Welcome to Outside the Camp

Howdy Weary Pilgrim!

I always begin with a friendly "Howdy" when talking to people, whether familiar or not. It may seem old-fashioned, but it's a habit I've had since childhood. So, Howdy!

In this newsletter, I want to share three things:

• Why you should read Outside the Camp,

• a bit about myself,

• and some practical actions you can take to bear witness to the true God in this generation.

I understand you're busy, so let me be direct:

We need to speak up more. 

That's why I started this newsletter. As a pastor, I speak frequently, but I believe it's crucial to reach diverse audiences and utilize various platforms to spread our message. Therefore, I want to speak up more, not less.

We are in a time of social, spiritual and civilizational decline. I choose to label it as the Late Western Empire. This decline is forcing you and me to rethink the structures and comforts we have come to assume. This newsletter aims to help you bear faithful witness to Christ in this Late Western Empire.

Specifically, Outside the Camp is a newsletter that offers an integration of theology, church history, and my personal experience in order to provide insight and practical applications that assist you to be witnessing with wisdom well. Christians are to be a witnessing, testifying people. 

The result is that you will navigate contemporary challenges with integrated Christian wisdom. As Christian leaders, pastors, influencers, and informed laypersons, you are called to stand outside the camp of conventional thinking, embodying Christ's teachings to make a lasting impact in today's world.

Join us on this transformative journey as we equip you with the tools to face these challenges and witness God's truth in action.

In what follows, let me unpack what I hope to do. But first…

What’s the Problem?

You may feel silenced by the crushing weight of the issues of the day, such as totalitarian, normalized sexual deviancy. It’s hard to speak. We are shamed by others if we speak. But we must speak into this present evil age (Gal 1:4).

This evil spirit of the age (cf. Eph 2:2), which David F. Wells called “Our Time”, aims to press us into its mold (Rom 12:2). Or like a cloud of wildfire smoke, this present evil age has a choking, suffocating effect.

This age or era will choke out all speech, declaration, proclamation, testimony, sermon, or Word that does not conform to its design and desire. This choking policy springs from the moral decline of the Late Western Empire.

So it is our duty to speak up and to speak out. We must speak the truth in love (Eph 4:15) or be silenced in hate.

My aim is to speak up with theology, including some biblical exegesis, some church history, and a bit of storified wisdom. I hope to apply it to the current age in order to help thoughtful Christians ranging from pastors and professors to parents and plumbers. Together I hope we can think biblically and therefore, differently about what is going on in the world.

Outside the Camp?

The kind of speaking out that needs to happen from you and me is to speak into our world, from the outside. Now, being an outsider can be its own kind of Inner Ring as CS Lewis described. So a generic contrarian attitude is not what is needed. You can be against “stuff” and still be a regime puppet or a useful idiot. Speaking as an outsider has to be defined. Where is this boundary? What are we outside of?

The position we need to be in, and where we need to speak from, is from outside the camp.

The question is, “Where is the camp?” And “Who is in the camp?”

The answer comes from the anonymous letter to the first century (Anno Domini) Christians with a special focus on the ethnically Jewish Christians, known as the Epistle to the Hebrews. In the thirteenth chapter of Hebrews, the writer (likely Paul), pictures the camp of Israel which was drawn up by God’s design and moved through the wilderness at the LORD’s direction. That camp was the historical boundary of who was an insider.

Inside the camp was the place where the high priest did his sacrificial work for Israel’s sins. “For the bodies of those beasts”, (v.11), “whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin,” (ESV, LSV “as an offering for sin “) are dealt with in a particular way. They are (v.11b) “burned outside the camp” (ESV, LSV, “ ἔξω τῆς παρεμβολῆς”GNT).

The carcasses from Israel’s religion went on the dead pile. At our cattle feedlot, we always had a dead pile. It was where you had to drag the dead critters (‘if you’ve got livestock you’ve got deadstock’) to let them decompose. The pile had the stench of death and was a place to be avoided. The stink was repulsive and repellent.

With these clear distinctions brought up, the writer does something unexpected. He makes a major switch, an ironic turn, and a gotcha comment in Hebrews 13:12. He says:

Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate. (LSV).

The writer made the connection between Jesus’ crucifixion outside the gates of Jerusalem at the Place of the Skull, at the dead end of the Via Dolorosa and the camp of Israel. Jesus was not inside the camp. He was outside the camp.

