1. religion and spirituality
2. christianity

Brookhaven Presbyterian Church
Leader Manual
Appendices
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Brookhaven Presbyterian Church
Leader Manual
Appendices
Appendix 1: “The Master Plan of Evangelism” by Robert Coleman, book
summary by Bill Glad………….p. 3
Appendix 2: “The Centrality of the Gospel” by Tim Keller………p. 9
Appendix 3: “The Incarnation, God’s Plan for Cross-Cultural Communication” by
Robert Kraft…………..p. 22
Appendix 4: “Imitating the Incarnation,” a sermon by BB Warfield………p. 29
Appendix 5: A Basic Outline for Quiet Times………..p. 42
Appendix 6: “Why Plant Churches?” by Tim Keller…………p. 44
Appendix 7: “Evangelism through Networking” by Tim Keller……….p. 53
Appendix 8: Prayer in Small Groups…………p. 62
Appendix 9: “Courageous Protestantism” by Carl Trueman……….p. 64
Appendix 10: Mercy Ministry Guidelines…………p. 78
Appendix 11: Discipleship Guidelines………..p. 80
Appendix 12: Brookhaven Presbyterian Church Job
Descriptions……………p. 82
Appendix 13: “Scrooge Lives!” by Rob Moll………….p. 84
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Appendix 1
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The Master Plan of Evangelism
Robert E. Coleman
Summary by Bill Glad
The Master and His Plan: The problem in evangelistic methods.
In our efforts to fulfill the great commission of Christ, we need to constantly evaluate the
objectives and relevance of our work. Is it worth doing? And does it get the job done? Just
because we are busy doesn't mean it is to a purpose. We need to focus our attention on a wellthought-through strategy of movement day by day in terms of long range goals - everything we
do must have a purpose. This is an attempt to see the controlling principles governing the
movements of the Master in hope that our own labors might be conformed to a similar pattern.
Since form follows function, this is a study to understand principles underlying Jesus' ministry principles that determined his methods. In order to do this we have to look at the New Testament,
and the Gospels in particular.
Christ is the perfect example. His objective was clear: He intended to save out of the
world a people for himself and to build a church of the Spirit which would never perish. No one
was excluded from his gracious purpose. His love was universal - he died for all sins and all
people; to him there was no distinction between home and foreign missions. To Jesus it was all
world evangelization. He planned to win! His life was ordered by his objective. Everything he did
and said was a part of the whole pattern. Never did he lose sight of his goal - to redeem the world
for God. We need to carefully consider his strategies, for he conceived a plan that would not fail.
Selection: People were his method.
It all started with Jesus calling a few men to follow him. His concern was not with
programs, but with men whom the multitudes would follow. The initial objective of Jesus' plan
was to enlist people who could bear witness to his life and carry on his work after he returned to
the Father. These first converts had little immediate effect on the religious life of the day, but
their lives, in time, would have an impact throughout eternity.
None of the men Jesus chose seemed to be key people. They weren't prominent in the
synagogues, educated, or wealthy. They were "unlearned and ignorant" (Acts 4:13), but Jesus saw
in them the potential to be leaders in the Kingdom. They weren't the men you would expect to
win the world for Jesus, but they were teachable. They had a yearning for God and the realities of
His life. Jesus can use anyone who wants to be used.
The wisdom of Jesus' method is that he concentrated on a few. One cannot transform a
world except as individuals in the world are transformed, and individuals cannot be changed
except as they are molded in the hands of the Master. Hence, as the company of followers around
Jesus increased, it became necessary to narrow the select company to a more manageable number
- Jesus chose twelve apostles. He didn't exclude others from following him, but it is undeniable
that his attention was focused more and more on the few and not on the many. Even within the
twelve there was a select apostolic group of Peter, James, and John. All other things being equal,
the more concentrated the size of the group being taught, the greater the opportunity for effective
instruction. Jesus staked his whole ministry on the apostles; the fringe could fall away, but the
close disciples could not miss his purposes or all was lost!
Jesus, on the other hand, did not neglect the crowds. He did much to identify with them,
to care for them, and instruct them - so much so that in many cases they were aroused and even
moved to make him king. But Jesus didn't give in to popular conceptions; he rather stayed with
his strategy at the risk of public scorn. Few seemed to understand his message.
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His strategy, again, was not to impress the crowd, but to usher in a kingdom. This meant
that he needed men who could lead the multitudes. Jesus was a realist. He based his evangelism
on a plan that would meet the need; by focusing on a few men he developed the base on which
the masses could later depend. This stands in contrast to our modern day emphasis on the number
of converts, rather than building the foundation on which a continuing evangelistic ministry can
be set.
Association: He stayed with them.
Having called his men, Jesus made it a practice to be with them. This was the essence of
his training program - just letting his disciples follow him. This was an incredibly simple method
and stood in stark contrast to the formal procedures of the scribes. By the virtue of their
fellowship with Jesus the disciples were permitted "to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of
God" (Luke 8:10). Knowledge was gained by association before it was understood by
explanation. The call to the disciples was "follow me and to others “come and see". Even in the
choosing of the twelve we can see that they were set apart "that they might be with Him" (Mark
3:14). He had more time with the apostles than with everyone else in the world put together, and
it could only have been deliberate. Taking this approach means that Jesus had little time to call
his own.
Jesus still ministered to the masses, but all the time ministered to his disciples by having
them with him. He had to devote himself primarily to the task of developing some people who in
turn could give this kind of personal attention to others. Again, the modern day church has failed
miserably to care for the individuals in the body with the attention they need. Building men and
women is not easy. But we need to be incorporating into our ministry personal care and close
relationships for all new members to the body.
Consecration: He required obedience.
Jesus expected the people he was with to obey him. They were not required to be smart,
but they had to be loyal. They were called his "disciples" meaning that they were "learners" or
"pupils". For the moment all they were asked to do was to follow Jesus. Following might have
seemed easy at first, but it soon became apparent that it meant the surrender of one's whole life to
the Master in absolute submission to his sovereignty. There could be no compromise. Would-be
disciples were made to count the cost, and many who followed turned away.
The disciples' obedience did not correlate directly with their understanding of Jesus'
teachings. In fact, they were far from understanding Jesus as he talked about the cross and
servanthood. But their capacity to receive revelation would grow provided they continued to
practice what truth they did understand. Thus obedience to Christ was the very means by which
those in his company learned more truth.
Supreme obedience was interpreted to be the expression of love. If the disciples were to
love Jesus, it would be shown in their obedience to his words. Absolute obedience to the will of
the Father, of course, was the controlling principle of the Master's own life. The cross was but the
crowning climax of Jesus' commitment to do the will of God.
From the viewpoint of strategy, obedience was the only way that Jesus could mold the
disciples' lives by his word. Their could be no development of character or purpose in the
disciples without it, and no one can ever be a leader until first he has learned to follow a leader.
Without obedience to Christ the disciples would surely have been lost in their battle for human
lives. Why are so many professed Christians today stunted in their growth and ineffectual in their
witness? Is it not because of their indifference to the commands of God? Obedience has been
replaced by a sort of respectable "do-as-you-please" philosophy of expediency.
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Impartation: He gave himself.
Why were Jesus' demands upon discipline accepted without argument? The disciples
understood that they were not just keeping a law, but were responding to One that loved them and
who was willing to give himself for them. His was a life of giving - giving away what the Father
had given him. Love is like that. It is always giving itself away. He lost no opportunities to
impress upon his followers the deep compulsion of his own soul aflame with the love of God for
a lost world. Everything he did and said was motivated by his consuming passion.
The constant renewing of his consecration to God through loving service to others
constituted Jesus' sanctification. He continually gave his life "for their sakes". His sanctification
then was not to benefit himself, but it was for his disciples, that they might "be sanctified in
truth". That is to say, in giving himself to God, Jesus gave himself to those about him so that
through his life they might come to know a similar commitment to the mission for which he had
come into the world. His whole evangelistic plan hinged on this dedication, and in turn, the
faithfulness with which his disciples gave themselves in love to the people about them. They were
to give as freely as they had received. Such a demonstration of love through the disciples was to
be the way that the world would know that the Gospel was true.
Jesus made it clear that his life was mediated only through the Holy Spirit. Likewise, it
was the Spirit that sustained and nourished the transformed life of a disciple as he continued to
grow in knowledge and grace. By the same token it was only the Spirit of God that enabled one to
carry on the redemptive mission of evangelism. Evangelism was the Spirit's work; all the
disciples were asked to do was to let the Spirit have complete charge of their lives. The fact that
these men were of the common lot of mankind was no hindrance at all. It only serves to remind us
of the mighty power of the Spirit of God accomplishing his purpose in people fully yielded to his
control. After all, the power is in the Spirit of Christ. It is not who we are, but who he is that
makes the difference. We must have his life in us by the Spirit if we are to do his work and
practice his teaching.
Demonstration: He showed them how to live.
Jesus saw to it that his disciples learned his way of living with God and man. He
recognized that it was not enough just to get people into his spiritual communion. His disciples
needed to know how his experience was to be maintained and shared if it was to be perpetuated in
evangelism. That is why the effort of Jesus to get across to his followers the secrets of his
spiritual influence needs to be considered as a deliberate course of his master strategy.
As an example, it was no accident that Jesus often let his disciples see him conversing
with the Father in prayer. They would see the place it had in his life without fully understanding
what it was all about. Note that Jesus didn't force the lesson upon them, but rather he just kept on
praying until at last the disciples got so hungry that they asked him to teach them what he was
doing. At that point he would give them a lesson, and thereafter he emphasized the life of prayer
again and again when talking with his disciples, continually enlarging upon its meaning and
application as they were able to comprehend deeper realities of his Spirit. One thing is certain.
Unless they grasped the meaning of prayer, and learned how to practice it with consistency, not
much would ever come of their lives.
Another aspect of Jesus' life which was vividly portrayed to the disciples was the
importance and use of the Holy Scriptures. This was evident both in maintaining his own personal
devotion and in winning others to the Way. He never ceased to used Scripture in his conversation
with them; he exposited the Scriptures before them repeatedly, and he made it abundantly clear
that the Word written in the Scriptures and the Word spoken by him were not in contradiction.
Furthermore, it was made clear to them that if they were to continue in his fellowship by the
Spirit after he was gone from them in the flesh, they would have to abide in his Word.
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Through this manner of personal demonstration, every aspect of Jesus' personal discipline
of life was bequeathed to his disciples, but what perhaps was most important in view of his
ultimate purpose was that all the while he was teaching them how to win souls. Practically
everything that Jesus said and did had some relevance to their work of evangelism, either by
explaining some spiritual truth or revealing to them how they should deal with people. Jesus was
so much the master in his teaching that he did not let his method obscure his lesson. He let his
truth call attention to itself, and not the presentation. All the disciples had to teach others was a
Teacher who practiced with them what he expected them to learn. He did not ask anyone to do or
be anything which first he had not demonstrated in his own life, thereby not only proving its
workability, but also its relevance to his mission in life. It is well enough to tell people what we
mean, but it is infinitely better to show them how to do it.
Delegation: He assigned them work.
Jesus was always building up in his ministry to the time when his disciples would have to
take over his work and go out into the world with the redeeming Gospel. He was never premature
in his insistence upon action; he was patient. His method was to get the disciples into a vital
experience with God, and to show them how he worked, before telling them they had to do it.
They were given tasks such as manual burdens of getting food and arranging accommodations, as
well as being sent on a preaching mission.
In their first evangelistic mission, the disciples were told to "preach the Kingdom of God
and heal the sick". But Jesus did not leave it at this; he was also specific in his instructions of
where to stay, what to take, and what to say. It was as though Jesus was telling his disciples to go
where they would find the most susceptible audience, and within that, the disciples were told to
concentrate their time upon the most promising individuals in each town who would thereby be
able to follow up their work after they had gone. We too need to be giving ourselves to
responsive hearers, while at the same time expecting hardship and division because of the
message we bring.
Evangelism is not an optional accessory to our life. It is the heartbeat of all that we are
called to be and do. But it is not enough to make this an ideal. It must be given tangible
expression by those who are following the Savior. The best way to be sure that this is done is to
give practical work assignments and expect them to be carried out. This gets people started, and
where they already have seen their work demonstrated in the life of the teacher, there is no reason
why the assignment cannot be completed.
Supervision: He kept check on them.
Jesus made it a point to get with his disciples following their tours of service to hear their
reports and to share with them the blessedness of his ministry in doing the same thing. In this
sense, one might say that his teaching rotated between instruction and assignment. What time he
was with them, he was helping them to understand the reason for some previous action or getting
them ready for some new experience. What is seen here so vividly in these checkup sessions
following the disciples' visitation merely brings into bold relief a strategy of Jesus throughout his
ministry. As he reviewed some experience which the disciples had he would bring out some
practical application of it to their lives.
Many illustrations could be cited to show how Jesus checked up on the actions and
reactions of his disciples as they faced various difficult situations. The important thing about all
this supervisory work of Jesus was that he kept the disciples going on toward the goal he had set
for them. Disciples must be brought to maturity. There can be no substitute for total victory, and
our field is the world. We have not been called to hold the fort, but to storm the heights.
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Reproduction: He expected them to reproduce.
Jesus intended for the disciples to produce his likeness in and through the Church being
gathered out of the world. Thus his ministry in the Spirit would be duplicated many-fold by his
ministry in the lives of his disciples. Through them and others like them, it would continue to
expand in an ever-enlarging circumference until the multitudes might know in some similar way
the opportunity which they had known with the Master. By this strategy the conquest of the world
was only a matter of time and their faithfulness to his plan. It did not matter how small the group
was to start with, so long as they reproduced and taught their disciples to reproduce. A barren
Christian is a contradiction. A tree is known by its fruit. Jesus called people to evaluate the
product of their lives. This was the revelation of what they were.
The great commission of Christ to the Church summed it up in the command to "make
disciples of every creature" (Matt 28:19). The disciples were to build people like themselves who
were so constrained by the commission of Christ that they not only followed, but led others to
follow his way. Leadership was the emphasis. The only hope for the world is for people to go to
them with the Gospel of Salvation, and having won them to the Savior, not to leave them, but to
work with them faithfully, patiently, painstakingly, until they become fruitful Christians savoring
the world about them with the Redeemer's love. The test of any work of evangelism thus is not
what is seen at the moment, or in the Conference Report, but in the effectiveness with which the
work continues in the next generation.
The costly principles of leadership development and reproduction seem to have been
submerged beneath the easier strategy of mass recruitment. When will we realize that evangelism
is not done by something, but by someone? It is an expression of God's love, and God is a Person.
His nature, being personal, is only expressed through personality, first revealed fully in Christ,
and now expressed through his Spirit in the lives of those yielded to Him.
Conclusion: The Master and your plan.
What is the plan of your life? Everyone has to live by some plan. The plan is the
organizing principle around which the aim of life is carried out. We may not be conscious of a
plan in every action, or even know that we have a plan, but nonetheless our actions invariably
unfold some kind of a pattern at the center of things. To regard Jesus' plans as true means that
they must be relevant. Every one of us then should be seeking some way to incorporate the
wisdom of Jesus' strategy into our own preferred method of evangelism.
The multitudes cannot know the Gospel unless they have a living witness. Merely giving
them an explanation will not suffice. People must be our priority. We should not expect a great
number to begin with, nor should we desire it. Better to give a year or so to one or two people
who learn what it means to conquer for Christ than to spend a lifetime with a congregation just
keeping the program going. The only realistic way to effect this is by being together. It is going to
take time and consistency in meeting together to pray and study God's word, and then to be
moving out in obedience. It is not enough just to involve persons in some kind of group
association, they must be given some way to express the things that they have learned; you need
to expect something from them. All of this is going to require a lot of supervision, both in the
personal development of these people, and in their work with others. The main thing is to keep
them growing in peace and in knowledge. Help them carry their burdens, and let them carry on
with the work of making disciples. The crucial thing, of course, is their own spiritual experience.
Nothing less than the infilling of the Spirit of Christ will be sufficient to meet the challenge. The
price of victory is costly, and disappointment sure to come, but we are not primarily living for the
present. Our satisfaction is in knowing that in generations to come our witness for Christ will still
be bearing fruit through them in an ever-widening cycle of reproduction to the ends of the earth
and unto the end of time.
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Appendix 2
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THE CENTRALITY OF THE GOSPEL
Tim Keller
PRINCIPLE
In Galatians 2:14, Paul lays down a powerful principle. He deals with Peter’s
racial pride and cowardice by declaring that he was not living “in line with the
truth of the gospel”. From this we see that the Christian life is a process of
renewing every dimension of our life-- spiritual, psychological, corporate, social-by thinking, hoping, and living out the “lines” or ramifications of the gospel.
The gospel is to be applied to every area of thinking, feeling, relating, working,
and behaving. The implications and applications of Galatians 2:14 are vast.
Part I - IMPLICATIONS AND APPLICATIONS
IMPLICATIONS
Implication #1 - The power of the gospel.
First, Paul is showing us that that bringing the gospel truth to bear on every
area of life is the way to be changed by the power of God. The gospel is
described in the Bible in the most astounding terms. Angels long to look into it
all the time. (I Peter 1:12). It does not simply bring us power, but it is the
power of God itself, for Paul says "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the
power of God for salvation" (Rom.1:16). It is also the blessing of God with
benefits, which accrue to anyone who comes near (I Cor.9:23). It is even called
the very light of the glory of God itself--"they cannot see the light of the gospel of
the glory of Christ...for God...has made his light shine into our hearts to give us
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." (II
Cor.4:4,6)
It has the life of God. Paul said to the Corinthians, "I gave you birth through the
gospel"! And then, after it has regenerated us, it is the instrument of all
continual growth and spiritual progress after we are converted. "All over the
world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among
you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth." (Col.
1:6). Here we learn: 1) That the gospel is a living thing (cf. Romans 1:16) which
is like a seed or a tree that brings more and more new life--bearing fruit and
growing. 2) That the gospel is only "planted" in us so as to bear fruit as we
understand its greatness and implications deeply—understood God's grace in all
its truth. 3) That the gospel continues to grow in us and renew us throughout
our lives--as it has been doing since the day you heard it. This text helps
us avoid either an exclusively rationalistic or mystical approach to renewal. On
the one hand, the gospel has a content--it is profound doctrine. It is truth, and
specifically, it is the truth about God's grace. But on the other hand, this truth
is a living power that continually expands its influence in our lives, just as a
crop or a tree would grow and spread and dominate more and more of an area
with roots and fruit.
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Implication #2- The sufficiency of the gospel.
Second, Paul is showing that we never “get beyond the gospel” in our Christian
life to something more “advanced”. The gospel is not the first “step” in a
“stairway” of truths, rather, it is more like the “hub” in a “wheel” of truth. The
gospel is not just the A-B-C’s but the A to Z of Christianity. The gospel is not
just the minimum required doctrine necessary to enter the kingdom, but the
way we make all progress in the kingdom.
We are not justified by the gospel and then sanctified by obedience, but the
gospel is the way we grow (Gal.3:1-3) and are renewed (Col.1:6). It is the
solution to each problem, the key to each closed door, the power through every
barrier (Rom.1:16-17). It is very common in the church to think as follows. "The
gospel is for non-Christians. One needs it to be saved. But once saved, you
grow through hard work and obedience." But Col.1:6 shows that this is a
mistake. Both confession and "hard work" that is not arising from and "in line"
with the gospel will not sanctify you--it will strangle you. All our problems come
from a failure to apply the gospel. Thus when Paul left the Ephesians he
committed them "to the word of his grace, which can build you up" (Acts 20:32)
The main problem, then, in the Christian life is that we have not thought out
the deep implications of the gospel, we have not “used” the gospel in and on all
parts of our life. Richard Lovelace says that most people’s problems are just a
failure to be oriented to the gospel--a failure to grasp and believe it through and
through. Luther says, "The truth of the Gospel is the principle article of all
Christian doctrine....Most necessary is it that we know this article well, teach it to
others, and beat it into their heads continually." (on Gal.2:14f) The gospel is not
easily comprehended. Paul says that the gospel only does its renewing work in
us as we understand it in all its truth. All of us, to some degree live around the
truth of the gospel but do not "get" it. So the key to continual and deeper
spiritual renewal and revival is the continual re-discovery of the gospel. A
stage of renewal is always the discovery of a new implication or application of
the gospel--seeing more of its truth. This is true for either an individual or a
church.
