It is interesting to notice that John Calvin’s Institutes longest section is on the subject of prayer. It is in this section that he makes it sure we know God’s desire for us is that we bring our requests:

Otherwise, to know God as the master and bestower of all good things, who invites us to request them of him, and still not go to him and not ask of him-this would be of as little profit as for a man to neglect a treasure, buried and hidden in the earth, after it had been pointed out to him. (Book 3, Chapter 20, Section 1)

The pivot point hangs on whether or not God has revealed a universal pattern for the church in the New Testament. If He has not, then anything will do so long as it works. But I am convinced that nothing so dear to the heart of Christ as His Bride should be left without explicit instructions as to her corporate conduct. I am further convinced that the 20th century has in no way simulated this pattern in its method of ‘churching’ a community… it is incumbent upon me, if God has a pattern for the church, to find and establish that pattern, at all costs.
– Jim Elliot

Elizabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty: Life and Testimony of Jim Elliot (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1989), 138-139.

The high places of Israel’s idol worship were places of high octane entertainment, drama, and visual sexualization. People liked to go to the high places, not because of the dead statues, but because of the alluring entertainment experience that was presented there.

But is the high octane pomp and electric experience what God has intended for His people? Rather, it is simplicity. Our worship should stand out, and stand alone over against a highly charged experience. Terry Johnson captures this saying:

Don’t revive the pomp and circumstance of the medieval liturgies. Don’t embrace the high-voltage extravaganzas of contemporary worship either. Don’t create a new priesthood of technicians, artists, and actors. Our worship is simple and hence universally valid. It can be conducted and enjoyed at any place, at any time, whatever the income, education, or technological prowess of those involved. It can be conducted in an igloo in Alaska, a grass hut in the Congo, or in a grand cathedral in Paris. God may now be worshiped in Samaria or Jerusalem. We repeat the implication of Heb 8-10. The Levitical ordinances were ‘a copy and shadow of the heavenly things,’ but Christ ‘has obtained a more excellent ministry’ (8:5, 6) The entrance of Christ into heaven itself, and not the earthly temple, ‘a mere copy of the true one,’ of necessity, means the abolition of the old ‘copy’ (9:23ff). The Law, he says, was ‘only a shadow of the good things to come,’ which have come in Christ (10:1). He writes,

‘Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water’ (Heb 10:19-22) (Johnson 52-53).

Everything about our worship is to be simple. Nothing is to be clever. Nothing is to draw attention to the learning, the wisdom, the sophistication, the beauty, the complexity of the medium. Simple readings (not melodramatic), plain-style preaching, unadorned praying, and hearty singing are the need of the day. Frankly, this makes everything about worship leadership and participation more difficult. The leaders cannot fall back on processionals, incense, liturgy, ceremony, and ritual, or light-show, drama, dance, band, and multimedia presentation. The participants cannot sit back and enjoy the ‘show’ as an audience before whom these liturgists or techies perform. Men with depth of character and godliness are the only vessels through which spiritual and simple worship will flow. Open minds and hearts are the only kind in which it will be received (Johnson 55).

We, as pastors, are not called to reinvent the church in every generation but to lay out the vision that God has given in the Bible for the church and the family.

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So they come to you as people do, they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words, but they do not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain. Indeed you are to them as a very lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument; for they hear your words, but they do not do them. (Ezek. 33:31-32).

