9Marks Journal: Ordinary Means of Grace (93 期：常規的蒙恩之道（或者說，不要做奇怪的事）)

For several years now, erstwhile 9Marks editor and now full-time pastor Sam Emadi, with a wink, has summarized our ministry, “Yeah, I just tell people, 9Marks exists to tell pastors not to do weird stuff. Just do what’s in the Bible.”

Not a bad summary.

If you’ve not heard the term “ordinary means of grace” before, Sam has captured what many pastors today need to hear: don’t do weird stuff in your church. Don’t take your growth cues from a marketing team. Don’t lead church services that would make P. T. Barnum or J. J. Abrams proud. Don’t, in short, think you can offer something extraordinary based on your creativity or ingenuity, or that you can manufacture the extraordinary through reverse-engineering the results you want.

The Spirit has already revealed everything we need for gathering and growing churches. And, yes, it’s pretty ordinary stuff. You might even be tempted to call it boring and (ironically) uninspiring. Yet the uninspiring is inspired: preaching God’s Word, singing God’s Word, praying God’s Word, reading God’s Word, and declaring God’s Word through the ordinances. Those ordinary—as opposed to extraordinary—practices have been ordained. The wisdom of God often sounds like foolishness, no?

In many churches simple acts of worship have been encrusted over by years of accumulated traditions that mask the beautiful simplicity of the ordinary means of grace. Don’t think you can offer something extraordinary based on your creativity or ingenuity, or that you can manufacture the extraordinary through reverse-engineering the results you want. The Spirit has already revealed everything we need for gathering and growing churches: preaching God’s Word, singing God’s Word, praying God’s Word, reading God’s Word, and declaring God’s Word through the ordinances. Those ordinary—as opposed to extraordinary—practices have been ordained. Directing people’s hearts and minds to God is the most important thing a church can do, and the singular activity around which everything else hangs. We need to remember that the visible church is a gathering of Christians in a local assembly to worship the Lord. This Journal, which focuses on the ordinary means of grace, presents the very heart of the 9Marks church program. What’s our church model? Here it is.