Reformed, Theological, and Biblical: The Shepherd’s Church Distinctives (Part 4)
In this series, Pastor Kendall Lankford and Deacon Dan Hult elaborate on the distinctives of The Shepherd’s Church, so everyone who worships with us, visits us, or lands on our webpage will know who we are, how we are, what we are, why we are, and what they can expect.
As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith. But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion, wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions. - 1 Timothy 1:3-7
INTRODUCTION
Every church has a foundation, but in our day many churches have chosen the wrong foundation. I often see beautiful New England churches that display pride flags and other signs of “inclusion”, thus proving that they have chosen the whims of the world as their foundation. Others have emphasized being “relevant” in order to draw large numbers of unbelievers using gimmicks, theatrics, concert-style worship, and feel-good preaching. Among these, some churches set their celebrity pastor as their foundation. Still others build their foundation upon centuries of tradition. All of these foundations will ultimately fall, so at The Shepherd’s Church, our foundation the only one that will last: “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:20-22). In other words, our foundation is Scripture and Jesus Christ Himself. To capture the depth of this foundation, we describe ourselves as Reformed, theological, and confessional.
REFORMED: OUR JOURNEY AS A CHURCH
When asked to define what it means to be Reformed, Alistair Begg answered: “You start by reading your Bible, then you become biblical, then you’re Reformed”. In essence, being Reformed means studying the Bible and then subordinating everything we believe and do to what the Bible teaches. I recently did a series on what it means to be Reformed, so I will only summarize here. The term comes from the Protestant Reformation starting in the Sixteenth Century. The Roman Catholic Church had placed human teachings above Scripture for centuries and had therefore drifted away from sound doctrine. As the Reformers began to subordinate everything to Scripture, that emphasis became a distinctive…and it remains one to this day. The progression of doctrine that resulted from that study mirrors the way many of us have grown in our knowledge of the truth…and how we as a church have grown as well. Their beliefs are best summed up in the Five Solas, which I described in more detail here:
Sola Scriptura: Scripture alone is the highest authority for faith and life, so Scripture properly interpreted must supersede all human teaching.
Sola Fide: Salvation is by faith alone and therefore not dependent on our works or merit.
Sola Gratia: Salvation is by the grace of God alone, a free gift we do not deserve and could never earn.
Solus Christus: Salvation is through Jesus Christ alone, so there is no other means to be saved.
Soli Deo Gloria: God works everything—including our salvation—for His own glory, so we must do everything for His glory as well.
For many, studying Scripture starts with salvation, so naturally that becomes the first area where we become Reformed in our thinking. Salvation seems focused on us: we heard the Gospel and then responded to it by praying the prayer to receive Christ. But as we study Scripture, we find that it is really God working salvation in us. We learn that in eternity past God chose those whom He would save and therefore predestined them to salvation. Jesus Christ then accomplished that salvation by His incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Then, at the right time as He has ordained, God calls each person who had been predestined to salvation, and that call has the effect of leading us to faith and repentance. As that happens, the Holy Spirit regenerates us—making us spiritually alive in Christ and opening our eyes to the truths of Scripture. Simultaneously, the Father applies Christ’s finished work to us by justifying us—declaring us righteous based on the atoning work and perfect life of Christ—and adopting us as His children—therefore making us heirs of eternal life. The Holy Spirit then begins to sanctify us, steadily conforming us to the image of Christ—a process that takes our entire lives. That process ends with our glorification, first our spirits at death and then our new bodies at the resurrection, where we at last possess our inheritance. From this, we see that salvation is the work of God and not us. We could never choose God but only do so because He first chose us and worked in us to respond to that work. This view of salvation is often referred to as Calvinism, which I covered here. It is usually summed up by the acronym TULIP:
Total Depravity: All people are dead in sin and incapable of choosing God unless He works within them.
Unconditional Election: God chose all who would be saved independent of anything they would do.
Limited Atonement: Jesus Christ did not die to make salvation possible for everyone but only died to actually and definitely save the elect.
Irresistible Grace: All the elect will ultimately place their faith and trust in Jesus Christ even if they resist for a time.
Perseverance of the Saints: All who are elect will persevere in faith though they may experience seasons of doubt and backsliding. Therefore, any who ultimately perish were not elect to begin with. In other words, salvation once obtained cannot be lost.
