The Friday Five (8.7.26)
A Few Things for My Friends
Hey!
Every week, I share five things to encourage and equip in life with God.
This week:
1. Remember your Baptism! | Harold L Senkbeil
2. A Protestant View of Spiritual Formation | Kyle Strobel
3. When the Church Sings What We Cannot Yet Say | Daniel Jesse
4. When Trusting God Feels Hard | Joel Muddamalle, PhD
5. We’ve Forgotten the Men | Harp
Enjoy!
MK
⬇️ Check out my book on who you’re becoming and how to grow in Christ! ⬇️
Read the forward from Jen Wilkin | Grab a copy here | Here’s a Discussion Guide
1. Remember Your Baptism!
This past weekend at The Village, we held our Made Alive weekend, celebrating the work of Christ and baptizing all weekend long. It was a blessing to listen to testimony after testimony from the waters of how Jesus is changing lives. It reminded me of Harold L Senkbeil’s work The Care of Souls, and how the doctrine of Union with Christ enables people to remember their baptism with confidence. Now, Lutheran and Baptism doctrine differ on the nature of baptism1, but the beauty of the charge stands. The testimonies in the water, the outward sign of an inward change, being buried and rising with Christ through faith - these are all reminders that what happens to us in salvation is real, and we need that when life comes for our joy.
Here’s Senkbeil:
Being washed in the powerful name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a person is cleansed of all sin and given a whole new life to live. All sin inherited from Adam and committed by that person himself is drowned and dies in that water. In a very real way Jesus takes the sinner, sins and all, along with him into his death and buries those sins in a watery grave, never to rise again. Yet from that very water a new man emerges, created in the image and likeness of the Lord who by his sacred blood has ransomed every soul and cleansed it from all impurity.
Baptism thus is an indispensable instrument in the soul’s healing and an essential tool for every physician of souls. Pastors baptize a person only once, but the significance of this watery grave for sin continues every day. For the rest of that person’s earthly life he or she daily returns to that washing by contrition and repentance so the old Adam continually dies each day and a new person regularly emerges and arises to live before God in Christ’s own righteousness and true holiness. So by faithful, patient teaching, by his own example, and through his prayer and blessing a pastor teaches the baptized faithful to “remember their baptism” by daily repentance and baptismal living.Baptism thus forms the hinge of the new life in Christ. In many ways, the cure of souls is always ongoing baptismal therapy; the pastor applies one aspect or another of Christ’s magnificent baptismal gifts to souls burdened with guilt or broken by hurt and shame. At the heart and center of baptism lies the remission of all sins in the shed blood of Jesus: remission for sins we’ve committed against God and sins others have committed against us.
Though baptism is a one-time event, such remission meets our collective ongoing need for spiritual health and healing. The forgiveness of sins is the daily bread and butter of every baptized soul.2
I really enjoyed The Care of Souls. There is a beautiful and sobering weight to Senkbeil’s view of the pastoral way of being, the habitus, and how we are to minister in the care of souls. What a gift!
2. A Protestant View of Spiritual Formation
Kyle Strobel is on Michael Horton’s podcast this week talking about a Protestant Vision of Spiritual Formation. It’s a meaty conversation that will take your attention - and you will be challenged to think about your approach to growth in Christ.
Thanks for having these conversations out loud, Kyle. We need them!
3. When the Church Sings What We Cannot Yet Say
The newsletter is called: Emotional Formation in Christian Worship. Of course I subscribed.
Daniel Jesse’s piece on grief and singing in community is a helpful and thought provoking read as we bear with those processing grief, and for the day we hold our own.
Daniel:
A person may not yet be able to explain what is happening inside them. They may not be able to pray with eloquence or confidence. They may not even want to pray. But they can stand among other people while a melody passes through the room. They can breathe on the same phrase as the person beside them. They can be carried, for a few minutes, by words they did not have to invent.
There is a mercy in that. The body is invited to pray before the mind has caught up. The voice may be weak. It may tremble. It may disappear entirely on a line that comes too close. But even then, the song continues. The congregation keeps singing. Prayer does not depend on my capacity to perform perfectly.
Read the whole thing here.
4. When Trusting God Feels Hard
Joel Muddamalle, PhD has a brief word on how human relationships often frame and inform our view of God. When it comes to trusting God in through pain, we treat him like people who have broken their promises before, expecting little better from God.
