Testing Tradition

This past week I learned from a brother of this Twitter thread by Mike Leake challenging preaching and the pulpit as the center of church gatherings: I’ve often heard something akin to this: “preaching is the most important thing that happens on a Sunday morning. That is why the pulpit is guarded, that is why it is central in our architecture, etc.” I’m not convinced of this… + https://t.co/CrlK2dtSol — Mike Leake (@mikeleake) August 25, 2021 This thread and the conversation it triggered with this brother reminded me of the following letter I wrote a couple of years ago to the home church I was gathering with at the time.  In the letter, using 1 Corinthians 14 as my main frame of reference, I push back (similar to Leake in the Twitter thread above) on our traditional evangelical tendency to center our gatherings on teaching. The bottom line is this: while our modern evangelical expectation of a church gathering is more akin to going to a sit-down restaurant where a professional ...

Note: This is the second of a two-part series.  You can read part one  here .  Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. Hebrews 13:17 There are at least two related ideas that are taught in many modern churches today  primarily  on the basis of this single verse: Within the church, elders/pastors have a unique authority that other believers don't have and believers are commanded to obey the elders/pastors in their church. God intends for a believer to enter into covenant membership in a specific church and it is those believers who are members of the church that elders/pastors in a church are accountable for. I would like to challenge both of these ideas and make the case that these ideas are more the product of ideas we read  into  the text than what the text itself says and mean...

Note: This is the first of a two-part series.  You can read part two here .  Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. Hebrews 13:17 There are at least two related ideas that are taught in many modern churches today primarily on the basis of this single verse: Within the church, elders/pastors have a unique authority that other believers don't have and believers are commanded to obey the elders/pastors in their church. God intends for a believer to enter into covenant membership in a specific church and it is those believers who are members of the church that elders/pastors in a church are accountable for. I would like to challenge both of these ideas and make the case that these ideas are more the product of ideas we read into the text than what the text itself says and means. First, Hebrews 13:17 does ...

Note: After I finished writing this post, I realized how much I'm indebted to Michael Gorman and his idea of "cruciformity" that he develops in his book Cruciformity and subsequent books of his that build on the essential foundation laid in that work.  Specifically, Gorman argues convincingly from Scripture that the obedience of Jesus to the point of death on a cross (Philippians 2:8) is the ultimate demonstration of faith in/faithfulness to God, which then becomes the pattern of all human faith in/faithfulness to God.  To say it another way, it has always been God's intention from the beginning that the cruciform shape of Christ's story would become the cruciform shape of the story of all who follow Him. When He shall come with trumpet sound, Oh, may I then in him be found, Dressed in his righteousness alone, Faultless to stand before the throne. In the final stanza of this beloved evangelical hymn written by Edward Mote, a song that multitudes hold precious and...