pursuing faithfulness to the Word of God and fullness of the Spirit of God
Archive for June, 2006
The Principled Missional Church
Jun 29th
Mark Driscoll is something of a controversial figure at the moment. On the one hand, he is loosely associated with the Emergent/Emerging movement and has upset a number of bloggers with his somewhat vulgar style (see what Challies, Jollyblogger, the Blue Fish, and Cawleyblog thought of his book Confessions of a Reformission Rev). On the other hand, he’s been invited by John Piper to speak at the “Above All Earthly Powers” conference alongside such speakers as Don Carson and David Wells. In other words, he’s not someone who can be easily pigeon-holed.
I hadn’t had a chance to read or hear anything from him until recently, when Desiring God put a few video interviews with him online. I was particularly interested in what he had to say in the “Seeker vs Missional” and “Biblical Principles and Cultural Methods”, as it ties in very closely with what I was trying to say yesterday on the Results Driven Church. There’s another installment of Seeker vs Missional up now that I’ve yet to listen to.
Anyway, I thought they were good enough to warrant transcribing (apologies for any mistakes, emphasis mine etc) …
Seeker vs Missional (Part 1) (Watch Video)
I think part of it is [that] the seeker sensitive church begins with the assumption that the church is a business that produces goods and services to a market. Therefore the demands of the market in large part determine the message and ministries and mission of the church. A missional church doesn’t start with the assumption that the church is a dispenser of goods and services but it is God’s kingdom representative on earth; it’s a counter-cultural entity, so it’s not just cultural relevance, it’s counter-cultural in nature and it begins with theological assumptions and then it’s asking, “how do we translate those theological assumptions effectively to a culture?” but the seeker movement is more asking “how do we win more market share or gain a larger following” which then can change your theological convictions, can change some of your leadership type of decisions. You say, “well, the majority of people who aren’t Christians don’t like to be preached at [so] let’s not do preaching, let’s do sharing. The majority of people that aren’t Christians think that women should be pastors, therefore let’s have women pastors.” It’s beginning with a business mindset of meeting a constituency as opposed to a theological mindset of working from a biblical series of convictions and just trying to articulate that in the most effective way possible. So it’s a distinction – do you lead with your theology or do you lead with your pragmatism? That’s the difference I see.
Biblical Principles and Cultural Methods (Watch Video)
In the Bible I see for the church, I see lots of principles. The church needs to have male elders, the church is to gather regularly, the church is to be involved in caring for the needs of widows and orphans, and about preaching the gospel, about planting of new churches, about teaching sound doctrine, about worshipping of God together corporately, partaking the sacraments, those kinds of things. There are principles in Scripture, and then we have methods that we use to implement those principles.
What I see is when you put everything in the open hand – both your principles and your methods – you’re a classic liberal. If you put everything in your closed hand – your principles and methods are both unchanging – you’re a classic fundamentalist. And these tend to be the two teams. “Our theology is open and our practice is open” or “Our theology is closed and our practice is closed”. What I would argue for is a two-handed approach. There are principles in the closed hand [that] we don’t negotiate [and] we don’t change, but our methods are flexible, culturally contextualised, open to change.
Some would call that cultural capitulation but they’ve already done it. They’re speaking English, not Greek and Hebrew. They’re singing, but they’re not singing the Hebrew Psalms. They are working out of an English translation of the Bible, they’re wearing American clothing and they’re driving a modern day vehicle, speaking over a contemporary sound system and recording onto modern technology. So the question is, does anyone have the right to actually say that cultural contextualisation is a bad thing? I think no. There is faithful and unfaithful cultural contextualisation but as long as we keep our Biblical principles, then that gives us a lot of freedom for our cultural methods. So what is our music look like? That can vary. What is our style of our printed material, of our architecture, of our pastoral dress, of our service order, all of those things are flexible. The New Testament actually gives no criteria for what those things should be. So I think there is a lot of freedom, if you have sound doctrine in the closed hand, and the Biblical principles are well established.
My fear is today, lots of people are only using the open hand, and their doctrine, their biblical principles and their methods are totally flexible. That’s very dangerous. But its likewise dangerous to have dead orthodoxy, where you have a Bible-believing solid Jesus loving church that nobody can relate to because you don’t speak the language, you don’t articulate the heart-cry of the culture. Your architecture, your printed materials, your vocabulary is so insular that you’re not doing what Paul says in 1 Cor 9, that by all means I communicate the gospel to as many as possible in an effort to bring them to the love of Jesus, so Paul says “I become all things to all men” – to Greeks I work this way, to Jews I work this way, therefore faithful not just to the theology of Paul but to the example of Paul we’re going to be pretty flexible and have a lot of diversity in methodology.
