Cornfield Theology

Calvinism is hotly debated. What is Calvinism and is it biblical? In this podcast, Lagan and I talk about my favorite flower, a TULIP.

Series Intro

Every month in 2022 I will be writing a blog post about anthropology, humanity, and sexuality. This series of blog posts will be used to foster discussion and to drive the reader back to Holy Scripture to learn about God’s grand design for men and women. I hope and pray these blog posts will offer greater clarity about God’s design for men and women. And I also pray that learning about God’s design for men and women will result in praise.

Anthropology 101

There is mounting pressure on the church to conform. The pressure is coming from every angle. The questions faced by the church are: What does it mean to be a man or woman? Can a woman become a man, and can a man become a woman? What are the implications of how a person understands the self? All these questions are fundamentally anthropological. Anthropology is the science of human beings. From a theological perspective, anthropology deals with the origin, nature, and destiny of human beings (per Merriam-Webster). If a Christian wants to know what it means for a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman, then the origin, nature, and destiny need to be found in Holy Scripture. When a Christian searches the scriptures for their origin, nature, and destiny, the world of anthropology is intersecting with theology and, suddenly, the doctrine of humanity. Here is a insightful quote about the doctrine of humanity.

The doctrine of humanity is one in which we would expect ourselves to be naturally interested, because we are humans. But there’s more to the importance of the category of the theology of humanity than just that we happen to be interested in it. It’s actually objectively an important part of God’s ways with the world: of all the things God is doing with all creation, he has a special eye on the part of creation that is created in his image—that is, humanity.– Fred Sanders, “The Doctrine of Humanity,” in Lexham Survey of Theology, ed. Mark Ward et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).

The path toward having a solid understanding of humanity begins with a foundation of biblical anthropology. Thorny questions can only receive answers after the foundation is laid. 

So Many Questions

I want to argue that discerning proper anthropology is one of the essential conversations that needs to take place in the local church. At present, we are not having a conversation. However, if you’re going to understand yourself, you need good anthropology. Further, your anthropology affects how you understand others. If anthropology reveals the nature of a human being, then how did the nature of a human being come to fruition? Is the nature of a human being malleable, or is it fixed? A bevy of questions can be asked when delving into the deep end of anthropology. 

The cultural conversation about sex and gender is anthropological. Since the dawn of time, sex and gender have been inseparable. Some would even use the words synonymously. But in the 21st century, because of philosophical hocus pocus that makes transubstantiation look like a fact, sex and gender are two different malleable concepts. Here is another question. What roles, if any, are there for men and women? Until recent church history, the church has made clear distinctions between men and women in the home, church, and society. Your anthropological foundation will inform how you answer the question about the roles of men and wome

Together for Good creates pathways for the church to come alongside vulnerable families in Christ-centered ministry. When parents face a crisis with no support system, they become vulnerable. When a parent becomes vulnerable, their children are at increased risk of trauma. Together we work to ensure that vulnerable families and children never walk alone.

Series Introduction

Recently, I have been posting why Redemption Hill Church is confessional. The term confessional has lost its luster over the last 100 years, but prior, most churches held to a Confession of Faith. I attempt to show in these blog posts the value of confessions and why a local church should be confessional. This blog is part 3 of 4. These four blogs on confessionalism are about:

The Nature of ConfessionalismThe Parameters of ConfessionalismA Vision of ConfessionalismSubscription to a Confession

If you are new to confessionalism, or the term is foreign, that’s ok. The purpose of cornfieldtheology.com is to introduce people to new concepts, terms, and theological ideas. 

These four blogs on confessionalism have been adapted from a paper I submitted to the elders of Trinity Fellowship Churches in preparation for Theology Day before our General Assembly. This fourth blog post is on subscription to a confession of faith. If a local church pastor is a part of a denomination that holds to a Confession of Faith, then to what degree is the confession affirmed, taught, and defended? 

Subscription to our Confession

In confessional denominations, one of the most debated issues is about subscription. But what is subscription? Merriam-Webster offers a helpful definition. Subscription is the “act of signing one’s name (as in attesting or witnessing a document).” And it is “the acceptance (as of ecclesiastical articles of faith) attested by the signing of one’s name.”

Here is the question at hand: To what degree should an elder or eldership subscribe to a denomination’s Confession of Faith? A too loose subscription will result in a confession being rendered useless. What is the point of ascribing to a confession or statement of faith if you are unwilling to affirm, teach, and defend it? There will not be unity but pragmatism in a local church and across a denomination.

