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Why and How to Go to Church

The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius began his remarkable book Meditations with a reflection on all the people who had shaped him: his teachers, his adopted father, his mother, his grandparents. He recalled the lessons they had taught him—lessons that continued to guide him. That was Book 1.

In Book 2, he turned to a different subject: how to deal with difficult people. He argued that we should show patience and kindness toward them. Why? Because human beings are made for cooperation—like hands, feet, upper and lower teeth, and eyelids. When we live in an uncooperative way, we live contrary to nature. When we resent others or withdraw from them, we contradict what we are.

Marcus presses this even further. If another person refuses to live cooperatively, he says, that person harms himself more than he harms us. We must not allow someone else’s failure to live according to nature to pull us away from living according to it ourselves. That is why we should maintain a gentle spirit, ready to forgive and ready to be reconciled. We are made for one another. Others may frustrate that design, but we must not abandon it.

Why begin a talk about church with a non-Christian Roman Emperor? Because Marcus grasped something we do not—what a human being is. A human being is a social creature—made for fellowship, made for cooperation. We are not designed for isolation.

Everything we accomplish and everything we become comes through others—even if those others lived 1800 years ago and reach us only through a book. None of the comforts or technologies we enjoy exist without the cooperation of millions of people. Try building your iPhone from scratch, including mining and refining the materials. The idea is absurd. Yet we often imagine we can construct our lives independently.

Like Marcus, we are who we are because others have invested in us. And we will grow into better versions of ourselves only through continued interaction with others.

I have watched people attempt isolated lives. They stagnate. They do not mature. Growth happens in engagement. Alone, we reinforce our assumptions. In community, we are sharpened. Our immaturity is exposed. We are compelled to grow into what God intends us to be. The church is the community designed for that growth.

Why Church as the Community?
Why would we say that church is one of those communities we should be a part of? There are at least three reasons.

First, you are a Christian (if you are!). You desire to follow Jesus and worship the Triune God. There is no other setting where you will regularly find a diverse group of people gathered around that shared purpose and committed to helping one another grow in it. You need that community.

Consider 1 Samuel 23. David was hunted by Saul and uncertain whether he would survive from one day to the next. In that dark season, Jonathan came to him and reminded him of God’s promise that he would be king. The text says Jonathan helped him find strength in God. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in Life Together, the word of God in the mouth of a brother is often stronger than the word of God in our heart. Continue reading “Why and How to Go to Church”

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The Cardinal Virtues for the Christian Life, Part 3: Practical Wisdom

If anyone was community-minded in our nation’s history, it was Martin Luther King, Jr. He rightly sought the correction of the many injustices inflicted upon African-Americans. But his vision was larger than that. He wanted a better community for everyone. As he said, “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of George the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood” (The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., 260). He called this vision the “beloved community.”

His concern for justice was not limited to African-Americans alone. He understood that injustice degrades not only those who suffer from it but also those who perpetrate it. As he wrote, “We do not seek to remove this unjust system for ourselves alone but for our white brothers as well. The festering sore of segregation debilitates the white man as well as the Negro” (ibid. 145). If that was the goal, what was required to reach it? He needed a lot of practical wisdom both to counteract injustice and to bring people together.

The Need for Wisdom
Anyone who sincerely seeks the good of the community quickly discovers that good intentions are not enough. We need practical wisdom—wisdom to see both the goal and the right means to achieve it.

That is precisely what the Apostle Paul prayed for the church in Philippi. He knew they had love, a genuine affection for the community. What they needed was wisdom to direct that love well. He wrote:

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 for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God (Phil. 1:9–11).

Let’s take this apart. First, Paul wanted them to bear good fruit. That means he wanted them to do and experience genuine good—for themselves, for others, and ultimately for the glory of God. Continue reading “The Cardinal Virtues for the Christian Life, Part 3: Practical Wisdom”

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The Cardinal Virtues for the Christian Life, Part 2: Community-Mindedness (Justice)

At 15, Charles Spurgeon was driven by a snowstorm into a small chapel. There, he heard the good news about Jesus and gave his life to Christ.

By his 19th birthday, he had become a preacher at New Park Street Baptist. Seven years later, the congregation moved to the 5,000-seat Metropolitan Tabernacle. Four years after that, in 1865, he began publishing a monthly magazine that would help thousands process the truth.

Spurgeon connected deeply with God, but he was also a profoundly community-minded man. He believed faith was meant to be public—to shape lives, institutions, and cities.

Community-Mindedness and Moral Excellence
Community-mindedness is the beating heart of virtue. Virtue is not private. There is no season of “working on yourself” first and then developing communal virtue later. The two must grow together. Virtue is communal. Period.

This is really what the ancients meant (and more) when they talked about “justice” as a cardinal virtue. Doing good isn’t just about ourselves. It is about our community. That’s why I’ve described it as community-mindedness. “Justice” can seem too transactional, as if we only have to care about our neighbor when some wrong is committed and needs to be corrected in court. The concept is much broader: thinking of the community all the time.