Calvary stood outside the camp.

The logic applied to you and me as readers is this, (v.13):

Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.

Our duty, as Christians, is to “bear his reproach” (cf. LSV, “τὸν ὀνειδισμὸν αὐτοῦ φέροντες” GNT). We are to join him on the stench pile of death.

What’s the point?

If association with Jesus Christ is akin to being on the dead pile, then we will be viewed as repellent and repulsive.

That pursuit, “let us go to him” (v.13a), is the call of discipleship which Jesus himself told the disciples repeatedly in his earthly ministry, “Follow me”.

Since Jesus also commanded his disciples to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19), the starting place where we always begin is outside the camp.

Can You See How This Plays Out?

What faithful Christians discover is that the veneer of civility that has existed in Western society has hidden dark and pagan forces, which Paul called, the elementary principles of the world (Col 2:8,20; Gal 4:3,9, τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου GNT). So we are living in a Late Western Empire, with emerging paganism outside the church and syncretism within the church.

To be faithful to Christ is to live outside the camp. Otherwise, we will be included in a dark realm whose religion worships those beings who are not God.

At this urgent time, we must speak up and speak from the outside. I don’t know if my discernment or courage is up to the task, but my hope is to speak as I can, share as I can, and herald as I can in faithfulness as I “go to Him, outside the camp”.

Will you join me in standing outside?

But first another question,

Why Another Newsletter?

I’ve been blogging since sometime close to when Moses was working on a sheep ranch.

You are reading this because you know me, or have read my writings here, here, or even here. 

If you subscribe, you will encourage me and help me to stay near the stench pile made fragrant by the sacrifice of the Savior.

I aim to help you, the reader, by helping you see things in new ways or consider how the bible, Church history, and theology apply to the mad world we are riding through.

I don’t know if this newsletter will be another of the many fits and starts I’ve had over the years.

Yet I aim to warn and exhort and maybe even delight and encourage all of the shamed, discarded, un-included ones who are staying close to the strong scepter hand of our Lord Jesus.

ABOUT ME

I’m married to Christel and I have three sons at home. We are a rodeo family traveling with horses to watch the boys rope cattle and sometimes wrestle them!

I’m the Senior Pastor of Calvary Grace Church in the city of Calgary, Canada. This ministry is my main calling and it is a privilege to herald the Word of the Lord to the Lord’s people on the Lord’s Day.

Currently, I’m a PhD student in Historical Theology at the University of Apeldoorn in the Netherlands. My dissertation is on the Scottish evangelical Robert Haldane (1764-1842), being advised by Herman Selderhuis.

I work with different Christian organizations and have served at one time or another with Simeon Trust Canada, The Gospel Coalition Canada, Millar College of the Bible, and others.

If you would like to hear my latest sermons you can go here.

EVENTS

I’ll be speaking at the King and Kingdom conference in Calgary on October 19-21.

Then I’ll be traveling to Denver to meet with Ph.D. students and Dr. Selderhuis.

Most Sundays I am preaching at Calvary Grace Church. My current preaching series is in the Gospel of Mark.

I also enjoy teaching a Systematic Theology study on Wednesdays at the church. We use the laconic Louis Berkhof’s text as our guide to categorizing the bible’s teaching.

FREE TO READ

Exposition of the Letter to the Romans, by Robert Haldane

This is the commentary which has been reprinted by the Banner of Truth Trust and D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote a forward to it he liked it so much.

The Remaking of America, by Victor Davis Hanson.

This short article from the farmer-scholar Victor Hanson is a snapshot summary of how much Western society has changed. Hanson talks about the American scene specifically, but his points apply by some measure to Western nations as different as Canada, the Netherlands, or France.

ACTION 🥅

Prepare to speak up this week by making a simple declaration of fact. Pick at least one of these:

• State the fact that the origin of the universe comes from God as the Creator.

• State the fact that Jesus Christ is risen and reigning and coming again to judge the earth.

SOCIAL

If you are helped by the newsletter, you can share it with other people you know, preferably by email, but social media is okay too. My aim is not subs but mutual support.

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Let me know in the comments or send topics you’d like me to cover here at [email protected]

Wisdom

Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or be in dread of them, for Yahweh your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Deuteronomy 31:6