Tag Archives: baptism

Feb 6 2009

Blog Traffic to Grace Digest


I posted my first blog post on June 29, 2006. It was 4 paragraphs and received one comment. As of today, and 782 posts later, I have learned some things about by blogging.

  • For each post I publish I get about 5 comments. Some posts get no comments and some get many comments.
  • My readers come from most of the states and from about 20 foreign countries. I have regular readers who live in Australia, England, Germany, and Africa. I was most surprised that someone in China sometimes reads what I write.
  • The busiest day for traffic to Grace Digest was 222 page views. The average for ’07 was 21, for ’08 it was 30, and so far in ’09 the average is 55 views each day.
  • If high visitors numbers is what I want I know how to get those big numbers. Tags (key words) like “a cappella”, “instruments in worship”, “coC unity”, “restoration movement”, get large interest and blog hits. Words like “Jesus”, “Christ”, “grace”, “salvation”, “forgiveness”, and “peace of god” get far fewer hits.
  • I am very likely addicted to blogging!

In view of the above facts about my blogging on Grace Digest, what subjects should I choose? And, more importantly, why do it at all?

First, blogging is a purely selfesh outlet for a frustrated writer and preacher/teacher. I seem to learn more when I write as I learn from God’s book and the school of life. I would write much of the same content even if I could not share it. Writing is a personal need fulfilled.

Without regard for the big hit numbers, I intend to share my heart with my readers. My first desire is to encourage every reader to consider the claims of the good news about Jesus and to trust him alone as the only basis of their standing with God. 

I am always learning. I try to, on purpose, approach my open Bible with an open heart and mind, ready for it to shape my thinking and by it’s truth to shape my life. A constant pursuit of objective truth is a passion for me. And, sharing those truths with others is also a very high priority. I know of no better way to accomplish that end than blogging.

I would be lying if I said the big numbers don’t matter to me, they do. But I refuse to taylor what I write with a view of having a large number of readers. So, I will continue to share what moves me at the moment and let the numbers be only numbers.

Part of my desire to continue blogging (apart from selfeshness) is fueled by the wonderful reports from people who have been helped in some way by reading my stuff. Recently, over the span of about 20 days, I received emails and other communications from several people who had read someting here that helped them to understand a part of the Bible better, had some theological question answered, expressed a desire to trust Christ more completely and be more devoted to him. And, I had 3 requests to use something I had written as a part of a sermon, lesson, and in one case a communion meditation.

It is encouraging to be validated by others who are more learned, more experienced, and widely trusted as men and women of God. Two years ago I think, 5 of the presenters at the Pepperdine Lectureships and 3 or 4 presenters at the Tulsa Soulwinning Workshop had recently made kind, encouraging remarks concerning something I had written. I am humbled.

I have also had several odd, nasty, hateful comments that I chose not to publish. Religeous zealots are often furious when you point out their hypcocicy and unbelief. Some folks are offended by truth while others embrace it and are healed by it. That is just the way it is.

As I complete this post and publish it I will shamelessly use some of those traffic generating “tags”.

John 6:40
Royce

Jan 23 2009

coC loosing churches and members


The headline in the latest on line edition of the Christian Chronicle is “Church in America in decline”. According to the article churches of Christ numbers are the lowest since 1980 when such stats began to be compiled. The Chronicle states:

“In the newly released directory, 21st Century Christian identifies 12,629 a Capella Churches of Christ with 1,578,281 adherents nationwide.

Those figures represent 526 fewer churches and 78,436 fewer people in the pews than just six years ago.” 

I’m sure there are a number of reasons for this decline. One that I believe is at the heart of the problem is this. The time frame referenced in the article closely corresponds to the birth and expansion of  the Internet, the “Information Age” if you will.

For most of it’s history, Restoration Movement congregations, especially churches of Christ, received their doctrine/theology almost completely from the guy in the pulpit, from elders, and both groups gathered most of their instruction in truth from “brotherhood”journals. The sphere of the church (coC) was relatively small. A few members visited lectureships, summer camps and work shops, but there too, they likely got a recycled version of what they had already heard. Most all of the information available was exclusively coC.

