TONY OTTEN
  • About
  • Writing
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
  • News
  • Contact

So Many Shepherds (Part 2): 3 Traits of the Good Shepherd's Church

8/5/2014

0 Comments

 
Platt, David Platt, alabama, birmingham, church, pastor, radical, reformed, theology, brook hillsDr. David Platt, pastor of The Church at Brook Hills (blog.al.com)
In June, I wrote on five kinds of preachers who don’t bring love and truth to a church, whether by incessant talk of damnation, political pandering, soft commitment to Scripture’s teachings, or preoccupation with family anecdotes. Now I want to share three ways that one Baptist church I met had a tangible difference in its message and culture.

1)      The church believes missions should happen everywhere. The pastor encourages missionaries to travel to Africa, to Haiti, to Native American reservations. But he declares it no less honorable to evangelize Philadelphia, or Cincinnati (ten minutes away from us), or down the block at a liquor store, or on your neighbor’s porch. Churches often fail to reach people on their doorsteps because the Gospel seems more available to Americans. But Christians are to “make disciples of all nations” (Mt. 28:19 NIV), and that includes college students, sales clerks, and newspaper boys in our hometown as much as it does tribesmen in distant wilds.

2)      The church speaks truth and loves everyone. You won’t find this pastor or his ministers “captive to hollow and deceptive philosophy” (Colossians 2:8). They know that to truly love someone is to be honest, with grace and kindness, relying on the “Spirit of truth,” not a permissive “spirit of falsehood” (1 John 4:6). That means saying that Jesus is the only way to salvation (John 14:6; 1 John 5:12). That means teaching that “there is no one righteous” (Romans 3:10), no one is good but God (Mark 10:18), and only God can enable people to do good. Alongside truth, this pastor’s ministry displays a loving recognition of differences. For example, Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum, which promotes the literal view that the earth was made in seven days as in Genesis 1, speaks occasionally at my church. Though some of us may disagree with his understanding of science, we welcome his moral insight into Scripture and we also agree that one or the other view of evolution does not prevent someone from being saved. This church is tolerant, but not to the point of endangering truth about sin and salvation.

3)      The pastor loads his preaching with Scripture. At a leadership conference in 2013, pastor David Platt told his listeners that preachers ought to saturate their sermons with the word of God, “rather than their personal stories.” The good pastor does this. He discards strategies for good behavior and instead edifies his listeners with the unique directives of Scripture. The presence of Jesus is strong and unavoidable in his prayers and his messages. Stories about family or travel aren’t absent, but they only appear when they illustrate that Christ-centered purpose of communicating unearned grace.

I hope you will be blessed with a church that has these qualities. At one point in my search, I despaired of finding a body of believers with a leader hungry to reach the world, a loving approach to truth, and a message that puts Jesus squarely before people’s eyes and hearts. But these churches are out there. You will find one if you haven’t already, and when you do, you will know you’re home.

For those of you who have found a home in a good church, what drew you there? A longtime sense of belonging from childhood? A passion for missions? A humble pastor with ambitions for his flock?
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    About

     Anthony Otten has published stories in Jabberwock Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, Wind, Still: The Journal, and others. He has been a finalist for the Hargrove Editors' Prize in Fiction. He lives in Kentucky.

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    RSS Feed

    Resources for Writers
    Duotrope
    New Pages
    Poets & Writers
    ​
    Query Shark
    ​
    The Review Review
    Recent Posts:

    Why I'm Choosing the Catholic Church

    The Struggle to Stay Real as Writers and Humans

    When People Stopped Being Interesting to Write About

    How to Avoid God, Unsuccessfully

    3 Ways to Use History in Your Fiction

    Who's Afraid of Death?

    Jesus and The "Illegals"

    The Hardest Command

    Grasping the Resurrection

    Radical Fairness

    Story Published

    The King of Outsiders

    When Your Idol Falls

    Our Not-Guilty Verdict

    Nobody Dies for a Lie

    Would You Be The Doorman?

    Judge Not

    Publication News

    What is a Blessing?

    Real Obedience is Love
    ​
    Jesus was Inevitable


    The Death of Envy
    ​

    What God Really Wants

    Submission and Query Resources for Writers

    Hearing His Voice

    The World Overcome

    Honestly, God: Praying Our True Feelings

    When God Gives Us What We Want
     
    Killing Isaac

    Archives

    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013

    Categories

    All
    Agents
    Bible
    Books
    Christ
    Christianity
    Church
    Classics
    Culture
    Description
    Education
    Envy
    Faith
    Fiction
    First Post
    Genesis
    Genres
    God
    Gospels
    Heaven
    Hell
    History
    Media
    News
    Nonfiction
    Novel
    Novels
    People
    Prayer
    Publications
    Revision
    Salvation
    Series
    Short Short Stories
    Short Stories
    Storytelling
    Thomas More
    Writing Advice
    Writing Advice
    Writing Exercises

Copyright © Anthony Otten
  • About
  • Writing
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
  • News
  • Contact