Peter Witkowski Church History, Ecclesiology

Lloyd-Jones, Rick Warren, & the Looming Crisis of a Paper Denomination

As British evangelicalism approached the precipice of their own crisis in 1966, the famed British preacher and evangelist, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones passionately encouraged evangelicals to leave their floundering denominations. As he made clear in his Appeal, he was done with paper churches. Speaking of the impulse to define the local church by creeds and statements of faith, the Doctor said,

I am sorry, I cannot accept the view that the church consists of articles or a confession of faith. A church does not consist of the Thirty-Nine Articles. A church does not consist of the Westminster Confession of Faith…A church consists of living people.

At first glance, the Doctor seemed to be affirming the often-heard statement of “No creed, but the Bible” as he headed off into the world of Christian experience. But while the fiery Welsh Preacher of Westminster Chapel certainly affirmed the authority and sufficiency of the Bible and the importance of the universal Christian experience of conversion, he had not given up on creeds in 1966.

Lloyd-Jones & The Importance of Creeds

He taught that the church’s survival depended upon the existence of creeds. Reflecting upon the practice of the early church, Lloyd-Jones said, “They defined heresy, and condemned it, and excommunicated men who taught it…The result was that we have the so-called great creeds of the Church – for instance the Apostle’s Creed.” What proved true of the early church also proved true of the Protestant Reformation and of the Church during other times of revival. Lloyd-Jones continued,

The Church in every period of revival and awakening, when she is really alive…has always done this very thing. The drawing up of a Confession is nothing less than a way of ‘girding up the lions of your mind,’ or ‘putting on the girdle of truth.’

In other words, the historic, evangelical church has always welcomed creeds and statements of faith because they were “drawn up to save the life of the Church and to safeguard the truth concerning our Lord and His salvation.” Lloyd-Jones believed that those who held fast to the Scriptures would hold equally fast to documents such as “the Westminster Confession.”

In critiquing paper churches, Lloyd-Jones was not expressing antagonism towards creeds but rather towards their misuse. In other words, he did not oppose the presence of creeds but rather those disingenuous pastors and denominational workers who signed orthodox creeds so that they could teach heterodoxy if not outright heresy apart from any criticism. In the 1960s, British liberals engaged in the doublespeak that defined the liberals wing of the SBC during the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 90s. In front of boards and councils, they publicly affirmed orthodoxy. But in their Tuesday morning lectures and their Sunday morning sermons, they openly attacked core biblical doctrines. Reflecting upon this reality in 1969, Lloyd-Jones remarked, “What the Christian church is teaching at any given time is what is being proclaimed from its pulpits and not what is handed down on paper.”

Though the British liberals hoped to revive their struggling churches through the inclusion of more culturally adept theology, their broadening theological horizons did not translate to increased membership. The grand cathedrals of old were transformed into flimsy and empty paper structures. As Lloyd-Jones noted, “If you mix with polluted doctrine, it is not surprising that you become diseased and more or less useless in the kingdom of God.” Those who abandoned or diluted the creeds would ultimately lose the gospel and their churches. He warned, “if you make what appears to be a minor change somewhere on the circumference it will soon have its effect even upon the center.”

Warren & the Baptist Faith and Message

In a few days, the SBC will face its own crisis. The messengers at the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting will have to decide whether they will reinstate Rick Warren’s old church (Saddleback Church) which has ordained and installed women pastors, violating the SBC statement of faith, the Baptist Faith in Message 2000, and its biblical moorings (and for what it’s worth – Lloyd-Jones’s teaching). With that vote, Southern Baptists will determine whether their confessional documents exist to protect the integrity of the gospel or to protect those who teach against the Bible from institutional and biblical accountability. In other words, they will be determining whether the SBC is a living or a paper denomination.

May they choose wisely.

What Did they Decide?

In God’s kindness, the messengers at the 2023 Annual Meeting affirmed that creeds exist to uphold the clear teaching of the Scriptures. They rejected Warren’s appeal to reinstate Saddleback Church by a vote of 88% to 11%. I am thankful to report that the SBC is not a paper denomination. As of 6/14/2023, it is very much alive!

Peter Witkowski Discipleship, Memos, Pain & Suffering

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, April Witkowski & the Myth of the Wasted Ministry

To know something of Martyn Lloyd-Jones is to know that the man yearned for revival. In addition to the sermon series which later became the book Revival, Lloyd-Jones devoted countless other sermons, lectures, and letters to the topic of widespread, simultaneous conversion. More than anything else in his life, he longed to see Wales if not the whole evangelical church experience something akin to what had happened during the days of John Wesley or Martin Luther.