Terry Johnson, author of Reformed Worship: Worship that is According to Scripture, speaks of the kind of joy it is:

What about joy? That depends on what one means by joy. Christian joy is not the joy of the barroom or the ballfield, but of those who fear the God whom they love. Again it may be helpful to make some distinctions. Even in the athletic world there is a difference between the joy expressed when the winning touchdown is scored and that expressed at the awards banquet two months later. In both cases the emotion is joy, yet the manner of expressing it differs as one moves from one setting to another. Similarly the joy of worship is not like the arena. Such joy is not expressed by high-fives, by jumping up and down, by screams and shouts. I once heard a preacher ask why we don’t get as excited in church as we do at the football stadium. The answer is, that kind of excitement is unsuitable for public worship, and it is a different kind of joy. ‘Delight’ and ‘fear’ stand side by side in Psalm 112:1. As we’ve just noted, Christian joy is compatible with ‘trembling’ (Ps 2:11). Presumably the 24 elders were filled with joy even as they fell prostrate before God. Indeed prostration and joy are joined in the experience of the wise men, who ‘rejoiced exceedingly with the great joy … and fell down and worshiped Him’ (Matt 2:10, 11). Our joy is a deep emotion, similar to peace, experienced at a level unrecognized by the world. It is not the noisy excitement of the arena, but is ‘inexpressible and full of glory’ (1 Pet 1:8).

Terry L. Johnson, Reformed Worship: Worship That is According to Scripture, (Jackson: Reformed Academic Press, 2000), 60.

The drift of the Spirit of God in his legal strivings with persons, has seemed most evidently to be, to make way for, and to bring to, a conviction of their absolute dependence on his sovereign power and grace, and universal necessity of a Mediator, by leading them more and more to a sense of their exceeding wickedness and guiltiness in his sight; the pollution and insufficiency of their own righteousness, that they can in no wise help themselves, and that God would be wholly just and righteous in rejecting them, and all that they do, and in casting them off forever: though there be a vast variety as to the manner and distinctness of persons convictions of these things.

(Pg. 70, 71, The Jonathan Edwards Reader, Yale Nota Bene)

There is nothing more important in the Christian life than the way in which we approach the Bible, and the way in which we read it. It is our textbook, it is our only source, it is our only authority…You can easily read [Paul’s] Epistles and be no wiser at the end than you were at the beginning because of what you have been reading into what Paul says, wresting them to your own destruction. Now that is something which we must always bear in mind with regard to the whole of the Bible. I can be seated with the Bible in front of me; I can be reading its words and going through its chapters; and yet I may be drawing a conclusion which is quite false to the pages in front of me.

There can be no doubt at all that the commonest cause of all this is our tendency so often to approach the Bible with a theory. We go to our Bibles with this theory, and everything we read is controlled by it…If you read half a verse and emphasize over-much some other half verse elsewhere, your theory is soon proved. Now obviously this is something of which we have to be very wary. There is nothing so dangerous as to come to the Bible with a theory, with preconceived ideas, with some pet idea of our own, because the moment we do so, we shall be tempted to over-emphasize one aspect and under-emphasize another.

D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1959-60), 6-7.

As a ministry dedicated to biblical discipleship, we are excited to announce the 2013 NCFIC internship. Training young men in biblical leadership, theology, business and foundational skills is something that we are very passionate about. Our prayer is that the deposits made in these young men will help launch a new generation of disciplined church leaders and elders.

The NCFIC internship is a men’s discipleship program, which features various academic exercises consisting of reading, writing, and personal study. It also features local church involvement and mentorship by the men and families at Hope Baptist Church. It is engaged in ministry to churches around the nation through audio, video, conferences, and internet communications. Interns are involved in the daily agenda of the NCFIC offices and daily discipleship with Scott Brown and David Brown. They are fully involved in the activities and mentorship of Hope Baptist Church. It also includes a strenuous program of physical fitness. This internship is about personal transformation and deployment.

One of the most exciting parts of our work at the NCFIC has been what God has done through our intern program. We have seen God work in a mighty way through the daily discipleship, the hard work, the camaraderie, the opportunities, and the sacrifice involved in being an NCFIC intern. We have seen men grow, stretched, convicted, and transformed. Our goal is to send out young men who are sharpened, hardened and prepared for the challenges of the 21st century.

In 2013, we are conducting an intern class which begins on May 5th and ends November 18th. Please prayerfully consider applying for the 2013 NCFIC internship. The application deadline is February 28, 2013. Learn more about the internship and the application process.