Enjoy a virtual Crown & Covenant Tour 2011 in pictures

This video is made up mostly of images that I took while leading the tour with my wife Cheryl (who actually does all the hard important work that makes these tours so much fun--good food, good accommodations,good fellowship--the real experience). The audio is from our first day at Glasgow HighKirk. 

And here's another angle on the tour, this video made up of pictures taken by various participants who decided for good of for ill to turn their lens toward me while I was yawping away at various sites on the tour.

GREAT COMMISSION at 30,000'--theory or practice?

After a snowy, bouncy ride in one of those turboprop airplanes that were designed by a sardine cannery from Sheridan to Denver, I was ready to relax. I had a wonderful time with the brothers at Camp Bethel, Wyoming, had taught four sessions (1 1/2 hours each) through the book of Job, then preached Sunday morning at First Baptist Church, Sheridan. It was a blessed time of fellowship for me, but after two flight delays from snow, I was tired and ready to sleep or read on the flight from Denver to Seattle.

I pulled out my MODERN REFORMATION issue on the Great Commission, and was readying myself for some catch-up reading and then a good nap so I could get home to my darling wife and family sort of rested. God had other plans.

Chico Gonzales, a chatty BP construction worker from Colorado Springs, sat down next to me and asked, "Business or pleasure?" To my shame, I thought I had the sure way to silence the fellow. "I suppose you'd call it business. I was speaking at a men's conference and I just preached this morning at First Baptist Church in Sheridan, Wyoming."

He wanted to know what I preached and taught on. So I began giving him a summary of 42 chapters of Job, then started explaining to him how the sufferings and testing of Job pointed to Christ and the gospel of grace.

But he had had a near-death experience and wanted to tell me all about the theological ideas he had developed and had come to have an intractable faith in. I thumbed my magazine full of stimulating articles on the Great Commission, and almost laughed out loud at the irony of this even being a dilemma. Here I was with an opportunity to be used as an instrument of the Holy Spirit, to actually participate in the Great Commission, and I had sinfully prefered to bury my face in the theory of sharing the good news--or just sleep.

What followed was a good hour and half of listening to his sincere but deeply befuddled experiential theory of death and meeting God. "It's all about free will," said Chico. "We each of us are going to be faced with a choice, and we have to be ready to choose love and not hate, good and not evil, God and not Satan." After listening and praying, I began probing about how he defined all those terms he used, especially good and evil, God and Satan. "It's up to each of us to define them according to our own feelings and experience."

So I proceeded to share with him what Jesus said about it all. "I am the way the truth and the life, no man comes unto the Father but by me."

Chico replied, "Oh, I agree with that totally."

I probed further. How can he agree with Jesus' declaration and with it all being up to the free will and individual ideas about what path? "I believe in a very open God, that there are many ways to him."

"But Chico, how can you agree with Jesus' words, then, when he declares by the authority of God himself, that Jesus is alone the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father but through Jesus?"

I then asked him if his theory about good and evil and finding God's love worked in the real world, for example in the world of aeronautical engineering. If the designer of the AirBus jet we were suspended 30,000 feet above ground had designed this jet the way Chico had designed his theology--based on his free will, his feelings about flight, about gravity, about thrust, etc--we'd be doomed. He constantly returned to man's free will, and that finally it came down to man choosing the right way.

"But Chico, how can you define choosing 'the right way' when, according to you, there are many ways to God? the Jihadist believes his way is the right way. Who's to say it is or it isn't? In your theory, his way is just as valid as your way, right?"

I then attempted to show him how every religion in the world is like what he has described to me: man doing something (choosing the right way), earning the favor of a deity, performing to receive a reward in turn for the good works done to win the favor of the god.

From there I attempted to show him the beauty of the Christian gospel, that instead of God requiring us to sacrifice ourselves to win his favor, he stooped down in Christ and sacrificed himself to redeem us, ransom us, rescue us from the clutches of death, a death we have coming to us for our sin and rebellion against the true and living God who made us.

His parting words were, "I feel like we may meet each other on the other side someday."

"I will be praying to that end," I said. "Which means that I'll be praying that the Spirit of God graciously transforms your heart and mind by the power of the gospel of grace so that you know and believe that Jesus is the only way to be right with God."

Bond speaking at ACM Symposium Friday--Homeschool enrichment opportunity

It's not too late to register for the ACM Symposium this Friday, October 15, 2010 in Tacoma, WA. This event is open to everyone and would be a great enrichment to homeschool curriculum for families in the area (students pay only $7.00 for this all-day and evening event: http://acmusicians.org/2010churchmusicsymposium.php). It is not exclusively for musicians!

I will be giving instruction on Church history (The Doxological Genius of Isaac Watts) and on understanding poetry and writing it, examining closely the poetic conventions, biblical allusions, and literary and theological mastery evident in several Psalm-like hymns. There will be addresses and a panel discussion on different worship "styles," how we got where we are, and where the church needs to go in its music and poetry to offer to God worthy sung worship in Spirit and in truth. The symposium is open to all Christians who care about these things.

