Peter Witkowski Discipleship

What is the Mission of the Local Church?

What should our local church be doing? Is it missions? How about kids’ ministry, choir, youth programs? What do the people of God do when they come together? What is the mission of the Church?

With a nail, a hammer, and a document of 95 thesis, Martin Luther turned the world upside down in 1517 seeking in part to answer the question: “What does a local church do?”. He knew that the local churches of his day exported religious vice and wickedness to the medieval world. The gospel seldom appeared in church, the clergy at all levels lacked biblical knowledge, and the sacraments were twisted into graceless works the little resembled the teachings of Scripture. Luther started out to reform the church seeking to answer the question what does the local church do.

The History

Since 325 A.D, the church has defined itself as the one, holy, catholic, apostolic church. The local church was defined as being a church that submitted to the Bishop Rome, which was made holy by Christ through salvation, that was universally recognizable, and that was founded on the teaching of the apostles which was often interpreted and expanded upon by church officials.

jj-jordan-140710-unsplash.jpgLuther and Reformers redefined these historical terms to better reflect the gospel. The Reformers claimed that the church was one under Christ. All who were saved were saved by Christ to be part of the church. They believed that church should be holy; it should be composed of those who had been redeemed by Christ and who were being sanctified. They agreed to the catholic nature of the church. But they did not believe all churches had to look the same and practice the same liturgy. Rather, they claimed the church was catholic in its timelessness. All true churches in all ages were viewed as being part of the universal church. And they believed the church was apostolic. But the Reformers believed that the apostolic nature of the church should be limited to the teaching of the apostles. Solo Scriptura, Scripture Alone.

The Reformers sought to clearly divide themselves from the Catholic Church by adding two more marks to the definition of the local church. The Reformers said the local church should rightly administer the sacraments and preach the Word.

The Answer

Now back to our question. What does the local church do?

The local church comprised of holy believers who have been united to the universal church by salvation in Christ Jesus preach the Word and administer the sacraments correctly. For a group of believers to be a church, they must preach the Word and practice baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

John Calvin plainly said,

Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists.

What about kids’ ministry, Super Youth Sundays, the choir, missions, singing, and prayer? All of those things begin and flow from the preaching of the Word and from the sacraments. You can have church without them. But you cannot have a church apart from the preaching of the Word and apart from the Sacraments.

Paul tells Timothy:

 “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. 14 Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. 15 Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. 16 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 (1 Tm 4:13-16). 

Do we want to have a healthy God glorifying church? Do we want to reach young families, encourage the old, and bless the new converts? Then, we preach the Word. Paul tells us we keep a close watch on our doctrine on the truth of the Bible and teach it to others.

What saves people? What makes our church look attractive to lost world? What breathes new life into the exhausted and crumbling congregation? It is the Word of God. The preaching of the Word of God is central to all that we do. The Holy Spirit works through his Word to redeem the lost and to sanctify the redeemed.

Christ is the Word become flesh.

John 1:1-4 states:

 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

To know Christ, to experience him, revive our hearts through his presence, we must preach the Word. As Jesus says in John 17:17, “Sanctify them in truth; your word is truth.”  The church must be dedicated to the proclamation of the Word.

How is the done? The Word is proclaimed and taught through every element of the service. Pastor Mark Dever rightly notes,

Everything teaches, whether you intend it to or not. The songs teach people doctrine and proper affections for God. Your prayers (or lack of them) teach people how to pray themselves. The kinds of prayers you pray or don’t pray) teach people about the important difference between prayers of adoration confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. The way you administer the ordinances teaches people about their meaning and even the very meaning of the Gospel. You preaching teachers people how to study and use the Bible appropriately. Everything from the call to worship to the benediction counts as teaching. Teaching is everything.

Everything the local church does begins and ends with the Word of God. Singing, prayer, and evangelism are all driven by our understanding of the Word of God. The songs that we sing reflect what we believe about the Bible. The prayers that we pray reflect our understanding of God and ourselves. Our passion and methods for reaching the lost are driven by our understanding of what the Bible says about salvation. All the other functions of the local Church can only exist if the Word is fully, accurately, and faithfully preached.  And all the other functions of the church help with the preaching and dissemination of the Word. In short, if we get Sunday morning preaching wrong, we will work in vain to fix our church. The struggling church does not have a discipleship, outreach, or kids’ ministry problem. It has gospel proclamation problem.

Martin Luther notes,

Outwardly he deals with us through the preached Word, or the gospel, and through the visible signs of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Inwardly, he deals with us through the Holy Spirit and faith. But this is always in such a way and in this order that the outward means must precede the inward means.

If a local church hopes to be filled with the Holy Spirit and wishes the world to be changed by Christ, that assembly of believers must preach the Word.

