For the Church 2015 | Truth and the Church

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Turn with me in your Bibles tonight to First Timothy chapter three. The topic that is mine is, “The Church and Truth.” I will be reading verses 14-16, but I will be building the sermon around one phrase at the end of verse 15. Paul writes to Timothy:

“I am writing these things to you, hoping to come to you before long; but in case I am delayed, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth. By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, Was vindicated in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Proclaimed among the nations, Believed on in the world, Taken up in glory.”

{Prayer}

It was a conversation unlike almost any other conversation I had ever had. The more we talked the more I felt my blood pressure going up. IN fact, in hindsight, I am quite sure the hair on the back of my neck was standing up straight. It was myself and a few of my colleagues here, and we were visiting with a leading historian in one of the nation’s most prestigious divinity schools. The conversation began generic and innocent enough, but it began to drift toward the topic of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This professor was kind enough, and he attested to believing in the resurrection of Christ, but he was baffled over the fact that myself and my colleagues thought one had to believe in a literal, bodily resurrection to be saved. The more we talked, the more agitated I became and the more confused he seemed to be, but we kept pressing the conversation in a more and more pointed way until it became clear what the fundamental distinction was between what we were supposing and what he was arguing. The question before us was, “What is Christianity after all?” Is it a sentiment or a feeling? Is it a set of songs and religious artifacts? Is it a series of meaningful moments or is it something more substantial than that?

What we will see from our text tonight and our time together this evening and tomorrow is that indeed, Christianity is more than a sentiment; it is a set of truth claims. Christianity is more than a feeling; it is a set of propositions, or facts, to be believed and articulated. Christianity is more than meaningful moments; it is a set and series of truths to be affirmed. Christianity is more than stained glass and artifacts; it is a set of doctrines to be embraced. When Christianity is disavowed of its truth claims, there is no Christianity left behind. In fact, if you think about our passage this evening and if you take a step back and consider the overall themes of the New Testament, we are reminded throughout the New Testament that the church is preoccupied with the truth. Whether it is untruth or false teachings coming into the church, the apostles are writing to correct and to instruct in the truth. There is a relentless New Testament concern about the truth. Whether doctrinal errors are coming from Judaism, Gnosticism, Pluralism, Fanaticism, or any other “ism,” the apostles, and Paul especially, keep coming back to the central reality that as believers in Christ and as gospel ministers, we must be about preaching and defending the truth. Paul says things like 1 Timothy 6:3-4, that if anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He would charge Timothy, “Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me, and the faith and Love which are in Christ Jesus, guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you.” He would tell Timothy again, “be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.” Of course, Jude tells us in such a poetic way to “contend earnestly for the faith, once and for all delivered to the saints.” We are about the church at this conference, which means we better be about the truth of Scripture.

Remember what is going on in this passage that we are considering together. Paul is writing to Timothy, his son in the faith. Timothy is pastoring the church at Ephesus, and Paul, in verse 15, tells him, “I am writing to you so that you will know how one is to conduct himself within the church.” That is really Paul’s thesis statement for this passage. He says, “I have been writing about how the church is to order itself.” He has been speaking to things like the qualifications of the office of the elder, the qualifications for the office of the deacon, prayer in the church, and other issues of the gospel in church ministry. Then he comes to verse 14-15, and this is an inflection point in the book. He is about to transition from general statements of encouragement in the preceding three chapters, to the last three chapters which cover a lot of words of warning and correction. In fact, beginning in 4:1, it is a warning of apostasy. So it is an inflection point, or a hinge point in the book where Paul says, “I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.” He is stating emphatically how we are to order ourselves in the church and he is stating emphatically that it is God’s church; it is his household; it is his family. He owns it; he died for it; he is building it; it is his church. Then he gives us this phrase, which is the anchor verse for this sermon and the conference itself–“the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.”

