We Have Squandered the Bounty of the Lord

["Christ and the Rich Young Ruler" by Heinrich Hofman (1824-1911), slightly altered]

Within the past few years, and in the past few months especially, the Lord has been gracious to show me how I’ve labored diligently to squander the bounty that He has undeservedly blessed me with. I have consistently wasted and misspent and misused and blown the wealth that I have been given on trivial, frivolous idols of materialism and worldliness.

I have spent my life gathering heaps and tons of worthless scrap to myself while billions of spiritually needy people about me are perishing for want of the gospel of God’s grace in Christ. I have been guilty of living a life of relative ease and luxury while ignoring those who, due to various circumstances, find themselves wallowing about in the mire of poverty, desperation, and the blackness of spiritual darkness.

The Lord has shown me, through His Word and the ministry of His indwelling Holy Spirit, that I have been a fool for this world and its seductive allures. During this time of instruction, He has revealed my sin to me in a merciful and gracious manner at a time when all of my self-centered actions and thoughts and desires deserved nothing but His harsh and righteous judgment. What a loving and gentle and caring Father it is that we serve who ministers to us even in our rebellion against Him. Such infinite and penetrating love is beyond our capacity to understand.

During the course of my life, I have learned the most about myself and about my God during times of great suffering and trial. This circumstance is no different. As His purposes in my life have unfolded over the past two-plus years, I have experienced great anguish and loss. The Lord has ordered the circumstances of my life in such a way as to show me the riches and utter sufficiency of the fullness of His grace while at the same time working to excise the sinister materialism that had conquered me on various levels. As a result, I now have more of Christ and less of this world in my life and heart and mind and spirit. I have less things, but more of His Spirit. I am poorer in the eyes of the world, but far richer in Christ.

Long ago, a spirit of covetousness invaded and effectively subdued the Christian Church in America. (Judging by the incident with Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11, it appears as if this sin has always menaced the Church of God to greater or lesser degrees at various times.) The god of this world (2 Cor. 4:4) and his demonic hordes revel in and rejoice over the lethargic attitude and relative inaction of the people of God in this the wealthiest nation in the history of this world. For far too long, I have bought into a thoroughly Americanized and crippled Christian faith that is drenched in and weighed down by consumerism. I confess that, for far too long, I have been part of the problem. By God’s grace I pray to be a part of the solution.

I was recently reading something that was very convicting and wanted to share it with my readers. The following excerpts are from John Piper’s Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry (Nashville, TN: 2002):

We will never persuade our people that the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:13-21) applies to them unless we apply it to ourselves. God called the man a fool because, when his fields produced a surplus, he built bigger barns and took his ease.

What should he have done with the God-given surplus? Verse 33 answers: “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy.” Instead of increasing his own ease and security, he should have used his extra possessions to alleviate suffering.

“Fool” is what God calls a person who uses his excess money to increase his own comforts. And Luke adds, “So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God” (v. 21)….

The person who thinks the money he makes is meant mainly to increase his own comforts on earth is a fool, Jesus says. Wise people know that all their money belongs to God and should be used to show that God, and not money, is their treasure, their comfort, their joy, and their security….

God does not prosper a man’s business so that man can move from a Buick to a BMW. God prospers a man’s business so that hundreds of unreached peoples can be reached with the gospel. He prospers a business so that 20 percent of the world’s population can move a step back from the precipice of starvation.

Brothers, many of our people have barely begun to grasp this. Too many are more shaped by the consumer culture than by the economics of Christ. They still operate on the simple rule: If you earned it, you deserve it. It’s yours; use it for your own material comfort.

They have been taken in by the half-truth that says we glorify God with money by enjoying thankfully all luxuries He enables us to buy. The true half is this: we should give thanks for every good thing God gives us. That does glorify Him. The false half is the subtle implication that God can be glorified in this way by every decent purchase we make.

If this were true, Jesus would not say, “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy” (Luke 12:33). He would not say, “Do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink” (Luke 12:29). John the Baptist would not have said, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none” (Luke 3:11). The Son of Man would not have walked around with no place to lay His head (Luke 9:58). And Zacchaeus would not have given half of his goods to the poor (Luke 19:8).

God is not glorified when we keep for ourselves (no matter how thankfully) what we ought to be using to alleviate the misery of unevangelized and uneducated and unhoused and unfed millions.