The Results Driven Church
Jun 28th
I have though been slowly working through Ian Stackhouse’s “Gospel Driven Church”, which has been quite thought provoking (a review will follow in due course). In this rather long and rambling post I want to take up one of his ideas, which is that in the desire for (numerical) “growth”, new churches (i.e Restorationist / Renewal churches) have adopted a pragmatism which has resulted in the compromise of previously held principles. In other words success is measured by numbers rather than faithfulness to the gospel – a results driven mentality. This is possibly an overly harsh diagnosis, but I feel that he has at least discerned a trend that must not be allowed to develop unchecked.
Defeatism
One of the attitudes that the new churches have been glad see the back of is defeatism. In some evangelical churches, success is almost measured by how small your congregation is. If people are leaving, it consitutes proof that you are being faithful to the gospel. These churches have a “remnant” mentality, like saying with Elijah “I am the only one left” (1 Kings 19:14)
Idealism
This defeatism was replaced with idealism. The new churches saw themselves as “new wineskins” (Mark 2:22), able to throw off legalism and dry rituals and replace it with a vibrant kingdom model of church, with genuine fellowship, dynamic worship, spiritual authority, prophetic direction, apostolic oversight, powerful teaching, impacting the community with the gospel. The expectation was for imminent revival, and the return to a “New Testament model” would be key to success.
Pragmatism
But 20 years down the line, and the wide-spread revival hoped for has not materialised. What’s more, many were left bitter and disillusioned following failures and even abuses in these new churches. Ian Stackhouse suggests that to compensate for the shortcomings, pragmatism became the new modus operandi. What is working elsewhere? Alpha, Cell Church, Seeker Sensitive, Purpose Driven, Spiritual Mapping etc – whatever the mega-churches were doing ought to be copied as it is obviously working (or more commonly put “God is blessing it”). The end result is churches that have diluted their original idealism and settled for being a successful franchise of a mega-church.
Realism
But if pragmatism is not the answer, what is? Surely we don’t want to retreat back to a defeatist mentality? But neither can we return to the naïve optimism of those early days. Ian Stackhouse has his own proposals, which I will discuss when I review his book, but I want to make a humble suggestion of my own. We can return to idealism so long as it tempered with realism. In other words, getting back to the original vision of a glorious church, but honestly acknowledging that we’re not there yet, and that we’ve got lessons to learn from the church of ages past. After all, even the “old wineskin” denominations were once the latest thing themselves.
A Case Study
There are lots of ways this could be expanded on, but I’ll briefly mention the “Ephesians 4 ministries” by way of example, as it was a key part of the original Restorationist vision. It is possible for a church that has succumbed to pragmatism to pay lip-service to these ministries without actually fully embracing them. I was interested to note that Dan also has the Eph 4 ministries on his mind at the moment, as he draws attention to Terry Virgo’s excellent comments on apostles and integrity of doctrine.
Apostles – The pragmatic church gets all the training pamphlets and DVDs it needs from the model mega-church, and fulfils its part in global mission by sending some spare money to parachurch organisations. Apostles are therefore redundant, and simply function as conference speakers.
Prophets – The pragmatic church sidelines the prophetic from meetings as its not “seeker sensitive”. They don’t need direction as their manuals tell them all they need to know about how to step up to the next level of growth.
Teachers – The pragmatic church makes sure it doesn’t scare new people away with Biblical exposition. A humorous short talk or a slick multimedia presentation is the order of the day. The church may claim to be “Bible-believing”, but it will have an increasingly “Bible-illiterate” membership.
Pastors – The pragmatic church does merely what is necessary to keep people attending and tithing. The emphasis is on keeping people happy rather than helping them to grow in holiness. The pastor’s job is to maintain the membership database rather than to run the discipleship program.
Evangelists – Despite the emphasis on growth, the pragmatic church would rather find a method that can be easily scaled than looking to find those who will create fresh ways of confronting the lost with the gospel. Who needs evangelists when you can show DVDs of Nicky Gumbel?