As Paul writes to Timothy, there is no ambiguity about the analogy or the word picture he is giving Timothy. Timothy is in Ephesus, one of the great cities in the Ancient World. As he is writing this letter to Timothy, Timothy and all of the congregants were very aware of the great edifice in the middle of the city known as the temple to the goddess, Diane. This temple was a massive structure, perhaps the most imposing building in ancient Ephesus, and it had 127 massive pillars which supported it. So, as Paul is writing to Timothy, there is a word picture that he is making to this temple, and he is saying, just as the temple to the pagan goddess that has massive support it, so the church is to be supporting the truth. Moreover, it is the buttress of the truth; the foundation of the truth; the support of the truth. It is the foundational structure on which the church rests. He is making an analogy to an ancient temple, but he is making it a living analogy to the church itself and saying, the church must be the pillar and support of the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a unique roll the church plays and it is a unique roll gospel ministers play, that we are to be about the business as the church, serving to support the truth.

Now, we have to be careful here as gospel ministers, because we are not Roman Catholics, and we have to be very careful that we do not slip into Roman Catholic teaching. By that I mean this, the church does not determine the truth; the truth determines the church. The church does not authenticate the Scriptures; the Scripture authenticates the church. The church does not empower the truth; the truth empowers the church. I love how Paul states this. He says, “The church is the pillar and support of the truth.” There is no need to overly qualify this or to get into explaining who’s truth, what truth, or which truth. He simply says, “the truth.” You get the sense that Paul had little patience for those who would seek to confuse or make ambiguous that which he has made clear about the truth. He is referring to the full body of Christian Scripture, centered upon the gospel message of Jesus Christ, and anchored in the full truthfulness and authority of Scripture itself. Paul speaks to Timothy, and he speaks through Timothy to us tonight and says this, “As the church, we have to assume and understand our role as the pillar and support of the truth.”

Here is what I want to do in our time together – I want to zoom out from this phrase and think a little bit more in a panoramic sense from this phrase, what this means for us to be men and women who are about the business of serving as the pillar and support of the truth. I want you to think with me around three charges built upon this phrase for us. The first charge from this phrase, which I want you to think with me about, is a call to vigorously protect the truth. To be convictional does not necessarily mean to be critical. I am not suggesting this is a call to pugilism or to belligerence, for a pugnacious spirit doth not a godly man make. Nonetheless, our call unequivocally, as men and women of God, is to have an ear for the truth, and eye for the truth, and more urgently, a mouth for the truth. Every generation understanding and every season of ministry different truths will come under assault whether it is satanic attack or congregational indifference. Whatever it is, in every generation there are certain truths the church must be urgent about strengthening, proclaiming and defending.

I love the quote, attributed to Martin Luther, which speaks to the way we must get at the specific truths that are under attack. Luther, we believe, wrote this, “If I profess with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the World and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages, the loyalty of the soldier is proved. And to be steady on the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.”

I want you to enter this passage with me tonight and think of this topic. As we are thinking about a call to vigorously protect the truth, what sort of truth in our generation, in this season of life and ministry for the church in North America, are under assault that we must be crystal clear about articulating, asserting, and reasserting? Our call, of course, is to uphold the entire corpus of Christian truth, but to speak also to certain areas and topics that are undermined or that are being challenged, whether it is through out and out attack, or whether it is through neglect. Whatever it is, we must be intentional about reasserting, forcefully, certain truths. Tonight I come to you first and foremost that as the church we be about reclaiming and articulating the truth of the exclusivity of the gospel. We must also vigorously protect the truth of the exclusivity of the gospel.

I remember as a boy, one of my first theological challenges as a kid, was wondering if it really mattered what you believed as long as you were sincere. We had neighbors who were of a different religion and I remember asking my mother, “Does it really matter what you believe as long as you are sincere?” And my mother had the instinct to say, “Well, sure it matters what you believe. We are called to believe in Jesus and to believe in the Bible.” That sort of confusion that I experienced as a boy is writ large in American culture today. In fact, if you really want to infuriate lost man, you do not have to speak about marriage being between a man and a woman, begin to speak clearly about the exclusivity of the gospel. It is offensive. It is a claim that we make that men and women must believe in Jesus to be saved. We believe in the gospel message that one must personal, consciously, explicitly, and exclusively believe in Jesus Christ for salvation. I am concerned, especially as we think about the church and truth, that the church today is being way too passive and assuming way too much about what the average church member believes about the gospel itself. We are told from the Bible that a person must believe in Jesus personally. They must come to that fork in the road where by repentance and faith they embrace him. It is a conscious decision. There are no anonymous Christians. One must believe consciously, in Jesus, the Messiah, God’s son. It must be explicitly in Jesus, not just generic God talk. It must be explicitly in the name of Jesus, and in him and him alone, reinvigorating the “solas” of the reformation, “Faith in Christ Alone.”

