Living in Light of Two Ages
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Sunday, July 21, 2013 at 03:37PM 
Dogma (Part 1)
Many Christians in our day avoid the study of theology in favor of more practical concerns. Dogma, they say, is for eggheads who wish to put God in a box. On the contrary, we argue on this program, knowing who God is and what he has done is the basis of Christian experience. We will discuss the impossibility of having a personal relationship with God if we don’t know anything about him.
Thursday, July 18, 2013 at 07:07PM 
Mo's retirement tour continues . . . This time Delta named a plane for him! How cool is that!
Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 08:49AM 
You simply cannot talk about the Christian "buzz" in the OC apart from Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel. If there has been one dominant church in the development of the OC's evangelical subculture, it is Calvary Chapel. Calvary Chapel made being a Christian "cool."
In 1965, "Pastor Chuck" as he's affectionately known, wanted to reach young people, especially the throngs of hippies and surfers found throughout South-Central Orange County (the so-called Jesus People). This was the era of free-love and Vietnam War protests, kids with long hair, tie-dyed jeans, girls in halter-tops, experimentation with drug use, and fascination with Eastern religions. Those young adults were asking questions about life, the future, and especially about the Christianity in which they were raised. Many of them found that the churches of their youth were not all that interested in them, or their questions. Their churches wanted nothing from them but conformity. Conformity, of course, was the one thing that was not going to happen. The Jesus People had "dropped out" and "tuned in." Why bother with them?
To his great credit, Chuck Smith did care about these young adults, and in a very short period time Chuck was preaching to vast numbers of them in a tent, and soon built the current Calvary Chapel very near the booming South Coast Plaza--emblematic of the OC's affluent middle class. The history of Calvary Chapel and those pastors with ties to Chuck Smith (including Greg Laurie, Raul Ries, Mike MacIntosh, Skip Heitzig) is a remarkable story and you can read about it here.
Chuck Smith's church background is in the mildly-Pentecostal Foursquare Church, the legacy of Aimee Semple McPherson (or "Sister" as Bob Godfrey calls her) and her Angelus Temple, once the largest church in Los Angeles. Smith is clearly Foursquare in his theology, which emphasizes, "Jesus the Savior, Jesus the Healer, Jesus the Baptizer with the Holy Spirit, and Jesus the Soon-Coming King." All of these are central to Calvary's theology and ethos.
Along with hundreds of others, and as the Newporters stared at us from their passing yachts, I was baptized during Easter vacation of 1977 at Pirate's Cove--the south side of the picturesque entrance into Newport Bay. Don't ask me for my baptism certificate, because Calvary Chapel cared less about such things.
While Calvary was never known as a healing ministry there was the anointing of the sick and speaking in tongues, both of which were confined to "afterglow" services, which often followed concerts and Bible studies. I went to one once, largely at the insistence of the cute girl I was dating--the only reason I would even consider it. I witnessed one of Chuck's assistants carefully explain that the gift of tongues was a supernatural gift of God, only to then give instructions as to how to do it. You started by repeating "kitty-kitty-kitty" until the Holy Spirit supposedly took over with your new heavenly language. I wasn't convinced. My date was, and so that ended, thankfully.
Everyone in the OC, it seemed, went to Calvary Chapel's concerts and Bible studies, even if you went to church elsewhere on Sundays. I often went to Greg Laurie's week night study--at the time he was well-tanned and had the same long hair and sideburns I did. Ironic isn't it, since we are both now bald, and well into middle age. The cool has long left me, and I won't presume to speak for Laurie.
The influence of Calvary upon the religious life of the OC (and elsewhere) cannot be underestimated. Traditional church music and hymns were out (although the few times I went to Calvary Chapel on a Sunday morning we sang hymns from a hymnal--if I recall correctly), as was any form of traditional church government and denominational emphasis. Chuck Smith did not like denominations, refusing to call the thousands of Calvary Chapels which sprang from "big Calvary" a "denomination"--even though the Calvary Chapels clearly functioned as one.
