Teleios

1. MacIlvaine, W.R., Nelson, L.A., Stewart, J.A., Stewart, W.C. (2013). Association of strength of religious adherence to quality of life measures. Complement Ther Clin Pract, 19:251-255.

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoption_in_ancient_Rome

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Wednesday, November 23, 2016

How to help a tare - share your faith

Welcome back to my blog. I am so glad you can visit today.

The last few weeks we have overviewed scriptural methods to recognize true and non-true believers in the church (tares). Importantly, it may be someone close to you: your friends, your family or perhaps even someone on the church staff. Last week we began by considering why helping a tare towards salvation can be difficult. It can be a tough sell!

This week we cautiously present some suggestions about how to share your faith with a tare (assuming an adult age group), realizing the difficulty at hand.

Here are some hopefully helpful suggestions:

Friends - The first step is to befriend your potentially unbelieving acquaintance or increase the depth of your relationship. Ask them peripheral questions over issues related to Christianity and the church, for example: likes and dislikes about their church such as the preaching, choir, Sunday school, leadership, etc. Then listen! People love to talk about themselves and their opinions.

Listening is vital because it shows your respect and acceptance of the person. Further, it allows you to analyze their scriptural needs as you learn about them. Every individual is important. After you listen for a while, follow up with more specific questions, eliciting more detail.

Advance the depth of questions - Ultimately, when they trust you then you can progress the conversation to what they believe about Christ specifically; who He is, why He came, favorite Scripture about Christ, or what they thought about what the pastor said about Christ in his sermon.

These questions should be asked in a conversational, non-threatening manner. Again, just mostly listen! These types of questions will teach you more about your friend and especially help you assess if they understand the nature of salvation through Christ.

Advance the conversation to the Gospel - At some point you need specifically to express the Gospel to your potential tare (Romans 10:9-10) without helping them answer. How to do this? This task is a 100X easier after you have shown your respect and affection by building the relationship and listening to them. Every person is different. Here are some ideas:

Should the elders’ preparation class ask the attendees to state how to express the Gospel, what would you want them to say? An alternative, if your friend asked you how to be saved, what would you tell them?

If your friend confesses a need to learn scripture knowledge, ask them to do a one-on-one study with you where you can discuss the Gospel and who Christ is from scripture itself. Warning, they rarely will mention doing a Bible study themselves, you will need to propose to them directly a study based on the needs they express when you are listing to them.

For example, if they have mentioned in prior conversations they do not know much Scripture then propose a verse by verse study from Colossians or Ephesians. A Bible study is a great tool as it brings your friend and you to a neutral ground where they can observe the Gospel themselves.

Ask them during the study, at an appropriate verse, what they believe is important in expressing the Gospel to someone. They will need to learn it with your teaching, probably over several Bible study sessions.

St. Peter’s question - If all else fails I describe a scenario in which one day tey stand before St. Peter and he asks ‘What gives you the right to enter heaven?’ or ‘Why should I let you in here?’

This question cuts to the fundamental basis of a person's true faith. They must express exactly what qualifies them for heaven. Try this question with even long-standing church believers and you will get amazing answers.

In my wife, Jeanette’s and my own experience in teaching the Bible to churched adults, at the beginning of the study probably ⅓ to ½ of our students did not understand the grace of salvation, even on prompting; not even close!

Once your friend knows the Gospel, do not indicate they just became a Christian as this may cause discord, but just be joyful that they can express it confidently and can tell someone else. If you think they may not believe what they say, then ask directly if they believe the plan of salvation to hopefully address any questions or doubts.

Have mercy on your friends and your family! Consider carefully if they truly understand their salvation which is so carefully laid out in Scripture.

That is all for today. Thanks for joining me as always.

WC Stewart

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

How to help the non-believer

Welcome back to my blog. I am honored you can visit.

We have been discussing that the church is God's plan to implement His purposes for this time before Christ’s return. It should function efficiently with love and act consistently with God's word. The last few weeks we overviewed scriptural methods to recognize true and non-true believers (tares) in the church.

