State of the Union Point 3: Risk to Build Biblically Faithful Churches
Building biblically faithful churches has inherit risks.
First, building biblically faithful churches means we take the right risk of continuing preach and counsel our people with biblical truth. Given the rapid movement of the culture away from biblical truth, the faithful preaching of God’s Word will have more inherent risk of us being criticized.
We are on a trajectory where the culture sees the biblical truth we preach as the problem. The culture says teaching on biblical sexual ethics is the problem and must be censored. And, in a growing culture of victimhood, the truth we preach, and the truth we counsel our people with will be targeted as potentially oppressive.
Let us be men who risk our lives for the cause of Christ by preaching it anyway for the purpose of building biblically faithful churches.
Second, building faithful churches means that we take the risk of calling our people to a love for, and a commitment to the local church. Whether it is an anti-institutional mindset, or a suspicion of authority, or the lingering apathy people have post-pandemic, calling people to love the dearest place on earth will be risky.
We must build faithful churches by courageously, and graciously calling people to be faithful to their local church.
May a love for the local church not be a first or second generational phenomenon in Sovereign Grace, rather may it be a multi-generational distinctive.
Third, building faithful churches means we take the risk of honestly accessing the health of our local eldership.
One of the primary ways that Satan seeks to sow disunity in the church is to weaken and divide the pastoral team.
“Conflict, poor communication, and relational disunity on a pastoral team can lead to discouraged and weary pastors, and eventually, can diminish the unity and health of the whole church.”[1]
If we are going to call people to love the local church, let’s make sure that the church we are calling them to love is strong and united. We do that by honestly evaluating the health of our local elders, which can be risky, but it is the right risk to take.
Let’s take great risks for the great cause of building biblically faithful churches.
[1] Jon Payne, “Team Health Evaluation Tool” blog post, October 19, 2021, sgcleaders.com
