The following is part of the interview process I went through with Community Bible Church of Olathe. After the initial 3-hour conversation, they sent me a list of questions to respond to. These were necessarily brief, but I hope you find them helpful.
Q4: What is your view on these components in evangelism?
- God: God Himself is the “good news” we proclaim—He is, He has revealed Himself and His plan for reconciling fallen humanity to Himself and He is making all things new again. He has made His existence and greatness obvious to all through His creation, He sovereignly convicts the world of its sin and rebellion, and draws all men to Himself, offering salvation to all who respond to Him in faith. He invites all believers to participate in His ministry of reconciliation.
- Man: All people have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Apart from God’s grace none will be saved, and face eternal separation from God in hell.
- Christ: Christ was both sent from God and chose to take on the form of a human servant in order to provide the way of reconciliation. He is the only God-Man and therefore the only Mediator between God and man. His substitutionary death and resurrection are the heart of the good news we proclaim in evangelism. His death satisfied the righteous wrath of God and His resurrection demonstrated God’s satisfaction.
- Response: Salvation has always been by grace through faith in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. All of man’s works are worthless in the eyes of God, but our faith pleases Him. Faith is the only condition for receiving eternal life.
Q5: What is your eschatological view?
- While I believe Christians should not divide over eschatology, a right understanding of it can provide great encouragement, hope and motivation for holy and missional living.
- I believe the best explanation of biblical prophecy is the dispensational framework including the Pretribulational Rapture, the seven-year Great Tribulation in fulfillment of Daniel’s 70th “seven,” the Premillennial Return of Christ then the literal one-thousand year reign of Christ on earth leading to the New Heaven and New Earth for eternity.
- I believe this climactic ending is a fitting conclusion to human history because Christ will receive the glory He rightly deserves within the context of human history.
- I believe in a literal, physical New Heaven and New Earth, as well as a literal hell.
Q6: What is your view of church government (elders, congregational government)?
- This is another secondary issue over which believers should not divide. However, this does not mean it is unimportant. The strength of churches and church movements depends on how local churches are governed. I believe—technically—churches should be led both by a plurality of elders and the entire congregation—the body of Christ.
- Several passages such as Acts 20:17ff; 1 Timothy 3; Titus 1 and 1 Peter 5 clearly place the care of the local “flock” in the hands of elders.
- Passages such as 1 Corinthians 12-14; Ephesians 4 and Titus 2 also make it clear that the ministry isn’t just for the elders, but for the entire body of Christ—the saints have all been gifted for the building up of the body and are to do the work of ministry under the equipping and authority of gifted leaders.
- I also believe the issue extends beyond the local church itself. There are two kinds of leaders in the church—broadly speaking.
- Local churches are to be led by modal (locally-focused) leaders who are gifted for the multitude of tasks related to shepherding a local church of believers (i.e., elders, deacons, older men, older women).
- Sodal (globally-focused) leaders are gifted for the work of expansion and multiplication of local churches everywhere. These—like Paul, Timothy, Titus, Luke, Silas, Aquila and Priscilla, etc.—should be supported and sent out to take the gospel into places of the world where there is no gospel presence, to do evangelism, make disciples and plant more local congregations.
