Peter Witkowski Apologetics, Discipleship

The Beaten Yet Victorious Church: My Hope!

church-1The churches of the Southern Baptist Convention are in sad shape. SBC pastors and leaders rejoiced last year when Tom Rainer, the President of Lifeway, released new statistics that implied that only 65% of evangelical churches were in decline. Previously, church growth experts had estimated that approximately 80% of churches were either plateaued of declining. The Department of Defense becomes uneasy when 14% of its forces are unfit for battle. The Church rejoices to discover that 45% her units are ready for the kingdom fight.

When we dig into the statics a little more, we discover why churches consider less bad news good news. According to the SBC annual report only 1 out of every 3 Southern Baptists attends church each Sunday. Two-thirds of our church members skip church every Sunday. And only 39% of those who regularly attend church read their Bibles every day. Because of the lack of Church attendance and because of their lack of biblical knowledge, most Christians more closely resemble their culture than the Scriptures. Seventy-six percent of Christians believe that the best way to find yourself is to look within; 72% believe that joy and fulfillment come through pursuing their desires; and, 40% believe that all sexual expression are permitted. Another study revealed that Christians where just as likely as their neighbors to buy lottery tickets, to have affairs, to lie, to seek revenge, and to steal. The main benefit of Christendom consists in the reduction of alcohol and swearing. Though 84% of Americans know someone who claims to be a Christian. Only 15% of Americans know a Christian who has been radically transformed by the gospel. The church is a mess.

But that is not all. The American culture has fixed her sights upon the church and has been firing salvo after salvo at our rickety vessel. The American culture which has embraced the religion of self has little patience for a religion that calls people to die to themselves. Ninety-one percent of Americans belief self-revelation is the key to happiness, and 89% believe that those who criticize the choices of others have gone against the moral code. Consequently, 60% of Americans view evangelism to be as extreme conducting a religious war. Preaching the morality of the Bible is deemed to be as dangerous as attempting to blow up Time Square according to a majority of Americans. They view the Bible as being outdated, irrelevant, and dangerous. Those who affirm the Scriptures, stand on the Word of God, and teach the Bible are said to be on the wrong side of history, standing with the bigoted backwards men and women of yesteryear. The number of Americans who identify with evangelical church continues to decline, and the fastest growing religious group in America continues to be the Nones, those who have no religious affiliation. The cry of Nitcheze is increasingly the cry of America, “God is dead.”

The church is both eroding from within and collapsing from without.

Though the evangelical church in America has been battered and bruised, she possesses great hope! In Matthew 16:18, Jesus says,

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

The church has great hope, because Jesus builds the Church.

The Church exists not because of our church growth plans and not because of our welcome packets. Those things aren’t bad, but they do not make the church go. Nor will they save the church. As Lloyd-Jones noted years ago,

The problem confronting us is not a problem of methods, or of organization, or of making a slight adjustment here and there, or improving things a little bit, or keeping them up-to-date, or anything like that.

A recent Lifeway study of church planters revealed that the church does not grow through human means. Three percent or less of the new congregations came to their churches because they Newspaper adds, billboards, or fliers. Another 6% came to church because of the church’s social media presence. The overwhelming majority of people attending the church,  77%, came because they had relationship with someone in the church.

Jesus builds the Church through the proclamation of the Gospel.  As Lloyd-Jones notes,

Men can produce evangelistic campaigns, but they cannot and never produce a revival…A revival by definition, is the mighty act of God and it is a sovereign act of God…Man can do nothing. God, and God alone, does it.

God does it alone and he does it. He works. He builds the church. And the gates of hell will not prevail against it!

Nitcheze is dead.  The church is not. God builds the church. God defends the church against the attacks of Satan and the world. From the get go the church has faced daunting odds both from without and from within. Men and women like Simeon the magician join the church and try to buy their way into leadership (Acts 8:9-24). The church at Corinth tolerates a man having an affair with his step mom (1 Cor. 5).  False teachers come in and twist the gospel at Galatia (Gal. 1:6-10). Jude and 3 John demonstratively warn to the church to be on the lookout for wolves in sheep’s clothing. Paul and the Jews imprison and murder Christians (Acts 8:1-3). Nero, Diocletian, Julian and other Roman leaders abused and murder Christians for political gain and for sport. The church has always been under attack.

The reformer, Martin Luther lamented the state of the church which was overrun with sin, sexual immorality and pride because the gospel was seldom preached. J.C. Ryle stood for the gospel in the 1800’s as British society abandoned the gospel viewing it to be old and antiquated. In the 1930’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer lamented that many in the church were preaching salvation without requiring “repentance.” And in the 1980’s D. Martin Lloyd-Jones was already defended the church from modern thinkers who believed humanity had evolved beyond abilities of the Bible. But despite all the corrosion from within and the attacks from without. The church remains. Rome is gone. The political power of the Vatican is at an end. The Holy Roman Empire is gone. But the church remains because she is God’s and God builds his church!

As I prepare to leave First Baptist Church Eastman and begin to serve at Amissville Baptist Church, I find great hope and encouragement from the words of Christ. I leave a church with problems and go to a church with problems. But none of them are too great for God. If we the people of God will stand upon his Word if we will faithfully preach the gospel and regularly repent, we have every reason to be hopeful! God builds his church on Christ through the proclamation of the Scriptures. The success of the Church does not depend on my ingenuity or yours. It depends on God. And the God who created the universe and who redeemed a lost and sinful people is more than up to the task. He has built his church and will continue to build it! I will shortly embark to become the senior pastor of ABC because I know God builds and defends his church! To God be the glory!

