SolaGratia
Puritan Board Junior
Has anyone read or heard this from Pastor Dever (Baptist)
What I CAN and CANNOT Live With as a Pastor
By Mark Dever
What I CAN and CANNOT Live With as a Pastor - 9Marks
Excerpts:
1. Organs. I can live with an organ. I can live without an organ. I can even live with an organ that’s too loud. But I don’t want to! Organs are not in the Bible. Congregational singing is. Any accompaniment which smothers and thereby discourages congregational singing should be reformed or eliminated. Given the financial and emotional commitments that are represented in organs, movement for change here should be slow.
4. Altar calls. I can live with altar calls. This is a longer conversation, but you must first realize how your congregation views them. If they are lightly invested in them, you can probably remove them fairly soon and easily. If they are the emotional highpoint of the service, then you probably need to spend some time changing the language you use about them, and then, over time, educate the congregation that Jesus called people to repent of their sins and to trust in him. The physical motion to which he called them was not walking down an aisle but taking up the cross.
Lastly
11. Infant baptism. I cannot live with infant baptism. Having said that, if I were the pastor of the only church allowed in Mecca, maybe… But even then, I simply lack the authority to admit someone to the Lord’s Table who has not been baptized. It is, as one said not too long ago, “above my pay-grade.” I have many dear paedo-baptists friends from whom I have learned much. Yet I see their practice as a sinful (though sincere) error from which God protects them by allowing for inconsistency in their doctrinal system, just as he graciously protects me from consistency with my own errors.
What I CAN and CANNOT Live With as a Pastor
By Mark Dever
What I CAN and CANNOT Live With as a Pastor - 9Marks
Excerpts:
1. Organs. I can live with an organ. I can live without an organ. I can even live with an organ that’s too loud. But I don’t want to! Organs are not in the Bible. Congregational singing is. Any accompaniment which smothers and thereby discourages congregational singing should be reformed or eliminated. Given the financial and emotional commitments that are represented in organs, movement for change here should be slow.
4. Altar calls. I can live with altar calls. This is a longer conversation, but you must first realize how your congregation views them. If they are lightly invested in them, you can probably remove them fairly soon and easily. If they are the emotional highpoint of the service, then you probably need to spend some time changing the language you use about them, and then, over time, educate the congregation that Jesus called people to repent of their sins and to trust in him. The physical motion to which he called them was not walking down an aisle but taking up the cross.
Lastly
11. Infant baptism. I cannot live with infant baptism. Having said that, if I were the pastor of the only church allowed in Mecca, maybe… But even then, I simply lack the authority to admit someone to the Lord’s Table who has not been baptized. It is, as one said not too long ago, “above my pay-grade.” I have many dear paedo-baptists friends from whom I have learned much. Yet I see their practice as a sinful (though sincere) error from which God protects them by allowing for inconsistency in their doctrinal system, just as he graciously protects me from consistency with my own errors.
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