Salvation…
The salvation God offers is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. It is not a result of works — not even the work of praying a little prayer when you were a kid.
Now that I’ve got your attention… 
[listen]
(Source: SermonIndex.net)
August 17th, 2006 at 10:02 am
Travis, I saw your comment on Tim Challis’ blog about the disproportionate number of women have shared “words” [impressions] from our mic. I too have wondered about this. Good food for thought. Those “words” also seem more emotionally driven.
I come from a Southern Baptist background where the spiritual gifts were acknowledge, but “miraculous” gifts were not exercised. I’ve broadened my view from scripture and teaching from SG over the years. Kauflin gave an excellent message at the worship conference about these issues, and I have to say, I agree from scripture with the teachings as he presented. I do however, find a difference in how the spiritual gifts are pursued at CLC than at Chesapeake, from my limited observations. I’d be interested to know how other SG churches practically deal with this issue.
Thanks for raising an interesting observation!
August 17th, 2006 at 11:01 am
I heard a year or two ago that Joshua Harris’ father’s church did away with their “prophecy mic oversight” — at least for the men. Women were admonished to run their “impressions” by a husband or father before coming forward, but in general they changed things so that the “word” was judged by the congregation after being shared, rather than by the pastors before being shared. Their reasoning was that the “pastoral filter” had no basis in Scripture.
I think they had a great increase in men sharing after that, BTW.
I’ll have to try and find a source for it, though…
August 17th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
So, I’m a little confused. What do you think is the reason that more men shared after pastoral oversight was removed? This doesn’t seem to be a positive step to me. One reason for pastoral filtering is to not allow non-members, etc. to share.
August 17th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Maybe I misunderstand the “mic bouncers,”
but I was under the impression that the oversight was to prevent certain things from being said, rather than certain people from saying them. (But even if that’s the case, what Scriptural warrant is there for only allowing members to share?)
Anyway, I spoke in my comment to Challies’ post of “manly” prophetic words (meaning specific calls to action, rebuke, that sort of thing)… well, the more “exhortative” words seem to be looked down upon in SGM circles in general. “Grudem-ite” prophecy seems to merely be a pseudo-mystical way to tell people that Jesus loves us and we should be happy and sing (in that particular generic sense). There’s nothing of the sort of prophecy with which the great famine was foretold in Acts, with preparations then being made by the whole church. Nothing that comes close to resembling the vision John received on Patmos — or even the “man caught up to the third heaven” that Paul speaks of. It’s pretty much all “here’s a couple of verses I read over coffee on Thursday morning… they say Jesus loves you and died for you, and wants you to be happy and sing real loud.”
I believe that God rarely, if ever, gives such “prophetic” words to men. Yet this is the sort of thing that’s now expected of prophecy in many circles where Wayne Grudem’s OT/NT prophetic dichotomy is embraced.
But hey, sometimes I just read too much into things…
August 18th, 2006 at 9:00 am
Okay, I see what you’re saying. Definetely wasn’t “tracking” with you before. So you’re saying what Grudem/SGM call or define as “prophecy” isn’t really–in the biblical sense as others may define it–and is instead simply sharing what you “read over coffee” (as you put it).
Josh and I talk about these theological issues and views a lot, and I find it really interesting. Thanks for more to think about.
August 18th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that such “read over coffee” impressions aren’t prophetic; I just think we can tend to give them far too great an emphasis, compared to prophesies that actually look like something from the Bible.