It might seem strange to say this, but we are not living to live. Living is not the point of our living. Waiting is. We live while we’re waiting.
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, (Titus 2:11-13).
Paul is giving Titus some instructions and reminders as to our duties as Christians, to be done while we wait.
Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible reminds us also that this life is a preparatory for the one to come.
To look for the glories of another world, to which a sober, righteous, and godly life in this is preparative: Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. Hope, by a metonymy, is put for the thing hoped for, namely, heaven and the felicities thereof, called emphatically that hope, because it is the great thing we look and long and wait for; and a blessed hope, because, when attained, we shall be completely happy for ever.
In today’s time it’s not considered mature to speak of prophecy. I believe that’s wrong. I believe that because so many verses stress that we are to look forward, to hope in His coming promises, to wait for His return. I can’t think of a better encouragement than to dwell on His prophecies. This life is difficult. (John 16:33). It’s full of evil people and seducers waxing worse and worse. (2 Timothy 3:13). It’s full of disease, strife, challenge, and vigilance. (1 Corinthians 11:30, 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Proverbs 28:25, Psalm 46:1,1 Peter 5:8).
We are being trained while we wait. But waiting is our task, our joy, our hope. We should look to His return for encouragement. He is the blessed hope!
We have 4 elders. One is the main teaching elder, though any of the men can teach at the pulpit. The other three men rotate in leading the confessional. The Confessional-teaching elder gives a short talk based on what the upcoming sermon will be and then stands silently as we individually confess and repent in our pews. Then he closes in an audible prayer. I appreciate the opportunity to set my heart and mind aright, and to confess, particularly when it’s a Lord’s Table Sunday.
On a past Sunday, our elder gave a confessional talk that had so many wonderful points. I’m paraphrasing, but-
If You want to look like Jesus, look at Jesus.
Our elder made the statement that we should fix our gaze upon Jesus, not the latest comedy or sports teams. I ended up focusing on the phrase “fix your eyes upon Jesus” from Hebrews 12:2. I looked up the word “fix” and the Strong’s says
872 aphoráō (from 575 /apó, “away from” and 3708 /horáō, “see”) – properly, “looking away from all else, to fix one’s gaze upon” (Abbott-Smith).
How helpful. I should not glance, not peek, not glimpse, but FIX my GAZE upon him, looking away from all else and steadily drinking in all that He is.
I need to spend more time with Jesus to look more like Him. What a great line. Moses only got to see God’s ‘back’ and His face after being with God was so bright it had to be veiled. We have the privilege of looking at Jesus’ “face” as it were, through His word. I want my face to be shining, to have my being conformed to Him, to have my mind transformed. But it won’t happen unless I read the Bible. I must look away from all other distractions and FIX my GAZE on Jesus. A Bible skim won’t even do.
If you’re interested in hearing the Confessional, here it is, in all its 13 minute power. I pray it convicts you as it did me, in some way that will honor and glorify the Lord as a result. I know what I’m going to be doing when I get home.
It is Reformation year 504. Five hundred and four years ago this October 31st, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Electorate of Saxony within the Holy Roman Empire. Luther wrote,
Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place. Therefore he asks that those who cannot be present and dispute with him orally shall do so in their absence by letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Here are the actual 95 theses if you want to read them: The 95 theses
Luther spent his early years in relative anonymity as a monk and scholar. But in 1517 Luther penned a document attacking the Catholic Church’s corrupt practice of selling “indulgences” to absolve sin. His “95 Theses,” which propounded two central beliefs—that the Bible is the central religious authority and that humans may reach salvation only by their faith and not by their deeds—was to spark the Protestant Reformation
Is there any event that is not connected in time by a previous event? Isn’t time a constant stream of events, all tumbling one after another, connected by their confinement to the visible riverbanks by the hands of God? Did the Reformation emerge all of a sudden, or were there catalysts and stepping stones laid first? Were there forerunners? I believe so.
As RC Sproul said, that before Luther there was Hus, (or Huss, spellings vary) who was preceded by Wycliffe, who was preceded by Augustin who was preceded by Paul who was preceded by Jesus.
