Don't be one of These!

EIGHT CHARACTERISTICS OF FALSE TEACHERS

[from Coram Deo's (Omaha, NE) eldership training class]

1. They turn secondary issues into primary ones (1 Tim 1:1-7, 2 Tim 2:23)
2. They cause division & dissension (1 Tim 6:3-5, Romans 16:17-18)
3. They prey on the weak (Rom 16:17-18, 2 Tim 3:1-9)
4. They talk a lot but say little (2 Tim 2:16, Titus 1:10)
5. They have un-Christlike character (Titus 1:16, 1 Tim 4:1-2)
6. They don’t call people to repentance (2 Tim 4:1-5, Jer 23:14)
7. They despise authority (Jude 8, Col 2:18-19)
8. They are ultimately tools of Satan himself (1 Tim 4:1, 2 Tim 3:24-26)

False teachers tend to distort the truth along one of two trajectories: legalism (1 Tim 4:1-5) or liberalism (Jude 4, 2 Pet 2:18-19)

Summer Institute: SDB Polity, Week Two

On Sunday, June 20, we started our 2nd week of Summer Institute with a test reflecting upon discussions from the first week. Then in the afternoon, we started with the topics for the rest of the course:

-Women in Ministry (or actually Women in Pastoral Leadership)

-Meaning, Forms, and Methods of Worship in SDB churches

-Baptism

-The Lord's Supper (including transubstantiation, consubstantiation, real presence, and memorial views)

-Origins of SDB General Conference (including original purpose and the "associational principle")

-Present polity and structure of the SDB General Conference (with focus on the roles of General Council, CLT, and the Executive Director)

-How General Conference functions in session (one week a year) and out of session (51 weeks a year)

-The current Ad Hoc Committee proposal on reorganization (found here)

It was a great two weeks with a great bunch of guys who love Jesus. I want to thank Pastor Gordon Lawton and Nick Kersten for teaching our class and for the students in the class for helping me learn a lot of lessons (both in the syllabus and not.!)

I would love to write or share more of my thoughts or our discussions on any interested topic. Leave a comment here, ask me on facebook, or send me an email.

Summer Institute: SDB Polity, Week One

On Monday morning, June 14 at 8:30am, 10 students, including me, started the journey toward learning "how" SDBs handle church issues. Rev. Gordon Lawton, Dean of the Center on Ministry, is our instructor.

We have tackled the following issues thus far:

Who are the People of God? (viewed from dispensational, covenantal, and antinomian perspectives)

Local Church Covenants

The Kinship System (including the tension between the Great Commandment and Great Commission)

Internal/External Balance in relation to the purpose of the church

3 Major Types of Church Polity: congregational, episcopal, presbyterian

9 Conference tests for congregational polity

process of church membership

the importance of conducting orderly business

Authority/Leadership in the church

Call to Ministry/Licensure/Ordination/Accreditation

I am looking forward to next week and what discussions wait in store for us based upon God's word. I would love to write or share more of my thoughts or our discussions on any interested topic. Leave a comment here, ask me on facebook, or send me an email.

Wisconsin Bound

I am getting ready for my last Summer Institute session in Janesville, Wisconsin. I love going to Janesville to see great friends and catch up with what they have been doing.

This visit (assuming I pass the course) and a vote on the floor of General Conference (in the affirmative) will make me an accredited SDB minister.

I am excited about this prospect. Fifteen years ago I started my quest towards ministry with a calling by God and an affirmation from my local church (Salem SDB). This summer I will have served ten different churches in some sort of ministry capacity, preached countless sermons, worked multiple camps, delivered numerous children's messages, sung in many special music presentations, started a campus ministry, gone through three Summer Institutes, graduated from four years of seminary, and made so many good friends that I cannot mention them all.

Here is the lesson in all of this doing and the one thing I am sure I have learned. I am not capable of changing one heart, even mine, with all of the learning and activity I have done. I am still fully, totally, and forever reliant upon the power of God.

I pray that what people have invested in me (time, money, patience, etc.) will bear fruit through my faithfulness and reliance upon God. Thank you so much to so many for so long!

Soli Deo Gloria