Stone Speak A symposium on worship, arts and the prophetic,
here and across the pond...

The love of Christ does not negate accountability. Rather, it gives a context for which healthy accountability can function.
There are those who claim that it is incorrect to call Christians into account for sin due to a very lopsided view of the grace of the cross. Please note: I am not speaking of those in the process of coming to Christ, but those who claim to be Christians and desire good standing within a congregation, or a ministry.
The grace of the cross is simply not available aside from truth. The apostle John tells us that not merely mercy was realized through the cross but ‘grace AND truth were realized through Jesus’. (John 1.17) Psalm 85.10 tells us “loving kindness and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” This is a prophetic picture of the grace of Christ. To claim forgiveness, as in one’s sins being washed away without truth (repentance) renders transformation an impossibility.
Should we have compassion for victims of sexual and substance addiction? Totally! But Biblical compassion is far more than feeling sympathy for the victim. It is to be moved by God in such a way that we lovingly call the victim into a sense of responsibility for their choices and assist them in reaching out to the power of God’s compassion. It must be stated, however, that God will not violate one’s free will. One must make the decision to reach out to God and trust in His power to change. That power through the Word and in the Holy Spirit cannot be experienced aside from repentance. We must take repentance out of the dusty church closet of shame and condemnation and view it as a great gift that God has given us to move towards wholeness & holiness.
Pseudo Restoration
Due to the onslaught of adultery taking place among church leaders today there has arisen a common scenario of what I call ‘pseudo restoration’. Pseudo restoration is a less than a real healing process that in many ways is simply waiting until the dust settles and then reinstating the still fallen leader back into their ministry position. Pseudo restoration has more to do with spinning the message than it does true accountability of the messenger.
Just because an individual takes a short break from ministry does not necessarily mean the root issues have been dealt with! It takes real time to realize God’s convicting truth in one’s innermost being. Merely feeling sorry for being caught and the damage one may have caused by one’s sins is less than knowing truth on a deep, deep level.
Partially the syndrome of quick fix restoration is due to the church not always grasping the importance of Christ like character being the foundation for one’s ministry. But, mainly, it is due to unsanctified compassion. We say ‘look at the high calling’ and ‘well, there under so much stress due to ministry’. Both are an affront to God. How can one claim to be a servant of Jesus and refuse to honor the ways of Jesus? Jesus after all stated that if we truly love Him we will obey His commandments- the Word of God!
True restoration takes time.
As stated it takes time to allow God’s truth to filter past layers of guilt, shame, and bring about deep down change at the root level. It takes time to rebuild equity and trust between a leader and his/her followers and supporters. It takes time to close the doors to condemnation so that the enemy can no longer manipulate one through the memories of sin. It takes time simply to rebuild trust in one’s own self towards one’s own will. When we see patterns over several years of sexual sin, or financial impropriety, or substance abuse some of the blame lies at the church which places greater value on that stumbling leader’s ministry than on the leader as a person in need of true, not false, compassion.
“If the foundations are destroyed what can the righteous do?”

(Psalm 11.3) Edmond Burke is credited to have written “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” I believe that God is calling church leaders today to rise up and begin to champion grace based holiness. Grace based holiness is teaching the truth in love, without condemnation!  While the foundation of Christianity can never be destroyed we can quench the Holy Spirit to the degree that we render the church impotent in moving in the fullness of the grace and power He has for us. He is after all ‘the Holy Spirit’. I believe that God is calling the contemporary church to essentially four responses in regards to the plague of misperceived grace, which is afflicting many ministries and congregations.
1)   Pray for a revelation of God’s heart and power to walk, model, and champion grace based holiness especially for leaders. Let’s cry out for a revelation that would cause us to echo the cry heard around  God’s throne- ‘holy, holy, holy’. Isaiah 6.3 & Revelation 4.8
2)   Begin to boldly, yet, with love & humility, educate and encourage the church in what the Bible has to say regarding healthy behavior to the point of hating sin! It is possible to hate sin, and yet love sinners- after all Jesus did it.
3)   Become intentional about taking to heart Paul’s admonishment to “not grieve” (offend) the Holy Spirit- the very presence of God in our lives and midst! After all we no longer belong to ourselves. He is the one who is in us to do His will & good pleasure.
4)   When serious sins do emerge in the life of a leader, let’s learn to value them as a person, more than their ministry. Let’s take the time to deal with the source of the issues rather than simply putting on the band-aid of ‘time out’.