The reason there are forerunners to Martin Luther and the Reformation is that Jesus never leaves Himself without a witness, and He as Master Husbandman tends soils so that there is always a soil ready to receive the Gospel. Even in “The Dark Ages”, the Gospel was doing its work in hearts. Salvations were always occurring.
Burk Parsons wrote of this connection from one era to the next, the vine as I envision it. It is planted by God and watered by Him, with men springing up along the vine as forerunners to His particular plan and path regarding the Reformation.
John Wycliffe was the morning star of the Reformation. He was a protestant and a reformer more than a century before Martin Luther ignited the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Through Wycliffe, God planted the seeds of the Reformation, He watered the seeds through John Hus, and He brought the flower of the Reformation to bloom through Martin Luther. The seed of the flower of the German Augustinian monk Luther’s 95 theses was planted by the English scholar and churchman John Wycliffe.
–2017 with an emphasis on the Reformation and how our salvation is directly connected to the work of the Reformers. R. C. Sproul writes, “The Reformation was not merely a Great Awakening; it was the Greatest Awakening to the true Gospel since the Apostolic Age.”
During the days that preceded the Reformation, the Bible had been locked away in a dark dungeon by the Roman Catholic Church. They insisted that the Word of God must be heard by the priests, who would speak it only in Latin. The Roman Catholic Church insisted that the common person was unable to understand the Word of God without the aid of a priest. However, they were unwilling to release control of the Bible, and in order to prevent anyone from getting their hands on the Word of God—they would burn people at the stake as an example to all who resisted their authority.
Under John Calvin’s leadership in Geneva Switzerland, thousands of missionaries were being trained and by 1562, over 2,000 churches had been planted in France. In 1560, the Geneva Bible was published which was greatly used in Europe and was also the Bible that was brought off of the Mayflower by the early Pilgrims of America. Through the Reformation, an explosion of gospel missions took place that shook the world.
The Reformation is an extremely important part of church history. One would think with the release of the Bible in the people’s language, the explosion of missions, the work of the Gospel in the hearts of many subsequent to the reformation, that our ecclesiology would progress in an upward trajectory. But satan does not like upward, only downward. He fights back. He fought back since the moment the first Geneva Bibles were released. And the Geneva Bible’s history is interesting in itself! It was the first Bible to be translated directly from the Hebrew. It had extensive notes and cross references, making it the first study Bible. It was translated so that the people could read it. More here.
Sadly, 500 years after the start of The Reformation, there is currently a definite softening toward the Catholic Church by many people who should know better.
Philosopher and poet George Santayana famously said,
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. (The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense. Scribner’s, 1905: 284)
We must remain vigilant because we are not unaware of satan’s schemes. (2 Corinthians 2:11). We should learn the past in order to remember the past and to push forward with clear, honest, uncomplicated Gospel evangelization. We shouldn’t ever remain ignorant of what has happened in the past of our church history. This is the 500th year of the Reformation. Here are some resources for you to learn more: The Heresies of the Catholic Church
Memoirs of a Medieval Woman: this is a biography of Margery Kempe, taken from her dictated autobiography. She was born sometime around 1373 and died after 1438, which makes her a devotee of the Catholic Church at a time when both the rise of the Lollards (Wycliffe followers) was gaining traction and also the incessant Catholic pilgrimages to Jerusalem were occurring. It is also set in the time just prior to the Council of Constance. This Council was held between 1414 and 1418, principally to reunite Christendom from the ‘too many popes’ syndrome (schism) but also to examine the teachings of John Wycliffe and Jan Hus and to reform the RCC as a reaction to the attack on the Church’s authority.
Wikipedia lists her as “an English Christian mystic, known for dictating The Book of Margery Kempe, a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language.” Kempe wrote of it all from a first person perspective. I liked the book for its attention to vivid detail on the practices of the Catholic Church, the realities of the pilgrimage journeys to the middle East, the ecstatic visions and examination of same by any and all church authorities Margery could get to listen (anchorites, priests, bishops, other mystics like Julian of Norwich, lay people…)
the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. (1 Corinthians 14:34).
