Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category

Posted on October 15, 2007 - by Anthony

Keller and the risks of being an Evangelical

Darryl over at DashHouse.com has put some notes together of Keller who recently spoke at the EMA in London.  Keller spoke on the risks of being an Evangelical in an age where the term has lost its meaning in so many ways.  Here are some excerpts:

• Evangelicalism used to occupy the middle ground between fundamentalism and liberalism. It was orthodox, pro-scholarship, and facing the world. Recently, evangelicalism has become more hostile and condemning of culture. A younger generation has given up on evangelicalism as a middle ground and are looking for a new consensus. This group goes by a number of names, such as post-evangelicals or the emerging church.
• A new gospel is being preached about the Kingdom of God and Jesus Christ overcoming the evil powers forces of injustice in the world. [Update: This version of the gospel rarely talks about personal sin and God's wrath.] The pendulum has swung the other way.
• To respond, evangelicals must understand and practice biblical repentance as a result of believing the gospel. This will allow evangelicals to admit their sins, even if they disagree with 80% of the criticisms from the post-evangelicals, and even if the remaining 20% is expressed poorly. To the degree that we understand the gospel, we will be able to freely admit our shortcomings as an evangelical movement.
• Don’t ever think that we can respond to legitimate criticisms of our practice by defending our doctrine. In defending our doctrines, we have not responded to the criticisms of our practices. Orthopraxy is part of orthodoxy.
• It is necessary to draw boundaries. What really matters is how we treat the people on the other side of those boundaries. People are watching. We’re going to win the younger leaders if we are the most gracious, kind, and the least self-righteous in controversy. The truth will ultimately lose if we hold the right doctrines, but do so with nasty attitudes and a lack of love.
• We need to approach the controversies with a repentant heart corporately and say, “Despite all the bad things that are being said here, there’s a core of truth here and we need to deal with it.”

Amazing insights, if you want to be challenged as a thinking Christian get hold of Keller’s stuff where ever you can find it.  Sell you car if you need to.  Actually, you can download most of his stuff off other sites (Redeemer Presby) so don’t sell you car…that would be silly.

Posted on October 3, 2007 - by Stephen Murray

Convergent Audio

Denny Burke has all the audio from the recent Convergent Conference at South Eastern Baptist Seminary. It includes a very thought-provoking talk by Mark Driscoll about his relationship to and views on certain key figures in the emerging church conversation.

Posted on September 20, 2007 - by Stephen Murray

Gospel Conviction: What We’ve Missed #5

Links to Part I, II, III, & IV

The average member of an average western evangelical church (MRC) needs a mindset change in order to overcome the compartmentalization that we’ve already talked about in Part IV. That mindset revolves around the idea of envisioning oneself as a missionary in the surrounding culture. This concept has been the cornerstone concept of what it means to be ‘missional’ all along. The question is: What motivates us to adopt such a mindset.

Some might feel we need to adopt this mindset after looking around at the evangelical church and noting how its failed to engage culture effectively with the gospel – especially cultures that have postmodern tendencies. However whilst this failure should spur us on to improve the situation it cannot be our basis. We are not simply ‘re-actionaries’, we are first and foremost ‘actionaries’.

Some of us might be adopting this mindset because its ‘cool’ to be missional in the new trendy church climate – sipping wine, wearing Crocs and discussing new church forms in low-key small groups meetings (okay maybe skip the Crocs part if you live outside of Gauteng). This is completely inadequate and we need to check ourselves on this one.

What drives us and motivates us to adopt a missionary mindset is first and foremost a deep conviction of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God is at work reconciling an alienated people to himself. That has to be our basis for motivation in becoming missional. We are not missional because the generation before us wasn’t, we are missional because God is reconciling people to himself in Jesus. Now this might sound like a simple point that doesn’t really shatter the ground you’re standing on. Yet I think that whether or not we will actually adopt a missional approach to ministry and life hinges on whether or not we have deep convictions about the gospel.

Being involved in the whole missional conversation has temptations of its own, we get caught up with the fads and ‘cool-speak’ of being missional and lose then basis of why we’re being missional in the first place. If all we’re ever doing is blogging about this, attending conferences, reading books, drinking coffee and meeting in trendy small groups then we’ve bought into ‘being missional’ without the basis of the gospel.

What is your basis for ‘being missional’?

Posted on September 14, 2007 - by Stephen Murray

God’s Mission and the End

There is a trend in the contemporary church to swing back the general emphasis of mission to what happens here in this present life. In some cases this trend is refreshing and a welcome relief to the kind of preaching that says ‘Get your “GET OUT OF HELL FREE” ticket and then just hold on, isolated from the world until Jesus comes back to burn everyone else.’ So the participants in this type of view isolate themselves completely from the culture and although they do evangelism their view of redemption is very narrow.

Yet this trend which swings emphasis back onto the present can also be dangerous in excluding the vital role that the end plays in our living here now. The aims are admirable, they seek to show Christians that they should engage culture, work in such a way as to improve culture and display Christ’s lordship over all in this present earth. Yet some in this swing, in light of this, tend to minimize the place of ‘the end’ in their thinking, evangelism and motivation for living now.

Today in Scripture I was reminded that this underemphasis cannot be right. The end must be kept clearly in focus to live now. I was reflecting on John 6:38-40 and noticed that in this concise little summary of what God’s will is for humanity Jesus twice includes the phrase ‘at the last day.’ (v.39 & 40) So whatever Jesus thinks about the mission of God in the world you can be sure of this: Being ‘raised up at the last day’ is of vital importance – lose it and you lose the mission now.

So lift high the end – our glorious redemption. Don’t play it down, but live in light of it so that the now is impacted because the end is certain.