God’s grace does not give us the freedom to do what we like and get away with it. It releases the power of God’s Word and Spirit to become individuals conformed to Christ.
Over the last few years a number of ministries have embraced a perception of grace that, Biblically speaking, is demonically distorted. True God given grace does not give us the freedom to do what we would like and get away with it. Rather, it releases to us the power of God’s Word and Spirit to become individuals conformed to Christ Jesus. Two passages found in Romans- 8.29 & 12.2 both address the conformity God is after in our lives. Perhaps more directly to the point, however, is Peter’s writing found in 1 Peter 1.14-16, which reads:
“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

1) The assault of Old New Age Gnosticism
There are three primary sources feeding the current perversion of grace. First is a resurgence of Gnosticism. This, in essence, as with much of ancient Gnosticism, is a false separation between what is spiritual and what is physical. In ancient Gnosticism there was the teaching that the two were completely unrelated. In effect the belief was that what one believed and nourished in the spiritual realm was unrelated and untouched by one’s actions within the physical realm.
The emerging Gnosticism in the contemporary church is not so much due to a deliberate teaching as it is from a growing ignorance and ignoring of the Word of God. In some church circles where things like prophecy, healing, and impartations of the Holy Spirit are valued there is also, unfortunately, a devaluation of the written word of God. This vacuum of ignorance has sucked many into a spiritual climate with a lack of regard for the holiness of God. That holiness is what we were born again to experientially walk in. To reference Peter a second time, 2nd Peter 2.20-22 warns that those who have come to know Christ Jesus but return to practicing former sins are like ‘dogs who return to their own vomit’.
To some degree the current hunger for spirituality and spiritual experiences devoid of an appetite for the Person and ways of God is witchcraft. This witchcraft manifests in two essential ways: 1) a hunger for spiritual experiences aside from the Lordship of Christ, and 2) a prevailing of anti authority attitudes. Witches love to move in spiritual dimensions but also despise authority, which is in keeping with the demonic realm. As well, as was with Jezebel, there is usually a fascination with perverse sexuality. To sum up modern day Gnostic traits emerging in the church there is a hunger for spirituality while there is a de-emphasizing of the Lordship of Christ governing one’s attitudes and actions. The false application of grace provides the loophole to continue in doing what one feels like doing and still praying the prayer “bless me, Lord”!

What has also, in a huge way, fed into current Gnosticism is a de-emphasizing of the Biblical mandate to make disciples. In many churches today the gospel is reduced to the two things: 1) free fire insurance, to escape the flames of hell, and 2) consistent teaching from the pulpits that God simply wants to give us formulas for success regardless of our lifestyles. Of course, God does want to bless people, but not apart from our embracing God’s principal of dying to self and living for Christ by embracing Christ’s ways. Galatians 6.7 reads: “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.”
If we sow to carnality that is exactly what we will reap- bondage and death, on many differing levels. The growing mantra today is “it’s okay to do what you like. God will forgive you.” Forgiveness is the result of repentance. Repentance, essentially, means to see things from a higher perspective (God’s vantage point) and to change one’s behavior accordingly.  The remedy is church leaders must return to preaching the gospel of ‘the kingdom’ that Jesus preached and seek ‘its righteousness’ not merely its blessings. Otherwise, when a so-called Christian is continually grieving the Holy Spirit it is the spirit of this age that rules them, not the Spirit of the living God!