Why Revival

The Doctor’s emphasis upon revival in-part grew out of his understanding of spiritual baptism. In addition to the slow, steady growth associated with the normal means of Christian sanctification, the Welsh pastor taught that God would at times fill a local church with a sweet and special awareness of his spirit which would result in the church members’ exponential growth. This moment of growth would then become the foundation needed for another nationwide revival.

Somewhat ironically, I believe Lloyd-Jones helped to split the British Evangelical movement in 1966 because he so longed to lay the groundwork for such a Spiritual baptism that he pressed his Appeal for the formation of a new doctrinally robust association of evangelical churches with an intense zeal that produced more confusion than action. Thus, his very appropriate call to reform the evangelical church around the essential doctrines of the gospel went mostly unheeded. Sensing that no revival was coming in the years that followed 1966, some Lloyd-Jones’s sermons began to take on a slightly negative undertone. Though forever confident in the return of Christ, he no longer spoke of the restoration of the West but more of how all forms of democracy would eventually end in the tyranny of the French revolution. In one sense, I think Lloyd-Jones went to his grave discouraged for God had not seen fit to bring about a revival in his lifetime.

A Testimony of Faithfulness

Though a national revival never came, Lloyd-Jones’s own ministry in London had not proved ineffective. An old family friend of the Doctor told me the other day that he thought one of the greatest tragedies of Lloyd-Jones’s life was that he so longed for national revival that he missed the extraordinary work that God was doing through Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel. With God’s help, the Doctor facilitated thousands of small revivals all throughout England, Wales, and the world. Thousands if not millions of people came to faith either directly through his preaching or indirectly through his writings and through the ministry of the numerous pastors, missionaries, and church members that he had discipled. I write today of Lloyd-Jones because of his very ordinary ministry at Westminster Chapel produced extraordinary fruit. Lloyd-Jones may have lacked a Reformation, but he did not lack a Wittenberg. The fire of revival burned brightly in the pulpit of Westminster Chapel.

Don’t Discount Today

The fact that Lloyd-Jones seemingly missed the glories of the ordinary forest in his unceasing search for that giant, evangelical redwood of revival should serve as a caution to all of us still in ministry – whether that be professionally or otherwise. The temptation to negate or overlook the glories of today because we are so focused on the dreams of what could be tomorrow did not pass with the end of the last century. How many pastors feel discouraged because their church has yet to cross the two-hundred-person threshold? How many singles discount their meaningful ministry to the senior adults in their church and to the young mothers with those crazy two-year-olds because they are still single and are not engaged in the discipling that come with marriage and the arrival of their own children? How many godly men and women with a bent towards missions believe their lives a waste because they spend their day evangelizing their neighbors a couple of doors down instead of reaching people hidden behinds miles of brush in the amazon? How many faithful brothers and sisters in the secular workforce believe their life counts for nothing because they have yet to start their own business or to reach that corner office from which they could make a real difference in the world?

April’s Fear

In truth, my late wife struggled with this temptation. As her life came to a close, she lamented one afternoon how her cancer had kept her from fully engaging in those things that she longed to do with me as we began our ministry at my current church such as: teach Sunday School classes, coordinate VBS programs, attend services, go on home visits, and counsel the hurting. She felt her life incomplete and feared that she had held me back. But as I told her that day as the sun filled the space around her blue rocking chair in our bedroom, she had stewarded her life well. Over the past four plus years, she had served as my greatest counselor and confidant. With her, I processed life and Scripture. Her life showed up not so much in our Sunday school curriculum or in those stick craft projects that make kids’ ministry so fun but in the subliminal content of my sermons, in the essence of my counseling, and in my visions for the future. Indeed, when she died one of the places, I grieved her loss the most was my office. Though she only set in those black chairs across from my desk sporadically during the last few years of her life, she still shaped all that happened behind that heavy white door the separates me from the back entryway. Ordinary, faithful ministry has an extraordinary influence.

The Power of the Ordinary

But what was true of my dear bride and Lloyd-Jones proves true of all of us. Our lives today will not be defined by our dreams, hopes, or expectations of what is to come (of what may never come) but will be defined by our faithful execution of the life and ministry God has given us in this moment. If we are faithfully serving God today in accordance with his Word and our calling and gifting, our lives are not a waste but rather the very definition of success. In other words, we should not discount the ordinary means of grace at work now, believing that all is a waste until the arrival of the extraordinary. In this respect, I believe the Lloyd-Jones’s insistence upon spiritual baptism proved unhelpful. The normative experience of the early church was not Pentecost but rather the faithful plodding associated with Paul’s missionary journeys.  Indeed, the most extraordinary thing about most of us is our ordinary faithfulness.