Brothers and sisters, if we are going to be faithful in our generation to support the truth, we had best rediscover and be intentional about proclaiming the gospel message of Jesus Christ because as we lose that and as we round the edges, everything else collapses around it. The logic of Christian testimony, the logic of Christian ministry, the logic of the missions movement–all of that collapses if we do not still believe that men and women in distant places have to believe in Christ to be saved. We all have read in recent days with concern about the financial challenges at the IMB and with David Platt. We all are praying for him and with him as he leads us through this season. But it struck me even as I read those press releases and was involved in other conversations about it, that at the root of that is a theological problem within the churches, because if we really believe in our heart of hearts that unless people come to know Christ as Lord and Savior, they are lost for 10 billions and 10 billions of years in eternal torment, how can you be indifferent about the Great Commission? So we must be about proclaiming the truth of the exclusivity of the gospel.

The second truth we must recover and defend is the nature and the power of Scripture. This is a perennial concern in Scripture, of course, all the way back to the garden of Eden and coursing from Genesis to Revelation. What are the Scriptures and what do they convey? I know I am speaking to people in the room tonight who probably show up with a basic embrace of the inerrancy and the inspiration of Scripture, but my point is not merely that we sign on to that theory, but we believe – in capital letters and all caps – we believe in the Scriptures. We believe in the Scriptures in such a way that it channels our preaching, that we submit our lives to it, that we permit it to order our churches and our ministries, and that every time we step into the pulpit or step before the Bible study group, we actually believe we are preaching from a Bible that is living and active and that God is speaking from it. We embrace with reformers, “vaux escritura, vaux dei,” the voice of Scripture is the voice of God. In our generation, we have to be faithful about articulating our truth that the Scriptures are indeed God’s Word. There is a third theological challenge we better be about clarifying and speaking to. I am very much concerned about this one as well, and that is we must be speaking to what I will refer to as experiential Christianity as opposed to clinical Christianity. By that, I mean, we serve a God that is living; we serve a God that answers prayer; we serve a God that is orchestrating and ordaining our works and our ways, and we are to live for him, serve him, trust him, and believe in him. One of the concerns I have in the era in which we live with the blogosphere and with publications all that is there, we have so valued content and make content king. It is as though Christianity has become “Who has read what or who has written what and have you read what someone has written?” Let me tell you brothers and sisters, that is good and right and we are to pour good, sound doctrine and books and writings into our hearts and our minds. But if that creates a dryness in our souls, our Christian life will wither, our witness will be stale and the church will perish under our leadership. Let me encourage us to speak to an experiential Christianity which follows the God-man Jesus Christ; that is living for him; that looks to him daily in repentance and faith; that seeks his leadership; that brings our prayers to him with a vibrancy in our soul.

There is a fourth challenge I want to speak to tonight and it is no surprise. It is the issue of human sexuality. We live in a world that mocks Tim Tebow and presents courage awards to Bruce Jenner. Issues of gender, marriage, sexuality, manhood, womanhood, all of that is being renegotiated before our very eyes, and we must be willing to speak every Sunday or inasmuch is appropriate from God’s word when we come to it in the text again and again and again, holding up the standard of what marriage is, what manhood is, and what womanhood is, and what all of this means. We have to keep speaking to it.

Fifthly, we have to keep speaking to issues of human dignity and the sanctity of life. You say, that is not a theological issue; that is a cultural issue. You bet your socks it is theological issue. It touches on the very heart of theological issues, the mother of all theological issues–about God being places in the heart of man being made in the image of God. It touches on the full complement of Christian theology, creation, redemption, and all that God wants to do.

