Culture Making: For the Church, For Christians, or Both?

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, church, city, contextualization, culture making, Gospel, idolatry, incarnational, theology, urban, Urban Tulsa Weekly, video, work
• Date: Jun 28,2011

Is the church called to transform culture?

Are Christians supposed to engage their callings in society for the sake of the Gospel? If so, what does that look like?

I am passionate about Christ-followers living out their giftings in the domains of society. In fact, I think the church would do well to develop a more robust theology of work for their people. Far too many see the work of “ministry” as relegated to only a select few. Not until we “clergify” everyone will we see culture renewed and restored. But what about the church as a whole?

The Gospel Coalition posted a video this morning via Twitter that I think gets at this conversation in a very helpful way:

Chandler, Horton, and Keller on the Church in Culture from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

After watching the video, you can see this is a difficult discussion to wade through. The church as an institution should be slow to see itself as a “culture maker.” But as Matt Chandler says, I believe the Bible is clear that the church is supposed to champion individual Christians enacting the Gospel through their gifts and callings in society.

We all make up the priesthood of believers (1 Peter 2:4-10). All that come to Jesus are being built up into a spiritual abode. We are the stones being placed together to proclaim the excellencies of the Chief Cornerstone. This happens wherever we are. And whatever we are. Pastor, firefighter, politician, homemaker, student. In these spheres, we have the opportunity to shape culture.

I have always loved to write. God instilled a love for words at an early age. My mom tells me I would read the newspaper to my grandparents as “entertainment” when I was the wee age of 3. One of my college professors would always tell me that I was in the wrong line of work (music) and that I should seriously pursue something in the English field. I didn’t listen to him. At least not in the way he saw it.

A couple of months ago, I was having coffee with a fellow church planter and friend in town and he asked me if I had any interest in contributing once a month to the religion column in the Urban Tulsa Weekly. UTW is Tulsa’s independent weekly newspaper with a circulation of about 35,000 distributed to the metro area. It truly is Tulsa’s alternative news weekly.

I told him I needed to pray about it but would get back to him soon. Within a few days, I felt like God wanted me to pursue this. I’ve had the honor of writing a few articles for UTW and now, I’m writing three times a month for their “Above and Beyond” column. It is an awesome privilege.

What does this have to do with culture making? Well, as a pastor, I am regularly getting the opportunity to winsomely share the Gospel in a secular news medium. Like much printed media in today’s world, I don’t know how many people read the UTW (although I’ve been told its readership is quite high), let alone a religion column, but I believe I’m doing Kingdom work “outside” of the institution of the church. Is this culture making? I think so.

I am praying that in some small way, God uses this opportunity to make Himself famous. I’m thankful to bring the good news of Jesus within the pages of a weekly that is passionate about many things that I’m passionate about: urban development, the arts, issues of justice, etc. But I’m also excited that this column is able to sit alongside other columns that reek of some of our culture’s idols. Amidst the cornucopia of issues in the UTW, I’m praying Jesus shines through.

I will be reposting my UTW articles here on transformission.com so stay tuned. Let me know what you think. Engage in conversation. Shalom…

Climbing the Fences: The MissionShift Conversations, Part 2

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Bible, Bible study, church, contextualization, culture, Evangelicalism, Gospel, hermeneutics, Jesus, missiology, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, missionSHIFT, orthopraxy, theology
• Date: Feb 2,2011

[This post is an entry in the Missionshift Book conversation happening @ edstetzer.com]

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, MissionShift: Global Mission Issues in the Third Millennium is an important book for those of us interested in the how the field of missiology impacts ministry in the 21st century. This week, we look at the late Paul Hiebert’s essay on mission’s present entitled, “The Gospel in Human Contexts: Changing Perceptions of Contextualization.”

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Hiebert begins his essay by challenging how little we take the time to study “systematically and deeply the contexts” in which we serve. (83) His concession that Christians, many times, impose their culture onto a receptor culture and thus, truncate the Gospel message is an important launching point for the sake of the discussion of mission’s present. Until we yield to the truth of this concept, we can’t proceed in our attempts to contextualize the gospel in a culture that is unlike our own. We live as monocultural beings in a multi- or sub-cultural world. As Hiebert says, “We do not stop to consider what aspects of our contexts come from our sociocultural and historical situations and what comes from Scripture.” (83)

In Hiebert’s essay, he attempts to plumb the depths of how contextualization has been used, examining unhelpful approaches such as non-contextualization, minimal contextualization, and uncritical contextualization. He concludes his essay by looking at a more constructive mode: critical contextualization or what he calls, missional theology.

According to Hiebert, non-contextualization takes place when we “come as outsiders and assume new converts will join and imitate us.” (85) Many will see the problems inherent in this method. In our attempts to contextualize the Gospel, we must admit that the process of contextualization should not and can not be “acultural and ahistorial.” (85) This is the misguided approach to “colonial” mission we saw in most Protestant missions in the early 20th century.

Minimal contextualization happens when we experience culture, language, and religious shock and we are compelled to deal with “others” and the question of “otherness” but ultimately don’t. (85) It is minimal because “we become aware of the depth and power of the people’s culture and the need to contextualize…the message…but we are afraid that this can distort the gospel.” (88) So, we stop short of the work needed to understand other cultures and our communication becomes “sender-oriented.” (89)

After the 1930s, uncritical or radical contextualization arose out of a growing awareness of anthropological insights that were observed in human contexts at the time. Unfortunately, this led to two beliefs. First, a conclusion that “we must measure communication not by what is sent by the speaker but what is understood by the listener.” (90) As Hiebert notes that in this paradigm, “…there is no way to test whether the meanings understood in one culture are the same as those found in another culture. There are no objective tests for truth.” (90). Secondly, pragmatism emerged in which we adopt which systems are most useful (also called cultural relativism). This was seen in the liberation theologies in the 1960s and 70s that were “untethered to the true intent of Scripture” and more recently, was seen in the Emergent movement that surfaced in the 1990s in which many in the movement assimilated itself deeply into culture to the extent there was no distinctiveness or “saltiness” and “lost its prophetic voice.” (107, 91)

A helpful correction materialized called critical contextualization in which Hiebert rightly cites was forged by individuals like Leslie Newbigin and the Newbigin-shaped, Gospel in Our Culture group, formed by George Hunsberger. The heart of this model is that the gospel “…is encoded in forms that are understood by the people, without making the gospel captive to the contexts.” (93) Hiebert continues, “in this view…missionaries are transcultural people…who come to serve the local churches instead of being rivals for power and positions.” (94)

So how do we enact critical contextualization? Hiebert suggests that there are three principles that will help: ontology (relating the transcontextual nature of the Gospel) , phenomenology (understanding the sociocultural context for Gospel understanding), and missiology (engaging culture with the transformative message of the Gospel).

