As some of you figured out, I have been in New Zealand for the past three weeks visiting family. My father had been diagnosed with liver cancer late last year and was told at the time that the cancer was incurable and inoperable, so was placed on palliative care with a fairly bleak and brief prognosis. There was more tumor in his liver than healthy cells. By God’s grace, he was admitted into a trial treatment involving a new way of delivering radiation to the liver, though was told that there was a good chance that nothing would happen, and that the best he could hope for was a 45 percent chance that there would be at most a 50 percent reduction in the size of the liver.

Frank and Doug Duncan from the Nelson Baptist pastors' portraits

Last Friday, I was with him when his oncologist reported the results from an MRI that had been scheduled to check on the progress of the treatment. The report was a shock–in the doctors’ words, a “complete response.” No cancer anywhere. It’s a reminder of the mystery and marvel of God’s grace.

Nelson Baptist Church, New Zealand

Another highlight of the trip was the opportunity to attend and preach at Nelson Baptist Church, New Zealand’s oldest Baptist church, last Sunday. It’s a church that both my grandfather and father pastored, though at different times. It’s also a special church for me because my parents met and married there, I was dedicated there, my grandmother attended there and still has friends there who remember me as a young child, and my brother has also preached there.

For those of you who are interested, I slotted into the pastor’s series on Romans and preached from Romans 3:21 to 4:25.

Piper tweets this:

If someone offers you pleasure for 10,000 years, say, “No thanks…at HIS right hand are pleasures for EVERMORE” (Ps 16:11)

Perry tweets this:

Got a new T-shirt in support of breast cancer research that says, “Save a life, grope your wife.” Thinking about wearing it…should I?

(BTW, PN, the answer is no.)

It seems there are quite a few Christian leaders (Warren, Driscoll) and Pajama Pages commentators who are arguing that becuase we can’t be sure that the Sabbath is really supposed to be on Sunday, or even that it’s supposed to be celebrated weekly, that we can observe it on any old day of the week. While I think there’s a Biblical argument to be made for a Sunday Sabbath, let’s just look at the issue from a cultural perspective and ask whether it’s such a grand idea to be ditching Sundays.

An important goal of the modern church, especially the Turnstile Church, is to be culturally relevant. I assume the ultimate outcome of cultural relevance is to make culture more like the church, rather than make the church more like culture. Perhaps that assumption is mistaken, but where might you say the church has been most sucessful in shaping secular culture? I would say it is in defining and protecting the Sabbath.

Most people the world over understand that Sunday is a day for worship, rest and recreation. Even though not all use the day for worship, you could talk to most unsaved folk and they would tell you that Sunday is a special day for Christian worship. You can see elements of this understanding in efforts by parents to send their children to church on Sundays, even though they may not attend themselves.

The heavy emphasis on televised sports (especially NFL, MLB, and NASCAR) on Sunday afternoons reflects the day’s special status as a day of rest. Even though the day is not what it used to be and is now highly commercialized, there is still a strong cultural gravitation towards rest on Sundays. Reduced trading hours and blue laws are also artifacts of the culture’s special regard for Sunday.

I would argue that the church has established a very strong cultural beachhead when it comes to honoring the Sabbath as a day of rest. Even though many people stay home, most Americans know that Sunday is God’s day.

I think there’s tremendous ground to be lost when some neoCalvinists and Turnstilers throw up their hands and say that they don’t know if the Sabbath is  supposed to be exactly on Sunday, so let’s just do church whenever. For now, our culture continues to preserve and respect Sunday as a special day of worship. If Christians abandon it, we lose any claim on the day at all. We strip the day of whatever sacred cultural value it still has, as well as the church’s special cultural time, and clumsily plop the church down in the middle of all the other mundane cacophonous cultural forces competing for our attention and allegiance.

If you were trying to build a strong cultural movement, to abandon what you’ve already won seems rather illogical. The sacred Sabbath is one area of common ground where our culture understands and respects the church. We should embrace that and build on it.

