How Our Church Became Reformed (Pt 4)

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. This program is dedicated to helping you better understand the word of God and the doctrines of grace. The Bible tells us, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to study along. Here's your host with today's lesson, Pastor Keith Foskey.

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. Today is August the 13th, 2020. And if you're following along in our daily Bible reading, today you're going to be reading Acts chapter 16.

Church Updates, Bible Reading, and Visiting the Congregation

Again, if you're interested in following along with our daily Bible reading, you can do so by going to our website, the Sovereign Grace Family Church website, that is sgfcjacks .org. You can also find out more about Sovereign Grace Family Church there.

And if you're in the Jacksonville area, we would invite you to come and visit with us on an upcoming Lord's Day worship service. We have Sunday school at 9 .30 and worship service at 10 .30. So on with the show.

Today, we're going to continue on with our discussion of how Sovereign Grace Family Church became a reformed church. And in our last episode, I talked about the fact that after we had a major event that dealt with the teachings of Calvinism, the teachings of reformed theology, we decided to hold a conference on reformed theology to help people to understand what that means.

And for five or six nights, I taught the Doctrines of Grace. And then during the day, I would have lunch with folks and again, that was in 2008, late 2008, early 2009 is when all this is happening. And the next thing that we did, the next major event on the calendar was that we decided as a church that it was time not only to reevaluate our theology, but we also wanted to reevaluate our ecclesiology.

Now, if you're not familiar with the term ecclesiology, the word ecclesiology simply means the doctrine of the church. And up until this point, we had had an ecclesiology that was based on an older system of church government, a congregational system of church government where the congregation would vote to approve whatever was going on in the church.

But that really wasn't the way it worked out. We really had more of a representative government because we had a board. The congregation would vote for the members of the board and the board would have ultimate say so over what happened within the church.

And we had elders, but the elders function sort of like a committee. They would make a report to the board. Every time we had a board meeting, the elders would present a report as to what was going on in the spiritual life of the church.

And the elders were pretty much relegated to only spiritual matters and everything else that was considered business matters were handled by the general board. And of course, there were committees on top of committees.

We had committees for committees. And one of the things that we decided after we began to go in the reform direction was we needed to look at what the Bible said about the structure of the church. The structure of the church is not supposed to be a board.

It's not supposed to be run like a business. It's supposed to be run like a ministry, a godly ministry. And so one of the things that we did was we, well, one of the things that I taught on that year, and again, I taught an entire, almost an entire year on the subject of the biblically functioning church.

And we talked about the fact that a biblically functioning church has Christ as its head, the word of God as its standard, and the elders of the church who should be men of God, called of God, who meet the requirements of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus, the pastoral epistles, meet those requirements.

The elders are to be pastors and they are to be ordained as ministers. And so that was one of the major shifts was moving from a board-governed church to an elder-led church, an elder-governed church.

And that did not come without some controversy. I'm gonna go ahead and say there was some major controversy because the issue was, well, we're taking the power out of the hands of many and putting it into the hands of few.

But in reality, what it was was simply just shifting from the board, which was a few, to the elders who were a few, but a different type of few. Because while the board had to be voted in by the congregation, there was no biblical standard for who served on the board.

But there was a biblical standard for who served as an elder. One, it had to be a man. So at this point, there would be no more female elders. We had already abolished that. And I mentioned that the church previously had had female elders, but thankfully, we recognized as a church that was not biblical.

And so the elders would be men. They would meet the qualifications of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus, particularly the qualification that they have the ability to teach the word of God, that they govern and lead by the word of God.

That is a hugely important thing. And that was part and parcel of the argument. Yes, it's going to be a smaller group, but this smaller group is going to have the demand of the integrity of having been vetted and the congregation having affirmed these men.

And so the elders became the leading body in the church. And again, for about a year, the church went through this process of shifting and changing of minds and hearts regarding how things were to be done.

And over time, and it has taken time, we have moved away from a committee-driven church to what we would call a ministry-driven church, where we still have ministries, but they're overseen by the elders.

They're led in many parts by the deacons of the church who have the responsibility of service. The word deacon means servant. And so for instance, we have a fellowship ministry that's in charge of events with food, anything that has to do with the kitchen.

