As a church planter in Rome, I’ve found out that one of my biggest challenges has been how to articulate the gospel meaningfully today. It’s not hard to sketch out the good old Plan of Salvation. But by meaningful articulation I mean showing people how the gospel relates to, challenges, and subverts the whole of their worldview. How it incarnates Christ into people’s late-modern categories of thought so that all of our thinking and all of our lives radiate from a Christ-centered core.

In particular, I have been struck by one special challenge, an area so crucial for the way we live but that surprisingly few Christians are talking about: the concept of happiness. Happiness is a serious, vital theme, especially for pastors and Christian leaders, and not just for the obvious reason that you and I and the people we teach all want to be happy. It is a theme begging Christian reflection because this magnetic word also holds within itself a whole cosmos: our understanding of happiness is our understanding of life. It is a token of our soul, a window into our worldview, the surest sign of what we prize and what we live for. It is people’s individual, alternative gospel.

Yet, does our preaching articulate an understanding of happiness – of the life we’re after – different than the worldview of TV ads and pop magazines? I’m not sure. Both seekers and believers looking for happiness today not only feel spoonfed a dumbed down solution–buy this product, get gorgeous, follow these seven steps–but there seems to be no real Christian alternative. Christians have bought into our consumer societies’ commercial definition of happiness without thinking it through critically, and instead substitute the self-help steps to happiness with Christian terminology. Rough edges are smoothed and spiritual language is sprinkled in, but the approach is still the same self-centered, self-serving approach.

So I went on an experiment. Could there be an alternative Christian understanding of happiness? Could this understanding be not isolated from, but actually spring out of our core beliefs about reality–Jesus is Lord, his cross offers life, to follow Jesus is best of paths? And could this alternative be not just well-meaning but be really happy, happier than any other alternative?

It was a fascinating experiment. I went back to Jesus and to what I felt is his key insight on life–that we gain life when we lose it, when we deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow him–and the result of that reflection is a book coming out this month called The Paradox of Happiness. In it I challenge people to think about happiness in a distinctively Christian way, and have lives more serene and joyous because they are actually less self-oriented and self-centered. Because they long to contribute, love, and give more than they want to get and buy. It is also a wish that people will be in wonder at the genius of Jesus’ vision of life and that they will be more willing to follow him, even if his path is a cruciform one. In the end, I would love if we–and the people we teach and serve– come to an understanding that makes us less worried about our own happiness and so find ourselves, paradoxically, happier than before.

For pastors and church planters like me, I hope that it also can serve as an encouragement and model on how to engage our culture and deconstruct it with Jesus’ splendorous gospel.

One could call this the ministry of happiness. We don’t find happiness when we try to fulfill our desires—we find it when we stop looking for it and start focusing on serving others. Happiness according to Jesus is generous and unexpected: by letting go, we find; by giving, we receive. Happy are those who share their happiness.

René Breuel is the author of The Paradox of Happiness and the founding pastor of a church in Rome, Italy. He blogs at wonderingfair.com.

[Originally posted at Redeemer.com.]

In a previous blog post I wrote about the 18th century pastor John Newton, who showed us that most Christians live out their lives with obvious character flaws that ruin both their joy and their Christian witness. But why is it that so many Christians live like this?

Our natural virtues, which come from inborn temperament and family nurture—such as our talents, aptitudes, and strengths—are good things. But they each have a dark side. People with prophetic gifts—that is, great directness, often good at public speaking or writing—can have problems listening to others and taking advice. People with priestly gifts—that is, sensitivity, often good at listening, giving counsel, showing mercy—often can be too concerned with making people happy. They may be cowardly, or overly sensitive to criticism. A person who is very generous may also be undisciplined and irresponsible in financial matters. Thus his generosity is really a facet of his too-impulsive character.

One of the reasons that the virtues of gifts and temperament have a corresponding “dark side” is that our gifts and natural temperament are bound up with the idols that dominate any heart not filled with the gospel of grace. Without a thorough knowledge of the gospel, we look to good things—human approval and relationships, the exercise of power and accomplishment, the control of our environment and self-discipline, the enjoyment of comfort, privacy, and pleasure—and make them into pseudo-salvations. So the person who makes an idol out of human approval may be a sensitive artist and the one who makes an idol out of power might be a courageous leader. But gifts and temperament in the service of idols—and this is our normal state—always are a mixed blessing. They have a good side—they produce virtuous behavior—but they lead the person into a corresponding sin or vice as well.

The final result of all this is that people cannot see their sins because they are looking only at their virtues. For example, someone may say: “I’m not abrasive, I just speak very directly.” It is true that a direct-speaking person may do good because direct, blunt comments are sometimes needed. But overall the abrasiveness is ineffective and the person’s boldness and confidence comes to some degree from pride and a lack of love. And for this reason, many (or perhaps most) Christians do not work on the supernatural graces of the spirit that are not natural to us, and that mitigate or eliminate the dark side—the besetting sins—of our nature.

So how can we be shaken out of our lethargy and awakened to our need to grow? Here are some principles that I have gleaned from Newton’s letters over the years.

1. Know that your worst character flaws are the ones you can see the least.

By definition the sins to which you are most blind, that you make the most excuses for, and that you usually minimize—are the ones that most have you in their grip. As we said before, one way we hide our blemishes is that we look at places that our natural temperament resembles spiritual fruit. For example, a natural aptitude for control and self-discipline can be read as ‘faithfulness’, and a natural desire for personal approval could look like ‘gentleness’ or ‘love.’ Or we mistake a bubbly, sanguine temperament for joy, and a laid-back, phlegmatic temperament for peace. We give ourselves spiritual credit for these things, when actually we aren’t growing spiritually at all. The lack of other fruit shows that real supernatural character change is not happening.

2. Remember that you can’t learn about your biggest flaws just by being told—you must be shown.

There are two ways we come to see our sins and flaws more clearly. One way is that we are shown them by troubles and trials in life. Suffering is God’s gymnasium—it reveals our spiritual weaknesses just as a workout reveals physical weaknesses.

Secondly, we learn by Christian role models. Sometimes the best conviction comes when you are brought near a person who is living as you should be living. You may not think of yourself as impatient, or abrasive, or over-sensitive until you are brought into close proximity to someone much more patient, irenic, and content than you. What this means is that we should make use of these opportunities to grow. They are painful—even being near very holy people can be uncomfortable! But it is at such times, when we most feel the need for grace, that we find God’s grace most desirable.

3. Be willing to listen to correction and critique from others.

We just said that no one ever learned about his or her sins by being told. We have too many layers of self-justification to grow without hard knocks. But in addition, as a complement, we need critique and accountability from brothers and sisters.

There are at least two kinds. First, you can create your own Hebrews 3:13 community. Hebrews 3:13 says we are to “exhort one another daily” so we are not “hardened by the deceptiveness of our sin.” Take some other believers that you trust and give them “a hunting license” to talk to you about where you need to grow.

Secondly, don’t forget the “Balaam’s donkey” principle (Numbers 22). You must learn how to profit from criticism even given by people who are badly motivated, or who you don’t respect. Even if only 20% of what they say is true, it may be God speaking to you.

But, you may ask, how do we actually make changes once we see where we need to change? We will look at that in a future blog post.

From April 23-25, 2013, the network of churches called City to City Europe held its fifth meeting in Prague, Czech Republic. Over 200 church planters and leaders from about 60 different cities across Europe were in attendance. Our first such meeting in London 2005 had just 15.

For two and a half days, attendees discussed the themes of having a gospel-driven church, gospel-centered community, and gospel-centered preaching, with a variety of breakout sessions on topics such as healthy church growth, the distinctives of urban church planting, and ministry in deprived areas. It was an encouraging time of fellowship among friends, both new and old, who are involved in the network. Many valuable connections were made, new relationships established and challenging ideas debated.

One of the highlights of the meeting was a testimony from René Breuel, a church planter in Rome who has been reaching the university crowd in a central part of the city. He talked about a young man in his congregation who had come to Christ and started to share the gospel with his classmates. René also gave a history of his church plant, sharing how he and his wife Sarah got involved in their community and have been leading people to Christ. You can listen to his talk here.

René’s story is just one example of how God has been at work in the cities of Europe, and stories like these are the reason why churches are being planted. To date, CTC Europe has been involved to some degree in over 75 church plants and mother churches, with dozens more churches that are affiliated in some way with the network. As the network expands, it becomes increasingly important that the gospel of Jesus Christ drives everything. Please pray that there will continue to be a spirit of unity and a passion for the gospel in these churches.

As one participant from Amsterdam said after the meeting ended with communion: “We are one in Christ our Saviour!”

For audio, video, and papers from the meeting, please visit the City to City Europe website (registration required).

April is our second busiest month of the year (see you soon September). With all that’s going on in the office, we’ve managed to recruit a couple of guest bloggers to keep the blog fresh and exciting.

Pete Armstrong explores the history of the neighborhood where he’s planting a church. The Bowery is the oldest street in Manhattan. It was once a Native American foot trail and has since seen a long history of cultural clashes and change. As Pete says, “The gospel has something to say to both the penthouse and the flophouse in our neighborhood.”

David Plant, director of Youth Ministries at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, writes about the “boomerang effect” seen in center city youth ministry. Unlike suburban high school students who dream of going off to college and moving on, students who grow up in New York (and other center-cities) dream of going to college and moving back. David explores what a long term approach to youth ministry might look like.

Our very own Tim Cox also shares some tips and general strategy on how to thoughtfully approach social media and content creation as a church plant. He narrows it down to five simple points: Don’t Spam, Be Deep, Delegate, Be Diverse and Track Data. The whole concept of Social can be scary to most church planters, but if you can delegate this to people who love to do it and care about your church, the result can be really beautiful.

Finally, Gary Watanabe is working to train coaches to walk alongside church planters well after their churches are launched. Gary had such an incredible time leading coach training sessions in New York and Sydney that he decided to blog about it. Please pray for the coach training that has begun in Sydney and new programs we hope to launch later this year in New York and Latin America.

Often times all we need in order to do what needs to be done is to acknowledge what God is already doing. Allow me to unpack this simple thought.

If we are honest, the reason why things do not get done in our lives or ministry is not because we lack qualifications to do them or because they are impossible to do, but because our energy tank is running on empty. We feel we just don’t have it in us.

An empty energy tank can be the result of many things, such as a lack of planning, lack of balance, and even lack of common sense. In most of our lives, however, the most common reason that we experience emptiness (resulting in stagnation) is due to a lack of encouragement. Regardless of who we are, we all need encouragement to thrive. Without encouragement, the insecurities that already exist in each of us are magnified, and begin to take over.

Have you ever caught yourself being overly preoccupied with the details that need to get fixed and never get fixed? That happens when insecurities and lack of confidence have already taken over, much like weeds in a garden. Over-preoccupation and stress have never fixed anything. In fact, they only add aggravation to the frustration.

What we truly need is solid encouragement.

It’s during times like these that God steps in, comes close, and does what he said he would do—he encourages. The Spirit of God is called by Jesus “The Counselor” (John 14:16) and the Spirit’s job is to encourage us by reminding us of all that Jesus said to us (John 14:26). There are four words of Jesus that I can think of that pretty much cover everything when it comes to the lack of encouragement that causes stagnation.

1. “[Father], you have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:23). We are loved as the Son is loved by the Father. Although at times we might not receive accolades and affirmation from others in regard to the work we are doing, we are reminded that if the Son is always loved and accepted by the Father, so are we (Gal. 4:6). He is for us.

2. “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever” (John 14:16). Jesus said that the Counselor (The Spirit) would never abandon us. This means that even though at times we feel alone, and trust me ministry can be very lonely, we are never alone. He is in it with us.

3. “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’... your heavenly Father knows that you need them all” (Matthew 6:25-34). Jesus promises that all our needs would always be met by the Father. Even though at times the church’s finances, the fundraising, the outstanding bills and the fear of not meeting our family’s needs might seem to challenge this promise, He has promised to always come through. He cares about us.

4. “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). Jesus is building his Church and that includes our local churches. We have all felt the overbearing pressure to build a successful ministry. This word alleviates all the pressure because according to it, no one loves our church more than Jesus does. In the end, it is his work.

I have found that whenever the Spirit reminds us of these words, it is never left abstract. The Spirit is always pairing these truths to facts. Jesus’ words are always backed up with whatever he (the Spirit) is doing in the present. These are the facts that we often ignore. He is opening our eyes to see how he is constantly using our work (and failures) to build others up. He wants us to see how he is building our character through our struggles. He wants us to see how he has met our need today. Trust me, it is all there.

I believe that if we would just be sensitive to what God is doing in the present, we would be able to see him working in us, for us, and through us. The problem is that we are rarely attentive. We are too busy looking for our own ways to make things happen in a failed attempt to find our own encouragement. Saint Augustine’s words perfectly apply to what we are talking about here. He wrote: "Why are you relying on yourself, only to find yourself unreliable?" Instead, we should rely on the Spirit (Gal. 5:25). To rely on the Spirit is to be attentive to the Spirit.

If we could just slow down or maybe even stop, we might just see what the Counselor is doing in the present. He is trying to encourage us out of our paralysis. Can you sense him encouraging you?

In the summer of 2011, before we launched our church, I took my leadership team through an exercise that determined which aspects of church life they were most passionate about. Holistic community development and growth in discipleship were near the top of the list, while evangelism was toward the bottom. It seems that even among a church planting leadership team, evangelism has become a bit of a dirty word.

The reason that our church exists is to connect the Mission of God to the Bowery. The Missio Dei includes – foundationally – the desire to see people put their faith in Christ. We can participate in the renewal of a neighborhood, but our eyes are only truly opened to how to do so when we follow Jesus. The mission statement of our denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, puts it well: renewing lives and communities worldwide. People come to faith individually as we renew the wider community in Jesus’ name.

Last week I asked an NYU graduate student what she thought when she heard the term evangelical. “Oh, those are the Christians that bait and switch. They’re nice to your face, but they really just want to convert you.” With so many inside and outside of Dwell Church being burned by the church and skittish around evangelism, we’ve had to re-imagine how to approach it. But I don’t want to abandon the term, so evangelism remains one of our core values even as we pray and ask hard questions.

We have to identify a new way of evangelism that leaves behind old models and gets back to the oldest model: that of Jesus. What I see in Jesus and other biblical figures, especially in Acts, is the power of curiosity. Jesus asked questions. He often responded to a question with a question of his own. Whether it was with Nicodemus at night, the woman at the well or countless other interactions, Jesus teaches us the power of curiosity.

Many times I am tempted to know the right answers, to try and back my neighbors into an intellectual corner. But in the neighborhoods that surround the Bowery, we find great diversity. Even though we’ve seen many people come to faith, I am only beginning to learn the cultures and patterns behind the spiritual questions people are asking. I find the process goes well and the Holy Spirit provokes curiosity in my neighbors when I approach them with respect, love and curiosity. And, let’s be honest, starting a church in New York City does generate some strange looks and plenty of questions!

After two years of spending a lot of time with three families in my neighborhood and praying for them, all of them finally began asking questions about Christ and His church. One had heard about another church and wanted to find out more about it. One wanted their children to participate in our service projects in the neighborhood. The third wanted to visit Dwell Church.

The culture we live in tells us that we’re all on a spiritual journey, and that all journeys are equally valid. I believe that is only half true. People are on a spiritual journey, but we need to be able to show the distinctiveness of Jesus and His incredible grace. We can be apologetic for our evangelistic missteps, and worse for giving Jesus a bad name. But we should be unapologetic about the truth of the gospel to transform any culture.

While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?”—Luke 24:15-17

Having just celebrated Easter brought my attention back to this passage about two disciples and their encounter with Jesus on the road to Emmaus right after his death and resurrection. I’d like to share this in connection with an important and growing need for church planters: coaching, or walking alongside them well after their churches are launched.

Our first urban church planter coach training was completed in New York City at the end of February. Ten participants representing several different, regional church planting networks within the U.S. completed a nine-month process of learning and practicing coaching based on the principles and process of training developed by Church Multiplication Ministries and Redeemer City to City. The model of coaching we used was “an intentional gospel conversation with focused discussions about a church planter’s relational, personal, missional, and spiritual life.” This is what we see going on with Jesus coming alongside the two disciples in Luke 24, and this is what we desire in training church planter coaches.

Shortly afterward we saw the start of the same coach training in Sydney—the first for us in an international city context. There were eight participants in that training, which coincided with a two-day church planting conference in Sydney to cast a gospel-centered vision and create a coalition for church planting.

“Coaching is just a more intentional form of discipleship,” as one of our training colleagues aptly described it. Church leaders and planters have expressed a great need for this in the cities where we work, where they are seeing a growing number of church planters, but not enough coaches to support them. Research by Dr. Steve Childers at Global Church Advancement has shown that good coaching has a significant impact on planters, doubling or tripling their effectiveness.

As our global network grows, we are hoping to be able to support it through coaching. Please pray for the coach training begun in Sydney and new programs we hope to launch later this year in New York and Latin America.

Our very own Tim Cox recently shared some tips and general strategy on how to thoughtfully approach social media and content creation as a church plant. As a digital native, he consults and speaks on the power of social media, writing blog posts, and how to reach your community, both small and broad.

Tim narrows it down for us in five simple points:

Don't Spam - Most businesses and orgs use social media to get people to do things, like buy their product or attend their events. Don't do it. Just use it to tell stories and include as many of them as possible. People will love reading your stories.

Deep - It's easy for me to post cynical things on Facebook, and most people post what's easy. Because of this I'm seen as a jerk. Another person I follow only shares photos of the stuff she buys so I immediately label her as materialistic. Maybe this is true, but really we're deeper than that. Being deep means taking the time to post happy, sad, needy, generous things. Post prayer requests along with praises. Post failures with successes. Be as real and as deep as possible.

Delegate - By including more people you're getting a diversity of voice, and you’re relieving pressure on the one person who all of this stuff usually falls on. Create a sandbox for your posting people to play in. Determine what is a good post and what isn’t. Always make sure to spell check, check for grammatical errors, and never use too many exclamation marks (!!!!!!!!).

Diversity - Post a lot of different types of things. See what's working and what's not. Then post more of what's working. This also applies to platforms. Start an Instagram, Vine, and Twitter profile if you don't have it. Post on it and see what's working and what isn't. If a platform isn't worth the effort, ditch it.

Data - Track and refer to your stats weekly or monthly. Every Monday or every first Monday of the month look at what's working and what's not. Make sure your website traffic is being tracked by Google Analytics and check out the referral sources. Where on social is most of your traffic coming from?

These tips provide great direction and a singular focus when thinking about where to start with social media. But what is Tim’s best advice? Focus on creating content. Content drives people to your social feeds, and more content drives more people.

Find out where all of your good content is — all of the stuff that's valuable — and partition it into buckets. You'll fill the buckets with a bunch of raw content, part the raw posts into usable content, and then schedule them out for regular posts on blogs, social, video, etc. Record what you can on audio, video, and photos and post it. Make your whole sermon or worship song available and then create clips on Soundcloud or YouTube. This way, there's a steady stream of content being posted during the week with minimal effort, which frees you up to be as creative as possible during the week.

Here are some ideas when we’re thinking about content:

Conversations - What are quotes from conversations you’ve recently had with people? Pictures. Video. Whatever. You can pillage your personal posts for this stuff and reuse it. When you repost or reshare, put a new spin on it. Don't just copy and paste.

City Stuff - What are the things that you LOVE about your city? That bike that's locked up in the most paranoid way possible. Your favorite tree. Places where you stop walking and just look.

Key People - My key people are Vincent at the newsstand, Tobin and Lance at Culture Espresso, Jeff and Matt on my pinball team, and Alison, my favorite server at Bogota. They have stories. Tell them. Feature them.

Needs- Inevitably you'll come up against needs in your community. What was needed and how was it fulfilled? Let people know how they can help and how to get involved. This is a great way to think about sharing praises and prayer requests from your community.

Events - Jimmy’s show is tomorrow night, let's all surprise him by actually going this time. Post video, audio, and photos.

The key is making this as natural as possible. One of the things you'll probably need to do is spend some time collecting things from people in your core group. Spend some time researching. It's like scrapbooking online.

To conclude, you need a church website with a blog that addresses your current thoughts, stories, and questions. Tumblr is a great platform for blogging, so that's a good place to start. Your main website provides a place to put the key info (including audio and video) and then readers can easily jump over to the blog where you can share more casually. The blog should be updated regularly by as many people as possible. Email is ok for announcements and newsletters, but social is going to be where the community will be featured and grow.

It might feel burdensome at first, but if you can delegate this to people who love to do it and care about your church, the result can be really beautiful.

In his recent book Calvin’s Company of Pastors, Scott Manestch points out that for about 35 years after Calvin’s arrival in Geneva all the city pulpits were occupied by foreign pastors, not Geneva natives. This was due, as Manestch points out, to the lack of catechizing Geneva’s young people prior to Calvin’s arrival.

This historical example has tremendous application in cities: ministry to students today will impact the church for decades to come. Unlike suburban high school students who dream of going off to college and moving on, students who grow up in New York (and other center-cities) dream of going to college and moving back. For these students the city is a place of opportunity and excitement, and therefore most in our context anticipate returning to New York to live, work and worship. Recognizing this “boomerang effect” allows those of us who are ministering to youth to take a long horizon approach in our ministry.

Imagine a spiritually mature student returning after college and getting re-acclimated to the city. Upon return he or she would walk right into a community of parents, pastors, lay-leaders and fellow students already with 10 plus years of relational capital between them – and they’re not even 25! Since many center-city churches are young and transient, the youth community can produce a mature and stabilizing presence in the life of the church. A youth ministry in a center city with the long horizon in view will help create a diverse, multi-generational community of parents, pastors, lay-leaders and students that worship the Lord and serve the city together for decades to come.

The Youth Community

I work at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, which is over 20 years old. In the early days it was predominantly single professionals, and we have only recently reached a critical mass of families, children and youth. Though we expect our middle and high school ministries to double in the next two to three years, out of a congregation of 6,000, we average presently about 100 students per weekend between the ages of 12-18.

With these things in mind, Redeemer's youth ministry has never been typical. With an eye towards the future, what we hope to cultivate is a youth community. The youth pastor carries out his ministry alongside the broader community of parents and lay-leaders. We lean heavily on lay-leaders, mostly young professionals 25-35, who are engaged in intense, life on life ministry among our students. They serve as a diaconal presence in the students’ life, ministering to both spiritual and physical needs. Meanwhile, the youth pastor shepherds the lay-leaders, recognizing and affirming their areas of giftedness, and often discipling and developing them to be future elders and deacons in the local church.

Of course, the other major congregational influence on our youth is the parents. In asking the question, “What factors would lead our children to return to live, work, and worship in the same church and city as their parents?” One factor is the “evolution” of the parental voice. When a child is young he or she looks to their parent for everything, and the parent has greater responsibility to make sure they do not stumble. However, as the child grows and their life-decisions become increasingly complex (college, marriage, mortgage, etc.), the youth pastor is tasked with humbly and prayerfully helping parents transition from the role of “parent-protector-judge” to that of “parent-coach-sage.” This task isn’t the sole responsibility of the youth ministry; it is a church-wide project and calling.

The Youth Worker

While many youth workers see their role as a stepping stone to “bigger” pastoral roles, center city youth workers, or those who work in a long horizon context, should feel emboldened to go against the current climate and, with the energy of a church planter, work to create a sustainable youth community that feeds into the ecosystem of the entire Church body.

In the world of finance, knowing your time horizon is crucial to how you plan and manage investments. If you have a short time horizon, your portfolio will reflect a more conservative, low-risk strategy. However, if you have a long horizon of twenty years or more, you’ll have a greater period of time to invest in areas of promise that may carry some risk.

For youth pastors in the city, this means recognizing and embracing the “boomerang effect” and being in it for the long term. It also means involving the church community—parents, lay leaders and kids—in a church-wide process of community and discipleship. And finally, it means that everything we do is built upon preaching the gospel and establishing relationships with our students. Holding these two together (preaching and relationships) enables the youth pastor to faithfully preach Scripture not in abstraction, but in a way that shows students how to make sense of their own individual life story within God’s grand story of redemption.

Being convicted by a vision keeps you content. On a personal note, recognizing and committing to the long horizon has in many ways saved me from myself. By committing to the longer view, I’ve gladly surrendered to the Lord many aspirations outside of my current role. In a lot of ways, understanding our time horizon has liberated me from the possibility of “greener” pastorates and very well may have turned ten-thousand heartaches into ten-thousand blessings for myself and others.

Last week my wife and I attended an event at the Bowery Hotel to celebrate the naming of the Bowery to the National Register of Historic Places. It was a wonderful time for our neighborhood to recognize its incredible past and dream of a vibrant future. Musicians sang the songs made famous on the Bowery, from 19th century vaudeville to punk rock of the 1970s. Despite the beautiful history of the Bowery, and New York City in general, I see a tension. It is a neighborhood that is already, but not yet.

As mentioned in my previous blog, the vision of Dwell Church is to connect the Mission of God to the Bowery. We define the Mission of God (Missio Dei) as the spiritual and social renewal of every square inch of creation. But what is the Bowery? Although many people aren’t familiar with this two mile-long street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, I can’t think of another place that has impacted American culture as much as the Bowery has.

The Bowery is the oldest street in Manhattan, having been a Native American foot trail long before the Dutch arrived. It has a fascinating history even prior to the Civil War: this is where Peter Stuyvesant retired to his farm, George Washington had a beer, James Delancey built a house and the Astors expanded their real estate holdings. It continued to be deeply influential throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in the area of arts and culture.

Over the years, this neighborhood has seen drastic growth and change. In the mid-1850s, the Bowery was a violent place. The south end is one of the five points seen in Scorsese’s 2002 film “Gangs of New York.” However, on the heels of the Fulton Street revival in 1857, two Christian organizations began to minister to the spiritually and materially poor on the Bowery: the YMCA and the Bowery Mission.

On an architectural tour of the Bowery two years ago, I was surprised to hear a friend and neighbor praise the work of the Bowery Mission. I had discussed faith with him before, and he certainly never resonated with the gospel that is preached at the Mission: the exclusivity of Christ and the need for repentance and faith. Despite that, the Mission had earned his respect - and the respect of many other secular New Yorkers (including Mayor Bloomberg) - by caring for the marginalized since 1880. I learned two valuable lessons from my friend that day: my neighbors on the Bowery love organizations that are old and are suspicious of those that are new, and they respect the Christian community when we are fulfilling our mandate to serve the common good.

Going forward with that knowledge, a key question I ask myself as a church planter is, “If Dwell Church closed, would the neighborhood miss it?” Would they lament the closing of our church or say, “good riddance”? Are we a hindrance to our neighbors? Or are we living out God’s command to love them?

It is an incredible time to be living and serving on the Bowery. It’s changing rapidly, while trying to preserve its soul. We are asking big questions spiritually and socially: How do we communicate the gospel to an incredibly diverse neighborhood? What would it look like to combine justice and gentrification? Is there even such a thing as “just gentrification?”

With a history as rich as any, the Bowery still needs Jesus. The gospel has something to say to both the penthouse and the flophouse in our neighborhood. And because of that, I am grateful that God is calling His people to the Bowery, opening doors for us to serve, and providing opportunities to share the gospel in Word and deed.

It’s almost the end of March and we wanted to update you on what’s been happening at City to City.

This month, Tim Keller challenged us with his Questions for Sleepy and Nominal Christians. In describing what a revival would look like today, he says, “When sleepy and nominal Christians get revived, attractive and bold in their witness, people who would never have believed before begin to get converted.”

That’s not all we were challenged with this month. A couple of weeks ago Dr. Keller and Katherine Leary Alsdorf got together to talk about their recent book, Every Good Endeavor, at a Center for Faith & Work event, “Work: What Is It Good For?” (You can watch the entire talk here.) Tim reminded us that doing a job for the glory of God doesn’t always mean passing out tracts and evangelizing to your coworkers. It means doing your job well. “What does it mean to be a great Christian pilot? Land the plane!”

Although we’re all called to work for God’s glory, that certainly takes on different forms. On our blog this month, we heard from Pete Armstrong who is a church planter in New York City at Dwell Church. He shared his story of how managing a coffee shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan turned into a journey that eventually brought him to planting a church in lower Manhattan. You can read the rest of the story of how Dwell Church came to be, “A City Where God Dwells With Us - The Story of Dwell Church”.

And finally, please celebrate with us this Easter as new churches launch in Athens, Greece, South Boston, and Tribeca. Alex Pipilios and Tim Coomar - church planters in Athens - both completed City to City’s Church Planter International Intensive in New York in 2010 and 2011 respectively, and the church Exarcheia will hold its first service in the same city where the Apostle Paul preached against idolatry on his second missionary journey. More recently the neighborhood saw some violence as part of the riots in Greece. Please pray for new life to be found in Christ in both of these communities.

Every church plant has a unique story of how it came into being. The story of Dwell Church actually began in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2004, when I was managing a coffee shop. One of my regulars was a friend who had recently returned to Michigan after an 18 month stint in New York City. I had only visited New York once, and enjoyed listening to his stories.

Two themes emerged: loneliness and economic disparity. In fact, I remember him saying that his experience of New York was as a city of “8 million lonely people.” He had never lived anywhere else in which he found it so difficult to connect with God or others. He named competition and the fast pace of life as the major factors contributing to this. He also spoke of the incredible wealth disparity in Manhattan, in which you find so many very wealthy people rubbing shoulders with the very poor.

I was captivated by these conversations and began to pray about one day serving Christ there, although church planting was not on my radar at that point. As I continued to pray and dream, I began to see myself at the jazz clubs and museums of New York. I began to see myself training for marathons at Central Park. I began to see myself sharing the gospel with New Yorkers.

Later that year, I met my wife Lily. In God’s providence, she had many family connections in New York. An aunt and uncle have lived on w 83rd st since 1968. She has nine cousins who live in Brooklyn or Manhattan. God used these family relationships to open doors for us in New York and to teach us much about the culture and context from the very beginning. I took these and many other answers to prayer as signs that He was calling us to this great city.

After several years in which I needed to grow in the gospel and as a leader, we moved to Manhattan in the summer of 2010. I interned at another church in my denomination, City Grace, in the West Village. The lead pastor had previously trained with Redeemer City to City. This provided a valuable residency year for us and helped us form the core group to launch Dwell in 2012. God is using Dwell Church to bring redemption in the two areas that he first brought to my heart nine years ago: connecting people to God through Christ and bringing together both rich and poor people. More on this in a future post.

Frequently, people ask us how we came up with the name Dwell Church. During the season in which we were discerning the name of the church, the word dwell seemed to show up everywhere. My wife was in Architecture school at the time and one of our favorite magazines is dwell (a modern design magazine). We even lived in a condo called Dwell Roosevelt in Seattle. At one point a friend commented that Dwell would be a great name for a church.

Once I had that name for a church in my head, I could not get it out. I began to see Dwell not only in the culture but in the Scriptures as well. It is mentioned in the Old and New Testaments frequently (e.g. Exodus 29:45, Psalm 27:4, Ephesians 3:17) but I was particularly captured by Revelation 21:3 – “Now the dwelling of God is with people, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God.” This is where history is heading: to a city in which God dwells with us. Incredible. At Dwell Church, we want to point people to this story through our lives and take part in the renewal of all creation that will find its apex in the New Jerusalem.

We’ve found that the story and name resonate with people in a fast-moving, transient city. People often interpret it in two ways. First, it encourages the believer to dwell in Christ. To avoid looking to the idols of the city for meaning and to dwell in the gospel. Second, it speaks of our calling to New York City and especially to the Bowery. Living into the name reminds us that God is calling a people to dwell in the city for the city. Instead of taking from the city and moving on when it no longer satisfies, we dwell, we persevere, we abide because God has called us here. We are dwelling in Christ for the city.

I recently gave a talk on revival, and I want to share some thoughts from it. It’s difficult to find the right word for what we mean when we talk about revival. “Renewal” is almost too soft a word, and “revival” has too many dated connotations nowadays. But the older definition of revival is helpful. It refers to a time when the ordinary operations of the Holy Spirit—not signs and wonders, but the conviction of sin, conversion, assurance of salvation and a sense of the reality of Jesus Christ on the heart—are intensified, so that you see growth in the quality of the faith in the people in your church, and a great growth in numbers and conversions as well.

In a revival, sleepy Christians wake up, nominal Christians get converted, and non-Christians get reached. A sleepy Christian may believe they’re a Christian, but they don’t have a real sense of God’s holiness, their own sin, or the depth of his grace. They may be a moralist or a relativist, or living inconsistent lives.

Nominal Christians may be going to church, but have never really been convicted of sin or received salvation personally. When sleepy and nominal Christians get revived, attractive and bold in their witness, people who would never have believed before begin to get converted.

So how do you wake up sleepy Christians and convert nominal Christians? Let me give you what I would call my modernized American versions of the kinds of questions I would ask people if I was trying to get them to really think about whether or not they know Christ. These questions are adapted from The Experience Meeting by William Williams, based on the Welsh revivals during the Great Awakening. He would ask people to share about these types of questions in small group settings each week:

How real has God been to your heart this week? How clear and vivid is your assurance and certainty of God’s forgiveness and fatherly love? To what degree is that real to you right now?

Are you having any particular seasons of delight in God? Do you really sense his presence in your life, sense him giving you his love?

Have you been finding Scripture to be alive and active? Instead of just being a book, do you feel like Scripture is coming after you?

Are you finding certain biblical promises extremely precious and encouraging? Which ones?

Are you finding God’s challenging you or calling you to something through the Word? In what ways?

Are you finding God’s grace more glorious and moving now than you have in the past? Are you conscious of a growing sense of the evil of your heart, and in response, a growing dependence on and grasp of the preciousness of the mercy of God?

Put together, that is a growing understanding of grace.

It’s almost the end of February and a lot has been happening at City to City.

This month Tim Keller shared some of his insights on preaching to the collective heart. He says, “there are many working definitions of ‘culture,’ but I think one of the best is that culture is a collective heart. It is a set of commanding commitments held and shared by a community of people.”

And speaking of a community of people, Stephen Murray who is a church planter in Cape Town is starting something new for the people in his community. He’s rented out a coffee bar in the city and will hold discussions on the most common objections that people have to Christianity. He’s calling this gathering The Reason for God and his discussions are based on Tim Keller’s book and study guide of that name. These gatherings are part of the pre-launch phase of the church and a way to form relationships with non-believers.

If you’re interested in South Africa, Redeemer Presbyterian Church is taking a group on a short-term mission trip to Johannesburg this summer to visit our growing network of church plants there. They’re building the team now, so if you’re interested in going or supporting, you can get in touch with Christina for more details.

If you’re not ready to go overseas but are looking to embark on a new venture where you live, consider attending the Entrepreneurship Initiative (Ei) Forum in April. Katherine Leary Alsdorf tells us how entrepreneurship can serve the city to bring about movement in exciting new ways, and also gives details on how to register for the Ei Forum.

This month we’ve been reading The Atlantic and Huffington Post and we were pleasantly surprised to see that apparently they’ve been reading The Meaning of Marriage. Author Emily Timbol has even tweeted us to meet up for coffee the next time she visits New York.

And if you’re still looking for more Tim Keller, you can now search 1,200 of his sermons by passage or topic through Logos Sermon Archive. Sermons from 1989-1993 are available immediately, and transcripts from 1994–1998, 1999–2004, 2004–2009, and 2010–2011 will be released in subsequent months.

Entrepreneurs are visionaries. They have the passion and drive to start something from the ground up in the face of the challenges, difficulties and setbacks that are sure to follow. Church planters can be considered the entrepreneurs of new churches, fostering a movement of the gospel that reaches into the hearts and culture of the city in which a church is planted.

In turn, these new churches equip and empower their congregants to bring the gospel to bear on their workplaces and industries. Often this results in starting new businesses or nonprofits that challenge the status quo and innovate new ways to bring about shalom in their cities. When congregants and church planters work together as entrepreneurs to bring the gospel to their city the movement grows in exciting new ways.

Launched through Redeemer’s Center for Faith and Work, the Entrepreneurship Initiative (Ei) is fostering a movement of gospel entrepreneurship for entrepreneurs of businesses, not-for-profits and arts ventures. As the gospel takes root deep in the lives of the “center church” congregation, they become passionate about the vision to seek the peace and prosperity of their city. They want to see the city served by thousands of churches, arts organizations, schools, businesses, and social services agencies that bring the truth, love and hope of the gospel to the brokenness of the culture. The Ei was formed with this vision in mind and seeks to nurture and cultivate new ideas and new leaders who are able to start new gospel-centered ventures.

The Entrepreneurship Initiative is based on the following core beliefs:

1. The Gospel changes everything - There is not a single square inch of this world that is outside the reach of God's redeeming love and power. The gospel changes everything: our hearts, our communities, and the world. It changes why we work, what we do, and the results of our work.

2. By working together, the gospel can renew our culture - Culture comprises many spheres: church, family, government, business, education, arts, and civic organizations. With the gospel we have the privilege to bring the love, justice and mercy of God into all the spheres of culture in which we live and work. Working together we can create a gospel ecosystem of hope and renewal.

3. The gospel ecosystem needs new organizations - Innovative new ventures can embody the truth and love of the gospel in ways that better serve the flourishing of the city. They use their fresh thinking and hard work to create positive change – bringing new concepts and products to market, creating jobs and wealth, and solving problems.

4. These new ventures can be gospel-driven and gospel-centered - Our gratefulness for the gospel helps us serve others instead of ourselves. Our understanding of the brokenness and sin in the world helps us recognize injustice and seek to bring justice. Our awareness of our own sin makes us humble. Our relationship with God gives us the courage and perseverance to try new things and challenge cultural norms.

Each year, during the annual Ei forum, entrepreneurs and investors gather to cultivate this movement of gospel entrepreneurship. Pastors and congregants are welcomed and urged to come and discover new ways to foster gospel renewal in your city.

Visit the website to learn more about Redeemer’s Entrepreneurship Initiative (Ei) and register for this year’s Ei Forum on April 5-6, 2013. The theme is “Risk: Faith or Folly.”

The food is delicious and the wine is even better as we enjoy a great dinner with our new friends Jean-Sebastien and Noémie. They live down the street from us in the Plateau, the famed bohemian neighbourhood that is home to the artists, students, thinkers, and bars which help create Montréal’s image of a cultural and party destination.

They’re your quintessential Plateau couple: Francophones in their mid-thirties, with two kids but not married, and both have very influential jobs: he is a film director and she is a college professor.

When the inevitable question “So what do you do for a living?” is asked, the course of the conversation follows a predictable path. After I explain that we’re starting a church in the neighbourhood – the first of its kind for a population of 100,000 – Jean-Sebastien stops me.

“I don’t understand. So you’re a priest – but you’re married?”

Like most people in Quebec, his only religious point of reference is the Catholic church, which oppressively dominated the province until the “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s, a period when seemingly overnight the people turned away from the church. Attendance at Mass plummeted from 90% to near 10% in just a few years, and sociologists believe it is one of the fastest periods of religious upheaval in history. Since that time, Quebec has become proudly and profoundly secular.

As I clear up the confusion regarding my marital status, Jean-Sebastien’s curiosity is piqued. He’s never had a Christian friend before, much less one his own age. His second question is pretty standard too: “Why do you want to start a church?” It’s pretty simple, I reply. Christians are called to love their neighbours as themselves, and to put others’ interests ahead of their own. So we think that a group of people committed to living like that who band together to love and serve their neighbourhood is the best thing that could ever happen to it.

It’s clear our new friends like what they’re hearing, but it’s equally clear that it doesn’t quite compute. The idea of a church that wants to work for the peace and prosperity of the neighbourhood is counter-intuitive in most cultures, but in this one, given its history, it’s downright preposterous.

The subject matter never fails to induce a measure of self-reflection. Unprompted, Jean-Sebastien begins outlining his own spiritual beliefs – or, as in the case of most Québecois, the lack thereof. He begins by recalling an experience during his catéchèse, the now-defunct Catholic religious education program that was mandatory in every public school in Quebec.

“I remember when I was in grade 5, the teacher was telling us that Jesus walked on water. I raised my hand, and asked how that was possible. The teacher yelled at me for questioning the Church and kicked me out of class. It’s been 20 years and I’ve still never got a decent answer to my question.” He ends his summary with an oft-heard refrain: “I believe in science, not God.”

It’s at this point that the conversation takes an amusing twist. Jean-Sebastien’s long-term girlfriend, or conjointe, looks stunned. “What do you mean you don’t believe in God?” Noémie exclaims. “I don’t believe in the God of any particular religion, but there has to be some kind of force or energy that created and sustains everything.” She then uses another equally popular self-designation in explaining that she’s spiritual but not religious.

The significance of this interaction was not lost on my wife and I. Here was a couple who have been living together for ten years, who have two children, and yet who have never, throughout the entire course of their relationship, had a discussion about their spiritual beliefs.

The conversation that follows is animated, convivial, and earnest, as Jean-Sebastien and Noémie take turns asking my wife and I questions about our beliefs and try to understand these strange new ideas. Fifteen minutes in, something dawns on Noémie and she interrupts us.

“This is the longest I’ve ever talked about religion with anyone before in my life.”

“Do you want us to stop? We can change the subject if you’d like.”

“No, not at all! I just find that weird.”

Us too.

All over the Plateau, this scenario plays out over and over as the 25 or so Christians in our core group do the same thing. Because this is what it looks like to plant a church: a group of believers all committed to embedding themselves in the neighbourhood and in the culture as a community of missionaries and servants, intentionally looking for ways to both proclaim and demonstrate the gospel to our neighbours. The building, the band, the programs...those will come later.

For now, it’s all about the 100,000 Jean-Sebastiens and Noémies.

Recently, a couple of books and websites have referenced me as a good example of how to exegete and “engage culture” in the task of preaching. They include citations of certain cultural references in my sermons. While I know this is meant as a compliment, for which I am grateful, I also have some concerns about the way this practice has been described. I can easily imagine that some (especially younger) preachers will aspire to imitate the method and miss the underlying principle. 

I think it may be possible to say that every sermon should have three aspects or purposes. First, you need to preach the text in its Scriptural context; second, you need to preach Christ and the gospel every time; and finally, you need to preach to the heart. Put another way, you should preach the truth, not just your opinion; you should preach the good news, not just good advice; and you should preach to make the truth real to the heart, not just clear to the mind. The first is often discussed under the heading of expository preaching, the second is often called Christ-centered preaching, and the third is usually named “application” (though I think each aspect contains more than these traditional categories might imply).

In that schema, where does “cultural engagement” come into my sermons? Most people would say that it does not fit into the scheme—preach the text, preach Christ, and preach to the heart. They might be tempted to add a fourth category. But that might suggest that cultural references are principally there to give the preacher some personal credibility. That would be a mistake. To make references for that purpose would tempt you to basically show off your learning or maybe your cultural hipness. That is not what I’m trying to do. 

You might be surprised to hear me say that my use of cultural references is actually part of my effort to reach the heart. But, you may respond, aren't those references to Nietzsche or de Kooning highly intellectual, designed to appeal to the mind and not the emotions? Not exactly. One of the keys is in how we define “the heart.” Remember that according to the Bible, the heart is not primarily the emotions but rather the seat of our fundamental commitments and trusts, and therefore it is the control center of the whole life. So to preach to the heart means to go right for the commanding commitments of people’s lives that drive their desires, thinking, feeling, and action.

There are many working definitions of “culture,” but I think one of the best is that culture is a collective heart. It is a set of commanding commitments held and shared by a community of people. Now my hearers—both Christians and non-Christians—live in the highly secular, late modern (some would say postmodern) cosmopolitan culture of Manhattan. This ethos is pulling on the hearts of all its residents. It is the source of so many of their deep aspirations, unspoken fears, and inner conflicts.

The so-called “cultural references,” then, are simply my way of entering the world of my hearers, helping them understand at a deep level what is shaping their daily work, their romantic and family relationships, their attitudes toward sex, money, and power. I seek to make plain the foundations of our city’s culture in order to help people understand themselves more fully and imagine what it means (or would mean) to live a Christian life here.

So it would be a mistake to merely imitate any preacher who makes a lot of cultural references in his sermons. In many parts of the world, citing Kierkegaard is not all that unusual, and if done rightly can lead people to say, “Oh, so that’s why I tend to think and feel that way.” That’s what you want to achieve. But in many other parts of the world it might only make people think, “Wow, he’s really intellectual and smart.” If that latter response is what you get from people (or worse yet, what you want from them) then you need to make some changes. The universal principle is found in Acts 2:37—preaching must “cut to the heart.” The means and methods we take to get to that end depend a lot on, well, your culture.

The beginning of 2013 has not been easy for me. It's actually been quite hard. But it has also been exactly what I need.

Before the Christmas season descended upon us, we had a prayer gathering in the UBC Robson Square (above). Several of us gathered together to pray for Vancouver, for St. Peter's Fireside, for the Church at large. I shared the vision God has given us for St. Peter's, and talked about what commitment to this vision would look like. In actuality, I merely painted a picture of what I think commitment to any community of faith should look like. I asked people to take the holiday season to pray over the vision and to ask God if this is the vision He is calling them towards. It was an inspiring night, and I went into the holiday season with a little cloud of awe floating over my being.

Julia and I have been back in Vancouver for a week now, and over the past week I have started to meet with people from our community. Many feel God is leading them to commit to the vision of St. Peter's Fireside, but more importantly they feel called to commit to the community that is forming. After all its not just about vision, its about the people God is bringing together to worship him. Others, however, feel that God is leading them elsewhere. These have not been easy conversations for me. If I'm honest, each one has sort of felt like a breakup. Throughout the week, I have felt like a pendulum swinging from fear to peace, anxiety to calm, and distrust to faith. This has been the hardest week of church planting yet. It is hard to let people go. It's emotionally hard, that is for sure. But it is even harder on my ego. There have been moments where I can't help but feel like I'm failing.

But despite my anxiety, throughout the week I have felt God relentlessly pursuing my heart, whispering to me "Whose kingdom are you building?" The kingdom of numbers, attendance, plans, milestones, and the like is more often than not my own kingdom. Part of me wants people to stay with us because I want to feel a sense of accomplishment, I want to measure my success in numbers. This is nothing short of sin. This is building my own kingdom.

But do you want to know what is amazing about people leaving St. Peter's? They aren't leaving for bad reasons. They are actually leaving for really, really good reasons. One girl feels God is calling her to commitment to the neighbourhood she lives in (which isn't downtown). Another couple feels the same way, choosing to focus on their local church while also telling me that they didn't know Christians community could exist as they experienced it at St. Peter's. Each person is responding to what God is telling them to do. They are taking steps of faithfulness, and this is a massive victory in God's kingdom. I have had to continually anchor myself in celebrating the faithfulness of these people. It hasn't been easy, but letting my own little kingdom die so that I can participate in God's kingdom has been so good for me. We are not in Vancouver just to build our own little church, we are here to serve Christ's Church.

There are two things God has done to comfort me through this challenge. First, back in November I got an email from a close friend who prays for me regularly. He wrote, "I don't want you to get discouraged or dismayed if things don't go according to plan in any area of your life. I strongly sense that God may thwart some of your planning the way he thwarted Gideon's planning. I believe that he wants you to know, not just in your mind, but in your heart that he is the one that is working this victory." This certainly seems to be prophetic and true at this point. I have to keep reminding myself that it is God who builds his Church, and not Alastair Sterne. But I have also taken comfort in being reminded that God isn't surprised by any of this, and that God knows what he is doing. Secondly, as I was writing this update my phone rang. It was another pastor from the Vancouver area whom I had never spoken to. He has been following us online, reading our blogs, and got my number from our site. He called because he just wanted to encourage me and thank me for the work we're doing in Vancouver. Such a simple, yet thoughtful act encouraged me deeply.

Despite how it may appear, this is not a set back. God is building his church at large, and we are playing a part. At the same time, our little slice of his church is deepening, and our community is continuing to look more and love more like Jesus. While the changes and challenges along the way rock me from time to time, I feel the Holy Spirit telling me "I am with you in this." So, this is where I am at in the moment. I still oscillate back and forth between my fears and trusting in God. But I am learning, more and more each day, to let God be my strength and to boast in my weakness. I am learning to repent of wanting to celebrate my own success, and learning to celebrate God's glory.

For years I’ve been haunted by one of John Newton’s letters, which was later titled “Blemishes in Christian Character.” Newton was an 18th century Anglican minister who had once been a slave trader. After a dramatic conversion, he went into the ministry and became one of the wisest and most insightful pastors of his time. His hundreds of pastoral letters are masterful and many are in print to this day.

In the letter I’ve referred to, Newton points out that while most Christians succeed in avoiding the more gross external sins, many nonetheless overlook blemishes on their character by passing them off as mere “foibles.” They “may not seem to violate any express command of Scripture” and yet, they are “properly sinful” because they are the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit that believers are supposed to exhibit. While our faults always seem small to us due to the natural self-justification of the heart, they often don’t look so small to others. As a result, these “small faults” cause large swaths of the Christian population to have little influence on others for Christ. Newton lists these faults that we tolerate in ourselves, and which do great damage to our public witness as well as to our relationships within the Body of Christ.

Over the years I’ve gone back again and again to this list in the manner he directs—for self-examination, not as a way to find fault with others. As I have done so I’ve seen things in myself that I’ve sought to stamp out with God’s grace. And as I’ve worked through the list I’ve expanded it—often breaking some of his larger categories into smaller ones for better discernment. Here I’ll share my expanded list—based heavily on Newton’s original one. Since Newton gave each case study a slightly humorous Latin name, I’ve done the same.

Austerus is a solid and disciplined Christian, but abrasive, critical and ungenerous in dealing with people, temperamental, seldom giving compliments and praise, and almost never gentle.

Infitialis is a person of careful and deliberate character, but habitually cynical, negative, and pessimistic, always discouraging (“that will never work”), unsupportive and vaguely unhappy.

Pulsus is passionate, but also impulsive and impatient, not thinking things through, speaking too soon, always quick to complain and lodge a protest, often needing to apologize for rash statements.

Querulus is a person of strong convictions, but known to be very opinionated, a poor listener, argumentative, not very teachable, and very slow to admit they were wrong.

Subjectio is a resourceful and ambitious person, but also someone who often shades the truth, puts a lot of spin on things (close to misrepresentation), is very partisan, self-promoting, and turf-conscious.

Potestas gets things done, but needs to control every situation, has trouble sharing power, has a need to do everything him or herself, and is very suspicious and mistrustful of others.

Fragilis is friendly and seeks friends, but constantly gets his or her feelings hurt, easily feels slighted and put down, is often offended and upset by real and imagined criticism by others.

Curiosus is very sociable, but enjoys knowing negative things about people, finds ways of passing the news on, may divulge confidences, and enjoys confrontation too much.

Volatilis is very kind-hearted and eager to help, but simply not reliable—isn’t punctual, doesn’t follow through on promises, is always over-extended, and as a result may do shoddy work.

Let’s end this post as Newton does his letter: “Other improprieties of conduct, which lessen the influence and spot the profession of some who wish well to the cause of Christ, might be enumerated, but these may suffice for a specimen.”

How is planting a church near a university unique? How can churches minister effectively in these contexts? Following are some ideas from three church planters located near major universities in their cities:

Tuck Bartholomew is the pastor of City Church, located a few blocks from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. His church is about six years old.

Charlie Drew is the pastor of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church, near Columbia University and Manhattan School of Music in Manhattan. The church is twelve years old.

René Breuel is planting Chiesa Evangelica San Lorenzo located in central Rome, next to the metro hub and La Sapienza, which is Europe’s largest university with 150,000 students. His congregation is less than a year old, with a large proportion of seekers considering the faith.

1. Why is planting churches near major universities strategic?

Tuck: The university season of a person's life is among the most spiritually formative times. Students that were raised in Christian homes are beginning to make their faith their own, and students previously unexposed to Christianity are often more open to exploring faith. Strong churches located within university communities are missionally preparing students and faculty to be relocated to the major cities of the country and world. I also noticed when I was a pastor in New York City that many of our strongest leaders had been involved in student ministries while in university.

René: University churches are striving to engage the world’s centers of expertise, and when this type of dialogue and faith presence is done well, it helps to enhance the intellectual credibility of the wider church too. People see knowledgeable Christians who can interact with other views thoughtfully at a culturally strategic location. Some of our best apologists, like C. S. Lewis, came out of a university setting.

Charlie: Major universities deeply influence the thinking of their students, who will go on to be cultural leaders. This is particularly obvious when it comes to the international students we have from China—they would never have made it to a place like Columbia unless they were talented and bound for leadership positions back home.

2. What makes university churches unique? How does it impact your philosophy of ministry, preaching and apologetics?

René: For me, this environment stretches us beyond simple answers and makes us acknowledge the role of ambiguity and doubt as a part of the journey of faith. We try to give people space and time to consider faith, and to voice their doubts without fear. The constant interaction with inquisitive people makes us strive for excellence in our preaching and public presentation. I guess it makes us humbler too.

Tuck: We do not want to "preach" at persons - rather we attempt to open a conversation and dialogue with them. This shows up in stylistic decisions about preaching - we embrace a more conversational style, but it also shapes the content of a sermon or lesson. I have a weekly discussion of the sermon text with staff and lay leaders in the community in order to talk about the text itself, but also to try to understand those aspects that will sound most odd to non-believers. A person that has been in or around the church for a season will begin to take many things for granted - I want to anticipate that and even draw attention to that in a sermon. This helps the non-Christian sense that we are truly open to a conversation, but it also helps the more seasoned Christian learn to be more humble and engaging in their private conversations with neighbors and colleagues.

Charlie: University churches are exciting places to minister because students are young and open to new ideas. They are also unstable places. We lose 25 – 30% of our people every year. This means that finding, building, and keeping leaders is a challenge. Our rapid turnover leads us to lay strong emphases on (1) welcoming, and (2) commitment. They need to sink their roots into community quickly if they are to benefit spiritually from their relatively short time here.

3. What are some of the concrete ways with which you have engaged the university next to you and its students and faculty?