This week let’s think how we might help the church-attending non-believer. It can be a tough sell! How can we bring a tare’s attention to their own unbelief? Next week we’ll provide a few suggestions about how to share your faith with a tare.

What makes helping a tare difficult is if you ask a tare if they are a Christian, they most always would respond “yes.” Are they being dishonest? Consider that there are several levels of Christianity accepted in our culture.

Christian Seeker - These are typically new church attendees who may not recognize that they are not a true believer because they are interested in learning about Christianity. Generally, they are comfortable in the social setting of the church (which often is designed expressly for that purpose). A seeker may say they are a Christian. However, they may be more willing to admit they do not yet believe as their motivation for church attendance may be to seek a solution to their needs, which might be spiritual.

Social Christian - These are individuals, most likely church members or attendees, perhaps longstanding, who would readily indicate they are a Christian. However, when asked to explain their Christian beliefs in specific terms they might be unable to express the gospel, even with prompting. Unfortunately, since they typically are tied to the church and its social structure, they would be embarrassed to admit they are not truly a believing Christian; this would likely affect their self-esteem and social standing. Tares would fall into this group.

Evangelical, born-again Christian - These Christians identify as saved by grace, by faith alone in the forgiveness provided by Jesus Christ‘s death on the cross (Ephesians 2:8-9).

What’s the problem? The first two groups are accepted socially and are comfortable within the typical evangelical church setting. Consequently, to confront them regarding salvation may (almost assuredly) produce a defensive posture and perhaps a damaged friendship.

How then can we bring these important church members to be willing to evaluate their own salvation in an objective way? Good question! We don’t yet know from research how to best approach them. Further, the method will likely differ per the individual. Consequently, we must cling to scripture where God reminds us to try to bring the gospel to all people.

How to do this? We will discuss this interesting topic next week!

Thanks for joining me today. I look forward to seeing you again next week!

WC Stewart

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Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Why are tares important?

Welcome back to my blog. I am so glad you can visit today.

The past few weeks we overviewed Scriptural methods to recognize true and un-true (tares) believers within the church. Why is helping tares towards salvation so important? Bringing them lovingly to Christ is vital for the church for two reasons:

Salvation in Christ is essential for the individual for eternal life.
Salvation for the unbelieving church member is important for the local church. A congregation needs active members to be effective so they help and don’t hinder the advance of the Gospel and affecting society for good.

We'll deal with salvation in upcoming blogs but let's consider today the influence of the unbelieving church member inside the local church.

Scripture stresses the importance of unity in the church (Ephesians 4:1-7). Unfortunately, churches sometimes can be a place of discord with angry splits between groups (1). No one knows all the reasons for disunity in churches, either on the personal or global level. The causes are probably multiple.

However, an unbelieving church member may pursue an agenda that can be distracting to church unity either by wasting people's time for their disruptive purposes or a deeper discord leading potentially to division. Although I don’t know that this question has been researched specifically I believe generally a tare could negatively influence the church in several ways, by:

Building a power base by which they can control a portion of the church ministry
Seeking attention for their emotional pain or desires - While appropriate biblically (Galatians 6:2) this situation can become draining if the tare is not willing to change to conform to scriptural wisdom, or is solely interested in soaking up people's attention.
Living a passive Christian life - Even if the tare is not overtly disruptive they can have a negative influence by merely talking continuously about subjects that are non-biblical, or not encouraging others to seek scripture or act in godly ways. Otherwise, they hide the truth by their words and actions.

For the church to function productively and for individual Christians to attain the greatest benefit from body life, the effect of tares and other unbiblical agendas must be limited. How to do this?

Recognize who tares are (please read my prior blog).
As we discussed before, bringing them salvation this is the best solution!
Expect tares to conform their life to the Bible. If they do not, then members and leadership should consider:

Limiting social and fellowship time with them.
Refraining from giving them spiritual or non-spiritual leadership positions from which they might build their expectations that they could influence the church.
Consider corrective biblical action (by the church leaders) if the tare is clearly disruptive to body life (e.g., Matthew 18:15-20, II Corinthians 2:5-11).