Hiebert advocates that in ontology, we emphasize the Gospel is divine revelation to humans, “given in the peculiarities of history and locality but…given by God and reveals God’s universal message to all of manking.” (94) In other words, it is transcontextual and not “equated with any particular human context.” (94) Further, in phenomenology, we must strive to put the Gospel in specific sociocultural contexts for people to grasp it. According to Hiebert, this is done by studying Scripture and humans and building a bridge between them. Finally, in missiology, the “knowledge of the Gospel makes us responsible to share its message of salvation…with all people.” (99) And this gospel “is not just information to be communicated…it is a message to which people must respond.” (99)

One of the most hotly debated issues from Hiebert’s essay was the concept of the church as a hermenuetical community. Norman Geisler states, “How can local theologies have the right to interpret the gospel wrongly, namely, to distort the gospel?” (139) I think Geisler insinuates more than what Hiebert is trying to say here.

What does Hiebert mean by the church as a “hermenuetical community?” I think we should let Hiebert answer that.

In his section entitled “Studying Scripture on the Issue at Hand,” he says, “…as the church we are entrusted with the gospel. If we do not all study it together [emphasis mine], we will not be active participants in knowing and living it, and we may be led astray by lone individuals.” (97) Simply, the church as a hermenuetical community studies the word together so we can uncover our biases for interpretation. The community serves as a “check and balance” against the very thing that Geisler is concerned about — Gospel distortion. In fact, this approach places a high value on trust within the community to self-govern itself against Gospel malformation.

Michael Pocock makes a helpful distinction with what I sense Geisler is concerned about regarding “local theologies.” He says, “Theology is a human product; it has no claim to infallibility. It is what humans do in arranging and rendering revealed truth in understandable categories. Revelation has a magisterial use while theology has a ministerial function.” (108) There is a difference between “revelation” and “theology” and Geisler seems to be equating the two. Hiebert states, “…we dare not equate the gospel with any human theologies. Our theologies are partial human attempts to understand Scripture.” (92). Ed Stetzer adds, “Revelation is eternal, objective, absolute truth. Man’s attempt to explain it theologically are based in human language.” (159)

Pocock continues in clarifying what I believe is Hiebert’s goal for the hermenuetical community, “…Evangelical believers hope that the theology they construct corresponds as closely as possible with revealed truth…” (108). In fact, Geisler’s statement that “Would it not be better simply to claim that we do not know all the truth but that the truth we know is truly known?” gets at the heart of Hiebert’s thrust. (138) A hermenuetical community humbly enters the study of Scripture “claiming” that their interpretations may be biased (“we do not know all the truth”) to work together to develop a truth that can be “truly known.”

The irony in all of this is, as Stetzer shows, “Is Geisler…affirming he understands perfect universal truth and that his understanding is not culturally conditioned but absolutely true?” (162) Hiebert speaks of the “corporate nature of the church as a community of interpretation extends no only church in every culture, but also to the church in all ages,” and to this, Geisler states, “Roman Catholics smile since such a claim supports their position that even infallible Scripture needs an infallible interpreter.” (95, 139) Doesn’t Geisler seem to be placing himself in a “papal” position of authority here or at best, the purveyor of the process towards the best interpretation?

To be fair, Geisler is concerned with Biblical fidelity and so am I. But so is Hiebert. To this end, Hiebert would have done well to make a clearer distinction between the Gospel (which I would equate with the aforementioned idea of “revelation”) and the contextualization of the Gospel. At times, the line between the two was a bit gray, at other times, very clear (see Hiebert’s citation of E. Stanley Jones statement on p. 95)

Hiebert’s approach to a hermenuetical community reflects what John Davidson Hunter, in his book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World, calls “faithful presence.” This posture towards culture is one of humility and grace. Geisler is concerned with Hiebert’s rejection that “other theologies and religions are false and must be attacked [emphasis mine].” (86) Geisler says, “If Hiebert means only that we should speak the truth in love to those who hold false views, then who would object? But truth is truth, even when not spoken in love…” (136)

For someone who is pushing for Biblical fidelity, why does Geisler posit it is sometimes appropriate to choose truth over love — even “attack” over love. Jesus was full of truth and grace. Truth only is a posture of an assertive (and probably, repulsive) aura . As Stetzer says, those who have held this view, “have rarely made contact with non-Western thinkers in an effective way.” (161)

So why does the conversation around, and further, the experimentation of contextualization need to continue? I believe Pocock and Stetzer crystallize the answer to this question:

“Where progress has been difficult over a long period, there must be room for experimentation and mistakes. Where there have been great awakenings, there have often been ragged edges that appear heretical to some, what Ralph Winter once called ‘the silver linings’ of otherwise dark clouds.”
–Pocock, p. 110

“This task of reaching out to other cultures is under the Holy Spirit’s direction. That task requires us being humbly certain of our own beliefs and methods, rather than arrogantly being so sure that we know what God would do and have us say in any situation…Crossing the barriers is more important if the world is our focus. We don’t accomplish this by throwing away the truth; we achieve this by holding the gospel close and climbing the fences with it in order to share it on the other side.”
–Stetzer, p. 158

[Note: The respondents also contributed to a healthy debate surrounding issues such as syncretism and the C-1 to C-6 contextualization spectrum but for the sake of space, I am going to hold off on entering those discussions. In short, I think there has to be a middle ground between Geisler and Pocock/Darrell Whiteman on the extent to which certain forms carry meaning. In some ways, I feel Pocock/Whiteman may go too far and Geisler may not go far enough but this review does not allow further conjecture.]

