“The Fulcrum Declaration” – Good Words from a Friend!

A friend of mind wrote this and I received permission
to add it to our group site:

The Fulcrum Declaration

God calls humanity to be faithful stewards of his creation — including those institutions and spheres of human endeavor God has ordained for humanity’s benefit — and bestows individual gifts sufficient to fulfill that mandate in each age and culture.

The challenges of our age are skepticism, relativism and declining virtue arising from post-modern world views. We seek to use the gifts God gives us to meet those challenges by promoting objective, Judeo-Christian standards of truth, goodness and beauty.

To achieve this goal, we affirm that:
1. All human life has intrinsic dignity, worth and meaning because God created us in his likeness and image to be faithful stewards over all aspects of his creation on earth.

2. Our aptitudes, skills, vocations and wealth are part of God’s personal call to ministry, because they are manifestations of the individual gifts that God has bestowed upon us. Our duty is to develop and use those gifts in fulfillment of God’s stewardship mandate.

3. God is the supreme creator, lawgiver and judge over all individuals and nations, and is the supreme provider to those who individually or collectively love, trust and obey him. Despite humanity’s rebellion and the effects of sin, God remains sovereign over our individual lives, nations and history.

4. Although God grants individuals and nations the nominal right to reject his grace and to suffer the consequences of indifference and sin, his ultimate purpose in history — to redeem creation and humanity from the taint of sin — will not be frustrated. Although we may not perceive the efficacy of God’s providence in every particular, our lives have context and meaning as we submit to his grace, enter into intimate and life-giving fellowship with God, conform to his precepts and use our gifts to fulfill his stewardship mandate.

5. The great historic doctrines and creeds of the Church provide the Biblical framework necessary to fulfill God’s stewardship mandate. We therefore have confidence in God’s sovereignty, absolute truth as revealed in Scripture, God’s unmerited and efficacious grace, the essential and uninterrupted role of the multifaceted, multi-gifted Church — as the Body of Christ — in history, the progressive advance of God’s covenantal Kingdom as men and women of good will labor to redeem all aspects of creation through the application of God’s precepts, the concurrent opposition and escalation of evil, and the ultimate triumph of God’s Kingdom at the culmination of history.

6. Consistent with God’s triune nature, we are created for fellowship with God and for community with each other. Society and the five fundamental forms of government – self, civil, voluntary associations, church and family – are part of God’s created order for the benefit of humanity.

7. God, who created all yet transcends all, is the only ultimate and authoritative source of objective truth, goodness and beauty. The qualities of virtue embody those absolutes, because they emanate from the very nature and character of God. They are built into the very fabric of creation, and are foundational for all societies that value liberty.

8. Redeeming our nation, culture and institutions involves more than simply impacting the State, politics and the law; it also entails rebuilding the foundations of virtue by becoming creatively engaged through our individual gifts in the full range of human endeavors — including the arts, the media, the professions, enterprise, charity, education and community service, to name just a few.

9. We do not seek to impose virtue on our society through coercion or totalitarianism, but trust that God in his sovereignty is able to bear fruit as we, in obedience to God’s stewardship mandate, uphold and proclaim virtue. God is covenantal and blesses those people whose hearts are turned to him and righteousness, rather than those who have God and righteousness imposed on them.

10. As beings created in God’s image, we have been given the faculties of reason and creativity. Reason and creativity divorced from revelation, however, lead to the nihilism and despair of post-modernity. Although humanity may dimly perceive objective truth, goodness and beauty as manifestations of God’s handiwork in nature, God in his mercy has brightly revealed in scripture those precepts that are minimally necessary for our well being. Understanding how to apply those precepts to the specific challenges and issues of our age requires wisdom, scholarship and humility.

11. The defining character of post-modernity is relativism, which embraces skepticism because it rejects objective truth, goodness and beauty. Through our laws, courts and other institutions, post-modernity increasingly is leading to tyranny as it seeks to supplant all other world views. As a result, decency is censured and decadence becomes normative.

12. Against the tyranny of post-modernity, true liberty is possible only when the five fundamental forms of government — self, civil, voluntary associations, church and family — stay within their separate jurisdictions as ordained by God. For our society to endure and flourish, each form of government, within its proper limits, must once again practice righteousness, promote virtue and resist vice.

13. It is the particular duty of civil government to defend the virtuous, punish evildoers and protect the separate roles of society’s other forms of government. While the State has no authority to dictate piety or personal belief, and the Church should not exercise State power, it is the proper role of the State to promote virtue. Separation of Church and State does not mean that law must be divorced from virtue or that virtue has no role in civil government.

