What We Need Before A Building: Clarity

I am excited.
Just a couple of weeks ago, our architect, along with all his people, put their final "stamp" on our plans to build a church building in Bayview. In case you are reading this as someone outside of our church community, the highlights of where we stand are as follows:

Bayview Bible Church is the only lasting church in Bayview, Idaho. It has existed since 1982, and no other attempt to establish a church here (of any kind) has been successful.

Bayview Bible Church has never had a building to call her own. The church has always depended on the graces of others, whether meeting in a private home, a community center, or an old school building.

Some members of the church have been here since the start. I don't know how many prayers have been lifted to God for a church building here since 1982, but it's more than a few. It seems that God has brought us finally to the cusp. We have raised a respectable amount of money, our land is paid for, and we have builders currently pricing out the finer details of the project. Things are a-moving.  

As the prospect of moving dirt and taking down trees approaches, I have spent some time reflecting on the church body. My mind has shifted from asking, "What kind of church building do we want to have" to asking, "What kind of church body should our people be?" See, there are really nice church buildings all over the world that are filled with spiritually dead people. Historic stone churches in New England now fly the demonic rainbow flag and teach a "gospel" of tolerance, not repentance. Many of the grandest church buildings are cathedrals that dot the landscape of Europe but only serve as museums and sit empty on the Lord's Day. How could we work to prevent such a travesty from taking place in Bayview? What should be the state of the people who fill the sanctuary week in and week out?

We need to be the right kind of church body before we have the convenience of a church building.

This post, along with the next two, will lay out three essentials we must have before we move in and start ringing the bell.

Gospel Clarity
This is a short way of saying that we need to make sure we understand and believe the gospel. Once we believe it, we can live according to it. I think it would be naive to assume that every person who gathers with the saints at Bayview Bible Church each Sunday is a truly regenerate person. People come to church for all kinds of reasons (family tradition, social pressure, boredom, curiosity). In my experience, when the culture of a church makes much of the gospel of Jesus Christ, those unregenerate folks in the pew tend to do one of two things: they draw nearer (because God is bringing them to Himself) or they are repelled. They don't want the gospel. They want a clubhouse, or a place to network, or a group of people to tell them they are basically morally good on their own. We cannot be about such things!

We must be a gospel-oriented people. This means that we make very much of the full plan of redemption God designed and employed to save rebels.

When I speak with Christians, especially in the context of their desire to join the church as a member, I usually ask them, "What is the gospel?" You would be surprised at how many adults (even those raised in the church) find the task of articulating the gospel to be very difficult.

Could you do it? Can you tell someone what the good news is in a clear and concise way right now? We must be able to. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16). If it is the gospel that has saved us, should not we make much of this same gospel frequently and clearly? Here is a four-part cheat sheet I like to share with people regarding the basic framework of the gospel:

Creation - Fall - Redemption - Consummation

(Creation): All things, including people, were made by God in heaven. He, therefore, has complete ownership of all things, and we find our meaning and purpose in Him.
 
(Fall): Though we were made to worship God and represent him on the earth, our first parents chose disobedience and rebelled against him, thus inviting alienation from God, physical and spiritual death, and condemnation to themselves and all their descendants.

(Redemption): In His goodness, God prepared a plan of redemption before the ages began. In this plan, he would provide a fitting Savior to come and bring restoration to fallen humans through paying for their sin, granting them his own righteousness, and assuring their future resurrection from the dead by his own resurrection to new life.

(Consummation): What God has started, he will bring to completion. The day will come when all God's people are saved from their sin, the enemies of God will be defeated, sin and death will be no more, and total victory, peace, and security will characterize eternity in the New Heavens and New Earth.

Doctrinal Clarity
The gospel (above) is absolutely central and key to everything. The simple facts of the gospel, though, are not the totality of what the Scriptures contain and teach. The Bible forms our understanding of doctrine - the truths we confess and hold high.

"Doctrine" is a scary and even repulsive word to some, but I want to remind us all that every Christian has doctrine. The question is whether our doctrine is biblical or not, developed or not, historic or novel, grounded or flimsy.

