Tuesday, December 4, 2012

What do I do wih my friend Joe?



In his book, Center Church, Tim Keller (borrowing from D.A. Carson) wrote about the important work we must do to make the truth of the Gospel clear to people who are far from God and disconnected from the language, life and worldview of God’s people.   He argues that the Gospel, while it is universally true and timeless, must be contextualized for different people in different cultures so that they will be able to understand it and respond.  The New Testament writers themselves did the same thing.  Keller identifies six motivations to use when appealing to non-Christians to believe the gospel:
  1. Sometimes the appeal is to come to God out of fear of judgment and death.  (Hebrews 2:14-18)
  2. Sometimes the appeal is to come to God out of a desire for release from the burdens of guilt and shame.  (Galatians 3:10-12)
  3. Sometimes the appeal is to come to God out of appreciation for the “attractiveness of truth.” (I Corinthians 1:18)
  4. Sometimes the appeal is to come to God to satisfy unfulfilled existential longings. (John 4)
  5. Sometimes the appeal is to come to God for help with a problem.  (Matthew 9:20-21, 27, Mark 2:1-12, Luke 17:11-19)
  6. Lastly, the appeal is to come to God simply out of a desire to be loved.  (Keller, 3024-3055)
Clearly the Gospel of salvation is completely by grace alone through faith alone.  Being faithful in contextualizing the Gospel is never about changing it or altering that core truth.  However, because we are faithful to the Gospel and the call of Jesus on our lives, we must be diligent and dedicated in the work of contextualizing the Gospel for those who have not heard it, have not understood it or who have yet to receive it.

Let me break it down even more.  Take my friend (to protect the innocent, I will call him Joe).  Joe had a short and very dysfunctional church experience as a child and was sure to run from it as fast as he could when he was an adult.  Now, as a husband and father, he is searching spiritually for the first time in years.  We have talked a number of times about spiritual subjects and he has even begun to come to church.  However, there are distinctive obstacles for Joe to connect with the Gospel as well as with other Christian people.  His understanding and the biblical understanding about basic words like salvation, confession, repentance, forgiveness, obedience, righteousness, holiness, etc. are totally different.  Therefore, every time he reads them or hears them discussed there is a disconnect between the truth and his caricature of the truth.  His idea of who God is, how He relates to humans and what He expects from us is pretty skewed.

What is God calling me to do with Joe?  Give up? No!  Hope he just figures it out on his own?  I don’t think so!  Throw out all the parts of the Gospel that will be difficult for Joe to embrace like surrender or dying to ourselves?  Absolutely not!  I could go on.

I believe God has called me to . . .
  • enter into a relationship with Joe whereby my life can best represent the transforming reality and good news of Jesus Christ. 
  • really listen to Joe’s story and sympathize with his hurt so that I can gain credibility and help him get past his distorted images of God, the Bible and the Gospel.
  • articulate the truth of the Gospel in such a way that Joe can hear it, grasp it and respond accordingly.  
What do you think about all this?  What is God calling you to do with the Joe’s in your life?

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Connecting beyond our walls . . .



About 30 years ago H. Richard Niebuhr wrote a critical book about a the necessary Christian approach to mission and ministry in the wider culture.  The book was called Christ and Culture.  In it he lays out five basic approaches:

  1. Christ against culture:  a withdrawal model of removing oneself from the culture into the community of the church.
  2. Christ of culture:  an accommodationist model that recognizes God at work in the culture and looks for ways to affirm this.
  3. Christ above culture:  a synthetic model that advocates supplementing and building on the good in the culture with Christ.
  4. Christ and culture in paradox:  a dualistic model that views Christians as citizens of two different realms, one sacred and one secular.
  5. Christ transforming culture:  a conversionist model that seeks to transform every part of culture with Christ.