APPLICATIONS
The two “thieves” of the gospel.
Since Paul uses a metaphor for being “in line” with the gospel, we can consider
that gospel renewal occurs when we keep from walking “off-line” either to the
right or to the left. The key for thinking out the implications of the gospel is to
consider the gospel a “third” way between two mistaken opposites. However,
before we start we must realize that the gospel is not a half-way compromise
between the two poles--it does not produce “something in the middle”, but
something different from both. The gospel critiques both religion and irreligion
(Matt.21:31; 22:10).
Tertullian said, "Just as Christ was crucified between two thieves, so this
doctrine of justification is ever crucified between two opposite errors." Tertullian
meant that there were two basic false ways of thinking, each of which "steals"
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the power and the distinctiveness of the gospel from us by pulling us “off the
gospel line” to one side or the other. These two errors are very powerful,
because they represent the natural tendency of the human heart and mind.
(The gospel is “revealed” by God (Rom.1:17)--the unaided human mind cannot
conceive it.) These “thieves” can be called moralism or legalism on the one hand,
and hedonism or relativism on the other hand. Another way to put it is: the
gospel opposes both religion and irreligion. On the one hand,
"moralism/religion" stresses truth without grace, for it says that we must obey
the truth in order to be saved. On the other hand, "relativists/irreligion"
stresses grace without truth, for they say that we are all accepted by God (if
there is a God) and we have to decide what is true for us. But "truth" without
grace is not really truth, and "grace" without truth is not really grace. Jesus
was "full of grace and truth". Any religion or philosophy of life that deemphasizes or lose one or the other of these truths, falls into legalism or into
license and either way, the joy and power and "release" of the gospel is stolen by
one thief or the other.
"I am more sinful and flawed than I ever dared believe" (vs. antinomianism)
"I am more accepted and loved than I ever dared hope" (vs. legalism)
The moralism-religion thief. How does moralism/religion steal joy and power?
Moralism is the view that you are acceptable (to God, the world, others,
yourself) through your attainments. (Moralists do not have to be religious, but
often are.) When they are, their religion if pretty conservative and filled with
rules. Sometimes moralists have views of God as very holy and just. This view
will lead either to a) self-hatred (because you can't live up to the standards), or
b) self-inflation (because you think you have lived up to the standards). It is
ironic to realize that inferiority and superiority complexes have the very same
root. Whether the moralist ends up smug and superior or crushed and guilty
just depends on how high the standards are and on a person's natural
advantages (such as family, intelligence, looks, willpower). Moralistic people
can be deeply religious--but there is no transforming joy or power.
The relativism-irreligion thief. How does relativism steal joy and power?
Relativists are usually irreligious, or else prefer what is called "liberal" religion.
On the surface, they are more happy and tolerant than moralist/religious
people. Though they may be highly idealistic in some areas (such as politics),
they believe that everyone needs to determine what is right and wrong for them.
They are not convinced that God is just and must punish sinners. Their beliefs
in God will tend to see Him as loving or as an impersonal force. They may talk a
great deal about God's love, but since they do not think of themselves as
sinners, God's love for us costs him nothing. If God accepts us, it is because he
is so welcoming, or because we are not so bad. The concept of God's love in the
gospel is far more rich and deep and electrifying.
What do both religious and irreligious people have in common? They seem
so different, but from the viewpoint of the gospel, they are really the same.
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They are both ways to avoid Jesus as Savior and keep control of their lives.
Irreligious people seek to be their own saviors and lords through irreligion,
"worldly" pride. ("No one tells me how to live or what to do, so I determine what
is right and wrong for me!") But moral and religious people seek to be their own
saviors and lords through religion, "religious" pride. ("I am more moral and
spiritual than other people, so God owes me to listen to my prayers and take me
to heaven. God cannot let just anything happen to me--he owes me a happy life.
I’ve earned it!") The irreligious person rejects Jesus entirely, but the religious
person only uses Jesus as an example and helper and teacher--but not as a
Savior. (Flannery O'Connor wrote that religious people think "that the way to
avoid Jesus was to avoid sin...") These are two different ways to do the same
thing--control our own lives. (Note: Ironically, Moralists, despite all the
emphasis on traditional standards, are in the end self-centered and
individualistic, because they have set themselves up as their own Saviour.
Relativists, despite all their emphasis on freedom and acceptance, are in the
end moralistic because they still have to attain and live up to (their own)
standards or become desperate. And often, they take great pride in their own
open-mindedness and judge others who are not.)
They are both based on distorted views of the real God. The irreligious person
loses sight of the law and holiness of God and the religious person loses sight of
the love and grace of God, in the end they both lose the gospel entirely. For the
gospel is that on the cross Jesus fulfilled the law of God out of love for us.
Without a full understanding of the work of Christ, the reality of God’s holiness
will make his grace unreal, or the reality of his love will make his holiness
unreal. Only the gospel--that we are so sinful that we need to be saved utterly
by grace—allows a person to see God as he really is. The gospel shows us a God
far more holy than the legalist can bear (he had to die because we could not
satisfy his holy demands) and yet far more merciful than a humanist can
conceive (he had to die because he loved us). They both deny our sin--so lose the
joy and power of grace. It is obvious that relativistic, irreligious people deny the
depth of sin, and therefore the message “God loves you” has no power for them.
But though religious persons may be extremely penitent and sorry for their
sins, they see sins as simply the failure to live up to standards by which they
are saving themselves. They do not see sin as the deeper self-righteousness and
self-centeredness through which they are trying to live lives independent of
God. So when they go to Jesus for forgiveness, they only as a way to "cover over
the gaps" in their project of self-salvation. And when people say, "I know
God is forgiving, but I cannot forgive myself", they mean that they reject God's
grace and insist that they be worthy of his favor. So even religious people with
“low self-esteem” are really in their funk because they will not see the depth of
sin. They see it only as rules breaking, not as rebellion and self-salvation.
A whole new way of seeing God.
But Christians are those who have adopted a whole new system of approach to
God. They may have had both religious phases and irreligious phases in their
lives. But they have come to see that their entire reason for both their irreligion
and their religion was essentially the same and essentially wrong! Christians
come to see that both their sins and their best deeds have all really been ways
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of avoiding Jesus as savior. They come to see that Christianity is not
fundamentally an invitation to get more religious. A Christian comes to say:
"though I have often failed to obey the moral law, the deeper problem was why I
was trying to obey it! Even my efforts to obey it has been just a way of seeking
to be my own savior. In that mindset, even if I obey or ask for forgiveness, I am
really resisting the gospel and setting myself up as Savior." To "get the gospel" is
turn from self-justification and rely on Jesus' record for a relationship with
God. The irreligious don't repent at all, and the religious only repent of sins.
But Christians also repent of their righteousness. That is the distinction
between the three groups--Christian, moralists (religious), and pragmatists
(irreligious).
Summary. Without a knowledge of our extreme sin, the payment of the cross
seems trivial and does not electrify or transform. But without a knowledge of
Christ's completely satisfying life and death, the knowledge of sin would crush
us or move us to deny and repress it. Take away either the knowledge of sin or
the knowledge of grace and people's lives not changed. They will be crushed by
the moral law or run from it angrily. So the gospel is not that we go from being
irreligious to being religious, but that we realize that our reasons for both our
religiosity and our irreligiosity were essentially the same and essentially wrong.
We were seeking to be our own Saviors and thereby keep control of our own life.
When we trust in Christ as our Redeemer, we turn from trusting either selfdetermination or self-denial for our salvation--from either moralism or
hedonism.
A whole new way of seeing life
Paul shows us, then, that we must not just simply ask in every area of life:
“what is the moral way to act?” but “what is the way that is in-line with the
gospel?” The gospel must be continually “thought out” to keep us from moving
into our habitual moralistic or individualistic directions. We must bring
everything into line with the gospel.
The example of racism.
Since Paul used the gospel on racism, let’s use it as an example:
The moralistic approach to race. Moralists/legalists would tend to be very
proud of their culture. They would fall into cultural imperialism.They would try
to attach spiritual significance to their cultural styles, to make themselves feel
morally superior to other peoples. This happens because moralistic people are
very insecure, since they look a lot at the eternal law, and they know deep down
that they cannot keep it. So they use cultural differences to buttress their sense
of righteousness.
The relativistic/hedonist approach to race. But the opposite error from
cultural imperialism would be cultural relativism. This approach would say,
“yes, traditional people were racists because they believed in absolute truth.
But truth is relative. Every culture is beautiful in itself. Every culture must be
accepted on its own terms.”
The gospel approach to race. Christians know that racism does not stem so
much from a belief in truth, but from a lack of belief in grace. The gospel leads
us to be: a) on the one hand, somewhat critical of all cultures, including our
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own (since there is truth), but b) on the other hand, we can feel morally
superior to no one. After all, we are saved by grace alone, and therefore a nonChristian neighbor may be more moral and wise than you. This gives the
Christian a radically different posture than either moralists or relativists.
Note: Relativists (as we said above) are ultimately moralistic. And therefore they
can be respectful only of other people who believe everything is relative! But
Christians cannot feel morally superior to relativists.
The example of a physical handicap.
Let’s come down from something sociological (racism) to something
psychological. Imagine that through disease or an accident, you lost your
eyesight--you became blind. How would you bring the gospel to bear on this
pain and grief?
The moralistic person will either a) despair, because the handicap takes
away something which was his/her “righteousness” or b) deny, refusing to
admit the new permanent limitation. The hedonistic person will also either
a) despair, because the handicap takes away their ability to live a pleasureoriented life, or b) deny, because his/her philosophy cannot bear it. But the
gospel will lead to a) resist the handicap, yet b) accept it too. Too much
resistance is denial and too much acceptance is despair. The gospel is real
about both sin and grace, and thus can give the handicapped person the same
balance.)
GROUP DISCUSSION
1. Share a) what helped you most, and b) what puzzled you.
2. Now try to think through the following three subjects to come to a gospelbased position. In each case, distinguish the moralist view, the
hedonist/relativist view, and a gospel view:
How/whether to evangelize non-Christians.
How to relate (as adults) to difficult parents.
How to regard the poor.
(After you are done, check the appendix. See A.6, A.9, B.3)
3. If there is time, choose other issues or subjects that the group wants
to work on, using the same schema for thinking the through.
4. Before concluding, select one personal problem or issue in your life.
During the next week, pray and reflect and fill out the following form:
a. The moralistic way to handle this:
b. The hedonistic way to handle this:
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c. The gospel way to handle this:
Part II. - THE KEY TO EVERYTHING
We have seen that the gospel is the way that anything is renewed and
transformed by Christ--whether a heart, a relationship, a church, or a
community. It is the key to all doctrine and our view of our lives in this world.
Therefore, all our problems come from a lack of orientation to the gospel. Put
positively, the gospel transforms our hearts and thinking and approaches to
absolutely everything.
A. The Gospel and the individual.
1. Approach to discouragement. When a person is depressed, the moralist says,
"you are breaking the rules--repent." On the other hand, the relativist says,
"you just need to love and accept yourself". But (assuming there is no
physiological base of the depression!) the gospel leads us to examine ourselves
and say: "something in my life has become more important than God, a pseudosavior, a form of worksrighteousness". The gospel leads us to repentance, but
not to merely setting our will against superficialities. It is without the gospel
that superficialities will be addressed instead of the heart. The moralist will
work on behavior and the relativist will work on the emotions themselves.
2. Approach to the physical world: Some moralists are indifferent to the
physical world--they see it as "unimportant", while many others are downright
afraid of physical pleasure. Since they are seeking to earn their salvation, they
prefer to focus on sins of the physical like sex and the other appetites. These
are easier to avoid than sins of the spirit like pride. Therefore, they prefer to see
sins of the body as worse than other kinds. As a result, legalism usually leads
to a distaste of pleasure. On the other hand, the relativist is often a hedonist,
someone who is controlled by pleasure, and who makes it an idol. The gospel
leads us to see that God has invented both body and soul and so will redeem
both body and soul, though under sin both body and soul are broken. Thus the
gospel leads us to enjoy the physical (and to fight against physical brokenness,
such as sickness and poverty), yet to be moderate in our use of material
things.
3. Approach to love and relationships. Moralism often makes relationships into
a "blame-game". This is because a moralist is traumatized by criticism that is
too severe, and maintains a self-image as a good person by blaming others. On
the other hand, moralism can use the procuring of love as the way to "earn our
salvation" and convince ourselves we are worthy persons. That often creates
what is called "codependency"--a form of self-salvation through needing people
or needing people to need you (i.e. saving yourself by saving others). On the
other hand, much relativism/liberalism reduces love to a negotiated
partnership for mutual benefit. You only relate as long as it is not costing you
anything. So the choice (without the gospel) is to selfishly use others or to
selfishly let yourself be used by others. But the gospel leads us to do neither.
We do sacrifice and commit, but not out of a need to convince ourselves or
others we are acceptable. So we can love the person enough to confront,
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yet stay with the person when it does not benefit us.
4. Approach to suffering. Moralism takes the "Job's friends" approach, laying
guilt on yourself. You simply assume: "I must be bad to be suffering". Under the
guilt, though, there is always anger toward God. Why? Because moralists
believe that God owes them. The whole point of moralism is to put God in one's
debt. Because you have been so moral, you feel you don't really deserve
suffering. So moralism tears you up, for at one level you think, "what did I do to
deserve this?" but on another level you think, "I probably did everything to
deserve this!" So, if the moralist suffers, he or she must either feel mad at God
(because I have been performing well) or mad at self (because I have not been
performing well) or both. On the other hand, relativism/pragmatism feels
justified in avoiding suffering at all costs--lying, cheating, and broken promises
are OK. But when suffering does come, the pragmatist also lays the fault at
God's doorstep, claiming that he must be either unjust or impotent. But the
cross shows us that God redeemed us through suffering. That he suffered not
that we might not suffer, but that in our suffering we could become like him.
Since both the moralist and the pragmatist ignore the cross in different ways,
they will both be confused and devastated by suffering.
5. Approach to sexuality. The secularist/pragmatist sees sex as merely
biological and physical appetite. The moralist tends to see sex as dirty or at
least a dangerous impulse that leads constantly to sin. But the gospel shows us
that sexuality is to reflect the self-giving of Christ. He gave himself completely
without conditions. So we are not to seek intimacy but hold back control of our
lives. If we give ourselves sexually we are to give ourselves legally, socially,
personally--utterly. Sex only is to happened in a totally committed, permanent
relationship of marriage.
6. Approach to one's family. Moralism can make you a slave to parental
expectations, while pragmatism sees no need for family loyalty or the keeping of
promises and covenants if they do not "meet my needs". The gospel frees you
from making parental approval an absolute or psychological salvation, pointing
how God becomes the ultimate father. Then you will neither be too dependent
or too hostile to your parents.
7. Approach to self-control. Moralists tell us to control our passions out of fear
of punishment. This is a volition-based approach. Liberalism tells us to express
ourselves and find out what is right for us. This is an emotion-based approach.
The gospel tells us that the free, unloseable grace of God "teaches" us to "say
no" to our passions (Titus 2:13) if we listen to it. This is a whole-person based
approach, starting with the truth descending into the heart.
8. Approach to other races and cultures. The liberal approach is to relativize all
cultures. ("We can all get along because there is no truth".) The conservatives
believe there is truth for evaluation of cultures, and so they choose some
culture as superior and then they idolize it, feeling superior to others in the
impulse of self-justifying pride. The gospel leads us to be: a) on the one hand,
somewhat critical of all cultures, including our own (since there is truth), but b)
on the other hand, we are morally superior to no one. After all, we are saved by
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grace alone. Christians will exhibit both moral conviction yet compassion and
flexibility. For example, gays are used to being "bashed" and hated or
completely accepted. They never see anything else.
9. Approach to witness to non-Christians. The liberal/pragmatist approach is to
deny the legitimacy of evangelism altogether. The conservative/moralist person
does believe in proselytizing, because "we are right and they are wrong". Such
proselyzing is almost always offensive. But the gospel produces a constellation
of traits in us. a) First, we are compelled to share the gospel out of generosity
and love, not guilt. b) Second, we are freed from fear of being ridiculed or hurt
by others, since we already have the favor of God by grace. c) Third, there is a
humility in our dealings with others, because we know we are saved only by
grace alone, not because of our superior insight or character. d) Fourth, we are
hopeful about anyone, even the "hard cases", because we were saved only
because of grace, not because we were likely people to be Christians.
d) Fifth, we are courteous and careful with people. We don't have to push or
coerce them, for it is only God's grace that opens hearts, not our eloquence or
persistence or even their openness. All these traits not only create a winsome
evangelist but an excellent neighbor in a multi-cultural society.
10. Approach to human authority. Moralists will tend to obey human
authorities (family, tribe, government, cultural customs) too much, since they
rely so heavily on their self-image of being moral and decent. Pragmatists will
either obey human authority too much (since they have no higher authority by
which they can judge their culture) or else too little (since they may only obey
when they know they won't get caught). That mean either authoritarianism or
anarchy. But the gospel gives you both a standard by which to oppose human
authority (if it contradicts the gospel), but on the other hand, gives you
incentive to obey the civil authorities from the heart, even when you could get
away with disobedience.
11. Approach to human dignity. Moralists often have a pretty low view of
human nature--they mainly see human sin and depravity. Pragmatists, on the
other hand, have no good basis for treating people with dignity. Usually they
have no religious beliefs about what human beings are. (If they are just chance
products of evolution, how do we know they are more valuable than a rock?)
But the gospel shows us that every human being is infinitely fallen (lost in sin)
and infinitely exalted (in the image of God). So we treat every human being as
precious, yet dangerous!
12. Approach to guilt. When someone says, "I can't forgive myself", it means
there is some standard or condition or person that is more central to your
identity than the grace of God. God is the only God who forgives--no other "god"
will. If you cannot forgive yourself, it is because you have failed your real God,
your real righteousness, and it is holding you captive. The moralist's false god is
usually a God of their imagination which is holy and demanding but not
gracious. The pragmatist's false god is usually some achievement or
relationship.
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13. Approach to self-image. Without the gospel, your self-image is based upon
living up to some standards--whether yours or someone's imposed upon you. If
you live up to those standards, you will be confident but not humble. If you
don't live up to them, you will be humble but not confident. Only in the gospel
can you be both enormously bold and utterly sensitive and humble. For you are
both perfect and a sinner!
14. Approach to joy and humor. Moralism has to eat away at real joy and
humor--because the system of legalism forces you to take yourself (your image,
your appearance, your reputation) very seriously. Pragmatism on the other
hand will tend toward cynicism as life goes on because of the inevitable
cynicism that grows. This cynicism grows from a lack of hope for the world. In
the end, evil will triumph--there is no judgment or divine justice. But is we are
saved by grace alone, then the very fact of our being Christians is a constant
source of amazed delight. There is nothing matter of-fact about our lives, no "of
course" to our lives. It is a miracle we are Christians, and we have hope. So the
gospel which creates bold humility should give us a far deeper sense of humor.
We don't have to take ourselves seriously, and we are full of hope for the world.
15. Approach to "right living". Jonathan Edwards points out that "true virtue" is
only possible for those who have experienced the grace of the gospel. Any
person who is trying to earn their salvation does "the right thing" in order to get
into heaven, or in order to better their self-esteeem (etc.). In other words, the
ultimate motive is self interest. But persons who know they are totally accepted
already do "the right thing" out of sheer delight in righteousness for its own
sake. Only in the gospel do you obey God for God's sake, and not for what God
will give you. Only in the gospel do you love people for their sake (not yours), do
good for its own sake (not yours), and obey God for his sake (not yours). Only
the gospel makes "doing the right thing" a joy and delight, not a burden or a
means to an end.
B. The Gospel and the church.
1. Approach to ministry in the world. Legalism tends to place all the emphasis
on the individual human soul. Legalistic religion will insist on converting others
to their faith and church, but will ignore social needs of the broader
community. On the other hand, "liberalism" will tend to emphasize only
amelioration of social conditions and minimize the need for repentance and
conversion. The gospel leads to love which in turn moves us to give our
neighbor whatever is needed--conversion or a cup of cold water, evangelism and
social concern.
2. Approach to worship. Moralism leads to a dour and somber worship which
may be long on dignity but short on joy. A shallow understanding of
"acceptance" without a sense of God's holiness can lead to frothy or casual
worship. (A sense of neither God's love nor his holiness leads to a worship
service that feels like a committee meeting.) But the gospel leads us to see that
God is both transcendent yet immanent. His immanence makes his
transcendence comforting, while his transcendence makes his immanence
amazing. The gospel leads to both awe and intimacy in worship, for the
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Holy One is now our Father.
