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a proper response

null Wisdom. Modeled.

For those that are privy to John Piper’s ministry, he is not afraid to tackle tough issues. In recent e-article that I subscribe to from Piper called Taste & See, he handles the controversy surrounding Pope Benedict’s recent comments on the Muslim faith with great wisdom and delicacy.

See his article in part below:

How Christians Should Respond to Muslim Outrage at the Pope’s Regensburg Message About Violence and Reason

John Piper

September 20, 2006

“Whoever offends our Prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim.” Those were the words of Sheikh Abubakar Hassan Malin to a gathering of Muslims in Mogadishu on Friday, September 15, 2006. On Saturday, Palestinians wielding guns and firebombs attacked five Christian churches in the West Bank and Gaza. On Sunday, September 17, in London, outside Westminster Cathedral, Anjem Choudary addressed a demonstration and said that those who insulted Islam “should be subject to capital punishment.”

These were among the reactions to a speech given by Pope Benedict XVI at Regensburg University, in Germany on Tuesday, September 12. Perhaps connected to the speech was the murder on Sunday in Mogadishu of sixty-six-year-old Leonella Sgorbati, an Italian Catholic nun serving as a nurse in a children’s hospital.

In the speech, the pope was addressing the foundation of the secular university. The subject was faith and reason. He was arguing that the foundation of the university, and the spread of truth and faith, lay in the rationality of God. He asked, “Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?” He answers, “I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek, in the best sense of the word, and the biblical understanding of faith in God.”

In other words, the pope is arguing that the university, and all people, have an obligation to act in accordance with reason, because reason is rooted in God. At this point, he brought in a discussion of the difference between Islam and Christianity on the relationship between God and reason. Christianity, he argues, sees reason as rooted in God. But, citing a noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, he says that “Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that [in Islam] God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practice idolatry.” This, he implies, disconnects God and reason and opens Islam to a use of violence in spreading their faith that is not governed by reason.

Then the pope said, “The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul…. God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats…. To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…”

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.

These references to the role of reason in Islam, and the apparent endorsement of violence (in parts of the Qur’an) as a way of spreading Islamic faith, have outraged Muslims and sparked violence and calls for violence.

Subsequently, the pope said, “I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims. These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought.”

How should Christians respond to this situation? I will suggest ten responses that flow from the Bible.

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a new hidden agenda

null It seems that the art of conversation is on life support. Most people talk to hear themselves talk.

The primo reason this concerns me is how, as Christians, we interface with those who are non-Christians or dechurched. [First things first, are we conversing with non-Christians and the dechurched? If not, revisit the Great Commission...]

If we are connecting in relationship with non-Christians and the dechurched, what is their impression of our conversation with them? Is it tainted with “I’m just talking to you so I can drop the ‘God’ bomb on you” or is it laced with “I don’t have an agenda; I just want to hear your ‘story’ and understand your hopes, hurts, fears, etc.”

If you picked ‘B,’ you have won a lifetime supply of knowing you have synced up with God’s heart behind missional living.

To help us to this end, check out these tips on conversation. May this be our new ‘hidden agenda’…

[HT: Bob Hyatt @ Pastorhacks.com and Marcus Vorwaller @ Best Tool For the Job]

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sticky perfection

nullEveryone once and a while, an editorial is so smart, biting, and right on that I read it and think, “That pretty much sums up issue ‘x’.”

Cameron Strang, editor-in-chief of Relevant Magazine, nails the superiority complex those of the younger generations suffer from. And we do. I can say this; I’m one of them [I'm getting counseling though].

Please find that I’ve reprinted it for your [and my] ‘edification’. [Adapted from Strang's "The First Word"-July/August 2006 Relevant Magazine]

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It’s a bit belated, but there are four new installments of podcasts from the 2006 Reform & Resurge conference at Mars Hill Church in Seattle available at theresurgence.com or itunes.com. What is exciting is that theresurgence.com has now added vodcasts to each accompanying podcast. Check ‘em out!

Podcast/vodcast #7 and podcast/vodcast #8 comes again from the conference keynote speaker, Dr. Tim Keller, senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, New York and founder of Redeemer Church Planting Center, also known as The Movement.

