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transforming culture

03 Mar 2010, by sfrowen

The call for the church to be creatively involved in the transformation of society is very timely.  It made me think of two items.  A number of years ago the pastor of 4th Pres in Bethesda, MD wrote a book entitled "How my Thinking has Changed About the Church".  It is very pastoral in showing how a pastor changed and began to challenge his people to get involved outside the church.  The second is a paper written for an Urban Mission class at Westminster Theological Seminary.  I think it has the possibility of showing how the Gosepl can be preached in different contexts.  It used the taxonomy of David Bosch on the 6 salvific events in the New Testament.  It can be accessed by googling Pam-Rowen Herzog.

Comments

BibleWonk
03/23/2010
I have been researching this Emerging Church Movement for some time and am disturbed to find that the premise of the movement is to "transform culture". That seems to be the over-arching theme of every emerging movement in any "lane"(Mark Driscoll model). Such ideas of "transforming the city", "reducing crime, poverty and homelessness", "fighting AIDS", etc... I am a simple man...with simple ideas regarding our calling. I see scripture calling me to live-out and preach the gospel and allow God through the Holy Spirit change and transform individuals. See pastors ecumenically build non-profit organization...receive funds from other "faiths", federal, state and local government sources for the purpose of "rebuilding and revitalizing" the inner-city for Jesus is not only embracing a social/global gospel and not actually preaching the gospel itself. I have read many use models such as The Woman at the Well...or Paul on Mars Hill to justify this method of reaching the inner-city culture but in my estimation it is nothing other than pretzel-twisting hermeneutics to justify the agenda. Forgive my cynicism but we need to re-think... "RE-THINKING CHURCH" because the Church, preaching, teaching and evangelism doesn't need to be "re-thought" to reach this generation or any other generation. The gospel gives life and transforms...not ecumenically joining other denominations and religions..forming non-profits and soliciting funds from the world and culture to accomplish an "ideal" or "utopian inner-city". Very simply..we were just not called to do this... Thought I would open up with an honest concerned response to where the church is going as a whole.