3. Approach to the poor. The liberal/pragmatist tend to scorn the religion of the
poor and see them as helpless victims needing expertise. This is born out of a
disbelief in God's common grace or special grace to all. Ironically, the secular
mindset also disbelieves in sin, and thus anyone who is poor must be
oppressed, a helpless victim. The conservative/moralists on the other hand
tend to scorn the poor as failures and weaklings. They see them as somehow to
blame for their situation. But the gospel leads us to be: a) humble, without
moral superiority knowing you were "spiritually bankrupt" but saved by Christ's
free generosity, and b) gracious, not worried too much about "deservingness",
since you didn't deserve Christ's grace, c) respectful of believing poor Christians
as brothers and sisters from whom to learn. The gospel alone can bring
"knowledge workers" into a sense of humble respect for and solidarity with the
poor.
4. Approach to doctrinal distinctives. The "already" of the New Testament means
more boldness in proclamation. We can most definitely be sure of the central
doctrines that support the gospel. But, the "not yet" means charity and humility
in non-essentials beliefs. In other words, we must be moderate about what we
teach except when it comes to the cross, grace and sin. In our views, especially
those that Christians cannot agree on, we must be less unbending and
triumphalistic ("believing we have arrived intellectually"). It also means that our
discernment of God's call and his "will" for us and other must not be
propagated with overweening assurance that your insight cannot be wrong. Vs.
pragmatism, we must be willing to die for our belief in the gospel; vs. moralism,
we must not fight to the death over every one of our beliefs.
5. Approach to holiness. The "already" means we should not tolerate sin. The
presence of the kingdom includes that we are made "partakers of the divine
nature" (II Pet. 1:3). The gospel brings us the confidence that anyone can be
changed, that any enslaving habit can be overcome. But the "not yet" our sin
which remains in us and will never be eliminated until the fullness of the
kingdom comes in. So we must avoid pat answers, and we must not expect
"quick fixes". Unlike the moralists, we must be patient with slow growth or
lapses and realize the complexity of change and growth in grace. Unlike
the pragmatists and cynics, we must insist that miraculous change is possible.
6. Approach to miracles. The "already" of the kingdom means power for miracles
and healing is available. Jesus showed the kingdom by healing the sick and
raising the dead. But the "not yet" means nature (including us) is still subject to
decay (Rom.8:22-23) and thus sickness and death is still inevitable until the
final consummation. We cannot expect miracles and the elimination of suffering
to be such a normal part of the Christian life that pain and suffering will be
eliminated from the lives of faithful people. Vs. moralists, we know that God can
heal and do miracles. Vs. pragmatists, we do not aim to press God into
eliminating suffering.
7. Approach to church health. The "already" of the kingdom means that the
church is the community now of kingdom power. It therefore is capable of
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mightily transforming its community. Evangelism that adds "daily to the number
of those being saved" (Acts 2:47) is possible! Loving fellowship which
"destroyed...the dividing wall of hostility" between different races and classes is
possible! But the "not yet" of sin means Jesus has not yet presented his bride,
the church "as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish"
(Eph.5:27). We must not then be harshly critical of imperfect congregations, nor
jump impatiently from church to church over perceived blemishes. Error will
never be completely eradicated from the church. The "not yet" means to avoid
the overly severe use of church discipline and other means to seek to bring
about a perfect church today.
8. Approach to social change. We must not forget that Christ is even now ruling
in a sense over history (Eph.1:22ff). The "already" of grace means that
Christians can expect to use God's power to change social conditions and
communities. But the "not yet" of sin means there will be "wars and rumors of
wars". Selfishness, cruelty, terrorism, oppression will continue. Christians
harbor no illusions about politics nor expect utopian conditions. The "not yet"
means that Christians will not trust any political or social agenda to bring
about righteousness here on earth. So the gospel keeps us from the overpessimism of fundamentalism (moralism) about social change, and also from
the over-optimism of liberalism (pragmatism).
Sum: All problems, personal or social come from a failure to use the gospel in a
radical way, to get "in line with the truth of the gospel" (Gal.2:14). All pathologies
in the church and all its ineffectiveness comes from a failure to use the gospel
in a radical way. We believe that if the gospel is expounded and applied in its
fullness in any church, that church will look very unique. People will find both
moral conviction yet compassion and flexibility. For example, gays are used to
being "bashed" and hated or completely accepted. They never see anything else.
The cultural elites of either liberal or conservative sides are alike in their
unwillingness to befriend or live with or respect or worship with the poor. They
are alike in separating themselves increasingly from the rest of society.
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Appendix 3
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The Incarnation, God’s Model for Cross-Cultural Communication
Charles Kraft
A major problem for today’s missionaries who seek to communicate the gospel in
terms of the culture of the society to which they go is that of the role they should assume.
To the unreflective, perhaps, this will not appear to be a problem, since he or she may
assume that it will suffice for them to fit into the assigned role of “missionary.” Perhaps ,
however, they would not be so unconcerned if they understood how adversely the simple
assumption of such a role can affect the message they seek to communicate.
In many places people see very little difference between the role of “missionary”
and that of “colonial government administrator” or that of “western businessman,” or
even that of “foreign tourist,” since there often seems to be so little basic difference
between the major attitudes, activities and concerns of the one and those of the other.
True, the missionary talks about religion, while the others are more concerned with
government or business or simply sightseeing. But beyond this there often seems to be
very little to disturb the impression of sameness so convincingly evoked by the
similarities in housing, clothing, traveling modes, linguistic ability (or, often, inability),
concern for schools, hospitals and other institutional innovations from western culture
and the like. Nor, often, is a distinction between “missionary” and “colonialist” or its
modern synonym “imperialist” evident enough to the nationals to lead them to exonerate
missionaries from the accusation that they are in league with the colonialists in their
imperialistic designs. Indeed, “spiritual imperialist” is one of the more recent epithets
felt by many to be appropriate as an alternative designation of the missionary.
This type of stereotyping is perhaps the most disturbing thing about simply being
assigned to a role such as missionary, since it allows the people to whom we go to
understand us and our presence in their midst wholly in terms of whatever their
stereotype of a missionary might be. That is, we become in their eyes well nigh
absolutely predictable, isolated from effective contact with them and depersonalized…In
other parts of the world, and especially in urban areas, the specifics of the stereotype may
vary but the people will often generate a similarly well-defined set of predictabilities
resulting in a similarly isolating and depersonalizing definition of the position and
activities of the missionary.
A STEREOTYPED GOD BREAKS OUT
That is a situation similar to that which God faced in his relationships with the
Jewish people over the years. In spite of his association with them and his constant
working in human affairs both within and outside of the Jewish nation, he had come to be
regarded as predictable, isolated from meaningful interpersonal contact with all but a
very few human beings, and more or less depersonalized. But then “in the fullness of
time” God did something about the situation.
In Jesus, the stereotyped God broke out of the stereotype. Though he was God and
had every right to remain God; though he was above humanity and powerful and majestic
and worshipable, and had every right to remain that way; though he had every right to
accept the stereotype, to remain within it accepting the assigned status, the prescribed
role, the assured respect that the stereotype provided for him, Jesus turned his back on all
of this, refusing any longer to cling to his rights as God. He laid aside both his rightful
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position and power and became a human being for the purpose of coming to live among
us (see Phil. 2:6-7 and Jn. 1:14). He broke out of the stereotype so that we could actually
see, hear and touch him as he dwelt, not above or apart from us, but truly among us.
To many people of that day (and this) God was regarded as very impressive. His
power, majesty and “otherness” made quite an impression on people. You might say that
God had developed a very good reputation and lots of respect, but few of his creatures
knew him well. He had many admirers but few friends. Much of what he said and did
was subject to the same kind of suspicion with which we regard the words and deeds of
the very rich or the very powerful—especially if their wealth of power has been inherited
rather than earned.
“How could the Kennedys or the Rockefellers understand what I have to go
through?” we ask, “since they have always had the wealth and/or the power ot insulate
themselves from these things. They could never understand my desires, my wants, my
needs,” we assume, “since they, without a struggle, were already in possession of the
things that I am working so hard to attain.”
And so, just as we suspect that such people don’t really understand us, likewise
humans had come to feel that God, being so far “out of it” with respect to the problems
and difficulties of the human scene, could not possibly understand “human beingness” is
really like. Those who questioned God’s ability to really understand were likely also to
question whether he really cared. And if he didn’t really care about us, why should we
care about living up to what was called “God’s standard?”
So humans assigned to God a status and a role (or non-role in relation to human
beings). We fitted God into a stereotype that effectively insulated us from active concern
about God or our relationship with God—a stereotype that kept God securely at arm’s
length and allowed us to go about our business with little or no concern about God. This
was often as true of the professional religionists of that day (as it is of ours) as it was of
the majority of the rest of the people.
But then God in Jesus broke out of that assigned status and role, rejecting the
stereotype to which he had a right, and he incarnated himself. He became a real human
being among us—a learner, a sharer, a participant in the affairs of men—no longer
simply God above us. Nor did he then merely content himself to do God-type things
near us. He spent approximately thirty-three years truly among us—seen, heard,
touched, living as a human being among human beings and perceived by those around
him as a human being. He learned, therefore, as the book of Hebrews contends, how to
sympathize with human beings by allowing himself to be subjected to the temptations
and sufferings of human beings (see Heb. 2:10, 17, 18; 4:15; 5:8, and elsewhere).
“Preposterous!” said the religious leaders of that day, “You can’t expect us to
believe a thing like that!” For they had studied the Scriptures and were sure they knew
exactly how the Messiah would come. He would, they seemed to expect, be above
ordinary men, he would associate with religious, good people, he would assume political
power, he would demand that people follow him, and so forth.
And, we must admit, it was a rather incredible thing to do. What a terrible risk
Jesus took in thus making himself vulnerable, able to be talked back to, able to be
criticized by humans, able to be tempted. But in this process of rejecting the assigned
status he had a right to retain, he put himself in the position to win (rather than demand—
as he had a right to) our respect, to earn (rather than to simply assume) our admiration
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and allegiance on the basis of what he did. He became a man among us. And in the
process, we discovered that God is ever more impressive than our doctrine had told us he
is. This discovery was doubly meaningful because it was based not simply on knowledge
about God, but on experience with him.
HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO OUR MINISTRIES?
But how does all of this apply to us as missionaries? We attempt to cross cultural
barriers, to enter into the frame of reference of other peoples for the sake of confronting
them with the message of Christ. But how do we go about it? And when we carry out
our calling, what is their response? Do we simply allow them to fit us into their
stereotype of what a missionary should be, whatever that stereotype may be, and, if that
stereotype is a bad one, end up with zero communications?
How would the people we work with fill in the following blanks? “The
missionary acts like ___”? In many situations the predictable filler of that blank would
be something like “colonial government administrator,” or “foreign businessman,” or, in
the area of Nigeria where I worked, the statement might well be predicted as, “The
missionary acts like God!”
As mentioned above, many people of mission lands may well feel that there are
more reasons than the missionary’s attitude to identify him or her with God. The
stereotype would seem to them to fit very well for a variety of reasons as they evaluate
the situation from within their frame of reference—a frame of reference into which the
missionary may not have penetrated if, indeed, she or he is even aware of it. From the
nationals’ point of view there may well be a whole series of further predictable
statements as well, such as: “The missionary lords it over us,” “The missionary shouts at
us,” “The missionary lives separate from us,” “The missionary only makes real friends of
people with western schooling.” These are statements of expectation as well as of
prediction, since they simply define for the people various aspects of the way in which
they expect the missionary to act. But by this very fact the communication value of the
acts and words that allow such statements to stand as accurate descriptions is close to
zero—unless, of course, it is the desire of the missionary to communicate this kind of
information.
BECOMING A REAL HUMAN BEING
But suppose someone says something like this about a missionary: “This
missionary acts like a real human being!” What a lot of information that kind of a
statement often carries—because the person of a mission land who makes that kind of
statement is defining “real human being” in terms of whatever is appropriate to that
concept from within his or her cultural frame of reference. Now, the missionary who is
interpreted as acting like God by the national may very well have been conforming to her
or his own definition of what it is to act like a real human being. But what from within
the missionary’s frame of reference looks like humanness may to the national look like
“Godness.” Thus, if to the national the missionary looks human, there has been a major
breakthrough involving the establishing of a beachhead within the national’s frame of
reference. There has been a breaking of the stereotype by overcoming the predictability
barrier, making possible life-changing discovery on the part of the national.
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The elements involved in establishing “humanness” within someone else’s
cultural frame of reference will vary from the quite trivial to the quite all-encompassing.
A missionary who, for example, never betrays the slightest doubt about anything
(especially about things that the national may assume are absolutely unknowable) may
well be interpreted as acting like God—that is, our very certainty may prove detrimental
to us at times. Note that the Apostle Paul chooses to be weak to the weak in order to win
them (1 Cor. 9:19-22). Furthermore, a missionary who never has or admits to a health
problem, or a security problem, or a moral (including thoughts) problem, or who never
admits to nationals that he has made a mistake, may well appear to them to fit more
properly in the supernatural category than in the human being category. On another
level, I once had a Nigerian say to me, “Why, we never knew how you missionaries go to
the bathroom—or even that you go to the bathroom!” In this regard it was a very
positive factor in the understanding of a certain number of the young people in our area
when, at a camp, I bathed with them…When the missionary acts differently than their
stereotype calls for her or him to act, the people are forced either to regard him or her as
an exception to their stereotype, or to modify or abandon the stereotype. If the
missionary’s activity consistently contradicts the stereotype in the direction of their
definition of humanness (there are other directions in which such reinterpretation could
go as well), the kind of human-to-human basis for communication that the incarnation
employs is established.
GOD, AND WE, HAVE A CHOICE OF ROLES
To summarize thus far, God had a choice of roles in his approach to us. He could
have remained as God in heaven, or even come to earth as God, and retained the respect
and prestige that is his right as God. He would have confined to have admirers but not
friends. The risks would have been far fewer, but the real impact very low because the
predictability would have been so high. But God chose not to go that route, choosing
rather to become a human being within the frame of reference of human beings, so that,
in spite of the tremendous risk involved, he might earn the respect of and, therefore, the
right to be listened to by human beings. Likewise we as missionaries may choose to
remain as gods above or as gods in the midst of the people we work among. Or we may
seek to follow God’s example and establish a beachhead within the frame of reference of
the people to whom God has called us—a beachhead of “human beingness” according to
their definition.
Soon after a young missionary had taken charge of a mission station in Africa he
was sitting, chatting with the son of the local chief on the porch of the mission home.
After some time the chief’s son looked up at the missionary and asked, “How long have
we been here?” The missionary calculated the time and said, “About three quarters of an
hour.” The chief’s son then asked, “Do you know how long I would have been here if
your predecessor were still here?” The missionary (lying) answered, “No.” “Five
minutes,” the chief’s son replied. “Your predecessor would have come to the door when
I called and asked me, ‘What do you want?’ I would have stated my business, gotten my
answer, and been off again in about five minutes! Just look,” he continued, “here we’ve
been sitting here for three quarters of an hour and I didn’t even notice that the time was
passing!”
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The previous missionary had only made one major blunder. He had acted in a
way perfectly intelligible from within his cultural framework. He had stepped outside to
meet the chief’s son, he had undoubtedly extended to the African a few common
greetings, and then he had gotten right to the point so as not to waste too much time by
asking very politely but directly what the man wanted. The African, however, was
interpreting all of these things from within his own frame of reference—a frame of
reference that regards a direct question such as “What do you want?” no matter how
politely asked in that context, as an extreme breach of etiquette, about equivalent to a
punch in the mouth. In the African’s society, it is the prerogative of the one who comes
to state his business in his own good time, and a matter of common courtesy for the
person visited to wait until his visitor gets ready to bring up the matter that brought him.
However, the chief’s son had come to expect such breaches of etiquette on the part of
missionaries, and this expectation had become a part of his stereotype of missionaries It
was not the actions of the earlier missionary that startled him, it was the fact that the
newcomer was willing to sit and chat with him and never to ask what brought him—from
his point of view, that the second missionary treated him like a human being—that
caused him to sit up and take notice. That which he, in terms of his frame of reference,
could definite as courtesy was in this situation the unpredictable and led to a new
discovery on the part of this chief’s son.
Straight out of Bible college, a young man I know accepted a call to a small New
England church. Soon after assuming that pastorate he also took a job in a factory. His
deacons called him on the carpet for this, admitting that they weren’t paying the highest
salary in the world but insisting that they expected him to devote all of his time to the
work of the church. “Oh,” he replied, “it’s not for the sake of the money that I took the
job in the factory. In fact,” he continued, “the church is welcome to whatever I earn. It’s
just that to this point I’ve spent all my time in school, yet I’m expected to minister to
people who spend from 9 to 5 every day in the factory. If I’m going to minister
effectively to these people, I’ve got to find out what it’s like to be in their shoes.”
This is one of the most constructive approaches to the ministry I’ve ever seen.
Though the pastor and his people were members of the same culture, he was able to
recognize that in major ways they were operating within different frames of reference—
he within an academic frame of reference, they within a quite different framework
strongly influenced by their involvement in factory work. In this and other ways he was
able to break through the stereotype that the church people had of a pastor, and to
increase dramatically the effectiveness both of his preaching and of his overall
relationship with the people.
Each of these illustrations points to the effectiveness for communication of
putting oneself within the hearer’s frame of reference, just as Jesus did. Jesus not only
came, he became. He not only traversed the infinite distance between heaven and earth
to get close to us, he also covered those last couple of feet that separate person from
person, to identify with us in the human condition in which we were immersed.
God became a human being—so much we. God broke through the isolating
stereotype—so must we. Those close to Jesus discovered that this one who had invited
them to get close to him, who had earned their respect and undying admiration and yet
had called them “friends,” could actually have demanded all of this. Even though he was
God, it was as a full fledged man, from within the human frame of reference, that he
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demonstrated it. So must we demonstrate God’s message from within the human frame
of reference—in hopes that the result of our ministry can be the same kidn of amazed yet
transforming response that John records as the result of Jesus’ ministry when he says
(paraphrasing 1 John 1:1-3):
This man came along, an impressive teacher, and I and several others became
his students. For three years we lived together. We walked together, talked
together, ate together, slept together. We both listened to his teaching and
watched closely how he lived. And what an impression he made on us! For as we lived
together we began to realize that this was no ordinary man—that when he spoke of God
as his Father he spoke from firsthand experience…for this man living among us was God
himself! This man whom we called “Teacher,” to whom we listened, which whom we
lived—we discovered that he is the God who created the universe, but who chose to come
in human form to live with us, his creatures, to demonstrate what he is like to us in a way
that we could not misunderstand. And this discovery has so impressed us that we’ll never
be the same again!
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Appendix 4
29
IMITATING THE INCARNATION
B.B. Warfield
From The Savior of the World (reprint: Banner of Truth, 1991), p. 247-70; reprinted in The
Person and Work of Christ (P&R, 1950, 1980), pp. 563-75.
Philippians 2:5-­‐8: Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man. He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. “Christ our Example.” After “Christ our Redeemer,” no words can more
deeply stir the Christian heart than these. Every Christian joyfully recognizes
the example of Christ, as, in the admirable words of a great Scotch
commentator, a body “of living legislation,” as “law, embodied and pictured in
a perfect humanity.” In Him, in a word, we find the moral ideal historically
realized, and we bow before it as sublime and yearn after it with all the
assembled desires of our renewed souls.
How lovingly we follow in thought every footstep of the Son of Man, on
the rim of hills that shut in the emerald cup of Nazareth, on the blue marge of
Gennesaret, over the mountains of Judea, and long to walk in spirit by His side.
