Joe Fleener's Profile

The more I face trials and suffering and loss in this world, the more it becomes obvious to me that one of the most significant roles of the church is to prepare people for death. The gospel, the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection for us, really comes home to us when we face death. Of course we must grow and live in light of the gospel throughout our life, but it is even true that the most immature and young Christian can face death confidently with the power of the gospel.

But we have hope; we have a hope that cannot be taken away from the curse of this world. That hope is in the gospel. When we sit there beside those we love, and we are looking at death, the only comfort we have is the gospel. We simply forget that it is also the only comfort we have in every moment of our life.

The activity of the Christian as a citizen engaging in co-belligerency over civic and moral issues is not the same as the declaration of Christians mutually recognizing the reality of each other’s faith.  This is what I wrote to Chuck Colson:     

Protestant theology affirms the sole authority of Scripture.  Sadly contemporary evangelicalism seems little concerned with the solas of The Reformation and is therefore susceptible to initiatives, which make something other than the Gospel, the basis of unity and the focus of our declarations.

Nothing really works in this situation. People are broken and looking for something to glue themselves together. Religious people are accumulating morality points and abandoning the Gospel. The possibilities of a community of Christians to show what it means to love people as Jesus did and in their own weakness get lost in drawing lines and pretending there is such a think as justification by having never co-habitated.

The possibility of seeing someone repent of sin, come to Christ and move toward true gifts of forgiveness and marriage is apparently less appealing than the Pharisaic joys of letting sinners know they aren’t welcome with us or the God we worship until they clean up their mess.

The October 2009 issue of NZ Baptist ran a “debate” consisting
of an article by a proponent of a literal, six-day creation and one by four theistic
evolutionists.¹ The theistic
evolutionists, Graham Finlay, Jonathan Gauntlett, Graham O’Brien and Andrew
Shelling, describe themselves as “Christian Scientists who believe that both
Genesis and evolution can be true.” That of course depends on what
they mean by the slippery term “evolution”, but from the content of
their article it becomes clear they are talking about an evolutionary progression
from pond scum—to animals—to man.

If, however, you feel and are inclined to think you have made it, flattering yourself with your own little books, teaching, or writing, because you have done it beautifully and preached excellently; if you are highly pleased when someone praises you in the presence of others; if you perhaps look for praise, and would sulk or quit what you are doing if you did not get it--if you are of that stripe, dear friend, then take yourself by the ears, and if you do this in the right way you will find a beautiful pair of big, long, shaggy donkey ears. Then do not spare any expense! Decorate them with golden bells, so that people will be able to hear you wherever you go, point their fingers at you, and say, "See, See! There goes that clever beast, who can write such exquisite books and preach so remarkably well." That very moment you will be blessed and blessed beyond measure in the kingdom of heaven. Yes, in that heaven where hellfire is ready for the Devil and his angels.

My Schedule and Writing through 1 March 2010

Turn up. Turn up each week. Resist the temptation to think about Sunday school as a child-minding service that someone provides for the weeks when we happen to find it convenient to drop into church. Think of it instead as a regular weekly commitment for the teaching and discipling of our kids. If we Christian parents were as committed to church and Sunday school as we are to swimming lessons, sporting teams and so on, I suspect there would be a fair bit less fluctuation in the numbers at Sunday school week by week!

Reinforce the lessons at home. Ask your children what they've learned, help them learn the memory verse, sing the songs, display the craft, etc.

There are some people for whom it is an honor to be asked to honor, and J. I. Packer is certainly one of them. And this is a surprising honor, considering that I disagree with him on baptism, church, and the resources of and prospects for rapprochement between Protestants and Roman Catholics. After all, I am a fundamentalist, Calvinistic, separatist Baptist—I barely believe in rapprochement with Presbyterians!

I saw in my Baptist brother Mark Dever a latter-day Sheriff of Nottingham, giving me a passing grade on the doctrine of grace but a firm “F” in ecclesiology.

The standard practice for both public and private prayer is to speak so as to be heard by the person with whom you are talking.  Prayer is verbal because it is relational. Prayer per se is not a psychological experience of contemplative immersion in an inner silence beyond words. It is a verbal connection with someone you know, need and love.