Church is no longer somewhere to go and serve, it is now God’s people gathered together to receive Christ and the benefits of His work of redemption through the means He has established. I now believe when we gather for corporate worship, something happens that doesn’t happen at any other time or in any other place, and it happens through the ordained means of Word, Sacraments, and Prayer. I am now trusting in His means of grace not my own list of what another friend of mine calls means of growth (spiritual disciplines). 

Multiple news outlets have reported the Church of England is no longer describing their new church start-ups as church plants. A new study says the Church is opting for terms like worshiping community and worshiping congregation that reflect the culture change or rejuvenation that is taking place. The designation church is apparently no longer sufficient to describe the new things that are happening like Shh Free Worship for young families with children, Silent Disco Worship for young adults, and Outdoor Worship for those who like to listen to the audio Bible and pray while they walk. But in the words of one Vicar, this movement reflects “a misplaced desire to be relevant and modern-sounding” and communicates “the Church has given up on church.” The author of the report even admits the change is forcing those within the Church to redefine what they think a church is and that it has “left certain parts of the Church – for whom fidelity to ecclesial forms and practices is central – feeling outside of the planting conversation.”(1)
I’ve been a part of three church plants over the course of my ministry. Two as a Baptist and one as a Presbyterian. The first was in 1997 after being sent to the very first Saddleback conference where I drank the Purpose-Driven Kool-Aid. The second was in 2006 after returning from the first T4G Conference as an official card-carrying cage-stage member of the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement. The third was twelve years later after arriving in the PCA. I spent my years in the seeker-sensitive (seeker-centered) movement exhibiting my misplaced desire to be relevant which resulted in being labeled defiant by the denominational establishment due to what they believed to be a lack of restraint within the limits they had deemed to be proper and in good taste (they were right). I didn’t fare any better during my stint with the YRR. Rather than humble me, my newfound knowledge of and appreciation for God’s sovereignty in salvation became an incubator for my pride. I, as so many do, overcorrected and spent a few years reacting to the err of my former ways by being condescendingly critical of other churches and harshly communicating what I was against more than what I was for. This opened the door to a legalism that left me and my family in need of an indefinite period of respite.
The PCA church we began attending was an oasis. We were immediately welcomed into the fellowship and ministered to and restored by a faithful pastor who was committed to the ordinary means of grace and the regulative principle of worship.
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The Bible also teaches that our hearts are born in corruption (Ps. 51:5; Rom. 5:12), thus the members of the family—both parents and children—ultimately need to have their problems solved from the inside out. That brings parents back to the Great Commission. The fundamental need of discipleship is a new heart cleansed from sin. Only Christ can accomplish this work. 

No text of Scripture speaking to discipleship deserves more attention than the Great Commission. That commission, or commandment, is given to disciples (Matt. 28:16) to make disciples (Matt 28:19–20). And Jesus gives the how: Christian baptism and biblical teaching. Before a parent does anything to discipline a child, he does well to pay attention to Christ’s plan for making disciples. Christ’s discipline must characterize our homes. That surely involves the discipline of children in the terms we often think (Prov. 13:24; 19:18; 22:15; 23:13–14; 29:15–17), but it also demands much more of parents.
Without a thoughtful reading of Proverbs in the context of the whole of Scripture, we can (and often do) fall into behaviorism, a secular psychological approach that views human learning as merely a matter of conditioning responses. But Christ teaches us that we and our children are more. We have hearts, spiritual centers of our being, from which our behaviors flow (Prov. 4:23; Matt. 12:33–35; 15:10–20; Luke 6:43–45). The Bible also teaches that our hearts are born in corruption (Ps. 51:5; Rom. 5:12), thus the members of the family—both parents and children—ultimately need to have their problems solved from the inside out.
That brings parents back to the Great Commission. The fundamental need of discipleship is a new heart cleansed from sin. Only Christ can accomplish this work. The Lord, speaking through the prophet Ezekiel, declares, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, . . . give you a new heart, . . . and I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezek. 36:25–27). The connection to baptism in the Great Commission is obvious. Whether someone affirms credobaptism (believer’s baptism) or paedobaptism (infant baptism), everyone agrees that baptism is something done for you, not something you do for yourself. It’s an outward sign pointing to the necessity of the Spirit’s work. Christian parents must know this: no true discipleship comes apart from heart change. The starting place of discipleship for our children can’t be separated from baptism.
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Written by Jeffrey M. Herbener |
Tuesday, April 4, 2023
At least one former Federal-Reserve insider recognizes that our central banking system has made moral hazard a way of life. What’s needed is fundamental reform. When will we abandon the foolish path of enacting policies that extend the scope of moral hazard? If we refuse to abandon the foolish path, we risk burning our house to the ground.

Moral hazard occurs when an agreement people make to act in concert for their mutual benefit results in an incentive for one of them to act immorally. The classic case is insurance. When an insurance company contracts with a homeowner to provide fire insurance, the homeowner now has incentive to pay a few premiums and then burn his house down and collect a full insurance payout. In committing arson, not only does the homeowner harm the material well-being of the owners of the insurance company and the innocent homeowners who are abiding by their promises, he injures his own spiritual well-being. He has defrauded those who trusted him to keep his word. In response to the possibility of arson, the insurance company assembles an arson investigation team to detect such immoral behavior. Mitigating moral hazard is a wise course of action because it limits the harm to all involved. It would be foolish for the insurance company to overlook the harm of moral hazard or, even worse, to arrange its affairs in a way that augmented moral hazard.
The potential for moral hazard permeates human relationships. Wisdom councils us to look for ways to mitigate the damage of moral hazard and avoid acting in ways that create moral hazard. In one area, regrettably, moral hazard has become a way of life.
Moral hazard is endemic to a banking system regulated by a central bank. Consider the current banking crisis. As reported by Dr. Peter St. Onge on March 19, total unrealized losses in the banking system are between $1.7 trillion and $2 trillion. The capital buffer for the entire system is $2.2 trillion. The banking system, therefore, is on the verge of insolvency. Furthermore, there are 186 banks in distress and hundreds with losses bigger and capital buffers smaller than Silicon Valley Bank.
The main culprit in these losses is the Federal Reserve’s more than decade-long policy of suppressing interest rates. Cheap credit has given an incentive to investors and entrepreneurs to pour funding into all kinds of projects and practices that will prove to be financially unviable. Monetary inflation is the fuel needed to increase the supply of credit and keep interest rates suppressed. The unwinding of the quantitative-easing policies of the Fed after 2014 was quickly abandoned in the repo crisis of 2019. But it was the monetary inflation of the Fed to fund the fiscal explosion of the federal government during the Covid lockdown that has resulted in the current return of significant price inflation. In turn, higher price inflation rates are now causing interest rates to rise. Rising interest rates on newly issued Treasuries have collapsed the market prices of the low-interest-rate Treasuries that banks acquired in the past and are holding now because regulatory bodies consider them safe. Of the nearly $17.5 trillion in bank credit in the banking system, roughly $4.4 trillion is Treasury and Agency securities and another significant but unknown portion of bank credit is now unprofitable loans undertaken during the period of cheap credit. Clearly, the Fed’s policy actions have led to the current crisis.
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