Although it’s not a scriptural argument, it is an argument.

This is an issue that’s been brewing in the comments to the Turnstile Church post, and it also matters when we start to think about the effectiveness of doing church online.

My basic position is that even though the church is not a building, it is usually found in a building. The fact that Christians function as a church only when they regularly meet in a building makes it a reasonable shorthand for people to refer to that building as the church.

1. The universal Church is organized into particular geographical churches. Although Paul’s advice applies universally to all churches, his epistles were addressed to city churches with particular problems and characteristics. We see a similar distinction in the seven churches of Revelation. These were specific churches with their own personalities and faith trajectories.
2. Church government requires face-to-face assembly. Paul’s instructions to Timothy about church welfare requires that church leaders have a high degree of familiarity with the people under their care (1 Timothy 5). Elders are told to correct a wayward brother first privately, but then, as a final resort, publicly (Matthew 18:17). The assumption is that the public announcement is about a person that the other members of the church know.
3. Christian worship requires physicality only found in a church. In worship we are to sing together. God blesses us through the laying on of hands. The sacraments require physical presence for their proper administration. We extend the right hand of fellowship and greet each other with a kiss. There are other examples that might be worth the attention of a future post.
4. Christian worship has a time and space dimension. Although eternal himself, God created a system of worship that was tied to a calendar through holy days, especially the Sabbath. Similarly, although omnipresent himself, God created a system of worship that was contained within at least four walls. Although we can worship God anywhere and at all times, he has clearly shown us that our highest form of worship is within sabbath (time) assemblies (space) of other believers.

Hebrews 10:25 recommends church attendance with these words:

Not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh.

As I once pointed out here, the Greek word translated as assembling is episynagoge. It means that Christians are to physically assemble together in one place. The root is synagogue, which itself means a physical gathering point, usually a building.

Yes, church also can refer to all Christians, living and dead, but it most commonly references distinct gatherings of believers who meet each other face to face for regular, physical worship of God. I assume that is our starting point, against which we’ll later assess efforts to redefine the church in ways that take it out of those chronological and physical constraints.

With so many new visitors to this blog, some are wondering what this is all about. To help out, I offer this quick tour of some posts that I think represent my best work.

• Who is church for?
• Does Jesus want to be famous? and If not fame, then what?
• What’s so special about Simeon?
• Why do denominations matter?
• Why can’t we mess with Sundays?
• What’s dangerous about visionary leaders?
• Why should we call ourselves Christians?

Please don’t judge me for saying this, but Pajama Pages is going to slow down for a little bit.

I have some very exciting events upcoming in my personal life in the next couple of weeks, and I look forward to giving as much attention to them as possible. I also think that over the last few months I have laid out my case about as well as I can. If you don’t find enough here to challenge your thinking and refine your discernment about the leaders I’ve been examining, there’s really nothing more I can add that will be of any use.

I’ll still monitor trends and thinking in the church and post periodically as events may warrant. I do plan to turn my attention to some of the issues that are being discussed by the Ipiphanist, as my friend, Nick Charalambous, talks about the still-young online church. It’s a combination of media and church issues that is rather irresistible to me.

I’m not sure how long that will take, though I’ll probably be posting about once a week.

It has been a fun and unexpected ride. I enjoy the little community that has emerged here, especially with friends like Tommy F, Twit, Seth (and his shovel), Albert, JT, Sara, and, most recently, James Downing.

Cheers, friends.

If you’ve been following the comments in the Gary Lamb and church-purpose posts, you may have noticed the emergence of a third argument against the blog (the first two being “go away”, and “people are being saved”), which is that we should not judge.

