Blog - Page 309 of 318 - John H Armstrong

The Danger of Ministerial Ambition

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:24:43-05:00September 15th, 2005|Categories: The Christian Minister/Ministry|

I give a great deal of my personal time to ministers. I love ministers. I love the church even more. Because of these two great loves I sometimes have real conflicts. If forced to choose, and thankfully I am not usually forced, I will always choose the church as my higher priority. The reason for this is very simple. The minister exists to serve the flock, not vice versa. The flock must be protected, loved and shepherded, even if the minister fails. I might better say, especially if the minister fails.

Martin Luther wrote a great deal on the minister and the ministry. He was a shepherd who cared for the souls of real people thus his pastoral insights are often balanced and wonderfully bracing in their directness. It was Luther who once said of the ministry: ambitio praedicatoris est ecclesiae pestis. Simply translated the Latin sentence means, "The ambitious preacher is a pestilence to the church."

If I see anything that regularly alarms me about some of the most important role model evangelical preachers in America that disturbs me […]

Newbigin: A Modern Prophet?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:24:44-05:00September 14th, 2005|Categories: Culture|

In teaching my class on apologetics for evangelism at Wheaton this term I am daily afforded the joy of thinking about how to defend the faith in a Western, and increasingly postmodern, context. One figure in the twentieth century stands out as the most influential person in the West for my thinking about culture, gospel, and communication with modern man. I refer to the late missionary theologian Lesslie Newbigin.

Newbigin served as general secretary of the International Missionary Council and as the associate general secretary of the World Council of Churches. He is the author of many helpful books, most still in print. He was a Reformed biblical thinker who served in India for many years and then returned to Great Britain, where he wrote, taught, and influenced many Christian leaders around the globe for several more decades. He died just a few years ago. A spate of doctoral projects are being done on his work even as I read him here in my own study this morning. I believe Newbigin’s corpus of written work is massively important for the church in […]

A Day in Pittsburgh with Two Faithful Friends

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:24:44-05:00September 12th, 2005|Categories: Personal|

I went to Pittsburgh today for a short visit with John Rodgers, the former president and dean at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, and Philip Houghton, the pastor of an Episcopal parish church in Bedford, Pennsylvania. John has been a leading voice for orthodox conviction and Christ-centered ministry in his church for five plus decades. When I asked him how and why he joined the Episcopal Church, after being a Presbyterian as a child, he told me of a visit to a local Episcopal church youth group for the purpose of meeting girls during his high school years in St. Louis. When John discovered the solid Reformed heritage of The Thirty-Nine Articles, beautifully linked with liturgical worship, he was hooked. Phil, on the other hand, was a Roman Catholic as a child, came to saving faith later, served in Vietnam, and then went to Westminster Seminary. He had more than one struggle with some of the more rigid Reformed stalwarts during his three years on the Philadelphia campus during the 1960s. But at Westminster he eventually came into the Episcopal Church as […]

Personal Reflections on Mainline Evangelical Churches

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:24:44-05:00September 11th, 2005|Categories: Renewal|

The Protestant "mainline" is a common description used to refer to churches in America that are in fellowship with the older, historic denominations rooted in early American history; e.g. Lutheran, Episcopal, Congregational, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Reformed, etc. These groups are the ones that now struggle mightily for their collective soul since liberalism, and compromise with culture, has eroded their witness for many decades. I am deeply attracted to these mainline churches and to the possibility that real spiritual renewal will include some of them. I do not think these denominational entities will necessarily be renewed, at least as ecclesial structures. I do believe that hundreds, indeed thousands, of churches/congregations within these communions can, and I pray will, undergo spiritual renewal.

I was reminded of this prospect again today as I drove home from a two-day weekend ministry in a mainline congregation, Westminster Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Rockford, Illinois. Westminster is thriving spiritually. It has three morning services, includes keen and earnest people from across a wide age spectrum, and has a healthy diversity in style. The church will soon enter a beautiful new […]

Cleansing a City

By John Armstrong|2005-09-07T10:11:45-05:00September 7th, 2005|Categories: Current Affairs|

Thomas Oliver, the New Orleans city council president, upon hearing stories of Sodom and Gomorrah this week, commented a few days after Katrina hit his city: "Maybe God is going to cleanse us."

It would be a wonderful thing if more of our leaders actually thought this way. Newspapers in Europe, certainly no hotbed for Christian faith, suggested that Katrina was punishment for America failing to sign on with the Kyoto accords. Islamic militants suggested Katrina was part of their "holy war" against the US, citing Allah’s will. And some zealous defenders of Zionism have suggested that our complicity in removing Jews from the Gaza strip brought down God’s jugdment on us. It seems the culprits behind Katrina’s devastation are many, at least according to the pundits and critics. We really do like to "blame" someone, or something, when disaster strikes. This is all the more true as we move further and further away from a robust doctrine of divine providence as taught by the Bible. Where, and when, such a doctrine is believed today it is generally misunderstood or wrongly used, […]

Judgment and Mercy

By John Armstrong|2005-09-06T22:05:45-05:00September 6th, 2005|Categories: Divine Providence|

As cultures fall further and further away from God and his righteousness we should expect them to experience divine judgment. Several have suggested, in the past few days, that New Orleans was ripe for judgment last week. I have some sympathy with this view, at least up to a point. But I also have some questions. Let me explain.

