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I posted a reply about a day and 1/2 ago. Can you check your spam filter and see if it is in there?

The New Testament doesn’t teach that we have free will. It explicitly teaches that we’re predestined. It also teaches that we’ll be judged for our actions. How do those two sides of the truth fit together? I don’t know, but I’m sure that the answer isn’t to deny either divine predestination or human responsibility.

Meanwhile, may the Lord continue to pour his grace on Burton Memorial Baptist. I would do certain things differently, but from what’s written here it seems that the Lord is working there in a special way.

You know I’m not a Calvinist, but I’ll be the first to say that the average church that I know about would be blessed 10x over to have one of the young reformation minded pastors from SBTS as their pastor. They will get the Gospel, serious leadership, God centered worship, a confidence in God’s word, a respect for history, and on and on.

This caricature of Calvinists as having no respect for the church and on a mad crusade to split churches is simply absurd. The only split I know of was motivated 125% by a slanderous crusade against conservative Baptists in general by those who wanted their church to go CBF. The aftermath of the split has been the demolition of the church’s cooperative program support. Are Calvinists ditching the CP and the Convention? Don’t think so.

I would actually disagree with you that the guys from SBTS- like you- are actually “reformed.” As Josh at the BHT says, if Calvin would burn you as a heretic, you probably aren’t reformed

I simply want our church to realize the Jesus meant what he said in Matthew 18. I do not want our church be like the Laodiceans who had everything they wanted and didn’t need Jesus or his instruction. Nothing to do with Calvin.

I simply want our church to realize that God, in addition to sending His Son to die for His bride, gave instruction in His Word for how His church should be organized. When I have preached through Acts, 1 Peter, 1 Timothy, Titus, and James, we saw elders, seems like God thinks they are a good idea, has nothin to do with Calvin.

I simply want our church to give God as much credit as He deserves for saving sinners. And I am content to err on giving God too more credit for my salvation, rather than little.

Am I reformed? Sure, but I haven’t mentioned election or predestination any more than 3 or 4 times in over 6 years on Sunday morning (about 300 sundays), but i’ve tried to mention the gospel on every one.

Thanks for thinking of Burton, Michael, love for you (or anyone)stop by and see us.

Kevin

To me it’s kind of like the mainstream denominations. When the denomination goes liberal and owns the church property. All of the sudden the church that has met there for 50 years has no building to go to.

I don’t think that is what really happened. The liberal reforms in the mainstream denominations in the 20s and 30s had wide support of large chunks of the membership. The problem (or good thing) is that those denominations were very broad ideologically. I did a study on the changes in the PCUSA. What I found when I looked at the writings was that all the groups had wide representation. It is very much like the homosexual debate today. There are large numbers of people on both sides of the issue.

Ultimately the church is a volunteer organization. The kids can vote but they can’t pay the bills. If there was genuine opposition to Calvinist reforms they would in most cases stop dead in their tracks. Try and get a membership convent through when long standing members openly say “I will never sign that”, openly and proudly.

Heck buy a box of copies of any good Arminian critique of Calvinism and pass them out for free. Calvinism is so contrary to human experience that even a weak apologetic will prove sufficient to fight against it.

I finally if you want to immunize your congregation against Calvinism have a profession of faith be part of the membership covenant, ” I believe that God graciously enables every sinner to repent and believe, but He does not interfere with man’s freedom. I believe that each sinner possesses a free will, and his eternal destiny depends on how he uses it… ” RAID for Calvinists.

Anyway. Kevin raises a good point. You can easily construct a leadership situation where the young are disempowered but then it is hard to get them to want to be volunteer, and that means less services (which the 30-50 demographic really want) or more paid staff. I think that’s a fair choice.

Why should people want to be in leadership if they don’t have the support of the congregation? So they can cause a split.

Kevin, thank you for giving a vision for what a healthy, transforming, multigenerational church should look like.

And Michael, thank you again for this ongoing series, it’s a big help to church planters like myself.