Common Grounds Online

Tim Keller on Why and How Redeemer Does Multi-Site (and how they don't)

Excellent piece by Tim Keller via Redeemer's new City to City division. City to City is led, in part, by Scott Kauffmann, who is an uncommon blend of talent and humility.

Check out Keller's blog post about how and why Redeemer does multi-site, and how they are different from many other churches that do multi-site.

Scott Armstrong, Review of Deep Church, by Jim Belcher

The 19^th century German philosopher Georg Hegel was famous for his theory of the “dialectic.” He said an event or idea served as a thesis, there was then a sharp reaction to it known as the antithesis, followed by a synthesis, which sought to combine the best features of both the thesis and antithesis.  Got that?

            Well, if you do, you’ll appreciate Jim Belcher’s new book, Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional.  Belcher, a PCA pastor from southern California, writes out of his own life experience; growing up in a traditional, conservative church culture, he was looking for greater intimacy, community and rootedness to the past.  He found his Protestant upbringing and experience to lack these things.  In more recent years, he observed a phenomenon and movement known as “emergent” which seemed to be “protesting” some of these shortcomings, calling forth with a prophetic voice for the church to change and was intrigued. 

            But he noticed something; in the last decade, traditional and emergent voices were like two ships passing in the night: they weren’t really talking to each other but past each other, speaking two different languages.  And because of this, both sides became reactionary, producing talks and books that tended to create “straw men” caricatures of each other that were often unfounded in reality.  And where there is no real conversation, there is no learning from each other.

            If they did, Belcher argues, perhaps they would discover a third way, what he calls “The Deep Church.”  In his book, Belcher critiques and praises traditional and emergent churches, looking for the best of both in order to be the church in the world.

Glenn Lucke, Formal Language & Church Work

*** Update ***

A number of students and graduates of these two schools have emailed, asking, "Me?" Others want to know about the breadth of the brush I'm painting with.

Overwhelmingly the students and graduates that I have encountered, from my point of view, are wonderful men and women and express themselves in a normal fashion. The post below was in reference to roughly 7 people who have applied for jobs or that I have met while recruiting at the schools. 

I've met or known scores of students and graduates from these schools who don't express themselves in a distinctively formal manner. The post below is about a subset-- a very small number of people-- who puzzle me with their formality.

Related, I've hired a bunch of students and grads from these two institutions who are STELLAR. While I have declined to hire those that strike me as too formal in their communication, I've hired multiple people from SEBTS and SBTS who are doing superb work for pastor-clients around the country. 

The pattern I've noticed is small, but I've witnessed it enough in the past 10 months to wonder about it and then write about it.

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In the course of running Docent Research Group, I meet a lot of seminarians and graduate students. Anecdotally (no social science research done), I've noticed an interesting pattern. A subset (not all) of the seminarians at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY and at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC that I have personally become acquainted with in person or by email (or reading their blogs) are more likely than seminarians from other institutions to use formal speech in person, emails and blog posts.

With a frequency that astonishes me, some (not all) of these seminarians express themselves in language that strikes me as very formal, even Puritan-esque. The language of Reformed systematics spills out in greetings and in email closings especially, but also in many other instances of written and verbal communication.

One commendable aspect of this is God-saturated speech. From my point of view, living and speaking in a way that demonstrates one's God-centeredness is a good thing.

Another commendable aspect of this way of speaking is that it surely reflects long hours of reading and reflection. In an age in which "thinness" (thinness of mind, thinness of character) is one of the most serious problems that evangelicals manifest, I applaud believers who devote themselves to study, to the life of the mind, and to wrestling deeply and thoughtfully with what it means to follow Jesus in our time and place.

And yet...

Corey Widmer, Location Location Location

Location Location Location[1]

 This Part 2 in a series on Community Ministry in Church Hill,VA.

To read Part 1, click on "Committing to Community: Church Hill in Richmond, VA".

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My family is part of a community of people who have taken up residence together in a neighborhood in the inner city of Richmond, VA. If we had a set of values to guide our ministry here (which we don’t), surely at the top of the list would be “Local Embodiment,” which is really just a fancy way of saying we’re committed to a specific geographical location.

 We think this is what Jesus intended. In the story of salvation, God did not convey his love to the world in a general , generic way. Rather, “the Word became flesh…”, i.e., he embodied his love in Jesus Christ in a specific culture, time and place. God was not a commuter – he was a local. He was a Jewish male, a carpenter, had a family and friends, had real relationships with real people in a specific little town and region. In turn, the New Testament Epistles reveal that there were no generic churches, but rather communities of believers that were “of Corinth,” “of Ephesus”, or “of Rome.” The church is never generic. Nor are individual Christians. God’s redemption is worked out in particular places. You are a Christian of a place, an address, a community, called to a specific location, sent to embody the Kingdom of God to a particular locale.

This commitment has been transformative of our attitudes as we labor in this neighborhood. We are not just working to help that poor urban neighborhood on the other side of the city; we are embracing our own streets and neighborhood and bearing the problems of this community as our own. We are not just working to improve that distant underperforming elementary school; we are working to improve the very school our kids our zoned for. We’re not just upset about the rampant drug use and truancy among young African-American young men; our hearts break for our young men, the ones playing PS2 in our living rooms and drinking all the Coke in our fridges. These are our streets, our schools, our children, our sidewalks, our community. This has dramatically changed the way we think about mission. It has demanded that we think far less imperialistically and much more mutually, working towards common goals with our neighbors rather than simply for them.