He came to save every age, says Irenæus, and therefore He came as an infant, a
child, a boy, a youth, and a man. And there is no age that cannot find its
example in Him. We see Him, the properest child that ever was given to a
mother’s arms, through all the years of childhood at Nazareth “subjecting
Himself to His parents.” We see Him a youth, labouring day by day contentedly
at His father’s bench, in this lower sphere, too, with no other thought than to
be “about His father’s business.” We see Him in His holy manhood, going, “as
His custom was,” Sabbath by Sabbath, to the synagogue,—God as He was, not
too good to worship with His weaker brethren. And then the horizon
broadens. We see Him at the banks of Jordan, because it became Him to fulfil
every righteousness, meekly receiving the baptism of repentance for us. We see
Him in the wilderness, calmly rejecting the subtlest trials of the evil one:
refusing to supply His needs by a misuse of His divine power, repelling the
confusion of tempting God with trusting God, declining to seek His Father’s
ends by any other than His Father’s means. We see Him among the thousands
of Galilee, anointed of God with the Holy Ghost and power, going about
doing good: with no pride of birth, though He was a king; with no pride of
intellect, though omniscience dwelt within Him; with no pride of power,
though all power in heaven and earth was in His hands; or of station, though
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the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily; or of superior goodness or
holiness: but in lowliness of mind esteeming every one better than Himself,
healing the sick, casting out devils, feeding the hungry, and everywhere
breaking to men the bread of life. We see Him everywhere offering to men His
life for the salvation of their souls: and when, at last, the forces of evil gathered
thick around Him, walking, alike without display and without dismay, the path
of suffering appointed for Him, and giving His life at Calvary that through His
death the world might live.
“Which of you convinceth Me of sin?” is too low a question. Who can find in
all His life a single lack, a single failure to set us a perfect example? In what
difficulty of life, in what trial, in what danger or uncertainty, when we turn our
eyes to Him, do we fail to find just the example that we need? And if perchance
we are, by the grace of God, enabled to walk with Him but a step in the way,
how our hearts burn within us with longing to be always with Him,—to be
strengthened by the almighty power of God in the inner man, to make every
footprint which He has left in the world a stepping-stone to climb upward over
His divine path. Do we not rightly say that next to our longing to be in Christ is
our corresponding longing to be like Christ; that only second in our hearts to
His great act of obedience unto death by which He became our Saviour, stands
His holy life in our world of sin, by which He becomes our example?
Of course our text is not singular in calling upon us to make Christ our
example. “Be ye imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ Jesus,” is rather
the whole burden of the ethical side of Paul’s teaching. And in this, too, he was
but the imitator of his Lord, who pleads with us to “learn of Him because He is
meek and lowly in heart.” The peculiarity of our present passage is only that it
takes us back of Christ’s earthly life and bids us imitate Him in the great act of
His incarnation itself. Not, of course, as if the implication were that we were
equal with Christ and needed to stoop to such service as He performed. “Why
art thou proud, O man?” Augustine asks pointedly. “God for thee became low.
Thou wouldst perhaps be ashamed to initate a lowly man; then at least imitate
the lowly God. The Son of God came in the character of man and was made
low. . . . He, since He was God, became man: do thou, O man, recognize that
thou art man. Thy entire humility is to know thyself.” The very force of the
appeal lies, in a word, in the infinite exaltation of Christ above us: and the
mention of the incarnation is the apostle’s reminder to us of the ineffable
majesty which was by nature His to whom he would raise our admiring eyes.
Paul prises at our hearts here with the great lever of the deity of our exemplar.
He calls upon us to do nothing less than to be imitators of God. “What
encouragement is greater than this?” cries Chrysostom, with his instinctive
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perception of the motive-springs of the human heart. “Nothing arouses a great
soul to the performance of good works so much as learning that in this it is
likened to God.” And here, too, Paul is but the follower of his Lord: “Be ye
merciful, as your Father which is in heaven is merciful,” are words which fell
from His divine lips, altogether similar in their implication to Paul’s words in
the text: “Let it be this mind that is in you, which also was in Christ Jesus.” It is
the spirit which animated our Lord in the act of His incarnation which His
apostle would see us imitate. He would have us in all our acts to be like Christ,
as He showed Himself to be in the innermost core of His being, when He
became poor, He that was rich, that we by His poverty might be made rich.
We perceive, then, that the exhortation of the apostle gathers force for itself
from the deity of Christ, and from the nature of the transaction by which He,
being God, was brought into this sphere of dependent, earthly life in which we
live by nature. It is altogether natural, then, that he sharpens his appeal by
reminding his readers somewhat fully who Christ was and what He did for our
salvation, in order that, having the facts more vividly before their minds, they
may more acutely feel the spirit by which He was animated. Thus, in a perfectly
natural way, Paul is led, not to inform his readers but to remind them, in a few
quick and lively phrases which do not interrupt the main lines of discourse but
rather etch them in with a deeper colour, of what we may call the whole
doctrine of the Person of Christ. With such a masterly hand, or let us rather say
with such an eager spirit and such a loving clearness and firmness of touch, has
he done this, that these few purely incidental words constitute one of the most
complete statements of an essential doctrine to be found within the whole
compass of the Scriptures. Though compressed within the limits of three short
verses, it ranks in fulness of exposition with the already marvellously concise
outline of the same doctrine given in the opening verses of the Gospel of John.
Whenever the subtleties of heresy confuse our minds as we face the problems
which have been raised about the Person of our Lord, it is pre-eminently to
these verses that we flee to have our apprehension purified, and our thinking
corrected. The sharp phrases cut their way through every error: or, as we may
better say, they are like a flight of swift arrows, each winged to the joints of the
harness.
The golden-mouthed preacher of the ancient Church, impressed with this
fulness of teaching and inspired himself to one of his loftiest flights by the
verve of the apostle’s crisp language, pictures the passage itself as an arena, and
the Truth, as it runs burning through the clauses, as the victorious chariot
dashing against and overthrowing its contestants one after the other, until at
last, amid the clamour of applause which rises from every side to heaven, it
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springs alone towards the goal, with coursers winged with joy sweeping like a
single flash over the ground. One by one he points out the heresies concerning
the Person of Christ which had sprung up in the ancient Church, as clause by
clause the text smites and destroys them; and is not content until he shows how
the knees of all half-truths and whole falsehoods alike concerning this great
matter are made by these searching words to bow before our Saviour’s perfect
deity, His complete humanity, and the unity of His person. The magic of the
passage has lost none of its virtue with the millennium and a half which has
fled by since John Chrysostom electrified Constantinople with his golden
words: this sword of the Spirit is as keen to-day as it was then, and happy is the
man who knows its temper and has the arm to wield it. But we must not lose
ourselves in a purely theological interest with such a passage before us. Rather
let us keep our eyes, for this hour, on Paul’s main purpose, and seek to feel the
force of the example of Christ as he here advances it, for the government of
our lives. But to do this, as he points it with so full a reference to the Person of
Christ, following him we must begin by striving to realize who and what our
Lord was, who set us this example.
Let us observe, then, first, that the actor to whose example Paul would direct
our eyes, is declared by him to have been no other than God Himself. “Who
was before in the form of God,” are his words: and they are words than which
no others could be chosen which would more explicitly or with more directness
assert the deity of the person who is here designated by the name of Christ
Jesus. After the wear and tear of two thousand years on the phrases, it would
not be surprising if we should fail to feel this as strongly as we ought. Let us
remember that the phraseology which Paul here employs was the popular usage
of his day, though first given general vogue by the Aristotelian philosophy: and
that it was accordingly the most natural language for strongly asserting the deity
of Christ which could suggest itself to him. As you know, this mode of speech
resolved everything into its matter and its form,—into the bare material out of
which it is made, and that body of characterizing qualities which constitute it
what it is. “Form,” in a word, is equivalent to our phrase “specific character.” If
we may illustrate great things by small, we may say, in this manner of speech,
that the “matter” of a sword, for instance, is steel, while its “form” is that
whole body of characterizing qualities which distinguish a sword from all other
pieces of steel, and which, therefore, make this particular piece of steel
distinctively a sword. In this case, these are, of course, largely matters of shape
and contour. But now the steel itself, which constitutes the matter of the
sword, has also its “matter” and its “form:” its “matter” being metal, and its
“form” being the whole body of qualities that distinguish steel from other
metals, and make this metal steel. Going back still a step, metal itself has its
33
“matter” and “form;” its “matter” being material substance and its “form” that
body of qualities which distinguish metallic from other kinds of substance. And
last of all, matter itself has its “matter,” namely, substance, and its “form,”
namely, the qualities which distinguish material from spiritual substance, and
make this substance what we call matter. The same mode of speech is, of
course, equally applicable to the spiritual sphere. The “matter” of the human
spirit is bare spiritual substance, while its “form” is that body of qualities which
constitute this spirit a human spirit, and in the absence of which, or by the
change of which, this spirit would cease to be human and become some other
kind of spirit. The “matter” of an angel, again, is bare spiritual substance, while
the “form” is the body of qualities which make this spirit specifically an angel.
So, too, with God: the “matter” of God is bare spiritual substance, and the
“form” is that body of qualities which distinguish Him from all other spiritual
beings, which constitute Him God, and without which He would not be God.
What Paul asserts then, when he says that Christ Jesus existed in the “form of
God,” is that He had all those characterizing qualities which make God God,
the presence of which constitutes God, and in the absence of which God does
not exist. He who is “in the form of God,” is God.
Nor is it without significance that, out of the possible modes of expression
open to him, Paul was led to choose just this mode of asserting the deity of our
Lord. His mind in this passage was not on the bare divine essence; it was upon
the divine qualities and prerogatives of Christ. It is not the abstract conception
that Christ is God that moves us to our deepest admiration for His sublime act
of self-sacrifice: but rather our concrete realization that He was all that God is,
and had all that God has,—that God’s omnipotence was His, His infinite
exaltation, His unapproachable blessedness. Therefore Paul is instinctively led
to choose an expression which tells us not the bare fact that Christ was God,
but that He was “in the form of God,”—that He had in full possession all
those characterizing qualities which, taken together, make God that all-holy,
perfect, all-blessed being which we call God. Thus the apostle prepares his
readers for the great example by quickening their apprehension not only of
who, but of what Christ was.
Let us note, then, secondly, that the apostle outlines for us very fully the action
which this divine being performed. “He took the form of a servant by coming
into the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled
Himself by becoming subject even unto death, and that the death of the cross.”
There is no metamorphosis of substance asserted here: the “form of God” is
not said to have been transmuted into the “form of a servant”; but He who was
“in the form of God” is declared to have taken also to Himself “the form of a
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servant.” Nor is there, on the other hand, any deceptive show of an unreal
humiliation brought before us here: He took, not the appearance, mere state
and circumstances, or mere work and performance, but veritably “the form of a
servant,”—all those essential qualities and attributes which belong to, and
constitute a being “a servant.” The assumption involved the taking of an
actually servile nature, as well as of a subordinate station and a servant’s work.
And therefore it is at once further explained in both its mode and its effects.
He took the form of a servant “by coming into the likeness of men:” He did
not become merely a man, but by taking the form of a servant He came into a
state in which He appeared as man. His humanity was real and complete: but it
was not all,—He remained God in assuming humanity, and therefore only
appeared as man, not became only man. And by taking the form of a servant
and thus being found in fashion as a man, He became subject to obedience,—
an obedience pressed so far in its humiliation that it extended even unto death,
and that the shameful death of the cross. Words cannot adequately paint the
depth of this humiliation. But this it was,—the taking of the form of a servant
with its resultant necessity of obedience to such a bitter end,—this it was that
He who was by nature in the form of God,—in the full possession and use of
all the divine attributes and qualities, powers and prerogatives,—was willing to
do for us.
Let us observe, then, thirdly, that the apostle clearly announces to us the spirit
in which our Lord performed this great act. “Although He was in the form of
God, He yet did not consider His being on an equality with God a precious
prize to be eagerly retained, but made no account of Himself, taking the form
of a servant.” It was then in a spirit of pure unselfishness and self-sacrifice, that
looked not on its own things but on the things of others, that under the force
of love esteemed others more than Himself,—it was in this mind: or, in the
apostle’s own words, it was as not considering His essential equality with God
as a precious possession, but making no account of Himself,—it was in this
mind, that Christ Jesus who was before in the form of God took the form of a
servant. This was the state of mind that led Him to so marvellous an act,—no
compulsion from His Father, no desires for Himself, no hope of gain or fear of
loss, but simple, unselfish, self- sacrificing love.
Now it is not to be overlooked that some of the clauses the meaning of which
we have sought to fathom, are differently explained among expositors.
Nevertheless, although I have sought to adduce them so as to bring out the
apostle’s exact meaning, and although I believe that his appeal acquires an
additional point and a stronger leverage when they are thus understood, it
remains true that the main drift of the passage is unaffected by any of the
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special interpretations which reasonable expositors have put upon the several
clauses. These divergent expositions do seriously affect our doctrine of the
Person of Christ. In particular, all the forms of the popular modern doctrine of
kenosis or exinanition, which teaches that the divine Logos in becoming man
“emptied Himself,” and thus, that the very God in a more or less literal sense
contracted Himself to the limits of humanity, find their chief, almost their sole
Biblical basis in what appears to me a gratuitously erroneous interpretation of
one of these clauses,—that one which the Authorized Version renders, “He
made Himself of no reputation,” and which I have ventured to render, “He
made no account of Himself,” that is, in comparison with the needs of others;
but which the theologians in question, followed, unfortunately as I think, by the
Revised Version, render with an excessive literality, “He emptied Himself,”
thereby resurrecting the literal physical sense of the word in an unnatural
context. We have many reasons to give why this is an illegitimate rendering;
chief among which are, that the word is commonly employed in its figurative
sense and that the intrusion of the literal sense here is forbidden by the context.
But it is unnecessary to pause to argue the point. Whatever the conclusion
might be, the main drift of the passage remains the same. No interpretation of
this phrase can destroy the outstanding fact that the passage at large places
before our wondering eyes the two termini of “the form of God “and” the form
of a servant,” involving obedience even unto a shameful death; and “measures
the extent of our Lord’s self-denying grace by the distance between equality
with God and a public execution on a gibbet.” In any case the emphasis of the
passage is thrown upon the spirit of self-sacrificing unselfishness as the
impelling cause of Christ’s humiliation, which the apostle adduces here in order
that the sight of it may impel us also to take no account of ourselves, but to
estimate lightly all that we are or have in comparison with the claims of others
on our love and devotion. The one subject of the whole passage is Christ’s
marvellous self-sacrifice. Its one exhortation is, “Let it be this mind that is also
in you.” As we read through the passage we may, by contact with the full mind
and heart of the apostle, learn much more than this. But let us not fail to grasp
this, his chief message to us here,—that Christ Jesus, though He was God, yet
cared less for His equality with God, cared less for Himself and His own
things, than He did for us, and therefore gave Himself for us.
Firmly grasping this, then, as the essential content and special message of the
passage, there are some inferences that flow from it which we cannot afford
not to remind ourselves of.
And first of these is a very great and marvellous one,—that we have a God
who is capable of self-sacrifice for us. It was although He was in the form of
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God, that Christ Jesus did not consider His being on an equality with God so
precious a possession that He could not lay it aside, but rather made no
account of Himself. It was our God who so loved us that He gave Himself for
us. Now, herein is a wonderful thing. Men tell us that God is, by the very
necessity of His nature, incapable of passion, incapable of being moved by
inducements from without; that He dwells in holy calm and unchangeable
blessedness, untouched by human sufferings or human sorrows for ever,—
haunting
The lucid interspace of world and world,
Where never creeps a cloud, nor moves a wind,
Nor ever falls the least white star of snow,
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans,
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar
His sacred, everlasting calm.
Let us bless our God that it is not true. God can feel; God does love. We have
Scriptural warrant for believing, as it has been perhaps somewhat inadequately
but not misleadingly phrased, that moral heroism has a place within the sphere
of the divine nature: we have Scriptural warrant for believing that, like the old
hero of Zurich, God has reached out loving arms and gathered into His own
bosom that forest of spears which otherwise had pierced ours.
But is not this gross anthropomorphism? We are careless of names: it is the
truth of God. And we decline to yield up the God of the Bible and the God of
our hearts to any philosophical abstraction. We have and we must have an
ethical God; a God whom we can love, and in whom we can trust. We may feel
awe in the presence of the Absolute, as we feel awe in the presence of the
storm or of the earthquake: we may feel our dependence in its presence, as we
feel our helplessness before the tornado or the flood. But we cannot love it; we
cannot trust it; and our hearts, which are just as trustworthy a guide as our
dialectics, cry out for a God whom we may love and trust. We decline once for
all to subject our whole conception of God to the category of the Absolute,
which, as has been truly said, “like Pharaoh’s lean kine, devours all other
attributes.” Neither is this an unphilosophical procedure. As has been set forth
renewedly by Andrew Seth, “we should be unfaithful to the fundamental
principle of the theory of knowledge” “if we did not interpret by means of the
highest category within our reach.” “We should be false to ourselves, if we
denied in God what we recognize as the source of dignity and worth in
ourselves.” In order to escape an anthropomorphic God, we must not throw
ourselves at the feet of a zoomorphic or an amorphic one.
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Nevertheless, let us rejoice that our God has not left us by searching to find
Him out. Let us rejoice that He has plainly revealed Himself to us in His Word
as a God who loves us, and who, because He loves us, has sacrificed Himself
for us. Let us remember that it is a fundamental conception in the Christian
idea of God that God is love; and that it is the fundamental dogma of the
Christian religion that God so loved us that He gave Himself for us.
Accordingly, the primary presupposition of our present passage is that our God
was capable of, and did actually perform, this amazing act of unselfish selfsacrifice for the good of man.
The second inference that we should draw from our passage consists simply in
following the apostle in his application of this divine example to our human
life: a life of self-sacrificing unselfishness is the most divinely beautiful life that
man can lead. He whom as our Master we have engaged to obey, whom as our
Example we are pledged to imitate, is presented to us here as the great model
of self-sacrificing unselfishness. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in
Christ Jesus,” is the apostle’s pleading. We need to note carefully, however, that
it is not self-depreciation, but self-abnegation, that is thus commended to us. If
we would follow Christ, we must, every one of us, not in pride but in humility,
yet not in lowness but in lowliness, not degrade ourselves but forget ourselves,
and seek every man not his own things but those of others.
Who does not see that in this organism which we call human society, such a
mode of life is the condition of all real help and health? There is, no doubt,
another ideal of life far more grateful to our fallen human nature, an ideal based
on arrogance, assumption, self-assertion, working through strife, and issuing in
conquest,—conquest of a place for ourselves, a position, the admiration of
man, power over men. We see its working on every side of us: in the
competition of business life,— in the struggle for wealth on the one side,
forcing a struggle for bare bread on the other; in social life,—in the fierce battle
of men and women for leading parts in the farce of social display; even in the
Church itself, and among the Churches, where, too, unhappily, arrogant
pretension and unchristian self-assertion do not fail to find their temporal
reward. But it is clear that this is not Christ’s ideal, nor is it to this that He has
set us His perfect example. “He made no account of Himself:” though He was
in the form of God, He yet looked not upon His equality with God as a
possession to be prized when He could by forgetting self rescue those whom
He was not ashamed, amid all His glory, to call His brethren.
Are there any whom you and I are ashamed to call our brethren? O that the
divine ideal of life as service could take possession of our souls! O that we
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could remember at all times and in all relations that the Son of Man came into
the world to minister, and by His ministry has glorified all ministering for ever.
O that we could once for all grasp the meaning of the great fact that selfforgetfulness and self-sacrifice express the divine ideals of life.
And thus we are led to a third inference, which comes to us from the text: that
it is difficult to set a limit to the self-sacrifice which the example of Christ calls
upon us to be ready to undergo for the good of our brethren. It is
comparatively easy to recognize that the ideal of the Christian life is selfsacrificing unselfishness, and to allow that it is required of those who seek to
enter into it, to subordinate self and to seek first the kingdom of God. But is it
so easy to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that this is to be read not generally
merely but in detail, and is to be applied not only to some eminent saints but to
all who would be Christ’s servants?—that it is required of us, and that what is
required of us is not some self-denial but all self-sacrifice? Yet is it not to this
that the example of Christ would lead us?—not, of course, to self-degradation,
not to self-effacement exactly, but to complete self-abnegation, entire and
ungrudging self-sacrifice? Is it to be unto death itself? Christ died. Are we to
endure wrongs? What wrongs did He not meekly bear? Are we to surrender our
clear and recognized rights? Did Christ stand upon His unquestioned right of
retaining His equality with God? Are we to endure unnatural evils, permit
ourselves to be driven into inappropriate situations, unresistingly sustain
injurious and unjust imputations and attacks? What more unnatural than that
the God of the universe should become a servant in the world, ministering not
to His Father only, but also to His creatures,—our Lord and Master washing
our very feet? What more abhorrent than that God should die? There is no
length to which Christ’s self-sacrifice did not lead Him. These words are dull
and inexpressive; we cannot enter into thoughts so high. He who was in the
form of God took such thought for us, that He made no account of Himself.