The Trialogue of God, Culture, and Contextualization: The MissionShift Conversations, Part 1

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Bible, Christianity, church, church planting, contextualization, culture, eschatology, Evangelicalism, Gospel, history, Jesus, kingdom of God, missiology, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, missions, orthopraxy, resurrection, sanctification, sent, Trinity
• Date: Jan 17,2011

[This post is an entry in the Missionshift Book conversation happening @ edstetzer.com]

MissionShift: Global Mission Issues in the Third Millennium is a timely book in the midst of the missional conversation we find ourselves in at the top of the 21st century. It’s a book that I hope gets the press it deserves because it is a indispensable resource for those wrestling with what it means to be “missional.” A big thank you goes to David Hesselgrave and Ed Stetzer for compiling this opus.

At a cursory scan, the book is moored by essays related to mission’s past, present, and future from three of the leading-edge missiologists of our time: Charles Van Engen, the late Paul Hiebert, and the late Ralph Winter. In response to these essays, Hesselgrave and Stetzer gathered a “who’s who” in the field of missiology to interact and debate about the issues therein.

In the coming weeks, I am going to respond to each section in MissionShift. Today, I would like to comment on the first section of MissionShift related to mission’s past.

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I have to admit that Van Engen is one of my favorite missiologists. His books, God’s Missionary People and Mission on the Way, are must-reads for any pastor, church planter, or missionary who is engaged in mission today. These books have informed my thoughts on how mission, the church, the Kingdom of God, and eschatology intersect, like few other.

Van Engen begins by showing us the plethora of ways the word “mission” is being used today — and thus the confusion surrounding the term. Some are attempting to use it correctly, while others are using it to “stand for any kind of new life, vision, vitality, and direction of the church — often with little or no theological or missiological reference.” (10)

I concur with Van Engen that due to this blurring, “it is especially important that the Christian church wrestle with its mission in the sense of articulating the reason and purpose for which it exists” because “a cohesive, consistent, focused, theologically deep, missiologically broad, and contextually appropriate Evangelical missiology has not yet emerged for this new century.” (10, 24)

Van Engen is the consummate historian in this essay, accentuating the important shifts in mission thinking in two millenia of mission’s history. He capably takes us through mission’s past by walking us through mission in the early church through the Constantinian era through the late 1700s circa William Carey through mission reconstruction in the 20th century.

Some will question (like essay respondents Keith Eitel and Andreas Kostenberger) the length at which mission’s past influences Van Engen’s mission present. But as Ed Stetzer notes in his response, the privilege of Biblical revelation does not “preclude us from gaining favorable insights from the history of the church…where God’s truth about the world and the people who live in it may be discerned.” (77)

One of Van Engen’s most important contributions in his essay is where he reminds us that the original Biblical meaning of the word “mission” — apostello and pempo — denotes being sent “forth to service in the Kingdom of God with full authority (grounded in God).” (11)

His point here is to highlight that mission is participating in the mission of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the sender is Jesus, whose authority “defines, circumscribes, limits, and propels Christian mission.” (12) This is a simple but profound subtlety in the debate over mission today. Who sets the agenda? Whose bias is inserted — the mission agency, the denomination, the sending church, the non-for-profit or something/someone else? Van Engen says, “Biblical mission is God’s mission.” (12)

So how do we let God set the docket for mission?

I believe we do this in large part as we see mission as robustly Trinitarian (as respondent Enoch Wan argues Van Engen is lacking — though Stetzer will later argue that Van Engen is not neglecting in this idea). Van Engen seems to purport this idea but I wish he would have been a bit more clear on this issue. To be fair, Van Engen leans toward this notion in a couple of ways:

1) First, he says “The church is sent by her Lord” and then goes on to say, “mission is participation in the mission of Jesus Christ…in the power of the Holy Spirit,”; I think we can synthesize his thoughts here to support a Trinitarian grounding of mission, but it’s not easily ascertainable (12)

2) He does cite David Bosch’s magisterial definition of mission from Transforming Mission in which Bosch says, “Mission [is] understood as being derived from the very nature of God. It [is] thus put in the context of the Trinity, not ecclesiology or soteriology.” (footnote, 24)

I believe that as we reflect and dialogue on the implications of a Trinitarian grounding for mission, contextual orthopraxy will emerge. These questions strike me as helpful questions to ask ourselves as we use the filter of the Trinity for mission:

–What does the story of God tells us about how God interacts with His people? How does this inform us on how to interact with people?

–How does the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus show us how to live in such a way that the Gospel is attractive to those in our spheres?

–How can we pursue the leading of the Holy Spirit to make prayerful, discerning decisions about mission in our contexts?

In summary, the most helpful respondent essays are from Stetzer, Darrell Guder, and Wan as Eitel’s is polemic in nature and the least helpful. Kostenberger’s response is generally helpful but also seems to show a paranoia that Biblical revelation is being usurped in the name of contextualization.

Guder specifically enriches the conversation by stating, “The authority of Scripture is not then defined so much by our anxiety about boundaries and guidelines but by the powerful way in which God’s written Word continues our conversion to our vocation.” (53) This reminds me of Tim Keller’s thoughts that the key to a Christian’s sanctification is not to tread into deeper theological waters but to come back to the Gospel found in the Word again and again. One of the by-products of this Gospel-wakefulness converts us to a community of faith that understands our vocation as missional.

Stetzer hits the nail on the head when he says, “For us to be biblical…in our reflections on the church’s mission, we must have a theological interpretation of the message of Scripture… (and) of our culture, and a theological application of the gospel to our culture.” (77) This Newbiginian-like trialogue of God’s story (Bible) and culture (context), and practice (contextualization via the local church) does not dilute Biblical revelation but rather enhances it to the glory of God flowing from Trinitarian mission.

the church for whom?