Podcast/vodcast #9 comes from my favorite pastor/teacher right now, Matt Chandler, who serves as lead pastor of The Village Church in Highland Village, TX. He gives a brutally honest talk about pastoring called Gravity…whoa!

Podcast/vodcast #10 comes from Eric Mason serves as the lead pastor of Epiphany Fellowship Church in Philadelphia, PA. Eric’s talk is entitled From Reluctance to Representation and gives us a great current cultural perspective as we preach the gospel today by looking at the icons that have affected our view on values today. The focus of cultural study is looking at the ripples of the hip-hop generation. Using Haggai chapter two Eric Mason reveals our purpose for missional living in our land.


truly traditional

nullIn light of my recent post on the pope’s recent comments on worship style and the lively debate over at theology for the masses over the same issue [see this and this], I would like to post a comment by Covenant Seminary professor, Anthony Bradley, from his recent blog entry, Culturally Contextualized Ministry Rocks!

If your church has traditional music, for example, then you’re probably singing in from the Psalms primarily in Hebrew or using music from the early church sung in Greek and the preaching’s in Greek. Otherwise, you’re just as non-traditional the “contemporary” church down the street. Churches that only sing from hymnals aren’t really as traditional as they want think, some would say. Adopting a previous era’s contemporary, culturally driven style and calling it “traditional” does not make it so.

THE definitive response to the ‘worship wars’ comes from theologian D.A. Carson, in the book he edited, Worship by the Book. He wrote Chapter 1 entitled: Worship Under the Word.

In this chapter, he tackles the challenge to define worship. He then does go on to define worship, as well as does an exposition on that definition and comes to some practical conclusions. You need to read the whole chapter but I will focus on what our debate over at theology for the masses has centered on:

Historically, some branches of the church have argued that if God has not forbidden something, we are permitted to do it, and the church is permitted to regulate its affairs in these regards in order to establish good order [the Hooker principle]. Others have argued that the only things we should do in public worship are those that find clear example or direct prescription in the New Testament, lest we drift from what is central or impose on our congregations things that their consciences might not be able to support [the Regulative principle].

Some have appealed to Hooker to support changes far beyond the appropriateness of prescribing or forbidding vestments and the like; others have appealed to Hooker in defense of a church-ordered prayer book. Some have appealed to the Regulative principle to ban all instruments from corporate worship and to sanction only the singing of psalms; others see it as a principle of freedom within limits; it recognizes that we are not authorized to worship God “as we please” and that our worship must be acceptable to God himself and therefore in line with his Word. In short, both the Hooker and Regulative principle are plagued by complex debates as to what they mean today as well as historically.

…there is no single passage in the New Testament that establishes a paradigm for corporate worship. Not a few writers appeal to 1 Corinthians 14. Yet the priorities of that chapter are set by Paul’s agenda at the point, dealing with charismata that have gained too prominent a place in public meetings…First Corinthians 14 lays considerable stress on intelligibility…We may debate what is the full range of musical styles to which this expression refers, but psalms are certainly included-whether they are judged intelligible for our biblically illiterate generation or not.

..but so that they [the church] better grasp the dimension of the church that he has redeemed by the death of the Son [and therefore better worship Him]-and that means, surely, [there should be] some sort of exposure to more narrow slice of church that subsits in one particular subculture. The importance of intelligibility must therefore be juxtaposed with the responsibility to expand the limited horizons of one narrow tradition.


to prune or not to prune
nullIt’s time to follow up on a promise.

About three months ago, I received, for free, a pre-release of Mark Driscoll’s [Mars Hill Church-Seattle] new book, Confessions of a Reformission Rev: Hard Lessons From a Emerging Missional Church.

The pact was: get a book for free from Mark, review it and post the review online. I, of course, jumped at the opportunity to get a free book [who wouldn’t] and now, three months later, find myself needing to report on Confessions.

But first, my confession is that I did not read it until a month after I received it, a week after the Reform & Resurge Conference at Mars Hill in Seattle in May. But I did read it. In a couple of days. And frankly, I couldn’t put it down. But some have. See this.

