Deliberate Church: Forward and Introduction

Christ Baptist Church will be studying The Deliberate Church on Sunday nights. God willing, I will post some of my summaries here on the blog. If you have not obtained and read this great book, shame on you.

Forward
What The Deliberate Church is not:
1. It’s not new. “We don’t even want to be innovative.”
2. It’s not a program. This is not just something you plug into your church and press PLAY.
3. It’s not a quick fix. Healthy growth takes time, prayer, hard work, patience, and perseverance.

So, what is it?
“Simply put, it’s the Word building the church.”

We don’t need the latest rhetorical techniques, business practices, or creative ministry models based on captivating metaphors. We simply need to be guided, governed, and geared by the Word of God (2 Tim. 3:16-4:2).

Middle paragraph on page 21:
“Deliberate, of course, means well thought through or careful. What we are trying to be careful about as church leaders, then, is building the church on and around the Gospel of Christ. More specifically, we are trying to be careful about building our church according to the pattern that God has given us in Scripture. At its best, the deliberate church is careful to trust the Word of God, wielded by Jesus Christ, to do the work of building the local church. It is an attempt to put our money where our mouth is when we say that we believe in the sufficiency of Scripture for the life, health, and growth of the local church. Our goal isn’t to see how innovative we can be. Our goal is to see how faithful we can be.”

The priority of pastors and church leaders is to make sure that the Gospel enjoys functional centrality in the church.
The goal of pastors and church leaders is to keep our methods basic and plain so that the Gospel is cast in bold relief against the backdrop of our own admitted weakness.

“We think the church will be catapulted into the future only when the most noticeable thing about her corporate life is that it is carefully governed and powerfully driven by God’s age-old, time-tested Word.”


Introduction
“Ignoring God’s plan for the church and replacing it with your own will ensure the eternal futility of your work.”

What is a local church?
1. A corporate display of God’s glory and wisdom (John 13:34-35; Eph. 3:10-11).
2. A corporate dwelling place for God’s Spirit (Eph. 2:19-22; 1 Cor. 3:16-17).
3. The organic body of Christ in which He magnifies His glory (Acts 9:4; 1 Cor. 12).
“The church is God’s vehicle for displaying His glory to His creation.”

The uniqueness of the church is her message—The Gospel.

The distinguishing marks of the church:
1. The right preaching of the Gospel
2. The right administration of the Biblical ordinances that dramatize it

The attitude we are combating: “If it brings people to church or helps them feel like they’ve really worshiped on Sunday, it must be a good thing, right?”

**The Word builds the Church.
Our power is not in having small groups, or meeting the felt needs of the target audience, or using the right evangelism program, or having funny skits, or providing plenteous parking, or targeting our ministries to postmoderns. Our power is in our unique message—The Gospel.

The relationship between the Gospel and the method of its ministers:
1. Theology drives method.
2. God’s methods determine ours.
3. The Gospel both enables and informs our participation in God’s purposes.
4. Faithfulness to the Gospel must be our measure of success, not results.