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I was invited a week ago to bring a message on "Cultivating Humility" for the seminary students at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary. I enjoyed the visit and the opportunity to think on the subject of humility, though I am no expert on it! Let me share a couple of key points from my message to the students.

First, I noted that by obeying 1 Peter 5:7 (casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you) we demonstrate humility under the mighty hand of God. To the extent that we keep our cares to ourselves, we are showing that much pride, as if we can handle all our problems apart from God's provision.

Second, I mentioned how extensively humility and its opposite, pride, show up in our systematic study of God's Word. These ideas touch the doctrines of sin, Satan, salvation, sanctification, the church, Jesus Christ, and the Triune God. Pride is sometimes called the very essence of sin; Satan sinned through pride; salvation rescues us from our own pride and requires humility to receive; sanctification is, in part, about the gradual removal of pride; the church is often upset by Diotrephes types who love to have first place; Jesus is the best example of humility; and God hates pride.

Third, I explained how God will exalt the lowly. The Bible mentions in many places how God will bring down the proud and lift up the humble. But He does not lift up the humble to the place that the proud would like to have. Rather, 1 Peter 5:5 says just how God will exalt the humble—He does so by giving them grace. We don't need the fame or fortune that a self-centered proud person wants. Humble believers have the grace of God in salvation, sanctification, eternal life, a future dwelling with God, and all the other grace-based blessings that accompany our salvation. We don't want to take the low road to things that proud people want; rather we will receive exaltation by being given the very grace of God. What else could we really need?!

Finally, I emphasized that we must be diligent to exercise humility in all our relationships, whether toward our pastors (1 Peter 5:5), toward everyone (1 Peter 5:5), and especially toward God (1 Peter 5:6). –MAP

Tri-Lakes Baptist Church is hosting a Church Ministry Seminar on Saturday February 25 from 9am to 3pm. They have graciously invited our church, and a number of others as well. It is geared toward local church workers, such as Sunday school teachers, not just pastors. Please find more information on it by clicking the flyer below.

Some months back 20/20 did a report on so-called "IFB" churches (Independent, Fundamental, Baptist Churches) regarding allegations of sexual abuse and cover-ups by some leaders in those churches. The scandal in the Catholic church continues to rage on. Then there was the Penn State debacle with Jerry Sandusky that took down head coach Joe Paterno. What could be next?

Well, a couple of stories right here in Ann Arbor have hit the news lately. The first happened at the University of Michigan Medical Center. The second, at a local elementary school. Here are some links if you want to read up on them:

• University of Michigan hospital situation
• Eberwhite Elementary lawsuit and follow-up article

Just this morning another story of the same sordid sort was in the news in the Los Angeles schools.

To add further evidence of the massive problem, the CDC recently reported that one in five women in the U.S. have been raped (page 20 of this PDF report).

As I reviewed all these facts, a few thoughts came to mind. First, what in the world is going on? The frequency of these incidents, in all kinds of venues, is ridiculous. Our society is so debased. Second, I have small children. What do I do in order to help protect them? Third, what are best practices for our church and schools to prevent and to handle such cases? Fourth, I noticed that even though the religious institutions have taken a beating in the press, the problem is far more widespread than just some perverts in churches. Big secular institutions are being hit with this as well.

One common thread in many of these cases is the delay in reporting to the police. That is a bad mistake, and one that we need to resolve not to repeat. In some of the cases mentioned above, authorities were contacted, but they might not have been the right authorities. If we are in "management" and something like this comes to our attention, we cannot hide it, shelve it, or ignore it. The people below us on the authority ladder may not know exactly what to do, or may be apprehensive about getting involved. We can exercise appropriate leadership by being actively involved in reporting the incident and encouraging them to be as well. A call to the police with the person who has told us of the incident would be a good start. Hopefully we will find out about the problem in a timely manner.

We must do things right in the sight of the Lord, as well as in the sight of men (2 Corinthians 8:21).

Direct mailings are not a panacea marketing solution for churches. They lack a personal connection with the recipient, but they can serve well to introduce a church to a large part of the population in a city. That is what we wanted to do late last year.

We did one mailing a couple of summers back that did not turn out very well, as far as cost and response. So we did a bit more research and made a better attempt the second time. This is far from a "best practices" document, but here are some things we found.

Step 1. Decide on what size piece you will use in your mailing. We decided on a 9x6 inch card, with color printing on both sides. There is such a dizzying array of possibilities as far as size of the piece and postage costs that it is helpful to just pick a size and run with it. This reduces the universe of possibilities to a manageable size.