The more we study Scripture, the more Scripture reforms our thinking and therefore the more Reformed we become. This leads us to adopt a robust and full doctrine espoused in a historic confession and then to see in Scripture the pattern of God relating to His people through covenants. That is what happened with Pastor Kendall, Pastor Derrick, and myself…and it also mirrors the story of The Shepherd’s Church. Kendall and Derrick were in a church that was Reformed in soteriology (view of salvation), but as their understanding of Scripture became more robust, they realized that in order to ensure their church was obedient to what Scripture teaches beyond soteriology, they would have to plant that church. So at The Shepherd’s Church, our Reformed understanding is seen in the centrality of Scripture in everything we do. In the worship service, we read multiple passages from the Old and New Testaments in the Call to Worship, God’s Greeting, Law homily, declaration of pardon, Old Testament responsive reading, New Testament reading, sermon text, communion homily, and benediction. The Reformation was characterized by congregations immersed in Scripture, so that is what we seek to do.
THEOLOGICAL: ALL OF GOD FOR ALL OF LIFE
Since Scripture is the story of God, the centrality of Scripture will naturally put God at the center of our lives as well. As we study the Scriptures, we gain an ever deeper understanding of who God is, and by extension we discover who we are and the way the world really is. This in essence is theology: the study of God. To many modern American Christians, theology is the realm of seminary professors and scholars, which has resulted in a plague of theological illiteracy that has infected many churches. I have previously commented on the dismal state of most people’s understanding of Scripture, God, man, sin, salvation, the church, and how that all relates to current issues based on Ligonier’s 2022 State of Theology survey, but a few alarming statistics bear repeating.
Only 41% saw the Bible as completely accurate, and 48% believed that science has not disproven the Bible.
Only 31% affirmed the clear teaching of Scripture that God is unchanging, 32% affirmed the divinity and eternal existence of Jesus Christ, 36% affirmed Christ’s divinity, and only 26% affirmed the personhood of the Holy Spirit.
Only 25% affirmed total depravity and the seriousness of sin, and 21% acknowledged that all are born sinners.
Only 31% saw religion as objective truth rather than personal preference and 60% affirmed that salvation is only found in Jesus Christ.
Only 22% believed God does not accept worship from all religions, 24% saw physical church attendance as important, and 37% felt the need to join a local church.
Only 53% saw abortion as sinful, 51% saw gender as an objective reality not personal choice, and 42% saw homosexuality as still prohibited by Scripture.
This has massive implications. When our understanding of God is uninformed by the whole of Scripture, we are actually worshipping a false god, and a misunderstanding of how He has commanded us to worship Him turns our attempts to honor Him into dishonor. A poor reverence for Scripture leads us to abandon or ashamedly avoid its clear teachings whenever “science” or society stand in opposition to them. Since many American Christians deny the divinity of Christ—and thereby commit the heresy of Arianism—a poor understanding of theology leaves us vulnerable to the same heresies that have dogged the Church for millennia. And this is not to mention the myriad of ways theology works itself out practically in every aspect of our lives. Clearly, every Christian must be a theologian. Basically, this means that every Christian needs a basic understanding of the following topics that make up theology:
Canon: The 66 books of the Old and New Testament were inspired by God (written by the Holy Spirit through the pens of human authors) and are therefore inerrant (without error), infallible (incapable of failure), sufficient for all of faith and life, and the final authority on our belief and practice. All theology must start with the complete canon of Scripture.
Exegesis: The interpretation of Scripture, drawing meaning out of the text rather than bringing our own meaning to the text (eisegesis). This is another distinctive of ours, so a future post will cover it in more detail.
Hermeneutics: The discipline of interpreting Scripture rightly. While every word of Scripture was written for our good, none of it was written directly to us. Each passage was written by a particular author to a particular audience in a particular context, which is vital to understand in order to rightly interpret the passage. Every passage has a single meaning—the meaning the author intended—unless another passage reveals an additional meaning, so hermeneutics requires us to look for that meaning rather than a unique meaning for us. Only when we understand the objective meaning of the text can we apply it to our lives.
Biblical Theology: This views every passage of Scripture in light of its place within the story line of the Bible: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. At The Shepherd’s Church, this is best captured by our commitment to covenant theology.
