Mark Driscoll's sermon on hospitality has been very helpful as my wife and I consider our missional calling in the suburbs/exurbs of Chicago. I encourage you to listen to it.
Missional
Lost Art
I encourage you to read "The Importance of Art When Engaging Non-Believers" by David Fairchild. Helpful. A blurb...
Since art is both enjoyableand educating, and communicates a message about itself and about the world that it was created in, we should pray that more and more the Christian community will see the need to engage the arts as the primary way to speak intelligently and truthfully to those who are made in God’s image.
Emerging in the Suburbs
David Fitch (at Out of Ur) on "The Brutal Burbs: How the Suburban Lifestyle Undermines Our Mission."
By idolizing the family, suburbanites may become focused onconsuming more stuff to create the perfect home and family. There is nothing but contrived affection left to keep the home together. And children who learn they are the center of this universe from parents actually develop characters that believe they really are the center of the universe.
After decades of this suburban lifestyle America is left with families split by divorce, kids leaving in rebellion, and millions on various drugs to relieve the emptiness as the idolized family turns out to be a myth. Apart from the personal destruction the suburbs can bring, suburban isolation also poses a real problem for the spreading of the gospel.
If hospitality is to be a central way of life for the spreading of the gospel, the alienation of the suburbs is a condition of our exile we must overcome. Elsewhere I have said:
… evangelical Christians must consistently invite our neighbors into our homes for dinner, sitting around laughing, talking, listening and asking questions of each other. The home is where we live, where we converse and settle conflict, where we raise children. We arrange our furniture and set forth our priorities in the home. We pray for each other there. We share hospitality out of His blessings there. In our homes then, strangers get full view of the message of our life. Inviting someone into our home for dinner says “here, take a look, I am taking a risk and inviting you into my life.” By inviting strangers over for dinner, we resist the fragmenting isolating forces of late capitalism in America. It is so exceedingly rare, that just doing it speaks volumes as to what it means to be a Christian in a world of strangers.
Post-Reformed
Growing discussion on being post-reformed. See The Craw and PostReformed. Some very good stuff here. These seven "Being PostReformed..." statements come from The Craw but compiled together at PR...
- Being PostReformed means laying aside a dogmatic application of a particular reading of the Reformed Confessions that keeps one from appreciating and fellowshipping with brethren from other traditions outside of Reformedom.
- Being PostReformed enables one to see the Bible as God’s grand story of the ages and not to view it as a repository of propositions and factoids. It’s not a Tommy-gun that we load up with pet proof texts…to blast other Christians with. It sometimes gets mysterious and messy but the PostReformed man is comfortable with that and doesn’t feel the necessity to correct God via better formulations and propositions.
- Being PostReformed allows one to ask, “who can I work with” rather than “who can I not work with” in ministry opportunities outside of one’s immediate church, denomination, or tradition. This puts things in positive rather than negative terms and frees one to find allies instead of drawing an ever more exclusive circle of “orthodoxy.”
- Being PostReformed means that when one arrives at a roadblock in one’s tradition, a roadblock created by traditions that attempt to interpret tradition, one is free jump into another road altogether. The PostReformed are not afraid to borrow from another tradition’s formulation of an issue, or to leave a particular point to ambiguity. He is able to clearly see he is bound by God’s Word and that tradition must serve it. He is a man in full.
- Being PostReformed means that you are sometimes not persuaded when the majority of current scholarship in your tradition agrees on something. They may be blind to the fact that they have arrived in a self-referential cul-de-sac. Jumping out of the cul-de-sac to see what another tradition says or to access earlier formulations from your own tradition isn’t something to be afraid of.
- Being PostReformed means you regard Arminians, Emerging Churchmen, and Roman Catholics as Christians…and treat them as such. You work vigorously to build unity, without compromising truth, to demonstrate the visible unity of the Body of Christ, wherever you can, to the watching world. The PostReformed man takes the Beatitudes seriously with great longing in his heart: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God.”
- Being PostReformed means having enough confidence in your Reformed theological convictions that you can interact substantively with Christians in other traditions without fear. The fear that often masquerades as dogmatism is replaced by a love for the truth and your brethren.
Keller: Preaching to Believers/Unbelievers
Tim Keller gave a lecture at Covenant Seminary in 2004 on Preaching to Believers and Unbelievers. He deals with a few very important points. One of them is about the power of the preaching event over the moralistic application of the sermon (evidenced by taking notes). I have quoted Keller on this issue recently. He also deals with Deconstructing Defeater Beliefs in the lecture. Give it a listen.
Warnock Interviews Driscoll
Driscoll Apology
Remember the whole Mark Driscoll and Brian McLaren exchange a while back? Remember how Driscoll took shots at McLaren and Doug Pagitt? Driscoll now apologizes.