Suddenly, in the span of a few short years, almost every family had a PC connected to the world wide web. The information available was astounding! Now, those same folks who had lead sheltered lives religiously were now exposed to other views of Bible teaching and theology. The “brotherhood” journals which had been the principal source of instruction from outside the local community was in a very short time relegated to only fraction of what the family on the pew read.

As church members have been exposed to more views, more Bible teaching, they were challenged to rethink why they believed some of what they had been taught and began to think for themselves. The more isolated a group is the easier it is to keep them under the iron thumb of legalism and error.

The sectarianism of the past several decades is regularly being rejected and more and more coC members are embracing the ideals and passion of the RM founders like Alexander Campbell who coined the phrase “Christians only, but not the only Christians”. Tens of thousands of people have studied themselves out of sectarian bondage and legalism and are now grace filled and grace giving people. Some of them are in more “progressive” churches, some have gone to some other brand, and some are toughing it out where they are, but their children are long gone and aren’t coming back.

Another reason for the decline is the glaring foolishness of people like 21st Century Christian’s brilliant idea to purge churches like North Richland Hills from the directory because they have instruments “in one or more services”. They are evidently no longer considered a church of Christ because they don’t tow the party line. This is exactly the kind of narrow minded, shoddy Bible scholarship many people are running away from in large numbers.

Meanwhile the church fathers are wringing their hands trying to figure what the problem is. I have a news flash! Churches that are growing by winning new converts are making a big fuss about Jesus! So long as churches of Christ major on other topics and minor on Jesus they will continue to swirl down to extinction and they deserve to do so.

I have looked at sermon topics of dozens and dozens of churches on their websites and a Capella singing, the church of Christ, baptism, the church of Christ, the error of the denominations, the church of Christ, and many other topics take precedence over teaching about the Christ.

Will there be a revival of love for Jesus Christ and the desire to be in unity with believers of every stripe which was the plea and ideal of the early Receptionist’s? It isn’t looking good. The vast majority of those who fill the pews in churches of Christ on Sunday morning are like me. They have gray hair, are either retired or near retirement age, and they are not bothered very much by the sound of young children in the assembly. Two generations from today, perhaps three, and most of those folks will be buried. Who will replace them? I hope revival comes, but I am not hopeful.

Royce


Sep 30 2008

“….from the mouths of the Restoration fathers”


I first posted the following quotes in April of last year. As I read them again this morning I was compelled to publish them again. They represent the heart of good, godly men, and the heart of the foundation of the Restoration Movement. I can only imagine what angst these good men would know if they could see one group of church of Christ folks branding another group “lost” because of how they worship God. And just as dissapointing, the common teaching that only church of Christ folks are saved.

After carefully reading the following quotes, a few things come to mind. First, these men, like you and me, were not infallible. Each of them spoke for themselves, and none of them should be given the level of trust we give God’s word. However, these statements were made by good, proven men, who refelct lives given completely to God and to the good news about Jesus. The point of this post is not an attempt to make a case for a particular doctrine, or for or against a coC distinctive. My purpose is to remind by dear friends and brothers that when we appeal to the history and tradition of the Resotration Movement for some of what divides us we are sorely wrong.

The fathers speak:

THOMAS CAMPBELL wrote: “We speak to all our Christian brethren, however diversified by professional epithets, those accidental distinctions which have happily and unscripturally diversified the professing world. By our Christian brethren, then, we mean . . . ‘All that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, throughout the churches.’ ” (Millennial Harbinger, Series 1, May 1844, p. 199.)