Charlie: We have sought routinely to befriend, pastor and encourage campus ministers and Christian faculty. When we have had interns we have always devoted a portion of their time to campus work, and we are working towards having a university pastor on our staff within the next 2-3 years. I speak 3-4 times annually at university campus gatherings and devote a significant portion of my time to international student ministry (I have led a weekly Bible study and English language conversation group for 4-5 years now).

Tuck: 45% of our church congregation has some affiliation with the University of Pennsylvania. From the beginning we have sought to engage the different student ministry groups, and several campus ministry staff are part of our congregation. Two years ago we hired a campus minister in partnership with a Pittsburgh based campus ministry who hosts weekly dorm discussions and a monthly Sunday evening dinner for students in his home.

René: We’ve co-sponsored two debates with campus ministries like InterVarsity and Agape on campus this year where I debated two atheists. For seekers, seeing a local pastor debate instead of a visitor helped them transition into joining a church.

4. What are the challenges this setting presents to your sustainability and growth?

Tuck: The greatest challenge is the need for creative fundraising given the transience of our community. We realize that growth will be slower when our population is young and unstable. We are six years old, but only recently entered the process of selecting and training elders and deacons.

Charlie: Students are young and spending (rather than making) money. They cannot be counted on to support the church financially or as leaders. For this reason we have from the beginning devoted a great deal of energy to being more than a university church. One of our first part-time hires was a director of children’s ministry. We knew that we needed to find and cultivate families and young professionals if we were going to be able to sustain our ministry to students.

René: We also try to maintain a core of professionals and families who are here long-term. But it is important also to assimilate and empower new arrivals quickly too, and make this flow of people arriving and sometimes leaving for other places a celebrated dynamic in the church. As Charlie said, when someone moves away, we see that not so much as a loss than as an opportunity to share of ourselves and bless other places.

5. What would you say to church planters considering planting a church near a major university?

Tuck: Consider it. Planting in university communities is strategic and invigorating, but it also has its own brand of fatigue. Identify other people doing this type of work and shadow them as part of your self-assessment and planning. We started a church planting residency this year that we hope will help young pastors learn more about pastoring and preaching in contexts like ours.

Charlie: For one thing, they should brace themselves for the pain of departures year after year. For another, they should seek not to be a “university church” but rather to be a “community church in a university setting”—reaching students but building a broader constituency. This is crucial not only because students cannot form a financial or leadership base, as we mentioned, but also because students need to be introduced, while they are still at university, to the larger church world that they will inhabit when they leave school. One of the downsides of campus ministries is that they are artificial social environments made up of the same sort of people in the same season of life. If students do not discover the diversity of the wider church while at school they won’t know how to embrace the real church when they get out.

René: It is a big and strategic need, go for it! I would love to see a new generation of churches that engage major universities and through them the wider culture. Don’t cut corners on your education and preparation, but don’t feel intimidated by the environment either. The gospel really is powerful to redeem people. And a practical thing: if being relational is not your gift, make sure you have good people on your leadership team that connect well with others.

I’ve had some busy people pick up Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, look at the subtitle, and ask: “OK, so, in a nutshell, how does God’s work connect to our work?” Always a good exercise for an author, to be asked to explain your book in just a few minutes! Here are four ways Christian faith influences and shapes our work.

First, the Christian faith gives us a moral compass, an inner GPS giving us ethical guidance that takes us beyond merely the legal aspects or requirements in any situation. A Christian on the board of a major financial institution—recently publicly embarrassed by revelations of corruption—told me about a closed door meeting there between top executives. Someone said, “We have to restore moral values.” Immediately someone asked, “Whose values? Who gets to define what is moral?” And there’s our problem. There once was a habitus of broadly felt moral intuitions that governed much behavior in our society. It went well beyond the legal. Much of the ruthlessness, the lack of transparency, and lack of integrity that characterizes the marketplace and many other professions today come because consensus on those moral intuitions has collapsed. But Christians working in those worlds do have solid ethical guidance and could address through personal example the values-vacuum that has now been recognized by so many.

Second, your Christian faith gives you a new spiritual power, an inner gyroscope, that keeps you from being overthrown by either success, failure, or boredom. Regarding success and failure, the gospel helps Christians find their deepest identity not in our accomplishments but who we are in Christ. This keeps our egos from inflating too much during seasons of prosperity, and it prevents bitterness and despondency during times of adversity. But while some jobs seduce us into over-work and anxiety, others tempt us to surrender to drudgery, only “working for the weekend,” doing just what is necessary to get by when someone is watching. Paul calls that “eye-service” (Colossians 3:22–24) and charges us to think of every job as working for God, who sees everything and loves us. That makes high-pressure jobs bearable and even the most modest work meaningful.

Third, the Christian faith gives us a new conception of work as the means by which God loves and cares for his world through us. Look at the places in the Bible that say that God gives every person their food. How does God do that? It is through human work—from the simplest farm girl milking the cows to the truck driver bringing produce to market to the local grocer. God could feed us directly but he chooses to do it through work. There are three important implications of this. First, it means all work, even the most menial tasks, has great dignity. In our work we are God’s hands and fingers, sustaining and caring for his world. Secondly, it means one of the main ways to please God in our work is simply to do work well. Some have called this “the ministry of competence.” What passengers need first from an airline pilot is not that she speaks to them about Jesus but that she is a great, skillful pilot. Third, this means that Christians can and must have deep appreciation for the work of those who work skillfully but do not share our beliefs.

Fourth, the Christian faith gives us a new world-and-life view that shapes the character of our work. All well-done work that serves the good of human beings pleases God. But what exactly is “the common good”? There are many work tasks that do not require us to reflect too much on that question. All human beings need to eat, and so raising and providing food serves people well. But what if you are an elementary school teacher, or a playwright? What is good education (i.e. what should you be teaching children)? What kinds of plays should you write (i.e. what kinds of stories do people need)? The answers to these questions will depend largely on how you answer more fundamental questions—what is the purpose of human life? What is life about? What does a good human life look like? It is unavoidable that many jobs will be shaped by our conscious or semi-conscious beliefs about those issues. So, finally, a Christian must think out how his or her faith will distinctly shape their work.

How wonderful that the gospel works on every aspect of us—mind, will, and feelings—and enables us to both deeply appreciate the work of non-believers and yet aspire to work in unique ways as believers. Putting all of these four aspects together, we see that being a Christian leads us to see our work not as merely a way to earn money, nor as primarily a means of personal advancement, but a truly a calling—to serve God and love our neighbor.

I just got back from a trip to Asia this Monday, and my last stop was in Tokyo, where I witnessed something pretty amazing.

First of all, I attended worship at one of our partner church plant projects, Grace City Church Tokyo, on Sunday. Tokyo is one of the most expensive and secular cities in the world. The average time I'm told for establishing a self-supporting, self-sustaining, self-governing church in Japan is about 7 yrs, and the average church size in all of Japan is about 30.

The church was packed to standing room only with over 80 people. Currently the church plant is in its third year and still growing. Now that the church has reached its limits in space it will have to find a bigger venue in order to continue growing, which means greater financial costs. The cost for a pastor and his family to live in central Tokyo and rent a venue for worship gatherings is one of the reasons so few churches are being planted in the heart of one of the world's largest cities. However, it's amazing to see the church's faith and growth in spite of the enormous financial challenges and other challenges that they have to confront in such a city.

But all of this wasn't the most amazing thing for me. It was what I witnessed in the worship service. In the middle of worship, the pastor, Rev. Makoto Fukuda, announced that the worshipers would have the opportunity to contribute to the relief efforts of Hurricane Sandy during the offering. In the midst of their own financial needs, they still felt it was important to come to our aid in New York City just as we did when they suffered the 3/11 triple disasters of earthquake, tsunami, and radiation.

That disaster happened when the church was just about one year old, and proved to be pivotal for the ministry. Seima Aoyagi, who had just been with us in New York as part of our International Intensive training in 2010, and Roger Lowther, an American missionary and worship director of the church plant, immediately began to pull relief together and make trips up north to the devastated areas. In the process they built relationships with many neighbors in Tokyo and up north, providing many opportunities for ministry. (The same is happening here in New York with some very new churches after Hurricane Sandy, by the way.)

Generosity is a manifestation and fruit of the transforming power of the Gospel and I had the privilege of witnessing that. This is what our work at Redeemer City to City is all about.

We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord.... For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. —2 Corinthians 8:1-3, 9

In my final post on catechesis, I'd like to add a few final thoughts on the New City Catechism.

First, it is important to understand the purpose of NCC—its goal is to introduce the almost-lost pedagogical method of catechesis to a new generation, and to direct and motivate far more people to study and learn the longer and historic catechisms than are doing so now. There are three features of NCC that we hope will accomplish this. One is its form as a free app. It means that people will be able to study and memorize the catechism within the fabric of their current, overly busy daily lives. It means that pastors and leaders who want to take a group or class or church through it will not need to make any purchases at all, but will only need to work out ways to use the catechism within their church's pathways of discipleship and training. A second feature is the language. We carefully sought to use modern but not colloquial language, seeking to be accessible but also graceful in style, but also harking back and using the style and language of the historic catechisms where possible.

The other crucial feature of NCC is its brevity. It is an intermediate catechism. It distills older catechisms but, by necessity, leaves a great deal out. While some might find it disconcerting that there is not more information about various subjects, to have a longer catechism would undermine its very purpose. NCC exists to draw in the masses of people who would never taste the richness of the catechism if they didn't have one that is far more economical in words and style. Having tasted NCC, we trust many will go on to at least read and study the historic catechisms. In part because of its brevity, NCC is less detailed than older catechisms and therefore can be used in a variety of churches.

Second, to appreciate NCC it will be critical to remember that catechisms are primarily instructional instruments, not creedal standards. So it shows no more disrespect to the Westminster Catechisms to write a new catechism than, for example, to write a new Sunday school curriculum. In the centuries after the Reformation in Britain hundreds and hundreds of catechisms were produced. While the Heidelberg and Westminster catechisms were intentionally written to be confessional documents, binding doctrinal standards, the vast majority of catechisms were designed to do Christian formation.

The formative, educational genius of catechesis is largely lost today. Learning a catechism is sometimes seen as "mechanical," as "rote learning" that some would say belongs to an earlier era. However, those who use catechesis have come to see the enormous benefits. Catechesis teaches basic mental discipline. Mastering and memorizing a body of content is usually not immediately rewarding. That in itself is a way of practicing the reality that God's truth is true whether it is personally fulfilling at the moment or not. Also, catechism teaches a lost art—the art of meditation and slow reflection. Memorization requires you to pay attention to every word, even every comma. The slow turning over of every word leads to depths of new insight.

Another powerful feature of catechesis is that it teaches us not only the right answers but also, more fundamentally, the right questions. Thomas Torrance observes that the less conversant we are with a body of knowledge, the less we even know what questions to ask. Knowing enough to ask the right questions then moves us down into the truth more swiftly and surely. Here is where catechesis excels.

[T]he Catechism . . . is an invaluable method in instructing the young learner, for it not only trains him to ask the right questions, but trains him to allow himself to be questioned by the Truth, and so to have questions put into his mouth which he could not think up on his own, and which therefore call into questions his own preconceptions. In other words it is an event of real impartation of the Truth.
—Thomas Torrance, The School of Faith: The Catechisms of the Reformed Church, Wipf and Stock: 1996,xxvi.

Last, it would be helpful to understand that NCC is written with a view to 17th-century British pastor Richard Baxter's vision for the role of catechesis—as not something only for the ambitious few or for children but as a normal feature of Christian life. In Reformation Pastors: Richard Baxter and the Ideal of the Reformed Pastor (Paternoster, 2004), J. William Black tells how Baxter and the Worcestershire association of pastors had put into place a program of vigorous expository preaching, only to be disappointed with the results in people's lives. Baxter wrote, "We finde by sad experience, that the people understand not our publike teaching, though we study to speak as plain as we can, and that after many years preaching, even of these same fundamentals, too many can scarce tell anything that we said" (Black, 174). Baxter began his famous program in which every family in the church participated in catechesis under regular pastoral care, discipleship, and visitation.

Black shows that Baxter's success was not reproduced elsewhere, because no one other pastor could pull off the Herculean feat of effectively, personally catechizing 16 families a week, year after year (188-189). But while the details of Baxter's system need not be reproduced, his basic idea is sound—catechesis should be used as broadly as possible in the congregation as a foundational way to instruct and form people. New City Catechism is designed to help churches realize this way of instructing people in the way of Christ.

New City Catechism is a joint project between The Gospel Coalition and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. It is available for iPad and online, and is an excellent way to fill the time during a hurricane.

In my previous post on this subject, I outlined how crucial the practice of catechesis is for the church, particularly when it is surrounded by a culture antagonistic to Christian teaching and truth. But, we may ask, “Why write new catechisms? What’s wrong with the older ones?”

After the high tide of the early centuries, the ministry of catechism diminished until the Reformation, when there was literally an explosion of catechism writing. T.F. Torrance edited a book that contains only catechisms that were used widely in the Reformed Churches of Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries, and he provides ten. (See The School of Faith: The Catechisms of the Reformed Church, James Clarke, 1959.) A first thought of a reader of this volume may be, “They all agree on basic doctrine—then why so many?” The answer is in the first lines of Torrance’s introduction: “The Catechisms set forth Christian doctrine at its closest to the mission, life, and growth of the Church from age to age, for they aim to give a comprehensive exposition of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the context of the whole Counsel of God and the whole life of the people of God.”

So the first reason to produce multiple catechisms is that they must serve the whole people of God, and that has always meant catechisms for beginning, intermediate, and advanced learners. There were simple catechisms for very young children, more intermediate ones for those being admitted to the Lord’s Supper, and advanced ones for adults and Christian ministers. For example, Calvin’s Geneva Catechism (1541) was accompanied by the Little Catechism (1556).

A second reason is that catechisms have always been connected to the “mission of the church.” This may be surprising, since today we think of catechesis as strictly a form of education for Christians. It is that, but of necessity catechisms are selective in how much time is devoted to each aspect of Christian teaching, and it is quite evident—if you take the time to read through many catechisms—that each seeks to fortify against the ascendant theological errors in the culture at the time.

Richard Baxter and others of his time saw catechesis as a way not merely to disciple but also to bring people to conversion. So new catechisms were always needed, not in order to change basic doctrine, but to present doctrine in ways that most equipped people to address the idols and answer the errors of the age.

When the church has gone through a period of reformation there has always been a renewal of catechesis. If we are going to see our people live holy lives in the midst of a post-Christian and anti-Christian culture, we will need to write new catechisms that fit their capacities and equip them for Christian living in the world. We should be frank with ourselves that the even the “shorter” catechisms of the past—such as the Westminster Shorter Catechism (1648) and the Heidelberg Catechism (1563)—are now too long for the average contemporary adult to master, and even in Presbyterian and Reformed churches where these are official standards, relatively few people are being immersed in them.

One of the reasons to develop intermediate catechisms like New City Catechism is to fill a gap between children’s catechisms and the longer and more extensive older ones. New City Catechism is short—52 questions and answers, one for every week of the year. It is based on Calvin’s Geneva, and the Westminster Catechisms, and perhaps most of all on the Heidelberg. As such it gives people a strong dose of each, introducing them to the practice of catechesis, and developing in them an appetite and capacity for going deeper. It can therefore be used by church leaders as a bridge toward teaching members the older and more extensive catechisms of their respective denominations.

John H. Westerhoff, the editor of a book tracing the history of catechesis, argues that we are in the midst of a change period in history as significant as those of the first, fourth, and sixteenth centuries—all times when new catechisms were written. He concludes that it is time for catechesis again. I believe he is right.

New City Catechism is a joint project between The Gospel Coalition and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. It is available for iPad and online.

On October 15, The Gospel Coalition in partnership with Redeemer Presbyterian Church will launch New City Catechism—a joint adult and children's catechism consisting of 52 questions and answers adapted from the Reformation catechisms, available on iPad and online.

The church in western culture today is experiencing a crisis of holiness. To be holy is to be set apart, different, living life according to God’s Word and story, not according to the stories that the world tells us are the meaning of life. The more the culture around us becomes post- and anti-Christian, the more we discover church members in our midst, sitting under sound preaching, yet nonetheless holding half-pagan views of God, truth, and human nature, and in their daily lives using sex, money, and power in very worldly ways. It’s hard to deny what Gary Parrett and J.I. Packer write:

“Superficial smatterings of truth, blurry notions about God and godliness, and thoughtlessness about the issues of living—careerwise, communitywise, familywise, and churchwise—are all too often the marks of evangelical congregations today….” (Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way, Baker, 2010, p.16.)

This is not the first time the church in the west has lived in such a deeply non-Christian cultural environment. In the first several centuries the church had to form and build new believers from the ground up, teaching them comprehensive new ways to think, feel, and live in every aspect of life. They did this not simply through preaching and lectures, but through catechesis. Catechesis was not only something for children, but for adult converts and even for leaders—all of whom were grounded in gospel truth by mastering, in dialogical community, material composed for their particular capacities and needs.

In the heyday of the Reformation, church leaders in Europe again faced a massive pedagogical challenge. How could they re-shape the lives of people who had grown up in the medieval church? The answer was, again, many catechisms produced for all ages and stages of life. Martin Luther and John Calvin both produced two, as did John Owen. The Puritan Richard Baxter produced three.

But in the evangelical Christian world today the practice of catechesis, particularly among adults, has been almost completely lost. Modern discipleship programs are usually superficial when it comes to doctrine. Even systematic Bible studies can be weak in drawing doctrinal conclusions. In contrast, catechisms take students step by step through the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer—a perfect balance of biblical theology and doctrine, practical ethics, and spiritual experience.

Catechesis is a very intense way of doing instruction. The catechetical discipline of memorization drives concepts in deep, encouraging meditation on truth. It also holds students more accountable to master the material than do other forms of education. Some ask: why fill children’s heads—or for that matter, new converts’—with concepts like “the glory of God” that they cannot grasp well? The answer is that it creates biblical categories in our minds and hearts where they act as a foundation, to be gradually built upon over the years with new insights from more teaching, reading, and personal experiences. Catechesis done with young children helps them think in biblical categories almost as soon as they can reason. Such instruction, one old writer said, is like firewood in a fireplace. Without the fire—the Spirit of God—firewood will not in itself produce a warming flame. But without fuel there can be no fire either, and that is what catechetical instruction provides.

Catechesis is also different from listening to a sermon or lecture—or reading a book—in that it is deeply communal and participatory. The practice of question-answer recitation brings instructors and students into a naturally interactive, dialogical process of learning. It creates a true community as teachers help students—and students help each other—understand and remember material. Parents catechize their children. Church leaders catechize new members with shorter catechisms and new leaders with more extensive ones. All of this systematically builds relationships. In fact, because of the richness of the material, catechetical questions and answers may be incorporated into corporate worship itself, where the church as a body can confess their faith and respond to God with praise.

Our people desperately need richer, more comprehensive instruction. Returning to catechesis—now—is one important way to give it.

For the past 4 years, CTC has welcomed a group of hand-picked church planters from global cities for five weeks of training called the International Intensive. This year, we're up to 18 church planters and ministry leaders–a new record! We've had to get creative with squeezing the extra chairs into the conference room.

Another first for this International Intensive was the introduction of a new textbook. Center Church, a book about connecting doctrine with ministry expression, was released in September and the Intensives received early copies to use throughout the trainings.

Please pray for these men and women starting new ministries in global cities:

Aaron Damiani - Chicago
Alex Deuscher - Berlin
Brad Morrice - Montreal
Bruce Clark - Toronto
Gelson Nogueira - Madrid
Leandro De Almeida - Santiago
Lee Eagelson - Belfast
Nick Mikhaluk - Kiev
Nicolas Kyalangalilwa - Democratic Republic of Congo
Matthieu and Christa Klass - Brussels
Olivier Engels - Brussels
Patricio Oyarzun - Santiago
Peter and Ruth Roberts - Liverpool
Robert Miller - Melbourne
Shane Rogerson - Melbourne
Stephan Pues - Frankfurt
Samuel Lago - Santiago
Tim Swan - Santiago

René Breuel is pastor of Chiesa Evangelica San Lorenzo in Rome, Italy, and editor of the forum wonderingfair.com.

"Social media” is not the only thing which is becoming more “social." An increasing number of voices are pointing out that the extraordinary success of Facebook, Twitter and the like are actually a visible symptom of a much larger trend. Just as Facebook is helping transform the Internet from a sprawling, opaque mass of unrelated content into relationally meaningful networks – what is being called Web 2.0 – the way people are approaching life and faith is changing too. It is becoming more social, less individualistic, more about belonging than believing or thinking.

Two larger trends can help us understand this phenomenon and the way it impacts people’s path to faith and how we should minister to them.

1. Cultural fragmentation – our Western cultures, especially in our major cities, are no longer homogeneous like they used to be. They are splintered into many subcultures, some of them overlapping, according to ethnicity, family upbringing, political ideology, socioeconomic status, religion, and choice of lifestyles. For a young person looking for a way into this massive horizon, there is not one but several possible paths, each of them more or less visible and credible according to his social networks. This cultural fragmentation also leads us to develop fields of trust: we distrust the complex world out there and its wars of interests and narratives, and come to trust people and then institutions when we develop close personal contact with them, and faces and voices that we can discern among the massive crowd.

2. The rise of the Emergent Adulthood – financial pressures, longer years of education, delayed marriage and other trends have formed in the last decades a new, intermediate type of young adulthood. Whereas maybe three generations ago most people transitioned from adolescence into established adult life – stable career, marriage, children, house – fairly directly, today’s emergent adulthood means that people stay single, professionally and geographically flexible well into their 20s and 30s. “Rather than being settled,” writes sociologist Christian Smith in his major study on the spiritual lives of emerging adults, “most of them understand themselves to be in a phase of life that is free, fluid, tentative, experimental, and relatively unbound" (see Christian Smith and Patricia Snell, Souls in Transition: The Religious & Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults p. 56). This means that the previous basic social unit, the nuclear family, is not only interrupted by a long hiatus between one’s leaving home and forming a new family, but the family itself often gets relativised into one of numerous living arrangements: couples living together, breaking up, single parents, sharing an apartment with friends, moving back to the parents’ house. And what is the basic socializing unit in this phase of life? The tribe of friends like in Friends and Sex in the City, complemented by extended circles of friends that stay liquid as people move in, move out, get together, break up, and by affinity-based circles around hobbies, cultural and social interests, or religious beliefs. People band together with others who are also feeling their way into life and into more lasting identities, forging a social approach to self-discovery.

And what do these trends mean for the way people approach faith today? For the people who did not inherit it from their upbringing, it means they will approach it socially. If the gospel is to become more than just another narrative among so many, hidden in a complex and distrusted landscape, it will get a serious hearing only if it gets incarnated into my field of trust by a known face, a close relationship, which will then open the way for a group which can show how it can be lived out, why it is plausible, and which will embody it concretely and attractively enough to make me want to embrace that faith as my own. Unless the gospel can be made visible in a face and a group, it will stay foreign, and unless I can feel my way into it and see intelligent people believe and articulate it, it will stay implausible, questioned by a landscape where belief in God and active faith are countercultural.

I’d like to highlight three implications of this social path to faith for our urban mission:

1. Belonging > believing > behaving: as church leaders, we would much prefer people who arrive already believing the gospel fully and who live according to it. More traditional churches actually behave this way, letting people feel they are incorporated only if they already believe (having come to faith outside of church, through a friend, tract, evangelistic crusade) and already behave Christianly, at least with no visible sins. But people considering faith today need to belong before they come to believe and behave; a “cold “medium like a tract, website or an unknown speaker won’t have the gravitas to make a person rethink their beliefs (unless she is undergoing a serious personal crisis). In fact, the very act of belonging could be the most influential factor leading to belief and behavior.

2. The importance of church planting: people’s increasingly social path to faith means also that, as we are noticing, mass approaches like the crusade, conferences, TV preaching, street evangelism etc. are becoming less effective in reaching nonbelievers (even though their importance in gathering, nurturing and strengthening believers continues). Friendship evangelism, too, though a crucial part of the process, is becoming less sufficient on its own, unless the contact with a believer leads to belonging to a larger group like a church or fellowship. The evangelistic approach which seems to best address people’s social approach to faith, however, is the planting of new churches: proliferating numerous circles of belonging and articulation of the gospel which can befriend and make space for a person to consider faith, next to believers who embody and explain the gospel.

3. Open and warm communities: people’s social path to faith also means that a specific kind of church will be most effective at reaching people today: churches that are open, warm, relational, sensitive to the fears and doubts of nonbelievers. It takes a specific congregational dynamic to do that; many of our churches, instead, have a spirit that keeps seekers away, however strong may be our professed interest in reaching them.

In my next blog, we'll look at specific practices that can help churches lay down a social path for people to walk in to our congregations.

One reason I wrote my new book Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City is that I believe there is a common misunderstanding of the relationship between doctrine and ministry.

Let me illustrate. A puzzling but common sight today is that many churches share the same doctrinal foundations, yet go about ministry in radically different ways. For example, consider two Presbyterian churches that both subscribe wholeheartedly to the Westminster Confession of Faith and catechisms. The first church uses contemporary music and very little discernible liturgy, employs lay ministers to lead meetings and ministries as well as pastors, and deploys the latest marketing and media strategies. The second church operates in almost the opposite way, using classical music, traditional liturgy, and emphasis on the ordained clergy. They also vigorously criticize the methods of the other church as a betrayal of the Reformed faith, and perhaps even of the gospel itself.

The same doctrinal foundations seem to be producing two completely different sets of ministry expressions. How can that be? And is it even a bad thing? Because the answers are not obvious, we draw two common but wrong inferences.

One mistake is to conclude that the first church is not holding to its doctrinal foundation firmly enough, and therefore it has “gone contemporary.” Traditional churches often say, “While they may subscribe to the Confession with their mouths, they don’t really believe it thoroughly.” The problem is that the foundational doctrinal statements (in this case the Westminster standards) do not speak directly to these matters of method and style. You could argue that the Confession implies this or that style of ministry, but proving the presence of these subtexts and implications is hard. There’s no reason to conclude that the contemporary-styled church must necessarily be untrue to the doctrine to which it subscribes just because of the style of its practices.

The opposite mistake is to conclude that the second church is traditional in style because it is holding firmly—possibly too firmly, depending on your point of view—to its doctrinal foundation. More innovative churches often assume, “they are backward and narrow because their doctrine and theology makes them so.” The dangerous conclusion is that, in order to do ministry that “really engages our culture today,” we need to re-engineer classic evangelical doctrine, such as substitutionary atonement, forensic justification, inerrancy, the holiness and wrath of God, and the necessity of ordained ministry. So some church leaders—who don’t like the form these ministries take—think the answer is to de-emphasize or even rework the traditional doctrines these ministries defend.

I believe neither side is seeing the true cause of the differences—the “hinge” between doctrinal foundation and ministry expression.

Rick Lints, to whom I owe much of my thinking on this topic, explains in The Fabric of Theology that once we settle our doctrinal foundations, we still haven’t answered the question of how exactly we are going to communicate and live out our doctrine in our place and time. He observes, for example, that churches have different readings of what in a culture should be affirmed and what should be criticized.

So let’s look at the question of the use of contemporary music forms. Wherein lies the difference? The Westminster standards don’t speak to timbre, rhythm, volume, melodic line, and tempo of music. They may speak indirectly, but certainly not directly, to emotional expressiveness. The divide is not over how the Confession is read, but over how the culture is read. One church sees contemporary popular culture as toxic (or perhaps as very thin and shallow) and therefore inappropriate for use in worship. The other church sees contemporary culture in more positive, or at least neutral, ways. So two churches with the same basic doctrine, but different attitudes toward the surrounding culture, will choose different ministry expressions to communicate that doctrine.

It’s not just readings of culture that shape a church’s ministry expression. Churches also have different understandings of Christian tradition—how much from the past should be kept, how much discarded, and why. They also have different understandings of the role of reason and persuasion—in comparison with the roles of emotion and community—in our preaching, evangelism, and discipleship. None of these questions are directly addressed in most confessions or statements of faith, yet it is clear that where we come down on these issues has a huge impact on how we do ministry. And so Christian ministry will still look different in various times and places, just as the universal Biblical principles of marriage take an infinite variety of particular forms in the unique personalities of millions of Christian couples.

When we’ve reflected on our contemporary culture and, on that basis, determined the basic shape of how we are going to practice and communicate our unchanging doctrine, we have arrived at what Lints calls a “theological vision.” Two churches with the same doctrine, yet holding different views of culture, tradition, and reason, will see different theological visions. Those different visions will in turn lead them to adopt different ministry expressions, methods, and programs.

To continue our example, the Reformed thinkers of the Puritan era produced the Westminster Confession. Many who subscribe to the Confession also greatly revere that time in history and so have largely adopted Puritan ways of preaching and doing ministry. They may naturally assume that anyone who subscribes to the Westminster Confession should also emulate the ministry practices of its writers. But that assumption is based on presuppositions about the nature of culture and the role of tradition, not on the Confession itself.

Still, these assumptions will matter deeply in the end. For to have a low view of contemporary culture but a very high view of the Puritan era will produce a very different theological vision—and consequently a different blend of ministry—than you will produce if you see common grace in culture and are highly sensitive to any distortions in the Puritans’ ecclesiastical practices and views. Either way, it is important to notice that no assessment of modern culture, or of the role of tradition, or even of the specific practices of the Puritans, is enshrined in the confessional standards themselves.

It has become clear to me that while most Christian leaders do very deliberate, conscious study and thinking to arrive at their doctrinal beliefs, they are almost blind to the process of developing a theological vision. They often just “catch” their convictions about culture, reason, and tradition without really thinking them out. They come upon a ministry that they admire or that helps them personally and then they adopt it wholesale without recognizing the presuppositions, convictions and decisions that went into it.

To be faithful and fruitful, more Christian leaders should pay attention to this “middle space” between believing doctrine and choosing methods. The vast majority of resources on “how to do church” discuss either the Biblical basics of church belief and practice or specific ways to adopt certain ministry programs. I don’t know of any book that, instead of asking “what should our doctrine be?” or “what should our programs look like?” instead asks “what is our theological vision for ministry in our time and place?” That’s why I wrote Center Church.

Gideon Strauss is the Executive Director of the Max De Pree Center for Leadership at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California.

Deep in conversation with about ten young professionals from about 8 different fields around a dinner table in Manhattan a few months ago, I marveled at the ability that these men and women, most of them in their thirties, had in talking about their daily work in ways that are clearly framed by a gospel worldview, without coming across as wannabe theologians or priggish moralists.

“There are no incentives in my industry for a boss not to be arrogant and mean-spirited. I want to become someone who has the character of a leader. Gotham Fellowship [a nine-month faith and work theology cohort at Redeemer] has given me a vocabulary and a community that makes genuine leadership something I can imagine, even if examples of genuine leadership are rare when I look around my industry,” explains an entrepreneur in finance. A yearning for vocational discipleship has these already very busy Gothamites invest several hours a week in reading and conversation, additional hours every month engaging the city in community, and a few weekends of the year on retreat.

In a small summit on vocational discipleship in the local church, which my organization (the De Pree Center) hosted in Manhattan earlier this summer, Katherine Leary Alsdorf, the executive director of the Center for Faith & Work at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and David Kim, the director of the Gotham Fellowship, explained that they see vocational discipleship as integral to a life shaped by the gospel.

“We see it as our job to help people move from certain things and to certain things,” explained Katherine. For example:

• from the salvation of souls, to the gospel changes everything
• from God is a value to us, to we can add value to the earth
• from God’s purposes beginning and ending with individual, personal redemption, to his purposes encompassing creation as well
• from heaven is up there, to the kingdom to come will be on this earth
• from cheap grace, to costly grace
• from disdain of this world, to love for this world
• from “bowling alone,” to community
• from people alone, to cultural institutions matter as well
• from Christian superiority, to God can work through whomever he wants
• from discussions limited to ethics, to fostering a theological imagination for the workplace

While I have been enthralled for years by the effect vocational discipleship can have on individual lives through places like the Center for Faith & Work, and by the potential influence of events like its annual Entrepreneurship Initiative, I was blown away last year by the Center’s first annual Gospel & Culture conference. Local churches that offer robust vocational and cultural discipleship as an ordinary part of the life of the church are still rare. The Gospel and Culture conference offers a brief but thorough look at what such discipleship looks like in Manhattan.

Listening to Chelsea Chen perform on the organ of beautiful St. Bart’s church, and to Tim Keller and Richard Mouw outline an inspiring theology of culture, redolent with the gospel; hearing Fiona Diefenbacher’s heart break for the fashion industry, and Max Anderson offering a vision of hope for MBA programs; I thought to myself: this is the stuff of a cultural reformation. This is not just another fad, soon to blow over. This is not some utopian vision of heaven dragged down to earth by human hands, no matter the price. These people are committed to the slow, hard, nuanced work of bearing hope into every corner of their world, by living their everyday work out of motives shaped by the gospel.

No doubt, vocational and cultural discipleship will look a little different in each church and city. In the aforementioned summit, Dan Siedell of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church explained that the considerable differences in vocational culture between Manhattan (“work is an end in itself”) and Fort Lauderdale (“work is a means to leisure”) demand distinctly diverse approaches to vocational and cultural discipleship. The context will be significantly different just a bridge away from Manhattan, in Brooklyn or New Jersey, or in a church plant versus a more established church.

Whatever the unique possibilities and challenges of our particular cities and neighborhoods, it is true wherever the church is present that we need a movement toward vocational and cultural discipleship being a part of the ordinary life of the church. As Steven Garber of the Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation, and Culture put it, “Vocation is integral, not incidental, to the mission of God.”

You can register online now for the 2012 Gospel & Culture Conference, or read the recap of last year's conference by The Gospel Coalition.

This article first appeared in edited form on CNN and is printed below in its entirety.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, the question "Why me?" was a natural one. Later, when I survived but others with the same kind of cancer died, I also had to ask, "Why me?"

Suffering and death seem random, senseless. The recent Aurora shootings—in which some people were spared and others lost—is the latest, vivid example of this, but there are plenty of others every day: from casualties in the Syria uprising to victims of accidents on American roads. Tsunamis, tornadoes, household accidents—the list is long. As a minister, I’ve spent countless hours with suffering people crying: “Why did God let this happen?” In general I hear four answers to this question—but each is wrong, or at least inadequate.

The first answer is, "This makes no sense—I guess this proves there is no God." But the problem of senseless suffering does not go away if you abandon belief in God. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, said that if there was no higher divine Law, there would be no way to tell if any particular human law was unjust or not. If there is no God, then why have a sense of outrage and horror when suffering and tragedy occur? The strong eat the weak—that’s life—so why not? When Friedrich Nietzsche heard that a natural disaster had destroyed Java in 1883, he wrote a friend: “Two hundred thousand wiped out at a stroke—how magnificent!” Nietzsche was relentless in his logic. Because if there is no God, all value judgments are arbitrary. All definitions of justice are just the results of your culture or temperament. As different as they were in other ways, King and Nietzsche agreed on this point. If there is no God or higher divine Law, then violence is perfectly natural. So abandoning belief in God doesn’t help with the problem of suffering at all, and as we will see, it removes many resources for facing it.

The second answer is, “If there is a God, senseless suffering proves that God is not completely in control of everything. He couldn’t stop this.” As many thinkers have pointed out—both devout believers as well as atheists—such a being, whatever it is, doesn’t really fit our definition of God. And this leaves you with the same problems mentioned above. If you don’t believe in a God powerful enough to create and sustain the whole world, then the world came about through natural forces, and that means, again, that violence is natural. Or if you think that God is an impersonal life force and this whole material world is just an illusion, again you remove any reason to be outraged at evil and suffering or to resist it.

The third answer to seemingly sudden, random death is, "God saves some people and lets others die because he favors and rewards good people." But the Bible forcefully rejects the idea that people who suffer more are worse people than those who are spared suffering. This was the self-righteous premise of Job’s friends in that great Old Testament book. They sat around Job, who was experiencing one sorrow in life after another, and said, "the reason this is happening to you and not us is because we are living right and you are not." At the end of the book, God expresses his fury at Job’s "miserable comforters." The world is too fallen and deeply broken to issue in neat patterns of good people having good lives and bad people having bad lives.

The fourth answer is, "God knows what he’s doing, so be quiet and trust him." This is partly right, but inadequate. It is inadequate because it is cold and because the Bible gives us more with which to face the terrors of life.

God did not create a world with death and evil in it. It is the result of humankind turning away from him. We were put into this world to live wholly for him, and when instead we began to live for ourselves everything in our created reality began to fall apart—physically, socially, and spiritually. Everything became subject to decay. But God did not abandon us. Of all the world's major religions, only Christianity teaches that God came to earth (in Jesus Christ) and became subject to suffering and death himself—dying on the Cross to take the punishment our sins deserved—so that some day he can return to earth to end all suffering without ending us.

Do you see what this means? Yes, we don’t know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, or why it is so random, but now at least we know what the reason isn’t—what it can’t be. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us! It can’t be that he doesn’t care. He is so committed to our ultimate happiness that he was willing to plunge into the greatest depths of suffering himself.

He understands us, he’s been there, and he assures us that he has a plan to eventually to wipe away every tear, to make "everything sad come untrue," as J.R.R. Tolkien put it at the end of his Christian allegory The Lord of the Rings.

Someone might say, "But that’s only half an answer to the question 'Why?'" Yes, but it is the half that we need.

If God actually explained all the reasons why he allows things to happen as they do, it would be too much for our finite brains. Think of small children and their relationship to their parents. Three-year-olds can’t understand most of what their parents allow and disallow for them. But though they aren’t capable of comprehending their parents’ reasons, they are capable of knowing their parents’ love, and therefore capable of trusting them and living securely. That is what they really need. Now the difference between God and human beings would be infinitely greater than the difference between a thirty-year-old parent and a three-year-old child. So we should not expect to be able to grasp all God’s purposes, but through the Cross and gospel of Jesus Christ, we can know his love. And that is what we need most.

In Ann Voskamp’s book One Thousand Gifts, she shares her journey to understand the senseless death of her sister, crushed by a truck at the age of two. In the end, she concludes that the primary issue is whether we trust God’s character. Is he really loving? Is he really just? Her conclusion:

"[God] gave us Jesus... If God didn’t withhold from us His very own Son, will God withhold anything we need? If trust must be earned, hasn’t God unequivocally earned our trust with the bark on the raw wounds, the thorns pressed into the brow, your name on the cracked lips? How will he not also graciously give us all things He deems best and right? He’s already given the incomprehensible.”

Our first Church Planter Intensive held in Asia ended on July 25. Jay Kyle is the Director of Asia for Redeemer City to City.

Hong Kong is known as a one of the world’s most iconic cities, often mentioned in the same breath as New York, London and Tokyo. It is a world power in financial markets and world-class architects love to study its new skyscrapers. But dim sum and church planting were on my mind as Maureen and I landed at the Hong Kong International Airport on June 26, 2012.

Good Chinese food awaited us in Hong Kong, but also landing on flights that day were thirteen potential church planters to be trained over the next month by City to City Asia. City to City Asia is a sister organization of Redeemer City to City and its goal is to train new church planters starting gospel communities in the major cities of the Asia Pacific.

From June 26-July 25, the trainees spent their days visiting recent church plants and receiving gospel-centered urban church planting training. We moved the trainees through four Asian cities to broaden their vision and understanding of what great things God is doing throughout Asia, and to deepen their personal knowledge and application of the gospel in their own lives and ministries. The month was spent in Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

Jet-lagged trainers like Mark Reynolds, Stephen Um and John Thomas arrived from Boston and New York to instruct them on Gospel Theology, Gospel Renewal, City Vision and forty other church-planting topics. CS Tang (Sydney), Nomer Bernardino (Manila) and Wing So, all men who had planted multiple churches in Asia, also took part and shared their lives and ministry with these new church-planting trainees.

The trainees visited with Tobin Miller who planted Watermark Community Church in Hong Kong, Gordon Huang who planted the Taipei 101 Church and three others in the last three years, Simon Murphy who planted Redemption Hill Church in Singapore, and Wong Fong Yang who planted the Puchong City Discipleship Presbyterian Church in Kuala Lumpur. To date these four men have been instrumental in planting thirty-four churches, so their words carried weight in terms of practical experience and servant leadership.

On the final day the church planters sat in a circle in Kuala Lumpur sharing how the training had impacted their lives. Michael Nhieu, who will plant a new church later this year in Sydney, shared, “When I arrived in Hong Kong I wanted to not just learn but to be transformed by the gospel. I was able to witness God across Asia and it has blown my mind. I saw the majesty of God as He lifted my eyes and vision of what He is doing, not just in Sydney, but throughout the Asia Pacific!”

Matt Straw who will begin a new congregation in Sydney out of St. Phillips Anglican Church on York Street shared: "In Sydney there is a lot of talk and excitement about church planting, but not many experienced church planters. Every day from 7 AM until midnight we were engaged with church planting, and I never got tired of the topic! We talked about it everywhere we went and over every meal. We experienced the purity of the gospel in our hearts. I received a new vision for ministry, that God is the One who is using us, and He is already on the move in these different cities. God is calling us to do the impossible, but He who has called us will give us the grace."

On Wednesday morning, July 25, 2012, at 1:00 AM our Malaysian Airline flight lifted off the runway into the night sky for Hong Kong which had just experienced a typhoon. I closed my eyes and thanked the Lord for keeping all of us safe and meeting with us throughout the training. Then I asked God to bless the church planters as they returned to their global cities to start new gospel-centered churches. Will you join me in this prayer that the Lord will be seen in His majesty and power through the lives of the those who will soon make up the thirteen new communities of believers in Sydney, Singapore, Mumbai, Bangalore, Manila, Taipei and East Asia? They will join the more than two hundred new churches worldwide in global cities with whom City to City has been privileged to partner. Thanks be to God.

In my last post, I made an argument for why we still need apologetics. Believing has both a head and a heart aspect, so while some non-Christians will need more help with one than the other, we can’t ignore either one.

So what can we say when we are called upon to present the reasons why we believe?

First, I try to show that it takes faith to doubt Christianity, because any worldview (including secularism or skepticism) is based on assumptions. For example, the person who says, “I can only believe in something if it can be rationally or empirically proven” must realize that that in itself is a statement of faith. This “verification principle” cannot actually be proven rationally or empirically, making it an assertion or a claim, not an argument. Furthermore, there are all sorts of things you can’t prove rationally or empirically. You can’t prove to me that you’re not really a butterfly dreaming you’re a person. (Haven’t you seen The Matrix?) You can't prove most of the things you believe, so at least recognize that you have faith.

I normally make this point by considering an objection to Christianity, to show that at the heart of it is some sort of faith assumption. Let’s take the example of suffering; someone will say, “I can’t believe in God, because how could a good God allow such suffering?”

Put another way, they are saying, “I know for a fact that there can’t be any good reason that a good God would allow this specific thing to happen.” Really? There could be all sorts of good reasons why God allowed something to happen that caused suffering, despite our inability to think of them. If you’ve got an infinite God big enough to be mad at for the suffering in the world, then you also have an infinite God big enough to have reasons for it that you can’t think of.

You have to show people that it takes faith to doubt Christianity. C. S. Lewis’ pre-conversion argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But then he asked himself, “But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? …Atheism turns out to be too simple” (Mere Christianity, Book 2, Part 1). In the natural world the strong eat the weak, and there’s nothing wrong with violence. Where do you get the standard that says the human world shouldn't work like that, that says the natural world is wrong? You can only judge suffering as wrong if you’re using a standard higher than this world, a supernatural standard. If there’s no God, you have no reason to be upset at the suffering in this world. That’s just the way it is. It takes faith to get mad at this world.

You see, a gospel-shaped apologetic starts not with telling people what to believe, but by showing them their real problem. In this case we are showing secular people that they have less warrant for their faith assumptions than we do for ours. We need to show that it takes faith even to doubt.

British critic and former atheist A.N. Wilson wrote about losing his faith as a young man, influenced by British intellectual society, which had all but accepted that only stupid people actually believe in Christianity. "As a matter of fact however,” he argues, “it is materialist atheism that is not merely an arid creed but totally irrational. Materialist atheism says we are just a collection of chemicals, and it has no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love, or heroism, or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat.”

A campus evangelist I once heard during the Vietnam protests pushed atheist students to recognize the clash between their moral relativism in regards to sex, and their moral absolutism with regards to international genocide. They had no answers. If there’s no God, everything is permitted. Without God we’re left with no basis for all that is most important to our lives: human dignity, compassion, justice. We have a problem.

Which brings us to the final point, the solution to our problem. At some point you need tell the Christian story in a way that addresses the things that people most want for their own lives, the things that they are trying to find outside of Christianity, and show how Christianity can give it to them. Alasdair MacIntyre said this about narratival apologetics: “That narrative prevails over its rivals which is able to include its rivals within it, not only to retell their stories as episodes within its story, but to tell the story of the telling of their stories as such episodes.” Read that sentence again.

There is a way of telling the gospel that makes people say, “I don’t believe it’s true, but I wish it were.” You have to get to the beauty of it, and then go back to the reasons for it. Only then, when you show that it takes more faith to doubt it than to believe it; when the things you see out there in the world are better explained by the Christian account of things than the secular account of things; and when they experience a community in which they actually do see Christianity embodied, in healthy Christian lives and solid Christian community, that many will believe.

Apologetics is an answer to the “why” question after you’ve already given people an answer to the “what” question. The what question, of course, is “What is the gospel?” But when you call people to believe in the gospel and they ask, “Why should I believe that?” —then you need apologetics.

I’ve heard plenty of Christians try to answer the why question by going back to the what. “You have to believe because Jesus is the Son of God.” But that’s answering the why with more what. Increasingly we live in a time in which you can’t avoid the why question. Just giving the what (for example, a vivid gospel presentation) worked in the days when the cultural institutions created an environment in which Christianity just felt true or at least honorable. But in a post-Christendom society, in the marketplace of ideas, you have to explain why this is true, or people will just dismiss it.

There are plenty of Christians today who nevertheless say: “Don’t do apologetics, just expound the Word of God—preach and the power of the Word will strike people.” Others argue that “belonging comes before believing.” They say apologetics is a rational, Enlightenment approach, not a biblical one. People need to be brought into a community where they can see our love and our deeds, experience worship, have their imaginations captured, and faith will become credible to them.

There is a certain merit to these arguments. It would indeed be overly rationalistic to say that we can prove Christianity so that any rational person would have to believe it. In fact, it dishonors the sovereignty of God by bowing to our autonomous human reason. Community and worship are important, because people come to conviction through a combination of heart and mind, a sense of need, thinking things out intellectually, and seeing it in community. But I have also seen many skeptics brought into a warm Christian community and yet still ask, “But why should I believe you and not an atheist or a Muslim?”

We need to be careful of saying “Just believe,” because what we’re really saying is, “Believe because I say so.” That sounds like a Nietzschean power play. That’s very different from Paul, who reasoned, argued, and proved in the book of Acts, and from Peter, who called us to give the reason for our hope in 2 Peter 3:15. If our response is, “Our beliefs may seem utterly irrational to you, but if you see how much we love one another then you’ll want to believe too,” then we’ll sound like a cult. So we do need to do apologetics and answer the why question.

However, the trouble with an exclusively rationalistic apologetic (“I’m going to prove to you that God exists, that Jesus is the Son of God, the Bible is true,” etc.) is that it does, in a sense, put God on trial before supposedly neutral, perfectly rational people sitting objectively on the throne of Reason. That doesn’t fit with what the Bible says about the reality of sin and the always prejudiced, distorted thinking produced by unbelief. On the other hand, an exclusively subjectivist apologetic (“Invite Jesus into your life and he’ll solve all your problems, but I can’t give you any good reasons, just trust with your heart”) also fails to bring conviction of real sin or of need.

There will be no joy in the Grace of Jesus unless the person sees they’re lost. Thus a gospel-shaped apologetic must not simply present Christianity, but it must also challenge the non-believer’s worldview and show where it, and they, have a real problem. This is what I usually try to do, and in my next post I’ll lay out what I would say if I had an hour to give the whole case for Christianity.

Redeemer City to City (CTC) is pleased to announce that Dr. John R. Hutchinson has accepted the position of President, effective September 1, 2012.

“We are delighted that God has called John to join us in a powerful and unique calling: to help leaders build gospel movements in global cities,” said Timothy Keller, CTC’s chairman of the board.

Dr. Hutchinson most recently served for 14 years as Senior Pastor at McLean Presbyterian Church (PCA) in McLean, Virginia. He earned his Master of Divinity and Doctorate of Ministry degrees from Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Mississippi State University. He is married to Cynthia and has three adult children.

"I look forward to building on the established foundation that Redeemer City to City enjoys, working with Tim Keller to lead the organization through its next chapter serving God’s Kingdom around the world,” said Hutchinson. “I am humbled by and thankful for the opportunity to join this compelling vision.”

Dr. Hutchinson and his congregation at McLean Presbyterian Church partnered with CTC in resourcing a church planting network in Berlin, Germany. Prior to serving as Senior Pastor at McLean Presbyterian Church, John started a growing congregation in Jacksonville, Florida. John has a proven track record of creating collaborative teams to deliver a long-term vision.

The president’s role is to work with the board of Redeemer City to City, Tim Keller, and the senior team to plan and manage the execution of the organization’s vision. In addition, the president will attract and develop the staff of CTC, build relationships with church planters and donors, and secure the needed financial resources for the organization.

The president role builds on the strong foundation laid by Reverend Terry Gyger, who has served the CTC faithfully with his vision, energy, and deep relationships with church planters and donors.

The Presidential Selection Committee and CTC board is indebted to Mr. Price Harding and CarterBaldwin Executive Search for the expertise, extensive work, and personal attention during the search process. Their commitment to identifying the most qualified of candidates was invaluable.

One of the surprising pleasures I've discovered in the process of planting an urban church is getting in touch with sin. Shared sin, I mean. The sinfulness that binds us together, that makes us come as one body before Jesus, that creates authentic community out of confession and shared struggle. In our new urban church I’ve discovered a community of sinners, as Bonhoeffer puts it, that eclipses the churches I had come in contact with before in brokenness and poured grace. I’m really enjoying it.

Maybe this is just part of the pastor's role, knowing people’s wounds beneath the masks we wear to keep us presentable. Maybe it is part of Rome’s culture, where people come to me to confess their sins just as they previously went to the parish priest. (Actually, I wasn’t even aware I was doing my first confession when an elderly man told me how he mistreated prisoners 60 years ago, and I just told him I was sorry. The following day I realized he wanted absolution…) But I’m discovering how strong a faith is born out of acknowledged and forgiven sin. Nothing sounds as beautiful as a repentant sinner.

This knowing what's going on beneath the surface makes me anxious too, as a church planter. A first time visitor will see a good-looking group, vibrant, well-mannered, cosmopolitan. For me, however, things look more fragile: people battling sins that are socially acceptable or not, and the fear that sin may take hold of them. I see regrets, compromises, ambiguities, disillusionment. I see people hungry for grace and wondering how it can work in their lives.

In a sense, this sense of fragility makes me long for good ol’ fundamentalism, where lines are sharply drawn, light and darkness don’t enter the same room, and acknowledgment of sin is repressed or ostracized. I long for that sense of stable community, of leaving our problems outside the door, of pretending everything is fine. I miss victorious language, royal, prophetic and apostolic pronunciations and that simplicity that believes willpower can make our issues go away. Things looked pretty and manageable and Christian then; can we return to it?

Yet, when I think of Jesus, he relieves me. The dignified self-righteous folks were on the other side, after all, and with Jesus were the publicans and sinners, and the occasional Pharisee to mix things up a bit. Not a very respectable entourage, the wagging tongues would say. A first glimpse would clearly judge one side as much more honorable than the other; back then confessed sins were as shameful as not washing hands. Jesus’ traveling congregation, on the other hand, had a scent of scandal, of second chances and unresolved regrets. With him were big sinners, the type you can spot from a distance and hear from the gossip, the type that infects you with disgrace just by eating with them.

But I guess I’m experiencing now what those folks found out back then: those who are forgiven much, love much. Or that where sin abounds, grace superabounds. Or that a Christian is as great as his or her repentance. Or, as pastoral instinct may put it, that the church is only a community of saints when it is a community of sinners, and that out of acknowledged brokenness and forgiven sin a special kind of communion sprouts, stronger than repression, uglier but much prettier than masks, more intimate than blood ties, a communion forged by Jesus’ costly grace and his Spirit animating a group open and ready to be vulnerable.

I didn’t expect our church to be as sinful and fragile, but also as godly and beautiful, as it now is. But I’m just loving it. It has been a pastoral delight. It smells and smells of Jesus, and I don’t remember experiencing as much of either of these odors during the good ol’ days.

[This was originally posted on Xavier's blog, and includes a translation of the original blog by Al Barth.]

Ayer por la noche llegué a Barcelona, después de tres días intensos de reuniones en Madrid. Aunque el clima más seco de la meseta sur hace el calor de esta época del año más llevadera, con temperaturas como las que estamos empezando a experimentar ya estos últimos días… no hay nada como vivir en una ciudad a orillas del mismo mar Mediterráneo.

En fin, los tres días que he pasado en Madrid he estado acompañando a Al Barth, de quien creo que ya he traducido algún artículo en este blog o en el blog de City to City. El motivo de su visita ha sido continuar explorando posibilidades de colaboración con ministerios locales que coinciden con los énfasis característicos de City to City, en su deseo de ver cómo en las principales ciudades del mundo (y especialmente de Europa) se van desarrollando lo que podríamos llamar “ecosistemas impregnados del evangelio” (algo que seguramente explicaremos en otra entrada) en cuyo centro se encuentre la plantación de iglesias que de forma efectiva respondan a las necesidades del contexto urbano con una manifiesta fidelidad al evangelio, a la vez que aprecien y muestren una especial sensibilidad a la cultura de la ciudad en medio de la que pretenden llevar a cabo su ministerio.

En esta entrada, podéis leer la traducción y adaptación del último artículo que Al Barth ha escrito en el blog de City to City. Se trata de una reflexión sobre lo perjudicial que resulta el culto a la personalidad sobre la que se construyen y proyectan muchas iglesias y ministerios hoy en día. Barth habla de ello desde la perspectiva del púlpito o ministerio de la predicación y lo denuncia como un fenómeno que se da especialmente en los Estados Unidos, pero lo cierto es que también afecta a muchos otros países en América Latina o en Europa.