Into the immeasurable calm of the divine blessedness He permitted this
thought to enter, “I will die for men!” And so mighty was His love, so colossal
the divine purpose to save, that He thought nothing of His divine majesty,
nothing of His unsullied blessedness, nothing of His equality with God, but,
absorbed in us,—our needs, our misery, our helplessness—He made no
account of Himself. If this is to be our example, what limit can we set to our
self-sacrifice? Let us remember that we are no longer our own but Christ’s,
bought with the price of His precious blood, and are henceforth to live, not for
ourselves but for Him,—for Him in His creatures, serving Him in serving
them. Let all thought of our dignity, our possessions, our rights, perish out of
sight, when Christ’s service calls to us. Let the mind be in us that was also in
Him, when He took no account of Himself, but, God as He was, took the form
39
of a servant and humbled Himself,—He who was Lord,—to lowly obedience
even unto death, and that the death of the cross. In such a mind as this, where
is the end of unselfishness?
Let us not, however, do the apostle the injustice of fancying that this is a
morbid life to which he summons us. The self-sacrifice to which he exhorts us,
unlimited as it is, going all lengths and starting back blanched at nothing, is
nevertheless not an unnatural life. After all, it issues not in the destruction of
self, but only in the destruction of selfishness; it leads us not to a Buddha-like
unselfing, but to a Christ-like self-development. It would not make us into
deedless dreamers lazying out a life
Of self-suppression, not of selfless love,
but would light the flames of a love within us by which we would literally “ache
for souls.” The example of Christ and the exhortation of Paul found
themselves upon a sense of the unspeakable value of souls. Our Lord took no
account of Himself, only because the value of the souls of men pressed upon
His heart. And following Him, we are not to consider our own things, but
those of others, just because everything earthly that concerns us is as nothing
compared with their eternal welfare.
Our self-abnegation is thus not for our own sake, but for the sake of others.
And thus it is not to mere self-denial that Christ calls us, but specifically to selfsacrifice: not to unselfing ourselves, but to unselfishing ourselves. Self-denial
for its own sake is in its very nature ascetic, monkish. It concentrates our whole
attention on self—self-knowledge, self-control—and can therefore eventuate in
nothing other than the very apotheosis of selfishness. At best it succeeds only
in subjecting the outer self to the inner self, or the lower self to the higher self;
and only the more surely falls into the slough of self-seeking, that it partially
conceals the selfishness of its goal by refining its ideal of self and excluding its
grosser and more outward elements. Self-denial, then, drives to the cloister;
narrows and contracts the soul; murders within us all innocent desires, dries up
all the springs of sympathy, and nurses and coddles our self-importance until
we grow so great in our own esteem as to be careless of the trials and
sufferings, the joys and aspirations, the strivings and failures and successes of
our fellow-men. Self-denial, thus understood, will make us cold, hard,
unsympathetic,—proud, arrogant, self-esteeming,—fanatical, overbearing,
cruel. It may make monks and Stoics,—it cannot make Christians.
It is not to this that Christ’s example calls us. He did not cultivate self, even His
divine self: He took no account of self. He was not led by His divine impulse
40
out of the world, driven back into the recesses of His own soul to brood
morbidly over His own needs, until to gain His own seemed worth all sacrifice
to Him. He was led by His love for others into the world, to forget Himself in
the needs of others, to sacrifice self once for all upon the altar of sympathy.
Self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world. And self-sacrifice will lead us, His
followers, not away from but into the midst of men. Wherever men suffer,
there will we be to comfort. Wherever men strive, there will we be to help.
Wherever men fail, there will be we to uplift. Wherever men succeed, there will
we be to rejoice. Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our
fellows: it means absorption in them. It means forgetfulness of self in others. It
means entering into every man’s hopes and fears, longings and despairs: it
means manysidedness of spirit, multiform activity, multiplicity of sympathies. It
means richness of development. It means not that we should live one life, but a
thousand lives,—binding ourselves to a thousand souls by the filaments of so
loving a sympathy that their lives become ours. It means that all the
experiences of men shall smite our souls and shall beat and batter these
stubborn hearts of ours into fitness for their heavenly home. It is, after all,
then, the path to the highest possible development, by which alone we can be
made truly men. Not that we shall undertake it with this end in view. This were
to dry up its springs at their source. We cannot be self-consciously selfforgetful, selfishly unselfish. Only, when we humbly walk this path, seeking
truly in it not our own things but those of others, we shall find the promise
true, that he who loses his life shall find it. Only, when, like Christ, and in
loving obedience to His call and example, we take no account of ourselves, but
freely give ourselves to others, we shall find, each in his measure, the saying
true of himself also: “Wherefore also God hath highly exalted him.” The path
of self-sacrifice is the path to glory.
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Appendix 5
42
Basic Outline for Quiet Times
Prayer:
Pray that the Lord would open your heart and your mind, that you would be able to
understand what He would have you understand, that He would open the Scriptures to
you, and impress upon your heart the things He wills.
Read the Passage:
Read the passage as an overview. Find out what the passage is basically trying to say. Is
it a letter, a history, a prophecy, etc.
Read the Passage Again:
This time read more slowly, looking for specific phrases and ideas that the Lord may be
wanting you to take note of. Dig deeper and question more as you now have read the
passage previously in its entirety.
Reflect:
Take a deep breath and try to think about those questions or phrases you have from the
passage. You could journal, think aloud, or just ponder things in your mind. Whatever
helps you sort things out and focus.
Pray Again:
Pray the ACTS prayer.
Adoration: Praising God for who He is (not to be confused with what He has done for
you personally). Reflect upon the qualities of God that are purely Him, His
omnipotence, His omniscience, mercy, grace, creativity, etc.
Confession: Confess your sins, the things in your heart that trouble you, the things you
have done (or not done), thought, and said that have displeasing to Him. This is not
done in fear but in sincerity and trusting in His grace. He invites us to cast our burdens
on Him, to confess the ways we fall short and where we need to embrace His grace. He
loves us and wants to help us.
Thanksgiving: Praising and Thanking God for things He has done in your life and in the
lives of others. Can be specific or broad.
Supplication: This is where we ask God for things. Especially ask for things that you
have learned or gleaned from the passage you just read and the things He showed you.
Pray for your friends and family who are suffering. Pray for spiritual things from Him,
not just for worldly things for yourself.
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Appendix 6
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WHY PLANT CHURCHES
Tim Keller
Redeemer PresbyterianChurch
Feb. 2002
Introduction
The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most
crucial strategy for 1) the numerical growth of the Body of Christ in any
city, and 2) the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing
churches in a city. Nothing else--not crusades, outreach programs, parachurch ministries, growing mega-churches, congregational consulting,
nor church renewal processes--will have the consistent impact of
dynamic, extensive church planting. This is an eyebrow raising
statement. But to those who have done any study at all, it is not even
controversial.
The normal response to discussions about church planting is something
like this:
A. 'We already have plenty of churches that have lots and lots of
room for all the new people who have come to the area. Let's get them
filled before we go off building any new ones."
B. 'Every church in this community used to be more full than it is
now. The churchgoing public is a 'shrinking pie'. A new church here will
just take people from churches already hurting and weaken everyone.'
C. 'Help the churches that are struggling first. A new church
doesn't help the ones we have that are just keeping their nose above
water. We need better churches, not more churches.'
These statements appear to be 'common sense' to many people, but they
rest on several wrong assumptions. The error of this thinking will become
clear if we ask 'Why is church planting so crucially important?' Because--
A. We want to be true to THE BIBLICAL MANDATE
1. Jesus' essential call was to plant churches. Virtually all the great
evangelistic challenges of the New Testament are basically calls to plant
churches, not simply to share the faith. The 'Great Commission'
(Matt.28: 18-20) is not just a call to 'make disciples' but to 'baptize'. In
Acts and elsewhere, it is clear that baptism means incorporation into a
worshipping community with accountability and boundaries (cf. Acts
2:41-47). The only way to be truly sure you are increasing the number of
Christians in a town is to increase the number of churches. Why? Much
45
traditional evangelism aims to get a ‘decision’ for Christ. Experience,
however, shows us that many of these 'decisions' disappear and never
result in changed lives. Why? Many, many decisions are not really
conversions, but often only the beginning of a journey of seeking God.
(Other decisions are very definitely the moment of a 'new birth', but this
differs from person to person.) Only a person who is being 'evangelized' in
the context of an on-going worshipping and shepherding community can
be sure of finally coming home into vital, saving faith. This is why a
leading missiologist like C.Peter Wagner can say, "Planting new churches
is the most effective evangelistic methodology known under heaven."1
2. Paul's whole strategy was to plant urban churches. The greatest
missionary in history, St.Paul, had a rather simple, two-fold strategy.
First, he went into the largest city of the region (cf. Acts 16:9,12), and
second, he planted churches in each city (cf. Titus 1:5-"appoint elders in
every town"). Once Paul had done that, he could say that he had 'fully
preached' the gospel in a region and that he had 'no more work' to do
there (cf. Romans 15:19,23). This means Paul had two controlling
assumptions: a) that the way to most permanently influence a country
was through its chief cities, and b) the way to most permanently
influence a city was to plant churches in it. Once he had accomplished
this in a city, he moved on. He knew that the rest that needed to happen
would follow.
Response: 'But,' many people say, 'that was in the beginning. Now the
country (at least our country) is filled with churches. Why is church planting
important now?" We also plant churches because--
B. We want to be true to THE GREAT COMMISSION.
Some facts--
1. New churches best reach a) new generations, b) new residents,
and c) new people groups. First (a) younger adults have always been
disproportionately found in newer congregations. Long-established
congregations develop traditions (such as time of worship, length of
service, emotional responsiveness, sermon topics, leadership-style,
emotional atmosphere, and thousands of other tiny customs and mores),
which reflect the sensibilities of long-time leaders from the older
generations who have the influence and money to control the church life.
This does not reach younger generations. Second, (b) new residents are
almost always reached better by new congregations. In older
congregations, it may require tenure of 10 years before you are allowed
into places of leadership and influence, but in a new church, new
residents tend to have equal power with long-time area residents.
Last, (c) new socio-cultural groups in a community are always reached
46
better by new congregations. For example, if new white-collar commuters
move into an area where the older residents were farmers, it is likely that
a new church will be more receptive to the myriad of needs of the new
residents, while the older churches will continue to be oriented to the
original social group. And new racial groups in a community are best
reached by a new church that is intentionally multi-ethnic from the start.
For example: if an all-Anglo neighborhood becomes 33% Hispanic, a new,
deliberately bi-racial church will be far more likely to create 'cultural
space' for newcomers than will an older church in town. Finally, brand
new immigrant groups nearly always can only be reached by churches
ministering in their own language. If we wait until a new group is
assimilated into American culture enough to come to our church, we will
wait for years without reaching out to them.
[Note: Often, a new congregation for a new people-group can be planted
within the overall structure of an existing church. It may be a new
Sunday service at another time, or a new network of house churches that
are connected to a larger, already existing congregation. Nevertheless,
though it may technically not be a new independent congregation, it
serves the same function.]
In summary, new congregations empower new people and new peoples
much more quickly and readily than can older churches. Thus they
always have and always will reach them with greater facility than longestablished bodies. This means, of course, that church planting is not
only for 'frontier regions' or 'pagan' countries that we are trying to see
become Christian. Christian countries will have to maintain vigorous,
extensive church planting simply to stay Christian!
2. New churches best reach the unchurched--period. Dozens of
denominational studies have confirmed that the average new church
gains most of its new members (60-80%) from the ranks of people who
are not attending any worshipping body, while churches over 10-15
years of age gain 80-90% of new members by transfer from other
congregations.2 This means that the average new congregation will bring
6-8 times more new people into the life of the Body of Christ than an
older congregation of the same size.
So though established congregations provide many things that newer
churches often cannot, older churches in general will never be able to
match the effectiveness of new bodies in reaching people for the
kingdom. Why would this be? As a congregation ages, powerful internal
institutional pressures lead it to allocate most of its resources and energy
toward the concerns of its members and constituents, rather than
toward those outside its walls. This is natural and to a great degree
desirable. Older congregations therefore have a stability and steadiness
47
that many people thrive on and need. This does not mean that
established churches cannot win new people. In fact, many nonChristians will only be reached by churches with long roots in the
community and the trappings of stability and respectability.
However, new congregations, in general, are forced to focus on the needs
of its non-members, simply in order to get off the ground. So many of its
leaders have come very recently from the ranks of the un-churched, that
the congregation is far more sensitive to the concerns of the non-believer.
Also, in the first two years of our Christian walk, we have far more close,
face-to- face relationships with non-Christians than we do later. Thus a
congregation filled with people fresh from the ranks of the un-churched
will have the power to invite and attract many more non-believers into
the events and life of the church than will the members of the typical
established body.
What does this mean practically? If we want to reach our city--should we
try to renew older congregations to make them more evangelistic, or
should we plant lots of new churches? But that question is surely a false
either-or dichotomy. We should do both! Nevertheless, all we have been
saying proves that, despite the occasional exceptions, the only widescale
way to bring in lots of new Christians to the Body of Christ in a
permanent way is to plant new churches.
To throw this into relief, imagine Town-A and Town-B and Town-C are
the same size, and they each have 100 churches of 100 persons each.
But in Town-A, all the churches are over 15 years old, and then the
overall number of active Christian churchgoers in that town will be
shrinking, even if four or five of the churches get very 'hot' and double in
attendance. In Town- B, 5 of the churches are under 15 years old, and
they along with several older congregations are winning new people to
Christ, but this only offsets the normal declines of the older churches.
Thus the overall number of active Christian churchgoers in that town will
be staying the same. Finally, in Town-C, 30 of the churches are under 15
years old. In this town, the overall number of active Christian
churchgoers will be on a path to grow 50% in a generation.3
Response: 'But,' many people say, 'what about all the existing churches
that need help? You seem to be ignoring them.' Not at all. We also plant
churches because--
C. We want to continually RENEW THE WHOLE BODY
OF CHRIST.
It is a great mistake to think that we have to choose between church
planting and church renewal. Strange as it may seem, the planting of
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new churches in a city is one of the very best ways to revitalize many
older churches in the vicinity and renew the whole Body of Christ. Why?
1. First, the new churches bring new ideas to the whole Body. There
is plenty of resistance to the idea that we need to plant new churches to
reach the constant stream of 'new' groups and generations and residents.
Many congregations insist that all available resources should be used to
find ways of helping existing churches reach them. However, there is no
better way to teach older congregations about new skills and methods for
reaching new people groups than by planting new churches. It is the new
churches that will have freedom to be innovative and they become the
'Research and Development' department for the whole Body in the city.
Often the older congregations were too timid to try a particular approach
or were absolutely sure it would 'not work here'. But when the new
church in town succeeds wildly with some new method, the other
churches eventually take notice and get the courage to try it themselves.
2. Second, new churches are one of the best ways to surface
creative, strong leaders for the whole Body. In older congregations,
leaders emphasize tradition, tenure, routine, and kinship ties. New
congregations, on the other hand, attract a higher percentage of
venturesome people who value creativity, risk, innovation and future
orientation. Many of these men and women would never be attracted or
compelled into significant ministry apart from the appearance of these
new bodies. Often older churches 'box out' many people with strong
leadership skills who cannot work in more traditional settings. New
churches thus attract and harness many people in the city whose gifts
would otherwise not be utilized in the work of the Body. These new
leaders benefit the whole city-Body eventually.
3. Third, the new churches challenge other churches to selfexamination. The "success" of new churches often challenges older
congregations in general to evaluate themselves in substantial ways.
Sometimes it is only in contrast with a new church that older churches
can finally define their own vision, specialties, and identity. Often the
growth of the new congregation gives the older churches hope that 'it can
be done', and may even bring about humility and repentance for defeatist
and pessimistic attitudes. Sometimes, new congregations can partner
with older churches to mount ministries that neither could do by
themselves.
4. Fourth, the new church may be an 'evangelistic feeder' for a
whole community. The new church often produces many converts who
end up in older churches for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the new
church is very exciting and outward facing but is also very unstable or
immature in its leadership. Thus some converts cannot stand the
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tumultuous changes that regularly come through the new church and
they move to an existing church. Sometimes the new church reaches a
person for Christ, but the new convert quickly discovers that he or she
does not 'fit' the socio-economic make up of the new congregation, and
gravitates to an established congregation where the customs and culture
feels more familiar. Ordinarily, the new churches of a city produce new
people not only for themselves, but for the older bodies as well.
Sum: Vigorous church planting is one of the best ways to renew the
existing churches of a city, as well as the best single way to grow the
whole Body of Christ in a city.
There is one more reason why it is good for the existing churches of the
region to initiate or at least support the planting of churches in a given
area. We plant churches—
D. As an exercise in KINGDOM-MINDEDNESS
All in all, church planting helps an existing church the best when the
new congregation is voluntarily 'birthed' by an older 'mother'
congregation. Often the excitement and new leaders and new ministries
and additional members and income 'washes back' into the mother
church in various ways and strengthens and renews it. Though there is
some pain in seeing good friends and some leaders go away to form a
new church, the mother church usually experiences a surge of high selfesteem and an influx of new enthusiastic leaders and members.
However, a new church in the community usually confronts churches
with a major issue--the issue of 'kingdom-mindedness'. New churches, as
we have seen, draw most of their new members (up to 80%) from the
ranks of the unchurched, but they will always attract some people out of
existing churches. That is inevitable. At this point, the existing churches,
in a sense, have a question posed to them: "Are we going to rejoice in the
80%--the new people that the kingdom has gained through this new
church, or are we going to bemoan and resent the three families we lost
to it?" In other words, our attitude to new church development is a test of
whether our mindset is geared to our own institutional turf, or to the
overall health and prosperity of the kingdom of God in the city.
Any church that is more upset by their own small losses rather than the
kingdoms large gains is betraying its narrow interests. Yet, as we have
seen, the benefits of new church planting to older congregations is very
great, even if that may not be obvious initially.
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SUMMARY
If we briefly glance at the objections to church planting in the
introduction, we can now see the false premises beneath the statements.
A. Assumes that older congregations can reach newcomers as well as
new congregations. But to reach new generations and people groups will
require both renewed older churches and lots of new churches. B.
Assumes that new congregations will only reach current active
churchgoers. But new churches do far better at reaching the
unchurched, and thus they are the only way to increase the 'churchgoing
pie'. C. Assumes that new church planting will only discourage older
churches. There is a prospect of this, but new churches for a variety of
ways, are one of the best ways to renew and revitalize older churches. D.
Assumes that new churches only work where the population is growing.
Actually, they reach people wherever the population is changing. If new
people are coming in to replace former residents, or new groups of people
are coming in--even though the net pop figure is stagnant--new churches
are needed.
New church planting is the only way that we can be sure we are going to
increase the number of believers in a city and one of the best ways to
renew the whole Body of Christ. The evidence for this statement is
strong--Biblically, sociologically, and historically. In the end, a lack of
kingdom-mindedness may simply blind us to all this evidence. We must
beware of that.
APPENDIX A- HISTORICAL LESSONS
If all this is true, there should be lots of evidence for these principles in
church history--and there is.
In 1820, there was one Christian church for every 875 U.S. residents.
But from 1860-1906, U.S. Protestant churches planted one new church
for increase of 350 in the population, bringing the ratio by the start of
WWI to just 1 church for every 430 persons. In 1906 over a third of all
the congregations in the country were less than 25 years old.4 As a
result, the percentage of the U.S. population involved in the life of the
church rose steadily. For example, in 1776, 17% of the U.S. population
was 'religious adherents', but that rose to 53% by 1916.5
However, after WWI, especially among mainline Protestants, church
planting plummeted, for a variety of reasons. One of the main reasons
was the issue of 'turf'. Once the continental U.S. was covered by towns
and settlements and churches and church buildings in each one, there
was strong resistance from older churches to any new churches being
planted in 'our neighborhood'. As we have seen above, new churches are
51
commonly very effective at reaching new people and growing for its first
couple of decades. But the vast majority of U.S. congregations reaches
their peak in size during the first two or three decades of their existence
and then remain on a plateau or slowly shrink.6 This is due to the
factors mentioned above. They cannot assimilate well new people or
groups of people as well as new churches. However, older churches have
feared the competition from new churches. Mainline church
congregations, with their centralized government, were the most effective
in blocking new church development in their towns. As a result, however,
the mainline churches have shrunk remarkably in the last 20-30 years.7
What are the historical lessons? Church attendance and adherence
overall in the United States is in decline and decreasing. This cannot be
reversed in any other way than in the way it originally had been so
remarkably increasing. We must plant churches at such a rate that the
number of churches per 1,000 population begins to grow again, rather
than decline, as it has since WWI.