But, the aim of a collection of churches is to be united on doctrine. As I have said in previous blogs on confessionalism, uniting around a person is unstainable. Trying to unite around a methodology will not last. Uniting around a vision is great until the vision changes, and not everyone is on board with the change. Uniting around culture has the potential to be toxic. But uniting around truth can last generations. 

Uniting with truth means churches in a denomination should strive for a subscription where an exc

Taking the gospel to the ends of the earth has always been the goal of evangelicalism. But what is a missionary, and what is the end goal of missions? I take up this topic with my good friend, Brooks Szewczyk. I think you will appreciate his insight.

Recently, I have been posting why Redemption Hill Church is confessional. The term confessional has lost its luster over the last 100 years, but prior, most churches held to a Confession of Faith. I attempt to show in these blog posts the value of confessions and why a local church should be confessional. This blog is part 3 of 4. These four blogs on confessionalism are about:

The Nature of ConfessionalismThe Parameters of ConfessionalismA Vision of ConfessionalismSubscription to a Confession (forthcoming)

If you are new to confessionalism, or the term is foreign, that’s ok. The purpose of cornfieldtheology.com is to introduce people to new concepts, terms, and theological ideas. 

These four blogs on confessionalism have been adapted from a paper I submitted to the elders of Trinity Fellowship Churches in preparation for Theology Day before our General Assembly. This third blog post is on a vision for confessionalism. How should a local church use its Confession of Faith? Again, the question comes down to utility and function. 

In The Local Church

Your church might have a statement of faith. You know, the 8-10 points on the church website that outlines the trinity, salvation through Jesus, and eschatological. But, unfortunately, there is a high probability that church A copied and pasted their statement of faith from church B. Church B gave their statement of faith to church C. There might be slight tweets to give the appearance of originality, but the pattern is the same. Now, on the one hand, good theology should not change. Good theology is good theology. But, on the other hand, copying and pasting a statement of faith is lazy.

Pastors need to know what they believe, even if it’s the same as the church down the street. It’s only when the church leaders know what they believe that they can teach the local church the fundamentals of the Christian faith. 

When it comes to teaching, a Confession of Faith offers maximum opportunity. Here are a few ways pastors can teach and train using a Confession of Faith. 

Discipleship

A Confession of Faith serves as a tool for discipleship. Because of its robust theology – unlike most statements of faith – a confession can help a Christian understand the depth of Holy Scripture in great detail. A confession is a tool for a new believer, allows for discipleship in the home, and an ongoing catechism for older believers. Because of the theological depth of a confession, there is a sense that there is always more to discover. Here is an example of how a Confession of Faith can be an excellent teaching tool for discipleship. Here is 9.2 of our Confession of Faith. 

The Son of God, the second person in the Holy Trinity, is the true and eternal God, the brightness of the Father’s glory, of one substance and equal with him who made the world, who upholds and governs all things he has made. When the fullness of time had come, he took upon himself man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities of it, yet without sin. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin Mary when the Holy Spirit came down upon her and the power of the Most High overshadowed her. So he was born of a woman of the tribe of Judah,

Presents. Trees. And Christmas Lights. All these traditions are great, but what is Christmas really all about? Logan and I get into the weeds and discuss the true meaning of Christmas.

How Far?

How far will a person travel for love? What is a person willing to do for love? These types of questions are asked and displayed in movies, songs, and TV programs. I could spend 90,000 words tracing themes of love in songs, movies, books, etc. And frankly, humanity is obsessed with understanding and obtaining love. 

I mean, we have an entire day – Valentine’s Day – built around the idea of love. I think humanity has continuously pursued love, even with the proliferation of information in our internet age. Everyone is looking around for love and to be loved, but people often look in the wrong places. 

One of my concerns with Christians when discussing love is that culture has polluted the mind. Culture has created radical and unrealistic expectations of love. The culture has inoculated the Christian mind to define love as something it is not. There needs to be a course correction in the church, when it comes to understanding love, and Advent seems like a good time to provide a biblical perspective.