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: church, church planting, city, contextualization, culture, Great Commission, incarnational, irreligion, mercyview, missiology, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, post-Christendom, relevintage, sent, urban, video, vision
• Date: Nov 7,2010

As I prepared to move to Tulsa to plant mercyview [Lord willing, a network of missional communities and expressions scattered all over this city and region], I had countless interviews “exegeting” the culture here, sitting under the wisdom of Tulsans from many different sectors: business, government, religion, etc.

Before I even visited the first time, I knew I was stepping into a highly churched culture. My research was confirmed as I talked with folks here. And in my conversations, it became very clear to me that new churches, for the most part, were contending for the same small slice of the pie that represents the “reachable” people groups.

I realized that Tulsa is in desperate need of a mobilization of Jesus-followers who are concerned about bringing spiritual and cultural renewal to the forgotten, the broken, and the wounded in the city; servant-messengers who are in the city, for city. Particularly, for those not-yet-Xians…

Michael Frost echoes this sentiment in this video:

notes from mercyview lab #4

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: acts, Bible, Bible study, Christianity, church, church planting, city, community, culture, culture making, emerging culture, evangelism, Gospel, Great Commission, homosexuality, incarnational, Israel, mercyview, missiology, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, Old Testament, Paul, post-Christendom, Poverty, religion, Revelation, social issues, social justice, theology, urban, work
• Date: Aug 3,2010

This past Sunday, it was great to see new and familiar faces, to intercede for one another and the future of mercyview, to dig into the Sacred Text, and to dialogue at mercyview lab #4 [we have one more next week before we move into a new phase for our burgeoning community].

We are fervently praying that as we approach the end of the summer, the “culture” of mercyview is crystal clear and God will call together a group of men and women who have an overwhelming desire to plant the Gospel deeply in their hearts and in the great city of Tulsa.

Here is the content from the previous labs if you’re interested:

–-Lab #1: The Gospel: The Center of Everything [download synopsis here]

–-Lab #2: Salt and Light: An Alternative City Within a City, For the City [download synopsis here]

–Lab #3: A Missional People: Sent as Missionaries to be Witnesses [download synopsis here]

In Lab #4, we talked about how a center-city church, seeking the “shalom” (peace) of the city, can redeem culture. Here is a synopsis:

–In Jeremiah 29, we find the purpose of the Babylonian exile for the Israelites was cultural assimilation and while the Jews were living in that place, as a counter-culture, they were to engage fully in life, even in the life of a city that was ostensibly opposed to God, “seeking the peace and prosperity” of the city.

–This may sound radical to us today but it is very much in accord with what Jesus deemed to be the second greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39). And It is right in line with the idea that Israel, God’s people at that time, was to be a “blessing for the nations” (Gen. 12:3)

God’s invention

–An Old Testament city would look like a human settlement surrounded by a fortification or a wall. This was very important because behind the wall, human society was very different than what existed outside of the city in the countryside.

–The average city in Old Testament times was 1000-3000 people and 205 people per acre (NYC has 105 people per acre). What made a city back then was not “bigness” but density, diversity, and mixed use (within 10 minutes you can walk to work, eat, learn, shop, live). The same is true for today’s cities.

–It is widely understood that when God tells Adam and Eve to “have dominion” and “fill the earth” he is directing them to build a God-honoring civilization. They are to bring forth the riches that God put into creation by developing science, art, architecture, human society. Therefore, God was calling Adam and Eve to be city builders.

–This new Jerusalem is the city is the Garden of Eden, remade. We began in a garden but will end in a city. God’s purpose for humanity is urban! Why? Because the city is God’s invention and design not just a sociological phenomenon or invention of humankind.

–City building is an ordinance of God just like work and marriage. God made the city to be a developmental tool, designed to draw out the riches he put into the earth, nature and the human soul at creation.

Cities develop culture

–Cities are the main creators of culture, values, and belief.

–Whatever develops in the center-city tends to have a profound effect throughout the rest the city, region, nation, and world. Influence tends to move from the center-city outward.

–In the latter half of the twentieth century in America, many churches left the cities and moved out to the suburbs. Today many evangelical Xians in the United States bemoan the fact that they have lost their influence on the culture. The reason is obvious: they are no longer in the cities.

How cities develop culture

1. The city as a place of refuge and safety

–It has always been a place where people come who are too weak to live in other places. When Israel moved into the promised land, the first cities were built by God’s direction as ‘cities of refuge’, where the accused person could flee for safety and civil justice. Thus God invented cities to be a sign of divine, not self, protection.

–Even today, people like the homeless, or new immigrants, or the poor, or people with ‘deviant’ lifestyles, must live in the city. The city is always a more merciful place for minorities of all kinds. Why? The density of the city creates the possibility of strong minority communities.

–Density creates diversity.

2. The city as a cultural “mining” center

–Even the description of the wicked city of Babylon in Revelation 18 shows how the power of the city draws out the resources of creation-of the physical world and of the human soul.

–Cities draw and gather together human resources and tap their potential for cultural development as no other human-life organization structure can.

–The city was designed by God to do, as an instrument of glorifying Him, by ‘mining’ the riches of creation and building a God-honoring civilization.

3. The city as the place to meet God.

–Cities are the key to evangelism in any area. Paul’s missionary journeys essentially ignored the countryside. When he entered a new region, he planted churches in the biggest city, and then left.

–Because of the diversity and intensity of the cities, urbanites are much more open to radically new ideas – especially the gospel. Because they are surrounded by so many people like and unlike themselves and so much more mobile and subject to change, urbanites are far more open to change/conversion than any other kind of resident.

–We need to care about the center-city: We need to be concerned about the city, if for no other reason than our future is likely to be profoundly influenced by what happens there.

–We need to change our view of the center-city: It is not an evil place from which we ought to flee. Negative views are directly linked to disengagement.

–We need to understand the crucial importance of the center-city: We need to commit ourselves to living in the city. All true ministry is incarnational. We are unlikely to have much effect on the city if we are not living where we can be salt and light.

–We need to engage the center-city at many different levels: proclaiming Christ to individuals and communities, doing justice, engaging culture, and integrating faith and work

–We need to reach the center-city to reach the rest of your city, the region, and the world

–We need to reach the center-city to reach your own heart with the gospel: You will eventually come to see that you need the city more than the city needs you. Tim Keller says it this way:

1. In the city you’ll find a) people that seem ‘hopeless’ spiritually, and b) people of other religions or no religion and of deeply non-Christian lifestyles that are wiser, kinder, and deeper than you. This will shock you out of your moralism and force you to either finally believe the gospel of sheer grace, or give it up altogether.

