WEDNESDAY EVENING BIBLE STUDY AT RIVERS OF JOY BAPTIST CHURCH
LAST NIGHT
WEDNESDAY
EVENING BIBLE
FELLOWSHIP
STUDY
What we might be tempted to struggle with is getting ahead of what God is doing, in order to push the process ahead of schedule.
If we are sure that we are doing the right things, we need to allow God to work in His time.
We are seeing weekly how the Lord is moving in our fellowship. We need to enjoy the process, blessings. We need to thank the Lord has He is at work in our church.
Thus we need to stop and praise the Lord,
Therefore to be reminded of the following principles we have set forth:
The aim is to understand the biblical principles and practices for the promotion of God-glorifying, Christ-exalting, Gospel growth, as opposed to the kind of things often vended as key to "church growth."
We should be interested in growth, not mesmerized by it. Who wouldn't want to see an increase in numbers and budgets.
But there's growth and there's growth.. Understanding what the New Testament means by growth, and how that growth happens, is what we need to know.
What are the principles and practices that will lead the church to the advancement of God-glorifying, Christ-exalting, and Gospel growth? How are we to understand Christ's blueprint for the church practices? How does scripture speak of growth?
We need to be sure that our interpretive methods of Scripture will lead us to and not misrepresent the intention of the text.
The book of Acts does speak of growth in members of the church. "Daily Christ added to the church." The biblical purposes that God designed the church to fulfill.
We discover the intentions of the church in the Word rather than create them ourselves. This calls us to a submission to Scripture. And that submission will lead us to a commitment to thoroughly evangelical doctrine. There is to be a common commitment to every-member ministry, to conversion growth, to making membership more meaningful by using the church covenants, to church discipline, to the continued growth and up-building of the church, to fellowship with one another, and the building up of each member, and the training and disciplining of each member to be full grown saints (Eph 4:12-19)
We need to be careful that we don't use statistics as a barometer of God's blessings. Growth in new converts and new members are biblical. "Daily the Lord added to the church.'
Ligon Duncan said, "Liberalism says that the gospel won't work unless the message is changed. Some evangelicals’ say that the gospel won't work unless the method is changed. But biblical Christianity believes that the gospel will work, and that God has given us both the message and the method."
Thus we need a right view of the message and the method in which to model that message.
In our desire to see Christ bring His own to Himself in our church, we need to model a local church ministry that reflects a Biblical Model.
Pastor/Teacher Charles E. Whisnant – Rivers of Joy Baptist Church - 2008