And we have people that are in charge of that. And that's a ministry within the church, not, you know, and say, well, somebody says, what's the difference between a ministry and a committee? I think the name itself, there's a difference because when we minister, we see it as an act that is being done toward God.

It's just the language is important and there's a language shift that happens there. So we moved away from committees, we moved to ministries, we moved away from the board, moved to the elders. And all of this is happening.

Ecclesiology, Church Government, and the Biblically Functioning Church

So this is part of the revival, right? This is part of what it means to become a reformed church. It's not just, hey, okay, now everybody believes in predestination. No, there's more to it than that. So the change was going from what we believed about in regard to salvation, but it was also what we believed in regard to the church.

How does the church function? And that whole series of lessons that I did, Biblically Functioning Church, actually became a book. I self-published a book entitled A Biblically Functioning Church. And that book is for sale.

If anybody's interested and you want to know how to get a copy, I can put a link in the description. Basically what I do though, is I outline the major focal points of the church and what the Bible says about leadership, elders and deacons, membership, how somebody joins a church, how somebody functions within the church.

Gift-based ministry is something we're very focused on. Using the spiritual gifts God gives us within ministry in the church. And things like baptism and the Lord's Supper, how those things are to function within worship.

And worship is part of ecclesiology, how the church is to gather for worship. So all of these things are important and all of this is part of the change. Well, fast forward to 2010. Many of these things have been worked out.

Many of these things have been smoothed over. We have finally come to a point where we're all on the same page. At least we're moving towards being on the same page. And I began to realize, along with others within the church, that we're not the same church that we were before.

We are not who we were. And so, we had to begin thinking about, do we want to continue calling ourselves Forest Christian Church? Because remember, Forest Christian Church was associating us with the Old Disciples of Christ movement.

We would have people come to our church expecting a Restoration Movement church, expecting a Campbellite church. And then they would leave angry because they were coming into a Calvinistic church. They were coming into a church that was clearly teaching Reformed theology.

By 2010, I mean, I was much more comfortable using the words Reformed. I was much more comfortable mentioning the name of John Calvin, Zwingli, Luther. I mean, we were very, by that point, we were on track.

We were a Reformed church. And yet, we still had the name Forest Christian Church. I remember one guy specifically, I preached on justification by faith alone. Now, if there's a doctrine that should be universally agreed upon among Protestants, it's the doctrine of Sola Fide.

That's not even really something that I would say should be limited to Calvinists. That should be affirmed by Methodists. That should be affirmed by Pentecostals. We are justified by faith alone. But a guy came up to me at the end of service, and he said, James 224.

And he just sort of barked it at me. And I know what it is now, but at the time, it just sort of flew over my head, and I just said, what? He said, James 224. And I said, excuse me? And he said, you see a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.

And I knew immediately, okay, now I know he's in James 2. Didn't register because normally when people walk out, they don't bark Bible verses at me. Normally they shake my hand or thank me for the service or whatever.

Or say goodbye or love me or give me a hug or whatever. Very rarely do people bark Bible verses at me, but this guy felt like it was his role to do so. And I wasn't immediately prepared to respond with one, you're misunderstanding James's point.

Two, you're pitting James against Paul. Three, you don't understand the context of James's reference to justification there. You're completely wrong. I mean, I could have said all that, but I didn't because again, he caught me off guard.

But it was one of those sort of defining moments where I said, hey, people don't know who we are. People think we're still associated with the restoration movement, and that's not good. So we began to discuss a new name.

We're gonna change our name. We've changed our ecclesiology. We're moving towards a more biblical ecclesiology, striving to be a biblically functioning church, and all that we say and do. We'd already changed our constitution to, we'd updated our statement of faith.

We had updated our constitution. We'd done a lot of things to move toward being reformed, but we still had that name, Forrest Christian Church. So we said, let's change the name. And we began the process of trying to determine what would be the best way to do that.

And right away, the concern was, well, do we wanna have a name that really identifies us as reformed? Because all kinds of names were suggested, Bible Believers Church, which certainly fits. We are a Bible-believing church.

Cornerstone Church, Christ is the cornerstone, and our church building just happens to be on the corner of North Main and Broad Street, so it was sort of a, do we, Cornerstone sort of fit. These were all names that were suggested.