The first church I went to pastor, now 12 or 13 years ago, I was in an interview process which was going along swimmingly, and someone said, “Are you pro-life?” And I said, “Well, yes, sir, I am.” And he said, “Should we expect you to preach pro-life messages?” And I said, “Well, sure, I will certainly do that.” I noticed that the way the question was asked, there was some squirming in the building and afterwards, a gentleman came up to me and he said, “I just want to apologize to you about how brother ‘so-and-so’ asked that question. He really put you on the spot, and I just want you to know that you should not feel pressure from him to preach on pro-life issues. He is pressuring you and that is not the right thing for him to do to you. You ought not feel that pressure.” I was a young guy then, but I was smart enough to know that what he is really saying is, “I am telling you not to preach on pro-life issues.” I did, and he did not like it, but the rest is history, as they say. Here is the point, as we preach to our churches, you can go from verse to verse, text to text, and hide behind preaching The Word, because abortion, gender, sexuality, and any of these other issues are not in the next passage and you kind hide behind a commitment to biblical exposition and never preach the full counsel of God.

Sixth, let me encourage us to recover preaching on eschatology. What in the world do I mean by that? I am not suggesting we break out our prophecy charts. I am not suggesting that at all. I am saying this – it seems as though the last couple decades there has been an unusual silence about the basic preaching about the hope of Jesus’ return. I tell you, every time I see a brother or sister suffering at the hands of Isis, or read a news report about a martyrdom here or there, my heart longs for Jesus to come back. I bet when our brothers or sisters are facing that sort of brutalism and barbarism, their hearts are longing for the same. We need to recover a healthy sense of Jesus’ soon return for his church and preach it to give ourselves and our churches a hope beyond the material gain we have in this world. We are called to be defending and protecting the truth–to speak out.

These are six issues. There are more an others based upon where your ministry setting is, but here is the point, do it with grit and gumption, but do it with grace and meekness as well. Too many of us, I am convinced, engage in a sort of “el camino Christianity.” How many of you remember the el camino car? I worked with Dr. Moore at Southern Seminary and he actually used to drive an el camino there. Didn’t you? Oh, I thought you did. Remember the el camino car? It is a blast from my past. The el camio was a car that was just enough of a truck to be a really worthless car, and it was a truck that was just enough of a car to be a really worthless truck. It was a little bit of both but actually neither, so what happened? It did not sell. It went the way of the water bed. Listen to me; hallway doctrine never works. It never works. Do not so nuance and endlessly be preoccupied with tone and an overdoing of nuance and qualification that you so layer this on and in the final analysis you are not saying much of anything. What you will find is that will not gain you approval by a critical and secular left, nor will it enable you to be found faithful in the final judgement as preachers and teachers of God’s word. We are called to protect the truth.

Notice secondly, we are called to consistently proclaim the truth. How are churches and ministers to think of ourselves as pillars and buttresses of the truth? We protect it and, secondly, we consistently proclaim what I talked about–speaking to specific issues. However, our call is not merely to dodge heterodox bullets; our call is also to, week-in-and-week-out, bring the truth of Scripture to our people. Let me let you in on a secret, Pastor. However you assess your people as far as their level of Bible and doctrinal knowledge is probably far lower than you think it is. The problem is not that you have relay lame church members, the problem is that your church members have had really lame pastors over the years. We have to come every Sunday and, in essence, theologically, doctrinally, biblically teach and preach so that they are strengthening their biblical muscles and coming to understand what it means to live the faith, what it means to believe the faith. You to do not have to go Labre to do that; you just have to be committed to preaching The Word week, after week. It is a challenge, I believe, to preach expositionally, bringing God’s Word to bear. It takes a prior and steadfast to the truthfulness of Scripture, and we come to it verse-by-verse, passage-by-passage, book-by-book, laying it bear before God’s people. If you do that, you will find yourself dealing with knotty texts and difficult doctrines, but you will find yourself one day being able to look back and say, indeed I did preach the whole counsel of God. It is a call to breadth, but listen to closely, it is also a call to gospel-centered intentionality. It is a call to preach Christ from the entire cannon of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation. It is a call to bring Christ, the man who declared, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” to bear on the church week in and week out. The church, after all, was founded upon a theological statement about that man. Matthew 16 is the great exchange you know, where they are dialoguing about who people are saying Jesus is, and finally by the prompting of the Holy Spirit, Peter gets it right, and he declares, “Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.” And Jesus says, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven has revealed this to you.” Peter got it right, by God’s grace and Jesus said, “Upon that confession, I will build my church.” So we must preach the whole truth consistently throughout the Scriptures. We must preach the full text, bringing it to bear, but as we do, we are drawing lines to the man, Christ Jesus always.

