"Christ in a Post-Christian Culture"

Recently the White Horse Inn broadcast two very helpful discussions on "Paul's missional approach in the first century." Michael Horton and the panel appeal to Colossians for insight into how Christians engage a culture that is increasingly post-Christian.

Listen HERE and HERE.

Minority Report

I find myself wondering how long the church is going to play in the fields of social theory. It seems that one has to have a degree in sociology to share the gospel effectively. I know it seems terribly out of fashion but I am unimpressed and unconvinced by those who belabor the importance of knowing our "postmodern" culture.

Don't misunderstand. We ought to know our times. But c'mon! We act as if we are the first generation of Christians to live at time when it is challenging to communicate the Gospel. The fact is, the experts cannot even agree about what postmodernism truly is. Meanwhile, I'm sure some smart guy is already crafting a term to describe the next generation. Then the cycle will begin again. Certain evangelical leaders will create the next cottage industry by having all the necessary insights to ensure we don't become irrelevant. And pastors like myself will buy the books, attend the lectures and hope we get it right.

In a recent article posted on Ref21 Carl Trueman offers a very helpful minority report on the current fascination of the church with cultural relevance.

Dr. Trueman writes:

As this postmodern ethos has bled into Christian theology, a similar theological disempowerment has become evident. What began as a healthy concern to contextualize theology led in many cases to theologies where the particulars of context (whether geographical, social, political, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation etc. etc.) effectively trumped the universal horizon of scripture. The perfect storm of anarchic postmodern philosophies, identity politics, hyperspecialisation and fragmentation of the theological discipline, fear of cultural irrelevance, and the eclectic mindset of the consumer have combined to create a situation where the particular rules, messiness is in, and the church is little more than a cacophony of competing voices (or, to use the trendy and pretentious terminology, `dissonant vocalities'). On every corner, huckster theologians who have made their careers out of creating this mess are selling you the problem as if it is the solution, and theology now abounds with Orwellian newspeak: chaos is order; contradiction is consistency; valueless trivia is vital truth. And the Christian culture vultures are at
the cutting-edge of this, with their focus on the particular and the peripheral rather than the universal and the central. Kids' stuff - teenflicks and sex and the internet - holds centre stage in so much Christian cultural conversation, perhaps a sign of the West's obsession with all things adolescent, perhaps a sign of the permanent adolescence of many of the interlocutors. And let's face it, no-one ever loses in today's evangelical market by backing the peripheral rather than the central, or by overestimating the triviality of the tastes of the Western Christian consumer. Is a
Christian bookstore going to make money selling a book on the Incarnation or on prayer, or one on Christian approaches to body image, or The Simpsons, or how to improve your sex life?

Read the entire article HERE.

Good Movies

Now for something a little less controversial.

Justin Taylor links to a list of "The Ten Most Redeeming Films of 2008." You can check out the list HERE.

Any thoughts?

Any you would add to or take off the list?

Church, Kingdom, and Society

Jim Hamilton has written an excellent article for the latest issue of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology. Given that we are in a political season this article is timely (http://jimhamilton.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/the-church-militant-and-her-warfaresbjtformatted.pdf).

Advancing the Gospel

As I studied for last Sunday’s sermon on Luke 8:1-3 I was both convicted and challenged. I was convicted because of my own lack of impact when it comes to advancing the Gospel deeper into Wichita. Luke’s words are so simple. Jesus went to the cities and villages preaching the good news of the kingdom. The twelve followed Jesus in this vocation. As Luke continues his gospel narrative on into the book of Acts he traces the apostle’s work of bringing the Gospel of Jesus to bear upon the various communities to which they traveled. It is not a complicated model. Cultures, on the other hand, can be and often are complicated. But what Jesus has called us to do is not. We are to make the Gospel known. We are called to go where the people are.

Luke’s words challenge me to think intentionally about how Metro East can better introduce the Gospel into our surrounding culture. As a pastor I receive a lot of advice from “experts” who tell me if I will just jazz up the worship and tone down the preaching then we will reach “seekers.” This perspective flows from the faulty premise that theater lighting, expensive stage props, and slick videos will somehow be the key to reaching our culture: “Sing songs about human longing and preach to felt needs. Quit boring people with the Bible. That’s the key!” The problem is, the more our worship and preaching mirrors the culture the more we disguise the radical alternative that the Gospel represents. It becomes a kind of bait and switch: “See how cool we are? Being a Christian is fun and impressive! Come to our church, sit back and relax. Oh, by the way, Jesus demands and deserves total allegiance.”

The gospel is not advanced by removing the other-worldly nature of our worship and preaching so that lost people can comprehend every aspect. Indeed, when the church is fortunate enough to host lost persons in their services, they ought to observe the worship of a God who is awesome and holy and they ought to be confronted with preaching that clearly declares the Gospel and the radically counter-cultural claims of Christ. The Gospel does not move into the culture by “worshiptainment.” The Gospel is advanced into the culture when, through transcendent worship, Christian’s hearts and minds have been captivated by a grand vision of a great God and, through careful instruction in the Scriptures, have been equipped for ministry.

