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Missional.

As Ed Stetzer has said, it is a theological junk drawer word. If you want to give the illusion that you are an individual or a church that “gets it,” just slap “missional” in front of it and you are good. Or so one would think.

Let’s try this. Missional church. Missional community. Missional lighting. Well, okay, maybe not missional lighting but you get the idea.

The truth is that, yes, missional finds its impetus in the mission of God or the missio Dei (John 17:18) but missional is not missional without an outworking of the mission of God in orthopraxy. In practice. In real-life, gritty, in-the-trenches operation. No aftereffects, sorry, you’re not missional. You may bloviate but it’s not authentic or integrous.

The majority of those who make up the priesthood of believers are not vocational ministers. That means the primary sphere that most of the Christians in the world are on mission in is their workplace.

For those of us that have worked outside of the confines of the local church, we know the gap that exists between what people know of our faith and what they do not. Living out our Christianity in the workplace is a difficult endeavor.

Below are 30 ways to bless your workplace (read “engage missionally). I think these are brilliant. Read them and maybe find one or two that you can enact in the coming weeks to bring the gospel to bear on your primary mission sphere.

Josh Reeves:

…I have compiled 30 ideas for engaging people in your workplace. The workplace is an everyday context where many people spend the majority of their time. It is important for us to know what it looks like to bring gospel intentionality to our jobs. Hopefully this will help spark a few ideas for connecting with and blessing your coworkers.

1. Instead of eating lunch alone, intentionally eat with other co-workers and learn their story.

2. Get to work early so you can spend some time praying for your co-workers and the day ahead.

3. Make it a daily priority to speak or write encouragement when someone does good work.

4. Bring extra snacks when you make your lunch to give away to others.

5. Bring breakfast (donuts, burritos, cereal, etc.) once a month for everyone in your department.

6. Organize a running/walking group in the before or after work.

7. Have your missional community/small group bring lunch to your workplace once a month.

8. Create a regular time to invite coworkers over or out for drinks.

9. Make a list of your co-workers birthdays and find a way to bless everyone on their birthday.

10. Organize and throw office parties as appropriate to your job.

11. Make every effort to avoid gossip in the office. Be a voice of thanksgiving not complaining.

12. Find others that live near you and create a car pool.

13. Offer to throw a shower for a co-worker who is having a baby.

14. Offer to cover for a co-worker who needs off for something.

15. Start a regular lunch out with co-workers (don’t be selective on the invites).

16. Organize a weekly/monthly pot luck to make lunch a bit more exciting.

17. Ask someone who others typically ignore if you can grab them a soda/coffee while you’re out.

18. Be the first person to greet and welcome new people.

19. Make every effort to know the names of co-workers and clients along with their families.

20. Visit coworkers when they are in the hospital.

21. Bring sodas or work appropriate drinks to keep in your break room for coworkers to enjoy. Know what your co-workers like.

22. Go out of your way to talk to your janitors and cleaning people who most people overlook.

23. Find out your co-workers favorite music and make a playlist that includes as much as you can (if suitable for work).

24. Invite your co-workers in to the service projects you are already involved in.

25. Start/join a city league team with your co-workers.

26. Organize a weekly co-working group for local entrepreneurs at a local coffee shop.

27. Start a small business that will bless your community and create space for mission.

28. Work hard to reconcile co-workers who are fighting with one another.

29. Keep small candy, gum, or little snacks around to offer to others during a long day.

30. Lead the charge in organizing others to help co-workers in need.


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…


It has been 11 months since my family moved to the urban core of Tulsa, Oklahoma to plant Mercyview. Within our first few months here, God graciously brought a humble band of urban missionaries around the mission and vision of Mercyview. Since that time, we have sought to plant the Gospel deeply in our lives, praying that out of this, God would graciously plant His church in the center city of Tulsa. And I’m humbled to say that He has!

But what is the church? Is it an institution? It is a building? Is it a worship service? Well, when I say God has planted His church here, I mean that He has planted His people in a particular time and place to cultivate the knowledge of the rule of His Kingship. George Ladd says, “…there can be no objection to the recognition that the church is the organ of the Kingdom as it works in the world.” God is building His church, His redemptive Kingdom agents on mission, here in the urban core of Tulsa and we are stoked!

The church began with the deep belief that Gospel transformation typically happens best in smaller groupings of people. We have experienced this firsthand in our time here with our missional community. Our missional communities are inter-generational, small groups that meet weekly in homes, sharing meals, prayer, the Scripture, and our lives with another, as well as participating in missional endeavors.

At the turn of the new year, I felt that God was moving us to provide another environment for individuals to experience the Gospel, community, and mission at Mercyview through a gathered worship experience.

We began to talk about this as a community and I was blown away at how God was already moving in the hearts of those that were a part of this to move in that direction. We made plans to launch a worship gathering on Easter Sunday, knowing that God was going to have to provide a space, sound equipment, kid’s items, etc. We stepped out in faith and asked the Lord to meet us at the point of our need.

Well, this past week, we celebrated the launch of Mercyview’s first worship gathering on Easter Sunday!

God graciously provided a space that seats around 125 people, has rooms for children’s ministry, an abundance of parking (which is a precious commodity in Midtown Tulsa), and room to grow at Tulsa Adventist Academy, in the neighborhood just to the east of the University of Tulsa called Turner Park. We had churches, organizations, and individuals donate special financial gifts, sound equipment, kid’s items, and Bibles to help us with our launch. And I am so proud of our team – they did an amazing job in pulling this together in a short amount of time!

Now, we haven’t arrived. The goal has never been to launch a worship gathering. Our goal will always be to find our identity in Jesus and to live in the freedom that His grace and mercy bought for us. This will happen in our gathering. But it will also happen in our scattering. It will happen in the neighborhoods we live in, the businesses we work in, and the places we play. God willing, He will continue to build a people who will make Him famous in Tulsa and beyond.

Here are some pictures from our special day:




[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.]


[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.


This past Sunday marked the end of the exciting first phase of planting the Gospel in urban Tulsa. God has been good! It has been a great summer as we have looked at the ethos of mercyview and how it fits in the spiritual and social climate here.

This Sunday, August 22, we will dialogue formally and informally about the base-level covenant and pray that by early September, God will bring together a group of deeply committed men and women to help plant the Gospel in their hearts and in the city of Tulsa.

But this post is to share the notes from mercyview lab #5, particularly for those of you that weren’t able to be with us. First, here is the all of 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]

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

–Lab #4: Seeking the Shalom of the City: How a Center-City Church Transforms Culture [download synopsis here]

Lab #5 was the final piece of the DNA of mercyview: the apex of holistic ministry interlocks the four ministry fronts [evangelism + worship // community + discipleship // justice + mercy // faith _ work] well. Here is a synopsis:

Introduction [1]

–Churches that thrive in cities should be characterized by an integrative balance of four ministry areas: missional evangelism, community formation, justice and mercy, and the integration of faith and work. Christians should seek personal conversion, deep Christian community, justice, and cultural renewal in the city.

–It is rare for a church to combine several of these emphases in ministry and extremely rare to have them all. One of the reasons is that the leaders of these ministries often resist and resent the others. But there is no reason to pit them against each other. They do not contradict but rather supplement each other.

–Only if we do all of these ministries at once will any of them be effective. They are interdependent and interlocking. And it is the only way to see our cities comprehensively influenced for Christ.

The Four Ministry Fronts

A. Connecting people to God: Missional Evangelism + Evangelistic Worship

1. Missional Evangelism [2]

–Evangelism rarely happens by osmosis. A prevelant myth in many churches is that if you give not-yet-Xians a chance to rub shoulders w/Xians, they are guaranteed to catch a dose of the Gospel. This myth is sometimes used to justify not making any special effort to provide evangelism programs or training. It allows churches to feel that they are obeying the Great Commission just by doing good deeds for Christ’s sake. A holistic approach places spiritual nurture and social care on a equal footing from the start.

What is missional evangelism?

a. We share the Gospel by word and deed, not word or deed. Modeling the Gospel through personal piety, acts of kindness, and the pursuit of justice is powerful and can draw people to Christ – if they learn why you are doing what you do.

b. We expectantly hope that those who hear the Word will embrace the message and repent. The bedrock of the Gospel is Christ’s incarnation of God’s love to a broken world. But accepting that love brings more than warm feelings – the powerful love of a just and holy God calls for repentance – turning away from personal and social sin through the power of the Holy Spirit.

c. Evangelism does not stop when someone accepts Christ. The ultimate goal of evangelism is not to win converts but to make disciples. Discipleship-oriented evangelism is concerned not only with non-yet-Xians but also dechurched Xians. The radical life of obedience preached by Christ is impossible without the teaching, accountability, and fellowship (koinonia) of a loving church community. If we make converts but fail to connect them to a Biblical, supportive, worshiping Xian community, then you have not completed the evangelistic mandate.

How do you do missional evangelism?

a. Pray: Prayer is the key to unlock relationships – it is what will draw, change, cause people to be comitted to their relationship with the Lord. Because salvation is God’s work, we must permeate all our evangelistic activity with prayer.

b. Listen: The temptation in proclamational evangelism is to try to take the conversation where we want it to go. Evangelism takes place best when the target community is treated not as a project but as people that have dignity and deserve respect.

c. Look: Look for a way to serve (go the extra mile), to connect (no two people are alike), to invite (take next step in their relationship with God-the journey from unbelief to to belief is a long one), and to fellowship (long-term relationship)

2. Evangelistic Worship [1 Corinthians 14:5-25 + Acts 2] [3]

–Non-believers are expected to be present in Xian worship. Paul in 1 Corinthians 14:23 expects both “unbelievers” and “the unlearned” (literally “a seeker”– “one who does not understand”) to be present in worship.

–Non-believers must find the praise of Xians to be comprehensible. It should not be missed that Paul tells a local congregation to adapt its worship because of the presence of unbelievers. It is a false dichotomy to insist that if we are seeking to please God we must not ask what the unchurched feel or think about our worship.

–Non-believers can fall under conviction and be converted through comprehensible worship. . In 1 Cor 1,4 it happens during the service, but in Acts 2, it is supplemented by “after meetings” and follow-up evangelism. God wants the world to overhear us worshipping him. God directs his people not to simply worship, but to sing his praises “before the nations.” We are not to simply communicate the gospel to them, but celebrate the gospel before them.

B. Connecting people to each other– Community and discipleship [4]

–We seek to spiritually form people mainly through community. Growth in grace and wisdom and character does not happen so much in classes and instruction, or even in coming to large worship gatherings. They happen mainly through in counter-cultural communities where the implications of the gospel are really worked out cognitively and ‘worked in’ practically in ways that no other setting or venue can afford.

1. The function of Xian community

a. Mission: The quality of our community is the real secret of mission. When the world sees exceptional community it is both 1) more convincing of the truth of Jesus’ message, and 2) far more inviting and encouraging to join up with.

b. Character: Jesus created communities of learning, where there was plenty of time to work out truth in discussion and dialogue and in application. Therefore, the crucial (though not exclusive venue for discipleship is in communities, not classes. Character is mainly shaped by the people with whom we live–with whom we eat, play, converse, counsel, and study. It is therefore our primary social community that makes us what we are at the deepest level.

c. Ethics: Most of the “ethical principle”‘ or “rules for behavior” in the Bible are not just code-books for individuals but descriptions of the new community of love and holiness.

d. Spirituality: A human being is too rich and multi-faceted a being to be known one-on-one. We think we know someone but an individual can’t bring out all that is in the person. We need to see the person with others. And if that is the case with a human being, how much more so with the Lord. You can’t really know Jesus by yourself.

Summary

It is a typical mistake of Christians to miss the centrality of community. We often think of community as one more thing we have to do in the “rules” of behavior. But community is the way we are to do all that Christ told us to do in the world. It is the way we do ‘ethics’; it is the way we do learning.

C. Connecting people to the city – Justice and mercy [5]

–We did not want to emphasize mainly evangelism (as conservative churches do) or mainly social justice (as liberal churches do) but give a very high emphasis to both. A gospel-centered church should combine ‘zeals’ that are ordinarily never seen together in the same church.

What is justice?

–Bruce Waltke: “The tzadiq [just] are [those who are] willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community; the wicked are [those who are] willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.”

–Living justly means the constant recognition of the claims of community upon us; it means disadvantaging ourselves in order to advantage others. According to the Old Testament, God’s justice means to share food, shelter, and other basic resources with those who have fewer of them (Is 58:6-10.)

–The basis for ‘doing justice’ is salvation by grace. Xians may disagree about the particular political approach to the problems of injustice but all Xians must be characterized by their passion for justice and their personal commitment to annihilate injustice through personal giving, sacrifice, and generosity.

What is mercy?

–Xians are to “show mercy” or eleos. This word is used to describe holistic ministry in Luke 10:25-37 and James 2:14-17, two of the key passages in the Bible about wholistic ministry. “Mercy” sometimes has a general meaning but sometimes it specifically refers to helping the poor and needy.

–Martin Luther: “We are saved by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone.”

Keeping justice and mercy in tension

–There are two unbiblical political ideologies and reductionisms that reign in our culture today. Many ‘conservatives’ are motivated to help the poor mainly by mercy. On the other hand, many ‘liberals’ are motivated to help the poor mainly out of a sense of indignation and aborted justice. Both views, ironically, become self-righteous. One tends to blame the poor for everything; the other to blame the rich for everything.

–A balanced motivation arises from a heart touched by grace which has lost its superiority-feelings toward any particular class of people. It is the gospel that motivates us to act both in mercy and in justice.

D. Connecting people to the culture – Integrating faith and work [6]

–All of our work matters to God. We agree with the original Protestant Reformers that so called “secular” work is as valuable and God-honoring as Christian ministry.

–When you use your gifts in work you are answering God’s calling to serve the human community. Our work then, whatever it is, matters greatly to God.

–On the other hand, God matters to all our work. That is, we also believe that the gospel shapes and effects the motives, manner, and methods we use in our work.

–What then is our vision? We do not want Xians to privatize their faith away from their work nor to express it terms of a subculture. Rather we want to see growing Xians working in their vocations both with excellence and Xian distinctiveness, transforming the culture in which we live from.

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[1] Adapted from “Integrative Ministry” by Tim Keller from London Church Planting Consultation, 2008-2009.

[2] Adapted from Chapter 3, “Making Evangelism Central,” from Churches That Make a Difference: Reaching Your Community with Good News and Good Workds by Ron Sider, Philip Olson, and Heidi Unruh, 2002.

[3] Adapted from “Integrative Ministry,” Keller.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.


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:

Introduction
[Jeremiah 29:1-13] [1]

–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)

A Biblical Theology of the City
[Hebrews 11:10 + Revelation 21] [2] [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.

Summary [4]

–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.


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.


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:

Introduction

–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 matters
[Acts 17:16-34]

–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]

Relating to culture the wrong way matters
[Jonah 1:1-3]

–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.

How the church should relate to culture matters
[Matthew 5:13-16]

–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.

Conclusion
[John 17:11-19]

–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.


mercyview is a new church community launching in Tulsa in August 2010 and over the summer, we are engaging those who are interested in it with five “labs” at the Andrews’ home in Midtown Tulsa led by myself.

The “labs” are intended to give a snapshot of what we believe God is calling mercyview to be in the great city of Tulsa and give folks a “no-commitment” opportunity to begin to discern if God may be calling them to join us in the birth of this new church community.

This past Sunday, we held our first lab and our house was full! I was humbled at those who came to be in community and conversation as we talked about mercyview‘s future. [This Sunday, June 27 @ 7pm, we will talk about what it looks for the scattered church to be counter-cultural missionaries in our community]

In the our first lab, I unpacked what I believe is and will always be the “hub” of all of mercyview‘s ministry: the Gospel. Here are the notes from the night for those of you who weren’t able to be with us, are peeking over the fence, or praying for us from afar:

Introduction

-The four values of mercyview are: gospel, formation, community, mission. In many ways, the Gospel is really not one of the four mercyview values – it is THE value.

-When we talk about anything (formation, community, mission, parenting, marriage, mentoring, counseling, outreach, evangelism, church multiplication etc.) the filter for all of these things @ mercyview is going to be the Gospel.

-I don’t know of an evangelical church that doesn’t formally subscribe to the doctrine of the Gospel but most do not have a ministry that is actually gospel-centered. It is easy to think that if you have the gospel down accurately in your head then your ministry is automatically shaped by it as well.

-So how do we do it – how do we have lives and a church community that is centered on the Gospel? I believe it involves getting three things right about the Gospel [1]:

1. The Gospel isn’t everything
2. The Gospel doesn’t do just one thing
3. The Gospel affects everything

The Gospel isn’t everything
(1 Corinthians 15:1-8)

-The Gospel is one thing: how our alienation with God is addressed and removed by the work of Christ. All other alienations in life flow from that – all human problems are symptom and our separation from God is the cause.

-Thus, the gospel is primarily news about the historical events of Jesus – His life, His death, and His resurrection – and the three Gospel themes of the historical events of Jesus are:

1. Incarnation: Jesus represents
2. Atonement: Jesus substitutes
3. Resurrection: Jesus secures

-The gospel is good news not good advice (Martin Lloyd-Jones) — it’s not something we “do” but rather something that has been done for us and that we must respond to.

The Gospel doesn’t do just one thing (Galatians 2:11-14)

-We assume that the Gospel is simply what non-Christians must believe in order to be saved and then we step into deeper theological waters but the Gospel isn’t the first step in a stairway of truths but more like the hub in a wheel of truth. (Tullian Tchividjian)

-In other words, once God rescues sinners, his plan isn’t to steer them beyond the gospel but to move them more deeply into it. (Tim Keller). Therefore, the Gospel is for non-Xians AND Xians.

-Most Xian’s day-to-day rely on their sanctification for their justification, practically functioning on the principle “I live a good life, therefore Jesus accepts me” rather than “Jesus accepts me, therefore I live a good life through obedience.” (Richard Lovelace)

-So how do Xians live as if the Gospel is true? The pathway to Gospel change is beholding the glory of God. Beholding is becoming. 2 Corinthians 2:17-18 says:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

-There are two “thieves” of the gospel: religion and irreligion. Moralism/religion stresses truth without grace and relativism/irreligion stresses grace without truth.

-What do both religious and irreligious people have in common? From the viewpoint of the Gospel, they are really the same. They are both ways to avoid Jesus as Savior and keep control of our lives through worldly pride (relativism) or religious pride (legalism).

-The gospel shows us a God far more holy than the legalist can bear (he had to die because we could not satisfy his holy demands) and yet far more merciful than a relativist can conceive (he had to die because he loved us).

-To “get the Gospel” is to turn from self-justification and rely on Jesus’ record for a relationship with God. The irreligious don’t repent at all and the religious only repent of sins. But Christians also repent of their self-righteousness. That is the distinction between the three groups–Christian, the religious, and the irreligious.

The Gospel should affect everything
(Hebrews 9:11-14)

-Even though the Gospel is a set of truths to believe, it cannot remain a set of beliefs if it is truly believed and understood. The Gospel creates a whole way of life and affects literally everything about us.

-Returning to the three Gospel themes of the historical events of Jesus, we can see how the gospel affects everything:

1. The incarnation is the “upside-down” aspect of the Gospel: The Gospel creates a new kind of servant community with people who live out an alternate way of being human. The world’s values are “right side-up” but Gospel values are “upside-down.”

2. The atonement is the “inside-out” aspect of the Gospel: Traditional religion teaches that if we do good deeds and follow the moral rules in our behavior on the outside, God will bless us and give us salvation. But the gospel is the reverse of this—if I know in my heart God has accepted me and loved me freely, by grace, then I can begin to obey, out of inner joy and gratitude. Religion is “outside-in,” but the gospel is “inside-out.”

3. The resurrection is the “forward-back” aspect of the gospel: The coming of the King is two stages. At his first coming, he saved us from the penalty of sin, and gave us the presence of the Holy Spirit. But at the end of time he will come to complete what he began at the first coming — He will bring a new creation, a material world cleansed of all brokenness. Christians now live and serve in light of the future reality (“forward-back”) of a new heavens and a new earth.

-We are saved by faith alone, but not by a faith that remains alone. (Martin Luther). True gospel belief will always lead to good works. Faith and works must never be confused for one another but neither should they be separated.

Conclusion

Michael Goheen: “Where we sink the anchor of our hope matters; our lives will be shaped by it.”

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


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