Common Grounds Online

Timothy McConnell, Five Principles for Mainline Resurgence

Blogging is not the format for careful arguments and developed strategies.  It's more for letting thoughts drop out of your head and seeing how God uses it all.  But this is something I've thought about for quite some time, so here's hoping it comes out clear...and begins a conversation.

My ministry is marked by two poles of emphasis.  First is a faith that Jesus Christ is indeed Lord and Savior of an invisible church, unhindered by worldly boundaries.  My days with YoungLife, FOCUS, the Army Chaplaincy, and even now at the Center for Christian Study have been about finding ways to realize this secret and shadowy countryside where anyone who follows Jesus is a brother and a sister.  Some cringe when I call this work 'ecumenical', but I still see it as an evangelical ecumenism, an apostolic catholicity.  The church of which Christ is the Lord is one church, even if we can't see that from where we sit. 

The second emphasis is a desire to see the visible church in our times have the greatest possible impact on the culture, the common way of life, of our nation and community.  For a number of reasons, I believe this includes Christ's deployment of the old mainline.  They may be tired, lapsed, sleeping or dead, but they still have that huge sanctuary on the corner of First and Main with a steeple whose shadow tickles the courthouse steps. 

So then, Five Principles for Mainline Resurgence...

Aaron Menikoff -- Denominationalism and Me

  A few weeks ago I shared with my church the experiences that led me to love being part of a local church. I find it interesting that this happened. As a child and until my senior year of high school (in Hillsboro, Oregon) I had little to no exposure to Christianity. All that changed in May of 1990 when a friend shared with me the Gospel. She talked about hell--and she really believed it existed. I was dumbfounded because I knew she was no fool and yet she actually believed that Jesus is Lord. Sometime in the next few months the Lord saved me. 

Rusty Kelley, "Act Like You Know Me!" - How Relevant is Relevance?

 

"Act like you know me!" is sometimes said in jest, but many times in my household, it is a statement of displeasure made by my wife when I do something, say something, or even, yes, think something (how they know, I don't yet understand) that in so doing, proved to my wife that I didn't know her as well as she'd like me to.  If any reader is like me, I.E. not a perfect spouse, then you have certainly had this charge brought against you, and probably rightly so.  For men, this may be a function of how people show us respect.  To not recognize us as the person we see ourselves as, to many of us is a sign of disrespect, whether intentional or not.  The turth is, man or woman, we all want to be known in the particular manner in which we seek to be known. 

With that in mind, I've found an interesting contradiction to this desire in many of our churches when it comes to knowing God in the way that He seeks to be known. 

J.D. Greear, Pastor of Summit Church, on their Calvinistic (or not?) theology

J.D. Greear is the Pastor of Summit Church in the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina. He has written a post about the theology of their church, which some find confusing.

Excerpt:

"Pastor J.D., are you a Calvinist?"

I get this question about once a week. To be honest, I’m actually grateful that I get it, because I hope I preach in such a way that makes people ask… i.e. that I wrestle with the glory of God and the awesomeness of the Gospel to such an extent that some would infer that I’m a Calvinist, and then that I plead for people to come to Jesus in a way that makes people think I think it’s all up to my ministry, which would imply that I am not.

I am not going to answer that question fully in this blog, but hopefully just say a few things that I think Gospel-loving Christians can all agree on.

Often Calvinists will say that Calvinism is the essence of the Gospel (see Piper, Sproul, Spurgeon, etc). Unfortunately, that statement often gets translated to mean that the particulars of the 5 points are the essence of the Gospel, which they clearly are not. But I don’t think that’s what those guys mean. What they mean is that Calvinism gets at the heart of the Gospel.

Timothy McConnell, I See a Branch Awakening

So, I have begun to Facebook...Wow!  I'm impressed.  Within minutes I was connecting with long-lost friends.  Some I haven't heard from or seen since High School.  Some that stretch back to kindergarten days.