In the wake of the buzz generated by Calvary, many of the churches in the OC felt compelled to compete with them by imitating Calvary's "contemporary" worship, and by focusing almost exclusively upon youth culture. Calvary Chapel always won that competition. Have you ever seen a traditional CRC or LCMS congregation try to pull off "contemporary" worship? There is nothing worse than an ethnic Dutch or German church trying to be relevant by mimicing what the church's youth had seen at Calvary.
Maranatha Music soon became a force in the Christian sub-culture. CCM rapidly pushed aside traditional worship and liturgy in many churches, replaced by something akin to what went on at Calvary's concerts and Bible studies. Youth culture now dominated. It generated buzz. Unnoticed perhaps, is the embarrassing fact that as the Jesus People became older, married and had families, they hung on to their music and ways of doing things. It is fair to say that "middle age" culture now dominates at places like Calvary. Once you get on the youth culture treadmill, you'll soon fall far behind the new and hottest trend (as Calvary Chapel has). The irony is that the Calvary Chapel of 2013 is now rather staid, if not down-right traditional. They've been at this forty years and there is now a substantial history to preserve. Rock Harbor and Mars Hill are the trendy churches in the OC now, but they sure don't generate the county-wide buzz Calvary once did.
One especially troubling distinctive of Calvary Chapel is the so-called "Moses model" of ministry. The Moses model centers around the idea that God revealed his will to Chuck (supposedly), and then Chuck revealed that will to his underlings. In a pamphlet on the subject, Smith counsels pastors to "fire" their boards if they will not go along with the pastor's God-given vision for his church. Of course, none of this can be found anywhere in the elder-based ecclesiology (Presbyterian) of the New Testament. Although Chuck Smith was anything but a cult leader, what Chuck said went (he was God's man after all) and it was common to hear Calvary folk call him "Pope Chuck" (often times facetiously, sometimes not).
Another troubling feature of Calvary is that Chuck's stress on the immediacy of the end-times which created several embarrassing situations in which he would come close to setting dates for the Lord's return--twice, during Calvary's New Years Eve services, I heard him say that this would be the last year because the Lord was coming soon. This was not a prediction or calculation like Harold Camping would make, but more like a heart-felt prophecy implying that Chuck knew via some supernatural means the end was at hand, and he was trying to prepare us.
It is also clear to anyone who has been around Calvary Chapel, that any favorable mention of Calvinism is a no-no. As I become more and more Reformed in my thinking, Calvary Chapel became more and more foreign to me. Chuck Smith does not like Calvinism, and he is not shy about telling people to avoid it. This is a touchy subject with my Calvary Chapel friends because in a church which has no formal membership and does not practice any form of church discipline, the surest way to receive the "left-foot" of fellowship is to start talking about Calvinism.
Chuck knew his Bible, but knew little about theology and church history. I listened to his criticism of Calvinism, but quickly discovered that a straw man was being attacked, and the biblical passages which were used against the doctrines of grace, actually supported them. Larry Taylor (who once taught at the Calvary Chapel Bible College) was the first to write in defense of Calvary's "balanced" approach to the Calvinism-Arminianism debate. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that Taylor's defense was an affirmation of decisional regeneration without the doctrine of perseverance--an odd construction. Calvary Chapel pastor, George Bryson, later produced two books defending Calvary Chapel's "balanced view" against the perceived evils of Calvinism (neither of Bryson's book are very compelling), and given the animosity still coming from Calvary Chapel towards all things Reformed, I'll bet the farm that Bryson's efforts have done little to stem the tide of Calvary Chapel folk becoming interested in the Reformation and Reformed theology.
Once the White Horse Inn went on the air in So Cal, and Reformed churches like Christ Reformed began sprouting up, it was soon obvious that the vast majority of those interested in the five "solas" of the Reformation and Reformed theology had, at one time, gone through the doors of Calvary Chapel. Many more we encountered were still attending Calvary, but looking to leave. Chuck Smith gave many of them their first exposure to serious Bible study. But it was all too apparent that his views on church government, end times, worship, and soteriology, were not the plain sense of Scripture. And he was not about to change his mind.