The Way Forward
So has the original idealistic vision been swallowed up into a purely pragmatic outlook? I don’t think so, at least not in the circles I am in. However, we should beware as the transition can be gradual. Church planting is perhaps going to be key to making sure we avoid this trap. With every new church, there is a fresh return to the original vision, an idealism mixed with faith, and people who are willing to make personal sacrifices to see the kingdom advance. Existing churches will also be reminded that they don’t just exist for their own benefit as they release people to be part of a wider global mission, and new people are raised up to serve in their place. This will result in growth that is not just numerical, but spiritual, or as Ian Stackhouse puts it, growth that is intrinsic to the gospel, not extrinsic.
Anyway, that’s enough for today… I’ve got loads of thoughts running round my head on this topic at the moment, so perhaps some more posts will follow later this week.
Some Links
Jun 27th
It’s been a while long since I posted anything here on my blog, mainly due to the World Cup and a generally hectic schedule. Expect some reflections on church very soon, but for now, here’s some things around the web that have caught my attention this month.
- Eerdmans’ have new forthcoming releases catalogue. This includes a number of new commentaries. For me, the most anticipated is the new Pillar Commentary on 2 Peter and Jude by Peter Davids.
- Mark Roberts has been blogging on what could be the “end of the Presbyterian Church USA”. As usual his posts are thorough, Biblically informed and well thought out.
- There have been a few helpful parenting posts recently. Rob Wilkerson writes about blame-shifting. Tim Challies is one of a number to recommend a new booklet on Family Worship. Also Justin Taylor recommends a catechism for kids.
- Castle Sands is a new blog to me, but one that I have been enjoying as it comes from a fellow reformed charismatic from Newfrontiers. He has a great post on faith, arguing that “faith is not about achieving certain outcomes, but a trusting in the character and promises of God”.
- I stayed out of the last debate on tithing, but Justin Taylor summarises some articles by Andreas Kostenberger and David Croteau. (Part 1, Part 2). I think there can be some muddled thinking about tithing, which churches can teach in a legalistic manner, even when their approach to the similar issue of Sabbath observance takes the exact opposite approach. What we need is to teach the principles of giving, that should result in people gladly giving more than a tenth, rather than begrudgingly doing their duty.
- Sovereign Grace continue to churn out some great new music with real depth to the lyrics. The latest project, “Valley of Vision” draws on prayers from the Puritans.
- The “Emergent/Emerging” church has generated a lot of controversy, and though I have some sympathies with their ideas, I think Rob Wilkerson’s insightful discussion of emergent humility highlights an important reason why I don’t feel able to identify with the movement as a whole.
- Dave Bish has already read his copy of Sam Storm’s new book Convergence and liked it.
- The Americans just don’t get the beautiful game… I set Justin Taylor right in the comments though.
- Final news. In the latest newfrontiers magazine we are promised that the papers from the newfrontiers theological forum are going to be made available online. I can’t wait! I wonder if Dan’s lament that there were only 12 people on the comittee has anything to do with this. (check out the comments there for James Farrer’s response – someone who seems to be in the know)
Book Review – The Message of Psalms 73-150 (Michael Wilcock)
Jun 4th
Posted by Mark Heath in Book Reviews
1 comment
Having made those criticisms, it is worth pointing out that there is still some very valuable material in this book, particularly for those planning a Bible study on a Psalm, and wanting to get a feel for its structure and setting (both historical and its place within the Psalter as a whole). He encourages a Christian application of the Psalms, seeing relevance for the church as the people of God in references to Israel. He quotes Bruggemman in a number of places, and talks of the “nonspecific” troubles of the Psalmist being able to speak into our situations.
He understands book 4 of the Psalms to be an “exodus collection”, and the Psalms of ascent are explained in the light of having a background in the Nehemiah story. He takes some time to discuss a Christian approach to the ‘imprecatory’ Psalms. There is a long section dealing with Psalm 119, and his exposition of Psalm 139 was one of the best in the book – he describes it as a theology of omniscience and omnipresence made simple and personal.
Overall, I would say its not the most thrilling of books to read cover to cover, but it still has something to offer. Each Psalm has on average two or three pages of comments, and would be helpful reading as background material to stimulate ideas for preparing a talk or study. It is common for Christians to quote parts of Psalms without having any real feel for their historical setting, or structure as a whole, so at least this book provides some useful corrective to that. It also encourages those preparing worship based on a Psalm to consider appropriate related Bible readings they could make use of.