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Church Discipline Supports Parents

blog-spaceChurch discipline and children’s discipleship appear reside at the opposite ends of the local church universe. Talking to an adult about the embezzlement seems to have little relation to the preschooler pushing cars. But despite appearances, the two planets traverse orbits that often overlap. And if we neglect church discipline, we will do great harm to our children and by extension our youth.

Parents rejoice when they see their child come forward to make a profession of faith. The parents also tremble. Having grown up in the easy-believism culture that defined faith as walking an aisle and making a prayer, parents know that such faith can easily be faked. They have watched in despair as their friends strayed from the church into a life of sin and debauchery.

And yet, these unregenerate church members still possess the title of Christian. They can still walk back into their home church take the Lord ’s Table and use the church name without ever having repented of their sin. In the eyes of the church and in the eyes of the community, the wayward Christian who has fathered 25 children by 25 different women is just as much the church member as the senior lady who has collected 25 Sunday school attendance pins.

Such sentiment is often expressed in our local church vocabulary. When we learn that a lady hasn’t attended church over the last five years, we label her “misguided” or “nice” but stop short of calling her a sinner and calling her to repent. When our friend divorces his wife to chase after his younger secretary, we turn away in disgust and tell him to, “Straighten out his life,” but happily welcome him and the secretary into the church when they are ready without addressing their sin.

Once baptized, men and women are church members in perpetuity.

Functioning within this local church paradigm, parents are slow to affirm their child’s desire to follow Christ. Before baptism, the parent can enforce threats by refusing to allow their child to be baptized. But after baptism all recourse is lost. Once a member, always a member.

Christ clearly affirmed the perseverance of the saints. Once a man or women repents and believes, nothing can separate him or her from the love of God. But God does not teach the perseverance of church members.

Though the local church should strive to baptize only believers, she will make mistakes at times and baptize unregenerate men and women. Moreover, those who truly love the Lord are still being sanctified and will sin and need to be called to repent. Think of David, Bathsheba, and Nathan. God commands his church to practice church discipline in Matthew 18 and in 1 Corinthians 5. Baptism is not a blank check of admittance into the church. Those who join the church are called to be like Christ. And when they are not like Christ, the church must spring into action.

But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. – 1 Cor. 5:11. 

The most important part of church discipline is the first stage of discipline. Personal confrontation. When we see a fellow church member in sin, we are to confront that brother for the purpose of seeing him restored. But how many of us have been lovingly confronted over our sin by our fellow church members? How many of us have heard Matthew 18 taught from the pulpit? How many of us have lovingly confronted another? If parents have seldom been confronted in love, they will probably struggle to lovingly confront their children about their sin.

And if the first level of church discipline does not succeed, we are to take one or two more Christians with us for the purpose of confronting the brother again. Again, how many parents have been a part of this process? How many parents have been confronted or have loving confronted another?

And if that fails, the church member should take the matter to the church. The unrepentant believer should be brought before the church. And if he still refuses to repent, he should be removed, excommunicated from the church. The church should declare that the unrepentant sinner is no longer a member of the church. Again how many parents and children have witnessed this process? How many parents and children have seen someone loving removed from the rolls because he or she refused to return to church or because he or she refused to abandon their sexual sin?

15 If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. – Mt. 18:15-17

If parents and children regularly lived and experienced all three levels of church discipline, they would have little to fear when their kids profess faith. Parents could regularly remind their children that faith is obedience and call their children to obedience. Children would see that church is not a light-hearted social club but a faith changing factory filled with the worship of God. Children would see that sin is serious and that the Christian life is a life of faith and repentance where people die to self and live for Christ. Church discipline helps families lovingly live out the gospel.

The local church must practice church discipline if she desires to empower parents to disciple their children.

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Are You Ready To Listen More and do Less in Church?

risk-all.gifAre you willing to listen?

Right before Jesus took off for the cross, he stopped and conversed with the rich young ruler (Mk 10:17). He delayed his march to Jerusalem, to his death, and to his victory over the grave to talk with the young man and to point him to Christ. As believers and followers of Christ, we must have the same disposition and mindset. We must be willing to stop and converse with others. We must care enough about our neighbors, our children, and our spouse to abandon our programs, our goals, and our ministries to care for them.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer rightly noted that “Our love for another consists first of all in listening.” The greatest success one can have is not found in creating a program that employees hundreds or thousands of people. Our greatest success, our most profound moments, our greatest times of influence often come when we stop and listen.

And we should not stop and listen simply to appreciate a violin solo or to notice the sunset. Those things are good and noble. They exist for our enjoyment and point to the beauty and majesty of our creator. We should stop and listen to hear people’s hearts, to learn of their sorrows and to point them to Christ. Many people wind up in crisis, depressed, hurt, and horribly broken because no one was willing to lay aside their schedules, programs, and ministries to care for them. As speaker, pastor, and counselor Paul David-Trip notes:

Perhaps the simplest reason for our lack of self-disclosing candor is that no one else asks.

Jesus took time to listen to the rich young ruler and to ask questions the drew out his heart. Jesus took the time to know what we all experience becoming human so that he could perfectly relate to us for the purpose of redeeming us. If Christ has so loved us, how can we not in turn love others?

If we Jesus and truly want to follow him, we too must be willing to stop, to listen, and to draw our the hearts of those around us. We must be willing to be thrown of task and schedule for the gospel. We must be willing to risk a large invest of time and be willing to receive a result that we deem less than desirable. We must be willing to follow Christ and love others not matter the cost.