My overall take on Calvary Chapel is mixed. Based upon the testimonies of many people who now attend Christ Reformed, there can be no doubt that what they heard at Calvary Chapel was instrumental in their coming to faith in Christ. Yet, these same people also testify that the teaching was shallow, repetitive, and did not withstand the test put to it by Reformed theology and practice. Regrettably, I do not see Calvary Chapel as a true church. Calvary does not have church membership--hence they have no church discipline (one of the three marks of a true church). Calvary does not baptize the covenant children of believers, nor understand the Lord's Supper as a true means of grace (another of the marks of a true church). The gospel is often preached there because the Bible is open and exposited. Yet, what truth is taught is often obscured by Chuck's odd doctrine of "abiding," his trichotomist view of human nature, his dispensational hermeneutic, and his charismatic emphases (especially in regards to subjective and emotive worship, and the lack of emphasis on the sacraments/means of grace).
That said, I also have no doubt that Calvary Chapel is filled with true believers in Jesus Christ--people who possess the marks of a true Christian (according to the Belgic Confession, Art 29). I also need to point out the obvious--throughout the years Calvary Chapel has done a remarkable job of reaching out to the unchurched. Calvary Chapel folk joyfully accept people as they are, where they are. Unchurched people don't feel judged (or like they need to be a theologian) when they visit a Calvary Chapel. Sadly, that is not the case with many Reformed and Presbyterian churches. There's a huge lesson for us here.
Yet, often times such outreach comes with a high price tag--church life and worship uncritically reflect pop culture, as does the theology and content of the preaching. Do people attend (and feel comfortable) because they identify with a particular style of doing things (which also happens to be quite compatible with a charismatic form of evangelical Christianity) and which suits their personal tastes? No one, it seems, thinks to ask "is this what the Scriptures teach about worship, preaching, and sacraments?"
There is another pressing question which needs to be raised. Because Calvary Chapel does not have church membership, how many who enter through the front door, quietly slip out the back? What happens to these folk? Undoubtedly, many of them make up the new "burned over" district which is the OC, and who, having witnessed the unhappy marriage of pop culture and Christianity, find the latter no more meaningful to their lives than the former.
I think the case can be made that Calvary Chapel has thrived precisely because it actually reflects the conservative values of OC, while at the same time appearing to be "contemporary," if not counter-cultural. There is a lesson to be learned here too. Perhaps the time has come for Reformed folk to think about creative ways to present our distinctive theology and manner of worship as bucking the secular tide. Certainly, our goal is to be biblical in all that we do, which is why we trust in the proclamation of Christ crucified as the divinely approved manner by which God truly extends his kingdom. This is why we are not terribly interested in making our church services look and feel like the trends and fads around us. Dare I say it? The time may have come when it might be "cool" to not be cool.
When all is said and done, no single church has exercised a greater influence upon the evangelical subculture and religious buzz in the OC than has Calvary Chapel. Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel have cast a huge shadow in the OC--certainly wider than anyone else's.
In the next installment of our series on the OC as a new burned over district, we'll take up what is perhaps the OC's most famous church, Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral (Robert Schuller and the Crystal Cathedral).
Here's the introduction to this series: Introduction
Here's part one, "the buzz": The "Buzz"
Here's part two, "TBN": TBN
Monday, July 15, 2013 at 10:19AM 
The Twenty-Eighth in a Series of Sermons on 1 Corinthians
What is the gospel? If White Horse Inn producer Shane Rosenthal walked up to you with his digital recorder and asked, “what is the gospel?” what would you say? If you can’t come up with the answer immediately, then please pay close attention. The gospel is what Jesus Christ did to save sinners. The gospel is called “good news” because the gospel is the proclamation of a certain set of historical facts–that Jesus suffered and died as a payment for our sins, and that he was raised by God from the dead on the third day as proof that his death turned aside God’s wrath toward sinners. Apart from the good news of the gospel, we have no hope of heaven because we are sinners and cannot save ourselves, not even with God’s help. This is a non-negotiable and fundamental article of the Christian faith. It is a sad commentary that so many professing Christians are so confused about such an important matter.
