has started young and had a long tenure will admit to failure when it comes to the commissions and omissions of sin in his early pastorate, myself included.

But there is still this other kind of start-up style that bakes in the features of worldly start-up culture into church plants. I think these features are still influenced by Mark Driscoll and the bro culture he promoted in his church. His 2006 book Confessions of a Reformission Rev offered the memoir for how bro culture looks for a plant. Driscoll’s template resulted in scores of church planters trying to copy him. Thankfully these planters have been satirized enough that we might see an end to the cussing, middle-aged pastor with a soul patch and skinny jeans.

Planters Must Be Pastors First

Church planting is very hard. Establishing a new congregation requires both wisdom and faith. Much effort needs to be expended by a planter to get the right structures in place for this new entity to be organized and functioning well. But he must have faith so that his identity resides in union with Christ, rather than being a frat boy visionary or guru-like wunderkind.

The planter must be a pastor first. He must preach the word (2 Tim 4:2), pastor the people (1Pet 5:2), confronting sin (Titus 1:13), and comforting sufferers (2 Cor 1:3-7). All of this must be done while still promoting the advance of the gospel into unwilling and hostile environments.

Let us pray for planters that they would be pastors first.

unsplash-logoElevate

Categories
Church Clint Ministry Pastors Reformers Spiritual Growth

The Necessity of Church Members for Soul Care

Returning from vacation, pastors might be jolted with the reminder that they can’t do their job. Or at least they will see that they can’t do all that their job demands of them. The needs of people are so many and so deep that only God’s supply can meet the demand. 

So what is the pastor to do? Does he simply pray that God will enable him with supernatural capacity to meet every need in the church? Prayer for God-given empowerment is good, but if we seek it to meet every need, we will shift from being a servant to being a messiah. 

People Are Gifts

What pastors and congregations need to realize is that God has already answered such prayers by providing gifts, supernatural gifts to the church. I’m not talking about the extra-ordinary apostolic gifts of miracles and prophecy which God sent to vindicate the foundation-laying apostolic message. I’m talking about God giving blood-won sinners who have been Spirit-empowered to serve God and one another. God has given people as supernatural gifts to the church. 

In the gift lists of Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4, we see that God has given a diversity of gifts to the church by setting individuals in vital union with Jesus Christ and each other. 

The marvel of this miraculous union shows God’s practical provision. Each believing person does not merely have a gift but is a gift. That means that no matter who they are, what their background is, or what their personality type might be, a sinner saved by grace is themselves a grace-gift to the church. They have a role to play. As they play it, everyone else will benefit. As Paul told the Ephesians: 

“When each part is working properly [Christ]makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love

Eph 4:16

In the modern church, this has come to be known as every member ministry. The description attempts to clarify that church members, all of them, have a role to play in the ministry, not just the clerical class. 

Caring For Souls

One area where every member ministry is critical, but often overlooked is in soul care. Today many people in Protestant churches still think that the only person who can help them is the pastor. It is as if they think that the pastor has a special direct line to God. Or they think that the pastor is the leading expert who alone has the professional expertise. Or they think that the pastor is paid to be on-call for their spiritual needs, so they want to get their money’s worth. 

Unfortunately, a lot of bad thinking sounds more like the unbiblical priestly models of Roman Catholicism, or the consumeristic therapy models of modern secular counselling. The two results that such an approach will achieve is either pushing pastors to become more like ‘professionals’ or it will push them to burn out. 


The Reformer Martin Bucer addressed this point: 

The care of souls makes so many demands that even in  small congregation it cannot be properly exercised by just one or a few…there is so much involved in the true care of souls that even those who are the most skilled in this ministry; if they are alone or few in number, will not achieve very much; because all skill and ability comes from God, who desires to carry out this his work in his church by means of many and not by means of few. 

Martin Bucer, Concerning the True Care of Souls, 58

To get ‘the many’ involved in ministry, pastors will have to do a number of things which will take effort, but the result will be better soul care for the congregation. 

Equip

Pastors must start by obeying Ephesians 4:12 and aim to “equip the saints for the work of the ministry for building up the body of Christ.” This means teaching the saints the content of the faith, but also equipping them in such a way that they know the work of the ministry they are to do, and that they have the chance to do it. To equip the saints, they need both direction and teaching. 