2. In the city you will find that the poor and the broken are often much, much more open to the idea of gospel grace and much more dedicated to its practical outworkings than you are.

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[1] Adapted from Allen Barth and Tim Keller, “A Vision for our Cities,” from Redeemer City to City.

[2] Adapted from Tim Keller, “A Bibilcal Theology of the City,” from Evangelicals Now.

[3] Adapted from Tim Keller, “City Vision” from UPL Consultation 2 mp3.

[4] Adapted from Barth and Keller, “A Vision for our Cities,” from Redeemer City to City.

ethos of a missional community

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, church, community, culture, evangelism, Gospel, hospitality, incarnational, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, orthopraxy, relationships
• Date: Jul 22,2010

One of today’s brightest thinkers on the issue of missional communities is Jeff Vanderstelt, lead pastor of Soma Communities and Vice President of the Acts 29 Network.

Recently, Jeff sat down with Scott Thomas, president of A29, and shared his thoughts on the ethos of missional communities and the interviews were posted on the A29 blog. Watch these four videos and let them challenge your thoughts about what being in community and mission look like:

Life on Mission

Life on Mission from Acts 29 Network on Vimeo.

Being on Mission Together

Being on Mission Together from Acts 29 Network on Vimeo.

How To Share Your Faith

How to Share Your Faith from Acts 29 Network on Vimeo.

A Life That Needs Gospel Explanation

A Life That Needs Gospel Explanation from Acts 29 Network on Vimeo.

organic church planting = slow church

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: authenticity, Christianity, church, church planting, community, leadership, missional, missional church, missional living, organic, relationships
• Date: Jul 17,2010

For all the adjectives out there to describe the church – total church, deep church, simple church, essential church – I’m convinced that for those planting organically, the only adjective that fits is “slow.”

(As a general rule, organic planting is moving from a core to a crowd vs. a crowd to a core; for more on this, see Ed Stetzer’s Breaking the Missional Code: Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community, Chapter 11 “Planting Missional Ministries”)

I’m not the first to come up with this idea. Tim Chester recently wrote on this and it really hit home. He says:

In recent years we have been offered all sorts of options for church: organic church, messy church, simply church, total church.

Let me add another: slow church.

There is a slow food movement that extols the merits of hand-cooked food made from local ingredients cooked for as long as takes – an antidote to fast food. The slow food movement has extended so that people are advocating slow cities.

I’ve reading through Proverbs over the past few weeks and have been struck by how many call for us to slow down.

I think Tim is onto something…

Planting organically is a very different approach than the traditional form of planting. Traditional planting isn’t wrong – it is a way – just as organic planting is. And yes, these are very general terms. But I’m finding that planting organically is, well, slow.

Echoing our experience, a church planter tells of how slow church looks in practice:

–not worrying when the church is apparently growing slowly, or not at all
–learning to value and be thankful to God for the ‘small’ actions of his grace: The idea grasped in a bible study, the godly resolution of a…conflict, the provision of work, the opportunity to bless our neighbors by doing their garden, the chances to speak about Jesus in the workplace, the unity in song, the growth in a desire to see people come to know Jesus, opportunities to look after each other, the conversation…
–praying for God to act to bring change and for the Spirit to open eyes to the truth of gospel
–our interventions in one another’s lives being focused on lovingly commending the good news of the gospel, rather than driving only at behavioral outcomes
–patience and persistence in prayer
–joy and hope coming not from activity or success ( which struggles when faced with a quiet life or failure) but from knowing the Lord Jesus
–learning to be thankful for the people God has put you with…

I think if I had to sum up the difference between the two approaches, it would have to be the issue of the “buffer.”

In the organic model, there is no stage, no lights + sound systems, and very little space between the leader and the community.

Instead…

There is a living room.

There are strangers facing one another, beginning to work through the uncomfortable stages of community.

There is lots of conversation.

There is a leader – but he is more of a harmonizer, integrating his vision with burgeoning vision of the community.

In short, there is very little “buffer.”

Here is what I think (in my humble opinion): The secret to developing concrete community in the infancy of a church may be found in the lack of a buffer.

I have nothing against preaching, corporate worship, preview services, etc. but if church leaders generally agree that 80% of true discipleship and spiritual growth come from smaller groupings [1], I’m afraid we might be skipping over something so essential in the formative stages of a church that may be difficult to backtrack and find again.

We think how you start means everything. It says a lot about who you want to be and how you want to be known.

We think whether you are a part of an established church or trying to birth a new church community, the end game is to be in rhythmic gospel formation in the context of community on mission. Everything else is periphery.

So we are choosing little to no buffer for the sake of instilling the DNA of deep gospel formation in community. It’s messy and measured. And there is no question that this means the birth of mercyview will be a slow simmer.

And that is just fine.

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[1] Dan Kimball, Emerging Worship: Creating Worship Gatherings for New Generations (El Cajon, CA: emergentYS, 2004), 29.

Photo by KaiChanVong // reprinted under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

the beautiful irony of intercessory prayer

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, church, church planting, community, cross, Jesus, mercyview, prayer
• Date: Jul 16,2010

A Christian community either lives by the intercessory prayers of its members for one another, or the community will be destroyed. I can no longer condemn or hate other Christians for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble they cause me. In intercessory prayer the face that may have been strange and intolerable to me is transformed into the face of one for whom Christ died, the face of a pardoned sinner. That is a blessed discovery for the Christian who is beginning to offer intercessory prayer for others. As far as we are concerned, there is no dislike, no personal tension, no disunity or strife, that cannot be overcome by intercessory prayer. Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the community must enter every day.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Life Together

This past Sunday at mercyview lab #3, we began to practice the rhythm of intercessory prayer – praying for one another’s needs and rejoicing in each other praises.

As we were praying, I realized something very beautiful was happening.