Creo que es una muy oportuna reflexión, sobre todo teniendo en cuenta de quién proviene, pues Al Barth forma parte del equipo de Tim Keller, uno de los predicadores con mayor proyección en estos momentos; a quien seguro que todavía muchos españoles o latinos todavía no conocen o no han oído hablar de él, pero que sin duda se beneficiarán (si es que no lo están haciendo ya) de la importante y fresca aportación con la que este pastor está contribuyendo al ministerio de la iglesia que quiere ser relevante para los hombres y mujeres de una sociedad profundamente secularizada.

***

En Norte América tenemos una fascinación enfermiza con los predicadores “súper estrella.” Levantar una iglesia (o un movimiento) alrededor de un pastor/predicador súper estrella tiene un riesgo implícito y genera una serie de problemas. Enumeraré unos cuantos:

1. El pastor o predicador súper estrella a todos los efectos acaba siendo alguien que no rinde cuentas a nadie aunque él mismo se someta de forma voluntaria a un grupo de hermanos. En el peor de los casos acaban siendo incontrolables. La cosa va bien mientras que el hombre sea humilde y permanezca humilde. Pero las tentaciones para perder esa humildad son casi irresistibles.

2. Una dieta continua a base de la predicación de un sólo hombre, la perspectiva de un solo hombre y su única manera de acercarse y aplicar el texto, aún cuando sea excelente, no es saludable. Tener un filete de ternera para cada comer cada día y en cada comida del día, al principio puede sonar estupendo, pero al cabo de tan sólo unos pocos días empezaremos a sentirnos mal.

3. Depender sólo de un predicador, incluso en el mejor de los casos, inevitablemente acaba promoviendo más al hombre que al mensaje. Curiosamente, la misma Palabra puede dejar de ser el centro de atención y en su lugar serlo el predicador o la manera particular en la que sea presentada.

Hace varios años, quedé fascinado al descubrir la manera en la que se planteaba la predicación en una importante iglesia de Londres (una iglesia, por cierto, conocida a lo largo de todo el Reino Unido por su ejemplar ministerio de la Palabra). En lugar de tener a un solo hombre que dominara la predicación en la iglesia, tenían a cuatro predicadores que compartían por igual la responsabilidad del púlpito. Por aquél entonces cada uno de los cuatro predicadores preparaba una serie de sermones que, de forma programada, procedían a predicar en las varias reuniones que la iglesia tenía a los largo de la semana—domingos por la mañana, domingos por la tarde, los martes al mediodía y los jueves también al mediodía, cada uno en su turno y utilizando el sermón por lo menos cuatro veces. Al hablar de ello con el rector de la iglesia, me referí a ese planteamiento como “platooning” (predicar en pelotón). El rector rió entre dientes y me dijo: “Os lo dejo a vosotros, americanos. Tenéis una habilidad especial de ponerle nombre a todo.”

Lo hermoso del sistema era que, aunque uno de los cuatro predicadores era (y todavía es) el rector de la iglesia (y definitivamente el líder), en lugar de enfocarse en aspectos como la personalidad del predicador, lo que el sistema hace es elevar la centralidad de la misma Palabra. La gente en la congregación tenían la certeza de que, independientemente de quién predicara, iban a escuchar una buena exposición de la Palabra en cada una de las reuniones de la iglesia. No venían a escuchar a ninguno de los cuatro predicadores en particular; venían a escuchar la Palabra. Interactuaban no tanto con lo que el hombre decía, sino con lo que Palabra decía.

Cometemos un grave error cuando centramos nuestra atención en el predicador en lugar de hacerlo en aquello que es predicado. Y me temo que esto es lo que [precisamente] estamos haciendo en los Estados Unidos. La iglesia es más débil en consecuencia. No hay un solo texto en el Nuevo Testamento donde veamos el fenómeno de un único predicador/pastor exaltado como ocurre hoy en día en los Estados Unidos. El único lugar donde vemos que Pablo alude un poco a esta idea es en 1 Corintios 1 y 3 donde censura la tendencia que algunos tenían de promover el culto a la personalidad del líder de manera que unos decían ‘yo sigo a Pablo’; otros ‘yo a Apolos’; y otros ‘yo a Céfas.’ Es el primero (y, por el hecho de ser el primero, tal vez el más grave) de los errores que Pablo trata en la carta. Lo importante es el mensaje de la Cruz, no los mensajeros y la forma ingeniosa que puedan tener a la hora de articular sus palabras. En el Nuevo Testamento siempre encontramos el ejemplo de un liderazgo compartido y, por consiguiente, también un ministerio compartido de la Palabra. En el ministerio, según nos lo presenta Pablo, los “predicadores” que formaban parte del equipo apostólico, parecían ser prácticamente intercambiables. Da la impresión que a penas importaba quién se ponía al frente de una determinada iglesia o por cuánto tiempo lo hacía. Era la centralidad de la Palabra en el ministerio de la iglesia lo que importaba, no quién trajera o presentara esa Palabra.

En nuestro caso, Tim Keller ha sido uno de los puntos más fuertes de Redeemer como iglesia. Pero, curiosamente, su punto fuerte como predicador genera también una cierta debilidad. (En la actualidad, para corregir esto, Redeemer está en transición hacia un modelo colegiado de iglesia con tres pastores principales en tres diferentes localidades). Es algo extraño tratar de discernir cuál es la mejor manera de sacar el máximo provecho de los líderes más capacitados que tenemos en la Iglesia hoy en día –a los que a su vez tenemos mucho más accesibles que en cualquier otro tiempo gracias a internet— y aún así no acabar deformando a la iglesia local, el lugar donde se supone que hemos de ser conocidos y discipulados en comunidad, en el proceso.

De ninguna manera es mi intención limitar el ministerio de aquellos hombres que están mejor capacitados en nuestras iglesias para el ministerio del evangelio. Por favor, entended que no es esto lo que estoy diciendo. Pero sí creo que en las iglesias más “normales” e incluso en aquellas que son nuevos proyectos, es sabio tener más de un solo predicador regular y, de forma deliberada, formar equipos de predicadores y maestros que puedan manejar de forma correcta la Palabra en todas las situaciones [en la vida de la iglesia] en las que debería ser proclamada.

[This was previously posted on Redeemer.com.]

I find it frustrating when I read or hear columnists, pundits, or journalists dismiss Christians as inconsistent because “they pick and choose which of the rules in the Bible to obey.” What I hear most often is “Christians ignore lots of Old Testament texts—about not eating raw meat or pork or shellfish, not executing people for breaking the Sabbath, not wearing garments woven with two kinds of material and so on. Then they condemn homosexuality. Aren’t you just picking and choosing what they want to believe from the Bible?"

It is not that I expect everyone to have the capability of understanding that the whole Bible is about Jesus and God’s plan to redeem his people, but I vainly hope that one day someone will access their common sense (or at least talk to an informed theological advisor) before leveling the charge of inconsistency.

First of all, let’s be clear that it’s not only the Old Testament that has proscriptions about homosexuality. The New Testament has plenty to say about it as well. Even Jesus, in his discussion of divorce in Matthew 19:3-12, says that the original design of God was for one man and one woman to be united as one flesh, and failing that, (v. 12) persons should abstain from marriage and from sex.

However, let’s get back to considering the larger issue of inconsistency regarding things mentioned in the OT that are no longer practiced by the New Testament people of God. Most Christians don’t know what to say when confronted about this. Here’s a short course on the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament:

The Old Testament devotes a good amount of space to describing the various sacrifices that were to be offered in the tabernacle (and later temple) to atone for sin so that worshippers could approach a holy God. As part of that sacrificial system there was also a complex set of rules for ceremonial purity and cleanness. You could only approach God in worship if you ate certain foods and not others, wore certain forms of dress, refrained from touching a variety of objects, and so on. This vividly conveyed, over and over, that human beings are spiritually unclean and can’t go into God’s presence without purification.

But even in the Old Testament, many writers hinted that the sacrifices and the temple worship regulations pointed forward to something beyond them. (cf. 1 Samuel 15:21-22; Psalm 50:12-15; 51:17; Hosea 6:6). When Christ appeared he declared all foods ‘clean’ (Mark 7:19) and he ignored the Old Testament clean laws in other ways, touching lepers and dead bodies.

But the reason is made clear. When he died on the cross the veil in the temple was ripped through, showing that the need for the entire sacrificial system with all its clean laws had been done away with. Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice for sin, and now Jesus makes us “clean.”

The entire book of Hebrews explains that the Old Testament ceremonial laws were not so much abolished as fulfilled by Christ. Whenever we pray "in Jesus name," we "have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus" (Hebrews 10:19). It would, therefore, be deeply inconsistent with the teaching of the Bible as a whole if we were to continue to follow the ceremonial laws.

The New Testament gives us further guidance about how to read the Old Testament. Paul makes it clear in places like Romans 13:8ff that the apostles understood the Old Testament moral law to still be binding on us. In short, the coming of Christ changed how we worship but not how we live. The moral law is an outline of God’s own character—his integrity, love, and faithfulness. And so all the Old Testament says about loving our neighbor, caring for the poor, generosity with our possessions, social relationships, and commitment to our family is still in force. The New Testament continues to forbid killing or committing adultery, and all the sex ethic of the Old Testament is re-stated throughout the New Testament (Matthew 5:27-30; 1 Corinthians 6:9-20; 1 Timothy 1:8-11.) If the New Testament has reaffirmed a commandment, then it is still in force for us today.

Further, the New Testament explains another change between the Testaments. Sins continue to be sins—but the penalties change. In the Old Testament things like adultery or incest were punishable with civil sanctions like execution. This is because at that time God’s people existed in the form of a nation-state, and so all sins had civil penalties.

But in the New Testament the people of God are an assembly of churches all over the world, living under many different governments. The church is not a civil government, and so sins are dealt with by exhortation and, at worst, exclusion from membership. This is how a case of incest in the Corinthian church is dealt with by Paul (1 Corinthians 5:1ff. and 2 Corinthians 2:7-11.) Why this change? Under Christ, the gospel is not confined to a single nation—it has been released to go into all cultures and peoples.

Once you grant the main premise of the Bible—about the surpassing significance of Christ and his salvation—then all the various parts of the Bible make sense. Because of Christ, the ceremonial law is repealed. Because of Christ the church is no longer a nation-state imposing civil penalties. It all falls into place. However, if you reject the idea of Christ as Son of God and Savior, then, of course, the Bible is at best a mish-mash containing some inspiration and wisdom, but most of it would have to be rejected as foolish or erroneous.

So where does this leave us? There are only two possibilities. If Christ is God, then this way of reading the Bible makes sense and is perfectly consistent with its premise. The other possibility is that you reject Christianity’s basic thesis—you don’t believe Jesus was the resurrected Son of God—and then the Bible is no sure guide for you about much of anything. But the one thing you can’t really say in fairness is that Christians are being inconsistent with their beliefs to accept the moral statements in the Old Testament while not practicing other ones.

One way to respond to the charge of inconsistency may be to ask a counter-question—“Are you asking me to deny the very heart of my Christian beliefs?” If you are asked, “Why do you say that?” you could respond, “If I believe Jesus is the the resurrected Son of God, I can’t follow all the ‘clean laws’ of diet and practice, and I can’t offer animal sacrifices. All that would be to deny the power of Christ’s death on the cross. And so those who really believe in Christ must follow some Old Testament texts and not others.”

There was once a common language for public moral discourse in the West based largely on the Bible. It was assumed that most people knew the basic tenets of Christianity, and if someone walked into a church, the language and customs they found there would be familiar to them.

Today, in our increasingly diverse and "post-Christian" society, we can no longer assume that this is the case. As media headlines and personal anecdotes remind us almost daily, the church in the West is on the decline and losing members fast, especially among the young and urban. Thanks to globalization and spread of urban culture, these challenges are now increasingly relevant not only for ministers in cities, but also in the suburbs and small towns.

For pastors this poses a special challenge. How do we adapt to a "post-Christian" culture without abandoning orthodox theology? How do we communicate the classic doctrines of grace and substitutionary atonement in our globalized culture and context? In a culture that no longer believes Christianity is a force for good, let alone the source of ultimate revealed truth in the person of Christ, how do we adapt our ministries without compromising them?

At Redeemer Presbyterian Church and Redeemer City to City, we have been wrestling with these questions for over twenty years. The result of that long struggle has now been captured in Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City, Timothy Keller's long-awaited book on ministry in an urban context, which will be released by Zondervan on September 4. The book will describe three core commitments which have shaped the ministry of Redeemer and informed the training we give church planters:

Gospel-centered: The gospel of grace in Jesus Christ changes everything, from our hearts to our community to the world. It completely reshapes the content, tone and strategy of all that we do.

City-centered: Cities increasingly influence our global culture and affect the way we do ministry. With a positive approach toward our culture, we learn to affirm that cities are wonderful, strategic, and underserved places for gospel ministry.

Movement-centered: Instead of building our own tribe, we seek the prosperity and peace of our community as we are led by the Holy Spirit.

Based on these commitments, the book will offer challenging insights and provocative questions. Rather than doing “business as usual” on the one hand, or abandoning age-old theology and doctrine on the other, Keller outlines a way to develop “new” ministry expressions based on “old” theology—how to communicate the classic doctrines of salvation by grace and substitutionary atonement in our urbanized world.

Doing this will require more sophisticated reflection on both the gospel and our culture. It will also require ministry to be much more balanced: emphasizing word and deed, personal holiness and cultural engagement, doctrinal depth and kingdom-centered cooperation.

You can find the trailer, reviews, and related articles at Centerchurch.com, with more materials on the way. Our special thanks to all of the church planters, pastors and network leaders who have helped shape the content of this book.

In North America, we have an unhealthy fascination with celebrity preachers. Building a church (or a movement) around a celebrity pastor/preacher has inherent dangers and gives rise to certain problems. Let me list a few:

1. Celebrity pastors/preachers de facto become unaccountable even if they voluntarily submit themselves to a group of brothers. In the worst cases they become uncontrollable. As long as the man is humble, and remains humble, it can work. But the temptations to lose humility are almost irresistible.

2. A steady diet of one man’s preaching, one man’s perspectives on and means of approaching and applying the text, even if it is excellent, is unhealthy. Eating steak at every meal may sound good at first. But after just a few days of beef at every turn, you start to feel sick (that’s right vegans!).

3. Reliance upon one preacher, even in the best cases, inevitably tends to promote the man rather than the message. Oddly, the Word itself can become less the focus than the one doing the exposition of the Word or the particular way the Word is exposited.

Several years ago, when I first encountered the approach to preaching at a prominent church in London (a church, by the way, known across Great Britain for exemplary word ministry), I was fascinated. Rather than having one dominant preacher, they had four men that equally shared the responsibilities of the pulpit. At that time each of the four would prepare a sermon series that they would then proceed to preach at the various services of the church—Sunday mornings, then Sunday evenings, then Tuesdays at lunch and then Thursdays at lunch, each in his turn, using each sermon at least four times. The other day when I was talking about it with the Rector of the church, I called the approach “platooning”. He chuckled and said, “Leave it to you Americans. You have a unique ability to come up with a name for everything.”

The beauty of the system was that, while one of the four was (and is) the Rector (and definitely the leader), the system diminished the focus on personality while elevating the centrality of the word itself. People in the congregation were sure that no matter who was preaching they would hear good exposition of the word at every meeting of the church. They didn’t come to hear one or another of the particular men; they came to hear the Word. Their interaction was not so much with what the man said as with what the Word said.

We make a grave mistake when we focus on the preacher rather than what is being preached. And that is what I fear we are doing in the States. The church is weaker for it. Nowhere in the New Testament do we see the phenomenon of a preacher/pastor being exalted as we do in North America. The only place there is a hint of it is in 1 Corinthians 1 & 3 where Paul decries the tendency of people to rally around cults of personality: "One of you says, 'I follow Paul'; another, 'I follow Apollos'; another, 'I follow Cephas.'" It is the first (and arguably since it is the first, the most grievous) error Paul addresses in the letter. It is the message of the cross that is important, not the messengers and how cleverly they use words. There is always shared leadership and shared Word ministry. In Paul’s ministry the “preachers,” members of the apostolic team, seem almost interchangeable. It almost didn’t seem to matter who took charge of a given church or for how long. It was the centrality of the Word to the ministry of the church that was important, not the one bringing it.

In our case, Tim Keller has been one of the greatest strengths of Redeemer as a church. But in an odd way his very strength as a preacher creates a weakness. (Currently Redeemer is transitioning to a collegiate model with three lead pastors for three different locations, partly to address this.) It is a strange thing to figure out how to use to the maximum benefit the most gifted leaders the Church has today—more accessible to the masses than ever via the Internet—and yet not deform the local church, a place to be known and discipled in community, in the process.

In no way do I want to limit the ministry of the best and brightest men we have available for gospel ministry today. Please don’t hear me saying that. But I do think that in most "normal" churches and church plants, it is wise to have more than one regular preacher and deliberately to raise up cadres of preachers and teachers that can rightly handle the Word in all situations where it should be proclaimed.

“I shall return.”

Those were General Douglas MacArthur’s famous words as he left Bataan during the Battle of the Philippines on March 20, 1942. Ten days later, as he arrived in Australia, he repeated the same words, offering hope for my ravaged country during a time of great bloodshed and suffering.

On October 17, 1944, the American general and war hero landed back in Leyte, Philippines, and declared, “I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil.” This is a classic story known to Filipinos, of how our American friend kept his promise of coming back and helping us win our freedom after decades of occupation and oppression. It offers hope, joy, and peace – three things we surely need again today.

As Filipinos, relationships are important to us. Spending time together is a daily activity, not just reserved for weekends. In fact, we typically value friendships and community over work and money, as illustrated by a cab driver I met recently who told me he spent lavishly on his birthday celebration, not caring where he’ll get the money for the next day. Across the board, Filipinos put a high priority on interpersonal relationships and value words, promises, and loyalty.

When I came to New York City in 2008 to spend six weeks as part of Redeemer’s International Intensive training for church planters, I quickly connected with one of the staff, Gary Watanabe, because of his history in my country. From 2001-2006, Gary had been a missionary in the Philippines through Mission to the World. He began working with the local churches in Manila, learning how to move through the hustle and flow of my city, and growing accustomed to my culture. Now, as a church planter coach specializing in intercultural church planting, he became my mentor. His friendship ever since has been one of my encouragements in planting Heroes Church in Bonifacio Global City, a leading business district in Metro Manila. I know firsthand his desire to see a gospel movement form in my city.

Heroes Church was launched in 2010, and we have already been blessed with opportunities to serve beyond our congregation, in Manila’s largest hospital and in our local neighborhoods. Gary has continued to come visit us from time to time, offering friendship and encouragement, and connecting us with other leaders throughout City to City Asia.

As part of this network, our church hosted our first Gospel in the City seminar in Manila on March 26-27, 2012. It presented the key ideas of gospel-centered ministry in cities to 51 participants coming from various churches and organizations in Manila. The conference was taught by Gary, Tobin Miller of Watermark Church in Hong Kong, myself, and Nomer Bernardino (my father) of Breadcom Church (see picture above). The two-day conference was a homecoming for all of us. Knowing that we are not alone in the fight for the Gospel in our city truly inspires us to move forward. People who came left inspired by the Gospel and its power to change everything.

The seemingly small action of serving, keeping a promise, or returning to where we started is meaningful not just to Filipinos. Christians all over the world have the hope of glory, Jesus Christ, who came to us, lived with us, died for us, and resurrected promising to us He will come back again. The return of General Macarthur and the most recent return of Pastor Gary both point us to the hope of fellowship, love, and the ultimate hope we all have – the return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

He shall return.

Church planters are not known for sitting still. We think of ourselves as entrepreneurs, eager to pound the pavement, share the gospel with our neighbors, and begin growing a new church. And yet after over a year of preparation, from assessment to training to commissioning services, Julia and I now find ourselves in another season of waiting—apprenticeship before launching our own plant.

I had a great meeting a few weeks ago with one of the directors of our church planting network, Chris Douglas. He gently reminded me to embrace the apprenticeship process. I am ambitious. I want to get started and get a church planted, but that's not the point of apprenticeship. The point is to help another church plant, to learn and marinate in the culture of the city. It's also a rare period in my life during which I actually have the time to have fun and explore. Chris assured me that this is a conversation he has to have with every apprentice at some point. I needed it. I felt a huge weight come off my shoulders. I felt the Spirit tell me to "repent of your expectations." It was very freeing, and has actually given me more life and energy to serve at our church during this period of time.

Not long afterward, I received some constructive feedback about my preaching that initially I wanted to refuse. But it was true. It exposed that I am prideful about my preaching and that I have to repent of how much I let preaching define who I am. It was another humbling day for me.

As if this wasn't enough, I read some material for our next church planter cadre, a monthly meeting of new church planters like myself. It convicted me of being a contrarian with other church planters who have different theological stances than I. Pride exposed yet again. It stung. Yet the Holy Spirit revealed God's love for me once again. God loves me by showing me that I need to repent. He loves me by forgiving me when I do repent. And he lets me experience his love when I confess these sins to my community and receive truth and grace in return. I am in a season of relenting to God and responding to him. It's strange to realize that I don't need accountability to be a hard worker. I need accountability to enjoy life. I continually have to remind myself that Julia and I did not arrive in Vancouver by forcing doors open, but by waiting upon God for his timing. Now that we're in Vancouver, why would the process of planting a church be any different?

I am praying that God would birth true humility in my heart and remove the stubborn root of pride that runs deep within my soul. I so desperately want to be more like Jesus: more compassionate, humble, self-giving and loving. I'm not. I need to be transformed for the sake of his glory. I have to embrace entering the kingdom crippled, humbled and contrite. Most of all, I need to thank God for his great compassion, mercy and love shown to us in Jesus.

Mission Week
Imagine a group of 50 students invading the three main universities in Rome with the good news of the gospel! This is what took place from March 15-19 during a missions week organized by the Gruppi Biblici Universitari (GBU) in Rome. We’ve had several different activities during the week, from an open air debate with an atheist, to apologetic forums, to one to one conversations, to a movie discussion, open mic night, and even distribution of Nutella with a New Testament! It was maybe one of the most encouraging weeks since we’ve arrived in Italy.

For example, 180 students came to the open air debate, 120 to another debate, 50 to the movie discussion, etc. At the end of each event we gave out an evaluation form in which we asked if the person would be interested in being part of a six-week course to explore Christianity, and 80 students said yes! Praise God! Since then we’ve been having 3 groups with these seekers (one at each university) and many coffee appointments to talk about God. Inla, a law student, has visited our church and said that she wants to come back. Leonardo, a philosophy student, said he wants to have a weekly “coffee appointment” to talk about his questions about God. Andrea, a political science student, not only is coming every week to the Bible study, but invited four of his friends to came along with their questions. Please pray that God will be very present in the lives of these students who are seeking him and that He could use us in this process.

Debates
The highlight of the mission week were the two debates with atheists in which I took part. The first took place at a literary cafè next to Roma Tre University, where I debated the president of the Italian union of atheists and agnostics, and the second debate took place in the open air at Sapienza University, which is Europe’s largest university. 300 students attended the debates, and we could see their real desire to interact and ask honest questions. Many have joined one of the three seeker Bible studies we are running at the universities. Both debates were filmed, and you can watch them at youtube.com/cesanlorenzo.

Church
After three monthly services at the end of 2011, our church officially launched with weekly services on January 15th. It has been thrilling to see this community take shape, and the many non-Christians and new Christians who are attending. A solid group has formed of about 40 people, and there is a constant stream of newcomers who are visiting and joining the church. “It was the intelligent, mature church I was looking for,” said Giancarlo, who found us through the church’s website. “Thank you for caring for people like me who see a dim light in the horizon.” Besides the Sunday service, we meet for pizza and a Bible study on Wednesday evenings, and for special activities once a month, like cleaning up the neighborhood’s park and celebrating a “Return to the Origins” service at the catacombs where the first Christians met.

Please join us in thanking God for an encouraging week, and pray that these new friends would come to understand the gospel clearly!

René Breuel
cesanlorenzo.it
wonderingfair.com

[Continued from Part 1]

Ross Douthat’s Bad Religion attributes Christianity’s decline in the U.S. to: 1) the political polarization which has sucked churches into its vortex, 2) the sexual revolution that has undermined the plausibility of Christian faith and practice for an entire generation, 3) the globalization that has made the exclusive claims of Christianity seem highly oppressive, 4) the materialism and consumerism that undermines commitment to anything higher than the self, and 5) the alienation of the cultural elites and culture-shaping institutions from Christianity.

What can we do about the decline of Christianity—if anything? This question has literally triggered an entire generation of books and blogs. Douthat’s book is mainly descriptive and critical. He even admits that the book was “written in a spirit of pessimism.” Yet he rightly responds that for any Christian, “pessimism should always be provisional.” So in his last chapter he very briefly proposes four factors that could lead to the “Recovery of Christianity.”

First, he speaks of the “postmodern opportunity”—the same relativism and rootlessness that has weakened the church is also proving exhausting rather than liberating to many in our society. Even in the academy, postmodern theory is now widely seen as being in eclipse and there is no “next big thing" on the horizon. Douthat wonders about the possibility of a kind of revolution from above, that is, a revival of Christianity among cultural elites.

Second, he notes the opposite impulse at work, the “Benedict option” being put forward by many—a new monasticism that does not seek engagement with culture but rather the formation of counter-cultural communities that “stand apart…and inspire by example rather than by engagement.” Ross suggests that these first two measures should not be seen as completely opposed and, indeed, could benefit by being paired with one another, otherwise engagement can become accommodation and being an "example" can become separatism and sectarianism.

His third factor he calls “the next Christendom.” By this he means that the explosively growing Christian churches of the former Third World could evangelize the West. Under the first two proposals Ross can name some existing efforts that hold promise, but this factor is much more than a dream. In European and North American cities there are already literally thousands of new churches and missions beginning under the leadership of African, Latin American, and Asian Christians.

His last proposal is that “an age of diminished [economic] expectations”—along with the devastation of the sexual revolution and the exhaustion of postmodern rootlessness—could lead to the masses again looking to Christianity for hope and help. A church that could welcome them, he warns, would have to have three qualities. First, it would have to be political without being partisan. That is, it would have to equip all its members to be culturally engaged through vocation and civic involvement, without identifying corporately with one political party. Second, it would have to be confessional yet ecumenical. That is, the church would have to be fully orthodox within its theological and ecclesiastical tradition, yet not narrow and harsh toward other kinds of Christians. It should be especially desirous of cooperation with non-Western Christian leaders and churches. Third, the church would not only have to preach the Word faithfully, but also be committed to beauty and sanctity, the arts, and human rights for all. In this brief section he sounds a lot like Lesslie Newbigin and James Hunter who have described a church that can have a “missionary encounter with Western culture.”

What do we think of his proposals? It is worth noting that each of these positive measures takes aim at one or two of the factors that have led to decline. The Benedictine option seeks to break the hold of political polarization on the church. The postmodern opportunity aims to re-engage the cultural elites. The next Christendom has already strongly undermined the contention that Christianity is just an extension of Western culture and imperialism. And if there is an “age of diminished expectations,” it could erode both the materialism and even the sexual licentiousness (which always works best in the midst of material plenty) that has undermined faith.

But how successful will these be? I don’t know, but I think these are the right strategies and responses to make. Why? First, each of the proposals addresses one of the five barriers to faith in our culture, and so we should at least attempt to deal with them. Second, though treated briefly, these are essentially the same ideas that others such as Newbigin and Hunter have proposed. That confirms them in my mind. Third, as many readers know, I simply think these are features of a Biblical ministry.

Near the very end of this book, Ross Douthat (whom I have not met as of this writing) very kindly used our Redeemer Presbyterian Church as a good example of some of the things he was proposing for the church in our time. When I read it I was startled, then humbled, then strongly overwhelmed by a sense that, for all God’s kindness to us over the years, we at Redeemer were so far from realizing our goals and aims. It actually discouraged me for several days until I noticed a little quote by G.K. Chesterton that Douthat cites near the end of his book. In The Everlasting Man Chesterton surveys the many forces over the last 2000 years that threatened and should have destroyed Christianity. “’Time and again,’ Chesterton noted, ‘the Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs.’ But each time, ‘it was the dog that died.’”

All quotes taken from Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (Free Press, 2012)

Gloria Furman is a wife, mother, writer, photographer, doula, and follower of Jesus Christ who lives in Dubai, where her husband Dave pastors Redeemer Church of Dubai. She is currently writing a book for Crossway on applying the gospel in the mundane, based on her blog Domestic Kingdom.

“Tell me that story again about Jesus when he talked to a woman.” My friend and I were walking around a shopping mall when she asked this question. We were window-shopping, too.

For a minute I was surprised. I remember that it took me weeks to muster the courage (or rather, submit to the Spirit’s leading!) to talk with her about Jesus.

There are several reasons that I had been holding back.

First, we were so different. We couldn’t have been more different, I thought. She was raised in a culture that was completely foreign to mine. She practiced a religion that explicitly rejected mine.

Second, I was intimidated because of my lack of knowledge. I knew that I didn’t know half as much about her religion and culture as I could have. I knew that she knew that, too.

Third, I was ashamed that I had been silent for so long. I knew that said something about my affection for the gospel and then I felt even more shame.

These thoughts preoccupied me and often kept me from witnessing until a wise woman said something to me that was like a bucket of ice water on my soul. “They wear their religion on their sleeves. They expect that you do, too.”

That was a wake-up call for me.

Of course my friends here expect me to talk about my faith in Jesus. They already assume that I am a Christian because of the color of my skin and where I am from. Sometimes this stereotype of Westerners all being Christian works against us—for example, because of this pervasive stereotype, every political figure and every actor they see in a Western movie represents “Christianity.” The faith represents indulgence, gluttony, indiscretion, and immorality to many.

However, in this case the stereotype helped me—she already assumed that I follow Christ; no need to “break the ice” on spiritual talk. I resolved by God’s grace to open my mouth and speak to my friend about Jesus. I resolved by God’s grace to walk in holiness and blow away all of her preconceived ideas of Christians.

Revelation 5:9 says, “And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.’” Jesus is worthy to receive the reward of his suffering. He is worthy to receive my worship, and the worship of my friends. When I remain silent about Christ, I miss out on the joy and privilege of glorifying God by my words. I deny my friends the opportunity to participate in worshiping the Risen Christ with me.

When I began talking with my friends about Jesus I found out something encouraging on a very practical level. All three of my major hesitations were non-issues.

Each of my friends were delighted and honored to be friends with someone different from them. I was introduced to their family members as, “My Christian friend.” At gatherings some people seemed to get in line to introduce themselves to me, stating that they had heard all about me. The assumption that I would be ostracized because of my ethnicity and religion simply wasn’t the case.

My friends also understood that I would not know everything about their culture. My cursory knowledge of their religion was not a hindrance to them. In all of my conversations with friends about religion, not a single person has asked me to explain something from the perspective of their religion. They all want to know what Christians believe and what the Bible says.

Of course, my working knowledge of their faith is helpful because it helps me to ask them good questions. I continue to learn what I can about what they believe. But any questions I have fielded from the particular people I serve have only ever been about what is contained in the Bible. In this regard, it has actually helped me to grow deeper in my knowledge of God’s word for the good of my own soul and so that I can communicate it effectively to others.

And lastly, the shame that I exhibited over the foolishness of the cross was dealt with on the cross. The gospel says that Jesus’ blood covers my sin—that means his sacrifice covers my sin of feeling ashamed of the gospel. God’s grace is amazing. Jesus said that when he is lifted up from the earth then he will draw all people to himself (John 12:32). The cross is God’s chosen instrument to acquire salvation for his people. Just as Jesus drew me to himself through his death and resurrection, he will draw some of my beloved friends as well. The gospel is God’s power for salvation, and he will wield it by his sovereign grace.

Peter, the apostle who denied Christ three times, remind us of this grace, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pet. 2:24).

This is the kind of grace worth sharing with others who have never heard. We should let the grace of God blow us away as we seek to share it with others.

I always marvel at the amazing ways that God works when I recall that particular conversation with my friend. Since then it seems like the only thing we talk about when we get together is Jesus.

Lord willing, someday we’ll kneel at the throne of grace side-by-side, marveling together at God’s grace in Christ for all eternity.

3. Movement over expansion

It’s a good thing that churches seek out ways to grow. After all, a local church is a living organism, and healthy organisms not only grow but reproduce themselves. But to think of growth in terms of a larger movement throughout a city or region instead of the result of a well planned expansion strategy for your church is not only to think less imperialistically, but to think larger rather than smaller.

I have found that churches that “think movement” envision the role they play alongside other churches as the kingdom of God goes forth in their region or city. They have switched from “How can we grow in influence in this city?” to “How can the Kingdom of God grow in influence in this city?” They refuse to be tribal, territorial, arrogant, and dependent on the strength of their "brand." They realize that the power lies not in a specific brand but in a deep comprehension of the Gospel present in the church at large in a region. There is always a collaboration (with other local churches and parachurch ministries) influenced by an impetus to flesh out the implications of the Gospel for ministry among their neighbors. They see this vision as something to be shared and owned not just by one church, or a few sitting at the top of the clerical ladder, but by everyone.

These churches are not necessarily concerned with the short term success of their particular local church (like companies that are always squeezing the bottom line at the end of each quarter), but with the long term success of the Gospel in their city/ region.

4. Flat over hierarchical

This last shift is closely related to the previous one, because a movement by nature has to be free. Missiologist David J. Bosch said that: “The difference between an institution and a movement is that one crosses boundaries while the other guards them.” According to Bosch, movements thrive when power is distributed as fast as possible. It cannot afford not to give away power. On the other hand, institutions will logically withhold power for self preservation. The hierarchical structure, therefore, is the greatest invention to play the defense game at its best. The confidence of an institution is backed on policies and those who hold offices while the movement’s confidence is based on trust among all who share a common vision. They see each other not just as co-workers but as friends and peers. In “The Spider and the Starfish,” Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom write, “It’s easy to rebel against a boss, it’s much harder to dismiss your peers.” The environment that is forged becomes one where there’s a high level of freedom but also a high level of accountability.

I have personally found that this is not only a highly effective way to produce but a very healthy environment to be a part of. It is extremely freeing to distribute the pressure in a way that the load of the ministry becomes bearable and consequently sustainable. The flatter the structure, the more it relies on collective intelligence, the more it stimulates creativity and the more it restrains large egos. Moreover, it allows boldness and compassion, truth and love to shape the outcome of the mission.

Traducido del artículo original en inglés por Timothy Keller.

<<Parte 3: Predica a Cristo desde Cada Texto

Las afecciones vs. las emociones
Se ha dicho que el corazón no es tanto el centro de las emociones como el centro de control de la personalidad de uno, en donde tomas las decisiones sobre la dirección de tu vida. Nadie lo expuso en mayor detalle que Jonathan Edwards, y una de sus contribuciones más perdurables es sus Afecciones Religiosas [Religious Affections]. En vez de aceptar la división típica occidental de la voluntad versus las emociones, Edwards le dio un lugar más central al corazón y habló de las “afecciones del corazón”, expresión con la que se refería a “la inclinación del alma” o lo que nos gusta o no nos gusta, lo que amamos o rechazamos.

Las afecciones están, por supuesto, relacionadas con las emociones, pero no son la misma cosa. Por ejemplo, sentimos la emoción del enojo cuando nos insultan, porque hemos puesto nuestra afección muy plenamente en nuestra propia reputación, elogio público o aprobación. Las afecciones son lo que Edwards llama los “ejercicios más vigorosos y sensitivos” del corazón, y en la Biblia a las verdaderas afecciones religiosas se les llama “los frutos del Espíritu” (Gálatas 5:22-26).

La contribución de Edwards es especialmente importante respecto a la unidad de las facultades. Él se negó a enfrentar el entendimiento con las afecciones. Las afecciones de gracia asoman solo cuando una persona posee un entendimiento espiritual de la verdadera naturaleza de Dios. En otras palabras, si una persona dice: “Yo sé que Dios se ocupa de mí, pero aun así estoy paralizada por el temor”, Edwards respondería que no sabes en realidad que Dios te cuida, de otro modo la afección o confianza y esperanza se erigirían dentro de ti.

Práctico vs. Hermoso
Ahora podemos ver lo importante que es esto para los predicadores. Si Edwards está en lo correcto, no hay a fin de cuentas oposición alguna entre la “cabeza” y el “corazón”. No debemos suponer, por ejemplo, que si nuestros oyentes son materialistas ellos solamente tienen que ser exhortados a dar más. Aunque la culpa puede ayudar con la ofrenda del día, no alterará los patrones de vida de la persona. Si la gente es materialista y poco generosa, significa que no han entendido verdaderamente cómo Jesús, siendo rico, se hizo pobre por ellos. No han comprendido de veras lo que significa tener todas las riquezas y tesoros en Cristo. Significa que sus afecciones están haciéndolos aferrarse a las riquezas materiales como fuente de seguridad, esperanza y belleza. Por lo tanto en la predicación debemos presentar a Cristo en la forma particular que reemplace el control de las afecciones que están compitiendo. Esto nos lleva no solo a una argumentación intelectual sino a la presentación de la belleza de Cristo. Edwards definió al cristiano nominal como alguien que encuentra a Cristo práctico, mientras que un verdadero cristiano es el que encuentra a Cristo hermoso por lo que es en Sí mismo.

Este entendimiento afectó profundamente la propia predicación de Edwards. En uno de sus sermones él insistió en que “la razón por la que los hombres ya no consideran las advertencias sobre un castigo futuro es porque no les parece algo real”. Este era, para Edwards, el principal problema espiritual y el principal propósito de la predicación. El objetivo de nuestra predicación es no solo hacer la verdad clara sino hacerla verdadera. El Dr. Martyn Lloyds-Jones, en un artículo sobre cómo impactó Edwards en su vida, escribió lo siguiente:

El primer y principal objeto de la predicación no es solo dar información. Es, como dice Edwards, producir una impresión. Es la impresión en el tiempo lo que cuenta, aun más de lo que puedes recordar posteriormente. En este aspecto Edwards es, en un sentido, crítico respecto a lo que era una prominente costumbre y práctica puritana. El padre puritano catequizaba e interrogaba a los niños sobre lo que el predicador había dicho. Edwards, en mi opinión, tiene la verdadera noción sobre la predicación. No es primordialmente para impartir información; y mientras estás escribiendo tus notas puedes estar perdiendo algo del impacto del Espíritu. Como predicadores no debemos olvidarlo. Deberíamos decirle a nuestra gente que leyeran ciertos libros por su cuenta y obtuvieran información allí. El asunto de la predicación es hacer que tal conocimiento viva.

Traer las verdades de regreso al hogar
Este concepto no es simplemente innovación por parte de Edwards. La Biblia en sí no es una serie de ensayos didácticos sino una enorme colección de diversas formas literarias: historia, poesía, drama, visiones apocalípticas, todas formas de traer las verdades al hogar, al corazón.

A modo de ejemplo, un tema bíblico recurrente es nuestra tendencia pecadora de “olvidar” al Señor y nuestra necesidad de “recordarlo” a Él, sus leyes y mandamientos. Este no es un tema de intelecto e información. El problema es que la información que ya conocemos se vuelve “irreal” para nosotros sin las continuas ceremonias de renovación del pacto.

En 2 Pedro 1:8-9 leemos que debemos crecer en bondad, dominio propio, perseverancia, amabilidad y amor, y que la persona que no está creciendo en esto “se olvida de que ha sido limpiado de sus antiguos pecados”. Pedro no dice que la falta de crecimiento en el carácter es simplemente una falta de fuerza de voluntad o compromiso, ni tampoco aconseja a sus lectores que lo intenten con más fuerza. En cambio, les dice que han olvidado que fueron lavados de sus pecados. Esto no puede querer decir que la gente había perdido una conciencia mental de que habían sido perdonados. Debe querer decir, como afirma Edwards, que habían perdido el “sentido del corazón” del costo de la gracia. No era espiritualmente real para ellos, y no fueron afectados por esa verdad.

Un segundo ejemplo es el Salmo 103, el cual no es en realidad una oración sino más bien un sermón para el alma. David le habla a su propio corazón: “Alaba, alma mía, al SEÑOR, y no olvides ninguno de sus beneficios”. David sabe que las glorias y los beneficios de la salvación se han vuelto irreales para su corazón. Sabe que tiende a olvidar. El Salmo 103 es un ejemplo de lo que 2 Pedro 1:8-9 dice que debemos hacer. Debemos predicarnos el evangelio a nosotros mismos. Debemos volver al evangelio y hacerlo real en nuestros corazones.

Enciende la imaginación
El objeto de la predicación no es agitar sentimientos sino iluminar la imaginación con la verdad. La imaginación o ilustración se refiere a la habilidad del predicador de evocar imágenes mentales en la mente del oyente. Por ejemplo, cuando usamos la palabra “justificación”, no se evoca ninguna imagen mental en la mente del oyente. Pero cuando hablamos de “nuestro abogado apelando a su obra consumada ante el tribunal de Dios”, hemos generado una imagen en la mente de la audiencia. Estamos encendiendo la imaginación y entibiando el corazón.

En 2 Corintios 8 y 9, Pablo nos da un notable ejemplo de lo que hemos estado hablando. Él quiere que la gente dé una ofrenda para los pobres, pero no pone la presión directamente sobre la voluntad (“yo soy un apóstol y esta es su obligación para conmigo”) o la presión sobre las emociones (historias acerca de lo mucho que sufren los pobres). En cambio, Pablo vívida y memorablemente dice: “Ya conocen la gracia de nuestro Señor Jesucristo, que aunque era rico, por causa de ustedes se hizo pobre, para que mediante su pobreza ustedes llegaran a ser ricos”. De este modo, los está llamando a recordar (“ya conocen la gracia de nuestro Señor Jesucristo”) y usa una imagen poderosa, trayendo la salvación de Jesús a la esfera de la riqueza y la pobreza. Después los lleva a una rememoración espiritual del evangelio que les pide que piensen en la costosa gracia de Jesús hasta que sean transformados en personas generosas por la belleza del evangelio en sus corazones.

Si has estado predicando (o incluso escuchando sermones predicados) por bastante tiempo, sabes que no puedes apuntar al corazón del oyente sin que el evangelio haga su obra de nuevo en tu propio corazón cada vez que predicas. Llámate a recordar el evangelio; dirige el evangelio a tus propis afecciones primero y estarás bien encaminado para alcanzar a los demás.

Ross Douthat’s new book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, is very helpful for Christians seeking to understand why the Church is in decline in the U.S. Before the book’s publication I gave a high-level look at its basic theses. In these next posts, I’ll share more details of Ross’s proposals and interact somewhat with his material.

Ross Douthat speaks of “five major catalysts” for the decline. First, he points to the political polarization between Left and Right that drew many churches into it. Mainline Protestants and some Catholics were pulled into line with the political positions of liberalism, while the evangelical churches (and again, some Catholics) became instruments of conservative political policy. He writes: “Issues that were swiftly turned to partisan ends by politicians in both parties…divided churches against one another as no controversies had since slavery.” As Robert Putnam has demonstrated in American Grace, this has greatly weakened the credibility of Christianity in the culture. Since so many parts of the Christian church are now strongly tied to one end of the political spectrum or the other, it means each branch of Christianity can be dismissed by a majority of the population (moderates and those on the other end of the spectrum) as partisan pawns. It has been particularly damaging to see white evangelicals voting overwhelmingly in the opposite way as black evangelicals. This has all given rise to a broadly held perception that religion is really not about God and the Bible but about politics.

We should keep in mind that in the 1950s, the two great enemies were the fascism of Hitler and the Communism of Stalin and Mao—both movements that had severely persecuted their national churches. Marxism was of course intensely atheist. And so in the average American’s mind, religion and Christianity were associated with freedom and democracy while secularism and atheism were not. Today, post 9-11, that has been completely reversed. In the average American’s mind religion and fundamentalism are associated with political extremism and terrorism. They are now seen as the enemies of pluralistic, western society.

Second, he points to the sexual revolution and the birth control pill that made it possible. “Before the sexual revolution,” Douthat writes, “a rigorous ethic of chastity and monogamy had seemed self-evidently commonsensical even to many non-Christians.” Why? The fear of “illegitimacy, abandonment, and disease.” But the pill changed all this. “Over the course of a decade or so, a large swath of America decided that two millennia of Christian teaching on marriage and sexuality were simply out of date.” The arguments against the traditional ethic had been around for centuries, but the hard reality was that sex produced babies and so the only really safe sex was married sex. The pill swept that argument away. Now far more people wanted (and were free) to believe these arguments for extra-marital sex because of “the new sexual possibilities” that the birth control pill afforded.

The importance of the sexual revolution for the loss of Christianity’s credibility can’t be over-estimated. For centuries individuals have justified and rationalized sex outside of marriage, but this had never occurred on a culture-wide basis as it now did in the West. Today there are enormous numbers of professing Christians, including card-carrying evangelical believers, who simply have stopped practicing the Christian sex ethic. It is seen as unrealistic and even perverse by thousands of people who identify as believers. This is massively discrediting and makes Biblical faith implausible to hundreds of millions both inside and outside the church.

The new sexual view of the world is one of the main barriers today to belief in historic Christianity. Most apologetics books (including mine!) give a chapter to each of the main objections to the faith, and yet few address what is almost the number 1 “defeater” for young skeptics—the regressive and supposedly unrealistic Christian view of sex and homosexuality.

The third factor has been the dawn of globalization and the impression that Christianity was imperialistically "western". After World War II, the "Third World" de-colonialized—dozens of former Western colonies were given their freedom. “To celebrate the new global civilization was to celebrate the eclipse of European dominance…[and] to cast a cold eye across the many sins of Western civilization.” This occurred during the 1960s through the 1980s with the rise of academic studies of colonialism and western imperialism, through books about U.S. genocide toward Native Americans (e.g. Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee), through discovery of southern white churches’ resistance to Civil Rights (e.g. The 1988 film Mississippi Burning), and to the uncovering of the history of the European church’s support of anti-Semitism in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust. Meanwhile “the more the world was swept up in the drama of decolonialization and Third World empowerment, the more tainted Christianity seemed by its centuries of association with the now-discredited imperial projects of the European West.” Out of “Christian guilt” over all this, the number of professing Christians who were willing to say that their faith is the one, true faith plummeted. Globalization has seemed to support those who attack Christianity’s claims to uniqueness.

The fourth factor in Christianity’s decline, according to Douthat, is the enormous growth in the kind of material prosperity that generally works against faith. This explanation was striking to me personally. Most religious-cultural analysts do not go here, but I found this argument persuasive. John Wesley was famous for his insistence that whenever a society (or a portion of society) becomes more wealthy, Christianity loses its power. Why? One underrated reason for the decline in the quality and quantity of those pursuing the ministry as a vocation is that other professions now provide far more wealth and status (as they did not 50 years ago). Another is that Biblical Christianity actually contains a very trenchant, powerful critique of greed and acquisition, as it does of sexual immorality. Just as the sexual revolution makes it hard for people to stomach one part of Biblical wisdom, so a highly materialistic society makes it hard to stomach the other. In addition, the consumerism of our culture is so pervasive and powerful that it has shaped American Christians’ attitude toward the church—namely, it makes the church irrelevant. Americans are conditioned to think of themselves as customers of goods and services, and churches as vendors that can be used or discarded on the basis of cost-benefit analysis. Douthat adds that in a materialistic society people are extremely mobile and they tend to commute long-distances to work. “Religious community proved harder to sustain in the new commuter society than it had been in an America of small towns and urban neighborhoods.” That’s right. In a society of increasing wealth, human community becomes less important for sustaining your life. Both church and neighborhood becomes superfluous.

The fifth and final factor in Christianity’s decline is the loss of the elites and the academic and cultural institutions they control. In some ways all of the other four factors have had their most powerful impact on what Christopher Lasch called the "knowledge classes"—the most educated and affluent, and this in turn magnifies secularization, because this class controls the media, newspapers, and networks, the academy, publishing, the arts, the most powerful and rich foundations, and much of the government and business world. Here Ross sounds a lot like Lasch (The Revolt of the Elites: And the Betrayal of Democracy) or James Hunter’s To Change the World. He argues that the educated and affluent have “gained the most from the new sexual freedoms and…suffered the least from their darker repercussions.” They were more cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, and well-traveled, and so they held more intensely to the view that religion was culturally narrow and imperialistic. The result is that the cultural elites have not merely “rejected” the faith. “Orthodoxy was less rejected than dismissed, reflexively, as something unworthy of an educated person’s intellect and interest.”
________________________
All quotes taken from Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (Free Press, 2012) pp.65-81

Next blog: Ross Douthat on the Character of Christianity’s Decline, Part 2

[This was originally posted on Felipe's blog.]

Despite the growing number of megachurches in America, the truth of the matter is that Christianity is in decline in our culture. I’ve heard Alan Hirsch explain the phenomenon as one of reconfiguration due to a lack of understanding of the true nature and mission of the Church (with a big “C”). While it's clear that mainline Protestantism is in steep decline, I believe that the megachurch model also has its days numbered because at its core lies an industrial mentality that our culture is now moving away from.

All of this has led me to rethink the very way in which my church values and does things. I have been reevaluating practices through a theological and cultural filter fueled by a desire to see a more biblical and sustainable form of Christianity in our cities. What you’re about to read are raw ideas (in no way conclusive) in terms of paradigm shifts. There are four main shifts: 1) incarnation over innovation, 2) environments over processes, 3) movements over expansion, and 4) flat over hierarchical. I’ll write about the first two on this post and leave the last two for next week.

1. Incarnation over innovation
I feel that there is a large preoccupation nowadays with innovation. Awards have been given to innovative churches, and pastors are praised for being “innovative.” There’s nothing wrong with trying to think outside the box when it comes to contextualization, but no innovative method will ever trump incarnation. I mean, this is God’s own method of addressing our need! It’s what differentiates Christianity from all other religions. Coming down to the level of people has always been Christianity’s most innovative way to contextualize the gospel to the real needs of humanity. In fact, I would say that our level of innovation is always proportionate to the depth of our incarnation. In other words, aim at incarnation and you will always get innovation.

2. Environments over processes
In the last 10 years there has been a great emphasis on churches developing discipleship pathways and processes. Processes and pathways are not bad things per se. In fact, having something in place will help move people horizontally and mobilize them towards your vision, organize your institution, or generate growth — at least on a surface level.

The problem with this methodology is that it resembles the American industrial model of assembly lines far more than the New Testament church. The thing with having a "process" is that it tends to compartmentalize discipleship by rushing people through stages that are focused on one specific thing. To carry out the metaphor, there’s a stage where you’re bottled, another where you are labeled, another where you are packaged, and another where you are delivered.

Environments are more holistic. They are spaces where you’re exercising a variety of practices with different intensities depending on the environmental context. You can see what I’m talking about in Acts 2:42 where the first Christians were living out the four components (the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer) in the context of bigger gatherings, smaller gatherings, and while ministering to neighbors. Thinking in terms of environments for discipleship is acknowledging that people should not just be moved horizontally towards an end goal, but in every direction at once (up, down, sideways, in, out). Such spaces allow the dynamism of the Spirit to be at work while helping to preserve the organic nature of the body of Christ. This is the perfect recipe for robust discipleship, which in the end is the the type of sustainable growth we ought to be looking for. In the industrial model, once a product goes through all the necessary stages and is finally assembled, it’s sold, then consumed — a feeling common to those who have been through a “process.”

More on the next two paradigm shifts next week.

Traducido del artículo original en inglés por Timothy Keller.

<< Parte 2: Predica gracia, no moralismo

El evangelio es tan rico que no puedes saberlo de memoria

Hoy en día todos entienden que los predicadores deben poder poner el pasaje individual dentro del contexto de toda la Biblia y predicar a Cristo desde cada parte de ella. Aunque soy un feroz partidario de esta visión, existe el peligro de que nuestro predicar a Cristo desde todo texto se convierta en un simple ejercicio intelectual y rutinario que meramente ensaye la totalidad de la teología bíblica, que pueda empezar a sonar igual cada semana y que pueda omitir una aplicación al corazón del oyente. El objetivo del predicador no es intelectual o siquiera abstracto; en cambio, la meta es cambiar los corazones con el evangelio.

El profesor del Antiguo Testamento, Tremper Longman, compara la lectura de la Biblia con mirar una película, en la cual la impactante conclusión es tan pasmosa que obliga al espectador a retroceder y re interpretar todo lo que ya ha visto. La segunda vez, ahora que ya conoces el final, no puedes evitar interpretar cada declaración y cada encuentro en los términos del final de la película. Ya no puedes no pensar más en el final cuando miras el comienzo y la parte media. El final arroja luz sobre todo lo que sucedió anteriormente.

De igual manera, una vez que sabes que todas las líneas de todas las historias y todos los clímax de los temas inter canónicos convergen en Cristo, simplemente no puedes no ver que todos los textos son acerca de Jesús. Por ejemplo:

- Jesús es el verdadero y mejor Adán que, aunque fue asesinado siendo inocente, pasó la prueba en el jardín y su obediencia ahora es imputada a favor nuestro (1 Cor. 15).
- Jesús es el verdadero y mejor Abel que, aunque fue asesinado siendo inocente, su sangre clama para nuestra absolución y no para nuestra condenación (Heb. 12:24)
- Jesús es el verdadero y mejor Abraham, que respondió al llamado de Dios de dejar todo lo que le resultaba confortable y conocido por pura obediencia a Dios.
- Jesús es el verdadero y mejor Isaac, que no solo fue ofrecido por su padre en el monte, sino que finalmente fue sacrificado por todos nosotros. Dios le dijo a Abraham: “Ahora sé que temes a Dios, porque ni siquiera te has negado a darme a tu único hijo”. Entonces podemos decirle a Dios: “Ahora sé que me amas, porque no te has negado a darme a tu único Hijo a quien amas”.
- Jesús es el verdadero y mejor Jacob, que luchó con Dios y arrebató el soplo de justicia que merecíamos. Ahora nosotros, al igual que Jacob, solo recibimos las heridas de gracia que nos levantan y disciplinan.
- Jesús es el verdadero y mejor José, que se sentó a la derecha del rey y usó su poder para perdonar y salvar a los que lo habían traicionado y vendido.
- Jesús es el verdadero y mejor Moisés, que se puso en la brecha entre el pueblo y Dios, quien es mediador de un nuevo pacto (Heb. 3)
- Jesús es el verdadero y mejor Job, el sufriente inocente que luego intercede por sus amigos necios (Job 42).
- Jesús es el verdadero y mejor David, cuya victoria contra Goliat se imputó a su pueblo, aunque ellos nunca habían levantado ni una piedra para lograrlo por sí mismos.
- Jesús es el verdadero y mejor Ester, que no solo se arriesgó a perder su palacio terrenal sino uno celestial, y que no solo puso en juego su vida sino que la entregó, para salvar a su pueblo.
- Jesús es el verdadero y mejor Jonás que fue arrojado en medio de la tormenta para que el resto de la embarcación pudiera salvarse.

