POLITY Episode 4: An Old Despair in Dave Harvey… A New Hope in Jesus Christ

Hello Beloved:

Books and Scripture have been plumbed and exhausted on this topic.

Put your seatbelts on.  It’s time to call for repentance.

In wrapping up this specific series on polity, I’ll open with the remainder of Wayne Grudem’s statement from Systematic Theology; this is the last of the missing chunk from Dave Harvey quoting (or not quoting in context, as it were) Wayne Grudem… that is, Grudem’s statement that I addressed in the first post in this series:

And it also seems that individual Christians –while they may have a preference for one system over another– should nevertheless be willing to live and minister within any of several different Protestant systems of church government in which they may find themselves from time to time.  But I do not mean to say that this is an entirely unimportant matter.  In this area as well as others, a church may be more or less pure.  If there are clear New Testament patterns regarding some aspects of church government, then there will be negative consequences in our churches if we disregard them, even if we cannot foresee all of those consequences at the present time.  Therefore Christians are certainly free to speak and write on this subject in order to work for increased purity in the church (Grudem 904-905).

I am in a Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM) church.  My church ”from time to time,” as Grudem words it, has been twenty-eight years with SGM, and twenty-plus years of that were spent specifically in SGM churches.  I met my wife in an SGM church.  I lost a parent while in SGM.  More than half my life has been spent with SGM.

At a particular Celebration I attended in 1985, I was in a youth class that had Larry T. and C.J.M. as the featured speakers for the next two days.  In C.J.’s class, he had me read a few passages of scripture from my Bible.  At the time, I was using the Amplified Bible, and I read everything that was in parentheses and brackets.  I was highly impressed with myself and C.J. was highly amused by me.  I rode the crest of people being either amused or impressed by me.  I’d grown up in a Christian home.  I said all the right things.  I did all the right things… within earshot and sightline, at least.

It wouldn’t be until 2003 -at least an observable line of demarcation for me- that God would call me out of darkness.  It wouldn’t be at church, it wouldn’t be at a Celebration, it wouldn’t be anywhere near the vicinity of an SGM church.  It would be in a cold, dark room in late Autumn on the first floor of a friend’s house… a friend who’d been charitable enough to take me in, because I was a thousand miles away from my wife.  We were separated, and my world was falling apart.

Flash forward to a few Sundays ago.  The worship leader in my church is giving his testimony of God meeting him in a very desperate hour for him and his family.  I know this man personally, and to see how God’s grace has transformed him moves me to tears.  Not much later, the Senior Pastor is giving his Sunday message, part of an expositional series on one of the Gospels; one that continues a theme of the sufficiency of Christ, when, he begins to acknowledge that we in SGM are rank with an arrogance that somehow we have the corner on the Gospel.  He elaborates, and calls the church to repentance in regard to this.  He is visibly shaken.  He means what he says.  I finally begin to see cracks in the Berlin Wall that holds my SGM church within its compound, and I experience a meltdown.  I thank my God and Savior.  It encourages me to pray harder.  I have hope.

And then Christ gently takes my chin and fixes my gaze upon Himself.  It’s then I realize that SGM is nothing without Him.  I am nothing without Him.  The cosmos is nothing without Him.  I have but to look at Christ to remove all fetters, all pretensions, and all barriers.  I go from meltdown to being destroyed.

God is good.  He is gracious.

The reason I shared the Celebration ‘85 story is because I believe we have many leaders who are amusing or impressive, but like myself in 1985, simply empty on the inside, or full of dead men’s bones.  We need men with the courage to embrace a plurality of eldership –a true plurality minus the man-made concoctions of things like “first among equals.” Can we at SGM not see the blinding and deafening hypocrisy of calling for stringent adherence to qualifications for elders while trimming some qualifications for the “apostles?”

Where do we strike that balance of calling for reform while, in the words of Grudem, being willing to live wherever we may find ourselves “from time to time?”  We’ve hit the thirty-year mark and beyond with SGM and to say we’ve experienced negative consequences is both true and haunting when taken in light of Grudem’s warning: “If there are clear New Testament patterns regarding some aspects of church government, then there will be negative consequences in our churches if we disregard them, even if we cannot foresee all of those consequences at the present time.” (Grudem 905)

Websites like this exist because of the disregard we at Sovereign Grace Ministries have had for not seeking a model of church polity that is, in our words, “God-Glorifying.”  Our leaders have spotted the toothpicks in the eyes of the sheep while neglecting to see the entire treelines of Yellowstone National Park in their own.

This is not just a call for change, but a call for repentance.  To say that we carry this polity on in good conscience while using Paul’s terms like ”Christ and Him crucified,” as a seal of righteousness puts us in a special kind of peril due to trampling on the Gospel!

The reason I shared my story about my worship leader and senior pastor -there was no exaggeration in any of that, by the way- is because there is hope.  Prayers make a difference.  Websites like this, where a call for change and repentance is tempered by prayer and love, make a difference.  And now that I have seen the cracks, the urgency is even greater.

The Bible is not our personal stamp of approval for our theological concoctions; we do not kidnap the Word and hold Him hostage at our convenience.  The Word of God is our life!  Leaders, do not treat this precious volume like you would a personal trainer: here’s a few bucks… get me in shape and make me look good… now please go.

Leaders:

Repent… as in make an about face and go another direction!

Pull the cedars out of your eyes and read the stories on these sites.  Stop dating your flock.  Stop being impressed by your image in the mirror while you mouth the words, “I’m the worst sinner I know.”  This is as dangerous and foolish as the harlequin who unicycles down your street parroting, “There is no God… there is no God… there is no God… squawk!”

Link arms with others in true accountability and do not form circles of yes-men who do your bidding.  You want to mortify sin?  Fall on your face before God and beg His forgiveness for how you’ve abused your flock and left the pasture fallow, stinking and bloody due to your lust for power!  Take an interest in your flock and stop giving them drive-by Hallmark card greetings (a bad rhyme followed by insincere commitments).

Repent… as in make an about face and go another direction!

Tear down your cults of personality.  Stop worshipping each other.  Stop erecting temples that face away from God.  Pray for one another and for three seconds stop “making an observation.”  Give God the Glory and stop giving it to each other.  Go on a sabbatical with just you and the Word.  Feed your sheep the Word of God and stop making them cannibalize each other with man-centered darkness.

Repent… as in make an about face and go another direction!

Give yourselves to your church and stop giving your church copies of Polity.

Stop handing us idols and give us back our King!

…pk

P.S. - “Therefore Christians are certainly free to speak and write on this subject in order to work for increased purity in the church (Grudem 905).”

For an even better therefore, see Romans 8:1-2

…pk