–A single man praying for a husband who is having marital tension

–A couple who can’t have children praying for the upcoming birth of a new child for another couple

–A man that travels two hours to come to the “labs” praying for a young man who will be traveling to and from Tulsa to Little Rock over the next couple of weeks

–A man who is expecting the birth of their new child praying for a couple who is grieving the loss of a dear friend

Do you notice the beautiful irony?

There were many prayers of paradox Sunday night – prayers in which personal need or desire was set aside to pray for the benefit of another.

As I listened to the group pray for one another, I realized this is one of the primary ways in which God builds His church, His community of faith – through intercessory prayer. It is what begins to knit a people together beyond surface conversations about the weather and sports. It is an emptying of self and a filling of healthy dependency on another.

Where do we find the motivation to do this? Jesus.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature[b] of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Philippians 2:5-8

And this emptying led to a death on the cross that found its validation in an empty tomb. Again, beautiful irony.

In the picture of an empty tomb we see man given the opportunity to trade worldly emptiness to be filled with the Gospel. And this is what propels us to pray for others in spite of ourselves.

Spurgeon:

Let us be Christians; let us have expanded souls and minds that can feel for others. Let us weep with them that weep, and rejoice with them that rejoice; and as a Church and as private persons, we shall find the Lord will turn [from] our captivity when we pray for our friends. God help us to plead for others!

notes from mercyview lab #3

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: acts, Bible, Bible study, Christianity, church, church planting, community, contextualization, culture, evangelism, Great Commission, incarnation, incarnational, Jesus, mercyview, ministry, missio Dei, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, New Testament, organic, orthopraxy, Phillipians, post-Christendom, Poverty, sent, social justice, theology
• Date: Jul 14,2010

After taking a week off for the 4th of July, this past Sunday we jumped into the 3rd of 5 labs this summer, looking at another foundational piece of mercyview.

It was great again to gather with friends, to pray for one another and the birth of mercyview, to look at Scripture, to dialogue, and of course, eat good food (this week, it was Oklahoma Caviar!).

Our prayer is that by the end of the summer, the DNA of mercyview is clear and God will call together a group of men and women who have an overwhelming desire to plant the Gospel in the city of Tulsa.

For those who have missed a lab or are “peeking over the fence” via the blog, here is the content from the previous labs:

–Lab #1: The Gospel: The Center of Everything [download synopsis here]

–Lab #2, Salt and Light: An Alternative City Within a City, For the City [download synopsis here]

In Lab #3, we talked about what it means to live “sent.” Specifically, we talked about being a missional people, sent as missionaries to be witnesses. We broke it down like this:

1. Sent
2. Sent as missionaries [1]
3. Sent as missionaries to be witnesses [2]

–When we talk about being “sent,” we are talking about the “in the world” part of the “in the world but not of the world” concept taken from Romans 12:4.

–Jesus prayed for His people to be in the world, living as a city within a city, and living sent. In John 17:15-19, we see Jesus pray three things in His high priestly prayer:

1. Don’t take them out of the world
2. Keep them from the evil one + sanctify them in the truth
3. Send them into the world

–The word “missional” captures the heart of how we do the “in the world” part of Xian community – is the adjectival form of the word “mission”

–Most believers readily grasp the idea of Jesus being sent to the world. The fact that Jesus was the “sent one” is one of the most fundamental identifications of Jesus, called the missio Dei. The issue is to realize that as Jesus was “sent”, His prayer is that we would also be “sent.”

–The concept of a missional church is recognition that God is a sending God and we, the church and individual believers, are to live sent. Our sent and sending identity is connected ontologically with the very existence of the church.

–Why be “missional?” Alan Hirsch says:

When the church is in mission, it is the true church. The church itself is not only a product of that mission but is obligated and destined to extend it by whatever means possible. The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus. To obstruct this is to block God’s purposes in and through his people.

–Research indicates that the vast majority of church activities and groups, even in a healthy church, are aimed at the insiders and fail to address the missional issues facing the church in any situation. If evangelizing and discipling the nations lie at the heart of the church’s purpose in the world, then it is mission, and not ministry or fellowship, which is the true organizing principle of the church.

–The old adage was this: If you preached to believers, you were called a “pastor.” If you preached to non-Christians in your own culture, you were an “evangelist.” If you needed a passport to get there, you were a “missionary.” This is not helpful…

–“…all Christians are missionaries or they are not Christians. The only kind of Christian there is, is missionary.” (Theodore Gill)

–”What kind of missionary would go to a foreign city, find a place to live, find a source of income, find where to buy food, maybe find a hobby and a wife, and then kick back and enjoy his surroundings, never befriending the locals? We wouldn’t call him a missionary – we’d call him a resident.” (Winfield Bevins)

–Two ways in which we are to be missionaries:

1) Incarnationally

Jesus had to be God to be able to lift us out of our sin, but had to be fully human to create the right conditions for such redemption to take place. It is from inside the human condition and experience that God fulfills his own requirements for the salvation of the human race.

Three theological themes of the incarnation:

a. Identification: The incarnation embodies an act of profound identification with the entire human race. In an act of unspeakable humility, God actually takes upon himself all the conditions, even the limitations, the struggles, and doubts of humanity. To identify incarnationally with a people will mean that we must try to enter into something of the cultural life of a “people”; to seek to understand their perspectives, the hurt, their real existence, in such a way as to genuinely reflect the act of identification that God made with us in Jesus.
b. Locality: The coming of God among us was in Jesus constituted a “dwelling” among us (John 1:14) and geography itself took on a sacred meaning. Jesus became Jesus of what? Nazareth. Geography matters! If you want to incarnate the Gospel in a particular setting, you will have to think about living in that setting.
c. Sending impulse: Incarnational mission implies a sending impulse rather than one of “extraction.” God is a missionary – he sent his Son into our world, into our lives, into human history. Incarnation implies some form of sending in order to be able to radically incarnate the various contexts in which we live. It extraction from culture vs. insertion into culture.

