Too Much Grace and Too Little Practical Godliness?

I recently came across the following anonymous testimony on Facebook and wanted to share it here along with my response:

All the PB churches in our area, including the one that we are a member of, preach nothing but the "doctrines of grace" as we call them, every single Sunday. As much as we love those old truths, my husband and I want our 2 sons, who are pre-teens, to also learn about all the other things that are taught in God's word. We really appreciate the fact that we were eternally saved for heaven by election, predestination, etc, but it sure would be nice to hear Bible preaching about how to live in this wicked world. I once heard elder Sonny Pyles say something to the effect of "While it's great to hear about the Sweet By & By, we also need preaching to help us make it in the Nasty Now & Now." The PB churches in our area do not meet on Wednesday nights. We are considering finding a non-PB church to attend on Wednesday night, so that our family can hear more of the word preached, and have fellowship with other believers mid-week. As for the things that are in error, we can eat the chicken, and throw away the bones. At home, my husband can point out to our sons the things in the sermon that were in error, and show them the truth. We would like to hear the thoughts of our fellow PB's about this idea.

A healthy church should receive a properly balanced diet of eternal salvation and time salvation. Even good ministers may find it difficult to find the appropriate mix, and PB ministers are no strangers to this issue. I do not doubt that PB ministers tend to err on the side of preaching eternal salvation over timely salvation. I can think of a half dozen potential causes, not the least of which may be feeling the need to compensate for the lack of grace that is taught in the Christian marketplace. As a minister, I'm sympathetic to that sentiment even though I realize that it can lead to an unprofitable imbalance in the instructional diet of the church.

Having said that, I believe it is possible for PBs who are underfed on practical godliness to develop a "greener pastures" view of seemingly similar orders (i.e., denominations that affirm TULIP, Doctrines of Grace (DoG), election, predestination, etc.). I do not doubt that they have some good things to say about practical godliness. Indeed even Christian groups outside of the DoG camp often teach good things with respect to how we ought to live. But what I would suggest is that these groups do not agree with PBs nearly so much on the DoG as their affirmation of TULIP might lead someone to believe. Almost all of them believe that either "the gospel is instrumental in regeneration" or that "the explicit NT gospel reaches ALL of God's elect during their natural lives" or that "ALL of God's elect will persevere to some requisite degree of holiness during their natural lives." Dissimilarities beyond these could be multiplied.

These seemingly subtle differences in what they intend by TULIP/DoG are quite far removed from what PBs believe (at least those PBs with whom I am in direct fellowship). I won't belabor the point here, but rather simply state it: In my experience, those differences create their own problems further downstream that are greater than or equal to the problems created by the over emphasis of DoG to the exclusion of practical godliness in PB pulpits.

Rather than regarding "greener pastures" as a possible solution, I would recommend that we redouble our efforts to break up our own fallow ground by teaching our children the word of God in the home and preaching a balanced diet of both eternal and time salvation.

- Elder Daniel Samons