The evidence that many of our people are not rich toward God is how little they give and how much they own. Over the years God has prospered them. And by an almost irresistible law of consumer culture, they have bought bigger (and more) houses, newer (and more) cars, fancier (and more) clothes, and all manner of trinkets and gadgets and containers and devices and equipment to make life more fun.

Very few of our people have said to themselves: we will live at a level of joyful, wartime simplicity and use the rest of what we earn to alleviate misery. But surely this is what Jesus wants. I do not see how we can read the New Testament, then look at two billion unevangelized people, and still build another barn for ourselves. We can only justify the exorbitance of our lifestyle by ignoring the lostness of the unreached and the misery of the poor….

Ephesians 4:28 says, “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” So there are three levels of how to live with things: (1) you can steal to get, (2) or you can work to get, (3) or you can work to get in order to give.

Many of us live on level two. Almost all of the forces of our culture urge us to live on level two. But the Bible is unrelenting in pushing us to level three….

You will have to make clear to the business people in your congregation that you are not against multimillion-dollar industries. Nor are you necessarily against their six-digit salaries. The problem arises when they endorse the professional status quo that says a six-digit salary should have a six-digit lifestyle. It shouldn’t. Perhaps it should have a $40,000 lifestyle and support two families on a new mission field.

The problem is not with earning a lot. The problem is the constant accumulation of luxuries that are soon felt to be needs (pp. 167-72, emphasis in bold added).

Luke 12:13 (ESV) Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him,‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Luke 18:18 And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 19 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.’” 21 And he said, “All these I have kept from my youth.”22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 23 But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. 24 Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! 25 For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

Hold the Core, Not the Forms

The Christian Church in America is dying and has been dying for decades now. It is my conviction that one of the main factors in the descent of the Church into side-show irrelevance is that older generations of Christians have failed to adapt to the changing landscape of our culture. Frequently, I have seen elder brothers and sisters in Christ fighting just as hard (or even harder!) for their temporal religious forms and traditions as they do for the eternal and unchanging truth of the Gospel itself. Many appear to care more about the propagation of their religious habits than with the propagation of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. For some, it appears that it is more important that one look “right” in church, dress “right” in church, act “right,” speak “right,” play the “right” music, and worship in the “right” way than if one truly has a soft heart toward our Lord and serves others in a self-sacrificial way.

The confusion of nineteenth and twentieth-century American cultural forms with the core of the Christian faith has resulted in a movement that has lost its breath and voice in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century.

The Church has lost its breath in the sense that it doesn’t seem able to marshal any significant effort to impact the culture for Christ. Many churches seem like they are conserving the little bit of Holy Spirit-energy they have left so that they can pour it back into their own congregations. The Church appears utterly exhausted from the religious and cultural wars of the later-twentieth century that were fought over issues that are not central to the spread of the Gospel and the multiplication of disciples of Jesus.

The Church has lost its voice in the sense that it no longer is able to speak intelligently, or even understandably, to the surrounding culture. For so long, conservative evangelical and fundamental churches have been immersed in the safe bubble of their own suburban sub-subcultures. As a result of decades of such behavior, they have developed their own language and jargon that is not at all well understood outside of this bubble. Outsiders have a hard time understanding our religious language, which is sometimes rooted in Scripture, and sometimes not. This hinders and obscures the power of the Gospel. Christians erroneously take for granted that unbelievers have a basic understanding of even the simplest biblical terms and concepts. For the most part, many outsiders do not even share a common view of God and who or what He is, let alone a common understanding of what it means to be “born again” by the Spirit of such a God. The entirety of our faith must be explained patiently, lovingly, and graciously to those who live and move outside of the walls of our self-constructed fortresses of faith.

The Church needs to own its role in the paganization of American culture. Frequently, Christian leaders let loose on the culture itself with both rhetorical cannons, blaming it for its own demise. This is the equivalent of blaming a squirrel for climbing trees. What else would we expect unbelievers to do than to run away from God and His Word? Why do Christians get all huffy and self-righteous when they talk about the individual and corporate sins of our nation? Shouldn’t observed depravity motivate us to compassionate, missional living instead of to a nose-in-the-air moral superiority complex?

Much of this has happened because we have taken our eyes off of the ball: the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Church needs to focus on the core, not on the forms, of the faith.