En resumidas cuentas, hay dos maneras de leer la Biblia: o es todo acerca de mí o es acerca de Jesús. O es consejo al oyente o son noticias del Señor. O es acerca de lo que debo hacer o de lo que Dios ya ha hecho.

Jesús es el verdadero templo, el verdadero profeta, el verdadero sacerdote, el verdadero rey, el verdadero sacrificio, el Cordero, la Luz, el Pan. La Biblia no es acerca de nosotros; es acerca de Él.

En 1 Pedro 1:10-13 el evangelio es maravillosamente descrito como algo de lo cual aun los ángeles “anhelan contemplar esas cosas”. Después de todos estos siglos, ¿no tendrían ellos archisabido el evangelio? ¿Por qué anhelarían contemplar la salvación de Dios? Porque es infinitamente rica. Hay implicancias, aplicaciones y facetas interminables. Nosotros estamos simplemente arañando la superficie.

>>Parte 4: Apunta al corazón, no a las emociones ni siquiera a la mente

Editor’s Note: In 2010, we posted a letter from Andres Garza, our Network leader for the church planting movement in Northern Mexico, regarding the recent escalation of drug-related violence there. Since then more civilians, including US missionaries, have been killed, and a shootout occurred right in front of Andres’ house. Below is a recent letter he sent to the U.S. churches who partner with them.

Scott Craig (Short-Term and Logistics Development)

Editor's note: Mexico, the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, has made great strides in both economic development and democratic freedoms over the past 15 years. However, an escalation of drug-related violence since 2006 has affected the major urban areas, especially in Northern Mexico near the US border. This letter was sent by Andres Garza, a church planting movement leader in Monterrey, to the US churches who support them.

March 23, 2010

The Lord has called us to serve him here, in the city, for the city, and with the city. For many years Monterrey, Saltillo and Ciudad Victoria have not had problems with drug trafficking. Unfortunately, many incidents have happened in these cities in the past few months, as we have been hit by organized crime.

Because of these new problems, the US Department of State, the US media and so forth have sent travel warnings about what is happening. After these warnings, many of our supporters have raised questions about security issues.

What should be our attitude towards these situations? Should we stay in the city? Should we keep inviting more mission teams to come? Are we being responsible with our supporters? Are we being responsible for our families? These and other security questions have come to us, and as human beings of flesh and blood, we need to ask these questions to learn and to grow in our ministry. We do not have all the answers or understand why all of these things are happening.

As a team, we know that there are two ways to react to the difficult times we are facing in our city. A very "spiritual" person might say, "We shouldn't worry, since we are Christians serving the Lord, God must take care of us and nothing is going to happen to us." On the other side, there are the "realistic" people that in the midst of their fears would say, "You have to decide what is best for you. You do not have to live in a city with all of these problems. You can protect yourself or stay inside your home and stop doing unnecessary things like visiting people, going to church, and so forth."

We have learned a third way to think in regard of this situation in our city. We are not to be "spiritual" and close our eyes to what is happening, but neither are we to be pragmatists who believe that we have to leave the city or hide from the city, and depend on our own decisions.

First of all, we see in Acts 4:27-29 that crime and violence happened in the city where the saints lived, and the reaction of the disciples was very strong. They did not close their eyes to what was happening, but they knew the biggest problem was that their fears could become a stumbling block to spreading the word of the Lord, and they prayed to be bold to keep preaching his word. They were sure about their call and praying for boldness was their first reaction. This is what we have started to do, and we are asking you to pray for us.

Secondly, we see in Jeremiah 29:7 that we are called to seek the peace of the city. We are called to be a renewed city in the broken city, to plant churches in cities where crime, drugs and so forth are the normal state of living for some people. In Tim Keller's writings about Jeremiah 29 he makes two great statements:

1. Have a positive view of the city. The Lord will bring judgment to the city if they do not repent, however, we are not to close our eyes to the brokenness in the city, nor are we to leave or hide from it.
2. Keep a vision for the city. It is in these difficult times where we really need to confirm our vision for church planting in cities. We need to accelerate our work to plant more churches and city ministries to fight the spiritual warfare through the gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to go to the heart of the people, the culture, the society, education and so forth, and to bring the gospel to the center of these arenas.

Do we need to be spiritual towards these situations? Yes. Do we need to be realistic about what is happening? Yes, of course. But our responsibility towards our call is to comprehend the purpose of our Lord in the midst of these situations and we are still living part of the redemptive history the Lord is developing. We need to trust the Lord with WISDOM and also to understand what is happening to act with CAUTION in accordance with the supreme call of the Lord to be and to serve in these cities.

We are an extension of your ministry of word and deed. Coming to any of these three cities is a great way to serve the Lord, however, your prayers and support are two other great ways to keep doing the ministry of the word in Northern Mexico. You can be sure that we are committed to serve the kingdom of God and by his grace we will continue serving.

We, the Northern Mexico MTW Team, want to thank you so much for your great desire to serve in our partnership to plant churches and train leaders in the 27 largest cities in the region. We thank you for your commitment to work with Christ in His promise to build his church, to become a new community into the cities we are working.

Please, keep praying for us and for this ministry. God bless you all.

Andres Garza
Team Leader
Monterrey, Mexico

agarzaayala @ aol.com

I had the pleasure of reading the manuscript of Ross Douthat’s new book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (The Free Press, 2012), slated to be released April 17 of this year. I am going to honor the publisher’s request that I not quote or review the book until it is published because it is still being edited. Nevertheless, I want to interact with Ross’s basic ideas because I think they are provocative and because this is essential reading for all Christians seeking to understand Christianity’s relationship to culture in the U.S.

Everyone agrees that our culture has become far more secular and hostile to Christian faith over the past two generations, but what are the factors causing that change? Many in the evangelical and Reformed world see the decline starting in the early 20th century when most of the mainline denominations and their affiliated academic institutions and foundations fell into the hands of theological modernists and liberals. But it can’t be as simple as that. In his first chapter Douthat looks at four figures—Reinhold Niebuhr for powerful mainline Protestantism, Billy Graham for rising Evangelicalism, Fulton Sheen for popularly engaged Catholicism, and Martin Luther King, Jr for the prophetic African-American Church of the Civil Rights era—who at mid-20th century showed the cultural and institutional strength of nearly all branches of Christianity. But by the beginning of the 21st century all four branches of Christianity are fragmented, declining, and in disarray, while the number of Americans who say they have no religious affiliation or even belief in God steadily climbs. Robert Putnam nuances this a bit in American Grace when he argues that the mainline church began declining first, in the late 60s and 70s, while the Evangelical church began doing so by the 90s. Catholics have been battered with a different set of problems and so has the African-American church, but they are also definitely losing influence and people.

In his second chapter, Douthat attributes the change to five major social catalysts that have gained steam since the 1960s: 1) First, the political polarization that has occurred between the Left and Right drew many churches into it (mainline Protestants toward the Left, evangelicals toward the Right). This has greatly weakened the church’s credibility in the broader culture, with many viewing churches as mere appendages and pawns of political parties. 2) Second, the sexual revolution means that the Biblical sex ethic now looks unreasonable and perverse to millions of people, making Christianity appear implausible, unhealthy, and regressive. 3) Third, the era of decolonization and Third World empowerment, together with the dawn of globalization, has given the impression that Christianity was imperialistically “western” and supportive of European civilization’s record of racism, colonialism, and anti-Semitism. 4) The fourth factor has been the enormous growth in the kind of material prosperity and consumerism that always works against faith and undermines Christian community. 5) The fifth factor is—that all the other four factors had their greatest initial impact on the more educated and affluent classes, the gatekeepers of the main culture-shaping institutions such as the media, the academy, the arts, the main foundations, and much of the government and business world.

How does Ross Douthat’s analysis compare with some older thinkers? Lesslie Newbigin blames the marginalization of Christianity in the West on the outworking of the 18th century Enlightenment—which promoted the sufficiency of individual human reason without faith in God—for a great deal of the shift. In this he understands historical patterns as being caused by ideas and intellectual trends working their way out through a society’s institutions. I see no reason why Newbigin’s history-of-thought approach and Douthat’s sociology-of-knowledge approach cannot both be right. A third kind of analysis could easily find the faults within the church itself. As H. Richard Niebuhr points out in his essay, “The Independence of the Church”, the church becomes weak and even corrupt whenever it becomes successful in a culture. This is an important factor to add. For example, why did the mainline and the evangelical church get co-opted by American political parties and lose credibility? Wasn’t this due to a lack of robust, vital orthodoxy within them? If all these approaches are right and complementary, Christianity in the West has been the victim of “a perfect storm” of trends, factors, and forces.

Next blog: Ross Douthat on the Character of Christianity’s Decline

Traducido del artículo original en inglés por Timothy Keller.

<< Parte 1: Predica a los cristianos y no cristianos a la misma vez

Lo que dirige el corazón
Veamos un ejemplo de un problema al que puedes hacer referencia con una audiencia secular: la deshonestidad. ¿Cómo responde el evangelio a este problema y cómo actúa en la vida real?

Jonathan Edwards identificó dos clases de comportamiento moral: “virtud común” y “virtud real”. La virtud común de la honestidad se puede lograr a partir del temor, ya sea a la sociedad (“Si miento me atraparán y quedaré expuesto”) o religioso (“Si no eres honesto Dios te castigará”). También se puede cultivar a partir del orgullo, el cual nuevamente puede ser cultural (“No seas como esa espantosa gente deshonesta”) o religioso (“No seas como esos pecadores; sé una persona santa y decente”).

Por ningún motivo Edwards intenta despreciar la virtud común. De hecho, él cree en el “esplendor de la moralidad común” como la principal forma en la que Dios refrena la maldad en el mundo. No obstante, hay una profunda tensión en el núcleo de la virtud común, porque si tanto el temor como el orgullo son las motivaciones de una persona para ser honesta, pero también son el temor y el orgullo la raíz de mentir y engañar, es solo cuestión de tiempo antes que un fundamento moral tan frágil colapse.

Por lo tanto, la virtud común no ha hecho nada para desarraigar las causas intrínsecas del mal; ha refrenado el corazón pero no lo ha cambiado. Y este “parche improvisado” al corazón crea una condición bastante frágil. En efecto, con todos los sermones y entrenamiento moral que has recibido en toda tu vida, estabas en realidad nutriendo las raíces del pecado dentro de tu vida moral. Esto es cierto ya sea que hayas crecido con valores liberales o conservadores. Las raíces de la maldad estaban bien protegidas debajo de una veta de progreso moral.

Entonces, ¿cuál es la señal de honestidad como una “virtud real”? Es el compromiso con la verdad y la honestidad no porque te beneficia o te hace sentir mejor ,sino porque estás enamorado de la belleza del Dios que es verdad, sinceridad y fidelidad. Es allí cuando llegas a amar la verdad, no por tu propia causa sino por la causa de Dios y aun por su propia causa. La verdadera honestidad crece cuando lo ves muriendo por ti, guardando una promesa que había hecho a pesar del infinito sufrimiento que esto le ocasionó. Esta clase de virtud destruye tanto el orgullo (¡Jesús tuvo que morir por mi!) como el temor (Jesús me valora infinitamente, y nada de lo que yo pueda hacer cambiará ese compromiso conmigo). En esta forma mi corazón no solo se refrena sino que más bien, su orientación fundamental es transformada.

El pecado detrás del pecado

Detrás de todos nuestros pecados de comportamiento subyace una negación fundamental a descansar en la salvación de Cristo. Según Martín Lutero:

Todos aquellos que no confían en Dios en todos los tiempos, y no confían en su favor, gracia y buena voluntad, sino que buscan su favor en otras cosas o en sí mismos , no guardan el [Primer] Mandamiento, y practican una verdadera idolatría, aun si siguieran las palabras de todos los otros mandamientos… combinados.

Y como este mandamiento es el primero, superior y mejor, del cual todos los demás provienen, en el cual existen y por el cual son medidos y dirigidos, así también opera, es decir, la fe o la confianza en el favor de Dios en todos los tiempos; es lo primero de lo primero, lo superior y mejor, del cual todos los demás deben proceder, existir, permanecer, ser dirigidos y medidos.

Lutero dice que si obedecemos la ley sin una creencia de que ya hemos sido aceptados y amados en Cristo, entonces en todas nuestras buenas obras estamos en realidad buscando algo más que que Jesús sea la fuente real de nuestro sentido y felicidad. Podemos estar confiando en nuestra buena paternidad, justicia moral, desempeño espiritual o actos de servicio como nuestros verdaderos “salvadores” funcionales. Si todavía no estamos seguros de que Dios ama en Cristo, estaremos buscando alguna otra cosa para suplir nuestra importancia y dignidad. Por esa razón Lutero dice que estamos cometiendo idolatría si no confiamos en Cristo solamente para nuestra aprobación.

El primer mandamiento es fundamental a todos los otros mandamientos. No quebrantamos los otros nueve mandamientos sin quebrantar en alguna manera el primero, al servir a algo o alguien aparte de Dios. Cada pecado está arraigado en la codicia desmedida de algo que viene por confiar en eso en vez de confiar en Cristo para nuestra justicia o salvación. Pecamos porque estamos buscando algo que nos dé lo que solo Jesús puede darnos. Debajo de todo pecado en particular se halla el pecado general de rechazar la salvación de Cristo e intentar alcanzar nuestra propia salvación.

El evangelio vs. el moralismo

Thomas Chalmers escribió lo siguiente:

La mejor manera de despojarnos de una afección impura es admitir una pura… Es solo cuando, como en el evangelio, la aceptación es considerada un regalo, sin dinero y sin precio, que la seguridad que el hombre siente en Dios es colocada fuera del alcance de toda alteración. Solo entonces podemos reposar en Él como un amigo reposa en el otro… La única manera de despojar el corazón de una antigua afección es mediante el poder expulsivo de una nueva.

Antes de entender la premisa de los afectos del corazón y el poder de predicar para desarraigar y reorientar nuestras afecciones, mis sermones seguían este patrón:

1 - Esto es lo que el texto dice
2 - Así es como debemos vivir a la luz de lo que dice el texto
3 - Ahora, ve y vive de ese modo, y Dios te ayudará.

Llegué a darme cuenta con el tiempo que estaba haciendo exactamente lo que Edwards dijo que no funcionaría. Yo estaba confiando en que el temor y el orgullo provocaran la obediencia a Dios. Aunque estaba haciéndolo indirecta e inconscientemente, estaba empleando la predicación para engañar al corazón en vez de para reorientarlo.

He llegado a darme cuenta que mis sermones tenían que seguir un bosquejo diferente:

1 - Esto es lo que el texto dice
2 - Así es como debemos vivir a la luz del texto
3 - Pero simplemente no podemos hacerlo
4 - ¡Ah, pero hay Uno que sí pudo!
5 - Ahora, a través de la fe en Él, puedes comenzar a vivir de esta manera.

En casi todos los pasajes de las Escrituras encontramos un principio moral, que se muestra a través del carácter de Dios o de Cristo, se exhibe en los buenos o malos ejemplos de los personajes bíblicos o se da en la forma de mandatos, promesas y advertencias explícitas. Este principio moral es importante y debe extraerse con claridad. Pero luego se crea una crisis en los oyentes cuando ellos comprenden que este principio moral les ocasiona problemas insuperables. Yo en mis sermones describo la forma en que esta obligación moral y práctica es imposible de cumplir. Los oyentes son guiados a un aparente callejón sin salida, pero entonces allí se abre una puerta oculta y la luz entra. Nuestros sermones deben mostrar cómo la persona y la obra de Jesucristo están relacionadas con el tema. Primero mostramos que nuestra incapacidad para vivir como deberíamos surge de olvidarnos o de rechazar la obra de Cristo. Luego mostramos que solo por arrepentirnos y regocijarnos en Cristo podemos vivir como sabemos que deberíamos.

Estudio de casos

Veamos algunos ejemplos. Digamos que queremos emplear el texto acerca de David y Jonatán en 1 Samuel 18-20 para hablar sobre la amistad. Podemos describir dos señales de una verdadera amistad: los amigos siempre te dejan entrar en su vida y nunca te decepcionan. Los amigos son transparentes y abiertos uno con el otro, y están comprometidos a servir a las necesidades del otro.

Si terminas tu sermón diciendo: “Ahora ve y haz tú lo mismo”, has predicado un sermón moralista –e irrealista–. No has desenmascarado los obstáculos reales de la amistad: el temor (a la vulnerabilidad) y el orgullo (inferioridad o egoísmo). Esos pecados arraigados en mi corazón me hacen un mal amigo o me impiden hacer y mantener amigos.

¿Entonces cómo puedo superar estos pecados profundos y convertirme en un verdadero amigo? Solo a través de ver a Jesús como el máximo amigo (Juan 15:12-14) y mirando a la cruz, el acto supremo de amistad. Jesús “nos dejó entrar”. ¿Puedes ser más vulnerable que Él cuando lo hizo? Sus brazos están abiertos hacia nosotros. Fueron clavados abiertos para nosotros. Hasta que no veas y entiendas este supremo acto de amistad nunca serás un amigo para los demás. Solo la cruz puede darte la seguridad de estar abierto y vulnerable a los demás, pero también la humildad de servirlos a ellos en vez de a tus deseos egoístas.

O tomemos por ejemplo el texto de 2 Samuel sobre el rey David y Betsabé. Con facilidad podemos extraer enseñanzas del pasaje acerca de los peligros de la tentación sexual o moralizar acerca de la seducción de la belleza física, y relacionarlo con la cultura en que vivimos hoy. La pornografía, los desórdenes alimenticios y el adulterio pueden relacionarse al peligro de hacer de la belleza un ídolo. ¿Pero cómo terminamos esta clase de sermón: “Ve y sé cuidadoso”? Esta exhortación puede ser técnicamente correcta, pero no es muy aceptable que digamos.

En cambio, puedes comenzar con el principio moral pero avanzar unos pasos más:

+ Cómo debemos vivir. El poder de la belleza física sobre nosotros tiene que ser quebrado. Mira la devastación que produce en nuestra sociedad y en nuestras vidas. El enfoque excesivo en la imagen y belleza distorsiona la visión de las mujeres de sí mismas y desmoraliza a las personas que se van haciendo mayores. Sabotea a los hombres estafándolos con la idea de grandes perspectivas para una esposa, que son pasadas por alto por razones superficiales, así como también los llevan a sustituir relaciones reales con pornografía. ¿Qué podemos hacer? No juzgues un libro por su tapa. Evita la pornografía. Enfócate en la belleza de carácter de los demás en vez de sus rasgos físicos.

+ Pero tú no puedes. Sabes tan bien como yo que no es posible. Primero, deseamos la belleza física para cubrir nuestro propio sentido de vergüenza e ineptitud. Segundo, tenemos temor de nuestra mortalidad y muerte. Los biólogos evolucionistas y los cristianos coinciden en que el deseo por la belleza física es el deseo de la juventud, y su control sobre nosotros es tan grande que nunca venceremos nuestro problema simplemente tratando con más ahínco.

+ Pero hay Uno que sí pudo. Hubo uno que fue bellamente inmaculado y perfecto, entronado en los cielos, y que aun así tuvo toda la disposición de entregarlo todo para tomar la “naturaleza de un siervo” (Filipenses 2). Él se hizo feo, “despreciado y desechado” (Isaías 53) para que nosotros pudiéramos ser hermosos a la vista de Dios y obtener la única belleza que realmente perdurará (Colosenses 1:22; Efesios 5:27).

+ Solo ahora podemos cambiar. Solo cuando vemos lo que Jesús hizo por nosotros, nuestros corazones se funden y liberan de la creencia de que podemos juzgar a un libro por su tapa. Solo cuando abrazamos la belleza de la eternidad con Él podemos ser libres de nuestro temor a la mortalidad.

>> Parte 3: Predica a Cristo desde cada texto

Traducido del artículo original en inglés por Timothy Keller.

Este artículo resume cuatro ideas que, según mi experiencia, son la clave de una predicación eficaz en una cultura secular. Si deseas comunicar el evangelio tanto a los cristianos como a los no cristianos que hay en tu medio, te animo a incorporar estos cuatro elementos a tu propia predicación.

1. Predica a los cristianos y no cristianos a la misma vez

El evangelio es la base de la justificación y también de la santificación
Gran parte de la literatura de “iglecrecimiento” presupone que no podemos ministrar a los cristianos y no cristianos a la vez. Según este punto de vista, los mensajes “evangelísticos” apelan a los no creyentes pero aburren a los creyentes, y los mensajes “de enseñanza” apelan a los cristianos pero confunden u ofenden a los que no lo son. Eso significa que una iglesia tiene que disponerse para tener un enfoque o el otro, y como resultado puede limitarse en su fidelidad a la Biblia así como también en sus resultados.

Algunas iglesias han tratado de resolver este problema mediante la distinción de “servicios para el buscador”, que se brindan en un día diferente a aquellos servicios orientado al discipulado. Pero este enfoque no está exento de problemas: muchos buscadores se quedan más de la cuenta en los servicios planeados para ellos, y nunca reciben un material más desafiante. Y como la mayoría de los que asisten a los servicios para buscadores son generalmente cristianos, los creyentes también se quedan varados en un cristianismo elemental.

Yo creo que el problema es teológico, no metodológico. De hecho, es imposible combinar a los cristianos con los no cristianos de una forma coherente a menos que el predicador y los líderes entiendan que el evangelio no es solo la manera en que las personas son justificadas, sino también la forma de ser santificadas. La actitud típica hacia el evangelio es verlo como el ABC de la doctrina cristiana, o meramente la verdad mínima requerida para ser salvos, pero se considera que para crecer en la vida cristiana se necesitan principios bíblicos más “avanzados”. Si ese fuere el caso, entonces de veras no podríamos enfocarnos en el evangelismo y la formación espiritual a la misma vez. Sin embargo, Martín Lutero comprendió que el evangelio no era solo la manera de recibir salvación sino además la forma de avanzar en cada etapa de la vida cristiana. Por eso la primera de las noventa y cinco tesis de Lutero fue: “Toda la vida es arrepentimiento”.

Jonathan Edwards en sus Afecciones Religiosas [Religious Affections], sostiene que las creencias y comportamientos están inextricablemente ligados y que cualquier fracaso en los cristianos es debido a la incredulidad. El antídoto a la incredulidad es un relato fresco del evangelio.

La predicación, por lo tanto, no es o para evangelismo o para edificación, porque todos nosotros tenemos el mismo problema subyacente. Si un sermón es Cristocéntrico en su exposición y aplicación, y si está orientado a desmantelar los sistemas de incredulidad del corazón humano y volver a relatar y aplicar el evangelio sobre esa incredulidad, entonces será iluminador para los no creyentes aunque originalmente apuntaba a los creyentes.

Cómo funciona
Vivimos en una sociedad en la que las personas son completamente escépticas a toda clase de verdad. En contraste con las eras pasadas, en la cuales se aceptaba la verdad revelada o se honraba la razón y la verdad científica, mucha gente hoy simplemente no puede recibir un conjunto de enseñanzas sin ver cómo “funciona” el cristianismo, cómo se corporiza en la vida real.

Esto tiene implicancias para todos nosotros. Para los cristianos que están rodeados de la cultura secular, es importante oír al predicador lidiar sabia y astutamente con los problemas que los no creyentes tienen a diario. Esto les ayuda a resolver sus propias dudas y además es un “entrenamiento” excelente para cuando ellos mismos tienen que compartir su fe. Los programas de evangelismo de los tiempos pasados no siempre preparaban adecuadamente a los cristianos para tratar con el amplio espectro de dificultades intelectuales y personales que la gente atraviesa hoy respecto de la fe cristiana.

De una manera similar, cuando el predicador se dirige a los creyentes, los no creyentes que están presentes llegan a entender cómo el cristianismo se aplica a las situaciones de la vida real. Por ejemplo, si tú estás predicando un sermón sobre el materialismo, y directamente aplicas el evangelio al materialismo de los cristianos, estás haciendo algo que interesa y beneficia también a los no cristianos. Muchos de los que escuchan tenderán a tomar decisiones de fe en un terreno más pragmático. En vez de examinar la fe de una manera intelectual algo distante, es más probable que tomen un compromiso de fe a través de un proceso de pequeñas decisiones, “probándolo” y viendo cómo se aplica en los problemas de la vida real.

Prácticas de predicar a la cultura secular

Algunos consejos prácticos para predicar:

+ Resuelve todos los problemas con el evangelio. De esta manera, los no creyentes escuchan el evangelio cada semana y los creyentes tratan sus cuestiones y problemas con la belleza del evangelio.

+ Ten cuidado con las suposiciones. No supongas que toda la gente tiene las mismas premisas. Evita exhortar el punto D si está basado en A, B y C, sin referirte primero a A, B y C. Constantemente fundamenta con declaraciones acerca de la autoridad de la Biblia o las razones de por qué creemos.

+ Involúcrate en la apologética. Trata de dedicar uno de los tres o cuatro puntos principales del sermón a los no creyentes. Mantén en tu mente una lista de las objeciones comunes que la gente tiene hacia el cristianismo. Muy frecuentemente el texto del sermón tiene alguna implicancia sobre cómo atender esas objeciones.

+ Brinda aplicaciones para ambas partes. Cuando das las aplicaciones del sermón, dirígete tanto a los no cristianos como a los cristianos, casi en un diálogo con ellos. Por ejemplo: “Si estás comprometido con Cristo, debes estar pensando esto, pero el texto brinda una respuesta a ese temor”, o “Si no eres cristiano o no estás seguro de lo que crees, entonces seguramente pienses que este pensamiento es muy cerrado, pero el texto se refiere precisamente a esto”.

+ Sé auténtico. La gente joven, urbana y secular en particular es extremadamente perceptiva a todo lo que huele a artificio u ostentación escénica. Ten cuidado con los sermones –o cualquier otra cosa en el servicio de adoración- que sea demasiado perfecta, demasiado controlada o luzca “enlatada”.

+ Está atento al lenguaje alienante. Los oyentes seculares se desconectan cuando perciben que el predicador utiliza lenguaje no inclusivo en cuanto al género o hace comentarios cínicos acerca de otras religiones o utiliza jerga religiosa, un lenguaje que solo los cristianos entienden.

+ Espera y aun respeta la duda. Siempre trata con respeto las dudas de la gente en cuanto al cristianismo. Cuídate de ni siquiera dar la impresión de que el cristianismo no admite dudas o que las personas poco inteligentes son las que dudan de su veracidad. Es importante reconocer la presencia de dudosos, y decir a los efectos prácticos: “Sé que esta doctrina cristiana puede sonar escandalosa”.

+ Dirígete a la comunidad más amplia. Sé consciente en tu postura y predicación de las necesidades y preocupaciones de la comunidad más amplia, no solo de la comunidad cristiana. Muestra de qué manera la gracia de Dios favorece a los pobres, marginados y extranjeros. Celebra las obras de justicia y misericordia y la ciudadanía que tienen en común en la ciudad.

+ Echa mano a las referencias culturales. Los vecinos de Manhattan no conocen ni confían demasiado en la Biblia, de modo que es importante que yo sepa sus referencias culturales, leer lo que ellos leen y responder a las preguntas de la Biblia que ellos se están haciendo. Yo documento y refuerzo abundantemente mis puntos principales corroborando opiniones de los mismos libros y periódicos que los neoyorquinos leen. A menudo puedo demostrarles cómo la Biblia se refería a esos mismos temas mucho tiempo antes que el autor contemporáneo lo hiciera.

+ Lee todo el espectro. Si lees solo una perspectiva de un tema, tenderás a ser ingenuo y estar más confiado de lo que deberías. Si lees una segunda perspectiva contradictoria que deconstruye el primer punto de vista, tenderás a volverte cínico y desanimado. Pero si lees un espectro de cuatro o cinco perspectivas diferentes, encuentras tu propia visión y voz y a menudo obtienes ideas creativas. Yo leo con regularidad diferentes opiniones e imagino cómo sería tener una conversación sobre el cristianismo con ese autor.

>> Parte 2: Predica gracia, no moralismo

A little more than two years ago, Monterrey, the financial capital of Mexico, began to lose its status as the most peaceful big city in Mexico. Our city became the location of a drug war. Some people left the city because of this. Many who remained became afraid of leaving their homes late at night.

As a ministry team, we defined some rules to avoid unnecessary risks. However, we were very careful to continue doing ministry in cities that need the gospel. We really did not want to become unbiblical martyrs, trying to say that because we are Christians there is no problem of violence. Such an attitude exhibits religiosity and spiritualism without a reasoning faith. Yet as real Christians who believe in the real gospel, we cannot leave our ministries and our communities without hope.

We believe that the only hope for our cities is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the gospel changes everything. Recently, a popular TV and movie actress sent a message to the biggest drug lord saying, “I do not believe in the government, not even in any church, but I believe that you can change, so please change your drugs and weapons for love.” I am sure that the kind of change she is talking about is not possible without God. But as a Christian, this declaration puts me in the spot; if I have the only real hope that changes everything, why am I not asking this man to come to know the only way to change; the grace of the Lord Jesus? This is the call Jesus Christ gave us when he said; “all authority on earth and heaven has been given to me, therefore go; make disciples.”

Some months ago, I preached on Genesis 50 about Joseph’s life. The Lord knows much better than we do why He allows some things to happen. Yes, Northern Mexico has been hit by a drug war, but we have a much greater Lord that surely can bring something good out of all this. Through violence, our network of churches has become more vibrant in their ministries, and more sensitive to the needs of our cities. It seems that violence has made us grow in numbers and in maturity. Pastors are now hungry for opportunities to counsel Christians and non-Christians. Church planters are becoming more creative to start new ministries to serve the city. This has happened in the last two years.

Downtown Monterrey has transformed from a dangerous place late at night, to one that is now more family and tourist oriented. In the past many involved with drug gangs started to come downtown to night clubs, but since then they have closed down. Politicians have changed their minds also. There are not many politicians who want to run for mayor because they are afraid they will become targets. However, the ones that want to run are doing so out of a desire to really serve, rather than wanting to be served. The idolatry of material possessions is changing because people now appreciate their lives more than their possessions. People in Monterrey used to love to show jewelry on their fingers and ears, to wear fine suits and dresses, but now they do not care about it because they could be in danger. The druglords intended to harm the cities, but the only real Lord is transforming all of it for the good of many in the city.

Yes, we are sure the Lord brought us to be the light of the city. Please keep supporting us so that we can be a bigger light in these cities. We are starting a new church in Durango, and new justice and mercy ministries. We are strengthening our relationship with the Lord in order to grow, to be not only in the cities but for the cities in Northern Mexico. We have a vision and a great passion in the gospel for these cities.

Pray today:
• For team boldness to keep developing this ministry through the sharing of the gospel and through making disciples.
• For new ministries to help the cities.
• For each of the 12 churches in our movement.
• For the short-term teams and partner churches from the US.
• For the government of the cities and country to be instruments in the Lord’s hands.

Andres Garza
Northern Mexico Network Leader
agarzaayala at aol.com

Stephen Um is the planter and senior pastor of Citylife Boston, a multiethnic congregation in downtown Boston. A Korean-American, he now serves as Associate Training Director for City to City Asia as well as a Council Member of The Gospel Coalition.

On February 20-21, 2012, City to City Asia hosted a two-day intensive Gospel in the City conference in the Yeong-jae district of Seoul, South Korea. Our meeting took place at Torch Theological Seminary on one of the campuses of Onnuri Presbyterian Church, one of the largest churches in Seoul.

With fifty to sixty leaders in attendance, we had a healthy combination of church planters, assistant pastors, and pastors of established churches. Many leaders in the Korean church have gone to seminary in the US and are tracking the latest ministry trends, and most had heard of but had not had direct contact with Redeemer City to City before.

The Conference
One of the highlights of my travels to Seoul was connecting with Jonathan Oh, who pastors New City Church, a City to City church plant in the Gangnam district. Jonathan and New City are doing well, and after having been there for a few years they have built a strong core. Jonathan did a great job organizing the conference, including getting hundreds of pages translated into Korean! He even served as a translator on the few occasions when, after teaching most of the sessions in Korean, I needed to switch over to English to better articulate the material. Duranno, a Korean publishing house, was also present to show their new edition of Tim Keller's book, Generous Justice, with hopes of releasing more books soon.

Of the 8 or 9 sessions that we taught, the more challenging to present and grasp were on contextualization and gospel preaching. The latter was particularly challenging because it breaks from the traditional method of preaching taught in many Korean seminaries. This somewhat moralistic preaching—largely shaped by a privileging of systematic theology—tends to be the norm. The concept of preaching we presented of reading the scriptures canonically and then preaching from a redemptive-historical, christo-telic perspective is new and challenging. However, I am hopeful that the consideration of this different approach to preaching will lead many pastors to gain a deeper knowledge of the gospel and how to preach it to others. It was encouraging to see Pastor Oh's example of someone who has truly grasped the Gospel DNA—that is, the core principles on how the gospel changes hearts, communities, and cities—and has contextualized it for the Korean culture.

The Church in Korea
Even though Stephen Ro (the other trainer, a planter and pastor of Living Faith Community Church in Queens) and myself are ethnically Korean, this trip allowed us to learn more about Korean culture than any other trip we've been on in the past. And as I reflect on the state of the gospel in Korea, I first want to acknowledge that God has immensely blessed the nation, and Seoul in particular. Korea is the only Asian nation where Christianity has taken hold in a significant way, the result of the faithful work of Presbyterian missionaries over 100 years ago, and despite heavy initial persecution. It is clear to me that the vibrant spirituality of Korean believers is unmatched, and in many ways, through the faith of my parents and community, I am the product of the work that God has been doing there for many years.

Having said this, many now believe that the Korean church, on the whole, is in a season of decline. While Korea is often cited as being 30-35% Christian, the most recent census numbers indicate that that number has decreased to about 18%. While this is still a staggering number for Asia, the drastic decline is hard to ignore. Furthermore, it is now the case that less than 2% of twenty-somethings regularly attend church, leading us to believe that Korea's religious future may look quite a bit like that of other developed nations. Yes, there was a cultural moment 20 or 30 years ago when an attractional, come-and-see model produced results and numbers, but this is simply no longer the case.

While there has been phenomenal development of theological education and ministerial structures over the last few decades, there has been little work done on how the church in Korea can integrate a gospel worldview into the culture, which has led to a lack of shaping influence and cultural renewal. The prevailing approach tends to have an unbalanced emphasis on evangelism and church growth without as much emphasis on church health, how the gospel changes us, social justice and mercy, and the integration of faith and work in an achievement-oriented culture. The prevailing expectation is that the world will continue to come into the church, effectively creating an ingrown church that lacks the means to reach out. (This is not according to my outsider perspective, but according to my conversations with Korean leaders and pastors who acknowledge that the church's influence in reaching the younger generation is slipping.)

For these reasons, after visiting Seoul this time around, I am compelled to communicate the need for a gospel-movement such as the one we are praying and working for through City to City. The church is in need of a thick gospel theological vision that shapes every dimension of its life and ministry. Churches need to be planted with sensibilities that will shift the directional flow from an outside-in to an inside-out gospel approach, that will turn the cultural idol of power accumulation upside-down, leading to radical power-sharing, which will avoid an overly triumphalistic approach to culture yet maintain a big vision for seeing the culture renewed with the gospel. Though all signs point to the church in Seoul experiencing a drastic and continual decline, it may be an opportunity for many new gospel churches to be planted—churches that will bring about gospel renewal and revival in new ways. Efforts like the recent Gospel in the City conference will go a long way toward equipping pastors and church planters with a robust gospel theology, winsome approach to skeptics, and an understanding of culture that can prepare the way for a gospel movement.

You can see photos from the event on Redeemer City to City's Facebook page.

Gloria Furman lives in Dubai, where her husband Dave pastors Redeemer Church of Dubai. Gloria enjoys serving the ladies in her community as a doula, and is currently writing a book for Crossway on applying the gospel in the mundane, based on her blog Domestic Kingdom.

The homes in Dubai are surrounded by 10-foot cement walls. When we first moved into this neighborhood to plant a church some years ago, I prayed that God would help me to reach my neighbors in spite of these obstacles. I was so intimidated by those walls and struggled to see how I would ever be invited inside.

Privacy and modesty are highly valued in the Middle East, and traditional culture here dictates that women should cover up when they leave their houses. This is why it was so egregious for King David to wander about on his palace roof where his gaze extended into the privacy of others’ homes.

I never imagined that God would facilitate gospel conversations by having one of my neighbors watch our family from over the wall that separated our homes.

I first tried to introduce myself to my neighbors by baking some cookies and bringing them next door. I put the cookies on a fancy plate, dressed the kids up, rang the bell… and got no answer. Dejected, the kids and I walked back through the gate.

The second time, a maid answered the gate. She didn’t speak much English, but she said the lady of the house wasn’t home. I asked her to give the family our greetings, and she smiled and said she would, but I wasn’t sure we had understood one another.

A few days later the bell on our gate rang. It was the maid from next door, and in her hands she held my plate, which was now full of baklava-style sweets. In this culture you never return an empty plate to someone. I love this custom!

The next weekend we hosted a church potluck at our house. My husband likes to say that if you haven’t been to an international church potluck then you’re missing out on a little taste of heaven. Shish tawook, vegetable curry, pizza, scones, puddings, kabobs, noodles, biryani… we get to eat some world-class food in our church!

The next day I finally got to visit with my neighbor. We shared some traditional coffee and dates and talked about our families and her favorite show on the cooking channel. Then she tossed a question into the conversation that turned our chat into completely uncharted territory.

“Last night I was watching through my window upstairs. I saw all these people from many countries turning into your gate carrying food,” she began.

“Yes! We had a potluck dinner. Have you heard of a potluck dinner before? The people in our church all prepared some food at home and brought it to share,” I explained.

Then came an onslaught of questions from my neighbor. “Why were all of those people eating together? How do you know all of those people? Does everyone eat everyone else’s food?” She fired question after question at me until she finally asked what was really on her heart. “Why would you want to eat with people who are not from your country?”

Racism runs deep where we live. My neighbor’s question swung a door wide open for me to talk about the gospel. I shared with her about God the Creator who made human beings in his image. I told her about what happened in the Garden and the trajectory toward destruction that we set for ourselves when Adam and Eve sinned. I told her about Jesus and his cross and how saving faith in him not only reconciles us to God, but to one another. I told her that Jesus was given the nations as his inheritance and how he is delighted to be the Shepherd King for every tribe and nation.

She was astonished. “This is not what I thought your religion was. My religion also includes people from all over the world, but we would never do something like eat meals with one another.”

Through more careful questioning and clarifying, I helped my neighbor understand how the gospel distinguishes Christianity from the other religions. This was earth-shattering to someone who sincerely believed that all religions were basically the same and that we just have different cultural expressions of it.

I left her house that afternoon amazed by the power of God. Over time I have been invited inside those walls to talk with her more about the gospel. The truth of Christ is just that captivating and can break into even the most seemingly impenetrable places.

One thing I’ve learned from this relationship with my neighbor is that I must maintain my confidence that physical and spiritual walls cannot hinder the gospel. And big plates of chocolate chip cookies certainly can’t hurt!

University towns like Oxford, Cambridge or Palo Alto may not technically be classified as "global cities," but it's hard to deny their importance to global culture, shaping the nation's next generation of thinkers, politicians, and thought leaders. College graduates flock to cities for jobs and become a large part of the center-city population. The questions heard on college campuses are often the same ones heard in places like London, New York, or Hong Kong.

This also makes universities excellent training ground for church planters and evangelists. C. S. Lewis spent most of his life in Oxford, became a Christian there as a result of a friendship with several Christian professors (including J.R.R. Tolkien), and many of his most brilliant insights were sharpened by his academic training.

During the week of February 6-10, the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (OICCU), an umbrella group of Christian ministries at Oxford which has existed for over 130 years, sponsored "This is Jesus," an annual week-long outreach of talks and Q&A sessions on some of the biggest questions students have about Christianity. The speakers were Michael Cain, pastor of Emmanuel Church, Bristol, and Timothy Keller, who together with his wife Kathy and son Michael (currently a college pastor in New York) spent a full week meeting directly with students and wrestling with their questions.

The evening sessions drew up to 600 students and generated significant interest in further discussions about the gospel. In Britain and much of Europe, hostility to evangelical Christianity has been increasing, and unfortunately many churches are in significant decline. As Samuel Chan, the prayer secretary for OICCU, describes student ministry at Oxford: "Many have heard about Jesus: relatively few have said yes to Him. Pray for a time of reaping! We're not content with just having people hear about Jesus, but we desperately want to see more [coming to belief]."

You can listen to the audio talks or view some of the Q&A sessions from the conference. Please pray for the students in Oxford to come to know God both intellectually and personally.

Robert Guerrero joined Redeemer City to City in January 2012. He is our New York City Church Planting Catalyst, who will network with existing churches and to identify and coach new church planters.

Born to Dominican parents in New York City, Robert has spent much of his life in the Dominican Republic. He earned a degree in theology from Moody Bible Institute and has planted churches in both Chicago and Santo Domingo, with a focus on holistic ministry and outreach to the unchurched.

Here's a short interview with Robert where he talks about how he arrived at Redeemer City to City and his vision for new churches in New York City. We are excited to welcome Robert and his unique gifts and experience to the team, and we hope our New York planters will have a chance to meet him soon!

[See also Gospel Masculinity by Felipe Assis.]

With all of the discussion and debate about masculinity and what God intends for men, I can't help but point out the obvious: most of them are written by men, for men, and there is far less by and for women.

When I think of my daughters and their friends, of me and mine, I long for us to grasp what God intended when woman was created. I long for us to bring a gospel-redeemed femininity to our relationships, our work place, our communities and our churches.

Because we are created male and female in the image of God this topic cuts to the core of who we are. Could we even extrapolate that our gender defines us more than our family of origin? More than our culture? More than our personality? I don't know.

But I know that the evil one was quite brilliant to attack our gender during the fall and to continue to do so today. No wonder this is a battle. So here are a few points to consider:

1. Gospel femininity is bigger and broader than culture or roles.
The culture in which we live obviously impacts our roles both as men and women. But this does not need to define us nor imply that this is what God intended. Remember, the gospel transcends culture.

It would be as preposterous to define femininity by what we do as it would be to define an entire person by their current job. When we limit femininity to a role, such as mothering or marriage, we confine it to our status. That's absurd. Does that mean we can't reflect God's image if we aren't married? When we define femininity by our roles and our culture we run great risks. We fall on the side of either erasing gender differences, or focusing too narrowly on those differences.

On the one hand when we try to hide the differences or 'do it like a man', the very gift and essence of who we are is not offered. Everyone loses. But if we focus too narrowly on staying in a prescribed role we may limit the wild ways God may be calling us to join in his redemption.

2. "Adequate/Rescuer"
So how does God himself define our gender differences? In Genesis God uses a phrase when he describes woman. However, the Hebrew word used in Genesis 2, ezer, has been so grossly misinterpreted in English that I've wrestled with what words to use. My friend and fellow blogger Felipe Assis has suggested the phrase "adequate rescuer," which comes much closer to the Hebrew than other translations I've heard.

Ezer or rescuer is the same word used in other passages of scripture for God coming to our rescue. God saves. God rescues. God comes to our aid. It's the same word God uses to describe woman. Describing woman as rescuer, God uses the adjective "suitable" or "adequate."

Does this blow your mind? But wait, this isn't all.

3. What does this have to do with the Gospel?
At the core of femininity lies the gospel story! There is a Redeemer who on our behalf has come and rescued us. As I look to Christ as my adequate rescuer, I in turn can bring suitable rescue or adequate saving as God designed me to bring to the many spheres of my world. Our temptation will be to fall to one or the other side of being an adequate rescuer. On the one hand we fall into the belief that we aren't adequate for the task. That we don't have what it takes. That it's not our place. You know what I mean. We diminish who we are and think we can safely hide behind the cloak of conservatism. Have you ever hid with the excuse that your husband doesn't want you to do something? Or maybe if you're single you think you won't be heard "in a man's world" and keep silent.

On the other side of the fence, we may ride our bulldozers to the rescue plowing everything and everyone in our path. We come with our guns blazing feeling it's our duty to put people in their place in the name of justice. It's not suitable and its not rescue.

In both of the above scenarios the focus is on us.

Instead, what if our focus turned to Jesus who was and is our adequate rescuer? What if, as we looked for Jesus's rescue on our behalf, we offered this image of the Godhead to our world?

This, my friends, is gospel femininity.

[This was originally posted on Felipe's blog. See also Gospel Femininity by Shari Thomas.]

Lately in some theological circles, the blogosphere has exploded in a war over gender roles. In my humble opinion, I think the discussion over the internet has been quite narrow in defining what it means to be masculine, and so misses the point. Here are a few observations I would like to make.

1. Gender matters.
If it didn’t, God would have created us all genderless. He could have, but he didn’t. It’s an act of worship when one seeks to live out of God’s original intent. Masculinity (or femininity for this matter) should be sought after as part of God's calling for us.

2. Objectivity is important.
To me it feels that those Christians that tend to blur the gender lines, do so most out of a genuine desire to reframe Christianity for those that have been hurt by it. That’s understandable, but you cannot do this at the expense of Scriptural truth.

On the other hand, those that tend to overemphasize it are doing so out of a genuine desire to reframe Christianity for Christians that have been infected by our culture’s broken gender expressions. Equally understandable though, it’s undeniable that they can come across as sexist.

3. Stop defining “masculinity” in terms of habits.
There are plenty of masculine guys that don’t drink alcohol, don’t hunt, don’t watch fighting sports, don’t drive pick up trucks, that are not married, and that do not have sex. The Bible is filled with examples of what I’m talking about.

Besides, that’s what religion does best, isn’t it—look at outward behavior rather than the heart? Here’s a warning: to be overly practical in this matter may lead to legalism, moralism, and the oppression of both women and “dudes” that do not necessarily conform to the current social-religious cultural norm.

4. Masculinity is best defined in terms of essence.
In other words: It’s not what I do in order to be… but, what I am in relation to what I was created to be.

“Servant-leadership” envelops the best concept of what lies at the essence of masculinity. These two words together are redemptive to each of the extremes in us, in our history, and in our cultures.

Here’s why: Each of us has a natural bent towards either “servanthood” or “leadership”, where servanthood turns into cowardliness or leadership turns into forms of dictatorship. This is due to sin, and because this is true, we cannot keep a perfect balance, I feel that both camps (currently arguing) are erring on one of the two extremes and that’s why it sounds a little off to either side when the other speaks.

I suggest we look more intently to Jesus—who was God incarnate as a male (can’t disprove this)— and whom has restored the servant-leadership balance that God had established in Adam since the beginning. At the core of masculinity, there lies the gospel in its perfect boldness and humility.

In the last post, we talked about a number of recent books that critique both the Cultural Transformationist and the "Two Kingdoms" approaches to Christ and culture. But for many churches and Christian leaders the issues are more practical. Is the mission of the local church to evangelize and produce disciples? Or is it to do justice and transform culture? Or is it an equal emphasis and combination of both?

Those who talk more of justice and cultural engagement are fearful of social marginalization. Without that emphasis, they believe, non-Christians in their settings will see the church as a useless and divisive institution that should not be tolerated. Those who stress evangelism and discipleship talk instead of the reality of limited resources. It would simply overwhelm the local church to try to meet the endless economic and material needs of the city, they say. Besides there are plenty of agencies doing that, while the church alone is calling people to conversion through faith in the gospel. So the church should use its limited financial resources almost exclusively on evangelism and the ministry of the Word.

How do we resolve this? First, we should establish that the ministry of the Word is the priority for the local church. The first thing I need to tell people when they come to church is "believe in Jesus," not "do justice." Why? First, because believing in Jesus meets a more radical human need and, second, because if they don't believe in Jesus they won't have that gospel-motivation to do justice in the world. So the first priority of the local church under its elders is to make disciples, not to do housing rehabilitation or feed the poor.

However, the church must disciple and support its members so they “love their neighbor”, integrate their faith in their work, and seek a more just and wholesome society and culture. This means that within the church there must be a great deal of teaching, preaching, and emphasis on how to be Christian in the public sphere and how to be loving servants in our neighborhood. And of course there should be strong “diaconal” or mercy ministry within the congregation to meet the economic and material needs of members. Nevertheless, while the church disciples its people to help the poor and be Christian film-makers, the congregation should not, for example, own low income housing nor start a film production company. So, we hold that the institutional church should give priority to Word ministry. However, we also teach that Christians must do both word and deed ministry in the world, and the church should equip them to do so.

What about the idea of “limited resources”? Most of the money Redeemer members give for mercy ministry within the congregation and service to the needy out in the city comes through annual special offerings and designated giving. One special offering is taken at Christmas and goes to diaconal ministry within the church. Another special offering is taken at Easter and goes to Hope for New York, a Christian 501(C)3 birthed out of Redeemer that does all sorts of mercy and justice ministry in the city. A lot of other giving to mercy and justice comes from our membership through individual gifts. Many Reformed churches have funded diaconal ministry this way over the centuries, with second or “special” offerings taken on communion Sundays or on other special occasions for the diaconal fund. The money was then used to meet needs inside the congregation and in the neighborhood. Meanwhile basic Word ministry is funded from regular offerings and not from special or designated giving.

This works very well. The special offerings do not cut into the regular offerings very much. They are generally new monies over and above regular giving. The existence of dynamic and compassionate ministry to the needy draws out giving that would not come if you did not give people the opportunity to give as their hearts direct. So Word ministry and acts of service are not an "either-or." It is not a zero sum game. In fact, I have seen that when people see a church caring about its community in tangible ways, there is a lot of goodwill, and it makes people more willing to give to the regular offerings as well. So there is no trade-off. We have found that if you fund mercy-justice in this way, it only increases the overall giving to Word ministry.

What about the charge that "we don't have the money or resources to feed all the hungry"? But we do not have the money or resources to "take the gospel to every creature" in the city either. We do what we can with what we have.

What about the concern for "relevance"? If the church is giving a priority to Word ministry, will our city think us useless? No. We have shown how a church can give priority to the Word and nonetheless show great concern for the poor in its message and raise lots of financial and human resources for the poor in its ministry. And the better the church's ministry of the Word, the more it will fill the city with mature Christians doing “salt and light” work, tackling the needs of the needy in sympathy and service. The local church and its Lord can and should get a lot of credit for that.

[This was posted today on Redeemer.com.]

I am grieved that New York City is planning to take the unwise step of removing 68 churches from the spaces that they rent in public schools. It is my conviction that those churches housed in schools are invaluable assets to the neighborhoods that they serve. Churches have long been seen as positive additions to communities. Family stability, resources for those in need, and compassion for the marginalized are all positive influences that neighborhood churches provide. There are many with first-hand experience who will claim that the presence of churches in a neighborhood can lead to a drop in crime.

The great diversity of our city means that we will never all agree completely on anything. And we cherish our city’s reputation for tolerance of differing opinions and beliefs. Therefore, we should all mourn if disagreement with certain beliefs of the church is allowed to unduly influence the formation of just policy and practice.

I disagree with the opinion written by Judge Pierre Leval that: “A worship service is an act of organized religion that consecrates the place in which it is performed, making it a church.” This is an erroneous theological judgment; I know of no Christian church or denomination that believes that merely holding a service in a building somehow “consecrates” it, setting it apart from all common or profane use. To base a legal opinion on such a superstitious view is surely invalid. Conversely, I concur with Judge John Walker’s dissenting opinion that this ban constitutes viewpoint discrimination and the use of public schools raises no legitimate Establishment Clause concerns.

A disproportionate number of churches that are affected by this prohibition are not wealthy, established communities of faith. They are ones who possess the fewest resources and many work with the poor. Redeemer has many ties with those churches and their pastors, and our church community invests time and resources to assist them to be good neighbors in their communities.

Let them be those good neighbors. I am hopeful that the leaders of New York City and the legislators of New York State will see the value of a society that encourages all spheres of culture—the church, government, education, business, etc—to work together for human flourishing.

Dr. Timothy Keller
Senior Pastor
Redeemer Presbyterian Church

[Traducido del original en inglés.]

24 de mayo de 2011. Tim Keller

Siempre me han parecido fuertes las palabras de Jesús en Mateo 5:21-11. Él comienza recordándoles a sus oyentes que todo el que mate será juzgado. Pero luego les da tres casos de estudios de acción que parecen ser mucho menos serios que el homicidio. “Pero yo les digo que cualquiera que se enoje contra su hermano será culpable de juicio; y cualquiera que diga ‘Raca’ a su hermano será culpable ante el concilio; y cualquiera que le diga: ‘Fatuo’ quedará expuesto al infierno de fuego.” Estar enojado y amargado contra alguien en tu corazón puede llevarte a un gran mal, de modo que tiene sentido. Pero el término “raca” significa meramente algo así como “cabeza de chorlito” y la palabra que se traduce como “fatuo” tampoco parece un insulto tajante. Los oyentes de Jesús probablemente hayan sonreído cuando escucharon esos términos ¡y estarían más confundidos todavía cuando terminó la oración amenazándolos con el infierno! ¿A dónde quería llegar Jesús? “La deliberada paradoja del pronunciamiento de Jesús es que los insultos comunes y corrientes pueden esconder una actitud de desprecio, algo que Dios toma muy en serio.” (R.T. France, The Gospel of Matthew [El evangelio de Mateo], p.201)

Este pasaje me ayuda a entender mejor Números 20. Al igual que en Éxodo 17, los hijos de Israel están en el desierto enfrentando una sed ardiente. Le echan la culpa a Moisés de ser, en el peor de los casos, malvado, o en el mejor de ellos, un líder incompetente. Otra vez, Dios le dice a Moisés que vaya a “esa roca”. Esta vez, sin embargo, le dice que le hable y de la roca brotaría suficiente agua para todo el mundo (vs. 8). Moisés reúne a todos ante la roca, pero en vez de hablarle, le habla furiosamente al pueblo. “¡Oid ahora, rebeldes! ¿Les hemos de hacer salir aguas de esta peña [otra vez]?” Golpeando la roca con su vara en toda su furia, el agua comienza a brotar. Dios, no obstante, le dice a Moisés que no entraría a la Tierra Prometida, porque “no creíste en mí, para santificarme delante de los hijos de Israel” (vs. 12).

