Michael S. Foster's Weblog

Cyprian Echoed in Calvin Regarding the Church

I recently wrote a post entitled, The Local Church: A Necessity, not an Option. In it I said that John Calvin often echoed the quote of Cyprian, "You cannot have God as your Father if you do not have the church as your mother." A good friend sent one of these occasions in which Calvin employed this great quote. Here it is:

Shut up as we are in the prison house of our flesh, we have not yet attained angelic rank. God, therefore, in his wonderful providence accommodating himself to our capacity, has prescribed a way for us, though still far off, to draw near to him. (And that way is the) church, into whose bosom God is pleased to gather his sons, not only that they may be nourished by her help and ministry as long as they are infants and children, but also that they may be guided by her motherly care until they mature and at last reach the goal of faith. "For what God has joined together, it is not lawful to put asunder,"  so that, for those to whom He is Father the church may also be Mother. (Institutes, IV.1.1, "The Necessity of the Church.")

A Lesson from Ernest Shackleton

Ernest Shackleton, the famed Antarctic explorer, was alleged to place the following advertisement in a London paper to recruit a team for one of his expeditions:

"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success."

It is said that this ad was met by more than enough men to fill his team. In other words, Shackleton actually had to turned men away. This amazes and excites me! As a church planters, we can offer men a journey just as hazardous, just as difficult, and millions of times more rewarding! I think the key to recruiting a team is to cast a compelling and honest vision of a mission worth giving your life. Of course, I'm being a bit simplistic. I know. However, I think most church planters fail to recruit a team for this very reason.

Raising a Reader

My son, Hudson, is becoming obsessed with books! We've already got him reading his "Bible" in the form of The Big Picture Story Bible by David Helm. He loves any story involving animals and the moon. Discerning Reader has a good review of it right here.

A Brief Philosophy of Ministry

If I was forced to give a quick overview of my philosophy of ministry, I would simply utter this great Martin Luther quote:

"The truth of the Gospel is the principle article of all Christian doctrine. . . Most necessary is that we know this article well, teach it to others, and beat it into their heads continually.”

Everyone needs the gospel. Non-Christians need the gospel. Christians need the gospel. New and old saints a like need the gospel. No growth, no progress, and no victory of any sort comes apart from the gospel. Therefore, we must become a broken record that repeats gospel, gospel,GOSPEL! I have learned that if people don't accuse you of being simplistic and ask for something other than gospel you have yet to make it the principle article of your message! They will tire of your gospel preaching because they desire a message that will give them a shot of some form of works-based righteousness. Don't give in. Forsake originality and don't yield to itching ears. They need gospel! Keep it central in your philosophy of ministry and you will see fruit well-pleasing to God.

12:01 AM

I'm going with a few guys to the 12:01 AM showing of The Dark Knight. I've been eagerly waiting for this movie since end of the Batman Begins! A review is to follow.

The Local Church: A Necessity, not an Option

If church planting and pastoral ministry has taught me anything about American cultural influence on the gospel, it has taught me that our gospel has been severely synchronized to the idol of individualism. This has been clearly illustrated to me time and time again by a numerous amount of Christians who have an out right disregard for the centrality of the local church in the lives of individual believers. They act as if belonging to a church is an option on par with belonging to a gym. Not so. When I speak to others on this subject you'll often here me give the following quote from Cyprian, often employed by Augustine and Calvin: "You cannot have God as your Father if you do not have the church as your mother."

I love this quote because it powerfully rattles the spines of lone ranger Christians who so carelessly cast off God's provision of the local church. Dr. David Calhoun, a professor at Covenant Theological Seminary, explains the meaning of this quote in one of his lectures in Ancient and Medieval Church History:

It has also been asked, what did Cyprian mean when he said that you cannot have God as your Father if you do not have the church as your mother? Cyprian and Augustine would always qualify that by saying, "ordinarily." I think they viewed some possibility of this not being true in rare cases. Generally, where there is the church a person must be part of that church to be a Christian. You cannot really be a Christian all by yourself. Part of the definition of what a Christian is is a person in fellowship with God's people on earth. So this was their way of discouraging any individual or private Christianity. Calvin also held that, but I think Calvin as well as Augustine thought it was possible -- possible -- for a person to be a Christian without being a church member, but not ordinarily. And it is certainly possible for church members not to be Christians. Calvin believed that, as did Augustine and probably Cyprian as well. This is a rather difficult quotation to understand, especially for us Protestants in the West. We Protestants tend to diminish the role of the church, to see it as not so important. I think that is a mistake. Then when we hear a quotation like this it startles us that you could say that you have to be a member of the church to have God as your Father. Of course, we may be thinking of being a member of a particular, local church, and that was true back then, too. But when there was one church you were either in the church or not in the church, and Christians were in the church.

You can find the entire transcript of the lecture here.

All Gone: Starting from Scratch

To quote my toddler, "All gone."

I meant to clean my blog up a little but instead I deleted everything. Over 650 post are gone. Crap. I shouldn't be trusted with technology. This is why I pay people to change my oil for me. Well, I've got a clean slate for sure.

I want to apologize ahead of time because I'll be reposting some of the stuff I've got saved in Word over the next few weeks. I'll probably just use this as an opportunity to do a complete overhaul on my blog.

To quote my toddler, "All gone."

I meant to clean my blog up a little but instead I deleted everything. Over 650 post are gone. Crap. I shouldn't be trusted with technology. This is why I pay people to change my oil for me. Well, I've got a clean slate for sure.

I want to apologize ahead of time because I'll be reposting some of the stuff I've got saved in Word over the next few weeks. I'll probably just use this as an opportunity to do a complete overhaul on my blog.