The following quotation is from the recent book The Multiplying Church: The New Math for Starting New Churches by Bob Roberts, Jr. (Grand Rapids, Zondervan):

Jesus movements surge from the young…. The most important ministry and focus in our local churches must be our youth ministry. Those of us who are old enough and have gained enough credibility to lead the institutions, handle resources, and become voices in the faith community must not focus merely on building the church for our generation but on extending the church to future generations. That means we keep our core but release our language, music, and methods. Emerging churches must hold on to truth in their core, but communicate to and be shaped by emerging generations. Failing to do so is why the church has become empty around the world.

Old men and women play a crucial role in the future church; it isn’t to hold on to the forms, but to hold on to a personal Jesus movement in their hearts so that young people can say of old people, “Oh man, I want to know Jesus like they know Jesus.” It is not, “I want to do church like they do church.” The only way that will work is for old folks to pour themselves into young hearts and mentor and love them so much that they would die for them. What that happens, you become more concerned about our youth than you do your tight grip (pp. 36-7, emphasis in bold added).

Gospel-Based Repentance vs. Legalistic Repentance

The following excerpt is from Tim Keller and J. Allen Thompson’s Church Planter Manual (New York: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2002), 190:

Without an orientation to the gospel, the heart will repent out of fear of consequences and out of fear of rejection. “Obey or you will be rejected.” But the gospel leads you to repent because Jesus died for your sin, so you would not be rejected. In a sense, the gospel says, “How can you treat one like this who paid this cost so that you would not be rejected?” Legalistic remorse says, “I broke God’s rules,” while real repentance says, “I broke God’s heart.”

Legalistic repentance takes sin to Mt. Sinai, gospel repentance to Mt. Calvary. Legalistic repentance is convicted by punishment, gospel repentance becomes convicted by mercy. Repentance out of mere fear is really sorrow for the consequences of sin, sorrow over the danger of sin – it bends the will away from sin, but the heart still clings. But repentance out of conviction over mercy is really sorrow over sin, sorrow over the grievousness of sin – it melts the heart away from sin. It makes the sin itself disgusting to us, so it loses its attractive power over us. We say, “This disgusting thing is an affront to the one who died for me. I’m continuing to stab him with it!”

Look at how Paul calls people to live moral lives. “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say ‘no’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives” (Titus 2:11-12). Contrast this with how many sermons you have heard telling people to say “no” to immorality. Often the implicit or explicit reasons are: “It is against the Bible” or “it will hurt your self-esteem” or “it’s against our Christian principles” or “your sins will find you out; you’ll reap what you sow.” Often all of those things are true, but they are inadequate and secondary motives. Only the grace of God, the logic of the gospel will work. Paul says it “teaches” us to say no, it argues with us. The gospel tell you that the sin beneath your sins is that you have made something besides Christ the center of your life. You have concocted a self-salvation strategy based on something that you have decided is more important than Christ and more of a savior than he. The gospel tells you that your sin is always the result of disbelief that you are accepted in Christ alone.

The gospel creates the only kind of grief over sin which is clean and which does not crush. It says: “Look at Jesus dying for you! He won’t leave you or abandon you – how then can you respond as you are? He suffered so you wouldn’t do this thing! You are not living as though you are loved! As his child! It is not because he will abandon you that you should be holy, but because this is one who at inestimable cost to himself has said he won’t ever abandon you! How can you live in the very sin that he was ripped to pieces to deliver you from?” See the GRACE of God argument? It is the only argument which cannot be answered. This creates the only motivation that leads you to hate the sin without hating yourself. It is the only motivation that will bring sin to lose its attractive power over you.

How can this be? The sight of Christ dying for you is at once both the one thing in the world that most convicts you to be holy and yet most assures you that you are infallibly loved. If he died for you – that is the conviction. But if he died for you – that is the comfort.

Grace Church of Philly – An Introduction and Invitation

An introduction to Grace Church of Philly in University City and an invitation to be a part of our core group for the birth phase of our ministry, or perhaps even longer. Presentation available on SlideShare and YouTube.

What is the ‘Target Group’ of Grace Church of Philly?

What is the ‘Target Group’ of Grace Church of Philly?