¿Qué fue lo que Moisés hizo mal? Es claro que no siguió bien las instrucciones. Golpeó la roca en vez de hablarle, y eso es desobediencia. No obstante, la reprensión de Dios va más profundo. Al llamarlos “rebeldes”, Moisés se erigió en juez. Al decir “¿les sacaremos agua?”, se puso en lugar de su libertador. Todo lo que Moisés hizo desvió la atención de Dios.

No es difícil entender el porqué. El liderazgo trae consigo una fuerte carga de crítica y malos entendidos, aun cuando las cosas estén yendo bien. Cuando las cosas van mal, la gente saca a luz su frustración y enojo contra los que están a cargo. Un pastor recién ordenado una vez me dijo: “Yo no sabía que, una vez que te conviertes en líder, ¡siempre hay alguien enojado contigo!”

Esto le da sentido a la reacción de Moisés. “Su reacción no es solo el golpe a la roca, sino la respuesta de un hombre que bajo presión se ha vuelto amargado y pretencioso” (D. Carson, For the Love of God [Por el amor de Dios], vol. 1, lectura para el 11 de mayo). Dios estaba listo para mostrar su gracia, pero Moisés no estaba de humor para eso. La crítica despiadada lo había tornado justiciero. Él los despreciaba. Tenía ira pero no compasión, y esa es la marca de un hombre que está volviéndose menos como Dios, no más (ver Isaías 15-16 donde Dios se lamenta aun cuando pronuncia un juicio). Moisés es un hombre que ha olvidado la gracia, y la señal es un espíritu santulón junto con palabras de denuncia sin humildad ni compasión.

El liderazgo siempre incluye conflicto. La famosa carta de John Newton sobre la “controversia” observa qué tan fácil es para la crítica gestar fariseos. “Cualquier cosa que nos haga confiar en nosotros como comparativamente buenos o sabios, como para tratar con desprecio al que no adhiere a nuestras doctrinas o sigue nuestro partido, es una prueba y un fruto de un espíritu justiciero.”

Todos los líderes, y en especial los líderes cristianos, deben estar a la defensiva de esta tentación inevitable y pecado terrible. Es natural, cuando estamos bajo la crítica, proteger nuestros corazones del dolor minimizando a los críticos en nuestra mente. “Ustedes son unos estúpidos.” Aun si no les hablas en voz audible como hizo Moisés, lo haces para tus adentros. Eso te lleva al ensimismamiento, autocompasión, incluso a delirios de grandeza, pero el mayor pecado es que el crecimiento del desprecio interior conduce al orgullo y a la pérdida de la dependencia humilde de la gracia de Dios. Moisés trató a Dios con desprecio cuando se volvió arrogante contra su pueblo.

Este es el desafío de los líderes. ¿Hay alguna esperanza para nosotros? Sí la hay, porque estás en una mejor posición que Moisés para comprender la gracia de Dios. Don Carson escribe: “A la luz de 1 Corintios 10:4, que nos muestra a Cristo como el anti-tipo de la roca, es difícil resistir la conclusión de que la razón por la que Dios insistió en que la roca fuera golpeada en Éxodo 17:1-7, y lo prohíbe en esta ocasión, es que Él percibe una maravillosa oportunidad de mostrar un punto importante: la gran Roca, de la cual fluyen los ríos de agua viva, es golpeada solo una vez y nada más”.

In my last blog post, Coming Together on Culture, Part 1: Theological Issues, I said that, despite all the division over Christ and culture in the Christian church today, I perceived that some people in each camp were listening to the critiques and were incrementally making revisions that moved them closer toward the other camps and positions. I highlighted the Transformationist and Two Kingdoms views, arguing that each model had some imbalances, but that many were recognizing them and incorporating insights from other models. You can see what I wrote here. Most of the critiques I gave the Transformationist side came from the Kuyperians themselves. (See James K.A. Smith’s recent book Desiring the Kingdom and the exchanges in Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought here.)

The post generated some resistance. Michael Goheen, a noted author from the Kuyperian movement, made a comment on our website. He said that he and co-author Craig Bartholomew (along with others), while solidly in the Transformationist camp, had “appropriated the work of Newbigin and would espouse a more missional Kuyperianism. That is social engagement is not first of all to change society—that may happen but…the goal…is to witness to the Lordship of Christ over all areas of public life and to love our neighbor as we struggle against dehumanizing idolatry.”

Meanwhile, Michael Horton, a prominent Two Kingdoms (or 2K) theologian, posted a blog in response to mine, similarly resisting my depiction of the Two Kingdoms position. Although six years ago he wrote: “There is no difference between Christians and non-Christians with respect to their vocations….” and “there is no ‘Christian politics’ or ‘Christian art’ or ‘Christian literature,’ any more than there is ‘Christian plumbing,’” he now writes: “Nothing in the 2K view entails that ‘Christians do not, then, pursue their vocation in a ‘distinctively Christian way’ or ‘that neither the church nor individual Christians should be in the business of changing the world or society.’” Then, after reminding us that no political movement can “transform the kingdoms of this age into the kingdom of Christ” he added that nevertheless Christian-led social reforms were good things. Horton confirmed the importance of Kuyper’s distinction between the church as organization and organism, and finally expressed appreciation for the conversation.

These two writers, despite their valid concerns about caricature, seem to me to provide evidence that indeed there may be a “coming together on culture” among Christians. Mike Goheen’s emphasis, still clearly within a Kuyperian model, has incorporated many insights and critiques from other sources and brought a balance to the whole “Christian worldview” way of engaging culture. And Michael Horton’s comments either clarified or slightly modified the often-heard 2K remarks that there is no distinction between the way Christians and non-Christians work in the world. His gracious spirit shows that this conversation can go on and the various approaches can learn from each other.

This is the fifth event of eleven planned Gospel in the City events across Asia from Fall 2010 to Spring 2011. These events will culminate in our first Asian Intensive, a five-week training for planters who are at or near launch, which is normally held in our New York office. Previous events were held in Singapore, Taipei, Hong Kong and Sydney.

Tokyo is one of the largest, most secular, and most expensive cities in the world. If New York is a tough town for church planters, Tokyo is undoubtedly tougher.

So we are thrilled that about 30 participants came to City to City Asia's first outreach event in Tokyo on January 16-17. Gospel in the City is a two-day learning experience that exposes urban leaders to core principles on how the gospel changes hearts, communities, and cities.

The event was hosted by Grace City Church Tokyo, a CTC-affiliated church. The sessions were led by pastor Makoto Fukuda and by Bart Garrett, lead pastor of Christ Church in Berkeley, which is also affiliated with CTC and now hopes to support GCC long-term. Daniel Iverson, a missionary with MTW Japan, and Seima Aoyagi of GCC also led talks.

According to Geert De Boo, a Dutch missionary working with GCC since its inception, this will be the first event of its kind in Tokyo. The goal is to jump-start a city-wide movement of gospel-centered church planting movements and partnerships, with a focus on finding and recruiting like-minded church planters and leaders with a vision for impacting the city for Christ by engaging it with the gospel.

The entire training was given in Japanese (which required a sizeable translation project), and we hope represents a great step towards furthering the movement in Tokyo.

Some highlights of the training:
1. That we were able to see this event happen at all! Japan is a difficult mission field, less than 1% Christian, and with very few workers in the Gospel. It was a reminder that "God has many in the city who are his people" (Acts 18:10).
2. Breakout small group discussion sessions in which the principles of the Gospel DNA that each speaker presented were addressed and applied to the city context. A lot of insights were given into the challenge of contextualizing the Gospel in a culture and city like Tokyo.
3. The increasing interest and desire for gospel-centered, urban church planting vision and realization of the need for networking or partnering in order to see it fulfilled.

You can also see pictures of the event from a participant.

Our thanks to Rev. Fukuda and others on his team for all the work they did with the amount of responsibilities they already have as church planters, aid workers, and ministers of the gospel! Grace City Church Tokyo, which launched less than two years ago, has already been thrown into service in extraordinary ways. See our past stories:

Grace City Church Tokyo Prepares for Launch
Network Rallies to Aid Japan
At Work in Tohoku and Tokyo

In this new year, many of us are making plans or pondering resolutions for the coming months. These can range from losing weight or getting more organized to changing jobs, moving our families to a new city, or taking up a new call.

Taking stock of our calling, where God has brought us up until now and where he is leading us, is always a relevant question, particularly for those called to live out their faith in an unstable economy, a transient city, or any kind of ministry. If God has created each of us with certain gifts and a calling for our lives (Ephesians 4, Romans 12), then seeking our calling is not just about personal fulfillment or getting ahead, but it is a matter of finding out how we are meant to glorify him.

Here are a few resources from our network on finding your calling.

1. Neat & Tidy Tips for Figuring Out Your Call and Messy & Ugly Confessions in Figuring Out Your Call

Julia and her husband Alastair Sterne are planting a church in Vancouver, and were part of our 2011 International Intensive. Here she recounts some of the very practical wisdom she's learned along the way to becoming a counselor and wife, and now, moving 3,000 miles to start a new church.

2. On Calling with Peter Ong

Peter Ong is in our Fellows program for prospective church planters. In this audio interview, he describes his journey from parachurch minister to elder to his new venture: starting a church-plant of a church-plant in Flushing, Queens. He also describes how as a pastor he helps his congregation to find their own identity in Christ and let that foundation drive their calling, and he gives some advice to those who might want to plant a church in New York City.

3. Vocation: Discerning Your Calling

Finally, in this article Tim Keller talks about finding a vocation, both in our careers and in our church communities. In a work-obsessed world, often driven by sex, money and power, we can look to our communities and the needs around us to see opportunities to serve as a steward of God's creation. "Your family background, education, and life experiences—even the most painful ones—all equip you to do some work that no one else can do."

Happy New Year.

This week we noticed a home for the holidays theme in our church planters' blogs, so rather than repost one or all three of them, we decided to highlight each of them and their unique perspectives on being home for the holidays. Chances are you'll find something to relate to in at least one of them.

1. Need some help for spending time with non-Christian family this Christmas?

Neil Powell, network leader and planter of City Church Birmingham, gives some practical advice and a book recommendation for those attempting the delicate task of sharing one's faith with family members.

2. Difficult Family Holidays

Rev. John Haralson, senior pastor at Grace Seattle, addresses how to make the best of time with family when our relationships with family members are strained at best. He reminds us to remember what is good and fallen in both our families and ourselves.

3. Why My Perfect Family Is Better Than Yours!

Finally, as usual, Mez McConnell of Niddrie Community Church in Edinburgh made us laugh with his spoof of the annual family newsletter, which unconsciously (or consciously) can begin to sound like a list of accomplishments.

God bless you and yours this Christmas.

Editor's Note: Sihle and Gigi Mooi are planting in Soweto, the largest township in South Africa just outside of Johannesburg. Townships were created during apartheid and became centers of resistance. Today Soweto is a vibrant city in its own right, but many visible reminders of the past remain. The challenges involved in planting a gospel centered church in this township are enormous. Please pray for Sihle and Gigi as they develop their church.

In 2008, my husband Sihle and I planted Soweto Community Church. We have many hopes and desires for this community. We hope to be catalysts for racial healing, reconciliation and justice in South Africa — one of the most racially polarized countries in the world. God seems to be accomplishing that in the most unexpected of ways.

20% of the world's orphans live in Southern Africa. North Pretoria is one of the most conservative (white) Afrikaans communities in all of South Africa, and from this region came the system of Apartheid which separated and subjugated all people based upon race. Most recently, we've begun to work with a home for abandoned babies in North Pretoria that is run by a couple from an Afrikaans church there. The home began receiving black babies, something which increasingly alienated them from their Afrikaans community and resulted in their no longer having a church home. As a result, they asked us (all the way in Soweto) to baptize their seven abandoned babies.

One of these is Usher (pictured), three months old, who was born in a field in Soweto and left to die. By the time police found him he was dead — frozen solid from hypothermia. He was wrapped him in a blanket and the police were taking him to the morgue when the officer decided to take him to the hospital instead. Usher's life is truly a miracle. He has had some serious physical repercussions from the hypothermia, though — a very weak and stiff neck which constantly made his head fall backward, and brain damage. You can see in this photo I have my hand on his neck as I'm praying healing over him. On that day, God healed him completely! I visited the orphanage a few days later and the house Mother said he was a completely different child. His neck is completely normal and the doctor has given him a perfect bill of health! He's now in the process of being adopted!

We were overjoyed to dedicate the seven abandoned babies, and had no idea that — along with the babies — would come 16 Afrikaaners from North Pretoria to our little church in the largest black township in all of South Africa! Most of them have been church goers their entire lives but had never been in a church service with black people. Three of them spent more than 20 years in the Military Police Force under the Apartheid government, and even violently patrolled the streets of Soweto not far from where our church now stands. After the babies were dedicated, one who was a Colonel in the Apartheid Military (who was unwilling to even touch black babies two years ago) gave a tearful testimony of how the Lord was using these little babies to change his life and heart with regard to racial prejudice. Sihle brought several of our Sowetan leaders to the front, then invited these Afrikaaner military men to come forward and be embraced by our black leaders. There were many tears shed in those precious moments.

Most of the babies in this home come from Soweto, but there are hardly any places to care for such children in Soweto, so they are taken all the way to Pretoria and other neighboring cities. Sihle and I have an enormous vision for this enormous need; to raise up these such vulnerable children with nurturing, a love for the Lord, and a burden for the restoring and rebuilding of this beautiful country. We are planning to launch a Children's Village for orphaned/ abandoned children, and eventually a home for abandoned babies attached to our own home. Please pray for all the pieces and the funding to fall into place to enable such a great need in our community to be met. May we raise up a new generation! And please continue to pray for deep, Gospel transformation in the Afrikaans community, and that God will use us in that process.

You can find photos of the baptism here.

Many, many thanks from the heart of South Africa.

I don't think you can tell it from reading on the internet, but among many younger leaders with Reformed and evangelical convictions there may be a slow convergence coming on the subject of the mission of the church and the relationship of Christ and culture.

On the surface, the Reformed and evangelical world seems divided between "Cultural Transformationists" and the "Two Kingdoms" views of these things. Transformationists fall into fairly different camps, including the neo-Calvinists who follow Abraham Kuyper, the Christian Right, and the theonomists. Though different in significant ways, they all believe Christians should be about redeeming and changing the culture along Christian lines.

On the other hand, the Two Kingdoms view believes essentially the opposite—that neither the church nor individual Christians should be in the business of changing the world or society. Again, there are very different camps within this stance. The Reformed and Lutheran proponents of the "2K" view believe that Christians do their work in the world along side of non-believers on the basis of commonly held moral standards "written on the heart" by natural revelation. Christians do not, then, pursue their vocation in a "distinctively Christian" way. The Neo-Anabaptists are much more pessimistic than Reformed 2Ks about the systems of the world, which they view as "Empire", based on violence and greed. However, both groups reject completely the idea that "kingdom work" means changing society along Christian lines. Both groups believe the main job of Christians is to build up the church, a counter-culture to the world and a witness against it.

However, over the last two or three years, several publications have been produced that critique both the Two Kingdoms and Transformationist views. And these books and articles are pointing in a similar direction and are being carefully read and discussed by a wide number of younger leaders. I'm thinking of Don Carson's Christ and Culture Revisited, James Hunter's To Change the World, Dan Strange's articles (the latest being "Not Ashamed! The Sufficiency of Scripture for Public Theology" in Themelios, vol 36 issue 2) and Miroslav Volf's Public Faith. All these works consider the two positions, as they are commonly held today, to be seriously unbalanced.

Transformationism is seen as too triumphalistic, coercive, naïve about sin, and often self-righteous. It does not appreciate sufficiently God's common grace given to all people. It may not prepare Christians well to make common cause with non-believers for the common good, or to appreciate the goodness of all work, even the most "menial" kind. It is criticized for putting too much emphasis on the intellect—on thinking out your philosophical world view—and not enough on the piety of the heart and the reordering of our loves. It is critiqued for putting too much hope in and emphasis on Christians taking political power and not enough on their being a faithful presence in the professions and existing cultural institutions.

The Two Kingdoms approach is seen as too pessimistic about the possibility of social change. Paradoxically, many holding this position are also too naïve and optimistic about the role of common grace in the world. They argue that Christians can work beside non-believers on the basis of common moral intuitions given to all by natural revelation. But Dan Strange in Themelios writes that this idea of common standards does not work well in cultures that have never known Christian influence, and, therefore, "What is often taken as evidence of general revelation…in our Western culture may actually be rather the historical influence of special revelation, biblical law, and the gospel." In short, the Two Kingdoms approach gives too little weight to the fact that every culture is filled with idols, that sin distorts everything, that there can be no final neutrality, and that we need Scripture and the gospel, not just natural revelation, to guide us in our work in the world.

The aforementioned writers call Christians to new balances that honor the insights of both views and avoid the mistakes. One of the balances is between the church and Christians living in society. While the mission of the institutional church is to preach the Word and produce disciples, the church must disciple Christians in such a way that they live justly and integrate their faith with their work. So the church doesn't directly change culture, but it disciples and supports people who do. Another balance has to do with society's cultural institutions. Rather than taking them over, or avoiding them as a corrupting influence, or treating them with indifference—Christians are to be a faithful presence within them.

As I said, if you look at the internet you get the strong impression that the Reformed and evangelical world is divided over this issue. I'm sure that is true to some degree, but I'm not sure how sharp the division really is. Many already stand in a middle space between the two, and the authors who have argued for the middle way are being read widely and carefully by the younger Christian leaders I meet. And even though the authors I've named do not have identical positions—some are more friendly to one end of the spectrum or the other—my informal analysis of the situation is that these books are slowly bringing churches toward one another not only in their theorizing on this subject, but also in their practice. We'll look at the practical aspects in the next post.

This blog was written by Mike Stark, youth pastor at Niddrie Community Church, a church plant in the projects of Edinburgh Scotland. Please pray for their church as they host various Christmas activities this month for the local community. You can read the original blog post at: niddriepastor.com.

If any professional ever had a claim to the title ‘Jack of all trades’, it would surely be the church Youth Worker. What other profession can boast such diversity in roles as counselor, entertainer, artist, cleaner, cinematographer, people manager, taxi driver, web developer, teacher, caretaker, do-it-yourself expert, technology guru, chef, referee, befriender, musician, theologian, administrator, shepherd and pastor? That’s by no means an exhaustive list, and very few of these roles feature on my job spec. Why is it that Christian Youth Workers will almost certainly have to try their hand at most of these roles (and others we might add) throughout their time in ministry?

Part of living in a community is being aware of the needs around us, having compassion on those in need, and being flexible and prepared to meet the needs of those in our community to the best of our ability. This is community living, and it’s not just limited to the realm of Christian Youth Work. Most of my ministry staff team will relate to the feeling of being a Jack of all trades too.

What do young people need?

So the question is: what are the needs of the young people in our community? Let’s first differentiate between perceived needs and actual needs. As Bible believing Christians, we know that the actual need – the fundamental need – is to hear the Gospel, to trust in Jesus and be transformed from the inside out, under the lordship of Christ. Obviously, few young people will approach you directly looking for the antidote to their sinful heart condition, and demanding an introduction to the Lord. For the young person, their perceived need will be quite different, though not insignificant. This is where we need to be alert to the perceived needs and flexible enough to work with them. And as we begin to meet these needs, we actually find ourselves with many more opportunities to address that more fundamental need.

For those within the 16-20 year old category in Niddrie, getting a job is one of the biggest perceived needs. In fact, quite a number of the opportunities I’ve had with this age group have come off the back of what you might call careers advice. So we can go ahead and add ‘careers adviser’ to the list above…

Careers adviser?

This week, UK Chancellor George Osbourne outlined plans for a £1bn package to tackle youth unemployment, which has been on the rise since the turn of the millennium, and hit a record high of 1.02 million in the months running up to September this year.

The "Youth Contract" proposed by the coalition government hopes to provide nearly half a million new opportunities for young people, including apprenticeships and work experience placements. Employers are being offered cash incentives to take on apprentices between 18 and 24 years old. (Read more about the Youth Contact scheme on the BBC: "Clegg: £1bn scheme will 'provide hope' to young jobless")

How does this apply to us? In Niddrie, we have some young people who want a job but aren’t motivated enough to find one, while others are desperate for a job, any job, and will do whatever it takes to get one. It’s the latter group that I seem to find myself working alongside most often.

So I help these guys put together their resume, fill in job applications (online or written), provide potential employers with character references, and coach young people through interviews – I’ve even loaned out one of my ties. All the while I’m keeping an ear to the ground for any jobs that might be going among employers I know personally, and looking for ways to develop the relationships I have with these young people beyond "careers advice" to genuine friendships where the gospel naturally comes out. It’s a different approach to that of all the other youth organisations and careers agencies (and there are many!) that are working in the community. Not better… just different. The sad reality is that there are loads of employable and motivated young people who still can’t find jobs in the current climate, especially in areas like Niddrie, and that’s disillusioning.

Micro-businesses and apprenticeships

With so few suitable jobs going, what more can we be doing for these young people? Of course we can continue to offer advice, polish their CV’s and point them in the direction of suitable vacancies, but is there a way in which we can actually provide gainful employment ourselves? Can the church be that vacancy? As I read these articles about youth unemployment and the government’s Youth Contract proposals, different individuals and situations were brought to mind and I couldn’t help but dream of the possibilities.

Some of the ideas we’ve had in the past have been focused on training; for example, young people working alongside Christian tradesmen, learning new skills and being exposed to the gospel. This would be a more accessible, manageable step towards an actual trade apprenticeship.

Lately, we’ve been thinking about helping young people establish micro-businesses: 1 or 2 person businesses with little overhead costs and a reasonable profit-margin. These might include: gardening, cleaning, pet-sitting, selling crafts, or anything we can imagine. I know of a guy who makes bracelets in his spare time out of high-tensile parachute chord which can be undone in such a way as to provide a length of chord of several feet for use in emergencies. He makes them while watching TV each evening and sells them on eBay to Jack Bauer wannabe’s and makes a fortune!

Might we offer Christian young people church-based apprenticeships, covering the gambit of work we do as a church? Maybe training them in adventure activities and outdoor education, giving them experience of work with the elderly, serving in the café, or in the schools? Wouldn’t it be great if, in the not so distant future, the church could plug into initiatives like the government’s £1bn Youth Contract scheme, and actually offer young people short term employment and training opportunities ourselves?

Nick Clegg says that the £1bn scheme will ‘provide hope’ to the young jobless. It would certainly be great to see more and more young people finding work, but at the end of the day we’re not careers officers. We know that the real need of our community goes beyond jobs and financial security, important though these things are. So we, through whatever means, seek to share that real, deep-seated, lasting hope that we have through the gospel.

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” (Romans 5:1-2)

Pray for us as we think these things through.

This report was sent to us from Sydney. Our special thanks to Fiona Smartt at CCIW for coordinating the event.

Almost 100 people gathered in the heart of the city of Sydney earlier this month (Nov 15-17) for Australia’s first Gospel in the City event.

Attendees travelled from all across Australia to attend the three day church planting and renewal conference exposing church leaders to what has been called Redeemer's Gospel Ministry DNA.

A combination of both current and potential future church planters and leaders came to hear City to City presenters Stephen Um and Tuck Bartholomew outline a vision for how the gospel shapes all of life, from the heart, to a church ministry, and to a movement across an entire city.

A highlight of the conference was the stimulating discussion generated by the rich diversity among the church pastors and leaders present. There were many fruitful conversations about applying the theological and practical principles of the Gospel DNA across diverse denominational contexts, different urban cities and a wide spectrum of cultures.

The conference concluded with a final dinner where 20 people gathered to discuss next steps for church planting in Sydney and beyond.

Gospel in the City Australia was hosted by three Sydney churches, Cornerstone Presbyterian Community Church, Christ Church Inner West Anglican Community, and St Philip’s York Street who have partnered with Redeemer City to City to grow a church planting movement amongst new and existing churches in Sydney.

We look forward with anticipation to see how, under God, this significant conference bears fruit in the months and years ahead.

Editor's note: This report is from Jaime Jimenez, who was in our International Intensive program in 2009. His church, the Iglesia Cristiana del Sur, is part of a growing church planting movement in Monterrey, Mexico.

God has been blessing us with gospel growth. It has been a great privilege to see people coming to faith in Christ or growing in their faith. By God’s grace this is the first church planting project in Monterrey that is completely coming out from one of our church plants, Encuentro con Dios. This is why we call it a “second generation” project. We started out with around 30 adults and 5 children, and now our regular attendance is about 50 adults plus 10 children.

A young lady who grew up as a cultural Catholic came to church a few months ago invited by one of her friends. After the service, she left in a hurry not allowing for the people of the church to welcome her. I assumed she didn't like the experience of being in a church like ours for the first time. To my surprise, that week she contacted her Christian friend and told her that she planned to keep coming.

After a couple of months, I was wondering how clear her understanding of the gospel was. So my wife and I invited her for a discipleship group where we studied the basics of the Christian faith. It was a great joy to listen to her tell us how salvation is offered to us only by grace through faith in Christ. Knowing her faith background it was a very exciting time. We thank God for bringing her into our church and for the work that He is doing in her heart.

Next month, trusting the Lord and considering our call, we are moving our services from the local seminary, where we've been blessed with very low rent, to a larger, more visible location at the Holiday Inn Parque Fundidora. The Parque Fundidora has become one of Monterrey’s landmarks and centers of recreation, holding a variety of cultural, sports and business events. It is approximately one mile from downtown, and is easily accessible by light rail or by several main avenues. The hotel’s personnel has been flexible enough to understand our current situation and needs and by God’s grace they have offered us a reduced price.

Please pray for us as we prepare to move and take on the additional rent. We want to be in a strategic location that will allow us to be in the heart of the city and be a light for the south of Monterrey. We will use some of our church savings to finance our first year, trusting that after a year the congregation will be providing enough to cover the rent. These savings represent what we have accumulated over the first six months apart from our missions and mercy savings, which we are not willing to compromise.

In Christ,
Jaime Jimenez

[Traducido del original en inglés.]

A finales de octubre, la red City to City Europe reunió aproximadamente a unos 500 líderes de 27 países en Berlín para hablar acerca de “El Evangelio y la Ciudad.” El evento fue organizado por un Equipo Ejecutivo de líderes y plantadores de iglesia europeos, y la invitación fue extendida –a través de una gran variedad de denominaciones y organizaciones, a todo aquél interesado en la obra pionera en el contexto urbano de Europa.

Tim Keller fue uno de los tres conferenciantes principales. Esta ha sido su primera visita como conferenciante al continente [hasta el momento sólo había visitado las Islas Británicas]. Sus charlas giraron entorno a algunas características de la iglesia que desarrolla su ministerio en la ciudad. Tanto el reputado urbanista alemán, Frank Eckhardt, como el teólogo y profesor de la Free University of Amsterdam, Stefan Paas, presentaron sendas perspectivas sobre tendencias en las ciudades europeas y la naturaleza de la plantación de iglesias en el contexto urbano de Europa. Muchos más líderes hablaron de otros temas en los talleres [que tenían lugar entre plenaria y plenaria]. La combinación de toda la enseñanza que se dio, el calibre de todos los líderes allí presentes y lo grande del evento en sí daba la sensación de estar produciendo una sinergia que resultaba del todo fascinante observar. En el segundo día de la conferencia, se formuló una pregunta que desde entonces no pude sacarme de la cabeza: “¿Podría ser que esta conferencia representase un ‘punto de inflexión’ en un mover del evangelio en las ciudades de Europa?”

En su libro, La clave del éxito, Malcolm Gladwell define un punto de inflexión como "el momento de masa crítica, estar en el umbral de algo, el punto de ebullición.” ¿Pudiera ser que nos encontremos en un “punto de inflexión,” cuando las aguas se desbordan y un torrencial de iglesias cuyo énfasis es el evangelio empiezan a ser plantadas o revitalizadas a lo largo y ancho del continente, y miles de creyentes en cada ciudad se esfuerzan por vivir de acuerdo a las implicaciones prácticas del evangelio en público y en privado, en sus trabajos, sus familias y en las comunidades en las que viven? Tal vez así sea; sólo el tiempo lo dirá.

Pero de una cosa estoy seguro: Hay un mover del Espíritu Santo. Este momentum que ahora vivimos como movimiento es algo que se ha ido formando. La gente está viniendo a Cristo. Se están plantando iglesias. Se han formado y se están formando redes para la plantación de iglesias en varias ciudades y regiones. Está emergiendo una nueva generación de líderes jóvenes con esperanza, coraje y visión para plantar nuevas iglesias en las ciudades de Europa. Muchos líderes denominaciones y de iglesias clave se están animando y empiezan a creer que puede haber un rebrote del evangelio en sus ciudades. Muchos parece como si hubieran empezado a estar menos pendientes de sus denominaciones para pasar ahora a estar más interesados en el Reino de Cristo.

Daba la sensación de que durante la conferencia podríamos haber traspasado la línea divisoria. Daba toda la sensación de estar en [el inicio de] un movimiento.

Durante más de diez años City to City ha estado trabajando silenciosamente entre bastidores ayudando a plantar aproximadamente una cincuentena de iglesias en las ciudades más importantes de Europa. Ahora, muchas de esas iglesias están plantando iglesias hijas o cooperando unas con otras para plantar más iglesias. Y ahora, con la creación de City to City, que es la red de iglesias y nuevas iniciativas que ha resultado de esa labor, estamos viendo cómo va tomando vida por sí mismo un movimiento urbano de plantación de iglesias en Europa. Aunque todavía se encuentra en sus primeras etapas de desarrollo, sin duda gana fuerza y credibilidad por momentos. Creemos que en los próximos cinco años se plantarán aproximadamente unas 150 iglesias relacionadas [directa o indirectamente] con la red. Todas esas iglesias estarán asociadas con una gran variedad de denominaciones, asociaciones de iglesias y redes más compactas, y aún así apoyadas por CTCE. Se están creando mecanismos para proveer apoyo economico. Se están construyendo estructuras de liderazgo que animen a desarrollar capacitación, coaching y redes transdenominacionales prácticamente en cada una de las ciudades más importantes de Europa. Todo esto podría suponer que estamos entrando en un tiempo de importante renovación para las ciudades de Europa.

Volviendo otra vez al libro de Gladwell—creemos que “las pequeñas cosas pueden hacer una gran diferencia.” CTCE en realidad es sólo una cosa pequeña, pero esperamos que sea de ayuda para la creación de un movimiento del evangelio en Europa.

***

Puedes encontrar audio y video de la conferencia aquí (el material es en inglés y es necesario registrarse para poder escucharlo).

Si quisieras apoyar a City to City Europe, puedes hacer tu donación aquí con Paypal (hay un pago de comisiones para las donaciones internacionales), o puedes donar para el coaching, la formación y el trabajo impulsor de Redeemer City to City.

7. Everybody’s Rule: Only God sees the heart—so remember the gospel and stick to criticizing the theology.

As I read through what these men and others have said about the importance and the danger of polemics, one theme came up so continually across their statements that I could not attribute it to any one person. That theme is about the evil of ad hominem arguments, the strategy of passionately attacking the person himself rather than engaging his doctrine and views. Gillespie warned against “acrimony… in the manner of expression.” If you have zeal, Gillespie, said, let it be expressed in the overwhelming force and power of your Biblical and logical arguments. “It is but in vain for a man to help the bluntness of reason with the sharpness of passion… let not a man cast forth a flood of passionate words when his arguments are like broken cisterns that can hold no water.” Much criticism today is filled with scorn, mockery, and sarcasm—“sharpness of passion”, rather than careful exegesis and reflection. Gillespie says such an approach is not persuasive.

But no one has written more eloquently about this rule than John Newton, in his well-known “Letter on Controversy.” Newton says that first, before you begin to write a single word against an opponent, “and during the whole time you are preparing your answer, you may commend him by earnest prayer to the Lord's teaching and blessing.” This practice will stir up love for him and “such a disposition will have a good influence upon every page you write.” Later in the letter Newton says, “Be upon your guard against admitting anything personal into the debate. If you think you have been ill treated, you will have an opportunity of showing that you are a disciple of Jesus, who ‘when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not.’ ” It is a great danger to aim to “gain the laugh on your side,” to make your opponent look evil and ridiculous instead of engaging their views with “the compassion due to the souls of men.”

In the end, Newton strikes this same balance that we saw in Lloyd-Jones and others. He says that it is “a laudable service to defend the faith once delivered to the saints: we are commanded to contend earnestly for it, and to convince gainsayers.” But almost immediately he added, “yet we find but very few writers of controversy that have not been manifestly hurt by it.” Why? He answers: “Either they grow in a sense of their own importance, or imbibe an angry, contentious spirit, or they insensibly withdraw their attention from those things which are the food and immediate support of the life of faith, and spend their time and strength upon matters which are at most but of a secondary value. This shows, that if the service [of doing polemics] is honorable, it is dangerous. What will it profit a man if he gains his cause and silences his adversary, if at the same time he loses that humble, tender frame of spirit in which the Lord delights, and to which the promise of his presence is made?”

In short, our purpose in controversy should be to persuade our opponents, lovingly but forthrightly challenging them. What we often see instead is a form of polemics in which opponents are caricatured and mocked, and base motives are imputed to them. Those taking more theologically conservative views are branded ‘self-righteous’ and those with less conservative views are called ‘sell-outs.’ In this approach, persuasion is not the purpose at all. Rather, the goal of polemics is to “rally the troops”—to gain stature in the eyes of some constituency, and maybe to grow your fan-base—by objectivizing and marginalizing your opponent. While many people conduct this kind of polemic in the name of Biblical truth, it is ironically more in line with Nietzschean postmodernism, which sees all discourse as not about truth and persuasion but about the accrual of power.

Is it possible for the Christian church today to get past this division between people who do polemics destructively and those who want to avoid polemics altogether? One way to do it is to go back to these authors that I have perused so lightly. I would even ask seminaries to consider at least one course in “Polemical Theology” which would not simply list the errors that need to be refuted, but which would teach students how to go about theological dispute in a way that accords with Biblical wisdom and the gospel.

Yes, the gospel. John Newton puts his finger on the main reason that polemics go wrong. We do not think out the implications of the gospel of grace for the way in which we go about our disputes:

Self-righteousness can feed upon doctrines as well as upon works; and a man may have the heart of a Pharisee, while his head is stored with orthodox notions of the unworthiness of the creature and the riches of free grace. Yea, I would add, the best of men are not wholly free from this leaven; and therefore are too apt to be pleased with such representations as hold up our adversaries to ridicule, and by consequence flatter our own superior judgments. Controversies, for the most part, are so managed as to indulge rather than to repress his wrong disposition; and therefore, generally speaking, they are productive of little good. They provoke those whom they should convince, and puff up those whom they should edify. I hope your performance will savor of a spirit of true humility, and be a means of promoting it in others.

***

You can find audio and video from the conference here (registration required).

If you'd like to become a supporter of City to City Europe, you can donate here via Paypal (payment gateway fee is required for international donations), or give to the coaching, training and catalytic work of Redeemer City to City.

Below is a brief summary by Simon Murphy, a church planter we are privileged to work with in Singapore. Simon is currently pastoring Redemption Hill Church. Pictured: CTC Asia Director Jay Kyle with two Singaporean church leaders.

Just last week, October 14-15, CTC hosted its first Gospel in the City event for the region of Singapore. Participants gathered from a variety of churches and spent two days looking at some of our Gospel Ministry DNA.

Gospel in the City is typically a two-day (sometimes the duration is extended to a week or more) learning experience that exposes urban leaders to core principles on how the gospel changes hearts, communities, and cities. So far, CTC has held Gospel in the City events in Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Hong Kong and Johannesburg. Several more are slated in various cities over the next six months including Sydney, Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo, Mumbai, Manila, Kuala Lumpur.

For this training, CTC Asia Director Jay Kyle and CTC Associate Director Mark Reynolds conducted the training along with Rev. Peter Wang. In attendance were a combination of local Singaporean pastors and potential future planters. The sessions on grace renewal, city focus and contextualization were particularly helpful, with many being exposed to this ministry philosophy for the first time.

Being the first event of its nature in Singapore, Gospel in the City stimulated a lot of discussion as to how churches could apply the material in an Asian context. Lots of discussion was given to how a movement of gospel churches could grow in Singapore and beyond.

We are incredibly grateful to City to City Asia for organizing the event, for the trainers who flew a long way to be here, and to all who came to the event. The gospel is growing and bearing fruit all over the world.

I recently went on a five-week training trip for church planters in New York. Upon my return to the community I had two miraculous moments that made me glad to be home. The first involved a skip (a small boat) sat in the car park near the front entrance of our church building. Just an ordinary small, yellow skip. I looked inside and it was half full of rubbish, some other bits and bobs and a fridge freezer. I went inside the church building and asked somebody how long it had been there. "About 5 days" was the answer. I smiled to myself and my heart was encouraged. The next day it was still there and the day after that and the day after that. Our little skip was there for a full week and with each passing day I was more encouraged and more thankful to God for His faithfulness and grace. For me it was a truly miraculous sign that probably went unnoticed by every church member who passed it by on the way to worship on Sunday, the members of my team and probably most of the people in our community who pass by our building on a daily basis. Yet, what a miracle on many levels, wouldn’t you agree?

The second miraculous moment took place yesterday when a young man walked past me inside our building carrying some shopping for the community cafe. Again, I smiled to myself as he passed by, thankful to God and encouraged in my heart. Another amazing sign of God miraculous grace, wouldn’t you agree?

You may be thinking, what’s the big deal? Why would a half-full skip and a boy carrying shopping constitute a miracle, let alone some random blog post? The answer, my friends, comes with context. Consider these two incidents in light of the following background information.

When I first came to Niddrie four years ago I found a building under siege. Read the following newspaper article here to get an idea of what my wife and I and our two little girls were walking into. The steel roof on the church premises was awash with a sea of broken bricks, bottles, bits of metal and in fact anything that could be used as a projectile. The windows were being smashed on a regular basis (when I went to visit the place during my first interview the window in the front doors was stoned less than 30 seconds after I walked into the building). Meetings were often interrupted by gangs of young people rushing in. On one occasion a masked group armed with metal bars, led by an angry young man in a ski mask and wielding a golf club, barged in to our service! Members' cars were randomly smashed up, one was burned out and some members attacked in the street. The locks on the front door were once jammed with broken glass to prevent us opening up on a Sunday (we conducted our service in the local park on that occasion). The drainpipes couldn’t be put up because they were ripped out. Flowers couldn’t be planted because they were torn out. The concrete slabbing on the steps leading up to the front door was regularly smashed up with bars and golf clubs. Outside doors were set on fire, graffiti was daubed all over the walls, neighbours' houses were stoned, their fences ripped out and their garden sheds set on fire. Some members were afraid to even open the church door on their own. In the early days there was even a policy of making sure two people were present when the front door was unlocked. One to open the doors and one to keep guard against being attacked! At one point nearly every window in the building was smashed.

So, let me tell you my story again. I returned from my trip to America this past week and discovered a half full skip sat outside the front of our church that had remained untouched for a week. A young man walked past me in the cafe and instead of wearing a ski mask and wielding a golf club, he was carrying shopping for our cafe. How’s it looking now?

Reams have been written about community acceptance and cultural renewal in church planting circles. Many opinions are being put forward for how to "do" community in the Twenty-First Century. Let me just say that nothing beats just plain old patient perseverance, love, consistency, faithfulness to the gospel & just keeping on in the face of immense hostility and depressing years of fruitlessness. Because if you hang in long enough you will begin to experience little miracles of spiritual renewal, community renewal and cultural renewal in things that often seem random and go largely unmissed to the outsider. I mean, who amongst us would pass a skip in the street and even think of thanking God? Or give any thought to a young man carrying a bag of shopping and think of a miracle of God’s grace?

We’ve come a long way in Niddrie over recent years. Four years in and we are just breaking through. Pray for us. Now, don’t get me wrong. One of our guys had his laptop stolen out of the church recently and on Sunday night I had to tell off two four-years-old (yes four!) boys who were trying to attack cars with sticks. They hadn’t touched the skip though. That was still there. And the boy who used to carry a golf club and wear a ski mask? He was at his house, reading a Christian book and seeking to find out how Jesus could change his whole world.

We press on.

Every September, CTC welcomes about a dozen church planters from different global cities to New York for our annual International Intensive. This four-week program is a time for church planters who are getting ready to launch to spend some time away from their ministries and cities and reflect together on how to approach them in a gospel-centered way. They also build relationships with each other for support, friendship and accountability.

This year's class consisted of:

Albert Tate - Los Angeles
Alexandros Pipilios - Athens
Alastair & Julia Sterne - Vancouver
Dave Furman - Dubai
Keith Case - Miami
Marcelo Robles - Buenos Aires
Marco & Diana Rizo Escalante - Mexico City
Mez McConnell - Edinburgh
Phaedra Seraphimide - Athens
Randrianjkohary Tanteraka & Mahefatiana Andomampionona - Madagascar
Rikko Voorberg - Amsterdam
Samuel & Carol Foucachon- Paris
Samuel Kim - Beijing

This year's class was able to spend time with church planters and staff from Redeemer Presbyterian Church as well as participate in worship services, special events (such as a Center for Faith and Work event with Michael Gerson and Gideon Strauss), and CTC's annual Open House.

You can read about last year's program here. Of the 2010 class, several have now launched churches while the rest continue to work towards a launch date. Please continue to keep them in your prayers!

Progress this year

When we first launched Camden Town Church, our original aims were:

1. To reach the unchurched of Camden—rich and poor, English and immigrant, professional, unemployed, creative, and even criminal—that they should hear the gospel, see it lived out, and have the opportunity to turn to Jesus Christ and be saved.

2. To be transformed by Jesus Christ in every area of life—work, family, leisure, relationships, money, time, and how we see the world around us.

3. To be a light for the gospel and an influence on the wider culture of Camden, for the good of Camden and beyond, recognising that Camden is a cultural melting pot for London, the UK, and has influence across the world. (The late Amy Winehouse died in her home half a mile from our house.)

Two big shifts have happened this year. In August 2010 we moved our Sunday meetings from a pub to a large homeless shelter called Arlington. Previously we were largely a church of white professionals and students, aged 20-35. Two months later, the demographic had widened dramatically, so that we had a mixture of ages, races, languages and social situations. Much of this happened through the work of one man with a particular gift and heart for talking to people on the street and going door-to-door. This is vital if we are to reach Camden properly, because Camden itself is so strikingly diverse. It is now possible for people from all over the social map to come into church and not feel that they are entering a narrow social club.

The second big change that has happened is that we have started to see people come to Christ. At the start of 2011 we had lots of people in church who were not converted but we had yet to see anyone clearly come to faith. This became a focus of our prayers and we started to think much more carefully about what sort of introduction to Christianity would be most appropriate to members of the church. Since the new year, we have seen several clear professions of faith, and real joy with them. That said, we still have a high proportion of non-Christians with us Sunday by Sunday, which is both a blessing and a focus of our prayers.

Moreover, we have seen lives transformed by grace. One former drug addict disappeared from church for a couple of weeks. Several people were worried that he had started taking drugs again. (It turned out that he was ill!) However, the most diligent in following him up were his former dealer, who had originally brought him along to church, and another man who had also formerly dealt drugs. To see two former drug dealers checking that someone was not taking drugs was a powerful picture of gospel transformation.

Added to that, we have seen people challenged in their professional lives, through our series of Faith and Work meetings, in how they handle money, and in forming friendships with people that they would not normally have any contact with. The simple gospel of salvation by God’s grace from God’s wrath through his grace in Jesus Christ is touching lives deeply.

All of this matters because there are other Bible teaching churches within a short bus ride. So it is only seeing the gospel reach parts of Camden that would otherwise have no knowledge of Jesus that makes it worthwhile putting in the time and resources to plant a church here. It has been massively exciting this year that we are really seeing that happen.

Hopes and challenges

All that has happened has left us with some good but big challenges for the coming year. Firstly, while there is real love between the very diverse members of the church, we need those from poorer backgrounds to feel as much part of the core of the church as the young professionals and students who have been here for several years. This raises some practical questions, like how to keep people who do not regularly use email in touch with all that is happening in the church. It involves some big pastoral challenges, such as how to deal with addiction, depression, serious mental illness, housing issues, and the like. It also involves making sure that everyone is serving in such a way that they know that they have a role to play in the community. Very positively in this regard, one man, who has previously led gangs and sold drugs, has just led a football camp for kids in the area, so that he knows that he is able to make a real contribution to church life. This is the challenge of truly being the body of Christ—one people with him as our head.

Secondly, we are starting to get families into the church and we need to be ready to support them and to teach their children. Children add invaluably to the atmosphere of the church and being able to love them appropriately will be a vital to reaching the whole range of Camden life.

Thirdly, we have been something of an underground church for the past few years, growing by word of mouth, meeting individuals, and personal invitations. While that is likely still to be the main way that new people come to the church, we also need to start to be visible in Camden. This may be through particular events that we are running now but that we publicise more widely, or through making our Sunday services more visible. If our third aim was to have an impact on the wider culture of Camden, being a visible, viable light for the gospel is a vital first step.

Church planters’ network

Our network of local church planters restarted in the New Year, having lost some of its original focus on supporting people who are actually in the process of church planting. The new group is smaller but, because we are all in the midst of planting churches, there is an energy and camaraderie that makes the group a blessing to all of us who are part of it. Vitally, we are also just beginning to support church planters' wives, who bear so much of the brunt of this work.

This group crosses denominational boundaries, while maintaining high gospel standards. It is also a massive personal encouragement to meet month by month with men who fully understand the heartaches, perplexity, and challenges of church planting. Other church planters are wanting to join us and a couple of potential planters are coming to us for assessment. With this combination, we believe that it has the potential to be an engine for much more church planting across London.

Financial report

This year, for the first time, congregational giving is the largest single source of income for the church. That is vital if we are to be sustainable at some point in the future. However, having started without an initial core group, it has taken us this long to reach the stage from which many church plants start. That has had great benefits in terms of the church being a deeply embedded in the life of Camden. However, it means that we are likely to be dependent on outside funding for several years yet.

Our internal giving has increased by 40% in the last 8 months with even people in social housing making commitments to regular giving. It is very much our aim to be a net giver to the church at large, not a net receiver.

So, we we are expecting to have to raise a further £10,000 for each of the next three years. After that, we hope that growth in internal giving will cover the drop-off in external funding. We are looking to cover that funding from a number of sources and are already being encouraged that God is at work to meet this need, just as he has met all our needs in Jesus Christ.

I hope that all of the above has given you a sense that your prayer and support are starting to make a real difference here in Camden. The love of individuals and churches has been vital for us to really know that we are part of God’s worldwide church, and that knowledge has sustained us through all sorts of difficulties. If you are ever able to join us for a Sunday, as well is it being great to see you, the people here give a far better picture of what God is doing here than I possibly can. They are very special and a wonderful testimony to the greatness and the kindness of God our Saviour and our Lord Jesus Christ.

In Christ,

Peter Harris
Camden Town Church
London, UK

Archibald Alexander, the first faculty member at Princeton Theological Seminary, was given the title “Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology.” That seems a bit startling to us, because the term “polemical” in our day has an almost purely negative connotation. However, in the original plan of Princeton seminary, Polemical theology was seen as a discipline separate from the positive exposition of systematic theology.

Alexander taught this as a distinct course that distinguished orthodoxy from all opposing views. If you look at the list of the subjects he covers, it is striking how much effort was given to help students discern and refute theological error. It is also striking that Alexander included in his course a lecture on “The evils of theological controversy.” In other words, he was concerned about two opposite errors—either refraining from polemics altogether or conducting it in an ungodly manner.

George Gillespie was a Scottish minister, a member of the Westminster Assembly, and a prominent controversialist, contending for Presbyterianism as the Biblical model for church government. And yet in the forward to “The Presbyterian’s Armoury” he wrote, “I have often and heartily wished that I might not be engaged into polemic writings, of which the world is too full already…” Again we see neither a shrinking from polemics nor any relish in it. Indeed, Alexander and Gillespie indicated that anyone who enjoys theological controversy, who makes it their main purpose and who feels virtuous as they do it, is in a bad spiritual state.

D.M. Lloyd-Jones once had a memorable encounter with T.T. Shields, the pastor of Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto, and a leading defender of orthodoxy against the growing liberal theology of the churches in Canada. Shields regularly attacked other church leaders in both his preaching and his writings. Lloyd-Jones shared virtually the identical theological positions with Shields, but he believed “that the Baptist leader was sometimes too controversial, too denunciatory and too censorious. Rather than helping young Christians by the strength of his polemics against liberal Protestants and Roman Catholics, Lloyd-Jones believed that Shields was losing the opportunity to influence those whose first need is positive teaching.” (I. Murray, D.M. Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, p.271). We should recall that Lloyd-Jones was quite willing to engage in polemics himself. He and John Stott clashed publicly over whether evangelicals should remain in the Church of England. (Lloyd-Jones said they should not.) And yet Lloyd-Jones opposed making polemics a major part of one’s ministry, and challenged Shields.

In their meeting, Shields asked Lloyd-Jones if he enjoyed reading the works of another contemporary defender of orthodoxy. Lloyd-Jones said that he seldom read the author, because, “he doesn’t help me spiritually.” Shields responded: “Surely you are helped by the way he makes mincemeat of the liberals?” Lloyd-Jones responded: “You can make mincemeat of the liberals and still be in trouble in your own soul.” This touched off an extended debate. At one point Shields said that he was only doing what Paul did to Peter—contradicting and opposing him. Lloyd-Jones responded “The effect of what Paul did was to win Peter round to his position and make him call him ‘our beloved brother Paul’ [2 Peter 3:15]. Can you say the same about the people whom you attack?” For this Shields had no answer. The simple fact was that his polemics were really designed simply to stigmatize and marginalize his opponents, not persuade them. Suddenly the younger Lloyd-Jones appealed to Shields in a bold way. In the 1920s, Shields had expected an appointment to McMaster University, but theological liberals blocked it. Lloyd-Jones pointed out that from that time it had changed the tone of his ministry. “Dr Shields, you used to be known as the Canadian Spurgeon, and you were…but over this McMaster University business in the early twenties you suddenly changed and became negative and denunciatory. I feel it has ruined your ministry. Why don’t you come back! Drop all this, preach the gospel to people positively and win them!” (Murray, p.273)

On the lips of someone else, this could be seen as an appeal to “just preach Jesus” and not care about sound doctrine. But it is hard to accuse Lloyd-Jones of that. Rather, Lloyd-Jones was standing in the tradition of Gillespie and Alexander. Polemics is medicine, not food. Without medicine we will surely die—we can’t live without it. This is why “polemical theology’ must be a required part of every theological curriculum. Yet we cannot live on medicine. If you engage in polemics with relish and joy—if polemics takes up a significant percentage or even a majority of your time and energy—it is like trying to live on medicine alone. It won’t work, for the church or for you. That was Lloyd-Jones’s message.

I fear that we are in a period in which many in the Christian church are dividing into extreme positions over the very conduct of polemics. On the one side there are seemingly more people than ever, especially through the Internet, engaging in polemics, and yet it looks to me like there is a large number of younger Christians leaders who are reacting to this as if polemics is a pure evil. We want “conversation”, never argument or apologetics.

In the next post I'll give some ideas for a way that I hope could help some avoid the polarization that is occurring.

[Skip to Part 3, Part 4]

Please pray for Mexico City and for an expansion of the movement of the gospel there. It faces the challenges of many global cities, including inequality, political unrest, rapidly changing social norms, and the global economic downturn. For a complete statement of the vision, including how to support Victor and his family, visit www.redeemermexico.org.

On Thursday, August 4, I hopped on a New Jersey Transit train at Penn Station for my first (ever) trip to Princeton, NJ. CTC ran a five-day workshop for 22 network leaders from 10 different countries on how to deliver the Urban Incubator training we've developed at CTC in their own countries.

I arrived in the middle of the morning session, and immediately realized this was not your typical lecture-style learning environment: poster-sized post-its on the walls, five tables of church planters brainstorming and presenting ideas as teams, and a big clock projected from a laptop onto the wall to remind the guys of the time. The day was jam packed with presentations and simulations, and the time was squeezed for every ounce of productivity. But it was also full of good times and guys who were clearly enjoying each other's company.

Our lunch break, in the Princeton Theological Seminary cafeteria, was the most memorable part of the day for me. I was the last one into the dining hall, and sat down at the last available seat with Mikey Lynch (Geneva Push, Australia), Andres Garza and Pablo Chavarria (church planters in northern Mexico).

They were already engaged in a conversation about Australian culture when I sat down. Andres described the Mexican perception of life in Australia as being comparable to the Texas cowboy (and, Pablo added, to Crocodile Dundee). Mikey countered that urban Australian culture was similar to that of Brooklyn (my own borough), and said that the Dundee types were very rare and located in more rural areas.

The conversation then turned to Australia's origins as a prison camp, and Mikey explained that his hometown of Hobart, Tasmania, was the harshest of the prison camps. Andres stopped him and said, "What a great way to convey the gospel!" and proceeded to explain how the gospel could bring life out of the most desolate environments, as well as some other relatable examples he had used in his own preaching in Mexico. I like the way Andres thinks.