Some of these friendships were light and soft, just acquaintances.  Worthy of a smile and a nod, and a response of help or some time to listen when needed.  Some others were my closest confidants.  People who knew my soul.  And for some reason or another we have grown apart.  It's these connections that throw you from your chair when the screen pops up with, "You and So-and-so are now friends."  You are now friends.  And after so many years...

Timothy McConnell: Of Soccer, Goals, and the Ecumenical Movement

I was convicted lately with the proposition that the world needs more soccer. I don’t even like soccer. It’s so boring. I like when a goal is scored, and I like thinking about the few moments just before the goal is scored so I can see how it happened, but you have to wade through so many long and boring minutes!

However, everybody in the world plays soccer. It’s remarkable really.

Iraq has a soccer team.  Indonesia has a soccer team. Scotland has a soccer team, and Kenya has one too. The Chileans play the Mexicans and the Ethiopians play the Russians. And everybody can participate. It has its own language, its own rules, and its own international governing boards. A group can sit down in Berlin and watch a match between the Irish and the Brazilians—there’s no language barrier. There’s no culture barrier. There are no walls to breach; only a game that everybody understands. Soccer exists above nations!

Soccer (Football) is a parable of the kingdom of God…as much as I hate to say it.

Alex Sims, Critiquing Another Man's Wife

How do you critique another man’s wife? Personally, it would take a lot for me to critique a man’s wife, whether friend or enemy. I could only imagine doing so in an extreme circumstance, and even then it would be with serious trepidation. We all know our spouses have flaws, but if a friend needed to critique my wife, I would expect any such critique to be delivered with the most careful, cautious, and gentle spirit imaginable. But too often, I don’t extend the same respect to Jesus’ wife, the Church.

It seems to me that there are some times when the Church needs critiqued. I don’t think that critiquing the Church can always be bad; after all, the Bible itself contains some such critiques. I'll admit upfront that I personally lean towards thinking (perhaps incorrectly) that Christians critique the Church too much. (And I recognize the irony of that statement – I’m critiquing Christians for critiquing the Church too much.) But maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps we don’t critique the Church too much. Perhaps we sometimes do so too harshly. I’m really not sure. Here are my jumbled thoughts on aspects of whether critiquing the Church is legitimate or not; please add or critique them, if you will.

Doug Serven, GroupThink

I didn’t grow up Presbyterian, and neither have most of you. I haven’t been in the PCA (a statistically insignificant blip on the denominational screen) for that long really, and I continually find things about it that I appreciate. And other things that truly frustrate me. I suppose that is true for every denomination, or at least I’ve been trained to think so.

I spent a considerable amount of my formative Christian years in a parachurch ministry that seeks to make disciples and concentrate on the Bible through study and memorization. It taught me a ton of good things. It taught me a ton of good things. It taught me a ton of good things. Did I say “It taught me a ton of good things?” Yes. I did. One of the unintended consequences, however, was that I developed a large distrust of groups, organizations, denominations and – well – the church. Conversely, I didn’t think that people could do much by themselves either. It seemed to me that things could be done best by teams. No, not done best. Done right.

Then I joined RUF and the PCA and had that ideal quickly challenged and slowly altered. I was immediately placed by myself on a campus, told that being ordained with the call of God is enough. No local team. I also found out that I had to meet with everyone in RUF twice a year, which seemed like an incredible waste of time to me. The bigger jolt was this whole presbytery thing. Every three months we get together to worship, pray and administrate the wider church. I’m supposed to go and submit myself to its decisions. And to participate in its work. Frankly, I was more than a little suspicious. I wouldn’t have done it this way.

Leithart Summarizes The Federal Vision Controversy

As if Paul Yanosy's post earlier today were not sufficiently provocative, here is a summary by Peter Leithart of the Federal Vision controversy roiling the PCA and other Reformed precincts.

Hat Tip: The Last Homely House