 One of the most frequent questions I am asked about our new church planting endeavor in Philly is, “What is your target group.” Since, I am familiar with the philosophies of church planting and the abundant literature that gives impetus to that question, I know the kind of answer they are expecting. For instance, at Church Planting Village in an article on conflict in church planting, the following representative statement is made:

Each church plant has in mind a group of people they are trying to reach. This could be a cultural group, a socioeconomic group or an ethnic group, but there is a target group of people.[1]

Admittedly, my initial feeling is a bit of hesitation, knowing that I don’t have the answer they expect nor do I have the answer that would be supported by many church planting manuals.

University City in Philly comprises a diverse demographic age wise, educationally, socio-economically, racially and ethnically. If by the question of ‘target group,’ one means which of these groups we intend to share the gospel with, baptize, and teach, the answer is ‘everyone of those to whom the Lord opens the door of ministry.’ The ultimate target group for Grace Church of Philly is simply ‘people who need Jesus.’

Now don’t get me wrong! I do believe that gospel conversations flow more naturally through ‘homogeneous networks;’[2] however, though I do support homogeneity in evangelistic strategy, I reject homogeneity as a church planting strategy in a heterogeneous context.

We do believe that “the gospel is greater than ethnic boundaries, racial boundaries, economic boundaries, and cultural boundaries?”[3] We also believe that the church worship, fellowship, and ministry should and can reflect that greatness. 

We are moving into University City believing there are people there in need of the gospel and in whose hearts God is already at work. We have no assumption about who these people are or what target group they fit into.

We seek to love and show mercy on all whom the Lord brings across our path. We will love our ‘neighbors’ indiscriminately. We will minister to all in need. We will share the gospel freely and widely. We will cast the net widely and see whom God brings our way.

I hope and expect that when we look back, we will see that the Lord built a church that was beyond our expectations and that defied our strategy and planning.

Let me go back to the original question of who our target group is. I suggest, what I think is, a better set of questions: 1) “What are the many homogeneous networks that exist in your target area and what will be your evangelistic strategies to reach each of them, and 2) how will the experience of the gospel transcend the differences and reflect that transcendence in worship, fellowship, and ministry?”

 [2] Homogeneous networks are people joined to one another by (usually) several webs of common interests and mutually beneficial relationships. These networks are called homogeneous because their members have something important in common (such as mutual ancestors, marriage ties, common work, or common disabilities). They are to be distinguished from stratified networks in which the master-servant, employer-employee, or teacher-student relationship tends to predominate. The members of homogeneous networks are sufficiently alike to allow them to trust each other’s judgment. New ideas pass freely from one person to another. (http://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/03_1-4_PDFs/3_1Monsma.pdf)

[3] http://www.desertfather.com/2009/04/17/target-groups-are-for-wussies/

From Mission-Minded to Missional: A Necessary Stance for Urban Church Planting

When someone hears the word “missional,” if the word is at all familiar, there may well be a reflex which associates the word with one’s own experience. Such is the nature of words since we bring to the meaning of words our own understanding. For example, when someone asks me if I am a Calvinist, I can’t give a clear answer without first understanding how they have loaded the word with meaning. There are Calvinisms rather than Calvinism. In a similar vein when we hear discussions on contextualization what emerges often bears little likeness to contextualization as understood by missiologists. I have read articles and heard sermons on contextualization which left me puzzled and convinced that many opponents of contextualization, as they understand it, have never planted a heterogeneous church or have not engaged in extensive cross-cultural ministry. There are contextualizations rather than contextualization. This is especially true when one starts from the perspective that Calvinism and contextualization are bad and need to be avoided.  Sources are then cited and the worse representatives and distortions are employed to prove one’s point. These are only examples but these and similar issues have emerged and re-emerged and the various perspectives are often left talking past each other. Likewise, for some, “missional” sounds too new age or emergent or has been associated with compromise. There is something in “missional” for everyone to dislike. There are many definitions, examples, and aberrations of missional. Yet we must not lose sight of what is valid and valuable for ministry.

What I hope to accomplish in this brief article is a simple reflection on the validity of churches and Christians examining their stance regarding those who are outside the church and who are in desperate need of an encounter with followers of Jesus Christ. Many churches are mission-minded. They love missions. They support missionaries. They even allow missionaries to plant churches that reflect the culture and community in which missionaries live. Yet often they remain locked in a cultural time-warp, fight battles that were won or lost long ago, debate issues that matter little or matter only to them and their regional or relational sub-culture, and ignore the enormous changes in our society and the challenges we face in reaching people for Christ with the gospel.

