I found this 1993 article in the archives of the Briefing called, Why, Where and How should Christians Meet? (Reproduced from Evangelicals Now).

Under “Characteristics” the writer of the article states this:

There are no set New Testament patterns for Christian meetings, but there are many hints about the sort of things that should characterise them. For example, Christian meetings are to be Spirit-filled (Eph 5:18); Bible-centred (Col 3:16); congregational (Heb 10:24); varied (1 Cor 14:26); characterised by praise and thanksgiving (Eph 5:18); intelligible (1 Cor 14); done decently and in order (1 Cor 14:40), and they should include the breaking of bread (1 Cor 11) and teaching and intercessions (Acts 2:42).

There are no set New Testament patterns for Christian meetings?  Hello!!!!!!  What about 1 Corinthians 11, 12 & 14 - especially chapter 14?????

I’m glad the writer found the hints that he did - it was a worthwhile exercise - but everything he discovered can be taken straight from those three 1 Corinthian chapters (even the “hints” found that do not come from texts about Christian meetings)!  Let’s have a look at the verses that give us those hints.

Spirit-filled (Eph 5:18)-21 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

I had to add the next three verses to show how it could relate to a meeting.  Nothing specific about meetings there, though it is fair to say that if our daily life is to be described this way, so should our meetings.

Bible-centred (Colossians 3:16) Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Same sort of thing.  Good, valuable, and to characterise every part of our Christian lives.  These are truly hints, because they do not specifically address meetings at all.

Congregational (Hebrews 10:24)-25 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

I’m pretty sure the writer meant verse 25 because verse 24 doesn’t illustrative “congregational” quite as well.  Still, it actually does refer to meetings, so that’s great!  (Though, the “hint” that a Christian meeting involves Christians meeting really doesn’t add much to the conversation!)

Varied (1 Corinthians 14:26) What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.

Aha!  An instruction on how meetings should work.  Is it too much to call it a pattern?  And look, it’s in ye ole 1 Corinthians 14!

Characterised by praise and thanksgiving (Eph 5:18)-21 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wait a minute!  Haven’t we looked at that already?  And verse 18 (which ends at “but be filled with the Spirit”) doesn’t address the point being made either!  You have to read on to verse 19 and 20!  Again, it doesn’t necessarily speak of meetings, but it’s reasonable to use it as a “hinted” characteristic.

Intelligible (1 Cor 14).

Far too long to reproduce here, but this is the very place where a pattern for worship can be found!  Not suprising it’s included, just suprising that it’s only considered a “hint”!

Done decently and in order (1 Cor 14:40) But all things should be done decently and in order.

A good hint, but again, not suprising in the same section of Scripture that is actually telling you how to meet together!

The breaking of bread (1 Cor 11).

Again, far too long to reproduce, but this also is part of the section of Scripture that gives instructions on how to meet together (1 Cor 11-14)!  Support for breaking bread during Church meetings can be found many other places also.

Teaching and intercessions (Acts 2:42) And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Non-Charismatics love to say that Acts is not normative.  Why then take this as a normative “hint”?  This is not describing a weekly meeting but rather a lifestyle.  Still 1 Corinthians 11-14 does include teaching and prayers in the pattern it gives.

Am I being snarky?  Sure.  It really gets me going when I read the totally unfounded statement that there is no New Testament pattern for meeting.  Not only do these hints easily and mostly explicitly fit into 1 Corinthians 11, 12 & 14, it is in those three chapters that a pattern can be found!!!

I’ve lamented about this before, and received some encouraging responses, but I still find it completely astounding that claims are still made that there is no pattern for meeting in the New Testament - back in 1994 right up to today!

Maybe God will use me to do something about it one day.

Tony Payne of Matthias Media has got a group of Moore Theological College graduates and begun a blog.  He has outlined what they are wanting to do.

I’ve added The Sola Panel to the sidebar.  We’ll see how it goes.

We all know we’re imperfect.

We all have at least a dim awareness that in some way we are not what we should be. 

We all have some secrets that we don’t share with others because they show what we are really like, instead of what we want to be like. 

 We have and they have standards that we don’t measure up to.   

  

   

Where did this awareness come from?

It comes from a faint memory that humans were originally perfect.

Unfortunately, our first parents mucked it up for us and ever since we have been imperfect.  All our actions are compromised and corrupt.

We humans, all of us, do not make the perfect grade.

 

 

But God hasn’t thrown us away. 

     He sent Jesus into the world to deal with the situation. 

Jesus says, “I love you, but you’ve got some big issues, big flaws, huge imperfections, huge sin.  We’re going to have to deal with those.”

 

 

 

Jesus leads us to…

…a wooden cross where he takes our corruption and imperfection:

from little lies to acts of murder; from lust filled thoughts to adultery; from the guilt of sexual abuse to the shame of being sexually abused;  all our dirtiness, all our uncleanness, all alcoholism, all drug-abuse, all self-righteousness and pride and arrogance and doubt and fear;

he takes it all and he’s killed as if it was all his, as if he deserved death instead of us.

   

 

 

And then Jesus was buried,

and three days later

he was raised to life, 

and he comes to us and says,

“Follow me.”

