Author: Uri Brito

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26 Strengths of the Evangelical Church

While negative aspects of evangelicalism emerge quite easily due to its diverse expressions, sometimes we are left with an image less than flattering and under the impression that evangelicalism is about to give up the ghost. The reality, however, is quite different. By “evangelical,” I include churches who affirm the supreme authority of Scriptures and a belief in the classic Christian doctrines of the Creeds. Recently, I wrote about 26 weaknesses of the evangelical church; so, here are 26 strengths of the evangelical church that we need to be grateful for in the midst of our critiques:

a) It has a zeal for propagation. However opposed one may be to certain methods of evangelicalism, the evangelical church continues to thrive in our day and grow numerically.

b) It preserves ol’ time religion. It has no interest in following progressive agendas for the church but in preserving the free offer of the Gospel as articulated in the Scriptures.

c) It strongly opposes sexual visions that contradict God’s view for man and woman.

d) It promotes male leadership in the Church.

e) It is opposed to Roman Catholic paradigms which elevate hierarchy and tradition above biblical authority and which adds unbiblical rituals to the church.

f) It preaches about the blood of Jesus frequently.

g) It is not afraid to confront scientism and liberalism.

h) It produced one of the greatest evangelists in the history of Christendom, namely, Billy Graham, whose crusades drew thousands, if not millions of people to Christ.

i) It has a high view of the Spirit’s work in the life of the saint.

j) It produced one of the most prolific hymn writers in Christian history, namely, Fanny Crosby, whose hymns still bear witness to the life of Jesus and ministers to millions in church and is remembered and sung by the aged in nursing homes with greater frequency than any other hymn-writer.

k) It was bold to break from liberal mainline churches when many were encouraging them to stay (see the PCA in 1973).

l) It defends vehemently the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible.

m) It upholds classic Christian moral issues such as the dignity of life from conception to death.

n) It is driven by a vision of preservation or conservation of the Judeo-Christian heritage.

o) It cherishes personal piety and a life of devotion.

p) It encourages a personal relationship with Jesus.

q) The modern evangelical movement has also produced capable biblical expositors.

r) It has popularized classic Reformed doctrines like the sovereignty of God and his glory (see John Piper’s works).

s) It has, by and large, preserved a historical understanding of the creation account.

t) Seminaries like Southern (SBTS) are producing well-trained scholars as observed in the most recent ETS where there were 50 presentations from Southern faculty and student body. Truly astounding. Also, kudos to Jim Hamilton’s excellent scholarship. I am a fan.

u) Evangelicals treasure experience (consider testimonials). Perhaps they overemphasize this dimension while some underemphasize the existential perspective (to quote John Frame).

v) Evangelicals believe in the power of prayer to change things.

w) Evangelical preaching is story-oriented; narratival; intended to keep your attention, while much preaching in our day is overly technical and unrelatable.

x) To be evangelical is to be the people of Christ; a people given over to the Evangel in its pure and unadulterated form.

y) To be evangelical is to not be ashamed of the Gospel. By and large, we have not succumbed to the academy’s embarrassment of the message of the cross.

z) In sum, the strength of evangelicalism is its disposition towards truth.

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26 Weaknesses of the Evangelical Church

The evangelical view of the church–my piece of the ecclesiastical pie–is weak on a number of levels. After 40 years on this planet, and growing up in an evangelical home, and as someone who is deeply invested in the success of Gospel churches, I have seen much. These weaknesses, in my estimation, lead to lesser and lesser influence in the modern world and a dysfunctional ecclesiology. Here are at least 26 weaknesses to be followed in another post by its strengths:

a) it views church worship as a funeral procession for Jesus rather than a triumphant resurrection procession,

b) it disincentivizes male participation,

c) it makes the Bible secondary and human creativity primary,

d) it views Jesus’ authority over the world in similar categories to Satans’ (a misunderstanding of II Cor. 4:4), which means it minimizes the power of the resurrection in changing the world in the first century (I Cor. 15:26),

e) it treats the themes of worship as preferential rather than objective (see letter c),

f) it belittles the sacraments,

g) it is not future-oriented, so it’s bound to do theology only for the present,

h) it is content to keep Christians at a basic level of growth, which means it diminishes rigorous theological dialogue for lack of knowledge