The health of the modern church is vital! Each member should be a functioning, growing Christian who facilitates fruitful and positive teaching, praise, prayer and fellowship and enables the church to have a positive impact on their community. Don’t allow the agenda of a limited few, who refuse to come to Christ or be obedient to Scripture, to diminish the progress of Christ’s church!

Next week we will begin talking about methods to bring salvation to tares. Please come back and join us then.

WC Stewart

(1) https://www.gotquestions.org/church-splits.html

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

So who are tares?

Welcome back to my blog. I'm thrilled you can visit!

We have been discussing that the church is God's plan to implement His purposes for this time period before Christ’s return. It should function efficiently with love and consistent with God's word. Last week we overviewed Scriptural methods to recognize true believers in the church.

This week we discuss methods to recognize those who might be churched unbelievers or tares (Matt 13:24-30).

Jesus said there will be tares (who look like wheat but are false believers) in the church of whom we cannot differentiate until he returns. However, as part of our love for the church and its people we should try, as best we can, to discern those who are not really saved that we might help them understand the Gospel.

Who are they? Again it is difficult to determine, but on close inspection, the opposite of Scripture and without the knowledge of salvation. Regarding the list below, we all probably struggle with these issues from time to time (I do), but for the tare it characterizes their whole life.

What they say?

Self-focused - They talk about themselves usually expressing: self-aggrandizement, desire, jealousy, criticism and lack of gratitude.

They speak church ‘jargonese’- It is like learning just enough Spanish to get by in Mexico City, it may sound good on first hearing but you sure do not want to get into detailed theological conversation. Tares will pick up just enough church jargon, which is easier than learning scripture, to fit in socially. What is ‘jargonese’? It may possess a grain of truth, sounds good, but generally teaches lies about God and cannot be found in Scripture such as: ‘I was called to do this’, ‘God has one person for me to marry’, ‘God will open a door’, ‘I'm in the place where God wants me’, ‘I don't have a peace about this (so I will not do it)’ etc.

Victims - They often feel they are treated unfairly. Most usually their expectations for the church, its leadership and their fellow members are not met, leading often to bitterness and criticism.

What they know?

Scriptural Knowledge - They do not know much! They usually are familiar with a few individual versus that they learned in high school or college and fill in the rest with whatever legalistic system is pushed by their domination or church, or the youth group where they first learned Christianity. This makes for a person who may be inflexible and does not know or enjoy the freedom offered by Scripture and living by faith.

They know they are right - Not knowing Scripture and clinging to a legalistic system does not provide them a strong basis to make decisions or handle change. This may cause the tare to become defensive, and cling to their stance despite Biblical evidence to the contrary.

Salvation by what? - If you simply ask them ‘what gives you the right to enter heaven when you die?’ they will not give you a coherent or correct answer but they hesitantly may give you a long, circuitous and confabulated explanation.

What do they do?

What they do is simple, ‘peudo’-Scripture.

Christian practice - They may show for church but rarely practice on their own the five tools to maturity (prayer, praise, teaching, Bible study and Bible based fellowship) outside of church. They do not exhibit spiritual growth. They are more comfortable with non-spiritual (but often needed) service activities such as keeping nursery, arranging showers etc.

Scriptural application to their lives - When confronted with Scripture they doggedly dig in and hold to the system of Christianity they learned in their youth (e.g., ‘this is the Baptist Church, we immerse here’).

Comfort - They typically desire a secure churched-based earthy existence within social Christianity.

Teaching and evangelism - These are not parts of Christianity with which they are comfortable with perhaps not their ‘gift’. If they do teach at all it is typically from prepared material from a book or video.

In contrast, a true believer, even if young, over time will start to speak and do the things of God in a loving but truthful manner. They will grow to love His Word. We should seek to identify and then help those who do not know the full regenerative power of the Holy Spirit through Christ's forgiveness in faith so they too may contribute to the church.

That's all for today thank you for joining me. Please return next week as we discuss how to handle tears in the church.