Archive for February, 2015


Feb 26

Marriage, Human Flourishing, and the Benevolence of God

2015 | by Trent Hunter | Category: Sermon Follow-Up

As Christians, we believe that God’s Word is not only true but good. We also believe that what is good for us individually has social consequences. We do, after all, live together. Careful Christian reflection on the meaning and consequences of such things as marriage is a means of loving our neighbors.

In Sunday’s sermon, “The Heart of Marriage and Divorce,” Ryan pointed to the social consequences of divorce for people, especially women and children. This is a sensitive topic and you should listen to the sermon if you weren’t able to join us. On the subject of divorce and its social consequences, this was especially true in the first century, but it is true today as well. This is evident from our own experience with divorce, even if there are obvious exceptions, but it is also evident in studies that have been conducted.

In his article, “The Social Costs of Abandoning the Meaning of Marriage,” Ryan Anderson writes:

[Marriage is] a personal relationship that serves a public purpose. According to the best available sociological evidence, children fare best on virtually every examined indicator when reared by their wedded biological parents. Studies that control for other factors, including poverty and even genetics, suggest that children reared in intact homes do best in terms of educational achievement, emotional health, familial and sexual development, and delinquency and incarceration.

The breakdown of marriage most hurts the least well-off. A leading indicator of whether someone will know poverty or prosperity is whether, growing up, he or she knew the love and security of having a married mother and father. Marriage reduces the probability of child poverty by 80 percent.

Anderson linked to two studies that ground this claim.

First, in, “Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles,” the Witherspoon Institute offers these ten principles with a bundle of social science research to substantiate them:

  1. Marriage is a personal union, intended for the whole of life, of husband and wife.
  2. Marriage is a profound human good, elevating and perfecting our social and sexual nature.
  3. Ordinarily, both men and women who marry are better off as a result.
  4. Marriage protects and promotes the well-being of children.
  5. Marriage sustains civil society and promotes the common good.
  6. Marriage is a wealth-creating institution, increasing human and social capital.
  7. When marriage weakens, the equality gap widens, as children suffer from the disadvantages of 
growing up in homes without committed mothers and fathers.
  8. A functioning marriage culture serves to protect political liberty and foster limited government.
  9. The laws that govern marriage matter significantly.
  10. “Civil marriage” and “religious marriage” cannot be rigidly or completely divorced from one another.

Then, at the Heritage Foundation, Robert Rector’s study, “Marriage: America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty,” offers this abstract of the substance and application of his findings:

Child poverty is an ongoing national concern, but few are aware that its principal cause is the absence of married fathers in the home. Marriage remains America’s strongest anti-poverty weapon, yet it continues to decline. As husbands disappear from the home, poverty and welfare dependence will increase, and children and parents will suffer as a result. Since marital decline drives up child poverty and welfare dependence, and since the poor aspire to healthy marriage but lack the norms, understanding, and skills to achieve it, it is reasonable for government to take active steps to strengthen marriage. Just as government discourages youth from dropping out of school, it should provide information that will help people to form and maintain healthy marriages and delay childbearing until they are married and economically stable. In particular, clarifying the severe shortcomings of the “child first, marriage later” philosophy to potential parents in lower-income communities should be a priority.

God’s Word is true, and it also works. For the Christian, while our interest in marriage does not stop with our own individual marriages, our own individual homes are the most important place for the application of God’s Word to life. Not only has God given marriage to us for our good, which is demonstrably true, but he has given it to us that we might have the honor of living out a picture of his love for us in Christ (Eph. 5:22-33).

If you missed Sunday’s sermon, we would commend it to you. Listen here.

Feb 20

Tips for Eating Dinner Together as a Family

2015 | by Trent Hunter | Category: Recommended Link

This week, David Murray posted some good advice for families. In his third installment in a series on “Ingredients Of A Happy Home,” David Murray shares these six tips:

  1. Maximize the number. Yes, we have conflicting schedules, shift work, overtime, etc. Yes, there are college assignments to be done, email to be answered, books to be read, chores to be completed. But just because you can’t get everybody together all of the time doesn’t mean we can’t get some together some of the time.
  2. Maximize involvement. Don’t let the loudest or oldest voice dominate. Work to ensure that everybody gets a shot at telling about their day, their joys and trials, successes and failures.
  3. Maximize listening. Encourage careful, appreciate, and interactive listening. Ban cellphones and sarcasm. No rising from the table while someone is speaking.
  4. Maximize positives. It can be tempting for some people and for some families to just dwell on the negatives at work, at college, or even in the national situation. Sometimes it can be helpful to ask each person to list three positives from their day until that becomes more of a natural instinct. Humor and laughter are also tasty side-dishes.
  5. Maximize food. If teenagers know that they’re going to miss out on some really great food, and even better deserts, they’ll be much more likely to organize their schedule around your mealtimes. They can get microwave dinners anywhere. Worth putting extra money and effort into enticing them to the family table. Yes, godly herbs are better than ungodly steak. But godly steak is best of all.
  6. Maximize worship. Start the meal with prayer, turn the conversation towards God at opportune moments, and close the meal with prayer and a short Bible reading.

For one more source of counsel, Columnist at the New York Times, Bruce Feiler, has this to share.