Systematic Theology: This examines what the entirety of Scripture teaches about a particular topic, including broad categories of bibliology (the study of Scripture), theology (study of God), Christology (study of Christ), pneumatology (study of the Holy Spirit), anthropology, (study of man), hematology (study of sin), soteriology (study of salvation), ecclesiology (study of the Church), and eschatology (study of the last days).
Historical Theology: This looks at how the Church has dealt with a particular topic throughout history. While men are fallible and the history of the Church has been plagued by various false doctrines, there is much to be gleaned from the writings of godly men and women throughout history. After all, there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
Practical Theology: This is how the teachings of Scripture affect our everyday lives and how we relate to those around us. Theology is not a merely academic exercise but extremely practical, as every doctrine has implications for our lives. Therefore all theology should lead to practical theology.
At The Shepherd’s Church, theology is vital for every believer. This is especially evident in our preaching. Many churches practice—and many seminaries teach—the equivalent of “no child left behind” by keeping preaching simple enough for everyone to understand. But we believe a rising tide lifts all ships, so we prioritize the proper amount of depth and rigor in our preaching. As our people listen to such preaching every week, they are strengthened in faith and knowledge. We also recite the Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, or Chalcedon Definition in our service, which solidifies core doctrines in our congregation so we will not fall prey to heresies like Arianism. Finally, we do not shy away from addressing difficult doctrines whenever they appear in the text. In these and many other ways we strive to nurture an entire congregation of theologians.
CONFESSIONAL: WHY THE WESTMINSTER STANDARDS?
We also foster robust theology by reciting a question and answer from the Westminster Shorter Catechism in the service. Portions of the Westminster Larger Catechism frequently appear in the law homily as well. Both of these were created to teach congregants the contents of the Westminster Confession of Faith. This brings us to our distinctive of being confessional. I have previously covered the origin of the Reformed confessions and their importance to the church today. In short, adopting a historic Reformed confession is vital to protect us from theological error. Despite being the product of men and therefore fallible, the confessions are the result of much wisdom and represent the height of theological scholarship for their day. We must consider their historical and cultural context, but it is remarkable how much is just as applicable today. The primary Reformed confessions are the Three Forms of Unity (Heidelberg Catechism, Canons of Dort, and Belgic Confession), the Westminster Standards, and the 1689 London Baptist Confession). Aside from differing views on baptism between the 1689 and the other confessions, they are all quite similar, so from the earliest days of our church, we regarded all of them highly and even listed them all on our website. But when we joined the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, we needed to choose one of these confessions. In addition to matching our paedobaptist and covenantal convictions, the Westminster Standards represented the height of Reformed orthodoxy, making that the natural choice.
Just because we adhere to the Westminster Standards does not mean we agree with everything they contain. Since they were written circa 1646 in Puritan England, we take exception to parts of the Westminster Confession of Faith. This is much safer and more preferable than authoring a new confession just because of a few points of disagreement. Our exceptions are documented in Article III, section 3 of our constitution. The most significant is our clarification of the worthy recipients of communion. We also clarify the language of “covenant of works” and include recreation in fellowship with God’s people as appropriate Sunday activity, keeping with what we believe was the intent of the Westminster Divines. In this way we still adhere to the Westminster Standards while recognizing that the difference in context between Puritan England and modern America necessitates some exceptions. More importantly, in doing so we avoid the generational arrogance that is so prevalent in our culture. Many people in our day consider themselves so much smarter than all who have gone before them that they see no reason to even consider our forefathers. This modern smugness is especially seen in academia that flat-out rejects the entire portfolio of anyone seen as problematic because of the slightest disagreement, but this attitude has permeated many churches too. Most Christians would not outwardly display such arrogance, but the individualistic notion of “just me and my Bible” likewise ignores the fruitful labors of the saints who have gone before us. Just like we need the local church, we need the great cloud of witnesses that has gone before us, including the early Church fathers, Reformers, and Westminster Divines. We are not as wise, smart, and enlightened as we think we are, so being confessional helps us maintain the proper humility and wisdom that is required for the Christian life.
Being Reformed, theological, and confessional keeps us firmly established on the Scriptures in general and Jesus Christ in particular as the only sure foundation. These distinctives leave no ambiguity in what we believe, so we will not be tossed to and fro by the waves of culture but, if God wills, we will be able to stand firm for generations to come..
As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. -Ephesians 4:14-16