(We’ll get to that issue in a minute, but first a comment about the over-the-top reaction to the Gary Lamb posts. Before you accuse me of judging Lamb or belittling him or his congregation, please review the content of my posts. The first one was the product of a little bit of research on Lamb’s blog which showed his moves to get close to his partner in the affair. The second criticized his lack of a public apology to Elena. The next simply showed his own sermon titles, which are interesting in the context of the acknowledged affair. Then the following two were more focused on Perry Noble’s self-described legalistic approach to avoiding affairs, the point of which was to prevent more Gary Lamb-type stories. I don’t see where the offensive judging is, especially when Lamb himself broadcast news of his affair.)

Should we judge? Of course. The folk who are accusing me of judging are themselves judging me for judging, so it is apparently something even the best of us cannot help but do. That’s just as well, because the Bible clearly calls us to judge, especially church leaders.

For all who quote the “do not judge” verse, let’s look at it in context from Matthew 7:1-6:

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs.

This is not an absolute prohibition on judging; it’s a warning that the standards that we hold others to will be used to measure us. It’s really a warning against legalism. If we condemn men for riding alone with women in elevators, for example, we are fair game for being condemned if we do the same thing. At the end of the plank-in-eye lesson, the judging brother does actually remove the speck. Note, also, verse 6. After the words about being careful about judging, Jesus challenges us to judge so that we can identify the dogs and pigs.

Look, also, just a little later in the same chapter. From Matthew 7:15-16:

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them.

We are to watch the prophets’ words and actions and judge whether they are true or false. My goal on this blog is to match the words and actions of various high-profile leaders against the standards of Scripture. That is the measure that I’m trying to use, which is already the measure that God uses to judge me. (I can think of one exception when I criticized Cooper for deleting Tommy’s comments from his blog. That is not a scriptural standard, but having measured BCoop by that standard, you are all welcome to judge me if I retroactively delete users’ comments.)

Let’s deal with a few more specific questions about judging.

1. We’re all on the same team. Aren’t you just being divisive? Yes, therefore yes. The Bible requires believers to hold teachers to high standards of truth. The Bereans were commended for testing Paul, who was at the time teaching inspired truth. 1 Corinthians 11:19 tells us that disputes over propriety in worship are useful in helping us find truth. 2 Peter 2 warns us to be vigilant against false teachers, who are, by definition, not obvious. They can only be smoked out by rigorous testing against Scripture. If anything, we should be much more vigorous in testing people on our own team. Look at 1 Corinthians 5:12-13:
   

   What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”

   Let the unbelievers be wrong, but we must insist on what is right inside the church, to the point of expelling immoral members.

2. Should you be doing this in public? Preferably not, but it’s not such a bad thing. Almost the entire New Testament is written against the backdrop of doctrinal disputes–first Jesus and the Pharisees, later Paul versus the other apostles and then against false teachers in the churches. Those disputes are part of God’s Word to us, which is the foundation for evangelism. It is the Holy Spirit that draws men to Christ, so why would a conversation between Christians who are seeking to properly apply the Bible to our worship and living be so debilitating? Do we want to be telling the world that truth and holiness don’t matter? Truth is attractive, though not always serene.

   A second reason is that there is no other available forum. I think I have stated this before, but my initial reaction when I first encountered the anti-Christian content on Noble’s blog was to write him a private letter. Long before I wrote the billboards newspaper article, I repeatedly approached Noble through the official channels in his church. As we’ve seen over and over, Noble refuses to engage his critics privately. What we have, then, is a church leader who defames the Christian church loudly, frequently and publicly. I would argue that we are left with a moral responsibility to defend the church loudly, frequently and publicly.

3. But you and your church aren’t perfect. Correct, but I and my church are not trying to start a Reformation. We are not leading hundreds of other pastors and church planters and trying to define for them what the church is. I respect Noble/Furtick/Warren etc for being the influential leaders that they are (recall all the times I’ve defended Noble’s salary on that basis), and I take what they say seriously.
4. Can’t we all just get along? Sure. Once you all agree with me, think how happy you’ll be.

(This post is a followup to this one about the purpose of church.)