Paul was exhorting about orderly worship here. Worship had gotten out of hand. Worship must be orderly, quiet, and respectful, that was the watchword. And Paul gave that word in this passage.
Is there a time for a woman to holler and throw stools at the pastor? Apparently there was for Jenny Geddes. She’s gone down in Reformation History as someone who stood up for Jesus. Here’s how.
Jenny Geddes (c. 1600 – c. 1660) was a Scottish market-trader in Edinburgh, who is alleged to have thrown her stool at the head of the minister in St Giles’ Cathedral in objection to the first public use of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in Scotland. The act is reputed to have sparked the riot which led to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which included the English Civil War.
Well, that’s some stool. It all happened on July 23, 1637 in Edinburgh.
Always independent, the Puritan Scots had become suspicious of the increasing encroachment of liturgy and rigid traditions a la the Roman Catholic Church. They had observed King Charles Is’ coronation rites and were displeased with his use of Anglican rituals. Next came forced use of the Book of Common Prayer, a high Episcopalian book, with its readings in the Apocrypha. King Charles issued a warrant in 1635 declaring his spiritual power over the Church of Scotland, insisting that the Church would be issued with a new book of liturgy which would be read at services. And on July 23, 1637 in St. Giles Cathedral, the Common Book of prayer was opened and John Hanna, Dean of Edinburgh, began to read.
Jenny Geddes sat fuming on her “fald stool” or a “creepie-stool” meaning a folding stool. Finally she had heard enough and stood up and cried; “Deil colic the wame o’ ye, fause thief; daur ye say Mass in my lug?” meaning “Devil cause you severe pain and flatulent distension of your abdomen, false thief: dare you say the Mass in my ear?” And at that she hurled her stool straight at the Dean’s head. This sparked a full scale riot in the church. one congregation member who had been heard uttering a response to the liturgy was thumped with Bibles. The Dean took cover and the Provost summoned his men to put down the disturbance. The rioters were soon ejected from St Giles and the Bishop of Edinburgh appealed for calm. However this was not going to end quietly…
The national spiritual unrest was real, but overlaid upon the spiritual unrest was political unrest too. Hence the riots that sparked the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and then the English Civil War. You can read about that part of the history elsewhere.
Jenny Geddes’ anger at the encroachment of evil into the pure worship service reminded me of another, more recent ‘Jenny Geddes.’
On November 10, 2013, Memorial Church of the Reformation in the city of Speyer, Germany hosted Karl Jenkins’ performance piece, titled “A Mass for Peace- “The Armed Man” where as part of the performance, the Islamic call to prayer is performed by an Imam.
German woman Heidi Mund had heard of this performance, grabbed her flag on which is emblazoned “Jesus Christ is Lord” headed to the church, and bought her ticket. But first, Ms Mund said, she prayed. To make matters even more emotional, the church the performance was to be held at was the Memorial Church of the Protestation in Speyer Germany, constructed specifically in 1900 where,
Its construction was supposed to be a reminder of the protest action that the imperial evangelical states brought to bear in 1529 at the Reichstag in Speyer. The Luther memorial in the vestibule and the adjacent statues of local Protestant rulers serve as reminders of this event.
Having no particular plan, she quietly listened to the music and readings, but when the Imam began praying to Allah in Arabic and saying, “Allahu Akbar!” she felt what she called a holy anger rising up in her. Much like Jenny Geddes, who was righteously aggrieved with the blasphemy in her midst, Mund stood up at this “interfaith event” and fearlessly began shouting that Lord Jesus alone is God and proclaimed His supremacy over all the earth.
If we are confronted with something of like kind, what would be our reaction? There is a time to sit silently and submissively, but is there ever a time for disruption and holy anger? Jenny Geddes threw a stool, narrowly missing the preacher’s head. Physical violence is never appropriate. How would we react to the incursion of evil into a holy place, a place set aside for the proclamation of the pure word? Just food for thought.
Both Geddes and Mund knew of what was to happen during the service. Neither were surprised. Mund prayed ahead, one can surmise that perhaps Geddes had also prayed ahead. In one way or another, we are all confronted with false doctrine creeping in. Start praying ahead for strength in the Lord to react in ways that honor and glorify Him.