The book Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Ed. Darrell L. Guder) has become a standard reference for beginning to explore what it means for the church to be missional and is a good starting point for those to this issue. To understand what it means to be missional, we must distinguish between different phases in our collective history. Some of us still remember the days when Christian churches were dominant in North America, at the center of society so to speak, places of influence, and when the majority of people to whom the church spoke had elements of a Christian worldview. People of other faiths were known mostly at a distance.  Other religions were less visible. We often refer to this as Christendom where people often spoke, rightly or wrongly, of a Christian nation. Times have changed. We now live in another phase, in another place occupied by competing worldviews. Christianity now competes among other faiths for a place in our society. If Christianity was one time at the center of society it now occupies the fringes and has been marginalized. Immigration has changed our demographics. The people we meet every day are less biblically aware and have had little exposure to what it means to be truly Christian. They have not been raised in a “Christian” environment and Christianity is simply one way among many.

Christians themselves must bear at least some of the responsibility for the present situation. Many churches fled the cities over the last few decades to find suburban refuge. In leaving the cities they left places of influence. Many of the decisions and direction of our society take place in cities where we find institutions of higher learning and government influencing culture through ideas and through legislation. As churches fled the cities Christian influence waned. Churches built large and impressive suburban ministries. These ministries were fed by a steady stream of Christians moving into the suburbs. Most churches grew from adding displaced Christians and most evangelism was done by bringing in evangelists for special meetings or by impersonal confrontation. Many churches started Christian schools and those who could afford it sought to protect their children from the ungodly influences in public schools. The Christian Right was seen as a tool of a political party and many churches all-too-quickly jumped on political bandwagons which further estranged them from the poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden.

Separatism became the hallmark of many churches which created an enclave mentality cutting off believers from contact with outsiders.  Lists of regulations were established similar to what we find in Colossians -“Do not handle. Do not taste. Do not touch” (2:21). Churches which were not supposed to be “of the world” were no longer truly “in the world.” Christian sub-cultures were created which in the end removed salt and light from society. Churches became havens of rest for Christians alienated from their communities and relatively untroubled by the turmoil of life outside. The building became the church and the center of activity while the real church, the people of God, grew comfortable and passive in the institutions that now existed primarily for the benefit of those who were already believers. These churches, to their credit, often gave heavily to foreign missions and were known as mission-minded churches. But “mission became only one of the many programs of the church” (Missional Church, p. 6). Churches saw themselves as sending churches rather than seeing the church as sent into the world.

The present decline of Christian influence and a fortress mentality cannot be reversed overnight. There is no utopian redemption for our cities. There is no reversal for the moral decay and corruption of our society apart from divine intervention.  But there is redemption and transformation of lives through the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is hope for the hopeless, help for the helpless. Believers can be salt and light in government, in institutions of higher learning, in public schools, and in community organizations. God’s answer for the sins and ills of our society is the gospel of grace. Churches know this but without contact with the world, without returning to the dense and diverse populations of our cities, there is little reason to hope for substantive change.

Christians, churches, and para-church organizations can continue to make resolutions which are mostly defensive in nature, often out-of-touch with reality, and filled with Christian jargon or they can commit to a missional engagement as the sent people of God in taking the gospel to those presently outside our reach.  They can continue to fear contamination by association with outsiders or begin to build redemptive relationships with outsiders. They can continue to make extra-biblical lists of how faithful Christians should look, act, and dress or they can humbly depend on the Holy Spirit to transform lives and change practices. They can continue to avoid addressing social injustices and societal problems or they can raise a prophetic voice against evil in its variegated forms and seek to alleviate human suffering as a legitimate implication of transformative gospel ministry. They can continue to fight among themselves for the inconsequential and irresolvable or they can turn their weapons of warfare to pull down enemy strongholds.  They can continue to use their resources mostly to sustain their institutions and maintain the status quo or they can invest in planting new churches to reconquer cities enveloped in darkness.