A few months ago while watching Brad Cooper’s effing Bible video, I saw the basic difference between the way he and I approach church.

To set the scene, Cooper is welcoming his congregation to a newly built (bamf) facility on the NewSpring campus. He has a very important point he wants his people to understand, so we get this illuminating piece of dialog.

Cooper: I want you right now to tell the person beside you, “This building was not built for you.” So you say, “What do you mean by that, Brad? Who was this building built for?”

Seminary student who hadn’t read the script: Jesus!

Cooper (in yes-but-really-no mode): Yeah, absolutely. But why would Jesus give us a tool like this?

He explains that because anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, that it’s really for the unsaved friends of the people there, who need to be invited so that they’ll be able to call on the name of the Lord in Cooper’s church. Cooper then lays down the law:

Do you want me to tell you what is failure? Let me tell you what is failure if you believe what we just read. Failure is you showing up by yourself next week.

Look at me in the face! You don’t believe the Word of God if you show up by yourself next week!

Although Cooper grudgingly agrees with Ms. Seminary that it should be for Jesus, his real LOOK AT ME IN THE FACE point is that it is built for unbelievers who have not yet visited the church. Who’s more important here? God, believers or unbelievers. Certainly it’s unbelievers. Existing believers are told that they essentially are faithless if they also don’t agree with Cooper’s hyperventilating pleas to turn the church inside out to get the unsaved there.

Cooper is not alone. The $700 man, Steven Furtick, flat out told the believers in his church that his church wasn’t for them.

We preach so that people can come to faith in Christ, and we want them to get in a small group and serve so that other people can come to Christ.

If you know Jesus–I am sorry to break it to you–this church is not for you.

“Yeah, but I just gave my life to Christ last week at Elevation.”

Last week was the last week that Elevation Church existed for you. You’re in the army now. We do one thing; we preach Jesus so that people far from God can know Jesus, and then we train them up so that others can know Jesus.

It’s called kingdom multiplication. It’s what Elevation Church is all about, and over 500 people have given their lives to Jesus for the first time in this church in the last five months. That’s over 100 per month.

If that doesn’t get you excited, and you need the “doctrines of grace” as defined by John Calvin to excite you, you’re in the wrong church. Let me get a phone book; there are 720 churches in Charlotte. I’m sure we can find you one where you can stuff your face until you’re so obese spiritually that you can’t even move.

Watch the video to witness the profound anger here.

Perry Noble shares Furtick’s distaste for churches who cater to God and believers. In fact, Noble’s vision of the church is so backwards and distorted that he sees expressions of worship as insulting profanity.

We have a purpose…and it’s not to be a country club with a steeple on top that gives our community the middle finger and tells them to go to hell because reaching them would make us uncomfortable!

The architectural purpose of the church steeple was to exalt God by pointing skyward, and to invite people to worship by being an unmistakable local landmark. As one Kentucky steeple maker said,

A steeple points one to the heavens, symbol of the dwelling place of Christ. Through city streets, across the valleys and lakes, through the countryside far and wide, the steeple declares Christ.

Where most of us see Christ, is it a complete surprise that Noble sees a middle finger? Actually, it seems that he sees a lot of Christianity this way.

Every week people show up at their stained glass fortressed and give their community the middle finger and tell them to go to hell.

I never see it prescribed in Scripture than when a church reaches a “comfortable” size–usually around 120 people–that the community should be given the middle finger and told to go to hell because additional people might mess up the holy huddle!

Noble equates the discipleship and equipping of believers as middle fingeresque.

Like it or not–Jesus didn’t go to a bookstore, get a theology book by a dead white guy, get a group of guys together that were just like Him and give the world the middle finger because He was obsessed with “going deep!”

If I meet one more group of guys who think they are becoming more like Jesus because they are theological superior to people (which, by the way, is PRIDE!) but do not know a lost person by name or refuse to exercise their spiritual gift…and yet claim to be godly…I am going to punch them in the throat!