Over these last few months, individuals who also received this book gratis have posted reviews on their blogs. Most have been positive, but a growing number have shown serious reservations about one particular issue that has seemed to overshadow the book’s underlying brilliance: Driscoll’s, at times, uncensored verbiage. See this and this and this. Because of this, I have been reticent to enter the fray.

Personally, I like Mark Driscoll. A lot. Maybe I shouldn’t. But I liked this book. [I'm not alone. See this.] And I guessed I feared that liking this book meant liking how everything was said in this book.

More on that later…

Okay, on to the review.

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cinema-the new cathedrals

Mercer Schuchardt from metaphilm.com poses some interesting thoughts on how movies are the new ‘cathedrals’ of our day. Here are some quotes:

What we want from church is actually precisely what we get from film: we want a special effect. In our daily lives, we have this vague but unshakable sense that the eternal and invisible world is all around us…in the movie theater, the supernatural is really there for us to behold—we can transport ourselves all over the planet and beyond just by sitting still; we can see the progress and acceleration of time, and we can see life begin, progress, and find redemption all within two hours.

Like religion, a good movie really does answer the only three questions worth asking in life: who you are, where you come from, and what you should do.

…we find ourselves, at the beginning of a weird new century that seems so much like the middle ages that we can’t tell if we’re moving forward or backward in time, in a world where the role of the church has been usurped by the cinema, and millions are unconsciously but actively attempting to lead their spiritual lives through the symbols, scenarios, and situation comedies of popular culture.

Read the entire article here.

This reminds me of what churches like Mars Hill Church [Seattle] and The Journey [St. Louis] are doing to counter this and help individuals connect the story of films with the story of the Gospel.

From Mars Hill’s Film & Theology page:

Movie theatres are modern day techno-pulpits; people flock to their local multiplex to let directors and screenwriters influence how they feel, think, and act. As image-bearers of God (the master storyteller, whose story spans all of creation) we in turn have a yearning to both create and be entertained by stories. This is evident even within scripture as Jesus teaches in parables. Holistic lessons are often learned more effectively through narrative than with bullet-point outlines and graphs. Christians should enjoy and engage film not just as entertainment, but also with a honed philosophical lens to engage culture, and reflect on how it relates to the gospel.

From The Journey’s Midrash page:

Movies form the common language of our culture; their stories unite us and often help us find meaning behind our own experiences.


r-squared: podcast #5 & #6

The latest two installments of podcasts from the 2006 Reform & Resurge conference at Mars Hill Church in Seattle are available at theresurgence.com or itunes.com. I attended this conference in May and have been letting you know when they have come out. They are teachings that every pastor needs to hear!

Podcast #5, entitled “A Humble Orthodoxy,” comes to you via Joshua Harris, senior pastor at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland. You may know the name from the wildly popular book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. In this podcast, Harris digs into the text of 2 Timothy 2.

[Btw, I can't help but think Harris had ulterior, or should I say 'reformed', motives with the title of his talk. I think it is no accident that one of the most controversial books in the emerging church realm right now is Brian McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy. Interesting...]

Podcast #6 comes from the keynote speaker, Dr. Tim Keller, senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, New York and founder of Redeemer Church Planting Center, also known as The Movement.

Keller is considered by many to be the preeminent missiologist in assessing the cultural landscape in North America. This podcast is the first of three talks by Dr. Keller entitled “Being the Church in our Culture.” This is a must hear!


the pope’s rift with riffs

Get your camo on. The Pope has entered the worship wars.

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r-squared: podcast #4

Podcast #4 from the 2006 Reform & Resurge conference is now available. This features Dr. Ed Stetzer again. This podcast is entitled, “Understanding Culture.”

In this podcast, Stetzer basically outlines Chapters 5 [Transitions to Missional Ministry] and 15 [The Process of Breaking the Code] from his newest book, Breaking the Missional Code. I have read this book and found it to be wonderfully insightful and inspiring. It is a must buy for those interested in being honest to the ministry context in which they are called.


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