We in the Free Grace camp need to think BIG about the future. I am not sure if I mentioned in my post about the Acts 29 conference I went to, but my biggest ache on that day was that all these men were going out to plant churches, and they were all Lordship/Calvinistic.
In my post on Emergent Immersion, Don Reiher made the following comment which I thought was so good, I would post it here:
To be perfectly honest, I cannot stand any of the churches in the area. In the Philadelphia area, there are really no good churches. ALL and I mean ALL the “good” mild lordship Bible believing Baptist churches have gone totally reformed over the last 30 years (yes I was born and raised here). There are a few mild lordship Bible churches, but the vast majority are hardline lordship. Then there are the KJV only, legalistic kind of churches.
I go to one of the “mild” lordship ones (75% of the elders are lordship, the pastor says he is free grace, but still makes me wonder). The music is horrible. I cannot blame people for going to “emergent” churches.
BTW. . . I recently read several books from Dan Kimball on Emergent issues, Emerging Worship
, and The Emerging Church
. I think his material is much better than McLaren’s.
My point, is, my heart aches for the 20s/30s today. When I was that age, there were still some decent churches around. I learned so much doctrine in church, that when I went to Moody in 1979, I already had read most of the books for my classes. It was simply building on what I already knew. Nowadays, I think people are hungry, and will take whatever scraps of food people like Piper throw at them.
People seem to think that you have to throw away all the teaching of the great men of the last century because it doesn’t match with the Westminster Confession. They think they are going back to their roots, by going back to the Reformation, rather than going back to the Bible.
I think we in the Free Grace movement should start putting together some of these big mega-conferences and provide some good worship bands, and dish out a good diet of sound teaching, from a free grace perspective. We need to provide an example of what God is like, and what missions are like, from a NON-Calvinistic, Non-Reformed perspective. In my opinion, their perspective of God is puny compared to what God is really like. Their perspective of the Gospel and missions is a massive confusion, dried up and withered, compared to the clear, fresh streams of water the more Free Grace type folks can provide for them.
I don’t think we could get 20,000 college people, but I bet we could get several thousand. More importantly, I think God would honor it. We in the Free Grace camp need to think big, and think “next generation.
I agree with this 100%. Thank you Don!