———————————— Further Reading
Trivia: Scottish Poet Robert Burns named his mare Jenny Geddes
Do I think more highly of myself than I ought? Of course I do! Just like Peter. Here’s Peter-
Peter: When Jesus asked the disciples if they want to leave Him too, Peter said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.” (John 6:67-68)
Peter again: But Peter repeatedly said insistently, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” (Mark 14:31).
We are warned not to think of ourselves too highly. There is only One who truly knows us inside out, and that One is Jesus. He knows what is in every man. (John 2:23-25). We may think we know ourselves, but we do not.
For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. (Romans 12:3)
Barnes Notes says of the Romans verse, "Not to over-estimate himself, or to think more of himself than he ought to. What is the true standard by which we ought to estimate ourselves he immediately adds. This is a caution against pride; and an exhortation not to judge of ourselves by our talents, wealth, or function, but to form another standard of judging of ourselves, by our Christian character"
The humility we are supposed to cultivate is for the good of the church. As believers walk with the Lord individually, we also walk with Him in unity. We are a congregation, and the local unit of believers comprising the church should reduce themselves in thought rather than elevate themselves for the good of the one anothers. This is because spiritual pride is deadly in the church.
Peter was given great insights by the Holy Spirit. Peter also thought he knew himself, but Jesus knew Peter would deny Him within hours, and with curses, too. James and John wanted to sit at Jesus’ right and left hand in the kingdom. Jesus asked them if they were able to drink the cup prepared for Jesus and they said without hesitation, “We are able.” The two of them were thinking of themselves more highly than they ought.
We should not think too highly of ourselves. We don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do.
When pride comes, then comes dishonor; But with the humble there is wisdom. Proverbs 11:2
Some things in the Bible are illuminated by the Spirit through concept. In these cases, there isn’t a specific Bible verse that says, THIS IS THE ANSWER YOU’RE LOOKING FOR! The answer is gained by being part of the great sweep and scope of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Some doctrines are learned from a concept rather than an explicit verse spelling it out. In these cases, the Bible student needs to make a logical conclusion. Paul spoke often of reasoning together, (Acts 17:2, Acts 17:17) and using terms like “so then”, or “therefore”. This was his way of announcing a conclusion was imminent.
This is called “necessary inference” and you come to understand it by inference.
Alan Hunter the Polite Leader on Youtube takes 6 minutes to refute the oft-heard chestnut that since Deborah ruled (judged) then that means women today can preach. People who claim this are taking a big scriptural leap, but oftentimes we ladies don’t have an adequately scriptural rebuttal. Here, Alan does it for you.
God did not ordain women to preach in the church, nor to teach in authority over men.
A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a wrongdoer. But women will be preserved through childbirth—if they continue in faith, love, and sanctity, with moderation. (1 Timothy 2:11-15)
Women are not to preach, be ordained as pastor, or be considered for any ‘office’ where she is in authority over men: Al Mohler explains–
In truth, the issue of women serving as pastors fueled the Conservative Resurgence in the SBC. The question was instantly clarifying. The divide over women serving in the pastorate served as a signal of the deeper divide over the authority and interpretation of the Bible. Simply put, the only way to affirm women serving in the pastoral role is to reject the authority and sufficiency of biblical texts such as 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2. There is more to the picture, but not less. Furthermore, the Christian church in virtually every tradition through nearly two millennia in almost every place on earth has understood these texts clearly. In most churches around the world, there is no question about these texts even now. Furthermore, there is the testimony of God-given differences in the roles of men and women in the church and in the home throughout the Bible. The pattern of revealed truth is not hard to follow.”
Voddie Baucham Provides Answers about Women Pastors, Teachers and Elders in the Church (Joyce Meyer)
Where did all these para-church organizations come from? Why do we need them?
EPrata photo
While laudatory in many cases, these organizations increasingly draw women away from their home church, infuse them with false doctrine, and re-seed them back to their church to infect it.