We even took name suggestions from the congregation. But the name that just kept coming up was the name Sovereign Grace, because we knew there is a certain reformed language that people know, certain Calvinistic terminology.

And one of those terms is Sovereign Grace. God is sovereign in his distribution of grace, and therefore, to be a Sovereign Grace ministry or a Sovereign Grace church connected us to the idea of Calvinism.

So we put forward the idea. What name should we choose? We put forward two options. One was Cornerstone, one was Sovereign Grace. And both of them, we decided on the term Family Church, and I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that in a moment because that sort of has become a, took on a life all of its own.

But we, our reason for Family Church is because we considered ourselves to be a church family, and we always have. That is very important to us. Now, later, that would become, as I said, it would become tied in with our belief in family integration and worship.

But that actually was secondary to the primary was that we were a church family, and so we were calling ourselves a family church. And we laid it before the congregation. Congregation voted almost unanimously, Sovereign Grace.

So we went with Sovereign Grace Family Church. But we had an issue. There was already a Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Jacksonville, so I had to contact that pastor and say, Pastor Shane, it's Shane Waters, Sovereign Grace Baptist.

I said, Pastor, are you gonna be upset if we take this name? It's so close. I mean, SGFC, SGBC, our websites are very similar. Is it okay? And he was actually very gracious. Yes, brother. And we actually discussed, at that time, there was a ministry called Sovereign Grace Ministries, which was led by a man named C .J. Mahaney.

And we discussed the fact that sometimes people might accidentally associate us with C .J. Mahaney's group. But the reality is that I don't know that that's ever happened with us. It may have happened a few times, but it was certainly not.

Most people are not familiar with Sovereign Grace Ministries. I don't even think they're around anymore. They may still be. But at least Sovereign Grace Ministries was a Calvinist. I think they were Calvinistic Charismatic, so that was the concern, was that it might tie us in with some kind of Charismatic group, and we're not a Charismatic church.

But it didn't, and Shane confirmed it's not a big deal. That's the only issue, and it's really not an issue. So we went with Sovereign Grace Family Church. And as I said a minute ago, throughout all of this, I was also beginning to recognize the importance of children worshiping with their families.

And I began to be influenced by Voddie Bauckham, who is big in family integration, and a few other teachers. And so one of the things that we eliminated was the concept of a children's church, where many of you are familiar with children's church, where children go to their own worship service, and the adults go to their own worship service, and they're not together.

And family integration became connected. And really, like I said, it was sort of interesting because that wasn't the reason we chose the name Family Church. That was later something that we saw as sort of God's design for our church, because God had a plan, even in the choosing of our name, a greater plan than we had.

He helped us choose this name that would ultimately fit. And so maybe I'll talk about family integration and why we do what we do and how we do what we do at a later date. But for now, just know that Sovereign Grace Family Church, that name was the name the church chose, and we were very pleased to identify ourselves with the Reformed tradition using the name Sovereign Grace Family Church.

And so in a very short time, we went from Forest Christian Church to being Sovereign Grace Family Church through a process of what I would say is legitimate God-inspired revival. Now, tomorrow on Coffee with a Calvinist, I'm gonna finish out the story by talking about the last 10 years, because that takes us up to 2010.

That was 10 years ago. What have we done in 10 years? Well, several things have happened in 10 years, and one of which is that we joined a fellowship. We are part of the Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals.

The Name Change to Sovereign Grace Family Church

And tomorrow, I'm gonna talk more about that. But this ends today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist. I hope that it has been interesting and informative and educational for you, and hope it's been an encouragement to start your day out thinking about the things of God and about how God works, especially in bringing true revival to a church.

And I hope it's been a blessing to you. I know it's been a blessing to me. Thank you for listening. My name is Keith Foskey, and I have been your Calvinist. May God bless you.

Thank you for joining in for today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist. Keep in mind, we have a new lesson available every weekday morning at 6 .30 a .m. on YouTube and Facebook. If you enjoyed this lesson, please take a moment to respond by hitting the like button, leaving a comment, and subscribing to the channel.

On behalf of Pastor Foskey, thank you for listening. May God bless you.