 

But “local embodiment” is not just for the sake of effective ministry. It’s for us too. Ken Myers of Mars Hill audio often says that there are certain human behaviors and practices that more deeply embody what God intends for human beings than others. We think that being a local is one of those things. Committing to being God’s people with and for a particular place has not only given us a rich experience of community; it has also given us a richer taste of the gospel, the good news about an embodied God who made our neighborhood his own.

 

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[1] I stole this title from a paper written by Walter Henegar about why living in the area is a core value for the church he pastors. To read this excellent paper, visit http://atlantawestside.org/wordpress/?page_id=2

 

Scott Armstrong..."Walking While Talking"

I have recently been studying Acts as part of our first teaching series with the Atlanta Eastside Project church plant and recently went through Acts 2:14-41, where Peter preaches a fiery sermon in response to a group of Jewish people gathered who heard all the commotion the Holy Spirit caused when He showed up in a house with wind, fire and foreign language miracles. The gathered folk had two responses to these signs and wonders: “What does this mean (spiritual seeking)?” and “They’re drunk (closed universe mockers).” To both, Peter responds with respect but boldness, laying out the Story, the story of why these signs and wonders have come (“The Spirit has come because the prophecies concerning the Messiah have come to pass,” Peter essentially says). And then Peter preaches the heart of the Gospel, ending by saying that Christ reigns as both Lord and Christ and calls everyone to repentance.
It is a fabulous sermon and full of theological orthodoxy but I have concluded that what makes this passage so profound isn’t just what Peter said but how he said it. Let me explain.

Catherine Claire, Journey of Compassion for Criminal, Part 2

Continued from 10/4/07...

But still many common objections can easily put the brakes on compassion. One of the objections is that prisoners are just getting what they deserve. After all, as the saying goes, “You do the crime, you pay the time.” Or as Paul puts it in the book of Galatians, “A man reaps what he sows” (6:7).

While this is true, the connection between crime and punishment shouldn’t necessarily short-circuit compassion. In the book of Hosea, chapter 11, despite Israel’s sin, God is still moved with compassion for His people. He asks how He could give them up and He concludes by saying, “All my compassion is aroused.” Or as Jesus looks out over Jerusalem, you hear the compassion in his voice when He says, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Mt. 23:37). Christ has compassion on sinners and longs for them to change. Even while criminals serve their time and deal with the consequences of the sin in their lives, we can have compassion for them and long for their total restoration.

Catherine Claire, Journey of Compassion for Criminals, Part 1

A couple of months ago, I sat in a room of staff interviewing a potential candidate for a position with Prison Fellowship. After the usual peppering with questions, the candidate got a turn to ask questions of his own. He didn’t miss a beat. He wanted to know: “How do you do it? How do you have compassion for these people?” I was taken aback by the question. But it caused me to to retrace my steps on this journey of compassion the Lord has invited me on.

I had only recently celebrated my sixteenth birthday when I read Crime and Punishment. I remember settling into a hammock on my parents’ back porch not far from St. Petersburg, Florida, and being transported to the arctic cold of St. Petersburg, Russia, as I devoured page after page of the arrogant Raskolnikov envisioning, plotting, and finally killing an innocent old woman. As the investigating inspector circled closer and closer in on the guilty Raskolnikov, I found myself feeling paranoid. In fact, when my mom opened the back door to ask me a question one day, I literally jumped in fright. I knew it was only a matter of time before, we—I  mean—he, was caught.

Glenn Lucke, Christians Living Out Their Callings

Recently I attended a gathering of Christian men and women who are in the scrum of lives and missions that Jesus has called into being.  What the Lord is doing across the US, and across the world, in micro and macro efforts, inspired me. It seems perhaps trite to say that He is a huge God with a deep love for people and the world, but those thoughts came to mind again and again as I heard brothers and sisters tell their stories of Jesus’ call on their lives. I’ve not felt real spurs digging into me, but figuratively I felt spurs stimulating me to think more about Jesus, to love Him more, to love my neighbors more, and to be more focused in doing the work to which He has called me. These young servant-leaders whose stories I heard at the gathering—these men and women are laying their lives on the line. As one organizer said, “These people are all in.”

 

How are they all in? 

One works in publishing, not only reading broadly and deeply himself, but also seeking to find and nourish Christians who can write great stuff across market niches. As in, write such great content that it transcends the Christian book ghetto.

Sally Morgenthaler Changes Her Mind on Attractional, Worship Evangelism

Sally Morgenthaler,  author of Worship Evangelism and a speaker/consultant who has been a leader in the Church Growth Movement, has changed her mind. She calls it career suicide.

Hat Tip: Jared Wilson at Gospel-Driven Church (and his analysis of Morgenthaler's article)

Michael Walker, former director of Presbyterians for Renewal and one of the principals in the new Presbyterian Global Fellowship, directed me to an article Morgenthaler did for the PGF blog, The Outbox.

All of this is good food for thought for me, and perhaps others who are reading & reflecting &  dreaming about what it means to be missional and what it looks like. I'm far from settled on these issues, so these articles are one voice among others helping me sift the issues.

Jurgen Habermas on Christianity as the only option for Europe

Jürgen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, “Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.”

See the whole article by Philip Jenkins in Foreign Policy.

Hat Tip: Boars Head Tavern