Westserve

When close <> the same

At Factory Night Church we’ve just about finished a short series of topical talks that we started around Reformation Sunday at the end of October.

The has been closely built around the resource produced at Christians in the media called Ideas that changed the world . The series covers the ‘four solas’ Grace alone, faith alone, bible alone and Christ alone, and the DVD resource includes four talks by Dominic Steele. Those include a reasonable dose of reformation church history, as well as solid biblical teaching on the issue that each talk explores. In addition, there are personal testimonies, and Q&A sessions.

The background to this resource – and our decision to use it extensively in our Growth Groups and as the basis for a preaching series, is World Youth Day.
This is the Roman Catholic festival being hosted by Sydney in July 2008. It is expected that huge numbers of Roman Catholics will descend on Sydney for the event – in excess of 500,000.
Which is fine and good for the Roman Catholics. I have no problem with what they are doing, in the sense of they should have the freedom to pursue such activity.

Theologically though, I beg to differ. Significantly.

I expect that the event will mean that spiritual matters will be suddenly on the national agenda (well, Sydney’s agenda, at least!).
I also expect that the media will do a terrible job at being accurate in their descriptions and summaries of spiritual truths.
So I (and many others) see this this as a wonderful opportunity to put the gospel out there, and take advantage of the heightened spiritual interest.

But, I hear you say, isn’t that what the Roman Catholics will be doing?

Well, that’s the problem. I’m sure there will be some members of the Roman Catholic church who are saved themselves and will be encouraging people to consider the gospel of the Lord Jesus in a biblical way. But the fact remains that official Roman Catholic doctrine still teaches a gospel of ‘Jesus +’.
There is no getting away from that. The material referenced in the “Ideas” series makes that very clear. The series also puts such error in a very sharp, clear historical context, by reminding us of the risks and terrible consequences that the key Reformation leaders took in order to stand on the authority of the Bible alone and it’s teaching of salvation by grace alone.
People like Luther, Tyndale, Cranmer and the like.

In teaching this series a number of members of my church have become upset at what they perceive as straight out ‘Catholic bashing’. A number of us have been discussing this on the FNC forum.
But all that has been attempted in the talks is a very simple highlighting of the key places where Roman Catholic teaching clearly differs from the Word of God.
As such, I will stand very firm on the point that it is my duty as a pastor to point out the fact that official Roman Catholic doctrine claims to lead people to salvation, but in doing so goes against the clear teaching of the Bible.
Therefore, it is a serious spiritual hazard that must be avoided if people are to be saved in the way the Bible teaches.
Just because Roman Catholic teaching sounds close to what we teach doesn’t mean it’s the same.

Coming back to World Youth Day: We are not planning to do anything in direct competition with WYD next year. We will be running a mission just after the WYD period, but we won’t directly clash with the event itself.

I have a feeling that the attention that WYD will generate will impact in a number of ways on our community and our church:

• People will have their spiritual curiosity stirred up.
• There will be a number of people (including members of churches like ours) who will be upset when we speak up and make clear that the Bible teaches salvation is by grace alone.
• Most importantly, I hope and pray that people will be saved, by God’s grace as a result of them investigating Christianity.

I’m not into ‘bashing’ any other denomination to the heck of it. Denominations are just human organisations, and that means they are all flawed.
But when it comes to the gospel, plain and simple, we cannot afford to compromise in order to just be nice to each other. We must speak out and tell people the truth. And being close to the truth is not the same as the truth itself.