In the fall, I began my longest blog series ever, a series sharing my ordination paper for the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA). If you’d like to read about what the process of ordination looks like in the EFCA, check out the first post in the series (here).

The ordination paper engages with our denomination’s 10-point statement of faith. I know these posts are dense. Please hang with me; this week’s post is the final in the series. It’s a miscellany on current doctrinal issues and issues related to lifestyle.

If you’ve found these posts helpful, please pick up the entire paper, which is now available on Amazon in both paperback and ebook formats under the title Once for all Delivered: A Reformed, Amillennial Ordination Paper for the Evangelical Free Church of America.

Thank you for the prayers and encouragement along the way,
Benjamin

PS: I posted a few pictures to Instagram from my ordination service last Sunday night.

{Previous posts in this series: God, The Bible, The Human Condition, Jesus, The Work of Christ, The Holy Spirit, The Church, Christian Living, The Return of Christ, Response and Eternal Destiny}

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Current Doctrinal Issues

Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage

God desires that Christians marry only other Christians. This follows from the prudent extension of 2 Corinthians 6:14–18 to marriage (cf. 1 Cor 7:39 “only in the Lord” and 1 Cor. 9:5 “a believing wife”) and the OT passages about marrying those from other nations, which weren’t so much about differing ethnicities or nationalities but religions (Dt 7:3–4; 1 Kg 11:1–8). It’s a great evil to delegitimize interracial marriages, as some have done in the past and some continue to do in our own day. But based on these passages, I would not officiate the marriage of one person who professes faith and one who does not. Prudence also suggests that Christians enter the covenant of marriage only with Christians of similar conviction and maturity. The issues surrounding marriage of a previously divorced person are more complicated. The Bible presents two grounds for a divorce that could open up the possibility of a remarriage, namely, infidelity (Mt 5:32; 19:8–9) and desertion (1 Cor 7:10–11). The ideal is always repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation, but these are not always possible. Thus pastors must take into consideration situational specificity while at the same time giving serious weight to what Scripture teaches, especially God’s hatred of divorce and the way the permanence of marriage portrays the permanence of God’s love (Mal 2:16; Eph 5:21).

Because questions often arise about the definition of sexual immorality and desertion, allow me to discuss each briefly. I take Jesus’s use of the word porneia (sexual immorality) in the exception clause in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 to be a sort of “junk drawer” term incorporating many variations of sexual sin, especially when the specific word for adultery, moichatai, is used in close proximity (5:27 and 19:9). This is not to say I’d encourage a woman to divorce her husband because last year he infrequently and repentantly looked at pornography. In fact, I’d never lead with the encouragement to get divorced. But I am saying a spouse in habitual, intense, and unrepentant porneia might qualify. Through study of God’s word and devoted prayer, I could very well imagine the pastor-elders of our church coming to the conclusion that a man who spent a decade at strip clubs and consuming internet pornography, even if he had not consummated an affair in sexual intercourse, could be divorced under the exception clause. Related to this, the desertion clause in 1 Corinthians 7 doesn’t only mean a spouse has moved to Vegas without a forwarding address. There are probably multiple ways to desert your spouse. But saying, “He won’t go shopping with me” or “She won’t watch football with me,” certainly do not constitute desertion. However, I consider habitual, unrepentant violence inflicted on one’s spouse to be a form of desertion. We must hold strictly to God’s commands, feeling the weight of Scripture far more than cultural trends. And it’s wise for pastor-elders to have a clear understanding of how we define sexual immorality and desertion before cases of each arise. As a final comment, my discussion in this paragraph should not be understood as an attempt to create new categories for divorce but to give definition and application to what the two categories encompass.

Abortion, Infanticide, and Euthanasia

God values life (Gen 9:6) and takes no pleasure in death (Ez 18:32). Thus, so should his people. Because abortion and euthanasia are sins, our views of them transcend political party lines and our solutions for them will not merely be political ones. No individual Christian or local church can participate in every meaningful cause, but I do long and pray for more who labor to advance this biblical worldview so that it gives birth to life-affirming deeds.

Role Distinctions in the Church of Men and Women

God can, and does, give both men and women extraordinary gifts for ministry, but God has left the office of pastor-elder-overseer to men. Biblical support for this is seen in the following:

• the responsibilities given by God to Adam before and after the fall (Gen 2–3; Rm 5:12ff);

• the pattern of OT and NT spiritual leadership being placed mainly among men;

• the parallels between male leadership in the church and the headship of men in the home as taught in places like Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, and Titus 2;

• no explicit mention of women pastor-elders in the NT;

• and, finally, specific passages like 1 Timothy 2:8–3:7 and Titus 1:5–9 which require male pastor-elders, something Paul even sees rooted in creation in the 1 Timothy passage.