“You cannot become a part of the organic life of a given community if you are not present in it and experience its cultural rhythms, its life, its geography. We too need to practice the missional discipline of presence and identification with any of the people and groups we hope to engage with.” (Alan Hirsch)

Two objectives of incarnation:

a. Real connection: This objective here is for not-yet-Xians to see that Jesus is “for” the unreached people group. Particularly in the Missional Communities, we want to introduce people to the network of relationships that make up that believing community so they can see Christian community in action. People are often attracted to the Christian community before they are attracted to the Christian message.
b. Real demonstration: This objective is to demonstrate that Jesus is “with” the unreached people group. Being thoroughly loving and gracious within the community will transform attitudes toward Christ. In a sense, the incarnational community has to completely reframe the unreached people group’s perceptions about Jesus and the church.

“…the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it.” (Leslie Newbigin)

2) Contextually

Perhaps the most important text on the subject of ‘contextualization’ is 1 Cor 1:22-25 — Paul offered Christ’s salvation in a way the culture could relate to (offering true power to the Jew and true wisdom to the Greek) and which connected to ‘baseline’ cultural narratives. And yet, at the same time, it confronted each culture’s central idolatry (calling Jews to repent of works-righteousness and Greeks of intellectual hubris) with the meaning of the cross.

Contextualization can be defined as the dynamic process where the never-changing message of the Gospel interfaces with specific, relative human situations. Because the Gospel is always God good news, it cannot be defined w/o reference to the human context.

“Contextualization is not ‘giving people what they want’ but rather it is giving God’s answers (which they may not want!) to questions they are asking and in forms that they can comprehend.” (Tim Keller)

How we contextualize:

a. Speak in the common language: avoid “tribal” language, “we-them” language, and inspirational talk and speak as if not-yet-Xians were there.
b. Enter and re-tell the culture’s stories with the gospel
c. Create Xian community that is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive: embody a ‘counter-culture,’ showing the world how radically different a Xian society is with regard to sex, money, and power.

–There are two sides to the missional coin – in other words, there are two primary ways that every Christian can become missional.

1) The first is by sharing a verbal witness. This is more commonly known evangelism. This is when you share the gospel message with your words.

Once we firmly trust and believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior, we must make his name known to the entire world. This is also called the Great Commission.

Many people want a form of evangelism they can compartmentalize in their schedule, switch off, and go home from but Jesus calls us to a lifestyle of love (1 Thessalonians 2:8).

“We can identify forms of evangelism that involve sharing the Gospel without sharing our lives, as well sharing our lives without ever having the courage to share God’s word. Paul’s ministry involved both: sharing his life and sharing the word of God.” (Steve Timmis/Tim Chester)

What does evangelism in the post-Christendom era look like?

Three steps in sharing our faith via the enter-challenge-re-establish approach.

a. Enter the framework: uncover “belief positions” and “themes of relevance”
b. Challenge the framework: show tension between their theme and their belief
c. Re-establish the framework: relate a brief presentation of the gospel to their theme

2) The second way we can fulfill the mission of God is called the social witness.

God is concerned about the needy, destitute, hurting, poor, and orphans of the world. The word of the Lord tells us that we are commissioned to care for those around us who cannot care for themselves.

In the abstract- evangelism is more important than social justice, not because the soul is more important than the body, but the eternal is more important than the temporary. However, practically —if you don’t care for the needs of people, why will they listen to you? The reality is that the more we do justice the more effective our evangelism will be.

Justice can precede evangelism. It creates plausibility for the gospel proclamation, and in reality it often draws non-yet-Xians in. This then leads them into Xian community and leads to a great openness to evangelism.

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[1] Adapted from Alan Hirsch/Michael Frost: The Shaping of Things To Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church, “The Incarnational Approach” (Chapter 3) and “The Contextualized Church (Chapter 5).

[2] Adapted from “Contextual and Missional” by Tim Keller from London Church Planting Consultation, 2008-2009

notes from mercyview lab #2

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: acts, Bible, Christianity, church, church planting, community, contextualization, culture, evangelism, Gospel, history, idolatry, imago Dei, incarnation, incarnational, Jesus, Jonah, kingdom of God, Matthew, mercyview, ministry, New Testament, Old Testament, orthopraxy, Paul, Poverty, Revelation, social justice, Tulsa
• Date: Jun 28,2010

This past Sunday, we held our second mercyview lab to introduce people to the heartbeat of a new church community in the city of Tulsa and we had a great time together. I was particularly encouraged to see some new faces.

As I said last week, these “labs” are intended to give folks a “window into” what we believe God is calling mercyview to be in Tulsa. This will give many an opportunity to begin to pray about joining us in the birth of mercyview at the end of the summer.

In our first lab, I unpacked what is the “hub” of all of mercyview‘s ministry: the Gospel. Last night, I talked about what is looks like for a church to be a “city within a city” – an alternative society in a city that is “salt and light” (Matthew 5:13-16). Here are the notes from the evening:

–One of the foundational issues a new church has to figure out where they come down on is their relationship with culture. This has to happen before they can talk about how to be the church in the community.

–There is a lot of talk about culture these days but not always much clarity about what it really is. The truth is that the tension between church and culture has been around since the church began. People shout about culture and how the church should or should not relate to it but we have to think discerningly about what it is and how we engage culture.

–So how do we unpack this issue? I believe it involves understanding three things:

1. Culture matters
2. Relating to culture the wrong way matters [1]
3. How the church should relate to culture matters [2]

–Culture mattered to Paul. In Acts 17, we see four things:

1. Paul finds a space within the culture to proclaim the gospel – the Areopagus [Acts 17:22]
2. Paul acknowledged their spiritual questions contextually [Acts 17:22-31]
3. Paul understood Athens – observed their idols as he walked through the city; quoted a poet [Acts 17:23, 28]
4. Paul understood how to respond to culture [Acts 17:29]

–There are basically three choices we have to respond to culture:

1. Receive
2. Reject
3. Redeem

–As we respond to culture, we essentially receive all of culture and within in that “reception,” we must choose which aspects of it to reject or redeem.

–What is culture? The common ideas, feelings, and values that guide community and personal behavior that organize and regulate what the group thinks, feels, and does about God, the world, and humanity [Harvie Conn]

–Culture itself is not evil but a composite of good and evil – as understood Biblically. In any given culture we can find both the imago Dei and idols because all people are made in God’s image and reflect that reality in some ways.