A godly friend once asked me an important question: “What do you wantto be known for?” I responded that solid theology and effective church planting were the things that I cared most about and wanted to be known for. He kindly said that my reputation was growing as a guy with good theology, a bad temper, and a foul mouth. This is not what I want to be known for. And after listening to the concerns of the board members of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network that I lead, and of some of the elders and deacons at Mars Hill Church that I pastor, I have come to see that my comments were sinful and in poor taste. Therefore, I am publicly asking for forgiveness from both Brian and Doug because I was wrong for attacking them personally and I was wrong for the way in which I confronted positions with which I still disagree. I also ask forgiveness from those who were justifiably offended at the way I chose to address the disagreement. I pray that you will accept this posting as a genuine act of repentance for my sin.
Unmissional
Missional Suggestions
I made a few suggestions for people striving to be missional over at MBB. It's just a starting place and mostly a call for missional fellowships (nothing too profound here), but it's a start.
MereMission Site
I very rarely pimp new blogs I find, but this one could be pretty cool. Check out MereMission. It's a group blog that is for "practical exploration of missional theology."
Gospel & Gospel Messengers
It's 1:02am and once again I'm up late because God has been working on me. This is getting to be a habit. I'm going through a lot of soul searching these last few months and especially these last few weeks. I regularly feel compelled to read Scripture, and not just like having a 'quiet time,' but really searching and meditating beyond my normal reading. I'm also praying differently. I'm listening more. I'm waiting more. I'm quiet more. I don't say any of that to say I'm doing something great spiritually. I've found that the more I'm quiet and listen, the more I sense my own pride and sin and cluttered mind and life.
Most of my thoughts and meditations have been on the Gospel. And the more I meditate on the Gospel (in full, or in part) the more I realize how much of the Gospel I miss in Scripture for my idolatry over principles. I can't explain this idea well yet, and please don't push me on it, but I'm growing more convinced that the pragmatics we teach and try to live are less about Scripture and more feeding our need to accomplish our own sanctification.
Now I'm not denying that the Scriptures are thoroughly practical. They certainly are. But it's so easy to make the practical seem exciting and the Gospel to seem too basic and elementary. It's easier to feel the excitement of the mission more than the excitement of hearing again the Gospel that calls us to mission.
Anyway, that's what my mind has been chewing on. A HUGE help in this meditation has been the sermons of Tim Keller. Yeah, I know, I talk about Keller a lot. But if there is anything I can say with certainty about Keller, it's this: when I hear Keller I hear the Gospel and not Keller. And whatever issue he is dealing with, he is always dealing primarily with the Gospel.
Yeah, I know this seems elementary. But I always find my way to preach sermons that include the Gospel rather than being the Gospel. When I hear sermons I tend to try to extract practicals rather than know Jesus. It's an enticing trap.
So, in that vein, I highly recommend Tim Keller's sermon on Luke 10: Messengers. I've listened to it a couple of times in the last few weeks, and it's one of the best examples I know of to show how to talk about something practical (our mission) while really just feeding us the Gospel. Enjoy.
The Resurgence of Resurgence
The elders at Mars Hill Church, which I founded in 1996, have always been a big-hearted, kingdom-minded team of godly men who have given over 10 percent of our general budget to help church planters since our inception. Now, they have also agreed to give even more money to serve the greater church by launching The Resurgence ministry. This includes paying for the development of a massive website that will include thousands of free articles, audio and video podcasts, film reviews, music reviews, book reviews, and more. It also includes freeing up one of our elders, Gary Shavey, to serve as director of The Resurgence, and recently hiring Jon Krombein as the full-time content manager for the forthcoming website.
To kick The Resurgence off with a bang, we will launch the new website this spring, Zondervan will release my next book Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church in early May, and we will be hosting the Reform & Resurge Conference 2006 at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Below I’ll introduce each of the main speakers and give some reasons why you will not want to miss this event.
John Armstrong: Church in the City
John Armstrong has a good post about his experience visiting City Church of San Francisco for a few days: "What is the Future of the Church in the City?" Here's his final paragraph...
I will tell you plainly that I believeCity Church, under God’s grace and provision, has an incredible future. The way these pastors and people interact with the religious and civic leaders of this city, the way they continue to humbly learn and move toward a clearer missional vision, and the way they embrace and accept all people incarnationally, deeply impress me. If there is to be a strong and vibrant witness to Christ in the cities of America in the coming decades, especially among the rising young population that is flocking into many of our major cities, then I believe City Church San Francisco will be a major part of that kingdom growth. I look forward to seeing how God uses the friendships I enjoyed this weekend at City Church for the wider growth of Christ’s church in North America. This kind of weekend is what I live for in terms of my own call to ministry.
This explanation of the Gospel is from CCSF's site, and I've heard it from Tim Keller before...