So I am asking myself a lot of questions these days. Are our current programs and schedule advancing that end or hindering it? Are our times of worship and instruction in God’s Word making us ready to effectively engage the culture with the Gospel? Is our fellowship charged with a level of encouragement and accountability that helps make each of us grateful ministers of Christ’s Gospel in the city where God has planted us? Will Metro East be a Christian ghetto offering a trivial sub-culture or a true church (a community of called out ones) calling people to God’s transformative counter-culture?

Timothy Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan knows a thing or two about the gospel and about how it advances into the culture. Redeemer Presbyterian has planted over 75 churches with a plan to start 200 in the next 20 years. Resources from Dr. Keller and Redeemer are available through this blog site. I would encourage you to check them out.


In one article entitled “Preaching in a Post-Modern City” Keller contrasts the Gospel and ‘Religion.’ I found his words very helpful as I considered the reality that one of the reasons we are not very effective at advancing the Gospel is because we don’t much believe it ourselves. Keller writes:

“The gospel is ‘I am accepted through Christ, therefore I obey’ while every other religion operates on the principle of ‘I obey, therefore I am accepted.’ Martin Luther’s fundamental insight was that this latter principle, the principle of ‘religion’ is the deep default mode of the human heart. The heart continues to work in that way even after conversion to Christ. Though we recognize and embrace the principle of the gospel, our hearts will always be trying to return to the mode of self-salvation, which leads to spiritual deadness, pride and strife and ministry ineffectiveness.
“For example, ministers derive more of their joy and a sense of personal significance from the success of their ministries than from the fact they are loved by God in Christ. Why? Their hearts are still operating on the principle – ‘If I do and accomplish all these things – then I will be accepted.’ In other words, on one level, we believe the Gospel but on another we don’t believe.
“So why do we over-work in ministry and burn out? Yes, we are not practicing the Sabbath principle, but the deeper cause is unbelief in the Gospel! Why are we so devastated by criticism? The person whose self-worth is mainly in his or her ministry performance will be devastated by criticism of the ministry record because that record is our very self and identity. The fundamental problem is unbelief in the Gospel.
“At the root then, of all Christian failures to live right – i.e. not give their money generously, not tell the truth, not care for the poor, not handle worry anxiety – is the sin under all sins, the sin of unbelief, of not rejoicing deeply in God’s grace in Christ, not living out of our new identity in Christ. This means that every week in a different way the minister must apply the Gospel of salvation by grace through faith through Christ’s work. Thus every week the non-Christians get exposed to the Gospel, and in its most practical and varied forms not just in a repetitious ‘Four Spiritual Law’ way. That’s what pragmatic post-moderns need.”

Toys 'R' Us and the Destruction of Manhood

Okay, the title might be a bit of an exaggeration but stick with me. My experience today was confirmation that Western society as we know it is changing for the worse. Just a few hours ago I took my two sons (ages 9 and 7) to the famous supplier of toys with one goal: to buy two cap guns. I love cap guns. As far as inventions go, they ought to be spoken of in the same breath as the internal combustion engine and the light bulb. Growing up, cap guns helped transform my back yard into an imaginary battle field. At various times they turned me into a Green Beret, a cop, Jesse James, and James Bond. So when my sons asked for cap guns last night I happily complied. This afternoon we piled into the car and made our way to the toy superstore.

And this is the point in the story where everything goes south. It seems that Toys R Us has joined the battle against the scourge of developing masculinity in young boys. I suppose it has been too long since I’ve been to Toys R Us because I immediately tried to find the aisle where they keep all the toy guns. Not finding any, I consulted a collection of three employees. I asked innocently, “Where do you keep the cap guns?” The reply came but it was too unsettling to fully process at first. It was disorienting. It was like finding out that you have just been awakened from a long coma and Bill Clinton is president again. “We don’t carry cap guns.”

We did find a few water guns and other things that shot out nerf balls. None of these fanciful plastic and brightly colored monstrosities could ever be confused with a gun. I can’t believe I am actually going to write this. They were the kind of “guns” that a girl might design.

This has not weakened by resolve however. If I have to get on Ebay I am going to find two cap guns and my boys are going to shoot them at each other. They are going to play cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, and war. What is more, I won’t have to teach them to do this because they are, after all, BOYS!

They are going to learn that sometimes the good guys have to use force against bad guys. They are going to learn that Jesus never told a soldier not to serve as a soldier. They are going to learn that the state is at times used by God to put down evil in the world. They may be called upon one day to intervene with force against hostile aggressors. On that day I don’t want them to wonder why their gun does not light up with bright colors and emit an array of bleeps and blips.

Press On

todd