C.Peter Wagner, Strategies for Growth (Glendale: Regal, 1987), p. 168.
Lyle Schaller, quoted in D.McGavran and G.Hunter, Church Growth:
Strategies that Work (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980), p. 100. See C.Kirk
Hadaway, New Churches and Church Growth in the Southern Baptist
Convention (Nashville: Broadman, 1987).
3 See Lyle Schaller, 44 Questions for Church Planters (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1991), p.12. Schaller talks about 'The 1% Rule'. Each year any
association of churches should plant new congregations at the rate of 1%
of their existing total--otherwise, that association will be in decline. That
is just 'maintenance'. If an association wants to grow 50%+, it must plant
2-3% per year.
4 Ibid, pp.14-26. 5 Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of
America 1776-1990 (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1992) p.16. 6 Schaller, 44
Questions, p.23. 7 See Schaller's case that it is a lack of church planting
that is one major cause of the decline of mainline Protestantism. Ibid,
p.24-26. Finke and Stark show how independent churches, such as the
Baptists, who have had freedom to plant churches without interference,
have proliferated their numbers. Churching, p.248.
1
2
52
Appendix 7
53
Evangelism through “Networking”...
Tim Keller | July 1992
Philosophy of Networking
“Networking” was originally a modern marketplace-jargon word, which refers to
deliberate relationship building to meet business goals. I use it to mean a whole
philosophy of ministry based on friendship evangelism.
For years, Christians have talked about “friendship evangelism” as opposed to
methods such as “cold contact” evangelism (street evangelism, tract distribution,
cold calling), “mass evangelism” (crusades, radio/TV broadcasts), “visitation
evangelism” (Evangelism Explosion). Friendship evangelism was always
considered 1) informal, something that could not be effected much through
leadership or programs, and 2) something that mainly only mature Christians did
much. (Why? Because it took both courage and the ability to articulate the gospel
and field questions.) Therefore, friendship evangelism was only ever seer, as a
supplement to the REAL evangelism “programs”. Those programs were
evangelistic services, or visitation evangelism courses, or broadcasts, and so on.
Why was friendship evangelism not seen as the REAL evangelism programs? 1)
Pastors could not program friendship evangelism, and thus felt powerless to effect
it. 2) Friendship evangelism seemed elitist--something only for advanced
Christians.
No research can prove this-but the more modern, the more secular, the more
urbanized, and the newer the cities and communities, the more these traditional
programs do not seem to bear fruit. Why? Most programs rely on the reception of
the gospel from a stranger. Either the crusade evangelist, or the trained “visitor”,
or some other stranger must give the gospel to the non- believer. As our modern
society becomes more privatized, as neighborhoods disappear and people
“cocoon”, the likelihood that people will listen to a stranger diminishes. Radio and
TV evangelism does fit in better with modem culture, but the follow-up gap is
severe. (How do you get the spiritually awakened through TV into a church? The
problem with a privatized culture-it creates people who are commitment-resistant.
Radio and TV can do very little to turn the “decisions” into disciples.) In response,
many churches are discovering that the entire church can be based on a philosophy
of networking. It is a complete retooling of the entire church’s ministry, giving
every part an “outward” face, making virtually every ministry activity a friendship evangelism event. This means everything -worship, small group life,
education, etc. This is to create a “corporate culture.” It can be supported by
planning and ministry programs; it can be done by even (and by ESPECIALLY)
54
the new believer. (In fact, the new believer is critical; see below!) A networking
philosophy consists of the following parts or principles.
SUM:
In an increasingly privatized, secularized society, we will find more and more that:
1. People will not listen to the gospel from strangers: a) not to strangers who come
to their door, b) not to strangers who call them, mail them, or even advertise to
them.
2. People will not be assimilated well through strangers who follow them up by
coming to their doors either. Assimilation takes enormous energy if we assume
that most visitors come without a good relationship to anyone in the church.
3. People will have to come a number of times to a program or service before even
giving us their name in order to send them material/ newsletter, and so on.
By the early 21st century we may see that the main way churches did evangelism
in the latter 20th century was: 1930’s-1960’s - Crusade Evangelism; 1960’s1990’s - Visitation Evangelism; 1990’s present-Network Evangelism.
Principles of Networking
A networking church is developed primarily through cultivating a mindset, a
collective attitude and only secondarily through setting up programs.
1. The key to networking: a partnership between newer/“grapevined” believers
and mature believers. THE problem in evangelism is this: New believers have the
connections and credibility with non-believers, but do not have the power to
articulate. On the other hand, mature believers have the power to articulate but not
the place in the worldly “grapevines”. Example: To take an enemy occupied town,
we need both, artillery, to smash a hole in the gate or walls, and infantry, to
actually walk in and take the town. The worship/preaching is like the artillery, the
relationships of members to their friends are the infantry. Without artillery, the
new Christian may not even speak about his faith.
2. The critical event in networking: the internal “self-talk” that turns “comers” into
“bringers”. The critical event in a networking church is when a Christian (and
especially a new Christian) comes to a worship service, a small group, or some
other church ministry program and says to him or herself: “I have been actively
talking to my non-Christian friends about Christ, and this is exactly what I have
been trying to show and say to them all along, but this does it far better than I can
do it.” OR “I have been silent in my witness, but this will give me credibility as a
Christian to my non-Christian friends, and therefore I now begin to feel the
55
courage to reach out to them.” A Christian becomes a “bringer” when two things
happen: a) The internal thinking mentioned above occurs in response to the
service, and b) the Christian brings a non-Christian or non- churched person who
wants to come back! That experience confirms the “bringer” behavior and turns it
into a habit. A bringer will use the church as a plausibility structure to reach out to
his or her web-network.
In a networking church, you must be either a seeker, a bringer, or a cell leader
(follow-up) OR YOU ARE DEADWEIGHT!
3. The cultivation of this “mindset” of networking.
There must be an atmosphere of expectation that every member will always have
2-4 people in the “incubator”, a force field in which people that are being prayed
for, given literature, brought to church or other events. How is this mindset
cultivated?
a). Brainstorm with the potential bringers the needs of their non-believing friends
and colleagues. Make a list of their most basic needs, interests, hopes, fears, idols,
aspirations, frustrations, dilemmas, prejudices, sins, strengths. (Make a list under
each of these headings! Reflect in a disciplined way.)
b). Preach and present in every service and ministry so that both Christians and
non-Christians are always intentionally challenged and addressed. Then be certain
that the great truths of the faith are always brought into connection with the
unbeliever’s heart, that the gospel is used to answer the questions they are asking.
If you don’t know how to do it, get books, tapes, etc. of those who are.
Evangelistic preaching is a “dynamic”:
i.) First, you must preach as if skeptics, agnostics, etc. are there, and if you
do, they will soon be there-they will be brought. This may mean at first you must
do a lot of reading and listening through the media to the issues non-Christians
struggle with.
ii.) As a result, you will be talking to more non-Christians, listening to their
objections, areas of confusion, and so on. The evangelistic appointments will then,
iii.) have a shaping influence on your preaching, making it more
evangelistically effective. You must always preach, thinking about the kinds of
non-Christians you have spoken to as you study your texts and prepare your
sermons. If you are talking to non- Christians constantly, the answers you give
them will sink in and appear in your preaching. Only if you are talking constantly
to non-Christians will your preaching address them and only if you address them
56
will people bring them and only if they are brought will you meet them. And so
on!
c). Modeling by the leadership. Your officers and leaders should all have an
“incubator”. They should be constantly talking about their incubators in noncondescending terms. It should be evident to all that they are regular “bringers”,
always working on and praying for people in their web networks. It may even be
important to screen officer candidates for the presence of the “networking
mindset”.
d). Kingdom-centered prayer. Your prayer meetings must be first of all oriented
toward your “incubators”, seeking to push the boundaries of the kingdom outward
over your community. See C. John Miller’s Outgrowing the Ingrown Church,
chapter 7, on the difference between frontline prayer and maintenance prayer
meetings.
e). Tools for networking evangelism should be everywhere -- handout pamphlets,
books, tapes. A serious networking church would develop its own tracts and tools
designed specifically for the kinds of needs and questions its “incubator” people
have. If the tools are not being taken and used get others!
f). A constant variety of visitor-seeking events such as “Friendship Sundays”. But
if the networking philosophy sinks in, Friendship Sundays become obsolete.
g). Continually evaluate all programs ruthlessly: are they BOTH challenging
Christians AND non-Christians? Are both kinds of people regularly present? Are
they both being kept interested?
4. The modes of networking,There are four basic kinds of “web networks”:
familial, geographical (neighborhood), vocational (career/school associates),
relational (friends not necessarily in the other networks). In urban areas, the latter
two are more important; in rural areas the first two are more important. It depends!
And different Networking-evangelism events can be oriented to one or the other.
Example: Geographically based evening small groups are better for winning
familial and geographical networks. But workday breakfast and lunch events in
business districts are better for the latter two networks. Etc.
5. The process of networking. Networking is a commitment to “process
evangelism”. Most of the other programs of evangelism are “crisis” oriented,
usually bringing the person to a decision very quickly -- through the signing of
cards or through the praying of a sinner’s prayer. Research shows that a) the more
varied ways a person hears the gospel, and b) the more often a person hears the
gospel before making a commitment, the better the comprehension, the less likely
of “reversion” to the world. Many people simply have “process personalities” -57
they will never come to faith if they are pushed. They need to come in stages.
In a networking philosophy:
a). It is expected that the non-Christian will be exposed to the gospel at least
several times on the way to commitment. There is real opportunity afforded
regularly for seekers to “cross the line into faith” and make a commitment, but
there is never great pressure put on the will to “decide NOW”.
b). There are lots of opportunities for the seeker to list his/her questions and
concerns, and for those issues to be addressed honestly. Question and answer
times, appointments over lunch, reading sequences, etc. can afford this.
Case Studies of Networking “Pathways”
A networking church will discern, create, and keep track of “pathways” for the
non-churched into the congregation. Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan
(my church) affords a sample of such pathways.
Business-network events pathway. ”BOLD”-inter-church preaching points at
lunch time in the heart of the two basic business districts. Preaching is done for
exactly 30 minutes (12:45-1:15 pm) in public cathedrals. Though they are
churches, the space is “secular” space, used for concerts and cultural events, and is
seen as public as a museum or art gallery. The mid-town meeting draws 250-300;
the downtown meeting approximately 100.
“Harvard Club” is a twice a month evangelistic breakfast in a major business
networking center. Christian men sponsor a non-Christian or unchurched friend.
The meetings draw 50-60 each.
Many people come to Christ through this path: a) tapes from Redeemer (lowest
commitment), b) then a visit to BOLD or the Harvard Club (modest commitment),
c) then a visit to Redeemer for worship (higher commitment).
2. Worship service pathway. Worship is presented in varied styles, once a week
with a question answer forum, contextualized somewhat to professional culture.
Preaching is designed to build up and challenge both believers and skeptics. The
preaching is key to encouraging friendship evangelism, for it models it (the
Christian hears the preacher talking to the worldly mind) and supports it. The
worship is thus the “artillery” for evangelism and the Christian is the “infantry”.
The worship pathway works like this.
a). Christian friend brings to church, and “follows up” through conversation. We
even propose restaurants in the vicinity to use for follow-up.
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b). Seekers returning to church are urged/drawn into 3 “fishing pools”:
i .) Foundations Class (Focused on basics of the faith; taught by staff for
inquirers)
ii.) Membership Class (Focused on basics of Redeemer; taught by staff)
iii.) Visitor dessert. (The least formal; a question and answer session led by
the senior pastor)
At each of these, cell leaders are to be present to recruit virtually all who come
into a cell group. These events give staff and small group leaders the opportunity
to draw into either cell groups or one-on-one evangelistic meetings. Also, the
“bringers” may come with their friends as part of their personal follow up. Many
people who come to Christ by this pathway simply report to their friends that they
came to Christ on a particular Sunday; but some come and tell a pastor or officer
after the service. We do not “ask for decisions” in the worship service, but we are
becoming more systematic about having officers present to pray with seekers after
the services.
3. Cell group pathway. Redeemer is using the basic “cell group model”
popularized in overseas urban areas. This is much better for evangelism than the
traditional Bible study approach. With the intimate oversight of the cell model,
leaders/ facilitators may be newer Christians themselves. The regular support
/oversight makes it possible to drive cell groups to regular invite more people into
it. In addition, we expect to put most of the groups once or twice a year into an
“outreach dessert” mode. (A target ministry of our church, “Business and
Professional Outreach” enables that and has done 20 outreach desserts in one
month this spring.)
The cell group pathway can work in two directions: a) The seeker is invited to the
group and then comes to worship, or b) the seeker comes to church and is invited
quickly into a group. In either case, the real evangelism happens more in the group
than in the worship service.
4. Felt need ministry pathway. Redeemer promotes divorce recovery workshops
and groups, a ministry for people seeking jobs, a ministry to people with AIDS,
several specific support groups, and a small counseling ministry. In addition to
these “target ministries”, there is an extensive Singles network which attracts
people looking for social connection through recreational events. All of these are
entry points, and constitute a fourth pathway into the church. People come in
response to an invitation to one of these events because it addresses a personal
need. Often they are then drawn into the worship.
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5. Large Group Special Events. Occasionally, the church puts on a special concert
(surrounding Christmas or Easter) or a “Comedy Night” or “Hot Topic Seminar”
on sex, money, work or power! Or Pastor’s Gabfests. These are most like a
traditional “evangelistic” event. A number of people have entered the church
through them. Along with the whole “spiritual culture” of networking evangelism,
they are very effective. But if the overall “networking culture” is missing,
evangelistic special meetings won’t work well.
6. Alliances with other evangelistic ministries. There are a number of ministries
which are reaching out to executives, international students, actors/actresses,
college students-many of whom use Redeemer as a place to worship and to then
bring friends/relatives who cannot be won to Christ by the ministry that won them.
It takes all kinds of modes! To “ally” may mean to formally endorse and support,
or simply have staff preach and teach at the para-church functions and give moral
support.
Follow-up in the Networking Church
Pastors, officers, cell group leaders and other mature Christians in the church
MUST be skilled at Networking follow-up. The new believer will bring nonChristians to church who will have questions and issues that they cannot address.
Therefore, in a variety of ways, more mature Christians must be trained to do
networking one-on-one evangelism. This usually means meeting over a meal for 3
or 4 times to talk about the gospel. Rapid follow-up will only happen if the church
is saturated by cell groups. Otherwise, the staff will have to do it all.
A procedure:
a). Diagnosis. Ask: “where are you with Christianity?
Are you Dissatisfied - Do you find aspects of Christianity unacceptable,
distasteful?
What is your trouble with Christianity? Where is your beef?
Indifferent - Do you find Christianity simply unappetizing or irrelevant?
Where does Christianity fail to challenge you?
What would be relevant to you?
Cautiously interested - Are you in a learning mode, interested, gathering
information, and yet not completely understanding?
What still does not make sense to you?
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Actively seeking, yet hesitant - Are you really searching for Christ, but find some
fears hold you back?
Does it seem to cost a lot and you are wondering about that? What costs give you
pause?
Make lists of issues after you have asked them these questions, and then you come
back in the next 3 or 4 meetings and address these questions.
b). Presentation. A good approach is to use C.S. Lewis’ argument from desire.
(See “Hope” in Mere Christianity. See our church’s pamphlet, “What does it mean
to Know God?”)
i.) If you are not finding yourself unsatisfied in life, you are either very
young or very superficial. If you are successful in your goals, there is a “low
growl” of emptiness; if you are unsuccessful, there is a “deafening roar” of
emptiness.
ii.) Once you discover that, there is only 4 possibility-blame the things in
your life, blame yourself, blame the universe/God, blame your separation from
God!
iii.) A gospel outline can be the one in the “What does it mean to Know
God?” brochure. Or the Evangelism Explosion outline. Or chapter 1 in John
Guest’s Go for It.
c). Handling Problems. A basic approach:
i.) You must see that you are already committed to religious, faith values.
You already base your life on faith assumptions. All values of any sort are based
on religious commitments.
ii.) Where do you get your faith assumptions? Don’t you see they are
arbitrary, just taken out of thin air? If you can believe anything you want to
believe, then anyone can act any way they want. Arbitrariness destroys itself.
Imagine if someone says to you, “I have a right to believe you are a child
molester!” Why then do you do with God what you would not let anyone do with
you?
iii.) There is no certainty without faith (think of how you hire people at the
office!) The main way to begin to believe is to doubt your doubts? Why should
you doubt everything but your cynicism?
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Appendix 8
62
Prayer
Prayer can be the most dreaded time of your group meeting or the most valuable. Be
aware that your whole group may not feel comfortable praying out loud especially at
first. Work toward being able to pray. Here are some tips on making it the most valuable
aspect of your meeting time together.
Put boundaries on your prayer requests:
Often prayer requests degenerate into stories about people no one knows but the
person speaking. These would be requests they should pray for on their own.
Limit requests to immediate family if you are going to take requests at all!
Give directed prayer topics:
Have members pray about the study you just completed and ask God’s wisdom
and grace in applying it to their lives.
Pray for one another:
Ask group members to share struggles they have in applying the Bible study topic
and then have each member pray for the person on their right.
Pray for one request at a time:
As a request is shared have someone pray for it before the next request.
Have one or two people pray:
Limit your prayer time, especially if your study was long or intensive.
Ask everyone to pray in turn for the same thing:
Have everyone thank God for something in their lives or praise Him for a
particular attribute. Come up with a topic pertaining to your study.
Have a Concert of Prayer:
The leader will read scripture pertaining to the aspects of prayer and the group
will follow with prayers of that aspect. For example: Adoration, Confession,
Thanksgiving and Supplication; or Praise, Requests, Adoration, Yielding.
Have Silent Prayer:
It is often good to let people process your study by talking to God about it. Direct
them in how to spend the silent time and close after a few minutes.
Break into smaller prayer groups:
Pair up or gather in threes to pray for one another. Give direction on how you
want them to pray (applicational, general intercession). Beware of pairing men
and women.
Be Creative and vary your method!
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Appendix 9
64
COURAGEOUS PROTESTANTISM? SOME REFLECTIONS
ON DAVID WELLS’S ANALYSIS OF THE
CONTEMPORARY CHURCH: A REVIEW ARTICLE
Carl Trueman
INTRODUCTION
For nearly two decades, David Wells, the Andrew Mutch
Distinguished Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, has been subjecting
American church life, particularly white, evangelical church life, to
rigorous, if not merciless, scrutiny. In four deep tomes he has
argued that, for all of the superficial signs of health among
American evangelical churches—crudely considered, their
impressive size, financial resources, and political influence,
compared to the lack of these for evangelicals elsewhere in the
world—there is a deep, dark sickness at the heart of the American
evangelical church which indicates a deep spiritual crisis which is
even now bearing evil fruit.[1] The books are an interesting
tetralogy, bound together not only by a pervasive tone of
pessimism but also by common enemies (American pragmatism,
the mega-church) and by a common solution (classic Protestant
orthodoxy and church life). Now, Wells has summed up and
extended his critique in a single volume, The Courage to be
Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers and Emergents in the
Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).[2] I say
"extended" because, in addition to providing an excellent summary
of the argument of earlier volumes, he now includes some critique
of the recently arrived "emergent/ing" churches in his critique. His
thesis (with which I am in basic agreement) is that, broadly
speaking, these represent the latest example of American secular
values expressed in a Christian idiom. As mega-churches
represented the greed and big-is-best mentality of the eighties, so
the emergents represent, among other things, the consumerist
pick-and-choose mentality regarding truth, the past, etc.
In this essay, I want, first of all, to offer a summary of David's
basic arguments, and then to lay out some lines of reflection and
critique. The latter should not be taken as any sign of disagreement
65
with the fundamentals of his case or his scholarship: I am in
essential agreement with the first and somewhat in awe of the
latter. Nevertheless, I believe that it is possible his books will be
read by some in the Protestant orthodox community as a
confirmation of their (our) essential correctness; and I want to
argue that, in fact, many of his criticisms apply as painfully to
those who pay lip-service to all that David holds dear. We
confessional types are no more immune to the wider cultural
waters in which we swim than the mega-church people and the
emergents.