Many churches will not be able to make the transition from being merely mission-minded, that is, caring about missions, to becoming radically missional.  And thankfully God is His good pleasure will deign to use them in His own way for His glory. Sadly, some of these churches will continue their decline as they remain unable or unwilling to engage the new realities of our day; some will continue to receive a stream or trickle of new members who were Christianized elsewhere and added to membership rolls; hopefully some might invest in planting churches, particularly in urban areas, which remain faithful to Scriptures and effective in blending cross-cultural ministry and counter-cultural living. We are living in unusual and challenging times in uncharted territory. Do we remain faithful, few, and fixed in place or do we faithfully go to Jesus who stands outside the camp (Heb. 13:13)? We may be safe behind the walls we construct but need to peer over the edges and see where Jesus is, outside with the outsiders, and join him there.

Simple Church Model

A revised and expanded PowerPoint slideshow by Grace Church of Philly that relates our core values and practical discipleship commitments as a Christian community in Philadelphia can be viewed in three separate locations here: YouTube, authorSTREAM, and SlideShare.

Why Plant New Churches?

Why plant new churches? 

This question is commonly asked by people inside and outside of the Christian faith. There are many misconceptions about church planting and the need to engage in this activity. 

The following quotations from Tim Keller and J. Allen Thompson’s Church Planter Manual may clarify the absolute necessity of planting new churches. 

Why plant new churches? Because it is really the only way of fully obeying the Great Commission:

Virtually all the great evangelistic challenges of the New Testament are basically calls to plant churches, not simply to share the faith. The “Great Commission” (Matt. 28:18-20) is not just a call to “make disciples” but to “baptize.” In Acts and elsewhere, it is clear that baptism means incorporation into a worshipping community with accountability and boundaries (cf. Acts 2:41-47). 

The only way to truly be sure you are creating permanent new Christians is to plant new churches. Why? Much traditional evangelism aims to get a “decision” for Christ. Experience, however, shows us that many of these decisions disappear and never result in changed lives. Why? Many (most?) decisions are not really conversions, but only the beginning of a journey of seeking God. Only a person who is being evangelized in the context of an on-going worshipping and shepherding community can be sure of finally coming home into vital, saving faith (p. 29).

If Keller and Thompson are correct, and I suspect that they are, the church has been missing this point on a grand scale over the last several decades, having been myopically focused in a big way on the “conversion point” rather than with a vibrant discipleship that is best worked out in the context of new church plants. 

Why plant new churches? Because it is the best way to reach the younger generations.

Younger adults are disproportionately found in new congregations. Why? The traditions of older churches reflect the sensibilities of leaders from the older generations who have the influence and money to control the life of the church (p. 30).

Why plant new churches? Because it is the best way to reach people who want little to do with existing churches.

Dozens of studies confirm that the average new church gains most of its new members (60% to 80%) from the ranks of people who are not attending any worshipping body, while churches over 10 to 15 years of age gain 80% to 90% of new members by transfer from other congregations. This means that the average new congregation will bring 6 to 8 times more new people into the life of the Body of Christ than an older congregation of the same size.

Why? As a congregation ages, powerful internal institutional pressures lead it to allocate most of its resources and energy toward the concerns of its members and constituents, rather than toward those outside its walls…. New churches, of necessity, are forced to focus far more of their energies on the needs of their non-members and become much more sensitive to the sensibilities of non-believers. There is also a cumulative effect. In the first two years of our Christian walk, we have far more close, face-to-face relationships with non-Christians than we do later. Thus new Christians attract non-believers to services 5 to 10 times more than a long-time Christian. New believers beget new believers (p. 30, emphasis added).

Why plant new churches? Because it is the best, and possibly the only way, to effectively reach our postmodern culture today.

[In Acts 2:40] Peter urges his hearers to “save themselves from this corrupt generation.” A generation is a whole culture. Today there are lots of recognition that each generation has its own common characteristics of mind, thinking and behavior. There is the “depression generation” and the “Baby Boomers” and “Generation X” – each have their own mindset. Peter recognizes that his hearers are not just individual sinners, but that they participate in the whole mindset and worldview of their culture and generation (p. 33).

Given the radically different worldview between a modernist pastor and a postmodern believer/seeker, it is unlikely that much progress can be made in the context of holistic evangelism and discipleship. As a matter of fact, the modernist pastor’s worldview may actually drive the postmodern further away from Christ and the church by his very outlook and method of argumentation. 

I am not making the claim that a modernist pastor cannot lead someone to Christ and disciple them in the faith. The Holy Spirit and His power transcend all worldviews and cultural barriers. But surely, the most effective way to reach any culture is to enter into it, contextualizing the faith so that the hearers are not barred from entering into the gospel story because of the use of culturally inappropriate methods of evangelism and doing church. 