Let's consider the doctrine of God, for example. If all you know about God is that "God is love," but you have thought no deeper about what that means nor searched any further to define your terms, you have a weak doctrine of God. Whose definition of love do we use? The world's? Does "God is love" mean that we can love and marry whomever we like according to our own earthly desires and affections? This is not a made up example, but rather a sad road many have traveled toward destruction. Their tailspin began with weak doctrine.

I want the people of Bayview Bible Church to love doctrine, for their own good and for the integrity of the entire body. Now, this does not mean that everyone must agree on every finer point of doctrine. There are, in many areas of biblical and theological study, opportunities to land in slightly different places than the Christian next to you (take the study of end times, for example). The point is that we all be pursuing truth together, not satisfied with shallow understandings of the excellencies taught in the Holy Bible.

At the very least, Christians should work to get to the point at which they are basically conversant in the following areas: Theology Proper (study of the Trinity); Christology (study of God the Son); Creation; Sin; Soteriology (salvation); Ecclesiology (the church); Eschatology (the end of history and God's final victory).

A great resource I recommend is "Essentials of Reformed Systematic Theology" by Dr. Joel Beeke. By reading 2.5 pages per day, you can finish the book in a year.

Missional Clarity
Lastly, our knowledge of wonderful doctrine will not serve us very well if we are not clear regarding our mission. Why are we here? What are we called to do? Are we simply a group of likeminded individuals, or are we meant to do something that impacts our community for God's glory?

At Bayview Bible Church, we have adopted what is known as the "Great Commission" as our mission statement (taken from Matthew 28:18-20). Our purpose is to make disciples of the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all the commands of Jesus. This is a simple but daunting task, and we are not called (or able) to carry this out all over the world. Our focus is this narrowest part of Idaho that I affectionately refer to as "the chimney". God has placed us in northern Kootenai County and southern Bonner County to make and mature disciples of Jesus through the simple and ordinary means he has provided for us. Knowing this mission and always keeping it front-of-mind matters for us in all we do.

Everything we say and do as a church body must contribute to this mission in some kind of direct and obvious way. Every sermon preached, song sung, event hosted, and conversation held are meant to fall under the banner of our mission - to make and mature disciples in our place. This means that if an opportunity comes along that does not align with the mission, we say "no" to it. This also means that we selectively say "yes" to the best opportunities to support our mission, knowing that our resources will not allow us to say yes to everything.  

This also means that we do not fall into the "seeker sensitive" model made popular in relatively recent history. We are not a church primarily focused on attracting people through programs or gimmicks. We have very few programs, and perhaps we are not clever enough for gimmicks! This may sound appalling to some, but the primary focus of the church is not to appease unbelievers. The church is the Body of Christ, and a church building is where the Body of Christ gathers to benefit from God's ongoing grace to us. Are visitors welcome with us? Of course! Do we expect God to draw unbelievers to Himself as the Body gathers to worship? Yes (Rom. 10). But there is a big difference between a church focused on entertaining the goats and a church focused on feeding the sheep.  

So how do we make and mature disciples? Primarily, our focused goal is to equip households to become Christian training centers. This is the model we see in the Bible. There is ample instruction for fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, and children in the New Testament, and all of it revolves around households learning to live lives pleasing to the Lord day in and day out; not just receiving concentrated instruction for 90 minutes on Sunday (as important as that is). Maybe a household has twelve people in it. Maybe two (or even one). The formula is the same, Christ must be honored and the Bible taught in every home. We believe the adage is true: healthy churches are made of healthy households. This is why we love and encourage family worship. This is why we do not segregate the ages at church, but believe entire households ought to worship together. Rather than overwhelm our people with programs that claim their time four or five nights each week, we would rather see them equipped to journey through their week with the knowledge and conviction to make much of Christ on their own.

There is more to come, and by God's grace, we will begin to see a building take shape in his timing. But what kind of people will we be as we walk into that new space? Let's start with being a people of clarity. We do ourselves and the world no favors if we are not crystal clear regarding who we are, what we are doing, and, most importantly, who our God is and what he is all about.