a proper response

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: church, culture, pastoring, the art of...
• Date: Sep 21,2006

Wisdom. Modeled.

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

See his article in part below:

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

John Piper

September 20, 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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r-squared: podcasts #7, #8, #9, & #10

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: church, culture, missiology, pastoring, social justice
• Date: Aug 3,2006

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

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

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

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

book review: confessions of a reformission rev by mark driscoll

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: books, church, culture, missiology, pastoring, review
• Date: Jul 13,2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

More on that later…

Okay, on to the review.

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r-squared: podcast #1

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: church, missiology, pastoring
• Date: May 30,2006

For those of you that are interested, the first podcast from the Reform & Resurgence conference is online.

The first podcast is Darrin Patrick, pastor of The Journey and vice president of the Acts 29 church planting network, who happens to be from my hometown of St. Louis.

Darrin was the first pastor out of the chute and he jokes that he felt like the opening act you’ve never heard of at a musical festival, setting up the ‘heavyweights.’

Though humble is he, Darrin started things off like a ‘heavyweight’ with such wisdom and clarity!