2) The Assault of Fear

As much as the church growth movement has been a help to many leaders for the last several decades, I believe, it has also proven to be a curse for some. It has mandated the wrong measuring stick. God measures the success of leadership by things like obedience, fruitfulness, and the making of disciples. Strictly using the ‘nickels, noise, and numbers formula’ to qualify/quantify one’s ministry is like trying to assess heaven by earth’s standards. By many church standards today Jesus would have to be labeled as a poor leader due to His message of ‘eating His body, and drinking His blood’. Because of that message He went from the multitudes following Him to barely the twelve. It would be a contemporary pastor’s worst nightmare. Jesus, however, measured success by obedience to the Father, not the accolades of man or the size of the crowd!
Proverbs 25.29 states “the fear of man brings a snare, But he who trusts in the LORD will be exalted.” Due to success being primarily measured purely by numbers there has come about a great fear of offending church attendees by saying the wrong thing from the pulpit. That ‘wrong thing’ too often means anything that might cause that attendee to stop attending. Without necessarily intending to we can inadvertently become pleasers of men rather than of God. We must constantly remind ourselves that the gospel message itself (if Biblically preached) is offensive. It is offensive simply because God calls people to die to themselves and change their behavior. Less than a changed lifestyle is less than Biblical Christianity.
When the incomplete message of ‘it’s okay, God loves you just the way you are’ prevails there will be very little room for the Spirit’s conviction for change. The other half of that message is begging to be preached: “He also loves you too much to leave you the way you are”! Yes, by all means let’s be as welcoming and as friendly as the good news itself to all. But a physician who won’t warn a patient about a growing cancer tumor out of fear of depressing, or offending that patient is a lethal care giver! There is after all a sorrow the Spirit can release that leads one to repentance. (2^nd Corinthians 7.10)
We need to learn to discern between religious condemnation and the Holy Spirit’s conviction. The former wraps people up in the legalism of religion, while the latter opens people up to the potential of healing and abundant life in Christ!
The current statistics of 50% percent of all Bible believing, church going Christian men and 20% of the same group of women being addicted to pornography tell us that something is seriously out of order in the church today.  As if that is not enough of a problem there is almost the same percentage of divorce in the church as there is among non-church goers. If the ancient boundaries that God has established for healthy living are moved then we have managed to learn to graze in the camp of the enemy without fear of consequences! If the foundations are destroyed, or at least obscured, what can the righteous do?
We can begin by proclaiming and praying for a return to God’s standards of ‘grace based holiness’. If judgment starts first with the household of God, then it is probably a safe bet that judgment will start first with the gatekeepers of the church- leaders. We can either fear man, or fear God, but not both at the same time.


3) The Assault of Unsanctified Compassion
Due to past movements, which practiced a focus on the control of individual Christians, the word ‘accountability’ has almost been thrown out the window. Accountability, Biblically speaking, is not so much a thing of control, but rather of encouragement and strength. The truth is all healthy relationships demand some sort of accountability in order to function well. A relationship where there is a fear, or pride, based resistance to honesty is doomed to fail to reach it’s potential.
Out of fear of treading on people rights, or offending people in one’s church, accountability has become neglected. So when problems arise due to ongoing destructive behavior (sin) there is too often the tendency to issue blessings based on ‘unsanctified compassion’. Many church attendees and members want prayers of blessing and breakthrough despite the fact that the hurtful condition they are in may be due to reaping what they’ve sown. To continually bless some one who will not truly repent (change) from destructive behavior is comparable to giving throat lozenges to some one dying of throat cancer and thinking that because the pain is temporarily gone all is well.
In contrast to unsanctified compassion Paul and Jesus were seemingly harsh. Paul wrote,  “if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat” regarding the distribution of charity to poorer church members. There was absolutely no sense of unearned entitlement with Paul! Obviously, he was not speaking of those who simply could not work. When it comes to those who refuse to stop coarse sinning Jesus said to treat them as sinners, not as redeemed members of a congregation. (Matthew 18.17) Jesus also, categorically, without any ambiguity what so ever, stated that a man who leaves his wife to marry another woman is to be treated as an adulterer- a flagrant practicing sinner. (Matthew 19.9) Of course, this is excepting when his wife first committed adultery. Today there is a veritable plague of men and women in church leadership abandoning the ‘wife (or spouse) of their youth’ for a younger version! Truths regarding marriage, such as oneness and covenant, which God emphasizes have been treated as obsolete by many current ministry leaders. God simply sees this as sin on a grand scale. Yet the church has learned to sweep adultery, financial impropriety, substance abuse, and many other sins under a heavy carpet incorrectly labeled ‘grace’.