THE ARGUMENT OF THE COURAGE TO BE PROTESTANT
David's book is divided into seven chapters. In the first, "The Lay of
the Evangelical Land," he outlines the three basic types of Christian
with whom he is going to engage: classic evangelicals; marketers;
and emergents. All three come in for relevant criticism. Not
surprisingly, David criticizes the marketers and the emergents most
vigorously. The former is an attempt to repackage classic
evangelicalism in a way that is appealing and entertaining. Their
strategies are rooted in polls, focus groups, and giving the people
what they want, and they inevitably abandon the hard things—the
doctrines, the imperatives—to make Christianity more palatable.[3]
The latter are virtually impossible to define in terms of doctrine, so
broad is the collection of beliefs they represent. They see the
essence of Christianity more in terms of what I would call aesthetic
qualities—as seen, for example, in their preference for the
language of "conversations" and "openness." The idea is to be on
an exciting journey, but never actually to arrive.[4] As for classic
evangelicalism, David correctly identifies two weaknesses in the
movement, particularly as it developed in post-World War II
America: its increasing doctrinal minimalism, a requirement of its
basic existence as a coalition movement; and its marginalizing of
the church in favor of parachurch entities, a factor closely
connected to the first weakness.[5]
Much of the remainder of the book is a detailed dissection of these
three movements in terms of the salient lines of critique laid out in
the first chapter. It is probably a fair assumption that most readers
of Ordained Servant will find themselves in deep sympathy with
most or all of what he has to say. He attacks mega-churches for
what we might describe as the triumph of marketing techniques, a
means of growing, and of seeing growth, in primarily numeric
terms. Underlying this, of course, is what we might call a Pelagian
view of human nature—though it is worth remembering that
66
Pelagianism in the early church was a movement rooted in strict
self-denial, and was originally a protest against what it saw as the
potential moral laxity of Augustine's teachings. In essence, it was a
countercultural movement. Mega-church Pelagianism today is,
ironically, not a cultural protest movement but an expression of the
dominant free market culture through a vaguely Christian idiom. In
other words, it just goes with the flow.
When it comes to emergents, David (correctly, in my view) sees
the connection between these and the mega-church advocates as
lying in the impact of modernity, particularly in its consumerist
aspects, on their respective agendas. While mega-churches see
Christianity as a commodity to be marketed, so emergents see
Christians as eclectic consumers who can pick and choose those
bits of truth, tradition, etc., that they like. Interestingly enough,
David heads up the chapter entitled "Truth" with a quotation from
Marx's Communist Manifesto, "All that is solid melts into the air, all
that is holy is profaned." This was written, of course, in the heat of
the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution, but yet is a
remarkably prescient description of the impact of consumerism—or,
perhaps better, capitalism—on the values and ideological structures
of society. While David's own analysis might well be regarded as
very conservative in many respects, harking back to an earlier,
better age, it has potent similarities with the neo-Marxist critique of
postmodernism offered by writers such as Perry Anderson, Frederic
Jameson, and, especially, Terry Eagleton. These writers have
argued that much of postmodern relativism is a function of the
underlying consumerist culture in which we now live. Truth has
become, if you like, a product; and one buys that which one likes
and leaves on the shelf that which one finds less attractive.
Along the way, David offers some healthy debunking of much of
the philosophy of language that undergirds, or at least provides the
pretext for, the rejection of traditional notions of truth and that has
been rather naively absorbed by the vanguard of the emergent
movement as basic. This verbiage, which marks so much
postmodern theory, is, as Mark Thompson has elsewhere argued,
predicated on the fundamentally unbiblical premise that language is
essentially opaque, obscure, elusive, and manipulative. On the
contrary, while human beings can and do use language to be
opaque, obscure, elusive, and manipulative, that is a problem of
sinfulness, not something which is inherent in language itself.
Herein, one might say, is one of the problems with emergentism:
67
not that it is too critical of the culture, but that it is not critical
enough. Postmodern philosophy tells us this about language (in an
apparently clear and non-manipulative manner!) so it must be true,
and all that the Bible and church have ever opined on this issue
must be set under this critical axiom.[6] It reminds me of a recent
encounter with someone who claimed my classes at Westminster
had taught him how to be critical of culture; yet, when this same
person heard a presenter on National Public Radio make a claim
about Westminster, his first instinct was to believe the presenter
and attack the seminary for incompetence. Criticism which only
ever critiques the tradition is no real criticism at all; rather, it is
merely an idiom for cultural compliance.
One of the frustrations that some have voiced about David's work
over the years is that its all sounds like so much bad news; what
about positive proposals? Well, in this volume David does offer a
positive vision. Theologically, he argues for a message built around
the five solas of the Reformation, emphasizing Gods' holiness and
sovereignty, the uniqueness of Christ's person and work, and
justification by grace through faith. Practically, his vision is built
around the three marks of the church as articulated in later
Reformed confessional documents such as the Westminster
Standards: the preaching of the word, the administration of the
sacraments, and discipline.
CRITICAL REFLECTIONS
One of David's strong points is that, though primarily a systematic
theologian, he is too good a historian to indulge in some of the
ahistorical doctrinal abstractions which too often afflict the
discipline. He knows that beliefs, behavior, and social and economic
conditions are intimately connected. That is what makes his
analysis so satisfying: it is not just that he offers some version of
the "the church is in a bad way because of sin" argument. Such an
argument, undoubtedly and indisputably true as it is, of course, is
by itself of but very limited usefulness, somewhat akin to saying
that the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11 because of gravity.
Universal causes only take us so far in understanding the nature of
particular actions and events. Thus, everything happens because of
providence; and bad things happen because of sin. So much for the
general rules; a more useful and probing question is how and why
did this bad thing happen at this particular juncture of time in this
particular place and in this specific way? Answering that question is
the task of the historian or the cultural analyst, and that kind of
question yields far more useful results. Thus, David not only tells us
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what we know—that the church is in trouble because of sin; he also
provides contextual specifics that allow us to gain greater insight
into the specific manifestations and ramifications of particular sinful
phenomena in the contemporary church world.
At the heart of Wells's analysis is his correct identification of
consumerism as perhaps the most powerful drive underlying some
of the most unfortunate trends in current ecclesiastical practice.
Here is just one of the many paragraphs in the book which makes
this point with pungency:
The seeker-sensitive are adapting their product to a spiritual market
that believes it can have spiritual comfort with very little truth. The
emergents are adapting their product to a spiritual market that is
younger, postmodern, and leery about truth. But in both cases we see
this strange anomaly. Here are those who think of themselves as being
biblical, as being the children of the New Testament, the followers of
Jesus and the apostles, embracing an alternative spirituality in order
either to be successful or to be culturally cutting-edge.[7]
A number of comments are in order here. As noted above, David is
correct in identifying the consumer/market forces which underlie
the mega-church and emergent agendas and bind these two
apparently antithetical movements together. But there is a sense in
which David's critique itself is somewhat muted because (I suspect)
of its cultural context. Consumerism, along with its cognates, is a
term bandied around (and I am as guilty as anyone here) in
Christian circles and presented, generally speaking, as a very bad
thing; but consumerism is itself a function of the wider
phenomenon of capitalism. Now, if one were to substitute
consumerism with capitalism throughout the book, the argument
would remain a cogent and powerful one; in fact, the critique would
arguably be even more powerful because it would reveal to us the
full power of the forces at play in the transformation of church life
here. Consumerism is not some accidental, aberrant by-product of
the West; it is the epiphenomenon of capitalism, a system within
which we must all today live, move, and have our being, given the
complete lack at this moment in time of any really viable
alternatives for economic and social organization. Communism has
failed; as did medieval feudalism, as will feudalism's modern-day
relative, Muslim fundamentalism, Taliban style. To use the term
consumerism potentially blinds us to the real, all-consuming
(pardon the pun) power of the rip tide within which we swim. Of
course, as soon as one uses the word capitalism, one is going to be
69
suspected of incipient Marxism; but one does not have to be a
Marxist to acknowledge the powerful impact that capitalism and the
free market have on all aspects of life, from the cost of living to the
way we think.
We can now push this a little further: if it is not consumerism but
capitalism that is the driving force behind so much of the
unfortunate nonsense that makes its way into the church's life, we
are surely forced to see the situation as more ambiguous and more
complex. For a start, we have to acknowledge that the very forces
which David (correctly) identifies as so damaging have also brought
tremendous good. After all, who of us wants to go back to an era
without all of those gadgets and devices which make life so
tolerable? Or abandon the freedom of the democratic system which
goes hand-in-hand with the freedom of the market? At the
simplest, most self-serving level, I prefer to mark student papers
that are typed on word processors, not scrawled in undecipherable
hieroglyphics; at a higher level, I like living in a world where I have
access to antibiotics, printed books, fine wines, the potential of
peacefully removing failed political leaders, etc. None of these are
essential to human life; but I consider them to be gifts of God's
common grace that allow me to enjoy being alive. I think that living
at a time such as this, when there are so many things which
enhance the overall quality of life, of which previous generations
knew nothing, is a good thing. And I do not think that my access to
these things is separable from the capitalist system within which I
live. Consumerism is thus not an entirely bad thing; nor can I
easily extricate myself from the consumerist mindset, given that its
values are deeply embedded in the whole of life, both for good and
for evil.
This should also surely influence how we look at the past. There is
a sense in this book (and in the tetralogy as a whole) that,
underlying David's take on the past is a certain nostalgia. For
example, he refers to the fact that, in times past, people's sense of
value was rooted in factors outside of the self, specifically in terms
of its own gratification. Thus, work, family, community provided the
focus of life, whereas now it is leisure activities and personal wellbeing/entertainment which stand at the center of each person's
universe.[8] I have no argument with this, but I do want to point
out that the balance sheet of present to past is perhaps more
complicated than it might seem.
Take my late grandparents, for instance: in many ways, they
epitomized the world whose disappearance David laments. They
70
worked in order to provide for their families, they found their
fulfillment in putting bread on the table and shoes on their
children's feet, their lives were centered on others, not on
themselves. On paper, their world sounds just like the world David
admires. Yet there was a dark side to that world: my grandparents
worked long, back-breaking hours for little pay; yes, they put bread
on the table and shoes on their children's feet, but they were never
more than a week away from financial ruin and a month or two
away from total destitution; they did not find their fulfillment in
leisure activities because, quite frankly, they had too little time, too
little money, and too little energy after long hours of labor to
engage in such; and it is questionable whether they found too
much value in their work in itself—granddad worked in a factory,
grandma scrubbed floors. Their work was a means to an end:
survival. Needless to say, none of their children made it to college;
only with my own generation did that become a possibility.
All of this is not to create nostalgic sympathy for my family of
yesteryear, but it is to point to the fact that nostalgia for the good
old days is, generally speaking, the preserve of the middle class
intelligentsia or of those who are in no danger of living in such a
past. Whatever idyllic visions we may have of the past, there is
another side to the story which is not so palatable. And then the
pressing question comes: can we have the values without the
brutal social context? That is something at least worth asking.
Indeed, we could pursue this last question a little and turn up the
heat on nostalgia for the past even more: what about Victorian
values, which I am sure many conservative Christians look back to
as a good thing? We may admire the virtues of thrift, self-control,
modesty, etc., which we typically associate with the phrase. But
what of the other Victorian values? What about children forced to
work as chimney-sweeps or in factories, the workhouses, the
debtor's prisons, the absurdly harsh penalties for minor
infringements of property rights? The general disregard for life—at
least the life of the poor and the working classes—which marked
these times? Of course, our times are no better: globalization
means that the child sweatshops, etc., are generally speaking
abroad, not at the end of our own streets. So our consumerist
heaven is also built on oppression and exploitation; but that is not
my point here. My point is that the past was not all sweetness and
light, and that the package as a whole was problematic too.
To make the point crystal clear: can we pick and choose which bits
of the past we like, and nostalgically mourn their loss and desire
71
their return, while rejecting those bits we do not like? Are they
separable in this way? The very system of capitalism which
developed the tools for improving working conditions and gave my
family the social mobility for me to go to a good college and find a
job that does not involve back-breaking physical toil is the selfsame system which has brought about the other social, cultural,
and moral consequences which David rightly laments. On this level,
his program is reminiscent of Mrs. Thatcher in the eighties: her
genius was that she was able to persuade the electorate in Britain
to believe that you could have free market economics that
shattered traditional vested interests at a social and political level,
and yet at the same time you could also maintain traditional moral
and social values. History would seem to indicate that this is not
the case and that advanced capitalism does transform the whole
world, not simply the means of producing and exchanging goods;
and that it does so in part by fostering the very thing which David
identifies as such a problem but which also brings great benefits to
humanity. David clearly acknowledges this at a principial level; but
in practice, by talking about consumerism, rather than capitalism,
he gives the impression that the unfortunate consequences we see
all around us are the result of an aberrant mindset, rather than an
essential part of the capitalist dynamic of Western, especially
American, society. Is David himself guilty of a kind of eclectic
consumption of the past akin to that with which he charges the
emergents?
This then raises a further problem: if the cause of the
transformation of Christian life and practice is not consumerism but
the whole capitalist dynamic of our society, then the answer David
gives—a return to what we might call traditional, confessional
Protestantism—starts to look less promising, or at least more
complicated. Do not misunderstand me here: I believe that the
kind of traditional, confessional Protestantism for which David
argues represents, in belief and practice, the most consistent kind
of Christian belief and practice available. The problem is that even
this can be subverted and transformed by such a powerful and
comprehensive cultural force.
Think about it. Ideas are one thing; but social practices, about
which David has much to say, are another, and these are
frequently shared in common by those who represent a wide
variety of different, even contradictory and mutually exclusive,
beliefs. So much of what David criticizes in emergents and megachurches is also alive and well within the more doctrinally refined
circles of traditional, confessional Protestantism. Thus, when David
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talks about the pizzazz of the mega-church experience, my own
mind is drawn to the vibrant world of Reformed conferences, with
their celebrity speakers. When David notes the rise of the language
of "rights" among today's generation (156–60), my mind is drawn
to how often in confessional Protestant churches I have been
treated (!) to lectures, for example, on the right to bear arms, the
right to free speech, the rights of the individual over against the
federal government, even the right not to have to be on the
church's clean-up roster (!!). Whatever the merit of these
discussions in themselves, radical individualism that focuses on
rights is alive and well on the theological right as well as the
political left and sits quite comfortably under preaching and
teaching that, on paper at least, should be its very antithesis.
The amazing thing about capitalism is that it can turn anything into
a commodity. It is a matter of form, not substance. The most
amusing example of this is, surely, the fact that Marx's Communist
Manifesto is now available in multiple editions in branches of
Borders and Barnes & Noble. The archetypal anti-capitalist tract is
now a best-selling commodity, making money for big corporations.
If it can be done with Marx, then it can just as surely be done with
Luther, Calvin, the Reformed Orthodox, and their modern-day
successors.
One example of this is provided by Frank Schaeffer in Crazy for
God, his controversial memoir about growing up as Francis
Schaeffer's son. Here is how he compares his own father (of whom
he is far from uncritical) in comparison with some other
conservative, traditional evangelical leaders:
Dad had a unique reputation for an intellectual approach to the faith.
And his well-deserved reputation for frugal ethical living, for not
financially profiting from his ministry, for compassion, for openness,
and intellectual integrity, was the opposite of the reputations of the
new breed of evangelical leadership, with their perks, planes, and
corner offices in gleaming new buildings, and superficial glib
messages. Empire builders like Robertson, Dobson, and Falwell liked
rubbing up against (or quoting) my father, for the same reason that
popes liked to have photos taken with Mother Teresa.[9]
Perhaps few in the OPC will have much time for Falwell, let alone
Robertson; my guess is that quite a few will have books by Dobson
on their shelves. But no matter: the point is that conservative
theology can go hand in hand with empire building, personality
73
cults, and worldly conceptions of power—and these of the most
dramatic kind. Confessional Reformed theology can itself be an
idiom for the most dramatically secular aspirations. There are a
number of celebrity Reformed ministries out there. I wonder what
the cultural difference between some of these and, say, Joel Osteen
is. Is it perhaps simply that Osteen and his kind are more honest
about what their agenda is? Sound theology is never going to be
enough if it is allied to the contemporary culture. Critique of that
culture is not simply being anti-abortion or believing in and
teaching the five solas of the Reformation. It involves seeing how
even the best ideas and theology can be co-opted by the silent but
deadly carbon monoxide of "the American way" in its most
attractive and deeply ingrained form: health, wealth, influence, and
the radical individualism upon which these notions float. To put it
bluntly, the content of our theology needs to shape the form of the
church's culture; but simply getting the theology right will not, in
and of itself, produce this result.
This brings me to my final reflection. I applaud David's call for the
reinstatement of church discipline as a central part of the church's
testimony. As the Westminster Standards argue, discipline fulfils a
manifold and vital purpose in the church: reclaiming sinners;
deterring others; purging out the leaven; vindicating the honor of
Christ and the holy profession of the gospel; and preventing the
wrath of God (WCF 30.3). As such, it is clearly vital to healthy
church life. The question for me, however, is this: what does this
look like in an era of motor cars, multiple denominations, and a
culture of radical individualism that is politically more alive and well
in the middle class Republican ethos of conservative Protestant
churches than in their equivalents in the inner city?
When Hester Prynne has the infamous scarlet letter in the novel of
that title, discipline is an awesome and terrifying thing because she
is trapped in a relatively tight-knit community with no anonymity
and no way of escape. Discipline is enforceable because of the
social conditions which apply. Today, any church that tries to
discipline someone has to face the fact that, unless that person is
immediately moved to repent, the likelihood is that, next Sunday,
he will simply jump in his car and keep driving until he finds a
church that will accept him. Then, during the week, nobody will
care because we live in a world where there is significant privacy
and anonymity. None of this is to say that I regard motor cars or
privacy as wrong; it is simply that we need to realize these things
have profound implications for the possibility of church discipline.
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Further, once again confessional, traditional theology is, in and of
itself, no answer. Indeed, my observation of conservative churches
would lead me to believe that they can often be worse offenders.
The "Here I stand!" principle of Luther at Worms is taken by many
conservative Christians to mean that their conscience is sovereign
and that there is no need to acknowledge the authority of the
church in any practical way at all. Allied to the strong currents of
individualism within American culture, this can make conservatives
among some of the most egregious offenders when it comes to
church discipline, accountability to the church, etc. The problem of
discipline is not something monopolized by the anonymous, casual
mega-churches or by the eclectic and loosey-goosey theologians of
the emergent churches. It is a function of modern society, with its
cheap gas, its anonymity, its multiple denominations, its radical
individualism, and its consumerist aesthetic; and the confessional
Protestant world is just as capable of being a part of the problem as
anything else. Indeed, it might be worse. There is nobody less
likely to meet with the elders, in my experience, than the hardline
confessionalist whose monopolistic possession of the truth,
combined with an oh-so-sensitive conscience and a Luther
complex, places him above the reach of ordinary church courts.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I want to reiterate that I find David's latest book
(along with his others) to be a compelling analysis of the problems
facing the church in the modern West, particularly America. The
church has secularized to an impressive degree. Whether it is
mega-church excess or emergent eclecticism, it is clear that both
by and large provide religious idioms for the expression of deeply
secular cultural concerns. I also find myself in full agreement with
David that the answer to these problems has to be a return to the
great solas of the Reformation, to a church practice built around
word and sacrament, and to the practice of church discipline.
Given all this, my concern is two-fold. First, I fear that many in OPC
type circles will read this book and have the reaction so ably
exposed by Jesus Christ in one of his most devastating parables: "I
thank you Lord that I am not like other men." It is easy to take
pot-shots at Willow Creek and emergent excess, but the problems
of American culture which they variously represent—cults of
75
personality, worldly conceptions of success and power, standing on
one's rights to the exclusion of everybody and everything else,
radical individualism, eclecticism, iconoclastic views of the past—
can sit very comfortably with Reformed, confessional theology.
Such theology can just as easily be turned into a commodity as
anything else out there in the marketplace. That is, after all, the
American way! We confessional conservatives too like our
superstars, our celebrities, our glossy magazines, and our megaconferences. With all of this to take into account, we need to realize
that theology is not enough; that theology needs to challenge
many of the things that are so dear to American culture that,
spiritually speaking, they are virtually invisible to the naked eye.