Time is passing here quickly, and I want you to hear this third charge as we think about what it means for the church to be the pillar and support of the truth. The third charge is a call to thoroughly prepare for the truth. Even as I verbalize that, think with me in your own mind and hearts about what God has done. Most of us in the room tonight sense some call of ministry. God has called you to Christ, you have been converted and you sense some call to ministry. For some of you, that was in a very clear and direct way and you have taken a very dramatic step to move to seminary or the ministry field to serve Christ and his church. Others of you have perhaps a more generic sense of feeling called by God but not quite sure what that means, and in your own simple way you are wanting to take steps of obedience forward to be faithful to God. Listen closely, if we believe half of what we say we believe, we have to acknowledge this is serious business. It is life or death business we are called to. We cannot sloppily go through life and ministry, dabbling in the truths of God. We are called to invest ourselves and be prepared. This is not merely a plug for Midwestern Seminary or any seminary. It may well include that if that is what God has for you, but it is a call to prepare yourself intellectually and theologically to be able to actually give that defense for the hope that is within you. I will be quit candid, we make no bones about it on this campus that we have prioritized the master of divinity degree, and every self-respecting seminary will do the same. That is because it enables one to be equipped with the full toolkit for ministry. The point is not so much a degree or seminary; this point is that you are seeking God and studying the Scriptures and sound doctrine so that you will be faithful intellectually to defend it.

I have a very dear friend of mine who grew up in a family with a very successful business. His father built a business from before my friend was born and his father because a very wealthy man with a very expansive business which was across the country in different locations. From the time my friend was a boy, his father did a couple of things. First of all, he thought, one day, this business will be my son’s. Even when my friend was a boy, his father would teach him about business, budgeting, negotiation, how to review architectural renderings, and how to engage contractors. He taught him a full skillset, but not only that, from when he was a boy, his father would make him put on a coat and tie and make him fly across the country to business meetings to be in the room to watch. Why? It was because his father knew one day he would have the business, and his father thought it was pretty important that he got it right. Brothers and sisters, if you are called to ministry, there is a far more weighty call before you. A great generational transition is taking place right now, where churches and ministries are coming open and being passed to the next generation of pastors and leaders. Are you ready? It is not only important to be prepared theologically. Listen closely, it is a call to be prepared attitudinally. It is a call to heart-preparation. Whether your crisis of ministry comes next week, moth, year, decade, or never, you have determined who you are as a man and woman of God in your heart of hearts and you have determined what the issues worth fighting over are, and you have determined where your conviction pillars are anchored. You do this now on the front end. The one who seeks to discover his conviction in the midst of controversy, I can tell you where those convictions will wind up, and that is where the path of least resistance is. We are called to prepare now to proclaim and defend the truth for a lifetime of ministry.

I do not think anyone in Baptist history better embodied these things; what it means to protect the truth, proclaim the truth, and be prepared thoroughly to defend the truth, than the illustrious Charles Spurgeon. Of course, we love him here. We have his library and many other things, but as you think of Spurgeon, especially through the prism of the Downgrade Controversy, we see and are reminded of the incredible urgency of these things.

