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Stunted Ecclesiology (J.I. Packer)

At the last moment this morning, as I was leaving for the airport at around 4:45AM, I grabbed two items for potential “airplane reading” and boy! Am I glad I did.

I was SO blessed on both of my flights as I read our denominational Christian Education & Publications magazine, Equip for Ministry, and as I re-read last summer’s Journal of Biblical Counseling from the The Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation.

I only have a moment to write now, so I’ll save the CCEF nuggets for a later post … but I wanted to share a few excerpts from one of the CE&P articles on the doctrine of the Church. The article cited three of five reasons that J.I. Packer gives in his book, Ancient and Postmodern Christianity, for the stuntedness of the Church in modern-day.

Here are quick summaries of two of the reasons:

1. The church is too centered on salvation. (This has led to a human-centered theologizing which sets human needs center stage and makes the Trinity’s role simply one of saving individuals. He says “church life is thought out and set forth in terms of furthering people’s salvation rather than on worshiping and glorifying God.”)

2. The parachurch-centeredness is virtually an evangelical trademark. (“Sadly, these agencies of God’s kingdom draw interest, prayer, enthusiasm, and money away from the wider-ranging, slower-moving, less glamorous realities of congregational life, so that the parachurch body comes to have pride of place in supporters’ affections and in effect to be their church.”)

Doesn’t the first one stop you in your tracks? At first I thought, “Huh?! How could the Church be TOO centered on salvation” But then I said, “Amen! That’s exactly right.” Man-centered rather than God-centered is never right.

 

And what about the parachurch-centeredness? What do you think? I TOTALLY agreed with him about it being an “evangelical trademark,” especially as I reflected on my first years of being a Christian.

Thankfully, I WAS taught that it was important to be a member of a local church and, by GRACE, I always quickly submitted myself to the authority of a local congregation whenever I moved as a teenager and young adult. But I was in my late twenties before I was ever taught the doctrine of the Church and what really makes the Church unique WHY it is so important for Believers to be in a local church.

Must run now–but I’ll write more later!

Happy Thursday, everyone!

Much love,
Tara B.