I suppose Noble’s fist trumps devout middle fingers.

In one of his middle-finger diatribes, Noble lays out his own description of his church, which you can find here. It is all about reaching unbelievers, but you’ll have to look hard to find mention of the worship of God (church purpose #1) or the assembly of believers (church purpose #2).

Noble, Furtick, Cooper, Lamb, Warren and many, many others are trying to redefine church by making it primarily about nonbelievers. If you ask them, they’ll give a perfunctory answer that church is really for God, as Cooper’s seminary guest forced him to do, but their actions and emphasis tell us that it’s mainly about nonbelievers. Cooper and Furtick specifically told their audience that they were more interested in people outside the family of God.

Getting people in the doors is much more important that offering them anything once they walk in. Make them feel bad, conscript them into the army, and get more people in the doors.

Several terms have been used to describe these new churches: emergent, emerging, etc. It’s all very confusing, so I offer a new term: The Turnstile Church.

Definition: Churches that attract people for the purpose of attracting more people for the purpose attracting more people for the purpose…

Feed my sheep? Not so much.

If you were to boil my disagreements with Perry Noble and NewSpring down to a single issue, it would be over the answer to this question.

Here, in order, is how I would answer the question.

1. God. As God began to reveal himself to his people, one of his early steps was to create a house for himself. Not only was God to have his own house, but he was very particular about how it was to be built and how people were to act when they visited it. From Deuteronomy 12:4-5:
   

   You shall not act like this toward the LORD your God.

   But you shall seek the LORD at the place which the LORD your God will choose from all your tribes, to establish His name there for His dwelling, and there you shall come.

   When I built my house a few years ago, I was keenly interested in adapting the plans and monitoring the workers who were constructing it. Large sections of the Old Testament are devoted to God’s detailed instructions on how the tabernacle and, later, the temple were to be designed and outfitted. God designed his house so that he would enjoy inhabiting it. It had to be just so before he would move in. From Exodus 40:34, after Moses had completed the tabernacle:

   Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the could had settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

   If you visited my home, I would expect you to act in accordance with the customs and rules in my home, and if I visited yours, one of the things I would be trying to do is to figure out your rules. Who sits in what chairs at the dinner table, for example. In an analogous way, God expects visitors to his house to act in accordance with his rules. Deuteronomy 12:8:

   You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes.

   Outsiders and unbelievers especially were not be be a standard for behavior in God’s house. Look at Deuteronomy 12:30-31.

   Beware that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations serve their gods, that I also may do likewise?’

   You shall not behave thus toward the LORD your God, for every abominable act which the LORD hates they have done for their gods.

   God also expects his own people to come near with respect. Leviticus 22:2 (and many others):

   Tell Aaron and his sons to be careful with the holy gifts of the sons of Israel, which they dedicate to Me, so as not to profane My holy name; I am the LORD.

   Ecclesiastes 5:1-2 also reminds us that church is not primarily for us, and that that understanding should affect our behavior:

   Guard your steps as you go to the house of God and draw near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools; for they do not know they are doing evil.

   Do not be hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the presence of God For God is in heaven and you are on the earth; therefore let your words be few.

2. Believers. By his grace, God opened his house to his family to join him and enjoy him. The Psalms often refer to assemblies of believers who gather to worship God. Psalm 149:1:
   

   Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the saints.

   It’s interesting to note that the label of Christian was given to describe believers who gathered in church. From Acts 11:25-26:

   And he left for Tarsus to look for Saul; and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch And for an entire year they met with the church and taught considerable numbers; and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.

   Christians and church are inseparable. Christians were defined in part by their attendance in church.

   Church is also necessary for preserving the saints in their faith. Note the progression from preaching to discipleship to church government in this passage from Acts 14:21-23.

   After they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”

   When they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

   Paul tells Timothy that proper behavior is expected in church, which is to be so honored because it is essential for understanding truth.

