Video – How to Pray the Hours Using Scripture

Posted on July 5, 2013 by tdillmuth

Pastor Tim points out that when we pray the Scriptures, we need to avoid overspiritualizing the passage and yanking it out of the context of Scripture, thus violating the purpose of fixed hour prayer.  We also often ask, “What does this passage mean to me?” instead of “What did the author intend this passage to mean?”  Pastor Tim says that even while thoughtfully praying the Scripture, it is still important to study and understand some basic information about the passage.  One good example of this would be to understand the context that surrounds the particular passage that we are praying. (Check out Pastor Tim’s family praying the hours at the end of the video!)

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Proclaiming The Gospel To Our Kids

Posted on July 3, 2013 by tdillmuth

WLO_proclaimgospelPost by Pastor Tim – When we think about proclaiming the gospel, we often don’t examine the “gospel” as much as the methods in which we try to proclaim it.  And no where is this seen better than in the modern-day youth ministry.  Many youth programs work on having better technology, louder music and cooler surroundings.  One blogger noted,

At a mega church I visited a few years back, entering a children’s classroom was like stepping into a Disney World attraction. Classes were decorated around themes like “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and the Starship Enterprise, with no expense spared.

Our family had a similar experience a few years back, when during a worship service the church gave away a Nintendo Wii by picking a name out of a hat.  And we found out that this was just one give-away in a series of amazing bicycle and video game giveaways.  Admittedly, my children thought it was pretty cool, but I later asked them what it taught them about God, and after thinking for quite some time they said that it taught them absolutely nothing.

Even though I was glad to hear them say that, I’m afraid that the method itself is not always neutral, and that the gospel which we are working so hard to proclaim is getting lost in another message.  And that message is shallowness.  David Kinnaman of the Barna group said “that one of the top reasons young Christians leave the church is the shallowness of faith they experience there.”

After Pastor Foley’s last post there should be no disagreement on what the gospel actually is, but how do we effectively proclaim it to our kids?  Here are some ways that DOTW Church families are proclaiming the gospel to their kids.

  • We are keeping our kids with us in the main service.  From time to time our kids do get “antsy” in the service, but I have been amazed at the growth and maturity that our kids have experienced through this process.  Admittedly, our kids are not by-standers; they are actively participating in the service through imitation.  They learn to pray the same prayers that we pray, sing the same songs that we sing, confess their own sins the same way that we confess our sins, and hear and proclaim the same gospel that we hear and proclaim.
  • We proclaim the gospel to our kids every night.  We don’t wait until Sunday, and we don’t consider it the job of the Sunday school, but we actually “do church” with our children every night in our home.  And they are memorizing scripture, songs and creeds that all have the gospel “front and center.”
  • When we reach out to other family members and friends, the children participate with us!  They are not just receiving the proclamation of the gospel, but they are actually proclaiming it as well!  This also means that the kids are an important process of how we give our tithe in relation to proclaiming the gospel.  We are praying together, giving together and proclaiming the gospel together.
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The Gospel In Ten Words? Try Paul’s.

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Pastor Foley

WLO_proclaimgospelIn an intellectual contest of sorts last summer, the Christian Century challenged contributors to “boil Christian proclamation down to just a few words”–seven to be exact–in venturing an answer to the question, What is the essence of the essence of Christianity? The contest produced a number of thoughtful and novel responses along with multiple echoes throughout the blogosphere, including Michael Horton reissuing the challenge to his own readers at The White Horse Inn. (Horton’s own entry is a nine word effort rooted in Romans 4:25: “Crucified for our sins and raised for our justification.”)

The novelty and appeal of summarizing the gospel in as few words as possible seems to show no signs of fading. Paul Ellis opts for ten words (Loved/forgiven/saved/union/ accepted/holy/righteous/died/new/royal), Dare2Share for six in an acronym in their million-hit YouTube video (God. Our. Sins. Paying. Everyone. Life.). Meanwhile, D.A. Carson tackles the whole Bible in 221 words.

Leave it to the Apostle Paul to sober us all up by noting in Galatians 1:8 that the cost of an inadequate entry in this contest–the price of novelty, as it were–is eternal condemnation. As the venerable Thomas Oden observes:

At the end of this journey I reaffirm solemn commitments made at its beginning:

  • To make no new contribution to theology
  • to resist the temptation to quote modern writers less schooled in the whole counsel of God than the best ancient classic exegetes
  • To seek quite simply to express the one mind of the believing church that has been ever attentive to the apostolic teaching to which consent has been given by Christian believers everywhere, always, and by all — this what I mean by the Vincentian method (Vincent of Lerins, comm., LCC [Library of Christian Classics] VII, pp. 37-39,65-74; for an accounting of this method see LG [The Living God (volume 1 of his systematic theology)], pp. 322-25,341-51)

I am dedicated to unoriginality. I am pledged to irrelevance if relevance means indebtedness to corrupt modernity. What is deemed relevant in theology is likely to be moldy in a few days. I take to heart Paul’s admonition: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we [from the earliest apostolic kerygma] had already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted [par o parelabete, other than what you received from the apostles], let him be eternally condemned [anathema esto]!

So at the start of this month’s focus on the Work of Mercy of proclaiming the gospel we eschew originality, novelty, and creativity and recall that for the Apostle Paul the gospel was a specific message with specific content–not the essence of Christianity but rather the announcement of it, which he lays out soberly and in precise detail in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8:

Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

153 words in all, which means regrettably that there will be no free subscription to the Christian Century for Paul. But if you’re still in the mood for the gospel in ten words or less, here’s my own .zip file effort at remembering what Paul passed on as of first importance:

Gospel: Christ’s sin-atoning death, burial, and witnessed third-day resurrection, fulfilling scripture.

I can only hope that it strikes you as terribly uncreative.

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