If that revival never occurs, or if that spouse never comes, or if the ticket to oversees ministry never arrives, and if we stay at our jobs for another 20 years, our lives still possess profound value in the Lord’s economy. If we are faithful today, we will in time bear extraordinary fruit. Take heart, friends. Don’t grow weary of today.

Don’t miss the forest in pursuit of your giant red wood.  

Listen To INterview
Peter Witkowski Book Reviews

Life In Two Kingdoms: A Review

The seas of political and cultural engagement have proved treacherous for the Christian soul. If it sails too close to the shore of faith, it can run aground upon the reefs of non-involvement. But if it sails into the depths of secular thinking, it can drown in a whirlpool of political partisanship. Both a lack of involvement in the world and an over preoccupation with politics can harm both the Christian and his or her witness to this lost and dying world.

In the span of 322 pages, Doctor Martyn Lloyd-Jones charts a path through these dangerous waters that is guided by his exegesis of Romans 13. The passage serves as a compass for his view of limited cultural engagement, a view that both promotes Christian involvement in the secular world and protects the believer from being consumed by political platforms.

Overview

Lloyd-Jones or the Doctor (he was an MD prior to entering the pulpit and happily would look after one’s physical body as well as one’s soul when asked) believed Christians should engage the political and secular world because God had instituted both culture and government and remained involved in the workings of men and women. Since God had ordained the state to promote human flourishing and to restrain evil, Christians could vote, serve in parliament, and overthrow unjust political institutions that used their power to abuse and harm citizens.

But such political and social involvement was never to become the believer’s guiding star. All governments remained concerned with the limitation of sin. The State could not positively legislate the Sermon on the Mount because gospel change flowed through the channel of the church in accordance with the faithful preaching of the gospel. Membership in the Church and the expansion of God’s kingdom depended upon one’s spiritual birth. Rebirth remained untethered to that person’s earthly citizenship and family heritage. After providing a somewhat oversimplified history of how the Church and state have interacted through the ages, the Doctor rightfully concluded that the state should not dominate the doctrines of the Church nor should the Church control the politics of the state. When the separate spheres of the state and the church were foraged into one distorted circle, the witness of the Church would begin to rot.

Because of sin, the Church could never advance through the state, protests, or cultural institutions. Though the Christian was to care for his or her neighbors, he or she was always to remember that only the gospel could overcome sin and bring lasting change. The local pastor was not to tell politicians how to best care for their citizens. The Church had no special insights into how to best regulate speed limits, drainage problems, or international trade. But she did possess the gospel of Jesus Christ which showed men and women their sin, pointed them to salvation, and then laid out the principles by which Christians could live loving and just lives. Instead of organizing marches, Lloyd-Jones called the local church to declare the “principles” that governed life. As the Doctor concluded,

“It is always wrong to talk about Christianizing anything. No such thing is possible.”

Instead of campaigning, preach.

The Doctor spent the second half of the book discussing the second coming of Christ. He showed readers the necessity of Christian suffering, the predictableness of human failure, and the hope of Jesus’s return. The Christian was not to think in terms of political cycles or sports seasons but in terms of eternity. Jesus would one day return to liberate the world from the curse of the fall. All other efforts to establish world peace and to final reform society would fail. Only the gospel could change the soul. And only the return of Christ would bring the gospel to bear on the entire universe. The Christian lived for eternity!   

Conclusion

The Doctor first shared the thoughts that became this book in a series of lectures that ran from November 1966 to May 1967 in his church located in London. Though Lloyd-Jones’s words are more than 50 years old, they prove ever relevant because they direct the reader’s soul back to the gospel. Moreover, like a good bottle of port stashed in a ship’s hull, the Doctor’s words have become sweeter and more poignant with age. Lloyd-Jones’s ideas reside in the realms of principle and cannot be dragged down into the particulars of any modern political debate. Readers do not have to fear that the Doctor has some hidden agenda or favorite candidate to prop up. In an age of rushed opinions and unrelenting political fury, Lloyd-Jones’s books serves as a harbor of refuge where readers may safely consider how to best bring the gospel to bear upon their political and cultural system. Even if you reject the Doctor’s view of limited political engagement, his arguments will undoubtedly help you chart your own voyage through these shifting waters.

If you only read one book this year, I encourage you to make it the The Exposition of Chapter 13: Life in Two Kingdoms.

May we all make it safely to Jordan’s Sunny shores.