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

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

Is the church called to transform culture?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Climbing the Fences: The MissionShift Conversations, Part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

notes from mercyview lab #4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God’s invention

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

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

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

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

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

Cities develop culture

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

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

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

How cities develop culture

1. The city as a place of refuge and safety

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

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

–Density creates diversity.

2. The city as a cultural “mining” center

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

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

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

3. The city as the place to meet God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 #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.

======================

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

“monday is for missiology” roundup

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, eschatology, evangelism, Gospel, history, kingdom of God, missio Dei, missiology, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, missionSHIFT, social justice, theology
• Date: Mar 29,2010

I thought I would “roundup” the great posts happening over at edstetzer.com with the recent resurrection of his “Monday is for Missiology” series. This is really helpful stuff if you want to avoid the historical “naivete” that can tend to happen in the current missional conversation.

Here are Ed Stetzer’s thoughts as he sets up the series again:

Over the next few months leading up to missionSHIFT, along with introducing to you to the folks who are joining us at Ridgecrest to be a part of the missional conversation, I want to make sure that we continue to trace the roots of the missional debate historically and theologically. These posts will be a continuation of my “Meanings of Missional” series that has been on hiatus for a while. Okay, since October of 2007 (grin).

For many of you, this discussion may not interest you. Your focus is, “Let’s live on mission.” Fair enough– we will actually be talking about some practical discussion with some partners in the next few days. I don’t think this practical approach is a wrong approach– but I think that if we are to think deeply on issues of church and mission, it will require historic and theological reflection.

…When you look at the historical trajectory of the “church and mission” conversation, it was a deeply theological discussion. We must continue to filter this discussion theologically. In fact, I would say that missional must be tied– and I believe it is– to something inherently theological, particularly, the missio Dei. If not, it is just another descriptor in a long line of descriptors: church growth, seeker-sensitive, church health, emerging.

Here are the seven posts that Ed has written since the start up of the series:

*Monday is for Missiology: The Eschatological Dimension of the Missional Church
*Monday is for Missiology: The Church, The Kingdom, and Mission
*Monday is for Missiology: Caveats Regarding the Eschatological Language of Mission
*Monday is for Missiology: The Church on Mission for the Kingdom
*Monday is for Missiology: The Connection Between Missiology and Soteriology
*Monday is for Missiology: How and Why is God at Work Outside of the Church?
*Monday is for Missiology: One More Run at Salvation

As an added benefit to the series, Ed has invoked the help of some of the leading missional bloggers to weigh in on the issues he is raising on their respective blogs. This team is working through these missional themes as a part of the “Prologue to Missional Discussions” synchroblog and they are:

*Rick Meigs: The Blind Beggar
*Bill Kinnon: kinnon.tv
*Brother Maynard: Subversive Influence
*David Fitch: Reclaiming the Mission
*Tiffany Smith: Missional Mayhem
*Jared Wilson: The Gospel-Driven Church
*Jonathan Dodson: Creation Project

I would encourage you to check the discussion happening at their blogs. And don’t forget to register for missionSHIFT — it’s going to be a great time to continue to talk about all things missional. See you there…

new missionSHIFT introductions

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, church, church planting, community, culture, emerging culture, Great Commission, incarnational, leadership, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, Missional Manifesto, missionSHIFT, organic, orthopraxy, postmodern, theology, work, world issues
• Date: Feb 27,2010

Ed Stetzer continues to introduce the individuals who will be serving as framers for The Missional Manifesto, as well as speakers for missionSHIFT (the conference that I have the privilege to be working with him on) which takes place July 12-15 in Ridgecrest, NC.

Are you registered for the missionSHIFT conference? You don’t want to miss it. Register here.

Here are Ed’s recent introductions and the best soundbites from his interviews with each of them:

Dan Kimball

Dan Kimball is on staff at Vintage Faith Church, planted in 2004 in Santa Cruz, CA. He is the author of several books including They Like Jesus But Not The Church. He is a columnist for Leadership Journal and Outreach Magazine. He is adjunct faculty at several universities including Wheaton College, George Fox University and Western Seminary where he teaches on church and mission. Dan is part of the leadership core for Origins, a new network focused on evangelism and the mission of Jesus to new generations. He blogs at dankimball.com.

