I am so sorry I failed to check your reply and get back to you sooner- my fault for losing myself in the international web!!

Thanks for your detailed and prompt response.

I fully agree with you in what you say – I guess that the challenge we face in whatever context we are in is to ensure that our aspirations are realised.

Perhaps we need to ensure leaders are trained and encouraged to really think carefully and theologically about things? That would help preserve the core theological comitments that matter to us. I have noticed that the evangelical churches in the UK which manifest the problems I noted are often run by men who play down the need for theological education and do not themselves read widely in theology (or literature etc).

Anyway – it is Christmas day so I will leave it there!

Have a good Christmas and God bless.

By the end of Feb I hope to have a new web journal set up – to encourage people to think more deeply and theologically about issues. Come visit us when we are live. Our home will be http://www.stilldeeper.com

God bless

Peter

Thanks for the helpful reply and the questions. A couple comments and i’ll try and answer the two questions.

I’m not sure the experience you have had in the UK but if its anything like the end results we have seen with the seeker senstive mega church movement, then i am in total agreement: losing theological & Gospel conviction for the sake of relating to a particular group is a disastrous error.

Now, my perspective is not to allow the “outsider’s” or the culture’s thinking to shape me or the church in such a way that the Gospel is lost in translation. However, i think we need some level of contextualistion that allows for the translation process to make sense to the people coming. So in other words i want the people sitting in the pews or the plastic garden furniture to feel like God speaks their language. This is why being sensitive to the outsider is my governing principle in a sense. But yes, not at the cost of what is most important, we must find what is flexible and inflexible.

Your questions are great here are some thoughts;

1. Preserving our church praxis from degenerating into pragmatic superficiality hinges in a conviction that the Gospel is the foundational reason as to why we meet, what we do and what we say when we meet. So our theology will inform our methodology. Our meeting structures (or Church life in a wider sense) are to serve this end, they have one goal: to make sure those engaging with us are not scandalised by our ways but rather scandalised by hearing the Gospel. Not sure if thats very clear, but i would prefer having a guy walk out on my service because Jesus demands everything as a disciple, rather than leave because i am wearing Jeans while preaching or because we meet in groups to discuss the Sermon etc.

Ensuring this will depend on a couple things; leadership that sees methodology as serving the evangelical Gospel. A conviction that missional contextualisation is just as important in your local suburban church as in outer Mongolia. Trusting in the Spirit working through the Word proclaimed (in whatever form) and not my ministry style. Developing communities that are adaptable to thier culture and are “missional” in thier own mindset. I think just working hard at understanding ones context with its postive and negative ideas. And so by doing this you can sift out what is good and bad about culture and which ideas can be used to connect with people.

2. Yes, absolutely. My own experience was that of being completely freaked out by a guy claiming to speak for God. He meant it through the Bible but i didn’t understand so it was very odd. Which means its almost impossible to guess what a person will feel or experience when they come to church. So at my church the other week, a girl who has been attending an evangelistic Bible study we run at a local pub came to church and sat through 1 Cor 11!!! I mean come one! I was ready to pull the fire alarm and get her out of there. But at the end she turned to me and my wife, and we had the most awesome conversation where she was totally open, inqusitive and positive about what Paul said. I amlost fell over. But it was great, the Spirit of God was working amazingly in her.

All i think, is that we as the leaders are too often concerned with our preferences in how we do church and miss being sensitive to the fact that outsiders might (SHOULD) be there. Thus we create a Christian sub-culutre that alienates outsiders but we like. We need to balance it out without reacting too far the other way.

Any thoughts? would like to hear more of what you are going through in England. Besides a crisis in international football!
Ant

It is difficult to be certain about the result, but there are indications that the outcome has not been increasing conversions but rather a weakening of the convictions and distinctiveness of evangelical practice and belief. It is now possible to enter a conservative evangelical church in the uk and listen to leaders say and encourage things that 15 years ago would have only been said in wooly/middle of the road churches.

This is done in name of making things more accessible to outsiders. It does attract a certain number of people and create a sense of dynamism in a church. Sadly it also eviscerates the heart of the evangelical Gospel.

Now I realise that you would not approve of that situation -the worrying thing is that where the project you are suggesting has been embarked upon, that has been the result. People said that it would not happen, but it has.

I guess that makes me want to raise two questions:

1. What controls or protection ought to exist to prevent endeavors to be outsider friendly degenerating to pragmatic shallow superficiality?

2. Is there a sense in which we can trust outsiders to expect church to be genuinely different from other secular experiences and therefore uncomfortable and strange? For example – a man saying that God speaks through preaching – very unique strange experience, but surely what one should expect to be unsettled by in church?