I was recently prompted to consider what the five most significant challenges facing the church today are.  After considering this for quite some time, I believe I have arrived at how I feel at this time.
We Christians must discover our individual identity in Christ.

“As Wesley emphasized, the image of God is restored within us. If the leading edge of the gospel is that ‘we matter to God,’ the ‘trailing edge’ of the gospel is that Jesus Christ has come to make it possible for each of us to become, in this life, the people we were born to be, conceived to be, and deeply within us have always wanted to be.” (Hunter, 52)

It seems odd that this is a challenge facing the Church. The reality is that we have largely become a religion of people who have become very good church members, instead of becoming very good Christians. This is not to say that there are not people, or even congregations who have become both. This said, it has been my observation that more often than not, the trend is that there is a profound disconnect between the life being declared on Sunday mornings, and the life being lived. This has led to the common perception of Christians being hypocrites.
Hypocracy has been used, and to an extent, abused when targeted toward Christians. There are common accusations of this double standard-living that stem from the cultural opposition to accountability or universal acceptance, and these are debatable in validity. The hypocrisy that Christians must learn to overcome is the temptation to live a complaisant, apathetic faith instead of a compassionate, apostolic faith. The radical life that Christ calls us to live is one of boldness. In God’s ultimate plan, through the workings of prevenient grace, and through the careful attention to the calling of the Spirit, each and every one of us has an identity we are to stand up and respond to in the Kingdom.

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels." Luke 9:23-26

We the body must work together.

“Churches differ in which … populations they “target.” Many growing churches effectively target unchurched Christians – people who believe but do not belong. Many “renewal” oriented churches show less “numerical growth” than “Kingdom growth” because they target churched non-Christians – helping nominal church members experience reconciliation with God and become genuine disciples. (Hunter, 26)

Many times, it seems as if a churches greatest critical opposition comes from the church up the street. I hear of camp meetings that warn of the Calvinist epidemic consuming America. There are hateful things spoken of Orthodoxy and how they only care about ceremony, and there is uninformed hype surrounding churches that are described simply as experientialists. There is an unfortunate amount of tearing down of churches by other churches, and this is not unnoticed by non-Christians.
There is a level of healthiness for the Kingdom in having a wide variety of denominations and forms of worship. They all have their distinct atmosphere that can be an effective witness to individuals that may be turned off by other atmospheres. While this level of superficial personal preference will need to leave an individual at some point during their path toward authentic worship, it can be healthy from an evangelistic perspective.
The danger is that we make enemies within our own faith instead of rallying as the greater Church toward the mission and calling that God has placed on any healthy congregation. Becoming the bigger man, setting aside the “but they believe…” and living in peace with one another is important. It is likely that a day will not come where all churches suddenly work happily in unison, but not tearing each other down or dismissing them as not being authentic worshipers is essential and must come to an end if the Church is to continue to thrive in our time.

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit— just as you were called to one hope when you were called— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:1-6

We must appropriately leave our buildings and seek the lost.