We come to the last major topic Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians–the bodily resurrection of believers. While I want to qualify what I am about to say by affirming that all of Scripture is God-breathed, and therefore profitable for teaching, rebuking and training in righteousness, Paul’s discussion of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 is one of the most important chapters in all the Bible–especially in our current context. The reason for this is simple. Paul defines the gospel in verses 1-11. He speaks of the fact of the resurrection in verses 12-19, and of the relationship of the bodily resurrection of believers to the second coming of Jesus Christ in verses 20-28. Paul goes on to define the importance of the resurrection for Christian living in verses 29-34, before addressing the nature of the resurrection body in verses 35-58. All of these things matter because they deal with the very foundation of our faith.
Since the wages of sin is death, and since we are all sinners, death is an inevitability. Try as we will, we cannot escape the reality of death. Death has claimed three of our own church members, and affected virtually every family represented here this morning. Therefore, we ignore this subject to our own peril. In the face of this horrible foe, Paul anchors the Christian’s hope in the resurrection of our bodies. Just as Jesus died and was raised from the dead three days later, so too shall we be raised on that final day when Jesus comes to judge the world, raise the dead, and makes all things new. At death, our bodies and souls are torn apart. In the resurrection God reunites them. This is why Paul’s discussion of the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15 is so important, since it is in this resurrected state that we will live for all of eternity in the presence of Christ on a new heaven and earth.
The doctrine of the bodily resurrection was a serious problem for the Greeks in Corinth, who were taught that at death, the soul (which was pure spirit and therefore good) was liberated from the prison house of the body (which was material, and therefore evil). To the pagans, death was almost a good thing, since we are finally rid of our bodies which are the source of bad habits and evil desires. According to his comment in verse 12 of chapter 15–“how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?”–Paul must address this matter with the Corinthians because a number of them were laboring under the mistaken and pagan assumption that the resurrection is spiritual only, and that the dead will not be raised (bodily), but exist throughout eternity as disembodied spirits.
To read the rest of this sermon: Click Here
Sunday, July 14, 2013 at 03:29PM 
Here's the audio from this morning's sermon by Rev. Compton: Click Here
Sunday, July 14, 2013 at 03:19PM 
Found in Christ (Part Two)
In Philippians 3, Paul writes about obtaining a righteousness that is not his own but, rather, a righteousness "which is through faith in Christ." On this program we will unpack this entire chapter and its implications for our understanding of justification and the Christian life.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013 at 07:40AM TBN Intro from Heath Nelson on Vimeo.
There was a time when much of the Christian "buzz" in the OC centered around the nightly doings of Paul and Jan Crouch and their must-see "Praise The Lord" program. "Praise the Lord" is still broadcast live each evening (Monday through Friday) and the world-wide and gigantic TBN empire remains a force. But the local buzz TBN once generated is now long gone.
In my circle, the "Praise the Lord" program was known as the "Pentecostal follies." Of course, most Pentecostals I know felt about TBN the way in which I feel about former CRC elder Harold Camping--the guy is a crackpot. We felt bad laughing at Paul and Jan at first, but then you realized that these people were broadcasting this stuff into my home because they wanted me to watch them. And frankly, much of what they did was funny--even if it shouldn't have been. If some of us were taken aback by Paul and Jan, many more just lapped this stuff up.
TBN hit the airwaves in 1973 and before long, people were fascinated with the nightly doings on "Praise the Lord." No one had seen anything like it. Jan Crouch was not quite as flamboyant as her east coast rival Tammy Faye Bakker, but every bit her equal as a TV personality. "Praise the Lord's" panel format with musical interludes was modeled on the old Mike Douglas and Phil Donahue programs, unlike the Jimmy and Tammy show, which was more a variety show format.
