You've put to words what I've been thinking for some time.  Thank you.

As the fruit (someone invited my dad to Willow and that led the family to faith) of "Willow's" community I can echo your thoughts.  Thank you for putting words to this.

Thank you so much for the tip on tri-perspectivalism. I've researched it about 5 minutes, and it's already transformed the way I look at church.

Tim, I think this paradigm or one like it is enormously helpful for analyzing local churches and broader church traditions.  I was gratified to see you raise Avery Dulles's Models of the Church and Ed Clowney in the comments of a post by David Fitch in December 2008.

I just want to echo what you say.  Just yesterday I was teaching students in Geoffrey Wainwright's Lesslie Newbigin course about his three models that he outlines in Household of God (1953) which mirror your three.  I will put them in the order you do above: King: "The Community of the Holy Spirit", Prophet: "The Congregation of the Faithful," and Priest: "The Body of Christ." 
As you say, the contribution of the "kingly" such as Willow Creek and others in the free church tradition--is its strength in doing evangelism.  The danger is losing its moorings--we might see this particularly evident in the "health and wealth" gospel of some rogue televangelists. 
The strength of the "prophetic" Reformed tradition is its emphasis on correct doctrine.  The danger is its intellectualism and tendency toward division. 
The contribution of the "priestly"--the liturgical side of the emerging church and other liturgical traditions like Lutherans and Anglicans--is their emphasis on history and tradition and the global "catholicity" of Christianity.  The danger is assuming that having a bishop appoint a priest ensures fidelity to the gospel--that is the danger of dead bureaucracy. 
As you imply, Tim, I think this kind of thinking is indeed very relevant: for (1) church planters who are "starting from scratch," for (2) interacting with others from other traditions (such as you speaking at Willow Creek), for (3) negotiating the various constituencies we find in established congregations, and for (4) thinking about the role of the pastor.

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Dear Tim,

I too attended the conference and agree that Willow?s excellence and expertise in executing a conference like this is unrivaled. For this and much leadership know how I hold Willow and Hybels in high esteem.

I also thought your presentation was the finest I?ve seen or heard you do.

However, while I think it is helpful to understand where the conference fits, in terms of tri-perspectivalism, there was a significant amount of content and ideational direction that I found quite troubling.

I can best summarize my concerns by playing around with a new word: Ecclesiodicy.  

 

Ecclesiodicy: The church?s idiotic need to apologize to the world for its existence, desperately showing the world it has extrinsic value and deserves to exist. It is the idea that the church is only ?value-added? when it aligns itself with the social and political agendas of the dominant culture.

 

One particularly troubling (albeit very entertaining) presentation challenged the church to get out of the ?worship huddle.? The speaker seemed to suggest that worship is a royal waste of time. The church should be doing something more worthwhile. Something that makes a powerful and visible impact on society. ?We need to get out of the worship huddle (i.e. Sunday morning worship) and into the game (i.e. social activism).? Here, ?ecclesiodicy? takes the form of guilt Christians should feel for gathering in worship on Sunday morning. In my opinion, this is double jeopardy for the church. Worship is misunderstood and devalued and the actual life-giving good of all the church?s believers, faithfully engaged in their daily lives, is now reduced to a few news-worthy church programs in the neighborhood. 

 

While I think the prophetic, priestly and kingly function is right on, this is after all the whole gospel, for the whole world, I found the confusion about the gospel (frequently presented as law during this conference), the church, pastoral identity and what constitutes leadership in the local church, quite troubling.

 

Tim

Great thoughts.  I know a bit of the tri-perspectivalism, basically what I've heard through the Acts29 guys.  Where specifically can I read more on this paradigm? Keller mentioned John Frame, but which volume.  Someone else mentioned Newbigin.  Can anyone point me to any specific titles?

Also, many thanks to Tim Keller for his heart for church planting and especially for the way he communicates the Gospel!

Hi Matt,

Frame deals with it extensively in his "The Doctrine of the knowledge of God." and also in "The Doctrine of the Christian life."

You can also find lots of articles at
http://www.frame-poythress.org/

Tim

a very healthy and prescriptive triangulation of three streams that the church needs to be whole and mature.

reminds me of Hebrews . . .  "only together with them"

Thanks Tim,

I'll check it out.

Check: http://timmybrister.com/2009/03/27/triperspectivalism-leadership-and-church-planting/

Tim Blackmon states well my own reservations about the Willow Creek event so I won't try to restate.

This is not knee jerk negativity against Willow Creek.  I have attended the Leadership Summit five times.  But I find their ecclesiology troubling.

I am also a bit confused by applying tri-perspectivalism in this way.  In my mind this separates what God has joined.  I don't see this as a model for the church reflected in Scripture.