Here is an illustration taken from Tim Keller’s book Center Church that illustrates how Neibuhr’s different approaches make sense:

Think of a particular cultural product – say, a computer.  The “Christ against culture” person may refuse to use it because it undermines human community.  The “Christ of culture” person will adopt it fully, assured that it is something God has brought about.  The “Christ above culture” person will adopt it but only use it for the purposes of evangelism and Christian teaching.  The “Christ and culture paradox” person will use the computer with some wariness and take great care not to indulge too deeply.  Finally, the “Christ transforming culture” person will study the effects of computers on human relationships, communities, and character and then develop particular ways to use computers that do not undermine but instead support human flourishing as the Bible defines it (Keller, 5473-5480)

I find this topic to be very fascinating and critical to our approach to mission and ministry.  Jesus made the call very simple.  The Great Commission is to “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:18-19).  In that spirit, the Great Commandment is to “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37-39).

While both of those pieces are quite simple and support one another, there is no shortage of debate about what all the different implications mean and where we should draw the line. 

As a Christian are there certain things I cannot or should not do or places I should not go to connect with people far from God?  Are certain clothes, hairstyles, language, artistic expressions, entertainment choices, political positions, etc. that must be avoided?  How should I live as a teacher, a doctor, a businessman, a plant worker, etc. who follows Jesus?  What contribution can and should I be making as a Christian in my profession, neighborhood or city?   

Which of the different Neibuhr approaches make the most sense to you?  How should it affect your personal approach to the culture you live in?  How should it affect the church’s mission and ministry that you are a part of?

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

For Christians, what does unity look like?



We in the Christian world talk an awful lot about unity.  In fact, I don’t know of any Christian leader who doesn’t consider it important for Christians to come together in Christ to worship, serve and proclaim the Good News of Jesus together as one.  The issue before us, it seems to me, is to decide what that unity is based on and what it’s for.

In Ephesians 2 Paul made clear that Jesus died to bring all people together, especially the Jews and Gentiles who were separated from one another and who were in many ways against one another.  Paul says this:

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” – Ephesians 2:13

In Jesus no one needs to be far off anymore, excluded from God and the salvation He offers us.

“His purpose was to “create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” – Ephesians 2:15-16

Jesus didn’t just come to make us right with God.  He came to also make us right with each other.  If God’s salvation is real it makes us right with God, it reconciles us with each other and it restores our self-image into one that is in line with the image of Jesus.

“For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.  So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.  In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” – Ephesians 2:18-22

We have one Spirit.  We have the same Spirit.  Now we are members of one family.  We are collectively and individually a temple of the one God, Jesus Christ.

So, if this is what unity is to be like according to Paul, what kinds of things does that mean for us?  Here are a few suggestions I have:

  1. No one can or should ever be seen as unworthy of Jesus or too far gone to matter.  If they are unworthy, so are we.  God loves everyone and Jesus died to offer new life to all of us.
  2. Every relationship in the Body of Christ is worth fighting to maintain or build up.  Christians can and should model reconciliation and problem solving for the rest of the world.  We have no shortage of conflict and we need to demonstrate that we have the right answer too.
  3. We need to get better at putting our agenda below God’s agenda AND the Body’s agenda.  It’s easy for us to think about our agenda being less important than God’s (At least that is our conscious thought.)  However, we need to take this further.  Our agenda and personal preference needs to be secondary to what is more important for the Body, especially the local church we are a part of.
  4. Since we have one Spirit and are a part of the one temple of God, we need to cooperate more.  Some churches need to combine ministries and resources more for the collective good of the Kingdom not being concerned about who gets the credit. 
  5. Finally, and maybe even more controversially, some churches need to consider totally joining forces in order to maximize their common effort to advance the cause of Jesus in their local communities.  Assuming they are one in the Gospel and their missions are aligned, two churches living as one with greater combined resources and momentum would certainly be a more potent force together than they ever would be separately. 

Now that, I believe, is just beginning to come to terms with what unity looks like.

What do you think?

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

12 Things Pastors Won’t Hear in Heaven



Here is an article from Mike Leake I recently ran across.  It really resonated with me:

I’d really hate to waste my life on things that aren’t significant.

Occasionally it is good to step back and wonder about the types of the things you probably will not hear in heaven.