   You will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. (1 Timothy 3:15)

   The church is given to us as a venue to worship God, and as his venue to teach, bless and discipline us.

3. Unbelievers. Although church is not created for unbelievers, it does not exclude them. Paul instructs the church on the proper use of tongues by telling them to consider whether unbelievers will be there. From 1 Corinthians 14:22-25:
   

   So then tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers; but prophecy is for a sign, not to unbelievers but to those who believe.

   Therefore if the whole church assembles together and all speak in tongues, and ungifted men or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are mad?

   But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or an ungifted man enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all; the secrets of his heart are disclosed; and so he will fall on his face and worship God, declaring that God is certainly among you.

   Although this verse is sometimes misused to justify turning churches into virtual pagan temples, note that Paul assumes that unbelievers are not a regular part of church. The repeated use of the word if shows that church is not lacking anything if they are not in attendance, but neither should they be excluded.

   Paul also assumes that if an unbeliever is attending church, they are quite likely about to be saved and begin to worship God. These are not seekers Paul is talking about; they are people ready to be turned inside out by God.

   The reason they’re in church is probably because God has drawn them there. We know that they’re not there of their own volition to seek God, as Romans 3:11 makes clear.

   There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.

The reason this matters is because our understanding of the purpose of church will affect the way we behave in it and how proper our worship is when we’re in it.

(Tomorrow we’ll look at what Perry Noble and his friends believe about this question and how it affects their worship.)

From our friend:

I don’t know who I am writing to…but I really feel like I am supposed to tell someone, “DON’T GIVE UP!!!” …

People hate you just because of what you do…and if you begin to experience any aort of success they will despise you even more.  Don’t give up…your calling is not to please them!!!

Word.

A week or so ago, we were looking at Brad Cooper’s gun-assisted sermon on how worship is a weapon. Although we were rudely interrupted by the Gary Lamb news, a couple of things in his closing prayer warrant a few more bullet points.

In his exposition, he criticizes existing worship styles.

In our evangelical culture we have neutered worship, and we sing empty, superficial posturing.

Then he comes to the prayer:

God, I pray for this culture, that, Lord, we would recognize the potential we have as worshippers of you. That we don’t just sing songs to sing. That we don’t just sing songs because people have done it for hundreds of years. That we don’t just worship you because it’s a sacred cow that people just always constantly do. That it’s not boring, that it’s not weak. God, I ask and beg you for forgiveness for the fact that we have worshipped in a neutered manner in churches all over our world for years.

Now, some un-neutered questions:

• What is sexual worship? If neutered worship is such a bad thing, what is its opposite? Does this explain Perry Noble’s interest in little blue pills? Is this why it’s a good thing to have condoms and sex magazines in church?
• Is worship not sacred? We’ll be doing it constantly in heaven, so what’s wrong with starting now?
• How can worship ever be boring? We’d only worry about that if worship was all about us, or if it was supposed to be something useful to us. You know, like a weapon.
• How does God forgive you for someone else’s sin? Since Cooper obviously doesn’t engage in neutered worship, how is he in a position to ask forgiveness for someone else’s sin? (Leaving off the fact that he hasn’t explained why it is something we need to beg forgiveness for.) The effect, given that the repentance is not being offered on behalf of anyone in the room, is to announce how great and righteous his own worship is. It’s the kind of prayer that Pharisees specialized in. From Luke 18:11:
  

  The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men-robbers, evildoers, adulterers-or even like this tax collector.’

• Is Cooper more important than these kids’ parents? Of the many reasons I wouldn’t recommend NewSpring’s youth group, the most important one is the lack of respect it gives to parents. When Cooper asks forgiveness for the old ways of doing worship, he is quite clearly referring to worship that happens in other churches. The people in his audience are high schoolers, so if they have attended other sinfully worshipping churches, it would have been at the initiative of their parents, many of whom probably still attend those churches. Cooper is telling his kids that their parents have led them into sinful worship.