Step 2. You need to get a sample card layout that will help you know how much space you actually have. You can contact me for a PDF file sample, or obtain one from your mailing service provider.

Step 3. It is important to think about your target audience in your crafting of the mailing to them. We decided that we wanted to let new movers know about the church. This told our mailing list provider how to extract data from their databases, and it guided us as to what to write on the mailing. If we were mailing to new college students, the mailing would look different. Of it it was a saturation mailing, to every address on many routes in the city, that would look different as well.

Step 4. Once the size and layout is settled, along with the target audience, you can begin to figure out what will go on the card. We designed the text and features of the mailing with all of the above things in mind.

Step 5. We decided to have the design of the card done "in house" because we have some talented people in that area. You might not. Likely your mailing service provider can provide help, or recommend someone who can. After several iterations using Photoshop, and going back and forth on the exact dimensions of where the address and stamp and so forth would go, we had a complete design.

Step 6. Decide how many you can print/mail. Our mailing service provider could tell us the cost to print X number of cards, and how much the mailing and postage fees would be. We went back and forth with them before settling on printing and mailing 10,000 cards. This number fit our budget. The total per piece price (print, mailing list, and postage) was 22.4 cents per card.

We thought that was a very reasonable cost given the number of homes we would be able to reach. We could not walk to that many homes in a reasonable amount of time using the volunteers in our small church. Beside the problem of limited resources, door-to-door work in our area (and in much of our American situation) has been ruined by the cults. We believe that we have to be more creative about reaching folks and the mailing was one way to do it.

The mailing was sent in November of 2011. Did we see any results? Frankly, not many. Some folks contacted us with address information that was bad. This was itself an opportunity to have an interaction with those folks. One person on an anti-junk-mail crusade contacted us, so we had an opportunity to minister to that person through correspondence. We are not aware of anyone who has come to the church through the mailing. But then again, this was the first attempt. Mailing has to be done consistently and regularly for it to have an impact in a community.

We plan to use mailings again in the future to keep our community aware of our ministry and to get the gospel into many homes. We have a Great Commission responsibility to do what we can with the resources God has given us, and this is one way among others for us to discharge that responsibility. Lots of personal invitations and flyers in common gathering places in Ann Arbor are other ways we use to reach the community.

Now, here comes a tough question. What about a common-law member who is errant in doctrine or practice? Can you exercise church discipline on such a person? The common answer I have heard is, "no" because they are not members, have not agreed to be bound by the "terms and conditions," and thus they can sue you if you publicize their sin to the church.

That is a practical answer, but it is not Biblical. I do not see in Matthew 18:15-17 where official membership is part of the equation. "And if he refuses to hear them, and if he has signed a membership application, tell it to the church..." is not what the text says. The text is talking about a brother. If I could be allowed to make a distinction between a member and a believer, I would make it here. Practically there are situations where you have to be able to treat the errant brother as a believer even if he is not a member. Indeed, we share more in common with members of our church than generic believers, but we do share some things with believers, especially those who are attending our church. And one of those things we share is a responsibility to carry out the Biblical command of accountability through discipline, whether the person "signed on the dotted line" or not.

All this was a factor in the origination of my "common-law" concept because I do not think it is appropriate for a person to be loosely joined to a church, not a member, and think that they can walk away any time things get a little sticky. Such situations are all too frequent. For example, person A is a member, and has abandoned any attendance at the meetings of the church. Person B is a non-member, but was attending all along as well, and then stopped. In the church meeting, we "discipline" person A by dropping him/her from the membership roll. Another member asks, "What about person B?" Good question. Person B is guilty of the same behavior, but B is treated differently just because his/her name was not on the list.

But if common-law members are warned ahead of time that they will be treated as members on the discipline side of the equation, that might encourage them to consider the whole package of membership so they can partake of the benefits as well as the accountability aspect of it.

Our local church membership process is quite simple. We essentially ask the candidate to publicly answer four questions: Are you saved? Have you been baptized by immersion since you believed? Do you agree to subscribe to the doctrine and constitution of the church? And are you conducting yourself generally as a Christian? If a credible "yes" is given to all four questions, the church votes to receive the person into membership. Actually, our membership class explains all of this in great detail in four sessions, followed by a time of sharing testimonies with the church board.

