(By Nathan Williams)
Rick Holland introduced John tonight and spoke of the recent celebration of John’s 40th anniversary as pastor of Grace Community. He read a couple of quotes from letters from people who wrote John leading up to the celebration honoring John for his steadfastness and authenticity.
John says he will talk personally tonight and share some of the things that were foundational to the church. When he came out of Seminary he said he just wanted to understand the Bible. He wanted to get somewhere where he could study and be disciplined to study and get through the Scriptures. He says his hunger for the Word has never been about preaching as much as it has been about studying the Word and understanding it. This curiosity continued through college and seminary. The driving question in his mind, what does it mean by what it says? He ended up at Grace Church almost by default. He was preaching for Talbot Seminary and preaching camps and churches around the country. He wanted to land somewhere where he could land and study and continue in ministry.
In the years between seminary and coming to Grace John says he knew he needed to understand how the church functioned. He had watched his dad and grandfather in different churches and had gone to a variety of churches in college and seminary. This variety drove him back to Scripture to understand what it had to say about church. He went back to the NT to find out what a biblical ecclesiology looks like.
This led to a Trinitarian picture of what the church should look like. First, the church has to get the gospel right or its not a church. His first Sunday at Grace he spoke on Matthew 7 on false Christians in the church. His second Sunday was on 1 Thess. 1 on what a real church looks like. From the very first two weeks, he has never moved from the commitments of those first two weeks. If there’s anything this church understands it’s the glory of God, the fact that Jesus is Lord and that we are guided by the Spirit. This is from the very beginning and has influenced his ministry the entire time.
40 years and the church hasn’t change in terms of conviction and the authority which we are under. Everything around has changed, but nothing has changed when it comes to our foundations. This is not our church, this is Christ’s church. All we want to know is what Christ commands in His church. We are all at different states of maturity, but are headed in the same direction.
Here are the non-negotiables for the church which have not changed in 40 years of ministry.
1. The absolute authority of Scripture.
This commands everything we do. We expect to have people bring their Bibles to us and ask, “If this is true, how do we explain this verse?” The Bible can stand careful scrutiny because it comes from a single author. We ought to be asked hard questions. We have to be held to the same standard when it comes to the authority of Scripture. We want our people to come to us with questions based on the authority of Scripture. At the very foundation of Grace Church has been the absolute authority of Scripture.
The proper interpretation of Scripture never changes. You can only draw out the true interpretation. If you can’t preach your sermons from 10 years ago, there is something wrong with them. If your sermons are infected with the culture, there is something wrong with them.
2. The church is primarily an assembly of worshipers.
We don’t hear about evangelism in the sense that we are seeking for men to worship God. An invitation to salvation is an invitation to worship Christ. It’s all about worship. The Father is seeking true worshipers. When we all get to Heaven we are going to worship. From the very beginning John says he felt his people needed to understand that it’s all about ascribing glory to Christ. People ask him sometimes, how can you worship when you preach an hour? To which John responds, how can your worship if you don’t? You have to take people down before you can take them up. Transcendent worship comes from a depth of understanding. People don’t like hymns because they don’t understand subtlety.
3. Doctrinal Clarity.
John says nothing drives him more crazy than half answers. We need clarity. A superficial understanding of a profound truth will not do. Clarity translates into conviction. We need to interpret the scripture and then get principles of theology which are supported by all of Scripture. When this happens we get conviction and then this conviction becomes affection. People live and fight for the truth when it reaches the affections. You can’t just get away with clever stories and illustrations.
4. Spiritual Discernment
First Thess 5 says to not quench the spirit. One way to do that is to despise prophetic utterances. Verse 21 is a call for discernment. The Sword of the Spirit is the ability to use the Scripture to deal with whatever assault is coming. If the church will be what it needs to be, the people in the church should be doctrinally clear and have spiritual discernment.
5. Pursue Holiness
We still don’t see a lot of this in the church. Legalism and antinomianism run rampant in the church. John says he was overexposed to hypocritical legalism. This led him to desire true holiness in the church. The NT is very concerned about true holiness. In Matthew 18, Christ’s 1st instruction to the church, he calls for confrontation of sinning believers to pursue holiness. John says he was warned that if he practiced church discipline he would ruin the church.
6. The need to develop godly leaders.
Having grown up in a pastors home, John says he saw the lack of development of godly leaders. Pastors would simply shuffle churches and move on to a bigger church. Paul told Timothy to train and produce leaders in his church. John says his goal was always to not get people to come from other churches, but to provide people for other churches. Producing godly leaders should be happening within the church. There should also be a plurality of godly leaders. An equal calling of men who lead the church, not a hierarchy. Godly men who mediate the headship of Christ in the church. We need to grow those people.
7. We need to be devoted to discipleship.
8. Teach them the unity which is produced by love and affection.
The church is to be marked by love. The one another’s in the NT are the mutual life function of the church.
9. The church needs to be marked by faithful prayer.
10. The church should be marked by evangelism.
We are here for the reason of evangelism. This is the purpose of the church. The whole purpose of Grace Church is evangelism.
John says he is not telling us anything we don’t know. He wrote these things down 40 years ago. Many fads have come and gone, but these things are still the foundation of the church. We don’t want people to walk in and say, “this is cool.” If you just follow the book, nothing changes. Technology changes and we take advantage of it, but there is something wonderful about not grabbing every silly trend which comes by. These trends come by so fast and you just can’t catch up. Why try? Stick to the manual.
It’s a wonderful thing to say, this is the way God says to do it and just keep doing it.