(Dan will serve as a “framer” for “The Missional Manifesto,” as well as speak on what evangelism looks like in the postmodern mileu)

Kimball:

“I have so much excitement and joy for the church at large right now. Just the fact that we are now becoming so much more engaged in dialogue about what being on mission means is a source of encouragement for me. I really sense that there is a wonderful stirring happening amongst so many people and leaders about this. So the one thing I think we are doing better at engaging in God’s mission is that we are really talking about it now, both theologically and in praxis and living it out. It feels like a tide is changing right now about all this in a very hopeful way. What incredible impact could be made as we unite and rally around God’s mission all the more.”

Hugh Halter

Hugh Halter is the national director of Missio, a ministry team committed to training, developing, and apprenticing Incarnational leaders for the church. Within Missio, Hugh co-directs the MCAP, an online collaborative training environment for Incarnational leaders, pastors, and church planters. Hugh is also lead architect of Adullum, a local movement of incarnational communities in Denver, CO. As co-author of The Tangible Kingdom, and the accompanying Tangible Kingdom Primer, Hugh is an advocate for disoriented God seekers and loves to inspire and re-orient leaders around the mission of God. I was happy to write the foreword for his next book, AND…the Gathered & Scattered Church coming out through Zondervan/Leadership Network/Exponential in April.

Halter:

“The biggest hope is in the conversations that are going on. It used to be a fight to ask people to consider moving away from purely attractional forms of church, but a much greater percentage want to move forward. What’s most exciting is how the existing church is not only in the conversation, but is asking for help and now innovating some really cool movements of incarnational community.”

Bob Roberts

Bob Roberts has earned degrees from Baylor Univeristy, Southwestern Seminary, and Fuller Seminary. He planted Northwood Church in 1985 that has since planted 140 churches in the United States. He has written for various periodicals and journals both faith based and secular international relations journals. He works with the United Nations and various State Departments of various governments around the world doing humanitarian engagement projects. He frequently travels to seriously challenged nations to help with development, engagement, and reconciliation. Their focus is to engage the society with the Gospel through the use of ordinary disciples vocations. Bob has written 4 books: Transformation, Glocalization, The Multiplying Church, and recently Realtime Connections: Linking Your Job with God’s Global Work. Bob speaks around the world on globalization, faith, church planting, engagement, and a variety of global affairs issues. He is married to his wife of 30 years Nikki, they have 2 children, Ben and Jill, a daughter-in-law Ashley, and an exchange student they consider their own – Ti.

Roberts:

“The motivation to be missional is good. The context of narrowing it just to the US, or traditional “missions” is dying. A new conversation is emerging that’s global, but I don’t think we get that in the US. My hope is that we learn to speak and live globally in the global era and missional is global incarnation…”

a missional theology of work

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Christianity, culture, incarnational, kingdom of God, missional, missional living, sent, theology, work
• Date: Feb 11,2010

On Monday, I posted Jonathan Dodson’s thoughts re: the “mission” of work:

We can’t plant a missional churches that don’t address work. Most people spend the lion’s share of their time in their field of work. That field of work is not only a mission field, but it is a city field. It is an urban domain.

As I was going through my RSS reader, I found a few other helpful things related to this very important issue.

The first comes from Dorothy Sayers’s essay, “Why Work?” in Creed or Chaos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949):

The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.

. . . Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade—not outside of it. The Apostles complained rightly when they said it was not meant they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their vocation was to preach the word. But the person whose vocation it is to prepare the meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not meant for us to leave the service of our tables to preach the word.

The official Church wastes time and energy, and moreover, commits sacrilege, in demanding that secular workers should neglect their proper vocation in order to do Christian work—by which she means ecclesiastical work. The only Christian work is good work well done. Let the Church see to it that the workers are Christian people and do their work well, as to God: then all the work will be Christian work, whether it is Church embroidery or sewage-farming.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

The second comes from Leadership Journal managing editor and Skyebox blogger Skye Jethani, including a quote from Martin Luther:

It seems like people in the church are often celebrated for what they do within the church or through the church or for the church, but we offer little attention or affirmation for the labor done outside the institutional structures of the church. The message we subtly communicate is that the 2 or 4 percent of a person’s time spent engaged in activities related to the church are what matter to God–they “count”–but the 95+ percent of the time they spend at work, with family, preparing meals, changing diapers, or mowing the lawn don’t really matter to God unless they incorporate church/missionary actions into those times.