To those common-law members who may object to this simple process of membership, here are some thoughts: Isn't checking up on a person's salvation testimony a wise thing to do? Shouldn't we safeguard the gospel and the local church by asking a few select questions? Church discipline is a safeguard for the church after a member has entered; the membership questions form a safeguard for the church on the incoming side. Both are fallible processes, but shouldn't we make some attempt through a formal process? If the church membership is asked to vote in order to add a member, shouldn't they be assured that the person applying for membership is in agreement with them on the basics? Such agreement would have to be publicly testified for the church to accept it.

So, what should we do about those who are not willing to publicly give a positive response to these four questions? Some people languish in that state so long that a third category like a common-law member seems practical, even if not ideal. Christians are not supposed to somehow float along with no connection to a church family. The fact is that these people share in many things of the church--worshiping, hearing the preaching of the Word, giving, sharing meals, doing mundane tasks around the church, their names are in the church directory, etc. Some things they cannot do, of course. The kicker for me is that as a pastor I feel some responsibility toward them, and I actually exercise shepherd oversight and care for them as much as possible. So, they are kind-of-members but not full members. Maybe they are being silly, or even sinful, in their refusal to commit to membership, but then again there are a lot of other ways our official members can be silly or sinful and the pastor still shepherds them.

In my experience, people have a few reasons (excuses?) for refusing church membership: 1) A desire not to commit or not to be subjected to certain restrictions or conditions in the church; 2) A bad experience with a previous church; 3) An objection to membership on grounds of principle.

Examples for each case, written from the first person perspective:

1) A church carries a heavy load of debt and I do not want to tie myself into that debt load and ethical responsibility to care for the debt. Or, I feel that certain conditions of membership are too restrictive or legalistic.

2) A previous church in my life burned me when the church went down a wrong path. The church lacked integrity in its selection of a pastor or other business matters. I do not want to be officially associated with or involved in that kind of situation again.

3) I do not believe the New Testament gives explicit instructions about how local church membership is to be done or even that there is such a concept. Or, Once I become a believer, I am automatically a member of the church through which I was saved.

I am not justifying any of these reasons; I'm just saying they are thoughts in people's minds. Maybe the non-member wants the best of both worlds by basically being a member but not committing to membership; or the leadership wants the best of both worlds by counting the person as a member most of the time but when things get difficult they can simply write off the person without any public mention of it. Some of my Baptist readers may be flummoxed by this line of thought, but it is real. If you are a person who grew up in churches that do not have a substantive membership, or do not promote it (ahem, some Bible churches), or if you are very strongly opposed to extra-Biblical structures, you know what I am talking about.

What is a common-law member? When I came up with the term, the idea that I had was this: a common-law member is a person who regularly attends our church, who does not have another church, who supports the church financially, who is not disgruntled with the church, but for whatever reason refuses to submit to a simple process of church membership.

It is akin to a common law marriage, which Princeton's WordNet defines as "a marriage relationship created by agreement and cohabitation rather than by ceremony." There is no official ceremony, but the people agree to live together as married. With a common-law member, there is a level of agreement to participate in church together, even if there is not full agreement on the part of the membership or church leadership in the sense that they are not the happiest with the arrangement, but are content to "live with it."

More later...

It is still kind of amazing to me that believers can take money and turn it into ministry in their own church, or in global missionary efforts. Useless paper dollars can be transformed into the eternal salvation of human souls. Wow.

Recently the Lord has allowed our church to begin regularly supporting a new missionary family in addition to the others that we have already been supporting. Our philosophy is not to support dozens and dozens of missionaries for small change every month. Rather, we want to have a select team and offer each family more substantial financial support.

One of the other things that we were able to do to open 2012 was decide that we will temporarily increase all of our missionary support by 1/3. So, for the first half of 2012, instead of sending X to each missionary for the 6 month period, we are sending 1.33 * X. We decided to do this in light of the hard times that they are facing.

I hesitated to write the previous paragraph, mainly because I don't want to be seen as tooting our own horn. And, I am supposed to preach a message on humility at DBTS in a couple of weeks! But I decided that this is not an individual-type thing where pride is puffing up an individual sinner. Instead, this is a church-type thing, and as a challenge to our brothers and sisters in like-minded churches, we think it is good to raise the level of support to the cause of missions rather than to cut it. Even Paul offered a financial challenge to his readers based on the generosity of other churches (2 Corinthians 8:1-3).

Obviously, the recent state of the economy in Michigan may not allow everyone to rise to our challenge, but there are some churches who probably could. Consider some of our "tough" times in light of currency fluctuations and recessions in other countries and reduced support levels from US churches to missionaries overseas, and you can imagine the pinch some of them are feeling. Just this morning, a missionary wrote how their mission told them last week that they would be having an increase in their health insurance premiums. Surprise surprise! But this increase is not accompanied by an increase in support from their churches!