14. We reject the myth of neutrality. To be cohesive, all law must be rooted in a particular world view to the exclusion of all other world views. Each world view is defined by its presuppositions. Presuppositions are a world view’s most fundamental values and beliefs. There are no neutral presuppositions, and all presuppositions are based on assumptions that must be accepted on faith. It therefore is duplicitous for the State, under the guise of neutrality, to supplant Judeo-Christian presuppositions and values with secular presuppositions and values that are nothing more than a competing, authoritarian belief system.

15. A presupposition of post-modernity is the paradoxical but absolute belief that there are no absolutes. Post-modernity therefore seeks to exclude objective, transcendent standards of truth, goodness and beauty from our culture, institutions and laws. Only a Judeo-Christian world view, in all of history, has been successful in affirming necessary social standards while also protecting, as one of its standards, individual diversity of belief, conscience and piety.

16. Tangible consequences follow from the world view a society chooses, and daily we witness post-modernity’s inevitable bitter fruits of nihilism, despair, moral decay, broken homes and shattered lives.

17. The challenge for the Church today is to raise a prophetic voice against personal and social nihilism, alienation and despair — while concurrently proclaiming God’s grace and the beauty of virtue. The Church must also nurture individual discipleship under the lordship of Christ within a community of faith, and equip Christians to use their gifts in service to God, each other and society.

18. We reject subjective “me-focused” theological fads, dualistic Gnosticisms that limit our faith to “spiritual” matters while neglecting the “secular” and “material” world of our day-to-day existence, and pessimistic eschatologies of retreat, defeat and escape. Such notions may be popular in our age, but rob Christians of our heritage and destiny. They provide no hope for our individual lives or culture, or any basis — beyond evangelism — for Christians to engage the world. As such, they are antithetical to the lordship of Christ and God’s progressive redemption of not only individuals, but also whole cultures and nations.

19. It is imperative that the Church move away from its program-oriented mentality, performance-based worship, podium-focused services and “clergy” dominated ministry. We must recapture the New Testament pattern of: (i) equipping all believers to effectively serve and minister under our full range of unique gifts and callings; (ii) being the church through authentic participatory fellowships where we share the Lord’s supper, minister one to another, and express the joyous, multifaceted life of Christ in us, among us and through us to each other and a watching world; and (iii) regional unity as we cooperate to reach, bless and impact our cities, towns and localities as members of Christ’s diverse Body.

20. As Christians, we are committed to engaging our society in the great debates of our age. While remaining faithful to our own distinctive beliefs, we labor together with all who seek to redeem our nation, culture and institutions by upholding objective standards of truth, goodness and beauty.

Used with permission from Fulcrum Ministries
(http://crossroadjunction.com/fulcrum-ministries)
(c) Copyright 2012 All Rights Reserved.

This is now apart of this blog 🙂

Jim Mazzulla  (G-mail: jim@goproclaim.com)

“The Sad Truth of Biblical Illiteracy Among Us”

One thing about our gathering that me be a little different than other groups, that while fellowship and community will be very, very important,  the Bible will be of key importance in our gathering.

Today I share on:

“The Sad Truth of Biblical Illiteracy Among Us”

These [Berean’s] were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in thatthey received the word with all readiness of mind [all eagerness], and searched [examining] the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. – Acts 17:11

Daniel Wallace states: “…The intentional dumbing down of the church for the sake of filling more pews will ultimately lead to defection from Christ (2006:337).

Allistair Begg states: “People do not know their Bibles. In an earlier generation the average 13-year-old or 14-year-old certainly in Scotland would have a far greater grasp of biblical parameters of truth than the average graduate from an American seminary today”.

Al Mohler: The many fronts of Christian compromise in this generation can be directly traced to biblical illiteracy in the pews and the absence of biblical preaching and teaching in our homes and churches.

C.H. Spurgeon: If you wish to know God you must know his word; if you wish to perceive his power you must see how he worketh by his word; if you wish to know his purpose before it is actually brought to pass you can only discover it by his word. 1607.377

Have you ever said or heard people say the Bible says, “God helps those who help themselves,”. Really give me chapter and verse, it’s not in the Bible! When asked 82 percent of Americans, said it was a Bible verse. Sadly, those who those identified themselves as born-again Christians did better–by one percent. [81% – Sad]

That was my introduction.

Today I was inspired and felt grieved enough to write on the subject of “Biblical Illiteracy.” The final straw, so to speak, was reading some responses to someone’s Bible questions to a Christian group on Facebook. In many ways this group thinks they are so “on the mark” of Christianity. I was saddened as most of their answers to the Bible questions were general, philosophical, and relational, but not Biblical.