You could find all sort of Christian celebrities and entertainers on "Praise the Lord." Many of these folks were Hollywood "has beens" who, by going on TBN, could still get before a live TV camera and find adoring fans if only they had an interesting "testimony" (or, as we called it, "test of money"). TBN could even boast of having their own rock star (Jeff Fenholt), who was billed as the former front man for Black Sabbath. Upon closer inspection it turned out that he actually knew a guy who once went to high school with someone whose cousin lived next door to some guy who was once in Black Sabbath. Or something like that. He had a set of pipes, but his actual Heavy Metal "front man" resume was pretty thin.
TBN's regulars included Oral Roberts (a nationally known faith-healer) and "Praise the Lord" probably established backwater Word-Faith types like Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, and Fred Price as household names.
Then there was the "young buck"--a Lebanese faith-healer and evangelist with a pronounced Middle-Eastern accent and the wildest comb-over anyone had ever seen--Tofik Benedictus (AKA Benny Hinn). This was the same Benny Hinn who announced live on TBN that there were nine members of the Holy Trinity because each of the three persons of the Godhead were body, soul, and spirit.
I had never seen people speak in tongues until I saw it occur live on the TBN stage. I had never seen people flippantly claim that God had spoken to them (sometimes audibly) and then glibly recount what God supposedly had told them like advice given by Dear Abby. I saw all kinds of things on TBN I had never seen before, and Lord willing, will never see again. It got to the point, if there was nothing good on TV, we'd turn on TBN, just to see what they were up to now--and we were rarely disappointed. It was "Reality TV" before anyone identified the genre as such.
The TBN set was also graced by the presence of those televangelists, pastors, and "ministry" leaders (more like CEOs) whose programming was broadcast by Paul and Jan. Robert Schuller was a semi-regular, as were Chuck Smith, Jack Hayford, E. V. Hill., Hal Lindsey, Bill Bright, and even D. James Kennedy, of all people. I can only wonder if the latter felt sufficiently embarrassed by appearing on the same set with Paul and Jan while trying to engage them in conversation.
But people in the OC talked about "Praise the Lord"--virtually non-stop. How could you be a Christian and not talk about it? Everything we saw on TBN was either controversial, just plain weird, or worse, heretical. I saw people "slain in the Spirit." I saw people "laugh in the Spirit." I heard Jan Crouch describe how, when she was a small girl, the Lord resurrected her dead pet chicken after anointing it with Crisco Oil (because she had no "anointing oil") while Benny Hinn and the participants in the annual telethon cracked-up in the background. Even Benny Hinn couldn't believe what he was hearing. I saw all kinds of things which I cannot forget, and which take up permanent space in my long term memory.
Eventually TBN moved from their headquarters in a Tustin industrial complex (near the famous "blimp hangers" if you know the OC) to the former Full-Gospel Businessmen's headquarters in Costa Mesa (right off the 405 Fwy and across from the OC's most famous shopping complex, South Coast Plaza). It is easily the ugliest building in the entire county. I am told TBN's influence now is primarily in the third world, but after numerous scandals, ill-health, and the unglamorous effects of old age, the OC, it seems, has largely forgotten Paul and Jan. They rarely appear in "Praise the Lord" anymore, and the live program is often broadcast from many places other than the OC.
A couple of other things of interest. . . Mike Horton was on TBN with one of their daytime hosts, Jim McClellen. Mike was all of twenty at the time, still at Biola, and living with the Riddlebargers. They discussed Mike's new book, Mission Accomplished (which later became Putting Amazing back Into Grace). This has to be the only time the five "solas" of the Reformation were ever mentioned on TBN. Incidentally, Paul and Jan actually gave away a gazillion copies of the Heidelberg Catechism as a "love offering" (that even sounds wrong) but stopped immediately when someone told them it taught infant baptism.
R. C. Sproul was once on "Praise the Lord" to promote his newest book, Reasons to Believe (1982). I still have the VHS tape of this somewhere in a box in my attic, but I wasn't going to dig it out and hook up the VHS player just to confirm. R.C. had no idea about Paul and Jan, and so when live on the air, Jan asked Dr. "Sprowal" if he believed that miracles still occurred today, R. C. gave the standard Reformed answer, that miracles were tied to the office of apostle and served to confirm the truth of Scripture. Paul Crouch was a bit miffed and said to R. C., "what if I told you that when my father was preaching a man's funeral sermon (in Egypt), the dead man came back to life?" You could just see R. C. waiting for the punch-line from Crouch which never came. After a long and pregnant pause, R. C. sheepishly quipped, "well, it only takes one of those to prove me wrong."