Debuting at the the symposium will be several new hymns for the Modern Reformation, including three of my own. You will get to hear the music and sing the text under the skillful leadership of the regional Director of ACM, and composer, Ron Bechtel. And you will get to take these resources back to your home and church. To top it all off, there will be excellent live illustrations of worship music, both vocal and instrumental, for your edification and consideration. Register at http://acmusicians.org/2010churchmusicsymposium.php 

Here are samples of seminar titles:

• The Doxological Genius of Isaac Watts (Douglas Bond, Author and Teacher)
• How to Hear a Hymn Tune (John Wykoff, Composer)
• The Imaginative Watts (Douglas Bond)
• How to Write a Hymn Tune (John Wykoff) 

Church Leaders Roundtable: “Let’s Talk about Worship Music”

• Why Our Church Has Adopted Popular Music in Worship
• Why Our Church Has Retained Classical Music in Worship
• Moderated Discussion by Ron Bechtel and John Wykoff

REGISTER on-line at http://acmusicians.org/2010churchmusicsymposium.php 

Join us!

Douglas Bond
www.bondbooks.net

Relevant gleanings on preaching from Modern Reformation

While reading MODERN REFORMATION on the plane from DC to Seattle, I came across Michael Horton's article, Interpreting Scripture by Scripture. He addresses some critical hermeneutic understanding necessary to properly interpret Scripture. "... the Westminster Confession properly reminds us that not everything in Scripture is equally plain or equally important. We have to interpret the more difficult passages in the light of clearer ones. Scripture interprets Scripture, and we learn the whole meaning of Scripture by studying its parts and its parts by learning the whole."

He is particularly helpful in his critique of specific problems with some interpreters of Scripture. "A noted pastor once told me, 'When I'm preaching through the Sermon on the Mount, I sound like a legalist; when I'm preaching through Galatians, I sound like an antinomian.' although this sounds like fidelity to the text--wherever it leads us--it is problematic for at least two reasons. First, it's naive. No one comes to the Bible without presuppositions. We all have some doctrinal framework we have acquired... Second, this assumption undermines confidence in the unity of Scripture. Jesus did not teach legalism and Paul did not teach antinomianism. As an apostle commissioned with the authority of Jesus himself and writing under the Spirit's inspiration, Paul's message is Christ's message. If we interpret the Sermon on the Mount as something completely unrelated (mush less, contradictory) to Galatians, then we haven't gotten either right."

The article concludes with a quotation from RC Sproul. "The primary rule of hermeneutics was called 'the analogy of faith.' The analogy of faith is the rule that Scripture is to interpret Scripture: Sacra Scriptura sui interpres (Sacred Scripture is its own interpreter). This means, quite simply, that no part of Scripture can be interpreted in such a way as to render it in conflict with what is clearly taught elsewhere in Scripture."

MODERN REFORMATION article in March/April 2010-hot-off-the-press

THE DEVIL HATES GOOSE QUILLS

And Why it Matters to the Church, by Douglas Bond

POST-POETRY CULTURE

Martin Luther, who said “The Devil hates goose quills,” insisted that in a reformation, “We need poets.” Most of us scratch our heads and wonder what on earth we need them for.

Our postmodern, post-Christian, post-Biblical culture has almost totally dismissed what used to be called poetry. Few deny it; ours is a post-poetry culture. But who cares? 

“Poetry is a marginal art form,” wrote poet Campbell McGrath, “in a culture that values neither literacy nor artistic expression in any vital way. America does not persecute poets, it does not seek to smash them like bugs—it just doesn’t care a lot.”

Martin Luther cared deeply about poetry, in the most vital way. But do most Christians today? Most accept the decline of poetry without a whimper, with barely a wafture of good riddance.  But does it matter?

Paul Johnson, decrying the decline in literacy, argues that students should “produce competent verse in a wide variety of strict meters, under examination conditions.”

To what purpose should they be subjected to such literary tortures? After all, what good is it? Won’t the machinations of society carry on just fine without poetry? Won’t the church do just fine without it? It’s not like poetry contributes anything vital. You can’t eat it.  

So thought Hanoverian King George II. “I hate all boets!” he declared. If you’ve ever been flummoxed at lines you were told were poetry, ones about wheelbarrows and chickens, you may agree with George’s abhorrence of poets.

But are Christians to stand deferentially aside as culture pitches poetry—the highest form—into the lowest circle of hell? 

WHAT HAPPENED TO POETRY? 

I’ve been accused of the pedagogical unpardonable sin of depriving my writing students of what has become poetry’s sole consideration: individual self-expression. “Why don’t you let them write in free verse?” I’m asked. “I do,” I reply. “We just call it brainstorming.”

Arguably vers libre achieved its foothold with Walt Whitman, a man with new ideas simmering in his bosom, new ideas that demanded a new form. “Through me forbidden voices, voices of sexes and lust, voices veiled, and I removed the veil.” The Devil, no doubt, rubs his hands in glee at Whitman’s goose quill.

Whitman-like free verse dictates against any conventional structure of meter or rhyme. This throw-off-the-shackles impulse creates a blurring of literary genre wherein poetic form is abandoned in favor of irregular bursts of feeling. What often remains is fragmented prose. “Poetry” thus conceived provides a pseudo-form for saying private things about one’s self, things one would never utter in direct speech—until Whitman removed the veil.

Such redefining of what poetry is has led to a proliferation of what one classics professor termed, “therapeutic soul-baring by emotional exhibitionist[s].” Or as John Stott quipped, “The trouble with you Americans is you’re constantly engaged in a spiritual strip-tease.” . . .