Don’t Reduce Love

The profundity of love has been reduced in multiple ways. I love my dog, Winston. He’s been a faithful dog, and when I am traveling, he becomes the man of the house, trolling and protecting the property like a good guard dog. When he dies, I’ll cry like a baby. I love my wife. My love for her is unlike anything I have experienced with any other person. My love for her is different than my love for my dog. These examples of love are familiar and perhaps healthy. But there are examples of love that are degrading and quite the opposite of the covenantal love we read in the Bible. 

A ten-minute stroll through a social media feed or going up and down the television dial shows us that love has been sexualized. I am not talking about the intimacy between a husband and wife. I am talking about the soft-core porn that attempts to invade every home through technology. Here is the bottom line. Humanity has taken something good and ruined it through sinful and selfish desires. 

So what is the way back to understanding and embracing love the way God designed it? And what does love have to do with the incarnation of Jesus Christ? Let me take you back to a time that was not time – before the creation of the world. 

Love and Creation

I think it’s fair to say the love offered by the culture is wildly confusing, and a definition of love changes with the wind. But what if we could know a love that is consistent, true, and pure? I think Holy Scripture provides a way for us to think about love that edifies and endures. 

Before the Creation of the World

The profundity of love is found with Godhead before the creation of the universe. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have loved each other with perfect purity and goodness. 1 John 4:7-8 tells us about the connection between love and God. We read, 

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.– 1 John 4:7–8

If you have never memorized a passage in the Bible, begin with God is love. David Jakeman hits the proverbial nail on the head. He says, 

John is not identifying a quality which God possesses; he is making a statement about the essence of God’s being. It is not simply that God loves, but that he is love. We are helped to understand this when we remember that God is revealed in Scripture as the holy Trinity, three persons in one God. We shall never be able to comprehend the full meaning of this with our finite minds, but at least we can grasp that at the

Making Disciples

I always look forward to engaging guests at Redemption Hill. Recently, I connected with a husband and a wife after church. I noticed they were engaged while I was preaching. Their Bibles were in their laps, and they were tracking what I was preaching. So after the morning service, I made a point to connect with them. First, I thanked them for coming. And then I asked what they thought of our church. They shared charitable comments. And then I said, “We are a church that will always choose substance over style.” The moment I said those words, their faces lit up as if I had given my wife’s homemade apple pie for the first time. They were delighted and intrigued.

I did not press on their church background, but common sense and a general understanding of Christian culture helped deduce a common trend. Within Christan churches, pragmatism is the preference over principle. You will hear in the sermon life stories, see movie clips, and the Bible is peppered in along the way. Feelings matter more than God’s truth. The smoke machine during worship is substituted for quality theology in the songs. How about this statement to make a point. COVID-19 is not a pandemic compared to the water-down theology in many local churches. God is being replaced to promote the self, causing people to spiritually die left and right because style is placed over substance. Within protestant circles, local churches are off mission. Here is a good reminder of why the local church exists. Our Lord said in Matthew 28, 

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.– Matthew 28:18–20

Ok. The church exists to make disciples. Got it. But Jesus did not stop at what the church is supposed to do. He told us what to do. When a person becomes a disciple of Jesus Christ, the church responds in two ways. First, the church is to baptize. Second, the church is to teach. In particular, elders teach (1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1). And Jesus is specific about what is taught to disciples of Jesus Christ. What Jesus commanded his disciples, those disciples are to teach others. 

Now let me ask a question. Are the majority of churches teaching what Jesus taught? Or is a two-minute clip from the Toy Story being used to communicate a nice moral, and then a passage of the Bible is used to supplement the moral? 

Posters in the Cafeteria

Allow me to elaborate on my point. One of the disadvantages of being a mobile church is that we are at the landlord’s mercy. In our case, it is a school district. Are there times when items are hung up in the halls, which I do not prefer? Absolutely. We are trying to facilitate church, not a 5th grade English class. But am I less concerned about the barely legible posters from a 2nd grader or the content of the songs and the sermon? I hope you get the point. Yes, every Sunday, the goal is to make the space look like a church then a school. But hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ is immensely more important than the orange poster hanging on the wall in the cafeteria. Don’t get me wrong. We want to continue to work toward creating a distraction-free environment. But the substance of what is taught will never be traded for style. 

Christmas Lights at Church

Here is an example of style over substance. What drives me bonkers is how gaudy some churches have become. Last week I drove by a large church in the Des Moine

Is it ok for a local church to be non-denominational or inter-denominational? Or, are there benefits for joining a denomination? In this podcast, we make a case for a local church to be a part of a larger denomination.