All of this should be a reminder to us that the medium profoundly changes the message. Noted apologist E. J. Carnell raised this Postman-like point back in the 1950s, but no one listened. Evangelicals jumped at the chance to use television to preach the gospel to the masses. That is what Paul and Jan thought they were doing, without realizing that their theology, personal antics, and the very nature of the medium they were championing, turned whatever meager Christian content there was in their programming into pure entertainment.
Some thought TBN offered a good alternative to secular TV. But those of us who live in the OC are still sweeping up after the horses now that the TBN parade looks to be over.
Next time, we'll turn to Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel--another distinctly OC phenomenon Part Three--Calvary Chapel).
Here's the introduction to this series: Introduction
Here's part one, "the buzz": The "Buzz"
Monday, July 8, 2013 at 10:12AM 
The Twenty-Seventh in a Series of Sermons on 1 Corinthians
It has been said that the true creed of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches is Paul’s assertion in 1 Corinthians 14:40 to “do everything in good order.” While we often joke about the Reformed obsession with rules and proper procedure, we must not overlook the fact that this statement is Paul’s concluding point in his lengthy response to the Corinthian’s question to him about the role and proper exercise of the gift of tongues. Sadly, division and confusion reigned in the Corinthian church, and Paul is writing to correct a number of problems in the church, problems which led unbelievers to think the Corinthian Christians were crazy.
We now wrap up our study of chapters 12-14. Paul is answering a question put to him by the Corinthians about the role and practice of the gift of tongues. Apparently, the way in which the Corinthians were exercising this gift was causing division in the church, as well as creating much chaos during the Lord’s day worship service. Paul has emphasized the need for Christians to earnestly desire the gifts of the Spirit because these gifts are for the common good, they strengthen the churches, and they enable us to love one another (the more excellent way). Now, he gives explicit instructions as to how the Corinthians are to use this gift, as well as the gift of prophesy.
Throughout this chapter, Paul makes the point that while the tongue-speaking is indeed a true gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of tongues is inferior to the gift of prophecy. The reason for this is that those who speak in a tongue (whether that tongue is known or unknown to the speaker) cannot be understood by the assembled church unless the tongue is interpreted, while those who prophesy (which is Spirit-enabled speech, likely from the text of the Old Testament) speak in such a way that the congregation understands what is said. Therefore, the congregation is said to be edified by some word or revelation from God.
Last time, we covered the first nineteen verses of this chapter, so we will now take up the balance of the chapter, verses 20-40. In the last half of the chapter, Paul addresses the effects of uninterpreted tongue-speaking upon unbelievers who may happen to visit the Corinthian congregation during worship. Not only do believers remain unedified (because they cannot understand what is being said), but non-believers will be completely put off by the confusion and chaos created by uninterpreted tongues and by everyone speaking at once. Seeing the confusion and disorder in the service, visitors will think Christians are crazy! Or, even worse, visitors will think that Christians behave no differently than pagans. This explains why Paul exhorts the Corinthians in verse 20, “brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.” Paul softens the stern rebuke a bit by affectionately referring to the Corinthians as ‘brothers.” But the force of the imperative (command) must not be missed–“stop thinking like children.” The Greek text literally reads, “stop being children in mind.” To paraphrase Paul: “grow up! Quit acting like children.”
To read the rest of this sermon: Click Here
Sunday, July 7, 2013 at 03:41PM 
Here's the audio from Rev. Compton's morning sermon: Click Here
Sunday, July 7, 2013 at 03:26PM 
Found in Christ
On this program we begin a two-part series through Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Who were the Philippians, and what were the circumstances in which Paul wrote this letter? What is this epistle chiefly about? We will address these questions and more on this edition of White Horse Inn. - See more at:
