notes from mercyview lab #5

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, community, culture, culture making, discipleship, evangelism, Gospel, incarnation, incarnational, missional, missional church, missional living, Old Testament, prayer, social justice, vision, work, worship
• Date: Aug 20,2010

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:

–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.

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.

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.

notes from mercyview lab #1

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: 1 Corinthians, atonement, Bible, Christianity, community, Galatians, Gospel, incarnation, irreligion, Jesus, justification, kingdom of God, mercyview, New Testament, religion, resurrection, sanctification, sent, social justice, theology
• Date: Jun 22,2010

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:

-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 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.

-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.

-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.

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