First Blog

Thanks for checking out my new blog. This is my first trek into the social networking realm of the internet. I fear that either no one will ever read what I write (please leave a note to say hello), or that the great evangelical minds of our day will read it use my writings in seminaries as examples of “What Not To Do”. I’m going to swallow my fear and step in here, hoping that this blog will be a way to stay in-touch with Waco Family Baptist Church and those who love us and support our ministry. My prayer is that God will bless this effort.

Today WFBC voted to adopt the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 as an official doctrinal statement of the church. This is a historic moment in the life of our church. We are marking ourselves as a “Reformed Baptist Church”. We are ascribing to the doctrines of the reformers. I do not wish to be known by the “C” word (if you don’t know what it is, don’t even worry about it) – too often the “C” word is divisive, and that is not honoring to Christ Jesus. Spurgeon said, “I wish to be called nothing but a Christian." "The old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, that Paul preached, is the truth that I must preach to-day, or else be false to my conscience and my God. I cannot shape the truth; I know of no such thing as paring off the rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox's gospel is my gospel. That which thundered through Scotland must thunder through England again." And I would add that the gospel must thunder through the United States of America as well.

These great doctrines of Grace are in one sense very new to me. I feel an urgency to master the depths of doctrine, a hunger to devour the meaty portions. I see the chasm from where I am to where I need to be becoming more clear to me daily – and more vast. Yet in another sense, these doctrines are very familiar to me. Doctrines like the depravity of man have been taught to me from my youth. And the doctrine of election has been on so many of the pages of Scripture that I’ve read. Though I have misunderstood and under-valued many of these teachings, a foundation was laid in my heart and in my mind before I ever knew it. I am growing to understand salvation with greater depth, but I do allow that God is still working in me and my prayer is that my comprehension of Him and of the gospel will continue to grow until my death.

The 1689 is hard to read for most of us, so there will be a tendency for you to accept it and “Trust the preacher” that it’s a good thing. I urge you to avoid that temptation. I invite you, even beg you, to dive into the document – read it, struggle if you must to understand it (I have to struggle with writing from so long ago), evaluate it according to scripture, learn it and love it. This document is NOT our rule for faith and practice, but it is an effort to summarize the Biblical teachings in a manner that is useful to us in communicating with those around us. Let’s use this tool in our quest to become Biblical theologians who are Gospel saturated.

Todd Gill