Pastors Conf. focuses on mission, adoption

ORLANDO, Fla.?Under the banner of “Greater Things,” speakers during the 2010 Pastors’ Conference? held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla., June 13-14?focused on the Great Commission and the launch of a national campaign to help pastors adopt children.

Tony Evans of Dallas and Matt Chandler of Flower Mound were among those who preached to the conference, which precedes the SBC annual meeting each year. Other notable speakers included apologist Ravi Zacharias and California pastor Francis Chan.

‘BECOME KINGDOM PEOPLE’

Like a team of referees in a football game, the church of Jesus Christ on earth is not here to take sides between earthly teams but to represent the interests of heaven, Evans, pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, reminded pastors in the closing message June 13.

Instead, with few exceptions, churches have been “drawn in to take sides” and “missed the kingdom,” Evans said, thereby perpetuating divisions caused by such things as race and politics.

For example, most Southern Baptists would vote Republican based on rightly placed concerns about certain moral issues, Evans said, but most of those at the National Baptist Convention, a historically African American group, would lean to the Democrat Party because they perceive that it values social justice issues.

Depending on the issue, sometimes Christians will necessarily come down on one political side or another, but the kingdom’s agenda must always dictate one’s loyalties, Evans said.

Noting that “the church of Jesus Christ is supposed to be a little bit of heaven, a long way from home” in the same way an American embassy represents the United States abroad, Evans said the church’s influence has been nullified because it has misunderstood its calling.

Citing Matthew 16, where Jesus told Peter that he would build his church on Peter’s confession that Jesus was the Christ, Evans said the best exegesis of the text connotes a collection of stones “hewn together.” In the same way, the church must be hewn together around “a common cause, a common impact.” If that were to a happen, Evans contended, there wouldn’t be both Southern Baptist and National Baptist conventions. Communities would be transformed, he said.

Christian convictions, not culture, must define God’s people, he said. “It is high time we become kingdom people,” representing the “King’s kids on the field of play.”

‘GRACE-DRIVEN EFFORT’

Chandler, pastor of The Village Church in Flower Mound, centered his message on the gospel as presented in 1 Corinthians 15. Noting that many churches are “primarily evangelism-oriented and not depth-oriented,” Chandler said the gospel affects not only one’s justification but sanctification as well.

Many churches and Christians have fallen into “moralistic deism,” which at its basic level points to behaviors that must be performed and/or avoided in order to receive the love of Christ, rather than to the atoning work of Christ on the cross, Chandler said.

Using D.A. Carson’s concept of “grace-driven effort,” Chandler explained there are two weapons found in God’s Word that grace provides: the blood of Christ, specifically described in Ephesians 2:13, and the promise of the New Covenant, found in Hebrews 9:13.

Grace-driven effort attacks the roots of sin in one’s life and not the branches,