During our conversation, Andres mentioned a video that he needed to create for a church that supported his ministry. Since I had a camera with me, I was able to shoot a quick video with Andres for the next 15 minutes, speaking directly to the DSLR. A few days later, after I edited the video and sent him the clip, his response was, "Tim, thanks for saving my life."

It's hard to not be moved by Andres as he talks about the work God is doing in Monterrey, Mexico. Here's a clip from that video.

It's exciting to be a part of what our church planters are doing and come up with ways to easily and effectively share their stories through photos, videos, blogs and social media.

You can give directly to help support the work of equipping trainers and leaders of church planting networks. This work could multiply and bear fruit over the next few generations in a big way.

Dr Lloyd-Jones taught that we should evangelize with the gospel even as we teach and edify believers. Why? We must not preach as if everyone is a Christian, and we shouldn't think that believers no longer need the gospel, but only more "advanced" instruction. He believed that church members needed to be exposed to the Gospel not only because some of them needed to realize they had never repented, but also because "all the people who attend a church need to be brought under the power of the Gospel." (p.153)

There is a flip side to this. Lloyd-Jones not only calls us to evangelize as we edify, but also insists that we can edify Christians as we evangelize. Lloyd-Jones preached sermons in the evening that were primarily evangelistic and sermons in the morning that were primarily edificatory, but he insisted that his members come to both, and that preachers not make "too rigid" a distinction, because the gospel edifies and evangelizes at the same time. He wrote:

"I have often had the experience of people who have been converted, and have then gone on and grown in the Church, coming to see me some time later and telling me about what happened to them. What they have so often said is, 'When we first came to the Church we really did not understand much of what you were talking about.' I have then asked them what made them continue coming, and have been told again and again that, 'There was something about the whole atmosphere that attracted us…we gradually began to find we were absorbing the truth…it began to have meaning for us more and more.'

….This is a very common experience; people at different levels seem to be able to extract, under the influence of the Spirit, what they need, what is helpful to them… [T]hey had continued to grow in their understanding until now they were able to enjoy the full service, the full message." (p.127-128)

Lloyd-Jones' Sunday sermons, even his more evangelistic ones, were very theologically rich, yet he was always careful to explain things with non-technical language. If you couldn't understand the concept, it wasn't because he was using technical language, but only because the Christian doctrine before you was unfamiliar and counter-intuitive to you. Why did he do it this way? Why were his evangelistic sermons not simpler; and why was it possible for people to slowly but surely find Christ through his edificatory sermons? It was because the basic way that he addressed believers' questions and problems was always by pointing in some way to the truths of the gospel. That way, as believers were edified, non-believers could hear a gospel presentation. What was good about this, as noted above, is that as non-believers came to faith, they didn't have to "graduate" to a whole different service. Yes, they might begin coming to the Friday night lectures on theology or Romans, but on Sunday they were able to both come to faith and grow in grace through rich expositions of the Bible.

When, in the early days of my ministry in NYC, I heard how expository and theological Lloyd-Jones' evangelistic preaching was, and how evangelistic and gospel-centered his edificatory preaching was, it was an epiphany for me. I realized that the then-popular Willow Creek strategy of light "seeker talks" every weekend was misguided. Non-believers, especially in New York City, did not simply want light fare designed exclusively for them. They really wanted to know how this Christianity "worked." Lloyd-Jones' kind of preaching, which used the gospel to grow Christians and evangelize non-believers simultaneously, was the answer.

I also saw that there was an over-reaction against Willow Creek. Many conservative evangelicals deliberately moved to lengthy, didactic, expository teaching that assumed all present were Christians. In a sense, they moved Lloyd-Jones' Friday night kind of teaching to Sunday morning and that was all that was offered. This was deadly too, as Lloyd-Jones himself argued (see the previous post). It produces smug, cold believers and confuses any non-believers who happen to show up. So the traditional American expository sermon was inappropriate for Manhattan as well. So many churches provided either sermons that were not theologically rich enough to convert anyone—or sermons that were not gospel- and heart-oriented enough to convert anyone.

In order to forge a new path—and knowing that New York City in the late 80s was more like mid-century London than anywhere else in the U.S.—I began listening to recordings of sermons by Lloyd-Jones and Dick Lucas, another London preacher who had a mid-week lunchtime service that included many non-believers. His evangelistic ministry was also expository, and his edificatory ministry also gospel-centered. (Dick attended the Doctor's evening services as a young rector in London in the early 1960s.) To these two men I owe a debt I can never repay.

Gradually I developed a preaching ministry based on similar concepts of the nature of edification, evangelism, and the gospel. (I've written more on this subject in an article called Evangelistic Worship.) This in no way means I am copying their style of preaching. I am, of course, a Baby Boomer American. That means tones, emotional expressiveness, approaches to humor, uses of illustrations—are all widely divergent. But the basic philosophy of how to use the gospel is the same. I urge my readers to consider embracing it. That in no way requires that you try to copy my personal style either. It does require you, as a preacher, to understand and apply the gospel to the hearts of every listener every time.

One of our core beliefs is that the gospel changes everything. It is as crucial to the life of a church planter as it is for the new believer.

For that reason, the goal of much of our church planter training is not just learning theology or practical skills, but ultimately it is the transformation of the learner. Leaders are subject to pressures, temptations, and often isolation, which can affect their ability to find community, accountability, and maintain both their ministries and their personal relationships.

Over the past four years, our Director of Global Training, John Thomas, has developed a 16-module Urban Incubator for New York City church planters meeting regularly over the course of two years. The Incubator incorporates both a rich and interactive curriculum and relationship-building for church planters walking together through the intense financial, professional, and personal pressures of planting a church.

In the hopes of spreading this community-based, transformative learning to other regions, John has also developed a facilitator guide to help trainers teach each module. Earlier this August, the first ever "Train the Trainer" took place in Princeton, NJ, with twenty church planters who are leading networks in ten countries. It was a highly interactive time of modeling, simulations, and spirited discussion of how to train gospel-centered church planters.

For leaders who are learning how to train other leaders, the danger is to focus on lectures and papers focusing solely on content and methodology. Our hope is that gospel-centered relationship-building remains at the core of this "curriculum," even in the teaching methods used, which are meant to be learner-centric and adaptable. The participants were all encouraged to tweak, translate, and contextualize the curriculum to their own contexts, and to keep in touch with each other to share what they learn as they continue to use it.

Among the comments from the training were the following:

"I went back not just with all the teaching and training you imparted, but I think I went back with a little bit of the passion you bring into your ministry. I won't forget that for the rest of my life."

"The Incubator curriculum is a tremendous help. I really cannot believe you allow us to use it. Thank you!"

Our thanks to Shari Thomas and Tami Resch from Parakaleo, a ministry for church planter spouses, and to Allen Thompson, one of the pioneers of Redeemer City to City's work with leaders, for their participation in the teaching and planning of the event.

We've posted pictures of the event on our Facebook page, or you can see the complete album on Flickr. You can also give directly to Redeemer City to City's work equipping network leaders in global cities.

First, Dr Lloyd-Jones insisted that we use the gospel as we edify Christians. In Preaching and Preachers, Lloyd-Jones warns preachers not to "assume that all…who are members of the church, are…Christians. This, to me, is the most fatal blunder of all." (p.146) He goes on to say that many people have accepted Christianity intellectually but have never come under the power of the Word and the gospel and therefore have "not truly repented." (p.150)

This is very significant. It is at the heart of the difference between the Old Side/New Side, Old Lights/New Lights controversy during the revivals in 18th century America. The Old Side and Lights insisted that what made you a Christian was, essentially, that you were in the church as a baptized, confessing member. They thought it inappropriate to make baptized, professing Christians consider that perhaps they were not regenerate. But here Lloyd-Jones comes down firmly on the side of the revivalists. He says that under real gospel preaching there will always be a steady stream of church members who, every year, come forward and confess that they had never understood the gospel and had, over the past months, finally repented and believed truly. "One of the most exhilarating experiences in the life of a preacher is what happens when people whom everybody had assumed to be Christians are suddenly converted and truly become Christians. Nothing has a more powerful effect upon the life of a church than when that happens to a number of people." (p.152) Lloyd-Jones relates several intriguing cases. In one case, he tells of guest preaching at a church in Toronto in which an older lady, one of the biggest financial supporters and "pillars" of the congregation was led to see by his preaching that she was not a Christian. The preaching at that church had never revealed it to her, because the preaching was what the Doctor called "general expositions for believers", helping them live a good Christian life, but mainly appealing only to the will, never going down after the heart and conscience.

Therefore, the Doctor warns about only exposing Christians to what he calls "general expositions" meant to teach, or "preaching morality and ethics without the Gospel as a basis." (p.35) Not only have many professing Christians never truly repented and rested in grace, but regenerate Christians need to constantly feel the power of the Gospel, and "almost" go through the experience of conversion again and again. (p.151) He adds, "If our preaching is always expository and for edification and teaching it will produce church members who are hard and cold, and often harsh and self-satisfied. I do not know of anything that is more likely to produce a congregation of Pharisees than that." (p.153)

As I've said in previous posts, Lloyd-Jones' advice is largely being ignored today. The emphasis even within the Reformed world tends to bifurcate in two directions, neither of which follow the Doctor. On the one hand, many Reformed evangelicals are (rightly) enamored with expository preaching, but it tends to be highly doctrinal and exegetical—it is not very life-related and, while there is some general concern to preach Christ from Old Testament texts, does not regularly recapitulate the gospel the way the Doctor calls us to do. On the other hand, there are the more liturgically oriented, who follow (whether they know it or not) the high church Calvinism of John W. Nevin rather than his contemporaries Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge of Princeton. Nevin was completely against assuming that baptized believers might not be regenerate. He stressed the long processes of liturgical worship and catechizing for shaping heart and mind, not preaching that called for self-examination and conversion. Lloyd-Jones is far more in line with the Princeton theologians.

In his Thoughts on Religious Experience, Archibald Alexander writes that Christians must be exposed to the gospel of grace versus works again and again, not only to bring people to justification, but to enhance sanctification.

When persons are truly converted they always are sincerely desirous to make rapid progress in piety….Why then is so little advancement made? First, there is a defect in our belief in the freeness of divine grace. To exercise unshaken confidence in the doctrine of gratuitous pardon is one of the most difficult things in the world, and to preach this doctrine fully without verging towards antinomianism is no easy task and is therefore seldom done. But Christians cannot but be lean and feeble when deprived of their proper nutriment.

It is by faith that the spiritual life is made to grow, and the doctrine of free grace, without any mixture of human merit, is the only true object of faith. Christians are too much inclined to depend on themselves and not to derive their life entirely from Christ. There is a spurious legal religion, which may flourish without the practical belief in the absolute freeness of divine grace, but it possesses none of the characteristics of the Christian's life. It is found to exist in the rankest growth, in systems of religion which are utterly false. But even when the true doctrine is acknowledged in theory, often it is not practically felt and acted on. "The new convert lives upon his frames rather than on Christ, while the older Christian is still found struggling in his own strength and, failing in his expectations of success, he becomes discouraged first, and then he sinks into a gloomy despondency, or becomes in a measure careless….[U]ntil religious teachers inculcate clearly, fully, and practically, the grace of God as manifested in the Gospel, we shall have no vigorous growth of piety among professing Christians….The covenant of grace must be more clearly and repeatedly expounded in all its rich plenitude of mercy, and in all its absolute freeness.

Do we preach the gospel so clearly even when we are seeking to edify that there are always at least a trickle of people within our church who come to see that they never really believed? The purpose of every sermon, according to Dr Lloyd-Jones, is not to give information and general instruction but to preach the gospel and make it real to the heart. There's a flip side to this, and we will look at it in the next post.

Jamison Galt is the pastor and church planter of Christ Church in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. This article originally appeared in Comment magazine, the opinion journal of CARDUS: www.cardus.ca/comment.

Recently, I donned my clerical uniform and stood behind a podium to proclaim a message to more than 200 people from my neighbourhood. Now, I am a preacher. I do this sort of thing on a regular basis and, though it's still not exactly comfortable, my body and spirit have become familiar enough with the regimen to cooperate.

But not on this occasion: my palms were sweating, the room swam. Anxious and insecure, I had little idea what to say and even less confidence about what might make any kind of difference. The deep divisions in the group I addressed dismayed me: Two intractable parties had been jockeying for enough power to achieve their objective. They had incompatible visions for the way forward, and this meeting was in Town Hall one week before the final vote. Individuals and families had accused one another privately and online of slander, indifference, racism, and political manoeuvring. Both party leaders had received death threats. Small children, parents, community leaders, and local politicians were involved in the conflict and in attendance. Technically, I was a committed member of one party. And now I had to address the entire body.

As shorthand, let's refer to the parties as the old-timers and the newcomers. On one side of the divide were (mostly) black families who had given their time and energy to maintaining an institution and building that had faithfully served its neighbourhood for decades but had come recently into hard times: diminishing funds, decreasing involvement, and Byzantine bureaucratic entanglements. On the other side were (mostly) non-black families who were new to the community and hoped to see the building liberated from these constraints through creative repurposing, to be enabled by their political, cultural, and economic resources. New to this congregation myself, you might assume I was a member of the newcomer party. But in fact, I was an adopted old-timer, because my kids were enrolled at Public School 20, the zoned elementary school, six blocks from my apartment, under question.

At this gathering, we were discussing the proposed expansion of a middle school academy that had been recently sharing P.S. 20's building into a K-5 school. The Academy is a privately funded non-profit organization with a Department of Education partnership and the freedom of selecting teachers and serving students from a broader geographical area whose parents master New York City's lottery system. P.S. 20 is a sixty-year-old institution embodying the strengths and weaknesses of its age and the burden of serving any child in its zone with whatever resources the city might grant or withhold. And the Academy's proposal would swallow up much of P.S. 20's best remaining resource: space.

But I don't want to discuss education policy here. Here I'd like to address living and loving locally. And I am newly aware that notional perspectives forged on high (in any discipline) usually need the chastening of local, even parochial, concerns in order for those perspectives to become practices that are beneficial for entire communities—and vice versa.

It seems my neighbourhood's fight over schools—though probably more public and rancorous than many other neighbourhood conflicts—is representative of the dynamics at play when people with differing resources and experiences come to share a particular place.

I believe we can expect urbanization to continue apace, and so it stands to reason that increasingly smaller localities will continue to play host to both entrenched populations and migrant ones. What might it look like for both groups to live and love locally in neighbourhoods that too often feel like non-violent battlefields?

To the old-timer I have little to say—never having been one. (I suspect Comment readers who've lived in the same neighbourhood for over a decade are in the distinct minority.) What I can share is an ethos some kindly old-timers have displayed to me.

That ethos looks like this. Celebrate your place: its unique glories, its funky idiosyncrasies, its sad stories, and its festive rituals. You know your place like a lover knows the gossamer hairs on the small of his beloved's back. And you know intuitively that no honeymooning newcomer could possibly love the neighbourhood with the wisdom you do—that some only use it for cheap satisfaction. So make your life a loud and living poem that trumpets your love. Invite others into it and give them time to grow from naïveté or indifference into the depths of mature love. As a proud host, welcome these strangers into your home and set the feast. Your greatest temptation is parochial tribalism, so be not too proud or intractable to exercise hospitality, to incorporate creative change, to allow your vigour to be renewed by your neighbour's presence in your shared place.

To the newcomer I have more to say. The burden is ours to be attentive to the radical and rapid manner in which our presence is able to make over a place. We often share in social movements with the power to profoundly effect change, for good and for ill. It will not do to be unthoughtful about our responsibility with this power to others—we start out as guests in someone else's home, after all. Your presence might not feel to you like hostility, but as we learn from the Parable of the Good Samaritan, indifference while pursuing your personal agenda is its own form of violence. Our greatest temptation is to mindlessly remake a place in the image of whatever our universal affinities may be, regardless of their relationship to the local. And while your open loft may be a blank canvas, a neighbourhood never is.

In the Scriptures, man is intimately related to the ground from which he came: Adam from the Adamah. Reflecting on the entire narrative of this biblical-theological theme, someone has said, "Geography is soteriology is geography." God's work of salvation is to renew and reconcile people and places to himself and to one another; it's about the entire cosmos being redeemed to dwell in shalom—the harmonious flourishing of Adam and adamah. And God determines the exact places and seasons where people dwell. Christians, then, must see their own neighbourhoods as the primary arena for the pursuit of God's healing shalom.

If so, then we must understand that change to a neighbourhood for someone who's made it home is more like the crushing of a snail's shell than the switching of seasonal garments. Like a snail to its shell, we are created, as Adam, for place to be an extension of our bodies. The second greatest commandment is to love your neighbour as yourself; that is, to love the people who live near you as you love your own body. Even science has also begun to catch up with this biblical perspective. In the most fascinating article on the city I've read in years, physicist Geoffrey West compares cities to the bodies of organisms, with boulevard-blood vessels and back-alley capillaries.

A diagnostic: Is your body a neighbourhood? Or is your love circumscribed to smaller (or too much larger) spheres?

I don't mean to suggest that every nail salon or bodega deserves your equal attention. If all institutions are not created equal, it stands to reason that they will not all be redeemed equal. But how can we, with our finite and broken perspective, make that judgment? Salvation will hold a few surprises, and the kingdom sure seems to be a place for the marginalized and counted-out. God's surprising renewal promises to include unsung institutions as much as ignored individuals.

That's why Tim Keller has said that the city needs intrepreneurs as much as it needs entrepreneurs, and I think this may be doubly true on a local scale. Intrepreneurs are those who operate with an entrepreneurial spirit within existing institutions. One stay-at-home-mom I know acted intrepreneurially when she used her free time to partner a prestigious art university in our neighbourhood with P.S. 20, which had lost its art funding. Both organizations are the better for it, as the elementary school received an art program and the university received teaching opportunities for its students and new neighbourhood connections and good-will.

While entrepreneurs are certainly needed, they run the danger of engaging existing neighbourhood organizations as competitors to be dominated. Intrepreneurs are forced to work collaboratively and patiently with long-term staff and neighbours, allowing their creative ideas to be chastened and prepared to benefit different demographics than they might have otherwise chosen. I suspect we have fewer intrepreneurs in parochial institutions with little prestige because of the patience, lack of acclaim, and long-term sacrifice required for marginal gain. Plus, differing cultural values are felt more intimately. But if we love our neighbours better with such efforts, perhaps we lose a cultural splash but gain the world.

Of course, it is not always possible to be an intrepreneur. (I am a church planter, after all.) But we need more than we have currently. How should the rest of us proceed?

Here are a few practical suggestions: Be truly present in your place. Walk as much as possible. Use your sidewalks and public spaces. Meet people unlike yourself. Go out of your way to befriend those who've lived in and served the good of your neighbourhood longer than you. Listen to them—then listen some more. Allow your values to be shaped by the hopes and loves they have—loves you have overlooked, but may come to share. And while not all of us can guarantee a lifelong commitment to a particular place, we can usually stay rooted longer than we'd planned, even when it means sacrifice. And more importantly, it is possible to engage in sanctified imagination and live as if you'll be present there forever, for the sake of your neighbour.

So what did I say in the fretful two minutes I was given to address that divided gathering? More or less, a very brief version of what I've written here. I argued that all of us seeking our neighbourhood's good compose a body. We have diverse gifts and strategies, and we need one another. But we must work in concert to move forward. If one member is crying out that another is doing it harm, then it's time to slow down, talk, listen, and learn to work together better for the sake of our body—and the world. Living and loving locally demands nothing less.

The topics of hell, final judgment, and the Rapture have become prominent water cooler subjects recently.

A common reaction today is to reject the idea of hell entirely, stemming from a suspicion of moral absolutes or a denial of the possibility of final judgment. Some prominent Christian figures have predicted doomsday scenarios which have been widely covered (and ridiculed) in mass media. Depictions of hell become cartoonish and ever less believable.

The question becomes, how do we understand the biblical doctrine of hell in our scientific and secular culture? Are we beyond believing such things? How do we contextualize this discussion in our churches so that these historic beliefs become relevant in our postmodern age?

Zondervan has just released a new book called Is Hell for Real or Does Everyone Go To Heaven? Contributors to the book include Albert Mohler, J. I. Packer, Robert Yarbrough, and Timothy Keller. Readers will find examples from several pastors and theologians to help equip them in engaging both the traditionalists and secularists that enter their church doors.

Tim Keller's chapter, "Preaching Hell in a Tolerant Age," is available for free download from our Resources section. You can find other resources on Preaching there as well.

When I first came to New York City in the late 1980s, I realized that I had not come to a normal part of the United States. I remember reading at the time a brief religious comparison of Manhattan and the rest of the country. 30% of Manhattan residents said they had "no religious preference" compared with (at the time) 6% of U.S. residents. 5% of Manhattanites attended any Protestant church at all, compared with 25% of Americans. I realized that New York City was, religiously and culturally, more like secular and very post-Christian Europe. So I began to search for preaching ideas from the great preachers I knew who had labored in London.

One, of course, was D.M. Lloyd-Jones, and so I re-read his book Preaching and Preachers (which was a new volume when got to seminary.) In addition I listened to scores (eventually hundreds, I think) of his sermon recordings. Particularly I was fascinated with his evening sermons, which he designed to be evangelistic. In the morning, his main purpose was to edify the saints, to speak to his congregation and (as he put it) address their heart issues from the Bible. In the evening, however, he had the non-believer particularly in view. Until that time, like many others I had been mainly acquainted with his published Romans series, but those were preached on Friday nights and were, in his mind, more 'instructional' and more like lectures. Very different was his Sunday preaching. When I began to listen to his Sunday messages and especially compare the morning and the evening, it was something of an epiphany.

What was so striking to me as I listened to the recordings was how similar the morning and evening sermons were. The evening sermons, yes, usually had a more direct appeal to people to come to Christ and believe the gospel, but the sermons were richly theological and expository, and quite often from the Old Testament. On the other hand, the morning sermons, yes, generally assumed a bit more knowledge of Christianity, but they always got back to sin and grace and Christ, the gospel. Yet they too were expository and rich. It was most interesting that Lloyd-Jones insisted and urged that all his members come to both. While the evening service was ideal for bringing a non-believing friend, he wanted the professing Christians there regularly also for their own good. Nor was he concerned when non-believers showed up regularly at the morning services. In fact, he said, "We must be careful not to be guilty of too rigid a classification of people saying, 'These are Christians, therefore….' [or] 'Yes, we became Christians as the result of a decision we took at an evangelistic meeting and now, seeing that we are Christians, all we need is teaching and edification.' I contest that very strongly…" (p.151)

The lesson I eventually learned from him was—don't preach to your congregation for spiritual growth thinking everyone there is a Christian—and don't preach the gospel evangelistically thinking that Christians cannot grow from it. In other words—evangelize as you edify, and edify as you evangelize. These are two different by intimately related ideas, and we will tackle one in each of the next two posts.

Editor's note: Below is an account from June 29 of a day Walter Wood spent “on the ground” in Athens with prospective church planters, Tim Coomar and Alex Pipilios, during the recent demonstrations and protests against the Greek government's austerity measures. These measures were passed on June 30 to avoid default.

I am visiting leaders who want to plant a church in the neighborhood of Exarcheia, about a mile from Parliament Square. The demonstrations against the government are confined to the square, and Exarcheia has not been affected. Some of the residents of this area are politically active, and have attended the demonstrations. They are not among the agitators/ troublemakers, who are a distinct minority. The great majority of protestors is and has been peaceful. There has been a general strike for the last two days, and air traffic controllers have been on four-hour strikes throughout. We should pray for the city of Athens, for its peace and for justice and wisdom to prevail. Most of the city center is closed, and the worship service at the First Evangelical Greek Church, the mother church, was called off tonight, largely because many of the roads into the city center have been closed until things calm down.

Yesterday and today were spent with Tim, Alex, and Senior Pastor Giotis Kantartzis (of the First Evangelical Greek Church) meeting potential core group members and discussing how the next six months’ activities might play out, regarding next steps to gather a leadership core and build the foundations of the new church. Tim just returned from New York City after finishing his theological studies filling the pulpit at a Greek church in Astoria. It's been a privilege to work these young guys who have a vision and a heart for Athens and who are enthusiastically recruiting good people to come and join them in living out the gospel in this city. And it's been gratifying to see how the story of God's amazing work in and through North Cincinnati has been useful in encouraging and instructing the young men I have encountered on this trip who are seeking to make an impact for Christ in their cities.

The world is in chaos. Just as Paul went to the great cities of the world to preach Christ, so many are being raised up today to bring the power of the gospel to these cities. And it's a privilege for us to be a small part of that movement of God, and to be in partnership with others who have a heart for their cities as we do for ours.

Today, June 17, 2011 found me in downtown Sydney joining a group of over 40 university and high school students for prayer. A good number of them left the prayer meeting to take their final exams. Why would these students gather in the dead of winter in the early morning to pray?

The answer they give is because their city needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Adrian Tam and seven other student leaders decided a few months ago that prayer was the key to unlock church planting work in downtown Sydney. They began as eight students and now they regularly have forty plus students every Friday who gather to pray for the renewal and transformation in the lives of those working long hours in the tall buildings that surround their little prayer meeting in Martin Place. Martin Place is in the center of downtown Sydney and a main train stop for thousands of daily commuters. The buildings around Martin Place hold thousands of influential leaders in commerce, law, finance, and the media.

As the city of Sydney came to life today, I was so encouraged as we prayed together for the citizens and leaders of Sydney. As we prayed for men and women in leadership like Sydney’s Commissioner of Police, Andrew Scipione, who love Christ and are serving their city. At the end of an hour of prayer, the young leaders sang several songs of praise to the Lord and then headed for their universities.

In December 2010, I was privileged to meet some of the young men and women whom God is directing to begin new churches in Sydney. They are part of the RICE movement, over 10,000 Asian-Australian young people and leaders who want to be used of God in Sydney. Steve Chong, the RICE movement leader is encouraging men like Adrian Tam and Michael Nhieu, soon to finish his studies at Moore College, to start new churches. Adrian Tam will soon complete a double degree at his university and believes that God is calling him to start a new church in downtown Sydney. Why am I excited about this group of young leaders?

First because they have been led by God to begin with prayer. Through prayer they will enter into closer communion with the Lord and with one another. Through prayer they will further connect with their ultimate source of all true power, Jesus. Through prayer they are intentionally and steadfastly claiming Sydney for the Lord, believing that He wants to bring Gospel change and renewal to their needy city.

Please pray for men and women like Adrian Tam who love Jesus Christ and are joining thousands of other leaders in the global cities who are starting urban center churches in their generation. They are from all different evangelical churches in Sydney... Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Hillsong, and many others. Pray that God will give these young leaders new dreams that will harness the imaginations and resources of the older generations to unite, take steps of faith, and to risk for the sake of the Gospel. Without faith God teaches us that people perish.

Each Friday wherever you are in the world at 7 AM, please pray for church planting in Sydney and then for those starting churches in your own city. God is sweeping millions into the global cities of the world every month in order to bring glory to Himself, to ensure that they hear the Good News of Jesus Christ. We at Redeemer City to City and City to City Asia are greatly encouraged by these prayer efforts.

Note: City to City Asia is a new sister organization partnered with Redeemer City to City, focused on planting gospel-centered churches in Asia’s global cities.

Imagine you get an email in your inbox on LinkedIn (or another social network) asking you to provide a recommendation or introduce the sender to someone in your circle of friends. This someone is an important person. Your contact. Meanwhile the sender is a person you don’t know that well or, more likely, is someone you do know well who has fallen on hard times. Perhaps she had a fairly successful career until the recession, and after being laid off has had a pretty rough time. Freelance here and there, but just scratching by. Lately, she’s been, frankly, a bit of a mess. She says this contact could really help her.

Do you connect, recommend, introduce… or not? And what does generosity have to do with this?

When our name and reputation are at stake, we often become extra cautious, because unlike time or money, our reputations are "assets" that if used indiscriminately can either help or hurt us… exponentially. Our name is highly leveraged—indebted to and built on the names of other people or things (our parents, our employers, our universities, our accomplishments)—and highly volatile. They increase in value when used well, and the reverse is also true. Proverbs 22:1 tells us, "A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold." This statement describes the importance of name and reputation for the body of believers and for those who are outside the Church as well. Wouldn’t you rather pay your friend’s utility bills than introduce her to your high-powered contact? Who in their right mind would risk their name?

Jesus Christ would, and did.

For it’s one thing when Roman soldiers mock Jesus and scorn his name and reputation in Luke 22, but it's another matter entirely when Peter himself spurns his friendship with Jesus and denies him three times in that same passage (vv. 54-62). Later, Paul tells the church at Corinth that Jesus' "name" (or reputation) in their day was not safe: "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18). The scandal of the Cross is that the Lord God Almighty saw in his mercy to come and die for us. To those who are perishing, this scandal is enough to tarnish the name of Jesus and assign weakness to those who have called themselves Christians.

How shall we apply this?

First, we must become grafted to the Body of Christ and assume his name as our own, calling ourselves Christians without blushing or apologizing. We must build our reputation on Christ's and not on our family's, our school's, or on our own blood, sweat and tears.

Second, we must become active members of a community of the kind we see in Acts 2:42-47 and Acts 4:32-35. We see here an image of a people who have their own "assets” (they had private property) but who shared them with others as needed. Most importantly, we see what was operating in Acts 4:33-34 that animated them as individuals and as a community: "And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them."

So what to do? What is wise and good stewardship with your friend who wants the connection?

You might decide to connect them without a second thought; it’s easier and requires about 30 seconds of clicking. You might decide to do nothing, and just delete her message. Or you might decide to get a cup of coffee with her, taking an hour from your schedule that you "didn’t really have," to learn more about her situation and decide from there if the connection is something that will really help her. Perhaps that coffee may be all the connection—someone willing to listen and help—that she needs. And that might be enough.

Or not. She might need more.

This post resumes the series on D.M. Lloyd-Jones' classic book Preaching and Preachers.

When Lloyd-Jones says that people still will come to hear preaching in our contemporary culture, he adds two qualifications—or you might say he has two underlying assumptions. He says: "The answer is that they will come, and that they do come... when it is true preaching. This may be slow work... it is a long-term policy."

First, he says, it must be "real preaching," and he later explains that this means preaching done by someone who is gifted to speak to larger groups. And that is a rub. As someone who taught preaching in seminary, I know that only a fraction of the students coming through seminary showed promise of having such gifts.

There are indeed many "incarnational" approaches to ministry that do not require a gifted speaker, and we should use them all. In fact, I would argue that in a post-Christian culture, preaching will not be effective in the gathered assembly if Christians are not also highly effective in their scattered state. In our times, people will be indifferent or hostile to the idea of attending church services without positive contact with Christians living out their lives in love and service. Therefore the incarnational "dispersed" ministry of the church is extremely vital and necessary.

Nevertheless, it is a mistake to argue that people in our society will not come to hear "real preaching." The fact is that, even in a very post-Christian city, if the preaching is of high quality, people will be brought and will come back. They will be shocked at how convicting and attractive the gospel message is, and they will feel like they've never really heard it before (even if they have been raised in a church).

Is that all that the Doctor meant by "real preaching"—done by someone who is gifted? No, there's more. During a convalescence after surgery in 1968, he visited the churches of many of his ministerial followers to hear them preach, but was distressed by much of what he heard. In response he said, "Once evangelical preaching was too subjective—now it is too objective." (From Iain Murray in "Raising the Standard of Preaching" in Lloyd-Jones: Messenger of Grace, p. 99ff.) In their concern to avoid entertainment and story-telling, their preaching had become too intellectual; it now addressed only the mind "and not the whole man" (p.105). He went on: "We have got the curious notion, 'It's the doctrine that matters,' and ignore this. With the message we have got, it is tragic if we can be cold, lifeless, and dull" (p.106).

In other words, though Lloyd-Jones often warns against being too adapted to the culture, in the end the Doctor argues strongly that preaching must not be dry and intellectual but profoundly life-related, that the preacher's tone must not be affected and "parsonic" but genuine, passionate, and transparent. If you listen to the Doctor's evening sermons in particular, you learn that he was always referring to current events and intellectual trends, often expounding Scripture in order to answer the questions posed by the culture. So the preaching must not be just a "running commentary" or an overly-cognitive explanation of the text, but must have shape and passion and connect forcefully with the heart and life of the congregant.

But the Doctor's assurance that "people will come" rested on two assumptions. First, that it was "real preaching" and the second that "it is a long-term policy." He means an effective preaching ministry takes many years of hard work. Americans of course are impatient and don't like to hear this. But he is right, and I'd add that it takes years of work in two regards. First, it requires the creation of a community, a body of believers who understands not only how to profit from real preaching themselves, but who know how to leverage it in their own ministry to their friends and neighborhoods. The Doctor begins to address this, but not enough for my satisfaction. Second, it requires many years and hundreds of sermons before a preacher becomes as good as they have the capacity to be. Some of that means the preacher staying put and becoming involved enough in the lives of the people and city so as to be able to address their questions and issues well from the Scripture. Some of that means coming to understand the Bible well enough to always make it clear. Some of it means years of repentance and prayer that creates an increasingly holy, transparent character.

In conclusion, I believe that Lloyd-Jones has made his case. I too am willing to affirm the "primacy of preaching" though I think there are many conservative evangelicals who take that to mean that preaching is essentially the only thing a minister has to do and everything else takes care of itself. That is a disastrous mistake. A man who is not deeply involved in personal shepherding, evangelism, and pastoral care will be a bad preacher. A man who can't lead his church well, forming it into a cohesive community, will find (as we noted above) that his church can't really benefit from his preaching. To say that preaching is primary in the church is correct. To make it virtually solitary in practice is not. Some will say that the Doctor made this mistake in his own ministry, and they may be right. Thirty years from now, if anyone cares, they'll be able to point out my glaring errors, too. And yours. For now, I hope more people will accept and embrace what the Doctor has to say about the importance of preaching in our time.

Our thanks go to Dr. Norberto Saracco, Marcelo Robles, and Osni Ferreira for their help, coordination and sponsorship.

(Pictured above from left: CTC Director of Global Training John Thomas, Brazil movement leader Osni Ferreira, and Buenos Aires church planter Marcelo Robles.)

Lloyd-Jones afirma de una forma clara que la principal tarea del ministerio de la iglesia debe ser la predicación bíblica –una predicación que traslade el sentido del texto bíblico en medio de la comunidad reunida.

Sin embargo, la principal objeción que se hace a la predicación en nuestros tiempos, es una objeción pragmática. Es la que dice: “¡No vendrán! Hoy en día la gente simplemente no vendrá a escuchar la predicación.” Durante los últimos años, se ha ido desarrollando todo un campo de trabajo que trata de distinguir entre un ministerio de “atracción” y un ministerio de “encarnación”. El modelo de atracción consiste en que los cristianos traigan gente a escuchar el evangelio dentro de las cuatro paredes de la iglesia. El modelo de encarnación pone énfasis en que los cristianos nos dispersemos y vayamos más allá de las cuatro paredes de la iglesia para amar y servir en la comunidad, y le hablemos a la gente acerca del evangelio en medio de sus quehaceres diarios  (ver Alan Hirsch, Michael Frost, The Shape of Things To Come).

No podemos abordar todo este tema aquí. Pero una respuesta obvia a todo ello es que [de alguna manera] es posible servirnos de los dos métodos para alcanzar a la gente, aunque lo que se discute sea mucho más que una [simple] cuestión de método. La gente a favor del modelo de encarnación suelen ser anti-institucionales, a menudo de una forma bastante ingenua. No sólo menosprecian edificios, sino también la idea de un liderazgo fuerte y centralizado, así como también organizaciones y reuniones a gran escala. Pero sin ningún tipo de institucionalización, no hay permanencia o estabilidad posible. (Y de hecho, lo que acaba ocurriendo en este tipo de iglesias que enfatizan el modelo de encarnación es que son muy pequeñas  y no duran más allá de unos cuantos años). Sin embargo,  quienes están a favor del modelo de atracción –especialmente en el contexto americano- pueden estar haciendo una concesión a nuestra cultura consumista, atrayendo a la gente a través de un montón de programas especialmente diseñados para proveer al “cliente”  con todo un selecto abanico de opciones para cubrir aquello que él percibe como sus necesidades.

Es interesante observar que desde el modelo de encarnación, la predicación es reconfigurada en forma de diálogos o charlas [cuya naturaleza no es] didáctica o autoritativa. De manera que podría parecer que hablar de “primacía de la predicación” es votar de facto por una iglesia cuyo modelo es de atracción. Sin embargo, el tipo de predicación que Lloyd-Jones practicó y que nos urge a tener en cuenta tampoco encaja en el modelo de iglesia que va orientada al consumidor. Sus sermones eran muy teológicos, serios y requerían concentración por parte del oyente. 

De todos modos, si al final haces de la predicación algo central en tu ministerio, de hecho esperas que el ministerio público de la Palabra sea atractivo y en sí mismo atraiga a la gente. Es justo en este punto que el Doctor se lanza de lleno a la principal objeción –“no vendrán”. Con firmeza asegura, “La respuesta es que sí vendrán, y de hecho vienen…” Ahora bien, el Doctor hablaba de su propio ministerio en la Capilla de Westminster en el centro de Londres después de la II Guerra Mundial. Por toda una serie de razones diferentes, después de la Guerra la asistencia a la iglesia decayó a lo largo de toda Europa. En medio de esa situación, Lloyd-Jones empezó a predicar sus extensos, teológicos y expositivos sermones y, lentamente, el gran auditorio [de la Capilla de Westminster] se fue llenando. Las reuniones de la tarde doblaban en asistencia a las reuniones de las mañanas, pues gente de todas partes de Londres venían con sus amigos no cristianos. Me atrevo a decir que algo parecido nos pasó también a nosotros en Nueva York durante las últimas dos décadas, y en un contexto bastante similar.  

Así que la predicación todavía “funciona” –ellos vendrán, pero es importante  notar que el Doctor hace un par de matizaciones en su afirmación. Las consideraremos en la siguiente entrada.

_______________

Here’s something they didn’t tell you at assessment: Urban church planting will tear you apart! This year alone I had friends quit, sink into depression, addiction, and one that has completely ruined his marriage.

Why? Because one of the hardest things you can do is start a church in a city. Here’s a twofold reason. (1) Cities are complex places and it takes a lot to figure them out. (2) Because cities are hard to figure out it makes it hard to figure yourself out as you live in the midst of the urban chaos.

I find that a lot of young guys that want to plant in cities are far more aware of the need to build a robust philosophy of ministry for their work in the city than of the toll that church planting and the city will take on their own personal lives.

So, what does church planting in the city demand of you as a planter? And, how can the gospel help speak into some of these faulty areas?

It demands:

1. Spiritual constancy - City people are fast paced. They adapt to change without giving too much thought to it and that’s why life becomes chaotic and out of control in the first place. When city people end up pausing to think about their overwhelming state, it’s usually too late. Ministry in the city requires a lot of reflection, prayer and, Scriptural meditation. It’s much easier to be in sync with the pace of the city than the pace of God’s heart for the city.

The Gospel says: You are a child of the King. That’s your main identity. The city cannot be your primary identity shaper. Your status of sonship is to compose the rhythm of how your life is lived out in the city. It’s not about being busy but, resting on what Christ has done for you.

2. Emotional stability – Cities demand quality, often without compensation. Think of the talented 50 year old sax player in the subway. Get the point? Pastors in cities have to find a healthy way to deal with slow growth and even failure. Unless they do so, they will likely hit the bottle, the spoon, their wives and kids or, the x-rated sites.

The Gospel says: Before God you have performed to perfection because Christ performed for you. You have nothing to prove to anyone. Your ultimate source of affirmation and joy should not come as a result of how well you are able to perform according to the city’s standard of success. God says to you in the Son: “you are my son of whom I am well pleased”. God could care less if you are able to build a mega church. He cares about your faithfulness to him.

3. Intellectual integrity – The city demands that you give a good reason for what you do and say. At the same time it’s always bargaining with you ideologically. It’s very hard not to compromise biblical doctrine in exchange for the approval of its inhabitants and even harder to find an honest, respectful, clear, and contextual way to communicate truth.

The Gospel says: Because your identity comes from who you are in Christ you can afford to be bold with people and not act like a coward. Pleasing God is more important than pleasing people. Also, the Gospel is that important. It’s worth giving deep consideration and thought so that you learn and teach others how it relates to the totality of life.

4. Excellent time management – If you want to stay together you have to learn to give time to yourself, to your body, to your family, to your leaders, to your neighbors, to your study and, most of all to your God. Failure to do so in one of these areas will show in lack of personal evangelism, spiritual shallowness, bad preaching, overwhelming sense of responsibility, stress, and a variety of family crises including divorce.

The Gospel says: Because Christ gave more than his time (his life) to you, you are to give time to the things Christ has entrusted you with. A heart that believes in the Gospel is always reordering its passions and setting straight its priorities.

5. Deep level friendships – Life in the city is extremely individualistic. If you, your kids and especially your wife do not find friends you can share your lives with, forget about it. You can have all of the above but you will just not make it. This should probably be the first thing on your check list when you move into the city.

The Gospel says: Because Christ went out of his way to seek friendship with you and was vulnerable with you, you are to go out of your way to make friends for you and for your family.

Conclusion: The Gospel is the only power you will have available to reconstruct you as the forces of urbanity and church planting tear you apart. So, dig in deep into its reality.

Want to work for Redeemer City to City? We are seeking a a committed and experienced urban church planting leader to direct its church planting efforts in New York City. This position is a salaried position based out of the City to City offices in Manhattan.

Please click here to download a full job description and details.

Over the last 10 years, CTC has assisted 60 new church starts in NYC through many denominations and networks. CTC seeks a visionary leader to facilitate 100 new congregations during the next decade.

Christ-centered preaching is a topic of much interest among many young and aspiring preachers. As of late, the Center for Gospel Culture has been engaged in a series of seminars in which we have been discussing, examining, and demonstrating the nature of Christ-centered preaching. We are looking to help young preachers come to grips with why and how Christ should be rightly preached from all of scripture.

At our last session of Sermon Labs we discussed a few pointers for aspiring Christ-centered preachers that I thought worth repeating here. You see, it is one thing to listen to good preaching and know when a preacher has made a solid, exegetically grounded, heart-warming connection to the Gospel; it is another thing to be able to make that connection yourself. Here are some things that you can do as you seek to see Christ in and preach Christ from all of the Bible:

Read the Scriptures. In order to see how inter-canonical themes and the narrative of redemptive history run through the entire Bible, and how Christ is the fulfillment of it all, you must regularly read it, both devotionally and in devoted study. Familiarity with the ins and outs of the Bible’s stories, letters, songs, etc., is absolutely necessary to begin making meaningful gospel connections. The preacher who is not immersed in the scriptures, and meeting Christ there regularly, will not preach him well from them.

Recognize that it takes time. Going hand in hand with regular immersion in the Bible is the need for extended time therein. The Bible is a book that repays years of careful reading. While one need not necessarily have those years of study under his belt to preach well, the benefits of a life long commitment to the scriptures are countless, and a sustainable preaching ministry demands that we be in it for the long haul.

Rehearse it in conversation. Part of making gospel connections and seeing Christ properly throughout the scriptures is learning to articulate what you learn to others. Find like-minded individuals who are interested in Christ-centered preaching and learn to talk through, challenge, and mutually enjoy the connections that you are making in your devotional life.

Really listen to other preachers. We listen to many sermons, but often we don’t hear the sermons that we listen to. In other words, we are often captivated by rhetorical and stylistic matters, important in their own right, yet fail to hear the actual content, logical flow, and biblical fabric that is at the heart of the best sermons. To really hear is to break down (not cynically but searchingly) what we hear in a sermon, to plug it into the one story plot line of the bible, and to press it into our own hearts.

Of course much more could be said in recommendation, but these are a few places you might begin as you learn the nature, importance, and practice of Christ-centered preaching.

Stephen Um is the pastor and church planter of Citylife Boston, and the Associate Training Director for Asia and Australia for CTC. This blog was first posted at The Center for Gospel Culture, a site that features sermons, blogs and articles emphasizing the centrality of the gospel for all of life.

[Also available en español]

Before continuing with my series on Lloyd-Jones' book Preaching and Preachers, the following is based on a recent quiet time/devotional I had. We will resume the series in my next post.

I have always found Jesus’ words in Matt 5:21-22 to be shattering. He begins by reminding his listeners that anyone who murders will be judged. But then he gives three case studies of actions that seem far less serious than murder. “I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” To be bitter and angry in your heart toward someone can lead to great evil, so that makes some sense. But the term "raca" means only something like "you air-head!" and the word translated "fool" is likewise not an outrageous or cutting insult. Jesus’ listeners would likely have been smiling as they heard these terms and would have been shocked as he ended the sentence threatening them with hell-fire! What was Jesus’ point? “The deliberate paradox of Jesus’ pronouncement is that ordinary insults may betray an attitude of contempt which God takes extremely seriously.” (R.T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, p. 201)

This passage helps me understand Numbers 20. As in Exodus 17, the children of Israel are in the desert wilderness facing parching thirst. They charge Moses with being, at worst, evil or, at best, an incompetent leader. Again, God tells Moses to go to “that rock.” This time however he tells him to speak to it, and the rock will pour out water sufficient for everyone (v.8). Moses gathers everyone at the rock, but instead of speaking to the rock, he angrily upbraids the people. “Listen, you rebels!” he cries. “Must we bring you water out of this rock [again]?” (v.10) Striking the rock with his staff in his fury, the water comes out. God, however, tells Moses that he now would not enter the Promised Land, because Moses “did not trust me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites.” (v.12)

What did Moses do wrong? Of course he failed to follow instructions. He struck the rock instead of speaking to it, and that is disobedience. Nevertheless, God’s rebuke goes deeper. In calling them “rebels” Moses set himself up as their judge. In saying, “Must we bring you water?” he set himself up as their deliverer. Everything Moses did pointed away from God toward himself.

It is not hard to understand why. Leadership brings a steady drumbeat of criticism and misunderstanding, even when things are going well. When things go poorly, people vent their frustration and anger on those in charge. A newly ordained pastor once said to me, “I didn’t know that, once you become a leader, there’s always someone mad at you!”

This makes sense of Moses’ reaction. “His response is not only the striking of the rock, it is the answer of a man who under pressure has become bitter and pretentious.” (D. Carson, For the Love of God, vol 1, May 11th reading.) God was ready to be gracious, but Moses was in no mood for that. The relentless criticism had made him self-righteous. He held them in contempt. He had wrath but no compassion, and that is the mark of a man who is becoming less like God, not more. (See Isaiah 15-16 where God grieves even as he speaks in judgment.) Moses is a man who has forgotten grace, and the sign of it is a sanctimonious spirit along with words of denunciation without humility and compassion.

Leadership always involves conflict. John Newton’s famous letter on “controversy” observes how easy it is for criticism to create Pharisees. “Whatever it be that makes us trust in ourselves that we are comparatively wise or good, so as to treat those with contempt who do not subscribe to our doctrines, or follow our party, is a proof and fruit of a self-righteous spirit.”

All leaders, and especially Christian leaders, must be on guard against this inevitable temptation and this terrible sin. It is natural, when under criticism, to shield your heart from pain by belittling the critics in your mind. “You stupid idiots.” Even if you don’t speak outwardly to people like Moses did, you do so inwardly. That will lead to self-absorption, self-pity, maybe even delusions of grandeur, but the great sin is that the growth of inner disdain leads to pride and a loss of humble reliance on God’s grace. Moses treated God with contempt when he became contemptuous toward his people.

This is what leaders face. Is there any hope for us? Yes, because we are in a better position than Moses was for understanding the grace of God. Don Carson writes: “In light of 1 Corinthians 10:4, which shows Christ to be the antitype of the rock, it is hard to resist the conclusion that the reason God had insisted the rock be struck in Exodus 17:1–7, and forbids it here, is that he perceives a wonderful opportunity to make a symbol-laden point: the ultimate Rock, from whom life-giving streams flow, is struck once, and no more.”

From May 9-11, 58 urban church leaders and planters from leading cities in North America gathered at the Trinity Conference Center in West Cornwall, CT, for a retreat. This network, which is yet to be named officially, consists of leaders who share a vision for Gospel movements in their cities.

As the follow-up to a conference in Miami in 2010, the retreat was meant to build and strengthen relationships among peers, share ideas and insights on the difficult issues particular to ministry in urban situations, and determine the need for a new network - one that would not replace other networks, but would be trans-denominational and help create city-wide movements between the different ministries in a city. This gathering exhibited the experimental nature of the network and provided the opportunity for attendees to encourage each other and brainstorm what this sort of collaboration could look like.

Bryan Loritts from Fellowship Memphis, Jon Tyson from Trinity Grace Church in New York City, Rick McKinley from Imago Dei in Portland and Tim Keller from Redeemer Presbyterian Church all introduced conversations on key topics that included discussions about ethnic and socio-economic diversity, challenges in dealing with the changing norms in sexuality, faith and work, and the spiritual life of a church planter. Participants also discussed ideas on how to work city-wide with other churches to do justice and mercy or prayer.

The beautiful weather and great worship and prayer contributed to a refreshing time of relationship-building, recreation, and conversations late into the night. This group was only representative of the bigger picture, and we look forward to planning more events where all of these like-minded church planters can be together.

In Preaching and Preachers, Dr Lloyd-Jones makes the case that the mainspring of the church's ministry should be Biblical preaching—preaching that expounds the meaning of the Biblical text in the assembled community.

The main objection to preaching in our time, however, is a pragmatic one. It is: "They will not come! People today simply will not come out to hear preaching." In our time a whole body of work has grown up around the distinction between "attractional" ministry versus "incarnational" ministry. The attractional model consists of Christians bringing people in to hear the gospel preached inside the church walls. The incarnational model is dispersing and going out beyond the walls of the church to love and serve in the community and talk to people about the gospel on their own turf. (See Alan Hirsch, Michael Frost, The Shape of Things To Come.)

We cannot treat this whole debate here. One obvious response to it is that it is quite possible to use both sets of methods to reach people, though there is more to the argument than a discussion of method. People who are dedicated to the incarnational model are anti-institutional, sometimes naively so. They not only eschew buildings but strong, central leaders, organization, and large-scale gatherings. But without some institutionalization there is no permanence or stability. (And indeed, the knock on churches in the incarnational model is that they are tiny and don't last more than a few years.) However, people dedicated in the American context to the attractional church can pander to our culture's consumerism, attracting people through lots of polished programs which provide the "customer" with an enticing selection of choices to meet felt needs.

For our purposes we should observe that in the incarnational model, preaching is sometimes re-engineered into non-didactic, dialogical, non-authoritative talks. And so it seems that to talk of the "primacy of preaching" is to vote de facto for an attractional model of the church. However, the preaching that Lloyd-Jones urged and practiced does not fit into the consumer-oriented seeker church model either. His sermons were very theological, serious, and demanding.

Nevertheless, in the end, if you make preaching central to your ministry, you are indeed expecting that the public ministry of the Word will be attractive and draw people in. At this point the Doctor takes the main objection—"they won't come"—head on. He says bluntly, "The answer is that they will come, and that they do come…" Now the Doctor was speaking of his own ministry at Westminster Chapel in central London after World War II. Church attendance throughout Europe plunged after the war, for a mixture of reasons. In that situation, he began preaching his long, theological, expositional sermons, and slowly the huge auditorium filled. His evening services were twice the size of the morning services, since people from all over London came to bring their non-Christian friends. I dare say that something similar happened to us in New York City over the past two decades, and in an analogous context.

So preaching does still "work"—they will come, but notice the Doctor's makes two qualifications to this statement. We will look at them in the next post.

Vamos a repasar las respuestas que Lloyd-Jones articuló frente las objeciones que en su día se hacían sobre la importancia de la predicación.

El Doctor nos recuerda cómo en el capítulo 6 de Hechos la iglesia encaró la crisis sobre la ayuda ofrecida a las viudas. El ministerio social para cubrir las necesidades de los más pobres en la comunidad era realmente importante y necesario. Pero es necesario que consideremos por qué razón los apóstoles dejaron el asunto en manos de otros líderes [escogidos precisamente para hacer frente a esa situación]. Lo hicieron para así poder dedicarse “a la oración y al ministerio de la Palabra” (Hechos 6:4). Esto era la cosa más importante, y era a lo que los apóstoles, líderes por excelencia de la iglesia, tenían que dedicarse [principalmente]. El Doctor señala [también] al ministerio de Jesús, especialmente en aquellos momentos en los que, presionado para que hiciera más Milagros, respondía que a lo que había venido principalmente era a predicar (por ejemplo, Marcos 1:38).  Los milagros de Jesús fueron maravillosos –ayudaron a quienes estaban enfermos y sufrían- pero aún así, lo que reconciliaba a la gente con Dios era creer en el mensaje y en la obra de Jesús.

El Doctor no escatima esfuerzos en su argumento. Es bueno que la iglesia ayude a la gente a suplir sus necesidades y [cuando se encuentran] en medio del sufrimiento –a través del servicio social y la consejería- pero aquello que la iglesia puede hacer de una forma única en el mundo es reconciliar a la gente con Dios a través del evangelio. Para ello es necesario usar palabras, un mensaje, explicar, exhortar, y no [limitarse] sólo a hacer buenas obras. Lloyd-Jones nos recuerda que fue sólo después de los periodos de avivamiento ocurridos en el Reino Unido –en los que millones de personas conocían el evangelio- cuando empezaron a proliferar hospitales, sindicatos laborales y [se empezó a redactar] una legislación social. La obligación primera de la iglesia es predicar el mensaje de gracia que motiva y capacita a la gente para que sea sal y luz en el mundo.

El Doctor Lloyd-Jones [también] desmonta de forma efectiva la idea de que ver un video o escuchar la grabación de un sermón es tan válido como asistir físicamente a una reunión y escuchar un sermón junto con el resto de la congregación. Obviamente, es bueno que una persona que nunca escucha o lee la Biblia, pueda hacerlo gracias a la grabación de un buen mensaje del evangelio y que, además, se beneficia de ello. Pero la gente, según argumenta el Doctor, experimenta el sermón de una forma totalmente distinta si lo escuchan junto con otros y pueden ver al predicador. Mirar a una pantalla o escuchar mientras caminas te desconecta y el sermón se convierte [entonces] en simple información, en lugar de ser una experiencia íntegra. Hay un poder e impacto que el canal mediático no puede transmitir.