The gospel is:
- you are more flawed and lost than you ever dared believe, yet
- you can be more accepted and loved than you ever dared hope at the same time, because Jesus Christ lived and died in your place.
Redeemer NYC: Getting Press
Tim Keller's wife, Kathy, has an article in The Movement about "Missional Ministry in the Age of Media." I think it's helpful. I especially find this excerpt interesting...
Unwise use of publicity, interviews and relationship to the media.
As a result of a series of unpleasant experiences, Redeemer Presbyterian Church has forged the following media policy:
We do not provide interviews or participate in stories; we do not desire publicity that will raise our profile. This policy exists for these reasons:
1. Anything that raises Redeemer's profile pulls Christians out of their own churches to visit or join us. This is a bad neighbor policy; the City needs many different churches, not one big mega-church, something we are going to great pains to avoid becoming.
2. If Redeemer becomes a “Christian tourist destination," our limited seating will be filled with those who already believe in Jesus, leaving no room for genuine seekers. We are already turning people away at one service, and seating is tight at others. Therefore, we do not want any publicity that would fill our seats with curious believers.
3. Redeemer would prefer that seekers come as the result of relationship (i.e., they are accompanying a friend who is then available to discuss things with them following the service.) To come into a church like Redeemer is not an easy thing, and although publicity might result in a few non-believer walk-ins, we would prefer there to be none at all.
4. Redeemer’s message is nuanced and non-political. We want to present the gospel and have people make up their minds about whether Jesus is God or not, rather than convincing them to espouse a point of view about this or that hot-button issue. Since this is somewhat different than the approach of some other evangelical churches, we don’t want to say or do anything that would give the impression that we fit into the storyline that the media currently has about evangelicals. This would tend to obscure and falsify our real message.
The problem is that while publicity alerts people who are trying to find a church like yours to your existence, it also alerts those who find your presence alarming. This can have an immediate negative effect on your rental arrangements (if your landlord does not wish to be identified with a church with your doctrinal commitments, or if he or she merely wishes to avoid a potentially controversial situation.) It can also affect the lease agreements of other churches in your area, which will suffer along with you if permission to rent in schools, for instance, is revoked.
Publicity also allows people to find you who are discontented with their own churches and who hope to find a church they can influence so that it suits their needs. These folks are a thorn in the side of any church planter trying to keep a clear vision of the Gospel before the world. And some people, of course, are just perennial malcontents, unable to be satisfied with any church, hopping from congregation to congregation, leaving a wake of destruction behind them.
The Movement: Recommended Books
in Books, Church, Church Planting, Missional
Tim Keller's (Redeemer's) church planting organization, The Movement: Global City Church Planting, recommends books in their newsletters. Here they are compiled for you by date of newsletter, and by theme where applicable.
Winter 2006: Missional Church
Fall 2005: Urban Anthropology
Summer 2005: Global Cities
December 2004: Evangelism
October 2004: Spiritual Life of a Church Planter
August 2004: Urban Theology
June 2004: Multi-Cultural Church Planting
April 2004: Effective Churches for Postmodern America
February 2004
December 2003
October 2003
Mark Driscoll: St. Patrick (The Dude)
Resurgence: Keller and Patrick
There's some QnA between the Director of the Resurgence website, Gary Shavey, and Tim Keller and Darrin Patrick (two of the conference speakers at the upcoming Reform & Resurge Conference). It will do you well to check back over at Resurgence regularly. Things are continually changing and improving.
Derek Webb-Donald Miller Chat
in Emerging Church, Justice, Missional, Music, Theology
Don't miss the Derek Webb and Donald Miller online chat tomorrow night.
Joining the conversation is a sure ticket to becoming a theological liberal repackaged with a goatee. If you are a girl, it will take a pretty significant piercing to equal goatee status. Yes! You can be a liberal too! Try throwing something into your eyebrow, tongue, nose, or lower lip. You didn't know liberalism was this easy, did you? Lucky I'm here for you.
Resurgence is Surging
The Resurgence website is "becoming" as two new articles pop up from John Armstrong ("Why Seek to Advance Tradition?") and Anthony Bradley ("Keeping it Real"). Learn more about these guys.
Saturday Night Herald
>> Ed Stetzer's thoughts on interpreting culture.
Preaching against culture is like preaching against someone’s house. It’s just were they live.
>> You can "steal" several weeks of Bob Hyatt's slides for Sunday morning Powerpoint. Nice resource.
>> Some of you need a good discussion board on Christians and the arts, and thankfully IAM in NYC now has a discussion board. It's pretty new, but could be a great board with a few more active posters. If you are into writing, painting, photography, sculpting, whatever, then check it out. But it could also be very valuable for any Christian learning about the arts.
>> Molten Meditation is an interesting idea, and pretty well done.