At the same time, however, women can and should be encouraged to participate in significant Christian ministry.

Homosexual Belief and Conduct

Today, the church has a tremendous challenge but also opportunity when speaking about what the Bible teaches about sexuality. The challenge is to speak with humility and compassion and at the same time fidelity to the Word. Homosexual practice is against God’s good design. It is a sin (Lev 18:22, 20:13; Rm 1:24–27; 1 Cor 6:9–11; 1 Tim 1:8–11), and must be called such (Is 5:20). However, alongside this truth, the church must do a better job of explaining the positive sexual design that God has established for society to flourish and winsomely invite people to participate in it.

Theology of Worship

All of life ought to be lived as worship (1 Cor 10:31), that is, living in obedient, glad esteem of the worthiness of God. It is appropriate that Christians gather regularly in local churches to both display and deepen their worship.

Speaking of the corporate gathering for worship, we endeavor to sings songs, preach sermons, and pray prayers that exalt what is true about God, faithful to Scripture, and celebrates the riches that are ours in the gospel. We seek to do all of this in an orderly way to build up the body with words intelligible to our people. The responsibility of leading corporate worship is so weighty to us that a few of us make time each Tuesday to debrief the previous week’s sermon and worship service, always striving to improve our ability to rightly handle the word of truth, asking for forgiveness where we’ve failed to speak as well as we ought, and praying that our church would more and more fall in love with God and his word.

Issues Related to Lifestyle

Spiritual Disciplines

God is pleased to supply his grace day by day and moment by moment to his people through spiritual disciplines. Therefore I actively pursue practices like evangelism, fellowship, prayer, service, and listening to the preached Word. I have my devotions in the morning before my family wakes up, attempting to read through the Bible cover to cover each year. As for prayer, I typically spend some time in prayer during my devotions. In conjunction with prayer, fasting—in both short and long durations—has been important to me.

Stewardship, Personal Finances, and Debt

God owns everything, yet he has entrusted humans with the care of creation (Ps 8; Heb 2); therefore, we should strive to be good stewards. The only debt my wife and I have is the mortgage on our house. We also intend to continue contributing to retirement funds. The Lord has been very gracious to us in these regards, and we feel blessed to extend God’s money generously to our local church, as well as to other ministries and missionaries.

Sexual Purity

The Bible tells us, “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Pet 1:16). There are certain temptations that tend to tempt men more acutely, and pastors and Christian leaders are not immune. As such, I will continue to seek God’s help in regard to all areas related to personal holiness and trust Christ to give me continued victory and progress as I lean into the means he has appointed for such victory and progress. This is the heart behind the book I authored to help men struggle against porn, not with it.

Marriage and Family Priorities

God made it the duty of men to provide, protect, lead, and serve our families (Eph 5:22ff). It is not a role of entitlement but of sacrificial leadership. Thus, practically, Christ-like spiritual leadership in my home involves me being the one to initiate conflict resolution (as opposed to being passive), doing the dirty house-work jobs, providing financially, and, as needed, being the first to take responsibility and repent. God calls all men to embody these impulses, though the outworking will vary depending upon one’s circumstances. May God supply the grace to do it with increasing success and joy. With respect to pastoring, my family is a priority above the church. This has many practical implications such as coming home around 4:30 every day, even if I go back out for an evening meeting, as well as cutting the occasional sermon illustration that might bless the church but not my children or wife.

Social Drinking of Alcohol

Alcohol was seen as a blessing by the Jewish people and a sign of covenant celebration of God’s goodness and provision (Dt 14:26; Ps 104:15; Prov 3:7–10; Jn 2:1–12; Lk 22:20), but the use of alcohol in excess is strongly warned against throughout the Bible in both propositional statements and through sinful examples (Noah’s drunkenness in Gen 9 and Lot’s in Gen 19; Prov 20:1; Is 5:11; Gal 5:21; Eph 5:28; and many others).

In light of all these passages, I occasionally drink alcohol but always in moderation.

Accountability in Life and Ministry

There are several structures in place for personal and ministry accountability, including an engaged pastor-elder board and bi-weekly meetings with my best friend who asks hard questions.

* Photo by Désirée Fawn on Unsplash