El Doctor analiza la idea de que la predicación no debe ser [sólo la formulación de ciertas proposiciones o la declaración de determinadas verdades] de doctrina bíblica, sino más bien describir de forma práctica la manera en que debemos vivir en el mundo como seguidores de Cristo. El problema con este planteamiento, dice Lloyd-Jones, es que puedes estar predicando moralismo y ética sin el evangelio como base –y eso, simplemente, no funcionará. Si le dices a alguien que “viva una vida de servicio a los demás de acuerdo a los valores del reino de Dios” eso no le va cambiar en esencia.  Escuchar un mensaje como ese no le va a llevar a quebrantarse y a proclamar,  "cayeron mis cadenas, mi corazón fue librado; me levanté, di un paso al frente y te seguí.” (1)   El mensaje del evangelio tiene un efecto transformador y provoca tal cambio de paradigmas en la vida, que requiere de mucha enseñanza acerca de la naturaleza del pecado, así como también del carácter de la redención de Cristo y la diferencia que hay entre la gracia y las obras, y la naturaleza de la fe.  Todas estas cosas son [tal y como antes mencionábamos] “la formulación de ciertas proposiciones o la declaración de una determinada verdad.”

Paradójicamente, señala de una forma especial Lloyd-Jones, el predicador tendrá más credibilidad si no predica principalmente en base a su propia experiencia, sino que trata de demostrar que el mensaje proviene de la misma Palabra. En lugar de decir “ésta es mi experiencia y ésta es la manera en la que la Biblia ha jugado un papel en ella,” el predicador debería decir, “esto es lo que la Biblia dice, y aún cuando todo ello pueda contradecir a mis deseos y a mi intuición [natural], os lo muestro porque este mensaje viene de Dios, no de mí mismo.”

Todo esto es el argumento básico del Doctor a favor de la primacía de la predicación. La predicación debe comunicar la verdad del evangelio como fundamento de cualquier aspecto práctico [de la vida cristiana]. Debe surgir del texto bíblico para demostrar que el mensaje es de Dios. Debe ser escuchado en vivo y en directo en el contexto de la iglesia reunida como una comunidad en asamblea. Y por último, la predicación es el motor que pone en marcha todo lo demás –creando [un ejército de hombres y mujeres como] agentes regenerados [que actúan a favor de la] justicia en el mundo; y esa misma predicación provee de material con el que los cristianos se pueden aconsejar y discipular unos a otros y los capacita para compartir su fe con otros.

Pero, Lloyd-Jones todavía tiene que responder a una última objeción, y es la más grande de todas. Es una objeción de carácter pragmático, y su enunciado sería más o menos el siguiente: “hoy en día la gente simplemente no va a venir a que les prediquen.” En la próxima entrada veremos cuál es su respuesta.

_______________

* Puedes leer el artículo orginal (en inglés) aquí.

Rubicon is to be a place where Christians can think through what it means to create a better world, one that reflects God’s original design and intention. Presenters at Rubicon 2011 included Phyilis Tickle (author of The Great Emergence), Alan Scott (Causeway Vineyard), Gavin Jennings (RTÉ Radio 1), Ethno-Graphic Films (USA Film Company) the Very Revd Dermot Dunne (Christ Church Cathedral) and Fr Peter McVerry (Homeless Trust).

You can see a photo slideshow and news coverage of the conference at http://www.wearerubicon.com/gallery/. You can also follow Rob's blog at http://www.startingtodream.com/ or his Twitter @robdjones.

In a recent post, Rob writes:

"Our world is changing fast, but the great fact is that God’s message of grace does not. The Church as a whole, and indeed our new church, needs to really engage in this changing culture. However a changing culture also constitutes a call from God and the Gospel must be proclaimed afresh within these different times in Ireland, which present a moment of opportunity, a challenge to be confident in the Gospel and a call to imaginative mission."

Is it possible that the reason the Church has lost its credibility and prophetic voice is that its Christians no longer believe the Gospel? The Gospel turned the ancient world of the Apostles on its head. It transformed the most unlikely of people into fervent ambassadors for God, while making enemies of both the secular and religious establishments. In contrast, the Church in many places today has become a part of a dying tradition that neither challenges the culture nor attracts the skeptic. Even in movements founded on Biblical truth, a pervasive legalism and moralism has eclipsed the explosive power of what God did for the world in Christ. The Church is in a moment of crisis. There is only one thing that can restore the revolutionary power of God to the Church: the Gospel.

Advance '11 is for anyone interested in the Church, advancing the Gospel, or understanding Biblical Christianity. The conference is open to people in ministry, lay leadership, or anyone from various denominations and backgrounds concerned with the future of the church in the South. Speakers will include Tim Keller, Alan Hirsch, Eric Mason, Darrin Patrick, Danny Akin, J.D. Greear, and Tyler Jones.

The conference is being sponsored by Advance the Church, a partnership between Vintage21 Church and Summit Church in Raleigh. Register at advance2011.com. For questions please email info@advancethechurch.com.

En los días de D.M. Lloyd-Jones muchas voces decían que la vieja manera de predicar era demasiado [en la forma de] un monólogo, en la que sólo se transmitía información, [de  carácter] inspiracional y autoritativa. La acusación continúa siendo la misma hoy. Pero, los críticos de hoy no sólo tienen en mente a la vieja y tradicional forma de predicación expositiva (piensa en James Boice y Charles Stanley), sino también a la nueva, inspiracional y práctica manera [de plantear la predicación] de las iglesia-espectáculo que buscan atraer a quienes [en esta sociedad todavía] buscan a Dios.

La gente postmoderna, argumentan, es  profundamente escéptica ante el [concepto de] autoridad y de quienes se te acercan como para venderte algo. La predicación que pretenda llegar al hombre y a la mujer posmodernos, apenas será reconocible como “predicación.” Será una conversación tranquila, sincera, un diálogo en lugar de un monólogo autoritativo. Usará mucho más la metáfora y la narrativa que la lógica. No será intensa, carismática o explosiva.   También [podemos decir] que tratará mucho más acerca de cómo vivir como un seguidor de Jesús en el mundo, de acuerdo al Reino de Dios, que sobre [ciertas] proposiciones doctrinales y espirituales que deben ser creídas.  Por supuesto, se centrará en las Escrituras, pero la credibilidad del comunicador no descansará de por sí sobre lo experto que sea su conocimiento de la Biblia, sino en su experiencia personal de cómo el texto ha moldeado su vida. La predicación será también sólo una parte más de toda la liturgia, no el centro de la misma. (Como ejemplo de lo que se propone para este tipo de predicación ver "Preaching in the Missional Church" de Ervin Stutzman.)

Es curioso ver lo parecidas que son las nuevas objeciones a las que también se hacían en relación a la predicación (ver Parte 1) que ya fueron situadas en el mapa por el Doctor en sus conferencias de 1969 en Westminster Seminary y publicadas en el libro El predicador y los predicadores.  Lloyd-Jones creía que en general las objeciones no eran correctas, que la exposición de la Palabra de Dios a la asamblea es una característica permanente del ministerio bíblico. No es algo que pueda ser descartado cuando cambian los tiempos. Debe continuar siendo tan central en el ministerio de la iglesia en la actualidad como lo ha sido en el pasado. Su crítica de todas estas objeciones a la primacía de la predicación es aguda y, en mi opinión, convincente. Pero antes de pasar a la crítica en sí, una palabra de advertencia.

Al volver a releer su libro, me di cuenta de que bajo ningún concepto sus puntos de vista ganaron la batalla. Las objeciones a la predicación clásica han sido asumidas por una gran mayoría y la gente mira de encontrar alternativas. Creo que la mayoría de líderes jóvenes que leyeran hoy su libro encontrarían que no tiene demasiado que ver con ninguno de los otros muchos libros que hayan podido leer sobre predicación. Aún así aquí estoy, después de veinte años en Nueva York, una ciudad posmoderna por definición, habiendo sido profundamente influenciado por las definiciones y prescripciones del Doctor sobre la predicación, y ha resultado en mucho fruto. De manera que si este consejo ha sido tan efectivo en plena ciudad de Nueva York, ¿por qué hay tan poca gente siguiéndolo? ¿Por qué hay tanta gente yendo en una dirección distinta en cuanto a la predicación? ¿Por qué no hay más gente escuchando [el consejo de Lloyd-Jones]?

Si vas más allá de estas entradas y lees el libro del Doctor —como espero que hagas—enseguida verás una de las razones por las que posiblemente la gente no ha seguido su consejo. El Dr. Lloyd-Jones hace una gran cantidad de afirmaciones dogmáticas sobre prácticas muy específicas. Él creía firmemente que el pulpito debe estar físicamente por encima de los oyentes, que el ministro debe vestir con túnica, que no debe hacer ninguna referencia personal a sí mismo ni hacer [comentarios humorosos]. Él creía que el predicador no debe anunciar el texto y los temas con antelación. (Hasta ese punto “odiaba” alimentar el interés personal y las supuestas necesidades que la gente pudiera tener). Él pensaba que era deplorable planificar con meses de antelación con exactitud los textos y temas a tratar (porque así no se daba suficiente lugar a la guía del Espíritu).   También se oponía a grabar sus sermones (aunque finalmente acabó cediendo a regañadientes). Creía que las grandes reuniones en la que se predicaba (domingos mañana y tarde, y viernes por la noche) realmente eran suficientes para llevar a cabo todo el “peso” del ministerio de la iglesia. No le gustaban los pequeños grupos [“células”] y no contemplaba muchas otras maneras en las que la iglesia pudiera congregarse como comunidad o para el discipulado y la instrucción. Al final su iglesia acabó siendo una iglesia que dependía demasiado de la predicación y después de su jubilación la iglesia experimentó una crisis.  

He llegado a la conclusión de que la tesis fundamental de  Lloyd-Jones acerca de la predicación no ha sido seguida ni en el Reino Unido ni en los Estados Unidos, mayoritariamente, debido a su dogmatismo y sus particularidades. También es verdad que muchos de sus seguidores parecen no haber sabido cómo separar tanto el método como los gustos particulares del Doctor de las líneas generales de su argumento. Yo creo que ese argumento es válido y tiene una importancia vital para nuestros tiempos. Es sobre ese argumento que trataré en la siguiente entrada.   

_______________

* Puedes leer el artículo original (en inglés) aquí

Let's survey Lloyd-Jones's answers to the objections in his day to the importance of preaching.

The Doctor points out how in Acts 6 the church faced a crisis over the support of widows in the early church. The ministry of mercy to the needs of the poor in their community was quite important and necessary. But notice why the apostles put some new leaders over it. They did it so they could devote themselves to "prayer and the ministry of the Word" (Acts 6:4). That was the primary thing, and that was what the apostles, the main leaders of the church, had to give themselves to. The Doctor points to Jesus' own ministry, especially to places where, under pressure to do more miracles, he says that what he came primarily to do was preach (e.g. Mark 1:38). Jesus' miracles were wonderful—they helped people with disease and suffering—yet what reconciled people to God was belief in the message and work of Jesus.

The Doctor argues this forcibly. It is good for the church to help people with their suffering and need—through social service and counseling—but the one thing that the church can do in the world that is unique is to reconcile people to God through the gospel. That takes words, a message, explanation, exhortation, not just compassionate deeds.  He points out that in the UK it was after times of revival, when millions of people became Christians through the gospel, that hospitals, labor unions, and all sorts of social legislation arose. The church's primary duty is to preach the message of grace that motivates and empowers people to be salt and light in the world.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones effectively dismantles the idea that watching a video or listening to an audio of a sermon is as good as coming physically into an assembly and listening to a sermon with a body of people. It is obviously a good thing if a person who never hears or reads the Bible listens to the recording of a good gospel message and is helped by it. But the Doctor argues that people experience the sermon in a radically different way if they hear it together with a body of listeners and if they see the preacher. Watching on a screen or listening as you walk detaches you and the sermon becomes mere information, not a whole experience. There is a power and impact that the media cannot convey.

The Doctor takes on the idea that preaching should not be about "truth propositions" of Biblical doctrine but rather should describe practically how to live as a Christ-follower in the world. The trouble is, he says, that may mean you are preaching morality and ethics without the Gospel as a basis—and that simply will not work. If you tell someone to "live a life of service to others in accordance with the values of the kingdom of God" that will not change them in the core. Hearing a message like that will not lead them to weep and cry, "my chains fell off, my heart was free; I rose, went forth, and followed thee." The life-transforming, paradigm-shifting message of the gospel requires lots of teaching about the nature of sin as well as the character of Christ's redemption and the difference between grace and works and the nature of faith. All of these things are "truth propositions."

He also makes the case that, paradoxically, the preacher has greater credibility if he does not preach mainly out of his own experience, but shows that the message has come out of the Word itself. Instead of saying, "here's my experience, and this is how the Bible played a role in it," the preacher should say, "this is what the Bible says, and it actually contradicts my desires and intuitions, but I'm showing it to you because this message is from God, not from me."

The Doctor's basic case has been made. Preaching must convey the truths of the gospel as the basis for all Christian practice. It must arise out of the Biblical text to show that the message is from God. It should be heard in person in an assembled community. And preaching "sets up" everything else—it creates regenerated agents of justice in the world, it provides the material with which Christians counsel and disciple one another and which equips believers to share their faith with others. 

But Lloyd-Jones has one more objection to tackle, and it is the biggest one. It is a pragmatic one and it goes like this: "nowadays, people simply won't come to hear preaching." We'll look at his answer in the next post. 

We are delighted that Nigel Richardson - a church planter in South Africa - just began public worship services with God's help. Nigel is a graduate of the 2010 International Church Planting Intensive and planted in Durban, South Africa. This new church is called Trinity Church Morningside.

The first service took place on Sunday, March 20th and drew about 100 people - a very healthy number for the first service of a new church. Durban is the third largest city in South Africa and is famous for having the biggest port in the country.

Of this new church, Nigel says, "We expect to be a community through which the gospel of Jesus Christ brings change and renewal, in ourselves and in our friends as we introduce them to the hope of the gospel. We also look for change in our neighborhood and city as we work for its good - socially and spiritually."

To learn more about this project, please email us at info@redeemercitytocity.com or, if you are in Durban, you can visit Trinity Morningside which meets at Greyville Presbyterian Church on Windermere Road (New name: Lilian Ngoyi Road), opposite the Windermere Centre at 5:00pm on Sundays.

Recientemente, me pidieron que escribiese un breve ensayo sobre el libro de D.M. Lloyd-Jones  La predicación y los predicadores que será reeditado por Zondervan en 2012. Esto me dio la oportunidad de releer el libro y descubrir que he sido más ayudado y moldeado por él de lo que me pensaba. Mucho de lo que he descubierto no encajaría en el ensayo, así que decidí compartir un poco de ello en algunas entradas de blog.

La primera cosa que me impactó fue cómo este viejo ministro gales de casi 70 años (llamado por sus seguidores “el Doctor”),  a pesar de haber dado esas conferencias en 1969, pudo anticiparse y tratar muchas de las cuestiones que tienen que ver con la predicación y con las que nosotros estamos luchando en nuestra propia cultura hoy. Durante los años después de la Segunda Guerra mundial, en Gran Bretaña había un creciente sentir en contra de la vieja idea [que defendía] la “primacía” de la predicación. En otro tiempo [la predicación] había sido considerada como la cosa más importante que un ministro de la iglesia hacía. Sin embargo, hacia mediados de los años 60, había muchos en el Reino Unido que argumentaban que la era del pulpito había llegado a su fin y que otras cosas debían desplazarlo porque la predicación—y sobre todo la predicación tradicional—ya no era la manera más efectiva para que la iglesia llegue a la gente.  

En sus primeras conferencias, el Doctor describe todas las razones y argumentos que explican esa [profunda] desafección por la predicación. La Segunda Guerra mundial dio a los europeos [motivos suficientes como para sospechar de] los grandes oradores (sólo basta con pensar en Hitler). A medida que fue pasando el tiempo, había cada vez más sospecha hacia las palabras y los “textos”. Cada vez se confiaba menos en que el lenguaje pudiera comunicar algún significado [real]. También la televisión y la radio alteraron la capacidad de atención de la gente y crearon un apetito por la charla de tipo informal, en lugar del sermón o el discurso cargado de oratoria. En una cultura post-cristiana, había también un creciente sentimiento de sospecha hacia toda autoridad, especialmente la autoridad religiosa. La pregunta que entonces la gente se hacía era, ¿cómo puedes esperar que gente moderna vengan a escuchar a alguien, normalmente de pie por encima de todo el mundo, haciendo un monólogo sin que exista la posibilidad de responder o de argumentar? Sin duda, ninguno de ellos vendría por sí mismo, y alguna vez fuesen arrastrados allí se aburrirían o se ofenderían por tanto dogmatismo.

A continuación, Lloyd-Jones se dedica a enumerar varias de las propuestas que se supone la iglesia debe hacer. Algunos de los que habían perdido la fe en la predicación miraban de cambiarla. Se volvió en algo marcado por el espectáculo—más énfasis en historias, en apelar directamente a las emociones y en recrear un show. (Lloyd-Jones identificó a Henry Ward Beecher de Brooklyn como el prototipo de esta nueva manera de entender la predicación). Otros insistieron en que la predicación debía ser reemplazada o al menos fuertemente complementada con “los nuevos medios” (que en tiempos de Lloyd-Jones eran la televisión y la radio).  Había también quienes proponían que la predicación no debería ser tan central en la reunión de alabanza—que la liturgia y la expresión artística debía tomar un lugar más prominente. También se criticaba que las Iglesias se habían convertido más en centros de predicación que en comunidades y que, por lo tanto, era necesario hacer más énfasis en el servicio social a la comunidad y en la consejería.  Por último, el Doctor decía que había quienes enseñaban que la única esperanza para [la supervivencia de] las Iglesias era abandonar su forma presente. Decían que los cristianos debían dispersarse, entregándose por entero a server a la comunidad, resolviendo o al menos estando involucrados en los problemas personales y sociales de la gente. Entonces, al juntarse para sus reuniones, debían hacerlo como grupos pequeños y lo que les caracterizase fuese el diálogo y la conversación [enriquecida] por una pluralidad de voces.

Lo que realmente impacta de esa discusión que tuvo lugar en el Reino Unido hace 40 o 50 años, es algo que viene ocurriendo en los Estados Unidos durante más o menos los últimos 10 años. En los días de Lloyd-Jones el discurso era que “la predicación no funcionará con el hombre y la mujer modernos” y hoy este mismo discurso se aplica al hombre y a la mujer postmodernos. En su día la acusación era que la predicación tenía que ponerse al día en la era de la televisión, y hoy el imperativo es  a adaptarse a la era de internet. Pero prácticamente todas las propuestas sobre cómo la predicación debe llevar a cabo esa adaptación son básicamente las mismas [entonces, como ahora]. Por lo tanto, la respuesta y la crítica que hace el Doctor de ellas es muy relevante. Le echaremos un vistazo en la próxima entrada.

_______________

Puedes leer el artículo original (en inglés) aquí

Many voices were saying in D.M. Lloyd-Jones' day that the older approach to preaching was too monological, information-driven, inspirational, and authoritative. Today that same charge is being made. Today's critics have in mind not only the older traditional forms of expository preaching (think James Boice and Charles Stanley) but also the newer, inspirational, practical talks of "seeker-driven" spectacle churches.

Postmodern people, they argue, are deeply skeptical about authority and "salesmanship." Preaching that reaches postmodern people will almost not be recognizable as "preaching." It will be quiet, sincere, dialogical conversation rather than authoritative monologue. It will be more highly metaphorical and narratival than logical. It will not be intense, charismatic or high-energy. Also, it will be much more about how to live as a Christ-follower in the world according to the reign of God than about doctrinal and spiritual propositions that must be believed. Yes, it will center on Scripture, but the speaker's credibility will not lie in his expertise in the Bible per se, but on his personal experience of how the text has shaped his life. Also, the preaching will be just part of the whole liturgy, not the centerpiece. (For an example of a proposal for this kind of preaching see "Preaching in the Missional Church" by Ervin Stutzman.)

I think it is intriguing to see how much alike these newer objections to preaching are to the older objections (see Part 1) that were fielded by The Doctor in his 1969 lectures at Westminster Seminary, published as the book Preaching and Preachers. Lloyd-Jones believed that by and large the objections were wrong-headed, that expounding the Word of God to gathered assembly is a permanent feature of Biblical ministry. It is not something that can be discarded when times change. It should continue to be as central to church ministry in the present age as it has been in the past. His criticisms of all of these objections to the primacy of preaching are trenchant and, I think, compelling. But before moving on to them, first a word of warning.

As I re-read his book I realized that his views by no means have won the day. The objections to classic preaching have largely been accepted and people are scrambling to find alternatives. I think most young leaders who would pick his book up today will find it completely out of step with any of the last several books they may have read on preaching. And yet here I am, after twenty some years in the middle of New York City, a postmodern city by any definition, having been deeply shaped by the Doctor's definitions and prescriptions for preaching, and they have borne much fruit here. So if this advice has proved effective in the middle of NYC, why are so few people taking it? So why are so many people going in a different direction with preaching? Why aren't more people listening to it?

If you move beyond these posts and read the Doctor's book—as I hope you will—you will quickly see one possible reason why people have not followed him. Dr. Lloyd-Jones makes a host of dogmatic assertions about very specific practices. He believed strongly that the pulpit should be physically above the listeners, that the minister should wear a robe, that he should not make many personal references to himself nor use much humor. He believed that the preacher should not announce his texts and topics ahead of time. (He was that loathe to cater to people's interests and "felt needs.") He thought it was abominable to plan out exactly what your texts and topics would be months in advance. (That did not give enough space for the leading of the Spirit.) He was also opposed to having his sermons recorded (though he reluctantly agreed to it eventually.) He believed that large preaching services (Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Friday night) really would carry virtually all the "freight" of the church's ministry. He frowned on small group ministry and had few other ways for the church to gather as a community or do discipleship and instruction. As it turned out, in the end his church was too preaching-dependent and after his retirement the church experienced a crisis.

I've come to the conclusion that Lloyd-Jones's basic theses about the nature of preaching have not been followed in the U.K. nor here in the U.S. largely because of his own dogmatism on details and also because so many of his followers did not seem to know how to extract the Doctor's particular methods and personal tastes from the broad lines of the argument he laid down. That argument is, I believe, successful and crucial for us in our times. So I will turn to it in my next post.

I recently was asked to write a short essay on D.M. Lloyd-Jones' book of lectures Preaching and Preachers which Zondervan is slated to re-issue in 2012. This afforded me an opportunity to re-read the book and to discover that I had been more helped and shaped by it than I had remembered. Most of what I discovered would not fit in the essay and so I decided to spread a bit more of it out in some blog posts.

The first thing that struck me was how this nearly 70 year old Welsh minister (called "the Doctor" by his followers), lecturing in 1969, could have anticipated and addressed so many of the questions surrounding preaching that we are wrestling with in our own culture today. During the post-World War II era in Britain, there was a growing resistance to the older idea of the "primacy" of preaching. Previously it was considered the single most important thing that the minister of the church did. However, by the mid-1960s, there were many in the UK arguing that the era of the pulpit was over and that other things must displace it because preaching—and certainly traditional preaching—was no longer the most effective way for the church to reach people.

In his first lectures the Doctor recounts all the reasons and arguments for the move away from preaching. World War II had given Europeans a suspicion of great orators (think of Hitler himself.) As time had gone on there was more and more suspicion of words and "texts." There was less and less trust that language can communicate meaning. Also, television and radio had changed people's attention spans and created an appetite for informal, intimate speech, not oratory. In a post-Christian culture, there was also an increasing suspicion of all authority, especially religious authority. How, it was asked, could you expect modern people to come out and listen to someone, usually physically standing above you, doing a monologue without any opportunity for response or argument? They certainly would not come on their own, and if they were dragged there they would be bored or offended by all the pontificating.

Lloyd-Jones then lists the various proposals for what the church should do. Some who had lost faith in preaching sought to change it. It became marked by showmanship—more emphasis on stories, on direct appeals to the emotions, and to the creation of spectacle. (He pointed to Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn as a prototype.) Others insisted that preaching should be replaced or at least supplemented heavily with "new media" (which in Lloyd-Jones' time meant television and radio.) Still others proposed that preaching should not be so central to worship—that liturgy and artistic expression should come more to the fore. Also there were criticisms that churches had become mere preaching centers, not communities, and greater emphasis needed to be made on social services to the community and on counseling. Finally, the Doctor said there are those who taught that the only hope for the churches was essentially to abandon their current form. Christians should disperse, they said, throwing themselves into serving the community, addressing people's personal and social problems. Then, when Christians did have gatherings, they should be small and characterized by dialogue and multi-voice conversations.

What is so striking is how all of this discussion that happened 40-50 years ago in Britain has been happening in the U.S. over the last 10 years. In Lloyd-Jones' day the call was that "preaching won't work with modern people" and today it's the same claim with regard to postmodern people. In his day the charge was that preaching had to keep up with the television age, and now it's a call to adapt to an internet age. But almost all the proposals for how preaching must adapt are basically the same. Therefore, the Doctor's response and critique of them is very relevant. We will look at them in the next post.

I believe a preacher is effective when he is faithful. Faithful not necessarily to his tradition nor to the people but to the Gospel he was called to proclaim. As a young preacher wrestling with being faithful I have given some thought to what faithfulness to the Gospel in preaching looks like. This top ten list is what I use to evaluate myself so, it may not apply to you but, nevertheless I felt the need to share it given the state of pulpits today. I feel that most sermons nowadays among the most famous evangelical preachers of our days could be preached by Dr. Phil, Deepak Chopra and, Oprah without a problem. Not because of common grace but because there’s no room for special grace. Enough said, here’s my top ten list to know if you are effectively preaching the Gospel.

You know you’re preaching the gospel effectively when…

1. In your prep you are able to see Jesus in light of every text and every text in light of Jesus. Jesus is the hermeneutical key to unlock every text because every text fulfills its main purpose when it reveals Christ. He said so himself (Lk 24:25-27,44).

2. Your reasoning sounds deep to mature christians and simple to non-christians. Both groups of people are not used to see Jesus in the Bible. The “mature christian” is not trained to read the Bible through Jesus and even when they are, they constantly need to be reminded because that’s how they grow. The non-christian on the other hand does not read the Bible and generally has a very negative view of the Bible (slavery, bigotry, violence…). Which means that, if you’re able to show Christ in the text there will be “a-ha” moments for both groups of people.

3. Change is taking place in the heart of the one who preaches before it takes place in the lives of those who receive it. When you’re able to see the Gospel in the text your heart cannot help but to burn and melt (Lk 24:32). You will begin to see your own idolatry, hopefully repent of it and, allow the truth of the Gospel to work in you before you hit the pulpit. If you allow enough time between your prep and your delivery your words will have depth. I usually give it about 2 weeks to marinate.

4. You’re able to share more out of failure than out of virtue. This one is a consequence of the previous point. When the Gospel becomes real to you there’s no shame in sharing weakness because the power of the Gospel is only made true in weakness (2 Cor 12:9). If you do this often people will not only relate more but grace will be made more real to them. Romans 7 is another great example of how this works.

5. You find yourself relying on the power of the gospel instead of relying on the intellect and emotions to be effective. I find that most preachers feel the need to quote dozens of people smarter than everybody else, cry like a baby in front of people, yell like a drill sergeant, act like a comedian, among other things, out of insecurity. Deep inside they feel the Gospel does not have enough power to do the job. (By the way, I’m not saying these things are bad in themselves, just that you should check your motives of why you keep doing it.) Part of it is that they do not have a Christ-centered hermeneutic, do not think through the deep implications of the gospel (in that particular text) for their lives and other peoples' lives, and do not go the length to explain the gospel clearly to people. I find myself constantly in this tension because I come from a cultural background that worships feelings and a tradition that worships the intellect. I find Scriptures such as Rom 1:16, 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 extremely helpful to keep the right perspective.

6. The implications of the Gospel are communicated beyond being right with God. We are made right with God so that things in the world will be made right. Part of the reason why God justifies sinners is so that everything would be redeemed (Col 1:15-20) through the power of the Spirit at work in the lives of redeemed individuals. If people are going forward and being baptized but your community is not becoming more grace-based, more sacrificial, more giving, more missional and your city is not becoming more beautiful, safe and just as a result of the people in your church, chances are that the whole gospel is not being preached.

7. There’s full emphasis on what Christ has done for change instead of what needs to be done to change. When the whole gospel is not being preached you have moralism mixed in with evangelism. So even though the “plan of salvation” may be presented at the end of every sermon, the part about “living the christian life” is based either on moralistic applications of the Bible text or on motivational/ self-help principles. This weird dichotomy produces the best kind of pharisees.

8. People are compelled by grace to believe instead of being coerced by guilt to behave. The gospel promotes an inside-out change, not an outside-in change. Behavior modification has all to do with religion and nothing to do with the Gospel. So, don’t guilt people for not changing, nor force change upon them. Preach the Gospel and allow the third person of the Trinity to do as it pleases.

9. There’s greater satisfaction that you’ve pleased God and that God is pleased with you than that you’ve pleased people and that people are pleased with you. We often measure success in preaching by the number of compliments we receive afterwards. I’m not saying that compliments are not good in terms of feedback, nor am I telling you not to accept them, but when you’re depressed the next day because you didn’t get enough, you’re motivation might be sightly out of line with the Gospel. And, if you’re not drawing your motivation from the Gospel you will find yourself being less and less willing to be faithful to the Gospel message and more and more willing to be faithful to your audience. At the end of the day if your motivation is not right, you will either grow in pride or succumb in sorrow.

10. Both religious and irreligious people are believing the Gospel. When the Gospel is preached faithfully and consistently in a community, you will experience an interesting dynamic. Both the “churchy” and the unchurched will often be offended while at the same time both will be encouraged with the hope they’re able to find in the Gospel. Meaning, in a Sunday you might get two completely different feedbacks from same demographic unchurched folks. Same with “churchy” folks. Mainly because the Gospel will be doing its job to humble the prideful and uplift the humble at the discretion of the Spirit. You’ll see both types not only mixed in the crowd weekly but coming to Jesus often. There’s no way around it.

In Japan, in Western Europe, and in Russia, the birth-rate has fallen precipitously, to below replacement levels. If this does not change, the economic and cultural impact will be very great on those nations. Many have pointed out that interest in child-bearing is lowest in the most secular countries and sectors of society, while it is the highest in the most religious countries. Why is this? One explanation is that more educated people put off child-rearing until later in life and that means fewer children. However, educated religious people have more children than educated secular people, and therefore the socio-economic answer isn't the most basic answer. I don't think anyone can be completely sure that they have a handle on this complex phenomenon, but I think it creates an interesting backdrop for the consideration of the unique Christian view of the family.

My European friends have two theories for why their secular neighbors have lost interest in the family. First, there is the sacrifice factor. For the last thirty years, sociologists have documented that secularism fosters individualism. A 2003 Ben Gurion University study found religious communes in Israel did better across the board than secular communes. (Cited in "Darwin's God", New York Times Magazine, March 4, 2007.) The reason? The members of secular communes simply were more selfish, particularly the men. Men who went to synagogue regularly were much more willing to sacrifice for the family and the community than men who did not. Despite the new financial incentives to have children that European governments are now offering, many people can't imagine a happy life with the severe loss of independence that comes with parenthood. As the studies since Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart have shown, secularism teaches that every individual determines his or her own purpose in life—the autonomous self is sovereign. In this world-view, family life looks like the loss of personal meaning and happiness.

There is also the hope factor. My European friends tell me that their secular neighbors are much more pessimistic about the future. They (rightly) see oceans of injustice and poverty in the world surrounding islands of democracy and prosperity. They are keenly aware of the ecological and technological disasters that are possible, perhaps inevitable. Why bring children into such a bleak world? Religious persons, however, have a profound assurance that in the future is final justice, or paradise, or union with God in some form. They have an over-arching hope that makes them more optimistic about bearing and raising children.

At this point you might think I would simply say "Yay for religion, it is the friend of the family!" It is not that simple. While secularism in the west tends to make an idol out of the individual and his or her needs, traditional religion has often made an idol out of the family. According to theologian Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University, Christianity was the very first religion or world-view that held up single adulthood as a viable way of life. Jesus himself and St. Paul were single. "One…clear difference between Christianity and Judaism [and all other traditional religions] is the former's entertainment of the idea of singleness as the paradigm way of life for its followers." (Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character p.174) Nearly all religions and cultures made an absolute value of the family and of the bearing of children. There was no honor without family honor, and there was no real lasting significance or "legacy" without leaving heirs. By contrast, the early church not only did not pressure women to marry but it institutionally supported poor widows so they were not forced to remarry as they were out in the culture at large.

Why? The Christian gospel and hope of the kingdom-future de-idolized marriage. "Singleness was legitimated, not because sex was questionable, but because the mission of the church is 'between the times' [the overlap of the ages]…We must remember that the 'sacrifice' made by singles was not [just in] 'giving up sex' but in giving up heirs. There could be no more radical act than that! This was a clear expression that one's future is not guaranteed by the family but by the [kingdom of God and the] church…" ( Hauerwas, p.190). "[Now, in the overlap of the ages], both singleness and marriage are necessary symbolic institutions for the constitution of the church’s life... that witnesses to God’s kingdom. Neither can be valid without the other. If singleness is a symbol of the church's confidence in God's power to effect lives for the growth of the church, marriage and procreation is the symbol of the church's understanding that the struggle will be long and arduous. For Christians do not place their hope in their children, but rather their children are a sign of their hope . . . that God has not abandoned this world." (Hauerwas, p.191)

The gospel-based community practices a view of family that is contrary both to the cultural idols of secular and traditional societies. The gospel frees singles from the shame of being unmarried they find in conservative cultures. Their truest identity is in Christ and their assured future hope is the kingdom of God. Even bearing children, in the Christian view, is merely nurturing more lives for the family of God. That can be done in other ways than the biological. On the other hand, the gospel gives us the hope and strength for the sacrifices of marriage and parenthood that is lacking in liberal cultures. Christians grasp that they were only brought to life because of Jesus' radical sacrifice of his independence and power. We know that children are only brought to life and self-sufficiency if their parents sacrifice much of their independence and power. In light of the cross, it is the least we can do.

The gospel is neither religion nor irreligion, it is something else altogether. Vital gospel Christianity's influence on a society will produce neither a liberal and secular nor a traditional and conservative culture, but something we have seldom seen before.

¿Cómo se produce un periodo de avivamientos? De Charles Finney, quien hizo de los avivamientos una “ciencia”, nos llegan toda una serie de respuestas. Finney insistía en la idea de que cualquier grupo puede tener un avivamiento en cualquier tiempo y en cualquier lugar, siempre y cuando aplicasen los métodos adecuados de la forma adecuada.  En mi opinión, esta manera distorsionada de entender lo que es un avivamiento por parte de Finney produjo el debilitamiento que hoy presenciamos en el mundo evangélico, tal y como Michael Horton ha argumentado tan bien a lo largo de los años. Especialmente, bajo la influencia de Finney, el revivalismo menoscabó la manera más tradicional de entender la formación cristiana. La manera tradicional en la que se producía el crecimiento cristiano era de forma gradual – instrucción catequética de toda la familia – y centrada en la iglesia. Sin embargo, el revivalismo bajo Finney puso el énfasis en períodos de crisis. La predicación dejó de estar orientada a una enseñanza a largo plazo y pasó a ser una predicación dirigida a despertar emociones en el corazón con miras a [que las personas] tomaran una decisión. No es de extrañar que este tipo de énfasis relegara a un segundo  plano de importancia a la iglesia en general y a la enseñanza doctrinal, [en particular] y por lo tanto pusiera todo el peso sobre la experiencia subjetiva del individuo. Esta es una de las razones (aunque no la única) por las que hoy tenemos una evangelicalismo tan individualista y consumista.

Durante los últimos 20 años en círculos evangélicos ha habido una crítica [con un cierto tono] sarcástico contra el revivalismo. Aunque en la mayoría de casos se trata de una crítica bastante justa, a menudo va más allá de criticar el revivalismo pseudo-científico de Finney, para caer en la afirmación de que incluso Edwards o los puritanos estaban terriblemente equivocados en su manera de entender cómo la gente debería abrazar la fe y crecer en Cristo. En este poco espacio del que dispongo aquí no puedo responder a esta crítica, sólo puedo decir que me parece que va demasiado lejos. Sin embargo, este tipo de crítica explica porqué hoy día hay mucho menos interés por el tema del avivamiento que en los días en los que yo era un joven recién entrado en el ministerio.  También explica porqué alguien como D.M. Lloyd-Jones no tenía ningún reparo en decir que no hay nada que podamos hacer para que se produzca un avivamiento (aparte de orar). Lloyd-Jones sabía que el revivalismo al estílo de Finney conducía a muchas patologías espirituales.

A pesar de ello, creo que podemos hablar  con cautela de algunos factores que, cuando se dan, a menudo se asocian al avivamiento como una bendición de Dios. Mi libro preferido en este tema (muy recomendado por Lloyd-Jones) es Lectures on Revivals of Religion de William B. Sprague (1832). Sprague fue alumno en Yale de Timothy Dwight, nieto de Edwards, y también de Archibald Alexander en Princeton. Los Princetonianos – los Alexanders, Samuel Miller, y Charles Hodge – hicieron un gran trabajo a la hora de combinar los elementos básicos del revivalismo con un sano énfasis en la doctrina y en la importancia de la iglesia. Las lecciones de Sprague incluyen un capítulo en “Medios generales” para promover avivamientos y sus capítulos sobre cómo aconsejar a quienes indagan en la fe y a nuevos creyentes son especialmente útiles.

El principal medio-para-un-avivamiento sobre el que todo el mundo está de acuerdo es una oración extraordinaria. Es el más claro de todos y, por lo tanto, no voy a dedicarle tiempo. El segundo medio es recuperar el evangelio de la gracia. Uno de los principales motores que encendieron la mecha del primer gran avivamiento en Northampton, Massachussets, fueron los dos sermones de Edward sobre Romanos 4:5, "Justificación sólo por la fe," en noviembre de 1734. Comprender la salvación por gracia en lugar del esfuerzo moral fue lo que produjo una transformación personal en las vidas de John Wesley y George Whitefield, los principales líderes del Gran Avivamiento en el Reino Unido, e hizo de ellos agentes de renovación. Lloyd-Jones enseñaba que el evangelio de la justificación podía perderse de dos formas distintas. Una iglesia simplemente podía volverse heterodoxa y dejar de creer en la justificación por la sola fe. Pero igual de letal es que una iglesia mantenga esa doctrina sobre papel pero que no la predique públicamente de una manera que logre conectar con el corazón y la vida de la gente. 

Yo diría que el tercer factor son individuos renovados. Sprague señala cómo podemos caracterizar a ciertos líderes de iglesia por las contagiosas marcas de un avivamiento espiritual – una seriedad que es a la vez amable y gozosa, y una “unción” que hace sentir la presencia de Dios. A esto se le puede sumar, a menudo de forma visible, cambios dramáticos en la vida (“conversiones sorprendentes”) que pueden llevar a que otros hagan un auto-examen profundo y cree un sentir de deseo espiritual y expectación en la comunidad. La renovación personal que va ocurriendo en estos individuos se extiende de manera informal a otros a través de conversaciones y relaciones personales. Un número cada vez mayor de gente empieza a mirarse a sí mismos y a buscar a Dios.

Al cuarto factor yo lo llamaría el uso del evangelio como elemento central de la consejería. Sprague y John Newton en sus cartas nos ayudan a ver cómo el evangelio puede ser usado tanto por quienes están indagando acerca de la fe, por nuevos creyentes y hasta por creyentes inmaduros. El evangelio debe alejarse tanto del moralismo como del libertinaje que destruye el verdadero poder de la vida espiritual.  Deben existir vías, maneras y espacios que faciliten que esto se lleve a cabo, ya sea en grupo o a base de encuentros personales. Ver el manual del líder de The Experience Meeting, de Williams Williams, que promovía el avivamiento mediante las reuniones de grupos pequeños en el País de Gales durante el primer gran avivamiento.

Por último, añadiría un quinto factor. Sprague señala acertadamente que los avivamientos ocurren principalmente a través de los “medios de gracia” ordinariamente instituidos – predicación, pastoral, alabanza, oración. Es una equivocación identificar demasiado determinados métodos o programas (por ejemplo, las campañas evangelísticas al estilo Billy Graham) con la idea de avivamiento. Lloyd-Jones se lamentaba de algunos casos en los que la gente que vino a la fe a través del avivamiento en Gales (1904-5) se aferraban a unas formas concretas de organizar el culto y decantar himnos como si se trataran de la manera en la que Dios trae avivamiento.  Por ejemplo, bajo Wesley y Whitefield, la predicación en las calles era un método novedoso y estimulante. Las reuniones de oración en público al medio día fueron importantes para el avivamiento de Fulton Street  en el centro de la ciudad de Nueva York durante 1857-58. Incluso estoy dispuesto a decir que la creatividad podría ser una de las marcas del avivamiento, porque bastante a menudo Dios ha utilizado alguna nueva manera de comunicar el evangelio como parte de esa mezcla que produce un poderoso avivamiento.

Me alegró mucho ver el Nuevo libro de Collin Hansen y John Woodbridge, A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir, porque tan sólo una generación atrás, la gente estaba mucho más interesada en y deseaba más el avivamiento que la generación presente, aunque entonces cada cual tuviera una idea de lo que era un avivamiento. Para muchos en las tradiciones bautistas y metodistas, “avivamiento” significaba una etapa de vigorosa actividad de cara a la oración, la renovación y la evangelización. Para pentecostales y carismáticos, significaba un tiempo durante el que los dones extraordinarios del Espíritu Santo eran evidentes. Para aquellos en la tradición puritana-reformada que veían la teología de Jonathan Edwards como algo definitivo, significaba una intensificación de los medios ordinarios de gracia y una gran oleada compuesta de aquellos en los que se despiertan preguntas [espirituales], de pecadores verdaderamente convertidos y de creyentes renovados espiritualmente.

Cuando mi mujer y yo llegamos al Seminario Gordon-Conwell en 1972, los dos pudimos ver, cada uno en su respectivo campus, un extraordinario año de renovación espiritual. (Kathy fue al Allegheny College en Meadville, PA.) Antes de 1970, todos los grupos bíblicos universitarios de InterVarsity en las universidades de Pennsylvania eran pequeños y poco atractivos.  En mi campus, la Universidad Bucknell, InterVarsity estuvo compuesto de entre 5 a 15 estudiantes por unos cuantos años. Entonces, durante el curso 1970-71 se produjo una explosión de interés spiritual, y hacia final de año teníamos una asistencia de 100 estudiantes a las reunions, a pesar de que no hubo ningún tipo de programa evangelístico. También recuerdo que esa primavera fuimos al retiro [que InterVarsity organizaba] para todo el área central de Pennsylvania y descubrimos que lo mismo había estado ocurriendo de forma espontánea en otras universidades. 

Al llegar a Gordon-Conwell tomamos un curso con Richard Lovelace que llevaba por nombre "Las dinámicas de la vida espiritual” y el siguiente semestre tome su curso sobre la historia de los grandes avivamientos. Fue entonces cuando leí a fondo a Jonathan Edwards y conocí también a quienes le “modernizaron”, como D.M. Lloyd-Jones y J.I. Packer, y el mismo Lovelace, que rezumaba Edwards en su clásico Las dinámicas de la vida espiritual. Sus descripciones del avivamiento fueron de una gran ayuda para entender lo que había visto, aunque de forma muy breve, en nuestro campus. Después del Seminario Kathy y yo nos fuimos a una pequeña iglesia en Hopewell, Virginia, donde vimos un creciemiento sólido y algunas maravillosas conversiones individuales, pero no podríamos decir que presenciamos lo que suele describirse como un avivamiento. Sin embargo, unos años más tarde, durante los primeros 18 meses después de haber fundado Redeemer en la ciudad de Nueva York, de nuevo vimos “las dinámicas espirituales” que ambos habíamos presenciado en nuestros respectivos campus veinte años atrás. Por aquél tiempo (1989-1991) Manhattan estaba muy castigada por el crimen y pasaba por una recesión. Había muy pocas iglesias evangélicas en todo el área metropolitana, y los cristianos no venían a vivir a la ciudad, sino que se iban fuera de ella. Aún así, vimos a unas 100 personas venir a la fe y en tan sólo unos pocos meses la iglesia creció de cero a cientos en asistencia; todo ello en un lugar donde absolutamente nadie creía que pudiera ocurrir. En mis lecturas sobre la vida de Lloyd-Jones, he visto que a él le ocurrió lo opuesto que a mí. Al principio el pastoreó un punto de misión que a duras penas se sostenía en una pequeña ciudad de Gales, Aberavon, donde vio muchas conversiones y un crecimiento en asistencia de casi 900 personas a los pocos años de ministerio. Eso era algo de lo que, simplemente, no se oía hablar por aquel tiempo y áun menos por aquellos lugares. Sin embargo, él no vio el mismo tipo de dinámicas de avivamiento en su iglesia o en su ciudad durante su último tiempo de ministerio en el centro de la ciudad en la Capilla de Westminster en Londres.

¿Qué he aprendido de todo esto? Los avivamientos pueden ser más largos, durar durante varios años, o más cortos, durando tan sólo unas pocas semanas; pueden ser más extendidos, afectando a toda una ciudad, región o país, o más limitados en su alcance, afectando tan sólo a una congregación. Pero son épocas en las que la acción ordinaria del Espíritu Santo es intensificada en gran manera. Creyentes inmaduros [que hasta entonces estaban] “adormecidos” vibran con un arrepentimiento lleno de gozo y ponen a Cristo en el centro de sus vidas. Cristianos nominales [que pasan inadvertidos] en medio de las congregaciones se convierten y dan testimonio de ello, lo que lleva a que otros que también estaban dormidos despierten. Al final resulta que los no creyentes se sienten atraídos a esta comunidad cristiana renovada y empiezan a abrazar a Cristo en tal cantidad de número que desafía cualquier cosa que entendamos como una explicación normal. En estos casos el  “iglecrecimiento” no se puede atribuir a un marcado giro socio-demográfico o a eficientes programas de alcance  evangelístico.  Lo más significativo de todo  es que en las reuniones de alabanza corporativa se puede sentir una fuerte presencia de Dios que no está siendo orquestada por quienes presiden. 

¿Qué es lo que produce el avivamiento? ¿Acaso es correcto hablar de métodos y “medios”? Hablaremos más sobre ello en la siguiente entrada.

* Puedes leer el original (en inglés) aquí

How do seasons of revival come? One set of answers comes from Charles Finney, who turned revivals into a "science." Finney insisted that any group could have a revival any time or place, as long as they applied the right methods in the right way. Finney's distortions, I think, led to much of the weakness in modern evangelicalism today, as has been well argued by Michael Horton over the years. Especially under Finney's influence, revivalism undermined the more traditional way of doing Christian formation. That traditional way of Christian growth was gradual – whole family catechetical instruction – and church-centric. Revivalism under Finney, however, shifted the emphasis to seasons of crisis. Preaching became less oriented to long-term teaching and more directed to stirring up the affections of the heart toward decision. Not surprisingly, these emphases demoted the importance of the church in general and of careful, sound doctrine and put all the weight on an individual's personal, subjective experience. And this is one of the reasons (though not the only reason) that we have the highly individualistic, consumerist evangelicalism of today.

There has been a withering critique of revivalism going on now for twenty years within evangelical circles. Most of it is fair, but it often goes beyond the criticism of the technique-driven revivalism of Finney to insist that even Edwards and the Puritans were badly mistaken about how people should embrace and grow in Christ. In this limited space I can't respond to that here other than to say I think that goes way too far. However, this critique trend explains why there is so much less enthusiasm for revival than when I was a young minister. It also explains why someone like D.M. Lloyd-Jones was so loathe to say that there was anything that we can do to bring about revivals (other than pray.) He knew that Finney-esque revivalism led to many spiritual pathologies.

Nevertheless, I think we can carefully talk about some factors that, when present, often become associated with revival by God's blessing. My favorite book on this (highly recommended by Lloyd-Jones) is William B. Sprague's Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1832). Sprague studied under both Timothy Dwight, Edwards' grandson, at Yale and also Archibald Alexander at Princeton. The Princetonians – the Alexanders, Samuel Miller, and Charles Hodge – did a good job of combining the basics of revivalism with a healthy emphasis on doctrine and the importance of the church. Sprague's lectures include a chapter on "General Means" for promoting revivals, and his chapters on counseling seekers and new converts are particularly helpful.

The primary means-of-revival that everyone agrees upon is extraordinary prayer. That's the clearest of all and so I won't spend time on it. The second means is a recovery of the grace-gospel. One of the main vehicles sparking the first awakening in Northampton, Massachusetts was Edwards' two sermons on Romans 4:5, "Justification by Faith Alone," in November, 1734. For both John Wesley and George Whitefield, the main leaders of the British Great Awakening, it was an understanding of salvation by grace rather than moral effort that touched off personal renewal and made them agents of revival. Lloyd-Jones taught that the gospel of justification could be lost at two levels. A church might simply become heterodox and lose the very belief in justification by faith alone. But just as deadly, it might keep the doctrine "on the shelf" as it were and not preach it publicly in such a way that connects to people's hearts and lives.

The third factor I would mention is renewed individuals. Sprague points out how certain church leaders can be characterized by the infectious marks of spiritual revival – a joyful, affectionate seriousness, and "unction" – a sense of God's presence. In addition, often several visible, dramatic life-turnarounds ("surprising conversions") may cause others to do deep self-examination and create a sense of spiritual longing and expectation in the community. The personal revivals going on in these individuals spread informally to others through conversation and relationship. More and more people begin to look at themselves and seek God.

A fourth factor I will call the use of the gospel on the heart in counseling. Sprague and John Newton in his letters do a good job of showing how the gospel must be used on both seekers, new believers, and non-growing Christians. The gospel must cut away both the moralism and the licentiousness that destroys real spiritual life and power. There must be venues and meetings and settings in which this is done, both one-on-one and in groups. See William Williams, The Experience Meeting, a leaders' manual for revival-promoting small group meetings in Wales during the first great awakening.

Finally I would add a fifth factor. Sprague rightly points out that revivals occur mainly through the ordinary, "instituted means of grace" – preaching, pastoring, worship, prayer. It is a mistake to identify some specific programmatic method (e.g. Billy Graham-like mass evangelism) too closely with revivals. Lloyd-Jones points to some sad cases where people who came through the Welsh revival of 1904-05 became wedded to particular ways of holding meetings and hymn-singing as the way God brings revival. Nevertheless, Sprague grants that sometimes God will temporarily use some new method to propagate the gospel and spark revival. For example, under Wesley and Whitefield, outdoor preaching was a new, galvanizing method. Mid-day public prayer meetings were important to the Fulton Street revival in downtown NYC in 1857-58. I'm ready to say that creativity might be one of the marks of revival, because so often some new way of communicating the gospel has been part of the mix that God used to bring a mighty revival.

As of Spring 2011, Dutton will begin a formal partnership with Timothy Keller and Redeemer City to City (Content Labs division) for the establishment of a dedicated Redeemer imprint for books about faith and ministry in global culture.

The first publication, due out on February 22, will be King’s Cross, a look at the life of Jesus through the Gospel of Mark. The Table of Contents and first few pages of King’s Cross are now up for viewing here. Author Tim Keller writes in the introduction: "My purpose here is to try to show, through his words and actions, how beautifully his life makes sense of ours."

Also in the works are books on Preaching, Philosophy of Ministry, Faith and Work, and more. These publishing projects are meant to support the ministry of gospel-centered churches and ministries everywhere.

To be notified of upcoming books and publications, please sign up at our Contact page.

I was very glad to see the new book by Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge, A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir, because a generation ago there was far more interest in and desire for revival than there is now, though everyone had somewhat different conceptions of it. For many in the Baptist and Methodist tradition, "revival" meant a season of vigorous activity for the purposes of prayer, renewal, and evangelism. For Pentecostals and charismatics, it meant a time in which the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit were evident. For those in the Reformed-Puritan tradition who looked to Jonathan Edwards' theology of revival as definitive, it meant an intensification of the ordinary means of grace and a great wave of newly awakened inquirers, soundly converted sinners, and spiritually renewed believers.

When my wife and I got to Gordon-Conwell Seminary in 1972, we had both seen, on our respective campuses, an extraordinary year of spiritual renewal. (Kathy went to Allegheny College in Meadville, PA.) Before 1970, the InterVarsity fellowships of central Pennsylvania campuses were all small and sleepy. At my campus, Bucknell University, IV had consisted of 5-15 students for a number of years. Then during the 1970-71 school year there was an explosion of spiritual interest, and by the end of the year we had about 100 students attending meetings, even though there had been no 'outreach' programs to speak of. I also remember that spring that we went to the central Pennsylvania area retreat and discovered that the same thing had spontaneously been occurring on most of the other campuses.

When we got to Gordon-Conwell we took a course with Richard Lovelace called "The Dynamics of Spiritual Life" and the next semester I took his course on the history of revivals and awakenings. There I read deeply in Edwards and also met his "modernizers" D.M. Lloyd-Jones and J.I. Packer, and Lovelace himself, who distilled Edwards in his classic, The Dynamics of Spiritual Life. Their descriptions of revival were an enormous help in understanding what I had seen, albeit briefly, on our college campus. After seminary Kathy and I went to a small church in Hopewell, Virginia, where we saw solid growth and some wonderful individual conversions, but where we wouldn't say we saw the things usually described as revival. Later however, during the first 18 months after the founding of Redeemer here in New York City, we again saw the "spiritual dynamics" we had seen on our campuses twenty years before. Manhattan at that time (1989-1991) was very crime-ridden and was going through a recession. There were very few evangelical churches in the whole metro area, and Christians were not moving into the city, only out of it. Yet we saw probably a hundred people come to faith and a church grow from zero to hundreds in attendance in just a few months, all in a location where absolutely no one said it could happen. In my reading of Lloyd-Jones's life, it appears he had the opposite experience to mine. Originally he pastored a struggling mission work in a small town in Wales, Aberavon, where he saw many conversions and growth to an attendance of almost 900 after a few years of ministry. That was simply unheard of in that time and kind of place. However, he did not see the same kind of revival dynamics in his church or in his city during his later center-city ministry at Westminster Chapel in London.