Second, while agreeing wholeheartedly with David's call for a
return to church discipline, I am very pessimistic about that
happening for the reasons outlined above: ease of travel;
multiplication of denominations; and arrogant, anti-authoritarian
individualism and libertarianism that spill over from politics into
church life. Discipline is a wonderful ideal. I am just not sure what
it looks like in the contemporary world. And to the extent that we
all, conservative Protestants and otherwise, are part of this wider
culture, so we are impotent to resist its forces.
David is right: it is a time for a courageous Protestantism. But
sadly such may be too little too late. Like the charge of the Light
Brigade, a courageous Protestantism on the attack might find that
it merely goes down in a spectacular, brave defeat rather than
actually achieving any of its desired goals. The analysis in this book
is superb; the proposal—a return to classic Protestantism—is
sound. Yet, only a dramatic transformation not simply of church
theology and practice but also of church culture and the hearts of
individual members of the church will be able to effect any of this.
It is hard to believe, but I suspect I am accusing David of being too
optimistic, something which is rarely alleged against him. But, then
again, there is hope: with God, all things are possible.
ENDNOTES
[1] No Place for Truth; or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical
Theology? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993); God in the Wasteland:
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The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1994); Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover
Its Moral Vision (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); Above all Earthly
Pow'rs: Christ in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2005).
[2] The edition which I am using for this review article is actually
that published in the UK by InterVarsity Press UK.
[3] Courage, 13-15.
[4] Courage, 15-18.
[5] Courage, 7-12.
[6] Courage, 77-80; for an excellent and informed defense of the
perspicuity of scripture in light of modern linguistic theories, see
Mark D. Thompson, A Clear and Present Word: The Clarity of
Scripture (Leicester: I.V.P., 2006).
[7] Courage, 178.
[8] E.g. Courage, 136.
[9] Frank Schaeffer, Crazy for God: How I grew Up as One of the
Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or
Almost All) of It Back (Carroll and Graf: Cambridge, 2007), 297.
Carl Trueman is a licentiate in the OPC, serving as a professor of
historical theology and church history at Westminster Theological
Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Ordained Servant, April 2009.
Accessed at:
http://www.opc.org/os.html?article_id=147
on 1.28.13
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Appendix 10
78
Mercy ministry
Mercy Ministries refers first to:
1) internal ministries of the church that are time and service intensive
2) external ministries of the church that are time and service intensive
What did you think about the book?
Article on summer camps for childcare folks
Mercy
Metric: number of ministries started
Mercy Ministry looks like:
1) time-intensive
2) Relationship oriented
3) Incarnational—have to chase them
4) Always recruiting other leaders
5) Time commitment: 3-10 hours/week doing the ministry
6) If not doing anything else, meet with someone in Brookhaven who
knows about what your ministry is
7) Benefit of mercy ministry: telling people you want to help is the
easiest way to get to know them. They don’t feel like you’re selling
them anything.
8) Fellowship comes as the result of doing ministry together
9) Share the gospel with them always. Some of these minsitries will
revolve around sharing the gospel (e.g. YL), others must be more
intentional about it (only the gospel changes lives ultimately—Randy
Nabors)
Existing Places in Brookhaven
Birthright International Crisis pregnancy center
Hope and Light Foundation
Faith-based organization benefiting children with Spinal Muscular Atrophy
Boys and Girls Clubs
Lenbrook Retirement Community and Canterbury Court
Retirement Communities
DeKalb Community Services
Elaine Clark Center
Center for Special Needs children and young adults
Cross Keys High School
Dresden Elementary
Woodward Elementary
Homeless people in Brookhaven
Rotary Club of Brookhaven
Apartment Complexes
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Appendix 11
80
Discipleship
Purpose of Discipleship
Non-Christian ! Christian ! Maturity ! Leadership
The purposes of discipleship are: 1) to see God work in peoples’ lives so that they grow
spiritually 2) to see people become new leaders as they mature spiritually, so that they
will create new leaders who will help others to grow spiritually
(always thinking at least 3 steps down the line)
Elements of Discipleship (may be different for women)
(Pray for God to send people—share the gospel with others, pray that others would come
to Christ)
1) 3 meetings ahead of time
a. Explain responsibilities; commitment for a year (and perhaps 3); goal
is for this person to lead other people; pray about it
b. Check in to see what they think as they pray about it
c. Meet with significant other and explain that not a spouse-bashing
session; deal with this person’s sin; taking time away
2) Covenant (explaining the responsibilies—must sign it)
3) Life Stories: the group will only grow as much as you are vulnerable
4) Cumulative Scripture Memory
5) Quiet Times (21 days together)
6) At least 1 overnight retreat
7) 1 week per month focused on prayer
8) 1 week per month for evangelism (larger gatherings)
9) Quarterly Fast
Possible tools:
1) Calvary Road
2) 4-week learning discussions
3) State of My Heart email
Responsibilities:
1) Pray specifically for the people in your group
2) Spend time with them outside group time
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Appendix 12
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Brookhaven Presbyterian Church
Job Descriptions
What is the job of our church? (what do people receive from the church?)
Teach the people (the Bible how to apply it to their lives)
Pastoral Care
Train and Equip how to make the most of your Kingdom potential
Provide a place where God is corporately worshiped
Serve the Community
What is the job of the pastor?
Teach the people (the Bible and how to apply it to their lives)
Pastoral Care
Evangelize
Leadership Training and Equipping
Cast Vision for the Church
Pray for the Church
Specifics: Leadership in Gathering, Discipleship, and Mercy
What is the job of a leader?
Pour life into a small number of other people in their area of spiritual calling
Contact: One 1-on-1 meeting per week, e.g. lunch, breakfast, etc. (1 hr/wk)
Prayer: Pray regularly and specifically for those to whom you’re ministering
Leader Meetings: Attend leader meetings (.5 hrs/wk)
Weekly Meeting: for mercy, gathering, or discipleship (1.5 hours/wk plus 1-2
hrs/wk prep time)
Sunday morning responsibility: 30 minutes early for prayer, meet new
people and sit with them
Fulfill other responsibilities of church members
Total: 5 hours/wk
What is the job of a church member?
Grow Spiritually (Regular Quiet Times, Small Group/Fellowship)
Worship God corporately and privately
Serve/be involved using God-given gift (Service, Gathering, or Discipleship)
Share faith with others
Work toward leadership in the church
Total: 2 hours/wk
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Appendix 13
84
Scrooge Lives!
Why we're not putting more in the offering plate. And what we can do about it.
Rob Moll
[ posted 12/5/2008 9:22AM ]
Christianity Today
This could be the worst moment in our lifetimes to discover that American
Christians give away relatively little of their money.
The economy is in the midst of the worst downturn in at least 17 years and the most
serious U.S. banking crisis in at least 20. It has the potential to be as painful as the
Great Depression. Banks are failing. Workers are losing their jobs. Homeowners are
losing their homes.
But this may actually be the best time for an emerging study that delivers the
bad news. Over the next few months or years, as our economy travels down a long
road of recovery, our neighbors may need much more assistance than we've grown
accustomed to providing. And like skyrocketing home prices, the lack of generosity
among American Christians is a trend that cannot continue without doing serious
harm.
More than one out of four American Protestants give away no money at all—
"not even a token $5 per year," say sociologists Christian Smith, Michael Emerson,
and Patricia Snell in a new study on Christian giving, Passing the Plate (Oxford
University Press).
Of all Christian groups, evangelical Protestants score best: only 10 percent
give nothing away. Evangelicals tend to be the most generous, but they do not
outperform their peers enough to wear a badge of honor. Thirty-six percent report
that they give away less than two percent of their income. Only about 27 percent
tithe.
Economists sometimes view recessions as necessary purgings of excessive
behavior, correcting irrational investments in stocks in the 1920s or tulips in 17thcentury Holland. Perhaps the current correction, as families learn to live on less and
depend on each other more, will make American Christians more generous. It would
be a correction long overdue.
The $85.5 Billion Gap
American Christians' lack of generosity might not be as shocking if it didn't
contrast so starkly with their astounding wealth. Passing the Plate's researchers say
committed American Christians—those who say their faith is very important to them
and those who attend church at least twice a month—earn more than $2.5 trillion
dollars every year. On their own, these Christians could be admitted to the G7, the
group of the world's seven largest economies. Smith and his coauthors estimate that
if these Christians gave away 10 percent of their after-tax earnings, they would add
another $46 billion to ministry around the world.
This kind of money matters. Smith says he embarked on his study after
discovering the difference a healthy church budget could make for a church youth
group. Working on Soul Searching, his 2006 book about the religious lives of
teenagers, Smith says, "It was clear how much churches can do when they put up
the money for hiring a good youth minister or putting programs in place."
His inside look into church spending opened his eyes to the limits of church
giving. This is pretty pathetic, he remembers thinking.
How much do American Christians really give? What could they give? And most
importantly, why don't they? Smith began investigating the questions with Michael
O. Emerson, a Rice University sociologist with whom he wrote 2001's Divided By
Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, and Patricia Snell, a
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researcher at the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of
Notre Dame, where Smith serves as director.
One early finding: That estimate of $46 billion in additional giving is
unrealistic. Not because it's too big, but because it's too small. Estimating 10 percent
giving for every committed Christian in the U.S. neglects two groups: those who
truly can't afford to give 10 percent (due to illness or unemployment or similar
reasons), and those who are already giving more than 10 percent (more on this
group in a moment). If you calculate that 10 percent of Christians can't give because
of their financial limitations, most of the rest give 10 percent, and a handful of
generous givers continue their current generous giving pattern, committed American
Christians could realistically increase their giving by $85.5 billion each year.
Admittedly, $85.5 billion doesn't look as big as it used to. The U.S.
government spent as much to save the ailing insurer American International Group
from bankruptcy. But such an increase in religious giving could be world changing.
Smith and his coauthors try to provide some idea of what that money could
accomplish:$10 billion would sponsor 20 million children for a year, and just $330
million would sponsor 150,000 indigenous missionaries in countries closed to
religious workers. $2.2 billion would triple the current funding of Bible translation,
printing, and distribution. $600 million would be enough to start eight Christian
colleges in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.
These figures only begin to spend that extra cash. What Christians could do—if they
managed their money in a way that gave priority to giving a portion away—is
astounding.
The Biggest Givers
Actually, it's not quite true to say that American Christians give only a small
portion of their money toward religious endeavors. Looking closer, the picture is
more disturbing. As already noted, a quarter gives away no money at all. The
average, regularly attending churchgoer gives 6 percent of after-tax income, but
that's a mean skewed by a handful of very generous givers. The median annual
giving for an American Christian is actually $200, just over half a percent of after-tax
income. About 5 percent of American Christians provide 60 percent of the money
churches and religious groups use to operate. (It's these people who skew the
average.) "A small group of truly generous Christian givers," say Passing the Plate's
authors, "are essentially 'covering' for the vast majority of Christians who give
nothing or quite little."
In addition, America's biggest givers—as a percentage of their income—are its
lowest income earners. The widow who gave out of her poverty rather than her
wealth (Mark 12:42; Luke 21:1-4) has a lot of company, it seems. Yet so does the
rich young ruler (Luke 18:18-30).
"Americans who earn less than $10,000 gave 2.3 percent of their income to religious
organizations," Smith, Emerson, and Snell write, "whereas those who earn $70,000
or more gave only 1.2 percent." While the actual percentages are slightly higher for
Christians who regularly attend church, the pattern is similar. Households of
committed Christians making less than $12,500 per year give away roughly 7
percent of their income, a figure no other income bracket beats until incomes rise
above $90,000 (they give away 8.8 percent).
In fact, in absolute terms, the poorest Christians give away more dollars than all but
the wealthiest Christians. We see the pattern in recent history as well: When
Americans earned less money following the Great Depression, they gave more. When
income went up, they began to give less of it away.
That giving is so low may be no surprise to those familiar with the adage of
the camel and the eye of the needle. But Passing the Plate's authors were not
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interested in chronicling stinginess. They were instead propelled by a nagging
question: Why?
Example Deficit
Combing through previous data sets, conducting their own survey, and
interviewing dozens of church leaders and members, the researchers came to some
plausible answers. First, a major reason Christians don't give more is because many
can't. Fixed costs in households have increased from 54 percent to 75 percent of
family budgets since the early 1970s. "A mere two buying decisions—the purchases
of homes and cars—are enough to lock household budgets into tight budgetary
situations for decades," they say.
It doesn't get better with larger incomes, says Bill Walter, a financial planner
for 35 years at Church Growth Services, a South Bend, Indiana-based consulting firm
that helps churches raise money in capital campaigns. In fact, a high income often
means more debt.
"Oftentimes there's a misperception that if we have this really wealthy church in this
well-heeled neighborhood, achieving the campaign goal ought to be a slam dunk."
Instead, Walter says, "Many of the folks in the well-heeled neighborhoods driving
Lexuses and going to their summer cottages are doing this all on credit."
Another part of the answer, the researchers found, is that some would-be
donors don't trust how churches and religious organizations would use their
donations. Only 9 percent of church-attending Christians say this is an important
reason for their lack of giving—but majorities in several church families (Lutherans,
Presbyterians, Baptists, and Catholics) say they don't have high levels of trust in
their denomination's management and allocation of funds.
A larger problem isn't that the parishioners distrust their churches; it's that
they are acting just like them. American families are repeating their churches'
examples. "Relatively little donated money actually moves much of a distance away
from the contributors," Smith, Emerson, and Snell write. The money given by the
people in the pews, it turns out, is largely spent on the people in the pews. Only
about 3 percent of money donated to churches and ministries went to aiding or
ministering to non-Christians.
Meanwhile, the study found that a major reason Christians do not give is
because they are not asked to. The researchers found "a strong correlation between
perceived expectations and readiness to give money." Americans know that nearly all
denominations teach that Christians should give away 10 percent of their incomes.
But this teaching is rarely reinforced. Pastors are reluctant to bring it up because the
issue is so closely tied to their own salaries. And the study found that pastors
themselves are often not great models of financial giving, which can exacerbate their
reluctance to preach on it.
The Cheerful Giver Dilemma
Resource constraints, low leadership expectations, and ignorance are each
significant hurdles to clear if American Christians are to become more generous. But
the real question may not be why Christians don't give away more money. A better
question, the researchers suggest, is, How do they give when they do?
Offering money, many Christians believe, should be like Hollywood's version of
romance: spontaneous, exuberant, and impulsive. Financial gifts should be joyful, we
think, so we give only when the urge strikes. "Structured systems" such as annual
pledges, write Smith, Emerson, and Snell, "seem to strike many American Christians
as rigid, impersonal, legalistic, and even unspiritual."
This attitude translates to giving from our wallets instead of our paychecks.
When the offering plate comes by, we dig into our purses or pockets and freely,
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joyfully give of what we find. Meanwhile, nearly all of our income is spoken for.
One congregant put it this way: "God requires it, but … he also tells us that
he doesn't want us to give if we don't want to." The proof text for this attitude is 2
Corinthians 9:7: "Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not
reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."
The application, however, suggests that God prefers consumerism to
generosity. If buying the bigger home or the larger car makes it more difficult to give
cheerfully, we will cut back on the giving until it's cheerful.
So we give our money like we spend it: haphazardly and without intention.
"Most people are looking out no more than a week or a month on their spending,"
says Rusty Leonard, an investment manager and founder of MinistryWatch.
Christians act no differently with their money than other Americans who don't save
for retirement, buy houses they cannot afford, or invest only when stocks are rising.
But, Leonard says, Christians are starting to pay more attention to financial issues,
and their attention to issues such as debt is helping them be better givers as well.
Chip Bernhard has seen such effects as the senior pastor of Spring Creek
Church in Pewaukee, a Milwaukee suburb. The church is one of more than 4,000
congregations using Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University curriculum this fall.
By the end of the three-month course, which Spring Creek offers twice a year, the
class of 50 to 100 people will have as a whole paid off about $100,000 in debt.
Helping people take a long-term view of household finances increases
parishioners' ability to give not just because they have more money, but also
because they start thinking about priorities.
Teaching people the theology of giving is the easy part, Bernhard says. More difficult
is showing that the church means it. So, for example, no one can be in a leadership
position who doesn't give (though there is no minimum specified).
"Where your treasure is, there is your heart," says Spring Creek's executive
pastor, Tom Price. "Why put people in leadership positions if their hearts aren't in
it?" In addition, Spring Creek elders call to thank anyone who gives any dollar
amount above their usual offering. Once a quarter, members receive a newsletter
with a testimony, a handwritten thank-you note, and an update on their financial
giving for the year.
The church is undergoing its second capital campaign to expand its facilities—
something that often lifts general giving along with directed gifts, notes Walter of
Church Growth Services. But Bernhard says he never talks about giving in terms of
brick and mortar.
"Our expansion is people driven," he says. So the church makes sure members hear
the testimonies of people who have experienced a changed life because of the
church's ministry. Then Bernhard tells the congregants, "That is why you give to
Spring Creek."
Boring is Better
Helping Christians take a long view of their finances helps, Passing the Plate's
researchers note. Even more important is helping them form habits. Asking church
members to make annual pledges will do more to encourage generosity than asking
for spontaneous gifts or pleading for cash to fix a broken boiler. And if there is one
thing better than pledges, it's automatic withdrawals. Giving would never again be
dependent on having cash in your purse or remembering your checkbook on the way
out the door. This approach would make obedience independent of our various
charitable impulses. It makes sense. Financial planners encourage families over and
over to have their savings and retirement investments taken right out of their
paychecks.
But is obedience that requires no effort, no thought, really obedience?
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Spiritual formation occurs when we, week after week, grab the checkbook, write a
check, and drop it in the offering plate. We remember God's goodness, his continual
care, as we build up a habit of giving.
Giving should be a matter of intentional obedience, a joyful expression of
returning thanks to God. And there seems to be something sacred about physically
collecting the offerings and blessing them during worship. Isn't something lost if it's
left to church administrators sorting the daily mail?
On the other hand, the Bible warns often enough about money that perhaps
we should be mistrustful of our ability to be impulsively generous week after week. A
man's pocketbook, Martin Luther said, is the last piece of him to be converted.
Money has a strange power, as the current economic crisis illustrates, that suggests
humility and prudence are the appropriate attitudes toward it, not exuberance and
impulsiveness.
Rather than being impersonal and legalistic, a steady, habitual, even
automatic approach to giving can do more to form us spiritually than the give-onlyout-of-joy approach. The decision to give a percentage of our income automatically
and "off the top" can affect everything from the house we live in to the groceries we
buy to a pizza delivery. When we pass on a purchase because we know the check to
church or a sponsored child is going out that week, it forces us to prioritize. It places
supremacy with someone or something other than us. Most importantly, and
formatively, it reorients our life.
Francis Chan, pastor of Cornerstone Church in California's Simi Valley, says churches
are often theologically accurate when they teach about giving. But they haven't
reoriented themselves.
Chan asks, "Do our actions show that we really believe that our money belongs to
God?" Cornerstone gives away 55 percent of what it brings in. And staff members
have tried to model financial generosity in a number of ways. Some raided their
retirement accounts and gave the money to organizations serving the poor and
needy. Some started businesses and donated the profits (and then their free time)
back to the church.
The example spread to church members. A college student moved into his
car, showered and shaved at friends' homes, and gave what had been his rent
money to a Christian aid organization. A single professional moved in with his
parents so he could give away a large percentage of his paycheck.
Cornerstone faced a difficult choice when its leadership looked into purchasing
a new building. After five years of stagnant attendance, the church realized that its
building limited growth. So Chan and the rest of the pastoral staff brought in
consultants and architects who laid out a sweeping new campus for the church: an
extended complex of buildings, brick streets, fountains, and gardens.
"I really felt it was repulsive," Chan says. "It showed us spending money for our own
comfort."
Chan showed the designs to the congregation. When the gasps subsided, he
told them it was off the table. Instead of a huge sanctuary, he explained, they were
building an open-air amphitheater and saving millions of dollars. A few small
buildings would suffice for offices. "There is greater joy in sacrifice," Chan says,
"than when we give just out of our excess."
That greater joy comes from habitual, routine, and generous giving—even
automated giving—and forms our lives. It's what teaches the giver to be cheerful.
Rob Moll is an editor at large for CT.
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