 

   

Have you experienced this?

Have you seen that when Jesus died on the cross,

he took your imperfections and corruptions on himself

and died for them so you don’t have to?

If you see that, then something else happened. 

 

   

When he took your imperfections and corruptions,

Jesus gave you his incorruptible perfection

and that changes you on the inside. 

 

   

You become different.

You start to desire different things. 

You, gradually or not, begin to think in different ways. 

You start a journey toward recreated perfection. 

You begin to see Jesus as most important

and your heart follows him and his desires.

 

   

To experience this…

…speak to God.

Be honest about your imperfections and corruptions.

Thank him that Jesus died and rose to life.

Thank him that Jesus takes your imperfections and

gives you his perfection.

Say you will follow him. 

I’ve long not been a fan of evangelistic tracts, but recently I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason I didn’t like them was that they didn’t actually express the gospel in an understandable way.  I’m in the process of writing a few of my own, but in the meantime, here’s a tract John Piper wrote that I think is a good one.

HT: Denny Burk.

Okay, for all you John Williamson junkies out there, the title is tongue-in-cheek.  The reason I can accuse John Williamson of intellectual theft is because he has a new song called “The Kiwi and the Emu”.

That’s our name!  (Stealer!)

I mean, think about it.  No one says “The Kiwi and the emu”.  They say, “The Kiwi and the Aussie” or “The Kiwi and the kangaroo”.  No, he read it here and stole it without even an “if you please”.

How much do you reckon I can sue him for?

Up at Everyday Liturgy.

Justin Taylor has pointed to two resources on the idea of merit by Lee Irons - a series of blog posts and a paper Irons wrote called, Redefining Merit: An Examination of Medieval Presuppositions in Covenant Theology.

I’ve read the blog posts and I am planning to read the paper.

I’m not overly familiar with the discussion on the idea of merit, but Irons raises interesting thoughts that relate strongly to my continuing thoughts about Love and Glory.

Have a read (if that’s your thing).

Lee Iron’s quotes Meredith Kline in his 4th post on merit saying:

…the value of the Son’s atonement payment was sufficient for all mankind, yet the Father gives him the elect only, not all.

Kline argues that without some notion of a prior agreement between the Father and the Son that his atonement would be “rewarded” with only the elect, the Father could be accused of injustice toward the Son.

But is this necessarily the case?

I have previously argued that Jesus can bear the full punishment humans deserve because he is an infinite being who can translate “punishment of limited severity for an infinite duration” into “punishment of infinite severity for a limited duration” and so take every ounce of punishment due to human beings.

If this is the case, (and, of course, I believe it is), then because of the unlimited nature of infinity, whether Jesus translated one person’s punishment of limited severity for an eternal duration into infinite severity for a limited duration, or 500 million people’s punishment of limited severity for an eternal duration into infinite severity for a limited duration, the outcome is the same: infinite severity and limited duration.

Therefore, God can not be accused of injustice.  Jesus’ atoning death was big enough to absorb the punishment of the whole world, and yet could be justly applied to only the elect without Jesus having paid anything less.

I’ve tried to pare back the number of links in the sidebar and so got rid of a lot.  Initially I deleted all the blogs under the “Not Friends’ Blogs” category, but I found that I wanted to refer to their posts or was just plain interested enough to want to check out their blogs and had to google them to get there.  So, back they came.

Of course, as always, many of the links under friends are blogs also.

I’ve just got off the phone to Hewlett Packard customer service.

We bought a printer last December.  On the whole it’s been a good buy, but not long ago it just wouldn’t turn on.  So, after a bit of a search on the site, I found a number to ring, dialed, and waited in the queue for 20 minutes or so, to be answered by someone in America who told me I had the wrong number (yes, probably my fault)…

I rang the other number and got through pretty quickly.  After explaining the problem to the Asian person who took the call and giving my details for the purposes of warranty, it appeared that I didn’t have a “phone service warranty”, I only had an “email service warranty”.  The lady on the other end of the phone would not help me - I had to email.

So, I emailed.  The person who replied was the most helpful of all.  I was given a list of things to try from the blatantly obvious to the more sublime.  The problem was blatantly obvious - the external power unit was not working.  I wrote back asking for a replacement, only to be informed that I was talking to the wrong people:

we at e-mail service are not authorized to create shipment for the parts we can only provide technical support.

So, I called the number I was given and organised with the Asian person who answered to be sent a new external power unit.  However, they would only send me the unit and the cord from the unit to the printer.  They would not replace the cord from the unit to the wall.

“What if that is where the problem is?” I asked.

Apparently because those cords are so readily available, HP doesn’t supply them.  But doesn’t that totally miss the point?  We have bought a printer complete with external power unit and cord to the wall, only to find less than 6 months later the power unit doesn’t work.  If the problem is with the cord connecting the power unit to the wall, the fault is still with the HP product.  Why should we have to pay for their faulty equipment just because I can buy it down the road?  I can buy another printer down the road.  Does Hewlett Packard want me to do that too?

And where is our money from the pay back deal we put in for???

And why can’t I talk to an Australian when I ring them?

Not impressed, HP, not impressed.