First, there is no doubt that nations and peoples are raised up, and taken down, by God. Acts 17:24-31 is clear on this point. And the Old Testament provides us with abundant evidence that God judges wicked people and their cities. New Orleans is a wicked city. Make no mistake about this at all. Its crime and murder rate are exceptionally high and its celebration of gay and lesbian lifestyle is infamous. It has boasted of its decadence openly for years. But there are far worse cities than New Orleans. And there were many righteous people in this city as well. And what about the other gulf cities that were also struck by Hurricane Katrina?

Second, all of us deserve judgment since all […]

Must Every Event Be Politicized?

By John Armstrong|2005-09-05T08:34:21-05:00September 5th, 2005|Categories: Politics|

I wrote my current Weekly Messenger today (September 5). It will soon be available to subscribers through our service on www.reformationrevival.com and then archived on our site. The subject in that piece is divine providence and Hurricane Katrina. As with the tsunami disaster at the end of last year, this natural catastrophe is bringing out both the best and the worst in humankind.

While the media focused upon death, looting and chaos for much of last week, we finally got some great stories of faith, hope and love over the past weekend. I told Anita last night that nothing brings out the light and darkness within the hearts of fallen men and women quite like a tragedy. People of faith rise to these occasions, displaying incredible sacrifice and commitment to others. Self-centered folks, the kind who say "you owe more to me than I am getting," will loot and destroy. (This is really a very small portion of the people suffering in this present tragedy.) The media loves to play this second response, which includes a great […]

Life's Ultimate Hope

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:24:44-05:00September 1st, 2005|Categories: Evangelism|

I get many unique opportunities for evangelism, just like many of you. Some of these come in the ordinary events of life. A news story in yesterday’s paper reminded me of a recent such witnessing moment I had in Atlanta outside Turner Field.

The press reported in Wednesday’s papers (8-31-05) that the "world’s oldest person (115), Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper," died this week in Amsterdam. Known as "Henny" she was born in 1890 and thus vividly recalled both Word Wars and a host of other memories. Louis Epstein of the Gerontology Research Group in Los Angeles, which verifies age claims for the Guinness Book of Records, reported that the oldest person in the world is now Elizabeth Jones Bolden of Memphis, Tennessee, who tuned 115 on August 15 of this year. The Geronootolgy Group tracks the supercentenarians, or those 110 and older. There are only 66 living.

I noted above I had a witnessing experience in Atlanta recently. I rode in a cab with a driver who believes that Christ and Christians are the real problem in America. He made some very […]

Doing and Teaching Apologetics

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:24:44-05:00August 31st, 2005|Categories: Evangelism|

I teach in many settings, both in churches and classrooms. A new one for me this fall is the Wheaton College Graduate School, where I have become an adjunct professor of evangelism this year. It is an opportunity that I cherish and one that will challenge and inspire me I am quite sure.

I met my fall class in apologetics for evangelism for the first time on Tuesday at 1:15 p.m. at the Billy Graham Center. The Wheaton M. A. program in evangelism has been recently redesigned and is thus being re-established this fall. For this reason I have only six students in this first class. This in itself will allow unusual opportunity for relationships and real learning. After meeting my students yesterday I believe I will be the one who is actually learning the most over the next few months.

My students come from Maine, Ohio, Washington, Connecticut, Chicago and the Bahamas. One student, perhaps two, intend to invest their lives in evangelizing Muslims. Another, a Haitian, is already a thirty-five year old full-time evangelist in Nassau who grew […]

Christ Alone or Christ Plus?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:24:45-05:00August 30th, 2005|Categories: Renewal|

The center of every faithful biblical theological recovery and renewal must be Christ alone. Even our evangelical emphasis on Scripture and grace must be centered upon Christ alone. Christ is the center of everything for the faithful Christian, not just the one who helps pull life together. He is not simply my Savior, or my helper, he is all, he is Lord. Paul’s argument in Colossians 1:15-23 make this all quite plain—Christ is supreme!

Evangelicals have lost the supremacy of Christ! By marginalizing Christ in our movement we have made him something other than Christ the theme of our best-selling books, the emphases of our popular ministries, and the thing that attracts people to our cause. It is not Christ we preach, but Christ plus whatever else makes people connect to our teaching or our movement.

I noted on August 29 the comments of David Bryant re: the national periodicals which recently surveyed the evangelical movement in America. In these articles Bryant noted that the mention of Christ occured only five times in over 150 pages of reporting. These various articles […]