 

 

Feb 14

The Plus One Approach to Church

2015 | by Trent Hunter | Category: Recommended Link

Kevin DeYoung recently published a blog, “The Plus One Approach to Church,” with some wise counsel for anyone who desires to be more connected  at any church, and it applies at DSC too. If this article doesn’t hold timely advice for you, then maybe it will come in hand in your next conversation with the next person you meet on Sunday morning

Here’s how he beings his article:

Are you just starting out at a new church and don’t know how to get plugged in? Have you been at your church for years and still haven’t found your place? Are you feeling disconnected, unhappy, or bored with your local congregation? Let me suggest you enter the “Plus One” program of church involvement.

I don’t mean to sound like a bad infomercial. Here’s what I mean: In addition to the Sunday morning worship service, pick one thing in the life of your congregation and be very committed to it.

This is far from everything a church member should do. We are talking about minimum requirements and baby steps. This is about how to get plugged in at a new church or how to get back on track after drifting away. This is for people who feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. This is for the folks who should make a little more effort before slipping out the back door.

The idea is simple. First, be faithful in attending the Sunday morning worship service. Don’t miss a Sunday. Sure, you may miss a couple Sundays during the year because of illness. Vacation and business travel may take you away from your local congregation several other Sundays too. But keep these to a minimum. Don’t plan all your cottage getaways over the weekend so that you miss out on your own church (and perhaps church altogether) for most of the summer. Don’t let the kids’ activities crowd out Sunday services. (What did Joshua say? “If soccer be god then serve soccer, but as for me and my household we will serve the Lord.” Something like that.) Don’t let homework or football or too much rain or too much sun keep you from the gathering of God’s people for worship. Commit right now that Sunday morning is immovable. You go to church. Period.

Now, add one more thing.

Read the whole thing here.

Depending on your involvement at DSC, that next thing for you may be joining us at our monthly Lord’s Supper service, held this month on February 25. It might mean getting involved in a Community Group. Or it might mean joining us for our next membership class, Knowing Christ, Knowing the Church, which is held each Spring and Fall on Wednesday nights, and during the Summer on Sundays.

Feb 6

Wisdom for Moving and Finding a Church

2015 | by Trent Hunter | Category: Recommended Resources

As a church in a city like Albuquerque we have the blessing of fellowship with believers who have relocated here from around the country. This also means we say goodbye to people from time to time who relocate elsewhere.

If the time comes for you or someone you know to move, hopefully the question of finding a church comes up right away.

In his article, “Two Factors to Consider Before You Move,” Deepak Reju offers these two points of counsel:

1. If you are considering moving, make sure there is a good church in your new location before you make the final decision to move.

If the local church is one of the key sources for your spiritual growth (Eph. 3:10; 4:11-13; Heb. 10:24-25), why would you take a risk and go some place without knowing first if there would be a good church near you?

Don’t make your decision to move based solely on criteria like:

  • This new job will be good for your career.
  • Education will give you better job prospects in the future.
  • You’re dissatisfied with your current job so you need to move on to somewhere else.
  • You’ve outgrown your current house, so you want to move to a bigger one.
  • You want a bigger home just because you can afford it.
  • You are about to start having kids and want to move closer to your family.
  • You would rather live in a city or the country or where the pace of life is different.

2. Consider, at some point in your life, committing to a church long-term.

If you’ve found a church where you are growing spiritually, then you’ve found a good thing. Why give it up? If you stay in your church over the long-term, you have the benefit of:

  • Getting to know the leadership of the church much better and allowing them to get to know you.
  • Getting to know the local community better (which will help your evangelism).
  • Sitting consistently under preaching that is benefiting you spiritually.
  • Building a kind of depth to relationships, which you achieve over 10 or 20 (or even 30) years that you don’t get if you move every 5 years.
  • Being known by others who have had the chance to see your needs, challenges, and sin patterns over time, which in turn enables them to speak meaningfully into your life and care for you in a way that those you just met couldn’t.
  • Earning trust among leaders in the church so that you might be assigned various responsibilities.
  • Earning trust among leaders and others generally that you might be speak into their lives in significant ways.
  • Having the opportunity to minister to the children of others as they grow from infancy to adolescence to adulthood, and having the ability to help form in those children’s minds a model of godly adulthood.
  • Building greater unity within the church by growing up with the church.
  • Providing a kind of stability in the church by staying and giving an example of commitment through thick and thin.
  • Being sanctified through being at the same church during different seasons . . .
  • Witnessing long-term spiritual growth—what it is like for God to make people more like himself over decades.

If in God’s providence and for good reasons you are headed to a new place, check out the TGC Church Directory, the 9Marks Church Search, or the Acts 29 Church Finder. There are other networks and ways to find a fine church, but these are three that we recommend regularly.

Finally, here are four things to look for when you’re getting to know a church either through a visit in person or to their website:

  • What do they believe? This is available on most church sites or at an information counter.
  • What’s their diet? Check out their sermon archive to see if they preach topically or through books of the Bible in an expository fashion.
  • How are they led? Are they led by biblical qualified elders/pastors?
  • What’s important to them? This takes some perceptivity, but, for example, are they engaged in the spread of the gospel locally and abroad?

You won’t find a perfect church in DSC, and you won’t find one anywhere else. Each church will have its areas of strength and it’s areas of needed growth. In the Lord’s wisdom, every Christian and every local gathering is a work of his grace in process. But perhaps these links and counsel will help you find a good fit if and when it comes time to move.

If leaving DSC is hard, then you’ve done it right. That says as much about God’s grace to commit you to this church as it does the body you’ve grown to love. Wherever you land, involve yourself with that same love and commitment.