ALEXANDER CAMPBELL wrote: “But who is a Christian? I answer, every one that believes in his heart that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God; repents of his sins, and obeys him in all things according to his measure of knowledge of his will. . . . I cannot make any one duty the standard of Christian state or character, not even immersion into the name of Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and [cannot] in my heart regard all that have been sprinkled in infancy without their own knowledge and consent, as aliens from Christ and the well-grounded hope of heaven. Should I find a Pedobaptist [one baptized as an infant] more intelligent in the Christian Scriptures, more spiritually-minded and more devoted to the Lord than a Baptist, or one immersed on a profession of the ancient faith, I could not hesitate a moment in giving the preference of my heart to him that loveth most. Did I act otherwise, I would be a pure sectarian, a Pharisee among Christians.” (Millennial Harbinger, 1837, p. 411-412.)

Again, ALEXANDER CAMPBELL wrote: “The case is this: When I see a person who would die for Christ: whose brotherly kindness, sympathy, and active benevolence knows no bounds but his circumstances: whose seat in the Christian assembly is never empty; whose inward piety and devotion are attested by punctual obedience to every known duty; whose family is educated in the fear of the Lord; whose constant companion is the Bible; I say, when I see such a one ranked amongst heathen men and publicans, because he never happened to inquire, but always took it for granted that he had been scripturally baptized, and that [ranking] too, by one greatly destitute of all these public and private virtues, whose chief or exclusive recommendation is that he has been immersed, and that he holds a scriptural theory of the gospel, I feel no disposition to flatter such a one, but rather to disabuse him of his error. And while I would not lead the most excellent professor in any sect to disparage the least of all the commandments of Jesus, I would say to my immersed brother as Paul said to his Jewish brother who gloried in a system which he did not adorn: ‘Sir, will not his uncircumcision, or unbaptism, be counted to him for baptism? and will he not condemn you, who, though having the literal and true baptism, yet dost transgress or neglect the statues of your King?’” (Millennial Harbinger, 1837, p. 565.)

BARTON W. STONE wrote: “My opinion is that immersion is the only baptism. But shall I therefore make my opinion a term of Christian fellowship? If in this case I thus act, where shall I cease from making my opinions terms of fellowship? I confess I see no end. . . . Let us still acknowledge all to be brethren, who believe in the Lord Jesus, and humbly and honestly obey him, as far as they know his will, and their duty.” (Christian Messenger, 1831, p. 19, 21.)

WALTER SCOTT wrote: “Christians who have not been baptized for the remission of their sins! Strange! Whoever read of such Christians in God’s Word? But the times are peculiar, and as faith does purify the life of a man, and as the man of pure life and pure heart is accepted of God and may receive the Spirit, therefore we must allow, that there are now a days Christians in heart and life who have not been baptized for the remission of their sins. What evidences, then, have they for themselves and others, that they are possessed of the Spirit? None but the moral graces which have already been quoted, viz: love, joy etc.; they don’t need to depend upon an opinion; they feel within themselves and show to those without them by their fruits, that they have been made partakers of the Spirit of Christ.” (The Evangelist, No. 2, Vol. 2, Feb 4, 1833, p. 49.)

ISAAC ERRETT wrote: “There are myriads of godly people, who are in error on baptism, of whom, nevertheless, we are compelled to say, ‘They are not of the world.’ To urge against these a strict and literal application of passages which are meant to mark the distinction between the church and the world, and thus to attempt to thrust them out from our Christian love, among heathens and reprobates, is, in our view, a grievous wrong. As it is a question growing out of the times — a question not directly known in form in the Scriptures, it must be settled in the light of well-established Christian principles, and not by a severly literal construction of Scripture language, spoken with reference to other classes of persons, and another condition of things.
The saints were carried captive into Babylon and remained there a long time. The church lost her primitive purity and excellency. . . . Yet God had a people in Babylon. . . . Now our good brethren may be able to prove to their own satisfaction that all these people of God in Babylon were immersed believers; and they may point, here and there, to bands of religionists, who kept up a protest against the corruptions of Rome. But it strikes us that a people could not come out of Babylon who were not in Babylon; and immersed believers, walking in the light, would have been hard to find within Babylon’s limits! But there was a people of God in Babylon. We incline to the opinion that most of them were unimmersed. They were in many respects an erring people — in regard to baptism they certainly were in great error; but they ‘feared God and wrought righteousness’ and, — what seems as great a stumbling block to many good men now as it was to Peter, until the trammels of sectarianism were knocked off — ‘in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with him.’” (Millennial Harbinger, 1862, p.120.)