Reference:

Timothy J. Keller and J. Allen Thompson. Church Planter Manual. New York: Redeemer Church Planting Center, 2002.

Holy Fear and Awe

Last Saturday night I preached a message on missions at a father and son banquet at a nearby church. When I finished and sat down, a familiar dread settled in upon my heart and soul. It is extremely difficult to describe this dread, but I feel it important to attempt to do just this and record this sense of fearful awe for further meditation and study. 

This dread is not something that is unhealthy or wrong. It is a dread grounded in the eternal majesty of God. And it is a dread that recognizes exactly what I am (and am not) in the face of such fiery Perfection and raw Power. It is a recognition of powerlessness in the face of Omnipotence. It is a Spirit-prompted acknowledgement of finiteness in the presence of an awful Infiniteness. 

The closest thing I have ever read that accurately describes this feeling is what C. S. Lewis (1940) calls “the experience of the Numinous” in The Problem of Pain:

Those who have not met this term may be introduced to it by the following device. Suppose you were told there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told, ‘There is a ghost in the next room,’ and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is ‘uncanny’ rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny, one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply, ‘There is a mighty spirit in the room,’ and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking – a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it – an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare’s words, ‘Under it my genius is rebuked.’ This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as the Numinous” (pp. 5-6). 

Perhaps it is that I feel closest to the triune God when I have just preached from His Word. Perhaps it is this awareness of my proximity to Him Who is Omnipresent that prompts my fearful awe and a desire to lay flat on my face upon the ground in His presence. 

After I preach a message from God’s Word before others, upon departing the pulpit and reclaiming my seat with the congregation, I am always prompted by the Spirit to hang my head in my hands and contemplate what I have just done. I have just handled the sword of the Spirit in the company of others (Eph. 6:17). This is not something to be done carelessly or frivolously. “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12, ESV). It is no dead and dusty book that I have handled. It is a weighty, heady, active, fiery, living sledgehammer of a tome (Jer. 23:29) that is bristling and bursting with the words of ultimate truth and eternal life. 

Whenever I am asked to preach or teach God’s Word, I undertake the task with great seriousness and solemnity. I do this with full apprehension of the teaching of the Holy Spirit through our Lord’s brother James: “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (3:1). 

This judgment speaks not of condemnation or punishment for sin, for we know that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). However, we do know that Christians will be judged in some fashion when we stand before the judgment seat of God (Romans 14:10) so that “each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Cor. 5:10). This judgment occurs when we, as Christians, depart our earthly bodies (or “tents” in 2 Cor. 5:1) in death and go to be “home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). It is in the presence of the Almighty Creator and Jesus Christ that we will receive our due. “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience” (2 Cor. 5:11). 

Perhaps it is that this dread originates in my conscience. Only I and the Lord know the horrific sins that I have committed in this lifetime. It is only He who knows me completely and fully. It is only He who knows the secrets of my wicked heart. We both know how utterly inept and disqualified I am from preaching His Word before others.

John Piper (2002) once said:

I was amazed once to hear a seminary graduate say how adequate he felt for the ministry after his years of schooling. This was supposed to be a compliment to the school. The reason this amazed me is that the greatest theologian and missionary and pastor who ever lived cried out, “Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Cor. 2:16). Not because he was a bungler, but because the awful calling of emitting the fragrance of eternal life for some and eternal death for others was a weight he could scarcely bear. A pastor who feels competent in himself to produce eternal fruit – which is the only kind that matters – knows neither God nor himself. A pastor who does not know the rhythm of desperation and deliverance must have his sights only on what man can achieve. But brothers, the proper goals of the life of a pastor are unquestionably beyond our reach. The changes we long for in the hearts of our people can happen only by a sovereign work of grace (p. 54).  

A desperate acknowledgement of my utter dependence upon a fearful and holy God. Perhaps this comes close to describing how I feel after preaching the Word. Perhaps I should feel this way more often, even when I am not preaching. 

Hebrews 12:28 (NLT) Since we are receiving a Kingdom that is unshakable, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe. 

References:

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001, reprint from 1940). 

John Piper, Brothers, We are not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 2002).