… many believers confuse biblical word pictures, and this leads to unintended results. For example, one could say that holinessi s a call to heart purity and to be “set apart” for acts of spiritual service. However, this imagery is often confused to mean “come apart,’ thus encouraging the isolation of the church from the world. Such a confusion can cause the church to see itself as a fortress, a refuge from the dangers of a sinful world. (Sweet, 86)

It is safe to stay inside. It is comfortable, to stay inside. It is easy, to stay inside.
We live in a fallen world and this can often lead to messy evangelistic situations. These truths have led to many churches falling into one of three responses.
The first is, we do not leave our doors and wait until someone is willing and open to the Lord to walk in. This is safe, and easy.
The Second approach is one of exstreme boldness by entering into the world, standing on street corners with a bible, bullhorn and signs, boldly declaring the gospel truths. This is abrasive, and often does more harm than good.
The final is to stand around and conversationally talk about what is happening at church, but never turn the table and ask what another person believes.  This approach is easy to feel missional while doing, but rarely leads to actually influencing another person to be reflective in their own life.
The thing about all of these methods of outreach is, they are all incomplete. They lack boldness out of the desire for holiness. They lack compassion or love, out of the desire for boldness. They lack discipleship, out of the desire for love and compassion.
As the church body, we need to try to generate good press. We need to spend more hours in the week ministering to the community than we do hiding within the safe fortress of our church buildings. If the Church does not begin immersing ourselves in the community, carrying with it the uncompromised word of God with it by way of genuine love and gentleness, then our churches will die and our missions will fail.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Acts 1:8

We must assess what are the core beliefs of Christianity, and make sure to prioritize the teaching of those over guidelines stemmed from wisdom.

In seeking to communicate the core of the gospel among people who have little or no knowledge of who Jesus is or of the biblical stories and concepts, much more time and patientce is required. The same missionary principles must be applied in a Western Context as in other parts of the world, whether pre-Christian or post-Christian. In both scenarios, a great number of misconceptions may need to be cleared away in order for the message to be heard. (Gibbs, 207)

We live in a culture with a rapidly increasing illiteracy rate. With Christians not being immune to this intellectual epidemic, the wisdom in assuming that members of our churches will know the Biblical narrative from their own devotional time is becoming questionable in its wisdom. It is unfortunate that this is a truth we must begin to contend with, but it does not mean the death of Christianity is on the horizon. For nearly 1900 years of Christian history, illiteracy was common place in the regions of the world where it thrived. For these  centuries, people still knew the Biblical narrative through the use of iconography and oral tradition.
While we live in a new era with advanced technology, it would be foolish for us to ignore the need to recognize the likelihood of the majority of our congregations reading their Bibles on their own time. We must therefore respond in ways that may differ from congregation to congregation in order to ensure core knowledge.
It is helpful, when teaching people toward a life of holiness, to teach lessons that give guidelines that come from wisdom. It is also good to teach conceptual, topical messages about day to day living. It is essential, however, that if we are to expect the Church to carry out the call of the Priesthood of all believers, that we offer lessons that teach the Biblical narrative. How are we to expect people to deliver their testimonies and explain who Jesus was if we never tell his story start to finish? Above all this, we must also ensure that before we address culturally focused topics, that people within our faith understand and are dedicated to core Christian beliefs. These can be summed up within the Apostles creed.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ Philippians 1:9-10

We must train others into the priesthood of all believers.

The New Testament idea of “priest” has so radically departed from the Old Testament that the entire body of believers is now described as by nature a priesthood. . (Gibbs, 88)

There is a widespread attitude among Christians that the majority of the priestly duties fall on the pastor, staff, and perhaps deacons of the local church. This attitude is a symptom of a lack of ownership of identity among Christians. I believe that a serious concern and challenge for the church today is to minimize the perceived gap between laymen and leaders. To raise up the priestly nature, and the authority of those who declare Christ as Lord who are among our churches. To encourage them to visit the sick with an authority and compassion that is equal to the presence of anyone else.
This priesthood is the fruit of finding one’s identity in Christ, of cooperating with others, of leaving the buildings and carrying with us the basic core that Christ laid out for us. This priesthood is God’s destiny for all who proclaim his name.

9 But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests,* a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. 1 Peter 9

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