The Bible reflects this view of moral excellence and virtue. Peter explains that we are to add to our faith virtue, and that this virtue leads us to mutual affection for one another and to a general love that reaches out to all people (2 Peter 1:7). Moral excellence inevitably moves outward.

The Apostle Paul described this same posture in his letter to the Roman church. Addressing differences within the body, he wrote, “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves” (Romans 15:1). He then grounded this in a larger principle: “Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up” (Rom. 15:2). This is community-mindedness. We do not simply think about what is good for ourselves. We consider what is good for everyone.

This is the pattern Jesus Himself showed. “For Christ did not please Himself . . .” (Rom. 15:3). His life was consistently oriented toward the needs of others, toward the good of the community—not His own comfort or ease.

What does this look like in practice?
What does it actually look like to think and live this way?

Here are a few concrete expressions: Continue reading “The Cardinal Virtues for the Christian Life, Part 2: Community-Mindedness (Justice)”

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Embracing Truth & Love: The Confessional Wide Catholicity of Old School Presbyterianism

[Editor’s note: you can read a much fuller version of this article here. It includes much more extensive citations and explanations]

When I first discovered Reformed theology, I felt like I had stumbled into treasure. Its systematic grasp of Scripture, its depth of thought, and its seriousness about truth captivated me. Before long, I concluded that fidelity to the Reformed system required making everything revolve around the confession. Not only ministers, but members; not only teaching, but fellowship.

The result was a church life that was confessional in every possible respect. Membership required adherence to Reformed doctrine. Relationships with other churches were kept at a distance unless they, too, were distinctly Reformed. I thought I was being faithful.

But over time, my spirit grew dry. I began to wonder if this narrowness was what Christ truly intended for his church. The turning point came when I discovered the way of the Old School Presbyterians. These were the confessional conservatives of the 19th century who held the line on confessional fidelity and made hard decisions to guard it. They taught me that my instincts about strict orthodoxy were right—but that I was missing something just as important: wide catholicity.

Guarding the Pulpit
The Old School was uncompromising in requiring confessional fidelity from its ministers. They believed the teaching office demanded the highest level of doctrinal integrity. Dabney reminded his students that ministers needed more than a casual acquaintance with doctrine, they were, as Paul said, were “stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful” (1 Cor. 4:1–2).. And as he said to Timothy, The minister must be “a workman approved unto God, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Tim. 2:15, cited in “Broad Churchism,” in Discussions: Evangelical, vol. 2, 449).

Charles Hodge was equally blunt: “We may guard our ministry and admit none to the office of teacher in our churches, who do not hold that system of doctrine which we believe God has revealed, and which cannot be rejected in any of its parts without evil to the souls of men” (Discussions in Church Polity, 224).

For the Old School, then, confessions existed chiefly to protect the flock from unsound teachers. They were not museum pieces or denominational badges. They were guardrails at the pulpit.

The Temptation of Overreach
But the clarity of that standard can tempt us to extend it further than the Bible does. That was my mistake. I required of members what was meant for ministers. I made precision the price of admission to the church, confusing the shepherd’s responsibility to guard doctrine with the sheep’s calling simply to follow Christ.

The Old School Presbyterians knew this temptation too. And they resisted it. They maintained a line between the demands of the pulpit and the welcome of the pews. Continue reading “Embracing Truth & Love: The Confessional Wide Catholicity of Old School Presbyterianism”

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The Cardinal Virtues for the Christian Life: Pursuing Moral Excellence

In one of my graduate classes, we were given time to share how God had worked in our lives. One pastor shared how he lived in college. He was brilliant—but he was a jerk. He used his sharp intellect to tear people down. Other people’s feelings weren’t even on his radar.

This is the exact opposite of moral excellence. You can have intellectual excellence, but without moral excellence, you are not living an excellent life.

The Morally Excellent Faith
The Apostle Peter called the scattered believers of the first century to pursue exactly this sort of life. He said, you believe. That’s good. Now put as much effort as you can into making your life a morally excellent one (1 Pet. 1:5).

The word he used was aretas, or virtue. This word could refer to excellence of any kind, but when applied to human beings it referred especially to living a life of moral excellence.

Peter did not leave the meaning of this moral excellence to their imagination. He explained what this life looks like in concrete terms. He said that virtue must be wise, that wisdom must be self-controlled, that self-control must persevere, that perseverance must be centered on God, that this God-centeredness must produce brotherly love, and that brotherly love must overflow into love for everyone we meet (see 2 Pet. 1:5–7).

The word Peter used for “add” is especially rich. It is derived from the Greek theater and refers to organizing the parts of a chorus so that they sound beautiful together. It can also mean “supply” or “intentionally organize” these specific components. The point is that none of these virtues stands alone. They are meant to work together.

Think about it. If someone is self-controlled but does not persevere or keep going, what good is it? If someone is disciplined but does not care for God or for people, what good is that kind of discipline? Continue reading “The Cardinal Virtues for the Christian Life: Pursuing Moral Excellence”

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