We need to remember that the workers are worthy of their hire. They are not rightly in the work for the "hire," but they do need some "hire" to stay in the work.

The first sentence of Dr. Bauder's article "Let Me Tell You How to Vote" certainly captured my attention. It said, "Churches have no business addressing political questions." After reading the article a couple of times, I still was perplexed. Perhaps, I thought, he has simply made a too-broad statement that is inconsistent with the rest of his article. Maybe he purposefully said it with the intention of returning to the issue later to clarify things. Maybe he means something different by "political questions" than I do when I use that general phrase. Maybe the church is not supposed to address political questions, but the Christian academician is permitted to do so.

The article is helpful, and one of the ways it was helpful was that it prompted me to think on the issues. Generally I agree with the principles Dr. Bauder puts forth. I differ in where I draw the line as far as principle and application, and this affects my summary statement. That is, churches have to address political questions because those questions often have some connection to Christian morality.

So...here are some of my thoughts.

I wondered if we would be having the discussion in the way that Bauder frames it if we did not have to concern ourselves with 501(c)(3) constraints. In other words, if we were given totally free religious speech, would we just "spit it out" and avoid the circumlocutions?

When I say "circumlocutions," I am thinking of the ways in which Bauder frames his eight biblical concerns such that they are effectively recommendations on "who to [not] vote for" even though he writes in terms of "general principles." If you preach Bauder's list, most people are going to understand your message in light of the current political situation and candidates. Consider some of his concerns and how they would be "heard" by the contemporary audience:

1. Reputation for Integrity - Don't vote for Newt Gingrich.

2. Right to Life - Don't vote for Barack Obama, and maybe not for Mitt Romney either, and possibly not for Ron Paul either.

3. Rule of Law - Don't vote for Barack Obama, and maybe not for some of the other candidates because of their weak stand on the immigration issue.

4. Restraint of Evil - Don't vote for Barack Obama.

5. Respect for Property - Don't vote for Barack Obama or most other Democrats, nor many establishment Republicans.

6. Recovery of Moral Responsibility - ditto.

7. Recognition of Israel - Certainly don't vote for Barack Obama, and probably not for Ron Paul either.

8. Responsible Use of Nature - Don't vote for most everyone on the left.

Now, as I said, I am in almost 100% agreement with Bauder's principles. However, in a sin-cursed world it is tough to apply them with 100% consistency. Maybe Rick Santorum is left standing after all these principles are applied, but maybe not. Couldn't we just say what we mean in terms of contemporary application instead of talking around it?

Another thought on the point about integrity comes to mind. Bauder says "a man who will violate his marriage oath is one who will violate his oath of office." He does not say "a man who has violated his marriage oath in the past is necessarily of the same character now and will certainly violate his oath of office in the future." All men are inconsistent in some ways. Some would violate their oath toward their spouse but not toward their job. Others maybe have learned their lesson and do not want to repeat their past mistakes.

Another thought: I would add a ninth biblical concern to Bauder's list.

9. Reduction of Debt by Paying it Off Fully. Proverbs 22:7 tells us that the borrower is slave to the lender, and Psalm 37:21 says that the wicked borrow and do not repay. The United States is currently a slave nation as well as a wicked nation in this regard. The continual piling up of yearly deficits into the national debt is morally wrong. The weak dollar policy that causes inflation, lessening the value of debt that is paid back on the same face value, is morally wrong as well. A default on sovereign debt would be morally wrong. And the surreptitious reduction of the purchasing power of savings held by our citizens by means of that same inflation is also morally wrong.

The point about debt, then, brings me to my final thought. Bauder makes the popular appeal to downplay purely economic issues in one's decision to vote (the idea is "don't worry about your pocketbook, vote for life/integrity/property rights/etc.!"). The problem is that many economic issues are also moral issues. Most of the concerns enumerated by Bauder are not only spiritual concerns; they are also economic concerns; and they are also political concerns, at least in the common sense of the term "political." Since the Bible gives us wisdom for all areas of life, it does so also for political questions. In preaching the whole counsel of God, we will necessarily run into passages that have applications that deal with political questions. It is true that principles must guide our decisions as to how to vote, but these principles at some point have to come down to the level of application in answer to the question "who to vote for," or at least who not to vote for, as well. —MAP