What are para-church organizations? Wikipedia definition: “Parachurch organizations are Christian faith-based organizations that work outside and across denominations to engage in social welfare and evangelism. Parachurch organizations seek to come alongside the church and specialize in things that individual churches may not be able to specialize in by themselves.”
GotQuestions defines a parachurch ministry this way: “The definition of a Christian parachurch ministry is “a Christian faith-based organization which carries out its mission usually independent of church oversight.”
Some different types of para-church ministries are, those involved in evangelism (Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Child Evangelism Fellowship), discipleship, (The Navigators, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship), Bible dissemination (Gideons International), disaster relief (Samaritan’s Purse), medical helps, domestic violence shelters, and so on. Christian book publishers and Bible translators are also considered a para-church organization. RC Sproul’s Ligonier.org is a parachurch organization designed to have a primary focus on the theological education of laypeople.
The pro with some para-church organizations such as radio ministries Bible dissemination, or missions organizations are that the Gospel can be introduced in closed countries or places devoid of a church. The downside to a parachurch organization is that many of them lack oversight. Some discipleship parachurch organizations even become a substitute for church.
Yet, Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3:14 of the church that “the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.”
The local church is to teach-
The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful people who will be able to teach others also. (2 Timothy 2:2).
Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, and to teaching. (1 Timothy 4:13)
Parachurch organizations did not exist during the time of the first century church, so the Bible doesn’t mention them. Acts 2:42 outlines principles of the purpose of the church: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”
The church is the pillar, and Jesus is the cornerstone of it. Our entire focus should be life lived in and around our home church. We read in this article, Who is Responsible for Training Pastors? :
"Training pastors is the responsibility of both church leaders as well as churches as a whole. Churches are responsible to support their pastor’s work in training men for ministry, give whatever resources they can to train men for ministry, encourage and equip men themselves, and ultimately to select their own leaders, which implies some kind of responsibility to oversee their training."
The life if a believer should focus on one’s own church. It goes without saying that believers should be a member of a church, submitted to elders and faithfully attending. There is no such thing as a Lone Ranger Christian. Each of us has a spiritual gift given to us by the Holy Spirit for the purpose of edifying each other within our local body of believers. Staying outside the confines of the church life is a denial of the gift and makes a hole in the global tapestry Jesus seeks to weave. Not to mention the practice of and witness to the Lord’s Supper and Baptism.
Our focus for our believing lives on earth should be the local church. If your church has raised up men to lead Bible studies, great, or women who disciple as per Titus 2, super. If you have activities for children and youth, that’s wonderful.
Sadly, some women look elsewhere than their own church for fellowship, prayer, or Bible study. They gravitate toward parachurch organizations. Some do so simply because they were invited by a friend, and being curious and with servant attitude, follow her friend to the organization to try it out. Those are the organizations to which I took exception in the second paragraph, the ones rife with false doctrine and slyly begin to substitute for the local church. Upon first reading of these parachurch organizations they sound good. Their aims and goals sound solid. Healing, discipleship, fellowship, what is wrong with that?
Nothing…until you look deeper and you realize these organizations are founded on something other than the word of God. Many of them are based on experiences, half-biblical truths, or ecumenicalism of the worst degree, where false religions’ doctrines are introduced. Here are a few examples of these parachurch ministries to be careful of.
Immanuel Prayer / Emmanuel Approach
Immanuel Prayer/Emmanuel Approach is one of these parachurch organizations that is dangerous in my opinion. IP circumvents the Bible entirely and counsels seekers along the lines of past experiences, memories, and emotions. They also mention that they are a ‘deliverance ministry’ and a ‘prophetic ministry’. They focus on healing psychological trauma and offer counsel in the form of what amounts to contemplative prayer.
This ministry’s practitioners focus on the Lord’s presence and how you feel about it, in order to emotionally heal you. They write that the opening session begins with prayer and goes like this–
1.) Recall past experiences of positive connection with the Lord; 2.) Deliberately appreciate specific aspects of/details from these past positive experiences; and 3.) Refresh perception of the Lord’s presence and connection with Him in the present.
They get involved with demons and deliverance, ‘binding’ demons and stating they can be aware of certain demons who may be attacking the counselee or the counselor. Secular Psychology. This sounds like a very dangerous ‘ministry’.