Remember the story with me. The year was 1887 and Spurgeon was in the winter of life and ministry. In five short years he would be dead. He was at the height of his popularity. For some three decades he had been the best known preacher in the world, but he was in the depths of his personal misery with gout, lupus, depression, and many other diseases. Yet, he found himself thrust in the middle of a controversy which many believe actually would take his life shortly. The Downgrade Controversy began slow at first with three anonymous letters appearing in The Sword and Trowel in the March, April, and June 1887 editions. The letters, later to be revealed to be authored by Spurgeon’s friend, Robert Shindler, caution of a drift from truth on a downward slope, thus the downgrade. The anonymous letters drew a little bit of interest, but it was not until a few months later, in August of 1887when the controversy actually exploded. Spurgeon himself entered the fray and wrote a six page editorial in his own publication entitled, another word on the downgrade. The gauntlet was thrown down. Spurgeon was depressed and physically beaten up, he did not need, nor did he much want this controversy and it was cost him much, for if he would withdraw his church from the Baptist Union, so much may be lost. Nonetheless, Spurgeon entered his westward study, he took fountain pen in hand, and he proceeded to join the battle himself by drafting for publication this six-page article. I own that article in his own handwriting, and I have it here with me tonight on the pulpit. To read it is fascinating. The first paragraph lives on in immortality when Spurgeon writes this, defending the truth:

“No lover of the gospel can conceal from himself the fact that the days are evil. We are willing to make a large discount from our apprehensions on the score of natural timidity, the caution of the age and the weakness produced by pain, but yet our solemn conviction is that things are much worse in many churches than they seem to be, and are rapidly trending downward. Read those newspapers which represent the broad school of descent and ask yourself, how much farther could they go? What doctrine remains to be abandoned? What other truth to be the object of contempt? A new religion has been initiated which is no more Christianity than chalk is cheese and this religion, being destitute of moral honesty, palms itself off as the old faith with slight improvements, and on this plea you search pulpits which were erected for gospel preaching. The atonement is scouted; the inspiration of Scripture is derighted; the Holy Spirit is degraded into an influence; the punishment of sin is turned into fiction and the resurrection into a myth. And yet these enemies of our faith expect us to call them brethren and maintain a confederacy with them.”

Spurgeon goes on,

“The case is mournful. Certain ministers are making infidels. Are not atheists not a tenth as dangerous as those preachers who scatter doubt at stab at faith? Germany was made unbelieving by her preachers and England is following in her tracts.”

Most prophetically, Spurgeon then argued that true believers cannot associate with those who have rejected the faith. His words would portend the schism to come. Spurgeon was a lone voice, but he was the loudest and the most revered voice of all. The controversy would cost him dearly. It cost him his friendships and reputation. His own brother disowned his decision. Yet, for Spurgeon to remain in within the union would be tantamount with theological treason. Spurgeon’s Another Word on the Downgrade landed like a bombshell. Shockwaves went throughout England and reverberated throughout the entire protestant world. He had been attached for decades by the press, but now he was savaged by his own Baptist Union. Prior to the Downgrade Controversy, if the Baptist Union had a pope, he was it. But not he erstwhile brethren brutalized him. They charged him with pugilism, with being schismatic, and they even questioned his sanity, starting a whisper campaign that his physical maladies had made him mad. Graduates of Spurgeon’s College turned on him and the leaders of the Baptist Union pilloried him. On October 28, 1887, Spurgeon wrote the General Secretary of the Baptist Union, Samuel Harris Booth, to announce his withdrawal, and three months later, in January of 1888, the Baptist Union convened to accept his withdrawal, and voted by vote of 100 to 5 to accept Spurgeon’s withdrawal from the Baptist Union. Spurgeon’s brother, James, seconded the motion for his removal.

Spurgeon, in The Lion in Winter, was prophetic if not popular. He said, “I am quite willing to be eaten of dogs for the next 50 years, but the more distant future shall vindicate me.” And indeed it has. Less than five years later Spurgeon would die, and against his wishes, a massive monument would be erected for his grave in the Norwood Cemetery. I have been there and it is impressive indeed. It was as I have said, against his wishes, but it is beautiful to see. The front of the tomb is a marble likeness of Spurgeon’s face and beneath it is a Bible open to 2 Timothy 4:7 which says, “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith.” Indeed he did, and indeed, brothers and sisters, if our church and our generation will know health and vibrancy and vitality, we better be ready to keep the faith ourselves.

{Paryer}

topicsChurch & Ministry, For the Church Conference