–Those who say we should not “engage the culture,” are using the word “culture” in a way that missionaries wouldn’t [Ed Stetzer]

–Four ways that the church has related to culture:

1. Pietiest
2. Conservative activist
3. Cultural “relevant”
4. Counter-culturalist

–A pietist is someone who stresses Bible study, personal religious experience, and evangelism to the exclusion of trying to understand culture’s expressions: attitudes, customs, beliefs, ethics, and value systems. In essence, their attitude is one of indifference. They believe that since the world is going to burn up in the end, what matters is to convert as many people as possible. If we do that well, then society will be changed ‘one heart at a time.’

–A conservative activist perceives the main problem today to be the loss of moral absolutes. They believe Xians have become too much like the culture, which no longer believes in absolute truth. In this approach, young people are encouraged to recover a Xian worldview and to penetrate the higher reaches of the cultural economy.

–A cultural relevant, in reaction to the conservative movement, complains that Xians are perceived as too hostile and condemning and that they speak in language that is undecipherable to the average person. In this model, the church is called to deeply identify with felt needs of people – embodying love and truth by working against inequality and injustice in society.

–A counter-culturalist sees the main problem today to be that the church has tried to reform the world to become like the church. In this view, the church needs to follow Christ ‘outside the camp’ and identify with the poor and the marginalized. It needs to be a witness to the world simply by being the church, an alternate society and they shouldn’t try to ‘transform culture’ at all.

–Is the lack of very vibrant, effective evangelism for the church today a major problem? Of course. Thus, the cry from the pietists.

–Is it a major problem that Christians are vastly under-represented in many sectors of the cultural economy? Absolutely. Thus, the cry from the conservative activists.

-Is it a major problem that the evangelical church essentially exists in a subculture, not able to speak the Gospel intelligibly to most Americans, and perceived to be only concerned to increase their own power rather than the common good? Of course it is. Thus, the cry from the evangelical relevants.

–Is a major part of the problem the “thinness” of our Christian communities? Of course, that is an enormous problem. Thus, the cry from the counter-culturalists.

–Every one of these groups articulates a crucial and irreplaceable part of what is wrong with our church’s relationship to culture.

–So what’s wrong? Two things:

1. An unbalanced view of themselves
Each group is responding more to the other Christian parties than to the culture. Because of this, they exaggerate the imbalances in the other groups, and thus, are blind to their own.

2. An insufficient grasp of the whole Biblical plotline
The Bible’s narrative arc is—creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. The problem is that each approach represents just one possible emphasis of the arc within a comprehensive whole. The Biblical teaching about Xianity and culture is very rich and should provide Xians in every century and culture with both boundaries and freedom to devise an approach that fits their time.

–With the Gospel

Gospel ministry is not only proclaiming it to people so that they will believe it but it also shepherding believers with it so that it shapes the entirety of their lives, inside the church and out in the world.

For evangelicals to move forward, we must be able to come together around a richer understanding of God’s will for a renewed world without losing the sharpness and power of the classic understanding of the gospel.

–As Light

Jesus tells his disciples they are to be a “city on a hill” whose “good deeds” are a light that will lead non-believers to praise the Father in heaven. Christians are called to be an alternate city within every earthly city and they should be the very best citizens, seeking the “peace and prosperity” of the city (Jeremiah 29:4-7). Here is where the relevants and the counter-culturalists get it right.

Care for the poor is a thing so essential that the contrary cannot consist with sincere love to God. [Jonathan Edwards]

Revelation 21-22 makes it clear that the ultimate purpose of redemption is not to escape the material world but to renew it. God’s purpose is not only saving individuals but also inaugurating a new world based on justice, peace, and love, not power, strife, and selfishness.

–As Salt

This metaphor is a counterpoint to that of light – it is more modest in what it holds out for us. Christian living (like salt in the meat) is quite important to keep culture from degrading but here we are being warned not to necessarily expect fundamental social transformation.

Salt is a more negative metaphor as well. Salt in a wound kept it from festering but it was also painful. This means that Christians are to stand for truth and guard orthodox belief and practice but there will inevitably be opposition. (1 Peter 2:12.)

The salt metaphor is different in another way as well. Salt must spread out and penetrate to be effective. Christians then do not only effect the world as a counter-cultural community (‘light’) but also as dispersed individuals who take the Christian message and world view into every circle and sector of society.

–The people of God (the Church) become an alternative city within a city to display, as a foretaste, what the eternal city will be like. (Jeremiah 29; Matthew 5:3-16; Luke 6:20-36; 1 Peter 2:9-12)

–Harvie Conn:

Perhaps the best analogy to describe all this is that of a model home. We are God’s demonstration community of the rule of Christ in the city. On a tract of earth’s land, purchased with the blood of Christ, Jesus the kingdom developer has begun building new housing. As a sample of what will be, he has erected a model home of what will eventually fill the urban neighborhood. He now invites the urban world into that model home to take a look at what will be. The church is the occupant of that model home, inviting neighbors into its open door to Christ…

As citizens of, not survivalists in, this new city within the old city, we see our ownership as the gift of Jesus the Builder (Luke 17:20-21). As residents, not pilgrims, we await the kingdom coming when the Lord returns from his distant country (Luke 19:12). The land is already his…in this model home we live out our new lifestyle as citizens of the heavenly city that one day will come. We do not abandon our jobs or desert the city that is….We are to seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which God called us in exile (Jeremiah 29:7). And our agenda of concerns in that seeking becomes as large as the cities where our divine development tracts are found.

–Motivation? God left the culture of heaven to enter the culture of man, to bring redemption and restoration:

“We don’t relate to God as a person on the first floor of a building relates to a person on the second floor. We relate to God as Hamlet would to Shakespeare. Hamlet’s only way to know Shakespeare is if Shakespeare writes himself into the play. In the incarnation, God has written himself into the story of this world.”
-Tim Keller

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[1] Adapted from “Church and Culture” by Tim Keller from London Church Planting Consultation, 2008-2009

[2] Ibid.