The founders are a husband-wife team. The wife is Charlotte Lehman, who is referred to as “Pastor Charlotte” and duties include preaching at church and teaching mixed audiences at retreats etc. This activity is not scriptural.
IP is based on theophostic counseling, which is not scriptural. More information here on Immanuel Prayer, and Theophostic Counseling-
If you are in need of counseling, please approach your own pastors / elders for help, either receiving counseling from them or obtaining a referral from them to a solid and biblical organization. Immanuel Approach is rife with false doctrine and is a dangerous approach to counseling. It will draw you away from your church, and worse, from Jesus.
If:Gathering
This is a parachurch ministry begun by Jennie Allen in 2014. At that first Gathering she announced that a few years prior “a voice from the sky” whispered to her to begin this ministry. This statement alone should be enough to stay away from this parachurch organization. Their foundation is based the question, “If God is real…then what?” which is a question straight from Genesis chapter 3 from the serpent to Eve. Again, if you weren’t convinced not to participate in an organization where the founder is deceived enough to follow a voice from the sky she interprets to be God, then participating in an organization founded on doubt should cement it for you.
Their About statement is that they exist not only as an annual conference event, “but a discipleship ministry focused on putting tools and resources in the hands of women in the church. Through these, IF is able to empower women to reclaim discipleship as God’s means to change the world.” The local church should disciple women and puts resources in women’s hands. We don’t need a duplicate of what the church is charged to do. I am unaware of a need to reclaim something that has never expired. That statement indicates that IF:Gathering believes itself to be a substitute for the church.
Also, the use of the word ‘reclaim’ and ’empower’ are concerning. IF has a lack of male oversight and is mainly run by women, who also develop the study materials. They are all about liberal theology, shaky hermeneutics, usurping lifestyles, and pushing their idol of social justice. Please do not be drawn away into this subculture of female reclamation and empowerment AKA feminism, under the guise of discipleship.
The aim of the program is to make known to people the love of God and to revive them for service to others as a lifetime priority. This is a good thing.
However, Cursillo’s theological grounding is from the Catholic religious system, its methods use emotional and psychological manipulation (to purposely “break you down” through intensive experiences), it is theology-lite, and as a parachurch ministry it tends to separate people from their own church, or undermine it, requiring constant reunion meetings and written “service sheets” to track your Cursillo efforts.
Further, the experience deliberately separates wives from husbands, who participate on different weekends. I am suspicious of any teaching or experience that disallows husbands and wives to be together, just as I am suspicious of the Passion Conference which does not allow parents to accompany their youth (only the youth minister is allowed to chaperone the youths inside the arena. Cursillo is labeled a ‘movement’ and the movement is recognized by the Catholic Holy See as member of the International Catholic Organizations of the Pontifical Council for the Laity in Rome.
Brian V. Janssen wrote, “It is evident that Cursillo is not really about theology from the fact that the method is so readily adaptable to very divergent theological perspectives: Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism (Via de Christo), Methodism, (Walk to Emmaus), Anglicanism (Episcopal Cursillo), Presbyterianism (Presbyterian Cursillo and [Great Banquet], Pentecostalism, (Tres Dias), and Dutch Reformed (Reformed Cursillo).”
Can one participate in an immersion weekend and emerge unaffected by an all-purpose or watered down theology? A theology born of Catholicism no less?
Not all parachurch organizations are at locations to which you go, separate from the church, such as IF:Gathering in people’s homes or a certain retreat location such as Cursillo. Some parachurch organizations develop Bible Studies which are to be introduced into your church. One would hope that the Sunday School Superintendent or overseer of curricula, preferably the pastor, would vet the materials on which his sheep will be feeding. Sadly, that is not always the case. When I saw that the next ‘study’ at an old church I used to attend was about to bring Priscilla Shirer’s Jonah Bible Study in, I approached the Superintendent in charge of curriculum. He dismissed my concerns out of hand, saying, “If it’s from Lifeway, it’s good.”