Cooper got the message about worship as a weapon wrong in the first place, but his self-righteous repentance for sins he doesn’t commit, though his congregation’s parents do, is as aggressive and destructive as the weapon he cradles.

A few days ago I referenced Noble’s tweet about the future of the church in a way that was intended to dismiss it with a deserved bit of ridicule. To refresh your memories, here’s what he said:

WHAT IF this past 2,000 years of the church was merely the foundation to set up what God REALLY wants to do? That thought pumps me up!

The more I think about it, the more I think this warrants a more substantial response.

1. It contravenes Scripture. This was the essence of my first post. Jesus laid the foundation of the church in Matthew 16:18. All the church needed was provided by Jesus and the apostles and can be found in Scripture. There can only be one foundation for the church, and it was created two thousand years ago.
2. It contradicts special revelation. The most galling aspect of Noble’s thought is one of the words he emphasized: REALLY. Think about that idea and let it roll around in your mind. What is Noble saying? God has been hiding his real intentions from us. When we read Paul’s instructions to the church in Corinthians, for example, we can ignore that because it’s not really what God was meaning for the church. Appalling.
3. It condescends to the saints. According to Noble, the last two millennia were merely a foundation for today. Merely–another word to linger on. There’s an awful lot of amazing history dismissed by that arrogant word. Augustine. Aquinas. Luther. Calvin. Spurgeon. Graham. Persecutions. Reformation and revivals. Never mind them. There are merely mere.
4. It contains secret knowledge. This is the dangerous bit. If we believe what Noble says, and if he really believes it himself, what that means is that God has a new blueprint for the church that has been hidden until now. We will learn what it is from special leaders who receive special visions from God that they expect their followers to commit to.
5. It creates space for error. If Noble can establish that the church is about to change is form and function, he can make whatever rules and set whatever standards he likes. Because it need not be based on Scripture, it will necessarily be wrong. It will also be impossible to criticize his beliefs because it will be impossible to tie him down to the standard of Scripture. Noble is notoriously slippery when it comes to defending himself.
   

   People will question our motives and our ministry. But our goal in all of this should not be to try to explain ourselves but to simply keep our eyes on the Lord and strive to become more like Him. If we spend too much time explaining ourselves we won’t have time to actually do what it is God has commanded of us in the first place!

   If you can simply show that how you do church conforms to the established Scriptural standard, there’s no need for your defense to take very long. If the Bible compels listeners to test teachers, I think you might also say that a true Biblical teacher will be happy to show that he can pass those tests. They didn’t bother Paul. If Noble spent as much time defending his beliefs and behaviors as he does complaining about being questioned, we’d all be much better off.

   If, on the other hand, he is doing church a new way and on the basis of special personal revelation, he’d better find every excuse he can to not submit to those tests and to keep doing what his vision compels him do to.

To be clear, I am not making a case here that Noble is doing church in violation of Scripture. I am pointing out that he is clearing space for himself that makes that not only possible, but difficult for his followers to detect and impossible for his critics to correct.

Perry Noble has started to lay out the rationale for minimizing the damage from Gary Lamb’s affair with his personal assistant. He tells us in his blog,

Here is a truth about every leader you know in church world…we are all under an intense amount of spiritual attack.  And…the larger the ministry grows the larger the target on his or her back!

So, you see, it was because Gary Lamb was doing such a great job that he was specially targeted by the devil. If he was just a run-of-the-mill, small-time pastor, he wouldn’t have been so cruelly tempted.

Perhaps Noble could show us some evidence for his truth. He gives a few scriptural references, though none support his assertion.