On Holistic Ministry

I’ve written previously on the imbalance in the ministry philosophy of churches on the right and on the left. Conservative evangelical and fundamental churches on the right have the saving gospel message, but are largely ineffective in reaching our culture because they lack in genuine, Christ-like, unconditional love.

Liberal mainline churches on the left do not preach the gospel message and the need for conversion, but are much more active in reaching out in love to the culture around them. However, because their social ministries are not properly rooted in and performed alongside the gospel of grace, they lack the power of the Holy Spirit. Whatever change is wrought through such ministries is fleeting and ephemeral. Taking an eternal view, such ministries merely make the earth a better place for souls to go to hell from.

The great need of our day is for the body of Christ to rid itself of the inchoate faith of the right and the biblically-uninformed, anthropocentric faith of the left and embrace a full-bodied, biblically-faithful, socially conscious, holistic Christian faith that can radically impact our post-Church society for Jesus Christ.

Following are some quotes from urban church planter, philosopher, and theologian Tim Keller (2002) on holistic ministry:

Have a counter-intuitive holistic ministry. Most people have a very powerful desire (need?) to place a church somewhere on an ideological spectrum from “Liberal/Left wing” to “Conservative/Right wing.” There is nothing more crucial than to use the gospel in the life of our church to defy such stereotypes and to (thus) become impossible to categorize. On the one hand, the gospel of Christ and justification-by-faith brings deep, powerful psychological changes. Though I am sinful, I am accepted through Christ. This discovery converts people, so they sing, “My chains fell off, my heart was free; I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.” On the other hand, the gospel of the cross and the kingdom brings deep powerful social changes. It defies the values of the world – power, status, recognition and wealth. The gospel is triumph through weakness, wealth through poverty, power through service. This changes our attitude toward the poor and toward our own status, wealth and careers.

Together, these two sides of the gospel’s influence create a unique kind of church. So many fundamentalist churches tend to be legalistic in their approach, even if they technically believe in justification by faith! Therefore, though they stress evangelism, they are not all that attractive or effective. Legalism does not produce reciprocal love for those without faith. On the other hand, so many liberal churches, though they stress social justice, are not all that effective at it. Their people’s lives are not electrified by conversion. They do not have deep experiences that humble them and change the way they look at the poor. Therefore, a gospel-centered church should have a social justice emphasis and effectiveness that greatly exceeds the liberal churches. Meanwhile, it should have an evangelistic fervor that greatly exceeds the ordinary fundamentalist churches. This gospel-driven, counter-intuitive combination of zeal can only come through teaching, prayer and repentance.

Jesus considered a concern for the poor to be a mark of his presence (Matt. 11:5). Increasingly, in a globalized world, we will win neither the elites nor the masses unless we embody the gospel in strong ministry to people with economic and material needs as well as spiritual. “The renewal of Christ’s salvation ultimately includes a renewed universe…there is no part of our existence that is untouched by His blessing. Christ’s miracles were miracles of the Kingdom, performed as signs of what the Kingdom means…His blessing was pronounced upon the poor, the afflicted, the burdened and heavy-laden who came to Him and believed in Him. The miraculous signs that attested Jesus’ deity and authenticated the witness of those who transmitted the gospel to the church is not continued, for their purpose was fulfilled. But the pattern of the kingdom that was revealed through those signs must continue in the church…Kingdom evangelism is therefore holistic as it transmits by word and deed the promise of Christ for the body and soul as well as the demand of Christ for body and soul” (Edmund P. Clowney, in The Pastor Evangelist)….

Jesus says that a sign of the gospel is faith. Matthew 5:4-7 says, If you “only greet your brother, what do ye more than others?” Since the Jewish greeting was Shalom! and an embrace, Jesus is saying much. We must show our uniqueness by following our Lord who always embraced the moral and spiritual outsider. Matt. 21:31 – “The prostitute and the tax collectors are entering the Kingdom of God before you.” If you understand the gospel of grace, you treat the other: A) With respect. Grace means the non-believer may be a better person. B) With courage. Grace means the non-believer’s possible rejection of us is not so fearsome. C) With hope. Grace means you are a miracle and no one is beyond hope. No other worldview can produce this combination of humility and confidence (pp. 105-106).  

Reference

Keller, Timothy J. and J. Allen Thompson, Church Planter Manual, New York: Redeemer Church Planting Center, 2002.