So I imagine a scenario where someone that the Lord has called me to shepherd walks up to me in heaven and says, I sure wish that you’d have...

Here are 12 things I doubt would fill in that blank. 

  1. I wish you’d have shown me more rapture charts.
  2. I wish you’d have told me steps to making more money.
  3. I wish you’d have prepared me for what heaven looks like.
  4. I wish you’d have settled those theological debates.
  5. I wish you’d have done funnier skits in our worship service.
  6. I wish you’d have pushed for a bigger building.
  7. I wish you’d have talked more about politics.
  8. I wish you’d have preached much shorter sermons.
  9. I wish you’d have worn ties (or cooler jeans for our postmodern crowd).
  10. I wish you’d have given us better pop-culture references.
  11. I wish you’d have made our worship ambiance better and the transitions smoother.
  12. I wish you’d have spent the money to fix that pot-hole in the church parking lot.

I could probably keep going.

Some of these things might be important and they might even be a means to serve and assist people in worship. But they are not ultimate.

What I don’t want to fill that blank would be, “I wish you’d have pointed us to Jesus more. I wish you’d have prepared us for heaven better. I wish you’d have preached more to root out sin and unbelief. I wish you’d have encouraged us to lay down our idols more.”

Those are the things I don’t want to hear.

What I do want to hear is the sweet and grace filled words of the Chief Shepherd, “Well done good and faithful servant."

What do you think?

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Maintaining Relationship When It's Hard



We live in a throw away society.  When something breaks, it’s easier and often cheaper to throw it away and get something new rather than trying to fix it.  While that may be true with the latest gadgets, too many of us have applied that same “throw away” principle to our relationships with others. 

When times get tough and conflicts arise, too many of us give into the temptation to just “throw away” that relationship in order to pick up a new one.  We aren’t necessarily conscious about it, but that doesn’t make it any less real.  Here are three I have seen over and over again:

  • Marriages are thrown aside because it appears to be the easier way out of very difficult troubles that have developed.  Unfortunately what people come to find out is they simply exchange one set of problems for a new set, often greater than the first.  On top of that, the same problems that ended the old marriage are brought into the new one – sometimes with the same results.
  • Families and friendships are fractured because someone says or does something to hurt the other one, but neither one is willing to actually deal with the problem, to say they are sorry or to try and reconcile.  So strain leads to distance and to relationship in name only.   
  • Churches are wounded when two Christians (or two groups of Christians), both who claim they love the Lord, allow some hurt or disagreement to divide them so that one of them ultimately breaks fellowship and leaves the church body as a result.   

In each case, one or both parties decides to “throw away” the other rather than actually do the hard work of reconciliation.  Conflict resolution and biblical reconciliation are hard, no question about it.  It’s more satisfying to be right or to win the argument than it is to say you’re sorry.  It’s hard to rebuild trust when it’s broken.  It’s easier to avoid someone than it is to have a difficult conversation.  It’s hard to accept and treat someone respectfully when you disagree with them.  Arguing always appears more successful than dialogue.  And – especially for Christians – it’s always hard to decide what matters are really “secondary or disputable,” not worth worrying a thing about, and what matters are “essential” and worth defending.

This is nothing new.  Jesus dealt with this directly in Matthew 5:23-26 and 18:15-20.  Paul also dealt with it a lot, especially in Romans 14 and 15.  What do these important texts have in common?

  1. Conflict is real and will continue to happen, unfortunately even in the lives of Christians.
  2. Christians do not have the option to be “throw away” people.  We must always work for reconciliation.
  3. While reconciliation is always the goal, we can only control our words and actions.  So we must make sure they are in line with Jesus. 
  4. Grace, humility, forgiveness  and love are virtues we must always cultivate before, during and after any conflict arises.  They are the means to avoid it altogether and the only way to repair relationships if it occurs. 

Listen to Paul’s words of wisdom to the church in Rome as they fought over some “disputable matters” about how Christians should conduct themselves in the world.  May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God” (Romans 15:5-7).

No “throw away” relationships there!

What do you think?  How can we be sure not to be “throw away” people?