Spurgeon said it so well: “Men talk about building upon Christ, and not upon the Scriptures; but they know not what they say; for our Lord continually established his own claims by appealing to Moses and the prophets. They would be Christo-centric, they say: I only wish they would. But if they take Christ for a centre, they will inevitably have the Scriptures for a centre too; and these men neither want the one nor the other. 2212.364

As I talk about “Biblical illiteracy,” I am not talking about having to memorize the entire Bible, though memorizing is a very good and profitable. I am also not talking about us all being Biblical scholars, although the Bible does say, “…be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:– I Peter 3:15.

I’m a pastor-teacher with a humble intelligence, so everything doesn’t come easy for me, I have to study a lot, and I still forget things; but I don’t use that as an excuse for being Biblically ignorant (illiterate). You or I may not be able to rattle off scriptures on every subject, but how about an overall understanding of the Bible and the doctrines (what the Bible teaches).

I really cringe at the answers you get in the “church” and “born-again” crowd when you ask, “how do you know you are saved or are a child of God?” Especially, of the younger generations, usually they hem and haw and give some really weak answer. I don’t want to give them the nth degree (well I sort of do), but most don’t have a clue what “salvation” is!!! If they are saved, and some may be, it is in spite of their ignorance. It is still scary, sad, and sickening how few really understand God, salvation, and THE BIBLE!

I personally say I was saved June 21, 1975, because that was when I gave my life to the Lord, though I didn’t really “understand” Biblically what was happening to me. I simply (and amazingly) believed in Jesus as my Savior and Lord. Immediately following I was so hungry to learn more about Jesus, so I turned to the Bible and read, and read, and read. Also, the Lord provided a very knowledgeable Christian brother (at a distance, and this was before e-mails existed). I would write questions and wait for his answers, which were always full of scriptures. I still have many of those letters 35 years later, and I thank God for putting this Christian Bible literate man in my path. Then, in more recent years in the 1990’s I met a very Bible literate brother/minister that I can always throw questions to, on top of my own studying for answers, and not as a replacement for my own studying, “…to see if these things be so” Acts 17:11

While there is a famine of God’s Word out there, there is hope for anyone to grow in the Lord. If you really want to learn the things of God, in addition to your own study time in the Bible, there are spiritual Bible literate people to help (you may have to search and pray to find them).
This is a little bit of my heart on a big and serious problem in the church of the 21^st Century.

Below are some passages for you and me to ponder, meditate, study, memorize, think on, and let God use to change our lives and help us to value God’s Word to the utmost!

Study [be diligent] to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing [handling accurately] the word of truth. – 2 Timothy 2:15

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:    17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. – 2 Timothy 3:16-17

Thanks for listening, and may you grow in the Lord as you build on the solid foundation of God’s Word (the Bible).

If you want to know more or join us, please call me at 704-456-8771 or email me at: jim@goproclaim.com or biblefood@gmail.com

Lord bless you all as you seek to serve God for His glory alone 🙂

Jim

Welcome to THE GATHERING! A little about us.

We invite you to be part of a new group of Christians called “The Gathering.” Our hope is that this will bring the closeness and interaction as seen with a “house church,” but with definite leadership (Biblical Elder) which is often lacking in house churches.

This fellowship of believers “The Gathering” (the name picked for being nice and simple) will stay small. Once we get too big to be close to each other, we will branch out to another location.

We will have an emphasis on God’s Word (the Bible) to guide our lives.  I feel there is not enough of that in modern churches or house churches. The Bible will be our source of guidance.

We will also not exalt any ministry/minister/writer as “above another.”  We may have a favorite among the traditional/institutional church or we may have a favorite among a house church.  One is not “better” than the other, as the Lord chose them to touch our lives.

We also won’t shun any Godly group whether a traditional/institutional church or a house church.  We recognize that the Lord can use whatever He chooses.

As for “The Gathering,” we will not be exalted above other groups. Our group is for those whom the Lord calls to our gathering.  We are no better than another group, we just happen to be a place for some in the Body of Christ.

I hope this first blog gives you an idea of what we are about in our infancy and prayerfully plan to keep that focus in the coming years.

If you want to know more or join us, please call me (Jim) at 704-456-8771 or email me at: jim@goproclaim.com or jmmazzulla@gmail.com

Lord bless you all as you seek to serve God for His glory alone 🙂

Jim

Note: I personally have over 30 years ministry experience and prayerfully look forward to seeing what God is going to do with this group.