BUT, these issues were not the main point of this article. Look at the title, “The Hallway and the Rooms”. Look at the analogy draw from C.S. Lewis (found in the last two paragraphs of the Preface of ‘Mere Christianity’). The whole point is to make the main thing the main thing!!

Yes, we should know what we believe and why we believe it. No, we should not toss labels around so carelessly so that they have no meaning (Lewis also deals with meaningless words in the same Preface to the same book). But what is of primary importance is that we ‘get into our room’and get busy doing its work.

We need to become intimately involved in the visible, local church of which we are members. Not activities, fund-raisers, or senior van trips. Those are fine and dandy, like pretty curtains on the wall, or a lovely vase on a shelf. The add a nice little touch to the atmosphere.

A room, however, has far greater purposes: fellowship, meals, instruction, encouragement, protection from the elements. The intent of this article was to cause us to recognize the difference between the hallway (the areas upon which we can agree) and the rooms (the distinctives that make us unique members of the same body) and drive us to spend our time and energies primarily in our own particular room.

Rather than standing guard at the door of our room deciding who we’ll allow to enter, let us strengthen those who are already in our room and allow ourselves to be encouraged by them. Let us encourage the weak brother and not turn him away.

Lewis’s first instruction in the ‘rooms’ analogy was to prefer a room over the hall (which is the same as this article of Eric Landry’s):

“It (Christianity) is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in…And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling. In plain language, the question should never be: ‘Do I like that kind of service?’ but ‘Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to knock at this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular door-keeper?’”

But Lewis’s next paragraph address the crisis of disunity evidenced by the collective responses given to our present article:

“When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.”

Let us be more concerned with being a viable, living ‘body of Christ’ than who is an ‘eye’ or ‘foot’ or ‘ear’:

“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many.

If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?

If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body.

And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary:

And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked: That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (I Corinthians 12:12-27)

We already have a term to declare exactly what we as Reformed Calvinists believe…Christian! Let us not forget our confessions and creeds affirm only biblical truth. It’s not open for interpretation. Why do we surrender words to contemporary vernacular?

Also, if the LORD has brought people into the hallway, they aren’t just visiting. Can they resist the call to enter a room? Or leave the home altogether? Of course not, thats the ‘I’ in TULIP.

For more on John Piper’s decision to invite Rick Warren to DGC check out my post with a video of Piper defending Warren’s theology. Wow.

http://www.fireinthewall.com/christian-culture/john-piper-invites-rick-warren-to-dgc/

Though the YRR is characterised almost exclusively by a set of conferences, networks and personalities. This isn’t the fault of the personalities themselves, who are largely very Godly, above reproach but the very nature of things means that their ‘authenticity’ – for want of a better word – becomes part of the attraction.

As such, the YRR is a thoroughly modernist movement – the ‘Reformed’ brand is appealing because of its authentic catchet.

The reason I bring this subject up is not to debate the issue of Paedo vs. Credo, but because I really don’t think calling myself a “Reformed Baptist” is wrong.
However, unlike some of my Baptist brothers and sisters, I would never make this particular issue one that requires me not to allow into membership into a local Baptist Church someone who is a Paedo-Baptist. With one exception, a Paedo-Baptist who isn’t willing to respect the Baptist distinctives concerning baptism; where it is clear that allowing into membership will create division.
I believe that Reformed Baptists have more in common with other Reformed Christian denominations than we do with Arminian Baptists.