For The Record 2.0

by Joe Thorn on November 1, 2005

This is the follow-up to my first For the Record and is an attempt to state a few things that are true of me.

I am:

orthodox
evangelical
reformed
baptist

These titles capture the basic theological framework I work through and express much of the content of my faith.

I am still learning.

I am wrong. Somewhere in the midst of all my theology and practice there is error. I have to admit this because I believe in the continual indwelling of sin and the constant need for reformation.

I believe in truth, and must believe in it because Jesus Himself is Absolute Truth. I believe God calls us to make it/him known to both the unknowing world and the over-knowing church.

I believe following Jesus will usually alienate a person from both the Deomcratic and Republican conventions.

I believe churches of 600 are way too big.

I have a lot of opinions about things that are not biblically determined.

I have chosen to be a cultural architect rather than a culture warrior.

I try to vote, buy, live and work redemptively in my community, and though I fail God keeps it on my mind.

I avoid using any Lifeway materials or programs at our church, because at the moment the better stuff is found outside of our convention.

I hope and pray for another Great Awakening, a more missional and confessional Convention, and for a quick return of our Lord.

About Joe Thorn

I am the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Fellowship in Saint Charles, IL, and author of Note to Self: The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself. Jen is my wife, and Katherine, Elias, Madeline and Kilian are my kids.

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  • http://blog.nelmezzo.net David Wright

    Be it resolved that Joe Thorn in refusing to use Lifeway materials is a disgrace to the Convention.

    Seriously, though, the whole Lifeway thing is really weird. I know some SBC folks who are really admirable in every way, but when they start talking about the need to use Lifeway stuff, all of a sudden they go all Amway. And most of the stuff that I’ve seen is not that great.

    So, what kinds of materials have you found useful?

  • http://theram4jc.blogspot.com joe kennedy

    I’d like to see some younger guys start working on legitimate Lifeway replacements. I didn’t go to Sunday School in undergrad (pre-Edgewater) because I thought the Lifeway stuff stunk. And in some cases, it was totally off base, although I can’t elaborate two years removed.

    At Edgewater, we had both Sunday School and Community Groups. Sunday School was, as far as I know, never Lifeway. I know my friend Justin taught through Luke-Acts for the college class. But we were a church filled primarily with seminary students, so maybe we’ve got higher standards. Perhaps we should raise those standards in other churches as well.

    Or we can keep’em dumb, keep’em local, and let’em tithe us into retirement.

    Gosh. I need to stop saying stuff like that. So totally polarizing. No comments on that last statement, please. I’m just kidding, even IF some folks do that.

    Anybody wanna start writing for Lifeway?

  • John Mark

    I ‘used’ lifeway material in my SS class. My senior citizens would be suspicious of anything else. The lessons had background passages which would be about 3 chapters. Then they had the lesson chapter which would be a moral lesson. I would cover the background passage and pretty much ignore the actual content of the Lifeway book. I know there are good studies out there, but I don’t know of good Sunday School material that covers whole books of the bible like Ezekiel or Jeremiah. Maybe its out there.

  • http://www.joethorn.net Joe Thorn

    David, we develop a lot of our own stuff. For the childrens ministry on Sunday mornings (His Kids) we are using the Desiring God stuff for kids. Very, very good. I am definitely not going to find something on Covenent Theology from Lifeway for Theology Pub.
    Look, I know some people at Lifeway. Good, thoughtful people. Friends. They are serious about God and ministry. They basically said that the problem is twofold: 1) In many ways Lifeway needs to improve and 2) local churches have to want/request better stuff. If Lifeway put something together on Theology Proper and tied it in to Christian experience would it sell? Would SS classes use it? LW needs to start writing better stuff and our churches need to “leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity.”

  • http://theram4jc.blogspot.com joe kennedy

    That’s a much better way to say what I was thinking, Joe.

  • http://www.doneydepot.blogspot.com Marcguyver

    LOL, I don’t even know what the heck “Lifeway” is ???

    I do like your comment about 600 being too big; although I might go even lower than that……say, however many you can fit in your home?

  • http://www.byfarthersteps.com Tim Etherington

    One of the profs at Trinity, I think it was Osborne, said that 30% of your theology is wrong. The trick is figuring out which 30% it is.

    You sound just like me in everything but the Lifeway part. I’m not part of the SBC and don’t know much about them. Other than that, I think we’re clones or something.

  • http://www.joethorn.net Joe Thorn

    Marc,

    Lifeway is a ministry of the Southern Baptist Convention selling and producing a lot of teaching material and Sunday School/small group curricula.

  • http://bitofsmoke.blogspot.com Bruce

    I use LifeWay strickly as a starting point to teach my young single’s class. But I constantly have to adapt, rethink, rework the material to make it even remotely relevant to 20s and 30s. I haven’t been able to find much of anything else out there. Any other help or directions would be greatly appreciated. We have a Sunday morning Bible study at the church (I hate the term Sunday School) and a Sunday night meeting at my house, so I’m needing two different lessons every Sunday.

    By the way Joe, I really enjoy your writings.

    B~

  • Puritan Fan

    As an alternative or supplement to LifeWay, you might want to consider Regular Baptist Press. I have used materials (childrens through seniors) from them and have found that it generally is more in depth than much of the material on the market.

  • GeneMBridges

    Been plugging this one for a long time:

    You can only teach so much in one hour on a Sunday. The trick is getting your people to stay on the same page during the week.

    I used Search The Scriptures, a book by IVP, edited by Alan Stibbs, first published in 1949 and still available. It’s an inductive format that takes the people through the whole Bible in 3 years. It’s written in Q and A format and is ideal for home study and group study. You can copy the week’s lessons for a class or, ideally, get them all to buy the book and use it.

    A typical lesson involves you either hitting the highlights of the previous week’s lessons or, ideally, getting them to do short presentations for each other’s benefit and talking about what they learned during the week.

    It usually involves them writing. The questions do not tell them what to believe, but they are pointed enough that they have to dig through the text in order to answer them. Using this tool, they learn to think about the text itself. You can either hit the hightlights, pick a particular theme from the week out to teach, or get them to do short presentations and teach themselves. In short, it’s highly adaptable. It includes some commentary notes in it to help them along, but those are minimal. It encourages them to apply the lessons through the use of rhetorical questions at the end of the objective portion. Most days, there are 2, never more than 3 questions to answer. Some questions will require a page or 2; others will only require a sentence or two. It just depends on the material. The important thing is that it gives you material from which to teach, and it keeps them all on the same page from week to week. It’s one thing to keep them on the same page from Sunday to Sunday, but to get a whole class to study the same thing every day from week to week and cover the whole Bible is quite a feat. It takes committment, and I’d encourage you to try it with a pilot group, but, in my experience, it works very well.

  • http://www.joethorn.net Joe Thorn

    Thanks for the recommendations guys.

  • Laurie

    For what it’s worth — Ligonier Ministries (RC Sproul) has a number of good group study materials as well — you can get video or audio tracks to go along if you want, or you can simply use the book/study guide ($50 purchases unlimited copies of the materials for a group). I’ve used “The Holiness of God” with the college aged group and they enjoyed NOT being talked down to, yet being able to understand an issue they really hadn’t given much thought to before.

  • http://www.joethorn.net Joe Thorn

    You’re right Laurie. Sproul’s studies are great, and the Holiness of God in particular is excellent.

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