i) it forgets its origins, thus minimizing the lessons of history,

j) it doesn’t rejoice enough; in essence, there is a low view of feasting,

k) it fails to view the church using the war-like categories of Scriptures,

l) it begins in Matthew when it should begin in Genesis,

m) it forgets the little ones in the life of the church, who often are only brought back at a much later time,

n) it doesn’t view catholicity in a positive light,

o) it doesn’t read broadly enough (see letter n),

p) it fails to encourage women to pursue good theology,

q) it doesn’t practice church discipline,

r) it doesn’t sing enough; we need a broader repertoire. The church is too rich musically for us to stick with a few,

s) it doesn’t encourage hospitality,

t) it fails to pray for the kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven,

u) it would rather sacrifice at the altar of sports than the altar of God on Sundays,

v) it views food and fellowship primarily as consumption rather than communion,

w) it reads too little Bible, and that parts that are read are incomplete and de-contextualized,

x) it is inconsistent in applying the Gospel to society, education, and culture,

y), it’s too casual or non-interested in Creeds,

z) it is incoherently trinitarian instead of intentionally so.

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Update on my Brazil Trip

Quick update: I arrived in Porto Alegre for a week of teaching, preaching and fellowship with the saints of Igreja Reformada de Cristo. I will be meeting the leadership this evening to visit the new facility they are renting. It is an answer to prayer.

In 2015, we decided to plant this little flock at the heart of Porto Alegre, not too distant from the Uruguayan and Argentine border. Porto Alegre is a deeply paganized city with few healthy evangelical witnesses.

It was one of my earliest dreams to be able to serve my people in Brazil in some capacity and for the last few years, our congregation in Pensacola has been praying and encouraging this little flock to persevere. After four years, they continue to be strong in their labors and faithful to proclaim the excellencies of Jesus in Word, Sacrament, and Community.

Remember them when you can in your petitions.

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Getting exhausted in Worship

This, of course, applies to a theme we care much about at Providence, which is how we worship. It’s not enough to talk about worship in generic categories, but we need to think carefully about how we worship. My presupposition is that healthy exhaustion should take place when we worship. We have worked, therefore, we have worshiped. If you come out of church and all you’ve been is a passive attendee, you’re doing it wrong. Worship is never a one-sided work. We are Protestants. We don’t think, “Hey, let’s let the professionals trained in theology do all the work and we just sit here as spectators.” If you feel this way, you may have walked into the wrong church building. We are here to exercise our ritual bones, to flex our liturgical muscles and to stretch our hands in adoration. Worship is the task of warriors.
-Transcript from a portion of today’s sermon on what it means to be a Christian ritualist

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What the Church Expects of Newlyweds, Part 1

I’ve had the joy of doing pre-marital counseling for over 20 couples. We cover a host of topics like communication, intimacy, submission, love, conflict, finances, etc. On the last session, I’ve developed a category called, “What a Church expects from newlyweds.” For most, this is a topic they’ve never heard discussed before, and one which I think is of fundamental importance at the beginning of a new life together as husband and wife. In this session, I provide ten things that a church should expect from newlyweds. Most of these are incremental steps. Most of these are things to be developed in a lifetime. I will try to offer a basic summary of each category once or twice a month and then attempt to gather all these things together into an article that pastors or parents can give their sons and daughters as they prepare to get married.

I will begin with the first (additional elements include, “public life of faith,” “hospitality,” “Christian charity,” etc.

a) Church Attendance (Ps. 122:1; Heb. 10:25)

The word “attendance” doesn’t exactly capture this first point, but it is used due to its common usage in church life. When a pastor says that church attendance is important, what he is really saying is that you attend church to be formed by its worship. Being in church is not just to be physically present, but to be willing to be transformed by something and Someone outside of yourself.

Newlyweds cannot grasp the significance of marriage unless they are in submission to a ritual that they themselves cannot perform outside of a corporate gathering. As a newly married couple, you are to make the decision of going to church once in your life, not every Saturday night. To be a responsible couple before God and his Church, you need to commit with one another that outside of unexpected circumstances, the act of being in church and your willingness to be transformed by worship through the renewal of the mind is of utmost importance.