Community Bible Study does both, develops curricula to be used in church or as small-group Bible studies to be done in a leader’s home. About page says their goal is to encourage individual study. “Transformation happens as individuals engage with God in His Word. Study questions help participants apply the timeless truths of the Bible to their daily lives. Participants gain additional insights and grow in their confidence with God’s Word as they discuss Bible passages in a safe small-group setting.” Isn’t that the job of the church?
I’ve heard from women and read online that CBS quotes and uses material from less than solid female teachers, in fact, this woman said she was introduced to Beth Moore through a CBS. This leadership newsletter for Community Bible Study teachers pushes material from Moore, Priscilla Shirer, Max Lucado, Bill Hybels, Jim Cymbala, Anne Graham Lotz, and other false teachers.
This woman enjoys CBS, saying, “CBS does not take the place of your local church or church activities. Instead, through study of the Word of God, CBS raises up local members to become disciples of Jesus Christ. Through that discipleship members often times take what they have learned back to their local church in the form of Sunday school teachers and adult ministry leaders.”
Well if that’s the case, yes it does take the place of your church. The local church is supposed to train up leaders and educate its people. Al Mohler, the President of the nation’s largest seminary, said in 2014,
"I emphatically believe that the best and most proper place for the education and preparation of pastors is in the local church. We should be ashamed that churches fail miserably in their responsibility to train future pastors. Established pastors should be ashamed if they are not pouring themselves into the lives of young men whom God has called into the teaching and leadership ministry of the church."
See also the Acts and the Timothy verses above as to what a church’s mission and activities should be. A friend told me some years ago about one of these para-church ministries she had tried out, that it seemed to her when the participants returned to church after having had the experience, it was creating a two-tier membership. It felt to her there was a growing clique of folks who felt superior because they had enjoyed the breakthrough experiences, or had ‘heard from God,’ and they pitied in the rest of the congregation because they had not enjoyed such experiences.
Some para-church organizations are good and might even be necessary. I’m sure the goals of such ministries don’t start out negatively, but the inevitability of an organization started on less than solid foundation, lacking oversight, it will inevitably drift in its mission and instead of coming alongside a church as para is defined, will begin to compete with it.
And Hannah Anderson raises an important point specifically regarding female parachurch ministries.
"On the other hand, because so many female spiritual leaders are operating in parachurch contexts, their ministries have the potential to lose the doctrinal and structural accountability that the established Church provides. The digital age may free women from the gendered constraints of traditional ministry, but this means that they also have the potential to become free agents." (Source)
Hannah Anderson continues, "Consider how few female evangelical leaders are visibly attached to an institution such as a church, seminary, or non-profit that did not grow up around their personality. Name a male leader like Rick Warren and you immediately think of Saddleback Church. Say Beth Moore or Ann Voskamp or Jen Hatmaker and most of us will draw a blank about which local church these women affiliate with. This is not to say that they aren’t connected, but their local church isn't a visible or central a component to their public ministry." (Source)
However, the fact is, if you think about the most popular national women’s ministries/discipleship organizations, they’re led by women who don’t seem attached to their own local church. IF:Gathering, Propel Women by Christine Caine, Living Proof by Beth Moore, Going Beyond by Priscilla Shirer, and more, are all female led ministries and parachurch entities that lack theological grounding and real oversight.
Before you get involved
Before getting involved in one of these ministries or organizations ask yourself some questions:
What is this parachurch ministry offering that I connect with, that my church doesn’t offer? Is it a sinful lust, or a genuine spiritual need?
If it’s a genuine spiritual need, such as a small group Bible study, have you spoken with your elders about the possibility of them starting one in your own church? Or you starting one?
If your church does offer training up, leadership opportunities, Bible studies, etc, why am I interested in going outside the church when it’s essentially a duplication? Is it because it’s new and shiny? Is it because I have unresolved social issues with some members in my church or its group leader?
If I truly believe that participating in this parachurch ministry is genuine and necessary, have I done my diligence in vetting it, or have I asked my husband or my pastor to look into it for me to ensure it has integrity in its doctrine and function?
If I decide to participate in a parachurch organization is there solid and thriving male oversight, and is there a disciplinary mechanism?
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