• 1 Samuel 31:1-3 describes a military attack on a national leader after many of his soldiers had also been killed. Saul was the final target, but his people were subjected to the same test first. Noble came back to the same passage to assert that the enemy will also come after a leader’s family. The problem with this interpretation is that Saul’s regular soldiers were cut down before the enemy got to his sons or to Saul. If anything, if you’re going to apply this passage to pastors, you’d say that the enemy comes after the leader last.
• 2 Samuel 5:11 describes a special tribute gift to David after he had won a victory. Either Noble or I badly misunderstand this passage, or he got the reference wrong.
• He refers to David’s affair with Bathsheba as David being attacked while at the top of his game. I’m sorry, but the Bible presents David as a conniving, murderous aggressor, not some spur-of-the-moment victim. David did it, not the devil.
• In line with the general poor treatment that Lamb’s partner has received from these leaders, Noble makes the obligatory reference to Jezebel. Trouble is, Jezebel’s threat to Elijah was an overt promise to kill him in revenge after she’d killed other prophets, not to seduce him in her bedroom. There was no special target on his back; she was treating him just as she’d treated others before Elijah.

I don’t see any evidence for the assertion that leaders suffer greater attacks or deal with greater temptations simply because they are leaders. I do see evidence that God holds leaders to higher standards than others (1 Timothy 3). Jesus experienced (and successfully withstood) temptations that are common to us all, not common just to a special class of leaders (Hebrews 4:15).

While the Bible chronicles plenty of temptations and failings for leaders, it also shows that regular folks are just as susceptible to falling to temptations as anyone else. When a leader succumbs to temptation, the results are often more public and the consequences more far reaching, but that doesn’t mean that their sins are more special than any one else’s.

Noble’s “truth” gives latitude for leaders to fail because they’re under greater pressure than others; God’s truth is exactly the opposite. Sin comes from our heart, not from our job.

Noble’s Twitter:

WHAT IF this past 2,000 years of the church was merely the foundation to set up what God REALLY wants to do? That thought pumps me up!

Matthew Perry 16:18:

And I tell you that you are Perry, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

(Yes, Twit, that is an example of adding to the Bible.)

Sorry, Reformer Perry, but that ship sailed two thousand years ago.

Yesterday’s post criticizing Perry Noble’s sexual legalism was predictably misinterpreted by a whole bunch of commentators as suggesting that we should not try to avoid temptation.

Perry invited us to consider him legalistic, so I obliged him because what he is suggesting is a classic example of the dangers of legalism. When you make a rule that says that you should never be alone with a woman, you immediately have a few problems:

It’s impossible to follow.

It’s not Biblical.

It’s useless.

Constant monitoring is not the answer to sin. The heart is the root of sin, and our hearts will always find ways to break the rules. You can lie to your accountability partner. You can’t be monitored 24-hours a day.

Thinking that these structures will prevent you from sin can actually be counterproductive because they prevent the daily disciplines of self denial and self control. Infants do require constant monitoring, but we expect that as people develop in maturity, that they can act civilly without having to have someone always hold their hands. If they don’t think they have the maturity required for sanctified living (shoot, just acting like a decent gentleman), perhaps these men shouldn’t be in ministry.

Perry Noble loves to label everyone who disagrees with him as a Pharisee who is not part of Christ’s kingdom. I am not going to counter-label him one here, but perhaps Noble should look at exactly what made the Pharisees the Pharisees.

The Pharisees earnestly sought to keep God’s law, but they did so by adding a whole set of man-made laws that were designed to protect people from breaking God’s law. For example, they might say that in order to obey the primary commandment against committing adultery, that one should never be alone with a woman. Yes, the second-tier law, if followed perfectly, would prevent breaking of the first, but it was never God’s law.

Paul’s point in Romans is that the law was designed, not to save us from sin, but to show us that we couldn’t not sin. Imposing and following Noble’s legalistic rules will never prevent someone from committing adultery. They may make it more inconvenient, but relying on his rules is foolish.

Practicing daily habits of self control and self denial in all areas of life in dependence on the Holy Spirit is much more likely to lead to sexual propriety.