Direction

I think pastors can be good at teaching the content of the Christian faith but can assume that people in the church will automatically know how to minister to each other from that doctrinal foundation. I know for myself that I’ve had to be more explicit in helping people make connections between their role in the body of Christ and their responsibilities in the work of the ministry. 

Teaching

To equip people well requires all of the best elements of teaching. People need the content, examples, illustrations, analogies, steps and opportunities to practice. This kind of teaching takes a lot of work on the part of pastors. It is the part of my own experience that I find the most difficult. Teaching doctrine is easier, but it can be harder to help a member become a needs-aware role player in the body of Christ. 

Unity

If pastors work at equipping the saints for the work of the ministry, the result as Paul argues through the fourth chapter of Ephesians will be unity. A church that “builds itself up in love” will be supernaturally unified through the relationships of its visible members.  As Bucer put it:

In this work of building [God] wishes to have and make use of many tools, so that he may raise many of his own to honoour and hold them all the more firmly together…None of his members must be idle, and there must be the highest degree of unity and order among them, each one must depend on and be depended on by the other; thus everything must be one and in common, beginning and continuing by means of common activity. 

Martin Bucer, Concerning the True Care of Souls, 58

Don’t Just Do It Yourself

As pastors (and church members) return from summer vacation, they can be tempted to slip into the thinking that says if you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself. But if we give in to that, we will burn out. Silo ministry will only expose how dysfunctional we are. Yet when we live according to God’s design, we will rejoice that he has gifted the church with many hands. Many hands make light work. 

unsplash-logoShane Rounce

***affiliate links

Categories
Clint Society

A Call for Pioneers

My guess is that you and I have been surprised at the rapid loss of confidence in the institutions of the West. Daily we have reports of scandal in leadership, whether it’s political, ecclesiastical, social, and familial.

Why would anyone want to start a family, or serve in a public way as a public figure? Aren’t you just setting yourself up for crushing scrutiny, and peer pressure that creates powerful temptations to lie, cheat or steal?

With online mobbing and social media character assassinations, you would assume that all of us will develop some type of anxiety disorder like agoraphobia, the fear of places that are “unsafe with no easy way to escape”.

The result is that there is a self-censuring going on that is different than the self-control which aims to inhibit our fleshly passions. The self-censure is entirely based upon fear of man. It means we are afraid to speak words into the public square, or anywhere because there may be no way to say enough to defend those words from attack.

If you know that what you say might be swarmed, even if it is innocuous, you just won’t say it. You won’t say innocent things because they might be doomed to defeat. Even a tweet or Facebook post can be subject to the Two Minutes Hate.

So it’s clear. There is a cost to sticking your neck out.

So now I think we need to put the call out. We need Pioneers. Trailblazers. Companies of Adventurers.

We should actively encourage the next generation to try things, take a risk, and walk forward in wisdom and in faith.

I believe it is important to emphasize this with young people in the churches. They need to be encouraged to establish new institutions: marriages, families, churches, businesses, schools, and social organizations.

As it is now, many young people are too afraid to venture out into a relationship. Friendships are perilous. Marriage seems a lost cause. But they must be encouraged to pursue friendships and seek to bind themselves to someone from the opposite sex in a covenant under God. Their mutual joy, fruitfulness and worship is the true nucleus of new societies. Without it, whole civilizations simply die off in a generation or two.

This new pioneering spirit must be promoted among Christians in their relationship with the church. For many, there is a malaise when it comes to the church. They are finding many other things to fill up their time. The call of God on the Lord’s Day has been shoved to the periphery. The collective power of the church made up of committed members is a rare occurrence. This is due largely to the absence of supernatural community that has the power to bind diverse people together in unified purpose. This can only happen in common confession of “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4:5-6).

There is thankfully a move toward church planting in the West that is attempting to keep this pioneering missionary spirit alive. We need this kind of hopeful, expectant approach to church extension and flourishing.

I think we should also encourage the coming generation with the hope that God can send revival in a profoundly free and sovereign way. He can make the hard hearts of the Twitterverse be surgically removed and replaced with hearts of flesh.

It can be easy to sit back in cynicism and lament. But we shouldn’t dwell on what is lacking. Instead, we should look out on the vistas of opportunity, the calling to which we have been called and seek new ways to be witnesses, martyroi (cf. Acts 1:8 Gr.).

Maybe we can all start by attempting to share the gospel. Bear witness to the gospel reign of Jesus Christ.

Speak up. Speak out. In love for our Saviour and love for the lost, let us think about new ventures for our words and witness.