Any local church that does not preach the Word is not a church. Religious clothing, sacraments, stain glass windows, and the sacraments alone do not make a group of people a local church. Religious minded people can have and do all these things and never preach the gospel. They cease to be a church when they preach a different gospel proclaiming salvation through other names, deeming sins to be acceptable, and demanding good works in the place of grace. Paul writes in Galatians 1:8

“But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.”

The one true, holy, catholic, apostolic church preaches the one true gospel.

Our Motivation: The Glory of God 

Why do we do this? Why should the church be passionate about preaching the Word?

The local church should be passionate about the Word because Christ is only present where the Word is preached. And we as the people of God can only expand the kingdom of God through the power of Christ. Moses nails this truth on its head in Exodus 33 when he says,

And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”

What makes the people of God distinct? What makes our local church distinct from every other social group? It is the presence of God via the Holy Spirit who works through the words of God as revealed in the Scriptures. The local church desperately needs God.

When the church fails to value the Word’s of God, God will not be present. And when the church ceases to experience the supernatural presence of God decay sets in. When the church cares more about tradition, cultural acceptance, and political power than about glorifying God, God will leave the church. James McDonald rightfully notes,

God will quickly withdraw His favor where sin is ignored or avoided and difficult people are coddled instead of confronted in love.

The local church should be about the preaching of the Word because she desires to experience the presence and power of God. Apart from Him, the local church can do nothing. And with Him the local church can do everything.

What does the local church do?

The local church preaches the word and rightly performs the sacraments (more on that soon!)

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 Apologetics, Church History

Sola Scriptura

scripture-aloneThis post was taken from my talk on Sola Scriptura delivered during FBCE’s Reformation Focus on October 29,2107

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they often err and contradict themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise, here I stand, may, God help me, Amen.

With these words,  Luther shattered his connection to the Catholic Church, by proclaiming the Scriptures to be the final authority. Pope Leo X and his advisers believed that the Bible was the inherent Word of God. Luther’s battle was not akin to the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention that fought to reestablish the belief that the Bible was the Word of God and was without error. Both the Luther and the Pope affirmed the inerrant nature of the Scriptures.

Luther and the Pope butted heads on the doctrine of the sufficiency and authority of the Bible. The Pope and the cardinals believed that they could and should add commands and ideas to the Scriptures because as Bishop Stephen Gardiner said, “The Scripture is dead: it must have a living expositor.” Infamously, Pope Leo X expanded upon the Scriptures by creating Indulgences to pay for the completion of St. Peter’s Cathedral.

Indulgences were little pieces of paper that transferred merit from Christ and the saints to the sinner upon payment to the church. As the evil monk Tetlsel sang, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, The soul from purgatory springs.” The Catholic Church was selling salvation on the authority of the Pope and on the authority of church counsels.

authorityLuther objected vehemently to the sale of indulgences, knowing that salvation comes through faith alone,  by grace alone, through Christ alone for the glory of God alone.  The Catholic Church responded to Luther’s 95 Theses and other writings by calling the German Bull to repent of his errors and to affirm the authority of the Pope and the Catholic Church.

Luther refused. He was, “bound by the Scriptures.” The church was not Luther’s authority. The Pope was not Luther’s authority. Pragmatism or the belief that what works is right was not Luther’s authority. The culture was not Luther’s authority. Right and wrong were not determined by the societal acceptance of a practice. Rather, Luther’s authority was the Bible.

The Biblical Case For Luther’s Belief

Luther made the Scriptures his authority because the Scriptures, the Word of God, claim to be the exclusive access to the voice of God. In I Timothy 3:16-18, the Bible claims to have been breathed out by God or exhaled from his mouth. The text in our hands and that shines on our phones is not simply the religious musings of some deep thinkers, it is not the divine inclinations of a few wise men and women, and it is not the suggestions of the spiritual astute. The Bible, is the Word of God. It is the essence of God.

2 Peter 2:16-21 reveals this truth clearly. The text states:

16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son,[i] with whom I am well pleased,” 18 we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. 19 And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, 20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

The Bible, the words of Peter, Paul, Matthew, Mark, Moses, Joshua, Isaiah, and the many other writers, contains the words of God. And the words that compose the Scriptures were not written in a dark room somewhere. No, these words reflect reality. Peter is recording the teachings and the events he saw and heard. He says in verse 16, “we were eyewitness.”

What was Peter an eyewitness too?

He tells us. He is talking about his experience on the mount of transfiguration. In Mark 9:1:-8, Luke 9:28-36; Matthew 17:1-8, we are told that  Jesus, Peter, James and John go up on a mountain. Jesus is transfigured. The three disciples see Jesus’ glory and listen to Jesus talk with Moses and Elijah. Then they hear as Peter recounts in verse 17 these words, “This is my beloved Son,[i] with whom I am well pleased.” They hear the voice of God the Father.