There can be no faithful marriage outside of participation in the great marriage renewal that occurs each Lord’s Day between our Lord Jesus and his Bride. Any idea that conveys to newlyweds that marriage is about making independent choices outside any authority structure is destructive. In fact, newlyweds can hope for a fruitful marriage only within the bounds of regular church life, which begins with the worship on the Lord’s Day.

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Remembering 9-11

I was in a theology class on September 11, 2001. A frantic young lady rushed into the room and informed the classroom that something terrible had happened in New York City. We sat there speechless. Our professor, a godly man, led us in prayer for protection. We did not know what had happened and how what happened would affect us. That uncertainty followed us for the next hour until lunchtime when we entered the cafeteria and watched that dreadful scene again and again and again on TV. Something powerful had happened; powerful enough to shake a nation and push our emotions to places it had not gone before.

In a very tangible way, evil showed up with all its might and fury. In a very objective way, evil was incarnated in devilish men. So much has transpired since that day, but we memorialize that ill-famed day as a day when the corporate reality of a nation shook at its very core; when we awoke from our slumber to see that the opposite of the good was alive and well. We mourn and remember. That’s what we are created to do. We mourn and remember because we are ritualized beings. Let us never forget. Let us never cease to be amazed at the ways of evil men. Let us never stop to pray for their ultimate destruction! Arise, O Lord, defend us! Arise, O Lord, and we will be saved!

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The Jonah Project

Well, the cat’s out of the commentary bag: Rich Lusk and I are working on another commentary. Observers may have noticed my tweets or random notes on Jonah. I have been preaching through it and also writing and editing some of our joint efforts. As always, I like to say Rich Lusk is the exegetical genius and I am the fortunate guy who has the joy of working with him in these endeavors. The added benefit is that he and I share a lot of presuppositions about hermeneutics and general biblical exegesis which afford us an awful lot of common ground when we do these projects. In fact, if this is published it will be the third work I’ve done with Rich.

I will be posting occasional quotes from our future commentary. Here is a fairly descriptive summary of the Assyrians to whom Jonah was called to minister:

The ancient Assyrian emperor–just to give you one example of the wickedness that characterized the empire and the city — after a military victory would put giant fishhooks in the mouths of the vanquished and march them down Main Street in a kind of victory parade. And then he would impale them, he’d lift their skin off, and after skinning them alive, he’d cut off their limbs and throw them to the wild animals to be devoured. Now that’s wickedness. That’s what paganism looks like in the raw; paganism when it hasn’t been tamed in any way by the subduing grace of God. Nations that have been influenced by the gospel, even if they aren’t any longer officially Christian, even if they aren’t all that faithful, usually know better than to fight their ways in that way.

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About Celebrities Leaving the Faith

Dear friend,

I am sure you are hearing about all these celebrities abandoning the faith. Some say it’s the contradictions in the Bible. Well, rest assured that supposed contradictions in the Bible have been addressed ad infinitum in the last 2,000 years of Church History. Contradictions only exist if someone denies that God is all-powerful and if they deny that the Spirit inspired men to write accounts that preserve the integrity of their humanity and their perspectives on events. Assume someone says, “Hey, I can’t believe a man would live in the belly of a fish for three days and three nights. That’s just impossible.” In this case, he is denying that God is all-powerful. After all, if God created the world out of nothing, then for a sea creature to swallow a Hebrew prophet is actually a playground miracle in God’s repertoire.

If someone says, “But the Gospel accounts are different from each other.” In this case, they are denying the humanity of the authors. If these authors wrote identical accounts, then we should be skeptical. But they added their individual nuances to the narratives which prove indisputably that we are dealing with a reliable source.

I say all these things because when someone leaves the faith because they cannot “reconcile,” for example, Judas’ death in Matthew and Luke, they are actually using such silliness to justify some kind of moral and ethical decision they have made and the Bible is used as a scapegoat for their validation. Ultimately, what they really want is a way out of obeying God and following Jesus. The road to the cross can be difficult; self-control is hard; repentance is not for the weak. So, why not use the fallibility of God’s word to make a case for your fallible actions, they think.

Don’t be sucked into this chaos! Those who leave Jesus are leaving true life. You keep pressing on! The cross leads to an open tomb!

Sincerely,
Pastor Brito