mgpcpastor's blog

June’s Briefing has come. As a monthly, they aim to be “An International Evangelical Monthly”. In my estimation they succeed. This month the cover theme is ‘Doctrine, Heresies and other Irrelevancies’. What’s inside? Read on…
Each issue beings with the ‘Up Front’ section, which throws up a few opinions from a few different writers to provoke some thinking.
First up is a piece attributed to ‘The Sacred Sandwich‘ entitled ‘http://sacredsandwich.com/archives/2781’ (CT is a famous US magazine for Christians) Having read a few similarly worded posts on responses to the writings of those who opposed the recent decision of the Church of Scotland to allow the installation of a gay minister to proceed makes it especially timely.
Peter Bolt has short piece on Reading the Bible with your ears open. How often do our experiences and theological presuppositions condition us to take a meaning from the Word and not let it speak for itself?
Paul Grimmond has written an article entitled ‘Name ’em and shame ’em? which raises questions about identifying and responding to false teaching. How much time should we give to error? How much publicity should we give it? Should we identify individuals? The local congregational context and the wider public context are addressed. Contemporary culture discourages conflict and disagreement, and these have been powerful tools in error gaining a foothold. Active proclamation of the truth is also absolutely necessary.
Michael Jensen writes ‘In defense of doctrine’. Michael defines Christian Doctrine as ‘the name we give to that activity of the mind that seeks to give a coherent and intelligible articulation of the truth about God and his relationship to the world, drawn from the Scriptures and addressed to our contemporaries. He ably elabourates upon this definition and I appreciate his point about ensuring that unchanging truth is expressed so that different generations can understand it.
Oddly though, I didn’t really discern a defence for the formulation and proclamation of doctrine that flowed from the fact that the Bible itself teaches us that we must systematically understand and teach its content. Doctrine is more that just useful. It is obedience. The life of Jesus was morally and ethically perfect, but his rebuttal of the error that confronted him was not to point to his perfection, it was to point to the Scriptures in a systematic way. So too for Paul and the apostolic cohort.
So, I agree with all Michael said, but wish I’d been able to find a significant other thing that I think needed to be said. (How long till someone points out to me that I’ve missed it?)
Rob Smith writes on ‘Borers in the pulpit’. (Available in full on the Briefing webpage). Pangs of conscience touch me when I read his comments about length, illustrations and applications particularly. Areas to work on. (Length to be a bit more concise if anyone at mgpc is worried).
I’ll probably check out Douglas Wilson’s online book ‘Evangellyfish’ which is reviewed on pages 26 and 27.
Tony Payne spruiks some very useful Matthias Media (publishers of the Briefing) tracts. (Full article also available on the Briefing page)
So, all that and more. A good read, some thought provoked, not too much time drained and ministry fuelled. Another good job by the Briefing team.