Sep 29 2008

BBQ, Bluegrass, and Baptisms


Wednesday a week ago, Carol and I drove to Atlanta where we met my brother David and his family for a nice dinner and a great visit at Outback. On Thursday we drove to Hendersonville (one of the prettiest towns on the planet) to the home of Don and Harriet Yelton. Don and Carol are WFR Relief! They of course had tons of work to do because of the demands of the recent storms and the famine in Africa.

On Friday Don and I had a great morning just visiting, having coffee, watching the white squirrels feed and play outside the kitchen windo, and talking fishing. In the afternoon we fished the Davidson river with a guide and caught some trout. This was my first trout fishing with a fly rod. What fun! That evening Carol spoke at a retreat for the ladies of the Hendersonville church about their launch of Heart to Home womens ministry. They had a great meeting with lots of excitement about the older women moulding the lives of the younger moms.

Saturday we drove over to Burnsville, N.C., (the birth place of both my parents and where they are buried) for an Ogle family reunion. There were lots of cousins I had not seen for some time, so the food and fellowship were equally wonderful. On the way back to Hendersonville Carol took me to a new show outlet where I found the Crocs I have been wanting, brown and black with leather uppers.

Sunday we worshipped with the Yeltons at Hendersonville coc, had a great lunch with them and the minister and his wife. In the afternoon house church at the Yelton’s was good with lively discussion, worship, and prayer.

Monday we were off down the mountain to Pigeon Forge to Dollywood for two days of Bluegrass and BBQ. What great fun! The weather, the food, and the music were top notch. Early Wednesday we left for Mobile and drove all day (582 miles). On Thursday we drove to Bayou La Batre to visit with the folks, catch up on all the news about the church, and prepare for two nights of Grief Share goups. On Friday night we had 18 people including many from the community and on Saturday night I believe there were 14 present. Bayou La Batre has lots of hurting people and it was a great blessing to be able to share our love with them.

On Saturday we had lunch with Daphne German (superwoman) and two young folks who had questions about baptism and how to begin a relationship with Christ. I shared the very good news with them and when I had finished they were eger to be baptised.

Sunday we had perhaps 40 to 50 in attendance at the Hemley Road church of Christ. I did a child dedication at the request of 4 young parents. I stressed the necessity of the parents being dedicated to Christ if they expect to raise godly children. It was a big deal for those families with grandparents and other relatives on the platform with the parents and children. Carol had printed nice certificates for each of the 4 kids. That event hopefully will be a landmark on their spiritual journey.

I preached from John 3, “You must be born again” and I have never had folks listen with more attention. At the invitation there were three adults who wanted to be baptised so immediately after the service we all drove over the the beach and I baptised two of those young moms whose children we had prayed for and dedicated to God, and a young father whose son was also in the dedication ceremony. God is so kind to allow Carol and me to have a part in what He is doing.

We left right away for Monroe and home, thinking of the joy of sleeping in our own bed again. We had not driven very long until we had a phone call reporting that another soon to be mom who listened to the message also wants to be baptised. What a joy filled trip with God’s blessing so evident!

Please pray for the brothers and sisters in the Bayou there in Alabama. They are in desperate need of funds. Their food bank is getting low, they need air conditioning in the church building, and a baptistry. Our dear sister Daphne does not have air conditioning in her house either by the way. They are running three vans each service to gather children who want to come to church and get something to eat. Over $500 is required each month just for fuel. They have a large insurance bill due in a few days and the list of needs goes on and on. But they are optimistic! They are going ahead and bro” Billy Spaulding told me he expects them to outgrow that facility soon. What great Christians and worthy of our gifts and prayers.

I am glad to be home and excited about what God will be up to next in our lives. Thanks for reading.

His peace,
Royce