Joel reminds us that God is not like man, and we can depend upon him.
Read Joel’s piece and be encouraged.
5. We’ve Forgotten the Men.
Harp has an open letter for the SBC this week, and it stirred my heart because it’s a topic I care a lot about: discipling men in our local church. Give Harp’s entire letter a read, it’s worth considering and engaging with.
Here’s a piece:
Our denomination must stop treating ministry to men as optional. This is not about creating another demographic program. It is about fulfilling the Great Commission among half the population.
We do not need less ministry to women. We do not need less investment in children. We need to recover a vision for calling men to repentance, responsibility, sacrifice, brotherhood, and mission under the lordship of King Jesus.
We need to recover the ‘ancient paths,’ a 1907 vision, the idea that men are the high tide that raises all ships. When a man is transformed by the gospel, he never changes alone.
His marriage feels it. His children see it. His church is strengthened by it. His workplace is influenced by it. His community benefits from it.
For decades, Southern Baptists have declared that we want to reach the nations. Amen. But the nations are filled with men, and most of those men are absent from our churches, disengaged from our mission, and unclear about God’s calling upon their lives.
Read the rest here.
Current Reads:
Thanks for Reading!
If someone forwarded this to you, I write two kinds of emails: one on select Tuesdays about life with God and the other every Friday, where I share things I’ve found during the week. If you want to subscribe but can’t afford it, email me, and I’ll take care of it—no questions asked.
I pastor, teach, and lead at The Village Church, serving as an Elder and the Executive Director of Discipleship. I’m also working on a Ph.D. in Church History, studying Jonathan Edwards and character formation. I’ve written A Short Guide to Spiritual Disciplines: How to Become a Healthy Christian.
Thank you for reading and supporting my work as I seek to shepherd with compassion and wisdom, equipping people to embody God’s truth for all of life.
Talk soon,
Mason
Logos Study Assistant Summary Response to the Prompt: Explain the difference between Lutheran and Baptist doctrine regarding baptism.
The fundamental divide between Lutheran and Baptist baptismal theology centers on whether baptism itself conveys grace and on the proper candidates for baptism.
On the nature and efficacy of baptism: Lutherans emphasize God’s activity as the chief element in baptism, affirming that God employs water and the Word to forgive sins according to his promise, while Baptists deny that God uses visible elements to effect spiritual regeneration.[1] Baptists affirm believer’s baptism but deny that baptism is a sacrament that destroys sin, arms against Satan, and creates or sustains faith.[2] Instead, Baptists regard baptism as an ordinance—a practice Christ has ordained through which one identifies with the death of Christ.[2] Lutheranism maintains a high view of the sacraments, ordinarily regarding baptism as essential to salvation, since through it by divine appointment, the blessings of remission and regeneration are conveyed by means of faith and the Word.[3]
On infant baptism: Luther supported infant baptism, arguing that while there is not a positive biblical command for the sacrament, it must be practiced.[4] One Lutheran answer concerning infants having faith involved the faith of the children’s sponsors—their parents or others—who believe in the place of the infants in a vicarious faith.[4] By contrast, Baptists delay a child’s baptism until the child seems to understand his own sinful condition and need for Christ, repenting of sin and confessing faith in Jesus, since a person is not a proper candidate for baptism until such conditions are met.[2]
The underlying difference reflects differing emphases: Lutherans, in their concern to affirm the primacy of redeeming grace, have emphasized human powerlessness to initiate life in God, while Baptists, in their concern to affirm human responsibility in relation to God, have emphasized the element of decision with regard to faith.[1]
[1] Samuel H. Nafzger et al., eds., Confessing the Gospel: A Lutheran Approach to Systematic Theology (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2017), 799–800.
[2] David P. Scaer, “Infants and Children in the Church: A Lutheran View,” in Infants and Children in the Church: Five Views on Theology and Ministry (B&H Academic, 2017), 110–111.
[3] H. Orton Wiley, Christian Theology (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1940–1952), 3:168–169.
[4] Richard C. Gamble, The Whole Counsel of God: God’s People in the Western World (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2021), 3:501–502.
Senkbeil, The Care of Souls p.113
Redwall!
Thank you, Mason, as always. (Those are some great current reads!)