Here’s a…quote…from Martin Luther, that unpacks a more accurate understanding of work and vocation:

“Therefore I advise no one to enter any religious order or the priesthood, indeed, I advise everyone against it – unless he is forearmed with this knowledge and understands that the works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they may be, do not differ one whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about her household tasks, but that all works are measured before God by faith alone.”

– Martin Luther, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520)

And finally, a quote from Dallas Willard and his book, The Spirit of Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Live (1990):

Holy people must stop going into ‘church work’ as their natural course of action and take up holy orders in farming, industry, law, education, banking, and journalism with the same zeal previously given to evangelism or to pastoral and missionary work.

…The truth of calling means that for followers of Christ, “everyone, everywhere, and in everything” lives the whole of life as a response to God’s call. Yet, this holistic character of calling has often been distorted to become a form of dualism that elevates the spiritual at the expense of the secular.

…Ponder for example, the fallacy of the contemporary Protestant term “full-time Christian service” – as if those not working for churches or Christian organizations are only part-time in the service of Christ. For another thing, Protestant confusion about calling has led to a “Protestant distortion” that is even worse. This is a form of dualism in a secular direction that not only elevates the secular at the expense of the spiritual, but also cuts it off from the spiritual altogether.

(HT: Skye Jethani)

transitioning to missional

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: Bible, Christianity, church, community, discipleship, incarnational, Jesus, leadership, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, social justice, theology
• Date: Feb 10,2010

Brent Thomas, lead pastor of Church of the Cross in Phoenix, has posted on some of his reflections on Verge, a conference that focused in on gospel-centered missional community.

Thomas says in his post, “Missional Communites Are Great And All, But Now What?! Transitioning to Missional”:

One of the take-aways for me from this conference was that there is a tremendous outpouring of frustration with the American church and its consumeristic mindset and business-like models. There is also a growing consensus that missional community rather than programs might be one of the answers to this growing frustration.

But Thomas knows that transitioning to missional will be extremely difficult for many pastors:

While much of this is refreshing and even exciting, it may in fact be frustrating for a good many pastors. I spoke with several pastors who attended the conference who actually left the conference quite frustrated because the churches to which they were returning were so far away from this model. The obvious, overwhelming and unclear question here for many pastors is how to get from here to there: how do you transition a traditional, American program-driven church to missional?

Thomas gives us 8 things to consider when transitioning to “missional”:

1. Go slow
2. Be theological/scriptural
3. Clearly define your terms
4. Lead by example
5. Don’t neglect community
6. Center each community around a tangible mission with the clear end-goal of making disciples
7. Celebrate successes/share stories
8. Focus on Jesus

Read Thomas’ entire post here to see how he fleshes out these points.

the mission of work

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: art, books, Christianity, church, community, culture, education, family, Gospel, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, parenting, technology, theology, urban, work
• Date: Feb 8,2010

Last week, I posted on Bob Roberts’ new book, Realtime Connections: Linking Your Job With God’s Global Work and said:

I can’t think of a more helpful book when many are preaching, writing, talking about what a theology of work looks like. Connecting our work to God’s glocal agenda is a must and this book will no doubt help us to that end.

Recently, Jonathan Dodson, lead pastor of Austin City Life in Austin, TX, also wrote on the issue of the mission of work:

We can’t plant a missional churches that don’t address work. Most people spend the lion’s share of their time in their field of work. That field of work is not only a mission field, but it is a city field. It is an urban domain.

Cities are comprised of anywhere from 5-10 city domains: Government, Arts, Education, Social Services, Health Services, Technology, Family, etc. Missional Churches must do the hard work of helping their people see their vocation in urban domains in terms of missional calling, not merely for evangelism but for whole gospel living.

Here are a list of resources that Dodson recommends to help in this endeavor:

Websites

* Redeemer’s Faith & Work Center
* Mockler Center for Work and Faith

Books

* R. Paul Stevens: The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work, and Ministry from a Biblical Perspective
* Tetsunao Yamamori and Kenneth A. Eldred: On Kingdom Business: Transforming Missions Through Entrepreneurial Strategies
* Tim Chester: Busy Christian’s Guide to Busyness
* Robert Banks: Redeeming the Routines: Bringing Theology to Life

I would add one more to the mix:

Wayne Grudem: Business for the Glory of God: The Bible’s Teaching on the Moral Goodness of Business