But as amazing and as grand as those words were and that experience was, Peter is affirming that you and have I something better. He says in verse 19:

And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts

Peter affirms the prophetic word. He says that text in front of us is more sure and more helpful for our everyday lives than his experience on the mount of transfiguration. Chew on that for a minute. Peter is affirming

kiwihug-284614that the Bible is better and more helpful than being with Jesus briefly on the mountain top. God’s word is far better than any experience we may have in the woods as the sun rises. God’s word is far more helpful than any experience we can create by praying ourselves into an emotional tizzy. God word is far more excellent than any private prophecy or premonition. If we want to hear the voice of God and to know what God is saying to us,  we must read the Bible.

Peter tells to respond reality of the Bible’s authority by reminding us that we will “do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place.” Borrowing the language of Psalm 119, Peter tells his readers that only God’s Word can guide them to light, truth, and joy. Only God’s word can show how us how live, how to worship, and how to overcome sin. God’s Word is inerrant and it is authoritative and all we need.  All of Scripture and not just the red letters is the words of our God.

And all of Scripture is the words of Christ.

John 14:25 promises:

25 “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”

Everything the disciples wrote down came from the Holy Spirit who was sent by the Father to bear witness to Jesus. The Bible is the Word that the Father ordains us to have through the Spirit, attesting to Jesus. We do not have to reach outside the Bible’s pages for a special word from the Lord. Because God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit work together in perfect unity and unison, they will not give us competing words or visions from sources other than the Bible. No member of the trinity will go against the over members and send a rogue message out here or there. And if we hear a word outside of Scripture, we have not heard the voice of God. We have tapped into demonic darkness. To know God’s will, to hear God’s voice, we must tune our hearts to the Scriptures.

Until Christ returns, until the morning light breaks into the darkness of this world and Christ once again reigns on high above all earth, the Scriptures are fully sufficient for all we need in life and Godliness. As Luther would note,

Scripture alone is the true Lord and master of all writings and doctrines on earth.

Luther can make this bold declaration because in verse 21, we read these words,

For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

The apostles did not put down their own ideas. They did not write down their agenda and push their political aspirations as the writer Dan Brown asserted in the Divinchi Code. No, writers of the Bible recorded verifiable facts. wrote down the words of God.

Remember verse 16. Peter tells us that he was an eyewitness. The apostle John makes the same claim in I John 1:1:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.

And in Luke 1:1-4 we read,

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

And in Matthew 5:17-19 Jesus famously asserts the authority and sufficiency of Scripture noting

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

As Luther would reflect,

The saints could err in their writing and sin in their lives, but the Scriptures cannot err.

Luther and the reformers made the Bible their authority because it is the definitive and complete Word of God. Sola Scripture; Scripture alone.

Reflections For Today

As I conclude this section, I want to reflect on how this doctrine of Sola Scripture should shape our church. As Dr. Albert Mohler the President of Southern Seminary said,

The true churches of the Reformation understood that the right call was for a church always reformed by the Word of God.

As men and women affirming the doctrines of the Reformation, the biblical idea that Salvation is through Christ alone, by Grace alone, through faith alone, for the glory of God alone, upon the authority of the Scriptures alone, we should continually examine our lives and the lives of our church for the purpose of reforming our hearts and church. to reflect the Scriptures.

I wish to close by posing to questions to help us apply the truths of Scripture alone to our hearts.

1. Do we value the Word in our church? Does the children’s ministry revolve around the teaching and preaching of the Word or is the ministry driven and directed by games and personal opinions?

Do the songs that we sing reflect our music preferences or do they reflect the gospel as revealed in the Word?

Do the sermons we hear drive us to the text? Or can we quickly close our Bibles once the pastor starts preaching? Do we regularly hear our pastors, guest preachers, and Sunday school teachers saying, “See what the text says, look at that verse, see what the word says,” or do the preachers simply tell stories and reflect on their own impressions? John Blanchard said,  “The pulpit is the throne for the Word of God”

Word prominently displayed on our throne? Do we value the word in worship?

2. Second do we value the word in our daily life? Do we truly think that the Words of eternal life are found in the Scriptures? Where do we go first when we encounter trials, tough decisions, and sickness, hardships, and unpleasant experiences? Do we run to our friends? Do we run to the psychologists and the Christian therapist for some extra biblical advice? Where do we go?

Luther noted,

A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or council without it.

Several hundred years later Dietrich Bonhoeffer restated Luther’s sentiment, saying,

The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus.

God’s word claims to contain all that we need for life and godliness (2 Tim 3:16-18). Luther said that God is light and that “all else being darkness.” Do we look to the light when seeking to navigate our lives or do we embrace the darkness that parades about as the world’s wisdom? Do we value the word in our life?

The reformation began in 1517. But it has not ended. May we continue by God’s grace to cotinually reform our churches and our souls to reflect the truth of the Scriptures. Sola Scripture. Scripture alone.