Tim, thank you for your comments.  They really help put things in perspective.  Your presence and presentation in the Leadership Summit was the talk of our staff.

The Summit plays a unique role in helping shape leaders.  It has been a GREAT source of refueling each summer.

I, for one, didn't walk away feeling bad about worship, the church, etc.  I took it as challenge to allow the Holy Spirit to stir new dreams and hopes for being "salt" and "light" in this world.

Thanks for folks like you, Bill, and anyone who so clearly represents Christ. Your ministry blesses.

Tim Blackmon rightly identifies that there is less focus at Willow Creek on worship and more focus on evangelism.  I think people who are from Reformed and Liturgical traditions tend to agree with Willow Creek that their evangelistic efforts are great but they wish Willow would do their outreach efforts on a weekday evening (like the Alpha Program) instead of every Sunday morning.  Over its 30 years, Willow has actually moved closer to a view of their weekend services being worship services rather than primarily outreach events for seekers.  Now, their weekend services reflect a theology of worship that closely resembles that of other free churches (Baptist, Mennonite, etc.)--worship songs, a sermon, believer's baptism, and communion (quarterly?).  It seems to me that Willow Creek's example encourages Reformed and Liturgical churches that they should do evangelism in some fashion, even though it will certainly look different than Willow's approach--I think the Alpha Course is a great example.  

toddpruitt rightly points out that John Frame and Vern Poythress's "tri-perspectivalism" is not "biblical" in the sense of the apostle Paul saying there are "kingly, prophetic, and priestly" churches.  Rather it is a theological description of some different strains of leadership in the Old Testament which John Calvin picked up on--describing the work of Christ as that of prophet, king and priest (Institutes 2.15). 

In New Testament terms, we might say that some churches and church traditions focus on the biblical descriptions of "presbyters" who are able to teach (the Prophetic), others on "bishops/overseers" who pass on to others tradition (the Priestly), and others on "apostles" who are sent to the unevangelized (the Kingly). 

toddpruitt is right that we do not want to draw firm divisions between these perspectives.  The perspectives are reconciliable--they are not mutually exclusive.  But most of us tend because of our personality or theological tradition to emphasize one or the other.  What I hear Tim Keller saying above is that he learns from other Christian traditions (from Willow Creek--"leadership, strategic thinking, and wise administration") even if he disagrees with some of their ecclesiology--how they come to terms with biblical evidence regarding the church.

I hope that's helpful.

@Mattkottman, TP (tri-perspectivalism) can be a fascinating lens to view things.  Here's some places you start with to get a better sense of this framework:

http://www.pastorfairchild.com/2007-06/14/triperspectival-hermeneutics/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiperspectivalism

By the way, one thought is that Redeemer's vision for urban transformation does make a decent amount of room for kingly perspectives.  If I have a decent grasp of it, then the level and way in which this kingly perspective is integrated into Redeemer's city renewal DNA is distinctive.

This post reminded me of *that* conversation plus the revelation that triperspectivalism demands all three (Normative - Prophetic, Situational - Kingly, Existential - Priestly) sides to be applied together.


Kenny
www.Godvertiser.com

Tim,
 
I found about this post from Andy Rowell, and I want to express my appreciation to you for your gracious words about Willow Creek and your warm embrace of the various evangelical traditions. 

Tim, welcome to the blogosphere, thanks for starting it off with sharing your perspectives about tri-perspectivalism. I've found it helpful to understand the differences of gifting and subjective biases that each of have, individually, and as illustrated here, also collective in a local church.

Am I missing it, or is there no RSS feed given for the blog?  I'd love to be able to subscribe, but I'm just not seeing it.

Frame makes an interesting distinction about his tri-perspectivalism, using it mainly as a pedagogical tool. This too is how TK introduced it,.....a helpful way to think about different streams within the church.

Frame: "How is perspectivalism useful? There are some moments when I think it is a kind of deep structure of the universe and of Bible truth. Other times (most times) I think of it more modestly, as a pedagogical device. Certainly, as a pedagogical device, it gives students some hooks on which to hang bits of theological knowledge, or to change the metaphor, some string by which to tie things together. But I think that it is of even more practical significance."

Thanks for your balanced perspective. I have often felt that in reformed circles over the years that there has been a certain 'unbalance', even in the criticisms of others. There are no perfect churches and we all seem to be a bit unbalanced in one way or another, giving just a bit too much emphasis on one thing and not enough on another. Thankfully the Lord is gracious, and He is still building His church. One day we will all get it right, when He recreates us all in perfection. Until then we need to learn to be a bit more loving and accepting of each other.