What I learned was this. Revivals can be longer, lasting several years, or shorter, enduring only a few weeks; they can be more widespread, affecting a whole town or region or country, or more narrow in scope, such as just one congregation. But they are seasons in which the ordinary operations of the Holy Spirit are intensified many-fold. "Sleepy" and immature believers become electrified through joyful repentance and put Christ in the center of their lives. Nominal Christians within congregations get converted and testify to the fact, which leads to more sleepy believers waking up. In turn, non-believers are drawn in to the beautified Christian community and begin embracing Christ in numbers that defy normal explanations. The "church growth" can't be accounted for by demographic-sociological shifts or efficient outreach programs in such cases. Most telling of all, the corporate worship gatherings are thick with a sense of the presence of God that is not orchestrated by the presiders.

What brings about such seasons? Is it even right to talk about ways and "means"? We'll look at that in another blog post.

The latest church to be planted in Berlin is Kreuzbergprojekt - a daughter church of Berlinprojekt. Fridtjof Leemhuis, the lead pastor of Kreuzbergprojekt is working in partnership with City to City and is a graduate of the 2008 International Intensive.

Kreuzbergprojekt had its first public worship service in March and the services have grown to around 40 people attending Sunday meetings. That may not seem like very many, but for a new church plant trying to reach people living in a predominantly secular city, this number is very encouraging and will only increase.

Kreuzberg itself is a vibrant and diverse community, known for its population of young urban professionals, artists and students. Fridtjof hopes the church reaches the young professionals and creatives of the community – and recently started two initiatives designed to draw non-believers. One is called “Stammtisch,” a German word that means, literally, to go to a bar and talk with a group. Recently, Kreuzbergprojekt has been meeting at a local pub to discuss what a church in Kreuzberg should look like. Also, church members have committed themselves to inviting people they meet in Kreuzberg to their homes for a meal.

In October I had the opportunity to attend the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town, South Africa. This Congress, perhaps the widest and most diverse gathering of Christian leaders ever held in the history of the church, drew over 4,000 selected participants from 198 nations. The Congress produced The Cape Town Commitment that was to be a “call to action that will stand in the historic tradition of The Lausanne Covenant.” (see official website at www.lausanne.org/cape-town-2010) Issued at the original 1974 Congress in Lausanne, Switzerland, The Lausanne Covenant became widely regarded as one of the most significant documents in recent church history.

Wanting to cover the gap between the first congress and third congress, I took as my nineteen-hour in-flight companion a recent book by the great historiographer, Mark Noll, The New Shape of World Christianity, in which Noll outlines some of the seismic shifts within the Christian world during the last 100 years:

• More Christians worship in China today than in all of Europe, a remarkable development since no legally functioning churches existed a mere forty years ago.
• More Presbyterians worship in Ghana than in Scotland, the former home of Presbyterianism.
• The largest churches in England and France are primarily black congregations.
• The startling reverse flow of missionaries from Asia and Africa to formerly missionary-sending nations.

In short, the growth and vibrancy of the church in the southern hemisphere is impressive, and it was into this milieu I was greeted in Cape Town. In many ways the Congress was an overwhelming experience: seven days of plenary sessions and dozens of breakout sessions (of which Tim Keller addressed the assembly twice), and a myriad of challenges and opportunities facing Christians today—all sessions are available for view on the website noted above. Like many who attended, I am still processing the experience, but here are my key reflections:

The response to increasing global poverty and injustice.
Will the church awaken and respond to the 2.4 billion who live on less than $2 a day or the 1 billion on the threshold of starvation or the 27 million living in slavery or the 50 million orphans in Africa? As a citizen of one of the wealthiest nations in the world, I was humbled by these facts and the faces they represent, and I was gripped by statements like, “Doesn’t the gospel make demands on your wealth?” and “How can the gospel you preach have power to change the world when you are not generous with your resources?” Despite the call of the newer evangelicalism to minister in both word and deed, the Christian community still struggles to address the sobering reality of global poverty. Hearing this wakeup call in an economically divided South Africa cultivated within me a call to simplicity and humility.

The importance of reaching cities as a mission priority.
In 1974 at the first Lausanne Congress, the key discovery was the realization that, despite the growth of the Christian church, hundreds of millions were still sealed off from hearing the gospel because of cultural and linguistic barriers. The result was a focus on the unreached people groups of the world. This breakthrough proved to be the most significant world missions milestone of the last 100 years.

Since the world’s population, however, is now over 50 percent urban—and migration to cities outpaces the growth of urban churches—a renewed focus on cities is important. I was left to wonder if cities will become the new unreached category and whether the Christian church will focus on cities with the same vision and resources it expended on the unreached people groups of the last few decades.

All the plenary speakers were European, and the agenda was planned and driven by European categories and topics of interest, with sessions focusing on the theme of “next steps” for church planting. Some of the topics addressed were identifying idols of the city, moving beyond the initial struggles of planting a church, and the future of City to City Europe. You can download audio and video recordings for many of the presentations on this page.

A unique moment took place at the end of the conference when everyone stood in a large circle preparing to take communion together. The one who was leading said, “Standing in this circle are representatives of nations on this continent that have often gone to war throughout our history, but today we stand as one because our unity in Christ.” It is hard to capture the emotion of that moment. Hungarians, Germans, Russians, French, British, Romanians, Italians, Spanish, Dutch, Irish, Czechs and Slovaks, men (and women) that in other generations would have been compelled to kill one another for the sake of their earthly kings were standing as one, together in service of the one true King who rules over all.

Recientemente hemos tenido jornadas electorales en los Estados Unidos. Parece que cada año aumenta la atención de los medios de comunicación hacia los mecanismos y el resultado de los intereses partidistas. Treinta años atrás, no se le prestaba toda esta atención a la política. Muchos señalan, acertadamente, que el ciclo de 24 horas [ininterrumpidas] de noticias e internet crean un apetito constante] por el análisis político. Pero yo creo que hay algo más en todo ello. Pero yo creo que hay algo más en todo ello. No es solo que a la política se le dé más espacio, sino que ahora se percibe como algo mucho más importante para la vida de las personas. La fragmentación política de los medios de comunicación, que van desde el que es muy progresista al que es muy conservador, solo parece tener una cosa en común; es decir, que lo único que al final importa es qué partido acaba ganando el mayor número de escaños.

R.R. Reno recientemente escribió un post en la página web First Things: On the Square que llevaba por título. "Culture Matters more than Politics". Su argumento es que, según la teoría marxista, la economía y el poder político son fundamentales, mientras que la cultura es un “epifenomeno.“ Es decir, que la literatura, la poesía, la música y las artes son simplemente la parafernalia sobre la que se apoyan los intereses del poder. Por lo tanto, la política –que es la que controla el poder de estado- es el factor más determinante para la vida humana. Por el contrario, afirma Reno, los recursos que hacemos servir para la vida pública son lo que en el fondo creemos acerca de la naturaleza humana, el destino de la humanidad y el sentido de la vida. Estas creencias pasan a formar parte de nuestras vidas a través de la religión y la filosofía, la cultura popular y la alta cultura, por toda una variada gama de instituciones humanas que, en la gran mayoría de casos, no forman parte del gobierno. Estas creencias compartidas moldean la visión de un pueblo sobre lo que constituye una buena comunidad y una buena vida, y la política normalmente es lo que sigue a continuación en esa evaluación.

James D. Hunter ha estado haciendo la misma observación durante años, aunque él invoca a Nietzsche, en lugar de a Marx. En La genealogía de la moral, Nietzsche argumenta que el reclamo de la moral cristiana – sobre la primacía del amor, la generosidad y el altruismo – en realidad sólo era la manera que tenían los primeros cristianos de hacerse con el poder de quienes por aquél entonces lo ostentaban. La moralidad cristiana se desarrolló a partir del "resentimiento" de los débiles hacia los fuertes y como un intento de arrebatarles su posición. Esta manera de ver las cosas también llevará a la conclusión de que la política es realmente lo más importante en esta vida.

El argumento de Hunter es que el resentimiento – "la narrativa del agravio" – ha llegado a ser lo que define el discurso político en los Estados Unidos. Tanto conservadores como liberales hacen de su sentido de agravio algo central a su propia identidad y, por lo tanto, en cada ciclo electoral el grupo que está fuera del poder es el que se siente más agraviado y ofendido y puede [por tanto] obtener los suficientes votos para ganar las elecciones. La política ya no es algo acerca de determinados temas, sino sobre poder, agravio y [por consiguiente] enfado. ¡Al más puro estilo de Nietzsche! Hunter va tan lejos que se atreve a afirmar que la Derecha Cristiana, la Izquierda Cristiana e incluso los neo-anabautistas (piensa en Dobson, Wallis, Hauerwas) son “funcionalmente Nietzscheanos" en el espacio público, ya sea porque ven la política como algo demasiado importante, o (como en el caso de los neo-anabautistas) creen que ejercer poder político es inherentemente no-cristiano. En cada caso, dice Hunter, los cristianos están siendo demasiado moldeados por la visión de Nietzsche de que la política y el poder es fundamental.

No deberíamos concluir que, realmente, la política no es importante para la cultura. Hunter argumenta que la cultura se forma y es transmitida principalmente más a través de las instituciones que por medio de los individuos, y llama a los cristianos a que mantengan “una presencia fiel” dentro de las instituciones de nuestra sociedad, aconsejándoles [a los cristianos] a que no sean ni demasiado triunfalistas ni que tampoco se retiren [del espacio público]. 

Reno y Hunter nos advierten de que la cultura es mucho más importante que la política, y yo estoy de acuerdo con ellos. Debemos rechazar el creciente sentir de que la política de poder es lo que realmente importa. Aún así, los cristianos no deben ser demasiado impulsivos en su reacción. El gobierno es una de las instituciones clave, entre otras, que refleja y moldea la ideología o valores latentes que están en lo más profundo y constituyen el recurso básico de nuestra vida pública. Hace muy poco escribí la introducción a un libro, The City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era escrito por Michael Gerson y Pete Wehner. Los autores le pedían a los lectores cristianos que no infra-valorasen el papel que la política juega en la creación de cultura, aún cuando a su vez saben reconocer el peligro de valorarla demasiado. Es una petición importante. James Hunter argumenta de una forma realmente interesante que aquellos cristianos que aconsejan retirarse de la política bien podrían tener una visión tan nihilista del poder como la que tuvo Nietzsche. 

Los cristianos deberían estar tan implicados en la política y en el gobierno como lo están en otras áreas de la vida.

We recently had an election season in the U.S. Every year, it seems, the amount of attention paid to the mechanics and outcomes of partisan politics grows. Thirty years ago there was nothing like this amount of attention given to politics. Many point out rightly that the 24-hour news cycle and the internet creates an appetite for political analysis. But I think there is more going on. It's not just that the political is given more air time, but that it's now seen as far more important to human life. The politically fragmented media, with outlets ranging from very liberal to very conservative, only seem to agree on one thing, namely, that nothing matters more than which American political party wins the most seats.

R.R. Reno recently wrote a blog post at the First Things: On the Square website that "Culture Matters More than Politics". He points out that, in Marxist theory, economics and political power are the fundamentals, while culture is "epiphenomenal." Literature, poetry, music and the arts are merely the supportive apparatus for power interests. Therefore, politics – who controls state power – is the factor that most sets the course of human life. On the contrary, Reno states, the deeper sources of public life are what we believe about human nature, human destiny, and the meaning of life. These beliefs are carried out into life by religion and philosophy, by high culture and popular cultural domains, by a huge variety of human institutions, the vast majority of which are not part of the government. These shared beliefs shape a people's vision of a good human community and a good life, and politics largely follows on from that.

James D. Hunter has been making the same point for years, though he invokes Nietzsche, rather than Marx. In On the Geneology of Morals, Nietzsche argued that Christian moral claims – of the primacy of love, generosity, and altruism – were really just ways for the early Christians to grab power from the people who had it. Christian morality developed out of the "ressentiment" by the weak of the strong and as an effort to wrest their position from them. This view will also lead to the conclusion that politics is what life is really about.

Hunter argues that ressentiment – "a narrative of injury" – has now come to define American political discourse. Both conservatives and liberals make their sense of injury central to their identity, and therefore in each election cycle it is only the group out of power, who therefore feels the most injured and angry, who can get enough voters out to win the election. Politics is no longer about issues but about power, injury, and anger. How Nietzschean! Hunter goes farther and argues that the Christian Right, the Christian Left, and even the neo-Anabaptist (think Dobson, Wallis, Hauerwas) are "functional Nietzscheans" in the public square, either because they see politics as too all-important, or (as in the case of the neo-Anabaptists) they think wielding political power is inherently non-Christian. In each case, Hunter says, Christians are being too shaped by Nietzsche's view that politics and power is fundamental.

We should not conclude that, really, politics is unimportant to culture. Hunter makes the case that culture is formed and passed on more by institutions than by individuals, and he calls Christians to maintain "faithful presence within" the cultural institutions of our society, counseling them to be neither triumphalistic nor withdrawn.

Reno and Hunter warn that culture matters more than politics, and I agree with them. We must reject the growing belief that power politics is what really matters. Nevertheless, Christians must not over-react. The government is one of the key institutions among others that reflect and shape the underlying beliefs that are the deepest source of public life. I recently wrote an introduction to a book, The City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era by Michael Gerson and Pete Wehner. The authors plead with Christian readers to not under-value the role of politics in culture-making, even as they acknowledge the danger of over-valuing it. It's an important plea. James Hunter makes the intriguing case that those Christians who counsel withdrawal from politics may have as nihilistic a view of power as Nietzsche.

Christians should be as involved in politics and government as they are in all other realms of life.

On October 15, Redeemer City to City and Redeemer Presbyterian Church released The Reason for God DVD curriculum. Published by Zondervan and based on Tim Keller’s 2008 New York Times bestselling book, The Reason for God, this film and accompanying discussion guide can help Christians address common questions about Christianity.

The DVD takes a unique approach to apologetics. After The Reason For God came out, Redeemer received many requests for follow-up materials from churches in the United States and Europe. They asked how to adapt TRFG for small groups and classes to learn how to answer sensitive questions about Christianity – questions like, “Why does God allow suffering?” and “How can God send people to hell?”

While brainstorming about how to present this material in a small group study format, the creative team at Redeemer City to City thought of this: gather together a group of individuals who are exploring spirituality, yet skeptical of Christianity, and ask them to participate in an actual group discussion led by Tim Keller. These conversations would be unscripted and filmed.

There existed no real reference point for a project like this except for talk show interviews (which are largely scripted) and reality TV (which is made for entertainment value). So the concept put Redeemer City to City in a bit of uncharted territory.

With recommendations from the Redeemer community and Redeemer’s surrounding church plants in New York City, the project’s production staff selected eight willing individuals to be filmed over a series of sessions with Dr. Keller spanning two months. The result is six 20-minute episodes that combine live group conversations with private, candid interviews with each participant.

The team behind this DVD project hopes to achieve two things: 1) to help Christians respond to objections about their faith in a winsome and intelligent way and 2) to model how to host a group for those who may be exploring.

New York City filmmaker Andrew Hunt directed this project and Sam Shammas served as creative producer. The curriculum is now available on our website and selected stores.

Este mes saldrá al mercado un nuevo libro que he escrito bajo el título Generous Justice [todavía no hay fecha prevista para la edición en castellano]. Mucha gente me ha preguntado porqué lo he escrito, y otros me han preguntado acerca del título en sí. Mis respuestas a estas dos preguntas van juntas. 

Espero que entre quienes lean el libro se encuentren esos jóvenes que expresan un apasionado interés por la justicia social. El voluntariado es una marca distintiva de toda una generación en América [como también lo es en Europa] de quienes actualmente están estudiando o se han graduado recientemente de la Universidad. La revista The NonProfit Times informaba que los adolescentes y los jóvenes están creando una subida enorme de las solicitudes para programas de voluntariado. Siendo un Baby Boomer [generación de americanos nacidos después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial] me resulta interesante constatar que los niveles de voluntariado eran elevados en los años 70, pero cayeron hasta la última mitad de la década pasada cuando empezaron a subir otra vez. Por supuesto, me parece una tendencia excelente. 

Sin embargo, mucha gente no sólo se ha empapado de este sentimiento cultural en favor de los derechos y de la justicia, sino que también [se ha empapado] del consumismo que desprecia la autonegación y [cualquier idea que sugiera] la demora de una gratificación inmediata. Aún cuando estén dando algo de su tiempo, [la gente] gasta una gran cantidad de dinero en entretenimiento, apariencia, aparatos electronicos y viajes. De modo que para un gran número de personas, el voluntariado forma parte de su portafolios particular de actividades que enriquecen la vida, pero no es una característica de toda una vida moldeada por el compromiso de hacer justicia que incluya en ello una generosidad radical con la economía propia. 

Una de las cosas que más me impactó mientras estudiaba la enseñanza bíblica sobre la justicia fue la cantidad de veces que la generosidad económica es considerada en sí como una parte propia de hacer justicia. Job dice, "Si he comido mi bocado solo, y el huérfano no ha comido de él… si he visto… sin abrigo al necesitado, sis us lomos no han expresado gratitud, pues no se ha calentado con el vellón de mis ovejas… eso también hubiera sido iniquidad que merecía juicio, porque habría negado al Dios de lo alto" (Job 31:13-28).

Muchos creen que "justicia" es simplemente castigar la maldad, y punto. No es que piensen que debamos ser indiferentes a los pobres, pero cuando ayudamos al pobre se refieren a eso como caridad, no justicia. Sin embargo Job dice que si no comparte su comida o sus bienes con el necesitado, sería igual que pecar contra Dios y, por definición, una violación de la justicia de Dios. Por supuesto, podemos referirnos a este tipo de ayuda como misericordia o caridad, porque debe estar motivada por un sentimiento de compassion; pero no vivir un estilo de vida de generosidad radical es, en términos bíblicos, injusto. 

Nuestra cultura nos lanza un mensaje mixto. Por un lado nos dice: gana mucho dinero y gastalo en ti mismo; construye tu [propia] identidad en base al tipo de ropa con la que te vistes y los lugares a los que viajas o vives. Pero también nos anima al voluntariado, a preocuparnos por la justicia social, porque lo que no queremos es ser personas totalmente egoístas. Sin embargo, la actitud cristiana en relación a nuestro tiempo y nuestro dinero no debería ser moldeada por [los valores de] la sociedad; sino por el evangelio de Cristo, quien se hizo pobre para que nosotros pudiéramos llegar a ser ricos (2 Corintios 8:9). 

El principal tema de mi libro es que el evangelio de gracia hará de cualquiera que crea en él una persona que hace justicia a los necesitados. Hacer justicia incluye no sólo corregir lo que está mal, sino también tener una disposición generosa y tener inquietud social, así como también estar dispuesto a vivir un estílo de vida más modesto con tal de ser más generoso con la iglesia y con los pobres. Este tipo de vida refleja el carácter de Dios (Deuteronomio 10:17-18, Salmo 146:7-9). Tenemos los recursos bíblicos y espirituales para vencer la superficialidad de nuestra cultura y así llegar a ser lo que estamos llamados a ser como descendientes espirituales de Abraham – una bendición real para nuestra ciudad y para el pobre (Génesis 12:1-3; Gálatas 3:7).

I've written a book that will be coming out this month called Generous Justice. A number of people have asked me why I wrote it, and others have asked about the title itself. My answers to these two questions go together.

One group of people I hope will read the book is the young adults who express a passionate interest in social justice. Volunteerism is the distinguishing mark of an entire generation of current American college students and recent graduates. The NonProfit Times reported that teens and young adults are creating enormous spikes in applications to volunteer programs. As a Baby Boomer it is interesting to me that volunteering rates were high in the 1970s but had fallen off until the last half of the last decade when they began to rise again. Of course I consider this an excellent trend.

However, many people have imbibed not only an emotional resonance for rights and justice from our culture, but also a consumerism that undermines self-denial and delayed gratification. While they may give some of their time, they spend large amounts of money on entertainment, their appearance, electronics, and travel. For a great number, then, volunteering is part of their portfolio of life-enriching activities, but it is not a feature of a whole life shaped by a commitment to doing justice, including radical generosity with one's finances.

One of the things that struck me as I was studying the Bible's teaching on justice was how often financial generosity is considered part of doing justice. Job says, "If I have kept my bread to myself, not sharing it with the fatherless...if I have seen...a needy man without a garment, and his heart did not bless me for warming him with the fleece from my sheep...these also would be sins to be judged, for I would have been unfaithful to God on high." (Job 31:13-28)

Many people believe that "justice" is strictly the punishment of wrongdoing, period. They don't think we should be indifferent to the poor, but when we help them they would call such aid charity, not justice. But Job says that if he had failed to share his food or his fleece – his assets – with the needy, which would have been a sin against God and by definition a violation of God's justice. Of course, we can call such aid mercy or charity because it should be motivated by compassion, but a failure to live a lifestyle of radical generosity is considered injustice in the Bible.

Our culture gives us a mixed message. It says: make lots of money and spend it on yourself; get an identity by the kind of clothes you wear and the places you travel to and live. But also do some volunteer work, care about social justice, because you don't want to be just a selfish pig. However, Christians' attitudes toward our time and our money should not be shaped by our society; they should be shaped by the gospel of Christ, who became poor so that we could become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9).

The main theme of my book is that the gospel of grace will turn anyone who truly believes it into a person who does justice for those in need. Doing justice includes not only the righting of wrongs, but also generosity and social concern, and a willingness to live a more modest lifestyle in order to be generous to the church and to the poor. This kind of life reflects the character of God (Deuteronomy 10:17-18; Psalm 146:7-9). We have the Biblical and spiritual resources to overcome the superficiality of our culture and become what the spiritual descendents of Abraham should be – a true blessing to our city and to the poor (Genesis 12:1-3; Galatians 3:7).

As I listened to the several presentations made at the Lausanne Congress in Cape Town about reaching unreached people groups, I found myself unmoved. In fact the more I heard, the more I found myself reacting somewhat negatively. It is not because I am not concerned about those who have never heard the gospel. I am. But when I heard the western evangelical leaders talking about a billion or more dollars that would need to be expended in order to finish the task as defined by their organizations (translations of the Scriptures into their languages and the initiation of evangelistic ministry in several forms), I couldn’t help but think there might be a better way to invest much of the time and many of the dollars it would require, for at least two reasons. The concept of unreached people groups (isolated groups of people that do not have the Scriptures in their own language and that theoretically have no witness of the gospel among them) is one that has captured the imagination of many churches here in the USA. It is at the very least a romantic notion that stirs the spirit. But is it really accurate to describe these groups as not having access to the Gospel?

The recently retired Presiding Bishop of the Church of England of South Africa doesn’t think so and has stated the same. One reason is that many of the people groups listed are already being significantly affected by globalization, often because individual members of many of these groups are moving into the cities and bringing back the message of the gospel when they return to visit their families. A second reason is that modern technology is invading even the most remote tribes or soon will. One of the statements made at the conference was that by 2015 there will be no dead zones anywhere on the face of the globe. That is, satellites are being put in place that will make it possible to enable mobile phone coverage everywhere, and not just phone coverage but access to the Internet. It will be physically possible to preach the gospel to every creature on earth. A third reason is that many of these groups do have people reaching out to them. Although they don’t have the Bible in their native language, many have or shortly will have access to the gospel through one of the major languages of the world.

One factor that goes against the idea is the reality that many of these groups are likely to vanish because many are streaming into the cities. But another is that, according to several accounts I heard, the agenda of the large evangelistic organizations that are driving the effort are not necessarily in concert with the nationals that are already working in the countries in which these groups are located.

While I don’t think it is ever wise to pit one ministry against another, or ministry in one place or situation against another (Gospel ministry is needed in every milieu and every kind of place), I do want to argue that we ought to putting great priority on urban ministry, if for no other reason than that that is where the people are and increasingly will be at least for the next forty years. And in many urban centers those who dwell in these places are among the least reached people in the world.

Today some 500 or more young lay leaders, pastors, staff, church planters and potential church planters gathered here in Cape Town at Common Ground Church to hear Tim Keller speak on the themes of The Importance and Priority of Cities For Gospel Ministry, The Distinctives of Urban Church Planting and How the Gospel Should Impact the Society and Culture in which we live. Tonight more than 5000 will gather to hear him speak on The Prodigal God. In effect both events are sowing the seeds of Gospel-centered theology and Gospel-driven church ministry. To all outward appearance the seeds fell on fertile ground. The listeners were very receptive, asking very perceptive questions throughout the day. With all the work that has gone into laying the foundation of a new movement of church planting in Cape Town and the surrounding area over the last three years, we are hopeful about the prospects of seeing that movement gain great momentum.

There are some amazing churches in the area, already given to evangelistic ministry and solid Christian discipleship. But their testimony is that this is what they needed to vault them ahead in re-reaching the city for Christ. In the coming months we will be helping to form a trans-denominational network of church planters and church planting churches that will be committed to planting churches in every neighborhood of the city and among every people group, class and ethnicity.

We are expecting even larger numbers of church leaders to attend a similar event in Johannesburg on Monday. There, too, we are hoping to help develop a network of churches and church planters that will plants dozens of churches in Soweto, Johannesburg, Thembesa and Pretoria, a metropolitan area that has a population of more than 16 million people and is rapidly growing. 

En el pasado, muchos de nuestros conciudadanos podían entender una predicación cristiana tradicional aún cuando su respuesta pudiera ser de desacuerdo o de indiferencia. Sin embargo, durante los últimos quince años nuestro mensaje es recibido con una creciente y desconcertante incomprensión o [incluso] hasta indignación. Hasta hace [justo] una generación atrás, en los Estados Unidos la mayoría de adultos  tenían unas intuiciones morales muy parecidas, independientemente de que fueran creyentes nacidos de nuevo, gente que [simplemente] iba a la iglesia, cristianos nominales o no creyentes. Todo esto ha cambiado.

Muchos han descrito el cambio que se ha producido en esta última generación como “el giro postmoderno.” La era “moderna”, nos dicen a menudo, estaba caracterizada por una confianza en la racionalidad, la ciencia y la búsqueda de un gran orden social al que accederíamos a través de [la educación] por medio de las instituciones académicas y de [la tutela] de la nación-estado. La era postmoderna está marcada por el pluralismo, una pérdida de confianza en lo racional, un deseo por la experiencia, y demás.

A pesar de todo, recientemente he estado leyendo algunos autores que piensan que esta manera de describir las cosas no aclara demasiado lo que está pasando. La opinión es que el término “postmoderno” acentúa exageradamente la discontinuidad con el pasado más reciente y [por lo tanto] falla a la hora de ver que sí hay continuidad. [Lo que estos autores] proponen es que lo que tenemos hoy no es tanto un distanciamiento de los patrones de vida y pensamiento modernos, sino más bien una intensificación de estos mismos patrones en tanto que han logrado penetrar aún más si cabe nuestras instituciones. Estos pensadores prefieren hablar de modernidad ‘tardía’ o incluso de modernidad ‘líquida’, por las siguientes razones.

La idea básica en la raíz de la modernidad (aún más fundamental que la confianza en la racionalidad, etc.) es ‘poner patas arriba’ toda autoridad fuera de uno mismo. En el s. XVIII, los pensadores de la Ilustración Europea insistieron en la idea de que la persona moderna debía cuestionar toda tradición, revelación y autoridad externa sujetándolo todo a la suprema corte de su propia razón o intuición. Somos nuestra propia autoridad moral.  

A pesar de ello, la sociedad moderna continuó estando dominada durante un largo período de tiempo por [todo un conjunto de] instituciones relativamente estables.  La gente todavía podia encontrar la raíz de su propia identidad en gran medida en la familia y el clan, en comunidades cívicas de ámbito local y en su trabajo o vocación. Ahora, sin embargo, incluso estas instituciones [sociales] parecen estar [dejando de ser el referente que una vez fueron], desgastadas por el “ácido” del principio moderno que antepone frente a cualquier otra cosa la felicidad individual y la autonomía personal.  Matrimonio y familia, trabajo y carrera, vecindario y comunidad cívica – ninguna de estas instituciones tiene ahora la suficiente autoridad o estabilidad para que los individuos dependan de ellas. La gente vive vidas cada vez más fragmentadas, ya no piensan sobre sí mismos en términos básicos del que ocupa un rol en la comunidad (“cristiano, padre, abogado.”) En lugar de ello, su identidad cambia constantemente de forma, a medida que van pasando por una serie de episodios en la vida que no están lo suficientemente interconectados entre sí. No tienen ningún problema a la hora de cambiar de rumbo y abandonar compromisos, sin apenas alterarse lo más mínimo, y emprender de nuevo la búsqueda de la mejor oportunidad que se les presente; todo ello siempre en base a una evalución muy personal de las pérdidas y beneficios que eso conlleve.

Por ejemplo, el nuevo libro de Christian Smith, Souls in Transition (Oxford, 2009), retrata el perfil de las creencias de los jóvenes entre 18 y 23 años de edad. En una entrevista con Ken Myers en Mars Hill Audio, Ken explica cuantas veces al hacer entrevistas y preguntar a la gente si sus convicciones morales (siendo algunas muy firmes) eran principalmente sentimientos subjetivos o realmente constables con la realidad, lo que se encontró es que muchos ni tan siquiera podían entender qué es lo que les estaba preguntando.

El hilo que permite ligar todo esto es lo inconcebible que ha llegado a ser la idea de un orden moral basado en una autoridad más fundamental que la propia razón o la propia experiencia. Este era el principio básico en la raíz de la Ilustración, y ésta es la piedra angular de la última generación. ¿Cómo podemos decir entonces que se ha acabado la Ilustración?  

Por supuesto, podemos utilizar el término "post-moderno" para referirnos a muchos aspectos de nuestra vida ahora en el mundo. Por supuesto, existe discontinuidad en muchos aspectos con el pasado más reciente. Pero, mi conclusión es que acentuar con demasiado énfasis el aspecto “post” de nuestra situación puede llevarnos a celebrar la más grande de las tolerancias, el fin de la “Cristiandad”, la caída de la Razón-con R mayúscula, y la apertura a lo espiritual, sin ver que todo ello encuentra su base en una especie de hiper-modernidad que tal vez sea más incompatible con el cristianismo de lo que nunca lo ha sido hasta ahora.

Tengo la suficiente edad como para haber visto tanto la oposición que la modernidad en su punto más álgido presentó contra el cristianismo, como la oposición que la modernidad ‘tardía’ o postmodernidad supone para el cristianismo. En las dos situaciones hay oportunidad y dificultad a partes iguales. En ultimo término, no prefiero uno u otro escenario para llevar a cabo mi ministerio, pues creo que la continuidad entre estas dos épocas es más fundamental que la discontinuidad. 

In the past, many of our neighbors could understand traditional Christian preaching even when they responded with disagreement or indifference. During the last fifteen years, however, our message is increasingly met with dumbfounded incomprehension or outrage. Until a generation ago in the U.S., most adults had similar moral intuitions whether they were born-again believers, church-goers, nominal Christians, or non-believers. That has changed.

Many have characterized the change over the last generation as "the postmodern turn." The "modern" era, we are often told, was characterized by confidence in rationality and science and the pursuit of a grand social order that would be mediated by institutions such as the academy and the nation-state. The postmodern era is marked by pluralism, a loss of confidence in the rational, a desire for experience, and so on.

Recently, however, I've been reading thinkers who believe that this way of describing things obscures much of what is happening. They say that the term "postmodern" overemphasizes the discontinuities with the recent past and fails to see the strong continuities. They propose that what we have today is not so much a departure from modern patterns of thought and life, but rather an intensification of these patterns as they have now penetrated further into our institutions. These thinkers prefer to talk of 'late' modernity or even 'liquid' modernity, and here is why.

The root idea of modernity (even more fundamental than confidence in rationality, etc.) is the overturning of all authority outside of the self. In the 18th century, European Enlightenment thinkers insisted that the modern person must question all tradition, revelation, and external authority by subjecting them to the supreme court of his or her own reason and intuition. We are our own moral authority.

Modern society nonetheless continued to be dominated by relatively stable institutions for a long time. People still were able to root their identities to a great degree in family and clan, in local civic communities, and in their work or vocation. Yet now even these institutions seem to be passing, worn away by the "acid" of the modern principle, namely individual happiness and autonomy must come before anything else. Marriage and family, workplace and career, neighborhood and civic community – none of these institutions can now remain authoritative or stable long enough for individuals to depend on them. People live increasingly fragmented lives, no longer thinking of themselves in terms of basic roles in communities ("Christian, father, lawyer.") Instead, their identities constantly shape-shift as they move through a series of life episodes that are not tightly connected to each other. They are always ready to change direction and abandon commitments and loyalties without qualms and to pursue, on a personal cost-benefit basis, the best opportunity available to them.

Here's an example. The new Christian Smith book, Souls in Transition (Oxford, 2009), profiles the beliefs of young adults age 18-23. In an interview with Ken Myers on Mars Hill Audio, Smith relates how he often interviewed people and asked them if their moral convictions (some of which were very strong) were mainly subjective feelings or really true to reality. He found that most had difficulty even understanding what he was asking.

The underlying thread that ties all this together is the inconceivability of a moral order based on an authority more fundamental than one's own reason or experience. That was the founding principle of the Enlightenment, and that is the cornerstone of the most recent generation. So how can we say the Enlightenment is over?

We can certainly use the term "post-modern" to refer to many aspects of our life in the world now. There certainly are discontinuities with the recent past. But I conclude that an over-emphasis on the post-ness of our situation can lead us to celebrate the greater tolerance, the end of "Christendom," the fall of Reason-capital-R, and the openness to the spiritual, without seeing that it is based on a kind of hyper-modernity that is perhaps more antithetical to Christianity than ever.

I am old enough to have seen both the "high modern" and the "late modern" / "post-modern" opposition to Christianity, and there are unique opportunities and difficulties in both situations. In the end, I don't prefer ministry in one over ministry in the other, for I believe the continuities between these ages are more fundamental to ministry than the discontinuities.

The word "movement" is often used to describe a kind of vital, dynamic human organization, in order to distinguish it from what are called "institutions." Both of these words can have broader meanings, but for the sake of this discussion let us define them in the following ways.

A movement is marked by an attractive, clear, unifying vision for the future together with a strong set of values or beliefs. The content of the vision must be compelling and clear so that others can grasp it readily. It must not be so esoteric or difficult that only a handful of people can articulate it. Instead, it must be something that all members of the movement can understand and pass along to others. By contrast, "institutionalized" organizations are held together by rules, regulations, and procedures, not by a shared vision.

This unifying vision is so compelling that it takes pride of place. First, the vision leads to sacrificial commitment. Individuals put the vision ahead of their own interests and comfort. They are willing to work without high compensation, power, or perks. The satisfaction of realized goals is their main compensation. There is no more practical index of whether you have a movement or not. If the leader is making all the sacrifices, you don't.

Second, the vision leads to generous flexibility. Institutionalized organizations are very turf conscious. Members are suspicious of anyone encroaching on their area of responsibility. Positions and power have been hard-won and jealously guarded. This is done by slavish devotion to rules of procedure, accreditation, and tenure.  In movements, however, the accomplishment of the vision is more important than power and position. So people are willing to make allies, be flexible, and cooperate with anyone sharing the basic vision and values.

Third, the vision leads to innovativeness. Institutions are organized more vertically, where ideas from "below" are unwelcome. Movements are flatter because the commonly shared vision unifies and empowers. The vision is what matters - so anyone with a good idea about how to accomplish it is welcome to give it. Ideas flow out of the whole organization, top to bottom, which leads to greater creativity.

Finally, a movement is marked by spontaneous generativity. Spontaneous combustion means energy generated from within - a conflagration without the need for external ignition. A movement is able to generate its own resources, recruit its own new members and participants, and (especially) raise up its own new leaders. This does not mean that movements have no formal training programs. Rather, it means that first, the vision of the movement (especially as its content is disseminated) attracts people with leadership potential, and, secondly, that the work of the movement provides opportunities that reveal emerging leaders through real-life experience and then prepares them for the next level of leadership in the movement. Denominations or church networks that always have to recruit ministers and staff that were raised up in other environments, and that attract them mainly with good compensation, do not show signs of being a movement.

David Hurst, a Harvard scholar, summed up how movements become institutions this way - vision becomes strategy, roles become tasks, teams become structure, networks become organizations, recognition becomes compensation. It is wrong, however, to draw such a hard line between the two forms. It is typical in the Christian movement literature to be highly critical of "institutionalism," for good reason. But the impression is left that all authority, central control, and formal processes are bad for ministry. The reality is more complex.

It is natural for new churches and ministries to try very hard to stay informal, non-codified, and non-centralized. But part of what makes a movement dynamic is a unified vision, and that always requires some codification and control. As time goes on, to maintain the main engine of movement-dynamics - a unified vision - a ministry must adopt some of the aspects of institutions. A strong movement, then, occupies the difficult space between being a free-wheeling organism and a disciplined organization.  A movement that refuses to take on some organizational characteristics - authority, tradition, unity of belief, and quality control - will fragment and dissipate. A movement that does not also resist the inevitable tendency toward complete institutionalization will lose its vitality and effectiveness as well. The job of the movement leader is to steer the ship safely between these two opposite perils.

Hay tres tipos de oración para las que trato de encontrar algún tiempo cada día -meditación (o contemplación), petición y arrepentimiento. Cada mañana me concentro en las dos primeras y la última es la que hago cada noche.

En realidad la meditación es un término medio o combinación entre la lectura bíblica y la oración. Me gusta emplear el método contemplativo de Lutero que él mismo delinea en su famosa carta sobre la oración a su barbero. Básicamente, el método consiste en - tomar una verdad espiritual y plantear tres preguntas. ¿Qué me enseña [este pasaje] acerca de Dios que debería llevarme a adorarle? ¿Qué cosas pone de manifiesto acerca de mí mismo que debiera confesar? ¿Qué necesidades muestra por las que deba rogar a Dios? Adoración, confesión y súplica. Lutero propone que ésta es la manera de meditar hasta sentir un calor en nuestros corazones y que estos se derritan al sentir la presencia real de Dios. Esto no suele pasar a menudo, pero no pasa nada. En ultimo término, no oramos para conseguir buenas sensaciones o respuestas, sino para honrar a Dios por quien es él en sí mismo.   

Hay dos tipos de lectura bíblica que trato de practicar. Cada mes leo los Salmos usando el Book of Common Prayer's daily office. También uso el calendario de lectura de Robert Murray M'Cheyne. Sigo la versión más relajada, que consiste en dos capítulos al día y que te lleva a través del Antiguo Testamento cada dos años y el Nuevo Testamento cada año. Por las mañanas hago el calendario de M'Cheyne y algunos Salmos, y por las noches leo más Salmos. Para concluir mis devocionales cada mañana, escojo una o dos cosas de los Salmos y  de M'Cheyne para meditar en ellas.

Además de las oraciones matutinas (M'Cheyne, Salmos, meditación y petición) y de la oración vespertina (Salmos y arrepentimiento) intento tomar, lo más a menudo posible, cinco minutos al mediodía para hacer un repaso espiritual, ya sea recordando las ideas más radioactivas espiritualmente [hablando] desde mi tiempo devocional, o bien echando un vistazo rápido a mis pecados e ídolos más recurrentes. Lo hago para ver lo lejos que he podido llegar abandonándome a malas actitudes como el orgullo, la frialdad y dureza de corazón, ansiedad y falta de amabilidad. Si veo que estoy yendo por mal camino, la oración del mediodía  me ayuda a rectificar. El problema con esta oración del mediodía es encontrar un tiempo para ella, pues cada día es distinto. Todo lo que necesito es quedarme a solas por unos minutos, pero eso a menudo es imposible, o más veces de las que quisiera, simplemente me olvido. De todos modos, llevo conmigo en la cartera una pequeña guía para la oración del mediodía que puedo usar [en cualquier lugar].

La última forma de oración que hago a diario es orar con mi esposa, Kathy. Unos nueve años atrás, Kathy y yo comentábamos el hecho de que en gran medida y con el transcurso de los años habíamos fallado a la hora de orar juntos. Entonces Kathy me exhortó diciendo: "¿Qué pasaría si nuestro medico nos dijera que tenemos una grave dolencia cardíaca que en el pasado siempre había resultado letal? Sin embargo, ahora existe una píldora que, si la tomásemos cada noche, nos mantendría vivos por muchos años. Si nuestro medico nos dijera eso y le creyésemos, nunca nos olvidaríamos de tomar la píldora. Nunca diríamos, 'oh, no me la he tomado.' Nos la tomaríamos, ¿verdad? Bien, si no oramos juntos cada noche, nos vamos a morir espiritualmente." Ella tenía razón. Y por alguna razón, todo encajó para los dos, y desde entonces no recordamos una sola noche en la que no hayamos orado juntos. Incluso si estamos lejos el uno del otro, siempre hay un teléfono [a mano]. Oramos de forma muy sencilla - solo un par de minutos. Oramos por cualquier cosa que más nos preocupe como pareja, cualquier persona o cualquier cosa que esté en nuestros corazones ese día. Y oramos sobre las necesidades de nuestra familia. Eso es todo. Tan sencillo, pero tan bueno.

No es fácil mantener este régimen, especialmente cuando estoy viajando. Pero cada cierto tiempo aparto un periodo de 40 días en el que me obligo a mí mismo a cumplir cada día cada uno de los tiempos de oración antes mencionados. Esto crea hábitos en la mente y en el corazón que permanecen conmigo de manera que, incluso cuando paso por alguna época de mucho trabajo, encuentro que puedo mantener algo de mis disciplinas y no me enfrío o endurezco en relación a Dios.

Robert Murray M'Cheyne tenía la fama de haberle dicho a los pastores, "lo que vuestra gente necesita más de vosotros es vuestra santidad personal."

* Puedes leer el original (en inglés) aquí 

There are three kinds of prayer I try to find time for every day - meditation (or contemplation), petition, and repentance. I concentrate on the first two every morning and do the last one in the evening.

Meditation is actually a middle ground or blend of Bible reading and prayer. I like to use Luther's contemplative method that he outlines in his famous letter on prayer that he wrote to his barber. The basic method is this - to take a Scriptural truth and ask three questions of it. How does this show me something about God to praise? How does this show me something about myself to confess? How does this show me something I need to ask God for? Adoration, confession, and supplication. Luther proposes that we keep meditating like this until our hearts begin to warm and melt under a sense of the reality of God. Often that doesn't happen. Fine. We aren't ultimately praying in order to get good feelings or answers, but in order to honor God for who he is in himself.

There are two kinds of Bible reading that I try to do. I read the psalms through every month using the Book of Common Prayer's daily office. I also read through the Bible using Robert Murray M'Cheyne's reading calendar. I take the more relaxed version - two chapters a day, which takes you through the Old Testament every two years and the New Testament every year. I do the M'Cheyne reading and some of the psalms in the morning, and read some Psalms in the evening. I choose one or two things from the psalms and M'Cheyne chapters to meditate on, to conclude my morning devotions.

Besides morning prayer (M'Cheyne, Psalms, meditation, and petition) and evening prayer (Psalms and repentance) I try as often as possible to take five minutes in the middle of the day to take a spiritual inventory, either by remembering the more spiritually radioactive ideas from my morning devotion, or by a quick look at my most besetting sins and idols. I do that to see whether so far that day I've given in to bad attitudes such as pride, coldness and hardness of heart, anxiety, and unkindness. If I see myself going wrong, the mid-day prayer can catch it. The problem with mid-day prayer is finding a time for it, since every day is different. All I need is to get alone for a few minutes, but that is often impossible, or more often than not I just forget.  However, I carry a little guide to mid-day prayer in my wallet which I can take out and use. 

The last form of prayer that I do daily is prayer with my wife, Kathy. About nine years ago Kathy and I were contemplating the fact that we had largely failed to pray together over the years. Then Kathy exhorted me like this. "What if our doctor told us that we had a serious heart condition that in the past was always fatal. However, now there was a pill which, if we took it every night, would keep us alive for years and years. But you could never miss a single night, or you would die. If our doctor told us this and we believed it, we would never miss. We would never say, 'oh I didn't get to it.' We would do it. Right? Well, if we don't pray together every night, we are going to spiritually die." I realized she was right. And for some reason, the penny dropped for us both, and we can't remember missing a night since. Even if we are far away from each other, there's always the phone. We pray very, very simply - just a couple of minutes. We pray for whatever we are most worried about as a couple, anyone or anything on our hearts that day. And we pray through the needs of our family. That's it. Simple, but so, so good.

It is very hard to stick with this regimen, especially when I'm traveling. But every so often I buckle down for a 40-day period in which I push myself to do every one of my stated times of prayer every day. This creates habits of mind and heart that stick with me, so that even when there are very busy times, I find I am able to stick with some of my disciplines, and I don't find myself getting cold and hard toward God.

Robert Murray M'Cheyne was reputed to have said to ministers, "what your people need most from you is your personal holiness."

En su sermón "Doctrina y Vida" en Walking with God: Studies in 1 John (Crossway, 1993), David Martyn Lloyd-Jones habla de la gente a la que no le gustan los énfasis doctrinales o de precisión teológica. [El argumento que suelen utilizar es el siguiente]:

Las ciudades americanas experimentaron veinte años de deterioro (1970-1990) y veinte años de resurgimiento (1990-2010). Pero las burbujas económicas que mayoritariamente incentivaron el crecimiento han desaparecido. Casi con toda seguridad, el renacimiento de las ciudades americanas durante los últimos 20 años ha llegado a su fin. Pero, ¿qué nos depara el futuro?

Hay varias tendencias que continuarán dándose, y algunas de ellas serán beneficiosas para las ciudades. En primer lugar, las ciudades americanas continuarán su proceso de globalización. Es decir, continuarán creciendo en conexión e influencia internacional, lo que ayudará a mantener en alza el valor de las viviendas, la creación de puestos de trabajo y que continúe aumentando la importancia y el estatus [de las ciudades]. El resultado será que las ciudades americanas serán cada vez más parecidas a otras ciudades de proyección mundial y se irán pareciendo cada vez menos, en términos culturales, a [otras zonas pobladas de] su propia región. En Segundo lugar, la planificación urbana continuará creando espacios compactos, mixtos en relación al tráfico y la incorporación de amplias zonas peatonales (con zonas residenciales, oficinas, negocios, educación, instituciones culturales y entretenimiento). El énfasis estará en las escuelas de barrio, calles con amplias aceras y paseos peatonales, carriles para bicicletas y demás. A esto se le llama "Nuevo Urbanismo" o "Crecimiento Inteligente." Viene motivado por muchos factores, incluyendo la toma de conciencia medioambiental, por lo tanto las ciudades continuarán su desarrollo como alternativa social de agrupación humana frente a los suburbios [o las urbanizaciones clásicas de la América más tradicional]. En tercer lugar, debido a que las leyes sobre la inmigración todavía no han cambiado de manera significativa, Estados Unidos continuará recibiendo inmigración procedente de todas partes del mundo. (¡Siempre hay algún otro lugar en el mundo donde la economía está peor que la nuestra!) Las ciudades que acojan esta inmigración se beneficiarán de la llegada tanto de trabajadores de la clase obrera como de profesionales llenos de energía y nuevas ideas. En cuarto lugar, hasta donde yo puedo ver, el postmodernismo que lleva a que los jóvenes prefieran la vida de la ciudad en lugar de la vida en los suburbios, es algo que todavía va a continuar por un tiempo. Todas estas tendencias están bien asentadas y van a ser las que sostendrán el crecimiento y continuo desarrollo de las ciudades.

Sin embargo, hay varios factores que van a jugar en contra de las ciudades. Primero, lo más seguro es que las ciudades se vean más afectadas por la disminución de los servicios sociales. Durante tiempos de dificultad económica, suele haber un notable aumento de gente que necesita servicios sociales, precisamente cuando la recaudación de impuestos es más baja.  Por ejemplo, un informe dice que en la actualidad hay un 34% más de gente durmiendo en las calles de Nueva York que hace sólo 12 meses atrás, y todo esto justo cuando la ciudad está haciendo todo tipo de recortes y despidos. Las escuelas, el transporte público - todos están haciendo frente a la crisis. Esto tendrá su efecto sobre la calidad de vida en las ciudades, y puede que nos lleve a un aumento del crimen. Segundo,  también están los que dicen que el apogeo de la tecnología hará que la "aglomeración" (es decir, que los beneficios sociales y económicos de tener a la gente en un mismo lugar) sea innecesaria. La tecnología hace que las relaciones sociales y la comunicación en el trabajo dependan cada vez menos de la proximidad física. Si a todo esto le añadimos el deterioro económico (como ya se argumenta), la gente simplemente no estará dispuesta a pagar los elevados costes que se derivan de vivir en una ciudad. Esto llevará a un descenso de la población urbana, o por lo menos a una "fuga de cerebros" - la pérdida de trabajadores altamente cualificados.

Entre los expertos no hay un consenso absoluto acerca del futuro de las ciudades. Algunas de las ciudades que [en la actualidad] tienen una situación más complicada que la del resto, como Detroit, tendrán que hacer cambios dramáticos, esencialmente reduciendo su área de extensión y rediseñándose a sí misma como una municipalidad más pequeña. Pero esa no será la norma en todo el país. Creo que la inmigración y otros factores culturales de carácter general harán que las ciudades todavía continúen siendo un destino preferencial para la gente más ambiciosa  e innovadora, y eso será un factor crucial para que no pare el apogeo de las ciudades.  En un fascinante artículo sobre la desaparición de las grandes empresas editoriales en Manhattan (ver aquí), David Carr escribe que "la economía de las grandes corporaciones mediáticas... ha hecho desaparecer componentes [realmente] significativos  del modelo de negocio que hace funcionar la empresa editorial tradicional." Y continúa diciendo que el mundo de las comunicaciones ha perdido 60.000 puestos de trabajo en Nueva York desde el año 2000. ¿Quiere decir esto que la gente joven que quiere trabajar en el mundo editorial y el de las empresas mediáticas ya no viene a Nueva York? De ninguna manera.

"Por cada joven que encuentro deambulando tratando de entrar por alguna puerta cerrada de la industria mediática, encuentro otro que es un cúmulo de ideas, energía y tiene un dominio absoluto de todo lo que tenga que ver con el mundo de la tecnología. La siguiente oleada [de jóvenes emprendedores] no se conforma con sólo llamar a las puertas, sino que las derriba.

"En algún lugar del distrito Flatiron, en Brooklyn, Queens o en Harlem, un puñado de jóvenes brillantes observa con un interés que va más allá de lo puramente académico toda esta fragmentación. Sus diminutos netbooks y iPhones, que sirven como portales de acceso para pasar en medio de toda esta neblina, contienen más "poder armamentistico" en términos de información, de lo que tan sólo dos décadas atrás podía ser contenido en toda una sala de redacción. Y [estos jóvenes] están extrayendo el contenido que la audiencia de estos medios genera a través del uso de las redes sociales o encontrando la manera de hacer más útil la información ambiente [que cada usuario genera en el ciberespacio y a la que se puede tener acceso si se tienen los conocimientos adecuados]. A estos jóvenes ya no les entusiasman demasiado las expectativas que se abren ante ellos [han dejado de ser ingenuos], pero todavía se muestran confiados en sus posibilidades, lo cual es un don de la edad que tienen.

"Para ellos, Nueva York no es una isla que se hunde, sino una que está justo en lo más alto de la cresta de una nueva y feroz ola" (David Carr, "The Fall and Rise of Media", New York Times, November 30, 2009.)

No sólo podemos estar tranquilos de que nos espera un buen futuro par alas ciudades de América, sino también una Buena oportunidad para el ministerio urbano. Si las ciudades sufren una gran carencia de los servicios sociales, esto significa que anuestras Iglesias se les abren las puertas para ayudar de tal manera que el vecindario se alegre de que estemos allí (1 Pedro 2:11-12). Ya sea que las ciudades estén en apogeo o en deterioro, el ministerio de la iglesia Cristiana en y hacia las ciudades puede y debe continuar creciendo.

___________________

* Puedes leer el artículo original (en ingles) aquí

'In his sermon "Doctrine and Life" in Walking with God: Studies in 1 John (Crossway, 1993), David Martyn Lloyd-Jones takes on people who do not like an emphasis on doctrine or theological precision. They say:

" 'We are not interested... in your various ideas and schools of thought with regard to the precise explanation of how the atonement of Christ works. These things are of no concern to us... so long as we are living a good life and producing good works, that is the only thing that matters.' " (p. 22)

This point of view is more prevalent than ever today. In both "liberal" and "conservative" churches, there is a resistance to an emphasis on doctrine. Often it is put this way: "We are not saved by assenting to propositions, but by obedient trust in God. What matters is being like Christ." Lloyd-Jones' response is, in my view, devastating: 

"'Whether you like it or not, to speak like that is, in and of itself, to speak in a doctrinal manner. To make statements along that line is, in actual practice, to commit yourself to a particular doctrine... the doctrine of works and, in a sense, of justification by works.' 'Ah, but' they reply, 'we are not interested in such a term as 'justification by works.'" But whether they are interested in such terminology of not, that is exactly what they are saying... In other words, whether we like it or not, we cannot avoid doctrine. ... There is no such thing as an irreligious person; everyone has his or her religion, if you mean by religion that ultimate philosophy or view of life by which people live." (p. 22-23)

So when you say, "I don't care about doctrine, it's how you live that matters," you are ironically promoting the doctrine of justification by works. You are proposing that what God really wants is a good life.  The response can be similar when someone claims that it doesn't matter which religion you belong to, because all religions are alike and no one should be held to a particular doctrine of God. Yet that assumes that God is not holy, and that he does not hold people responsible for how they live. In other words, to say, "no one should be held to a particular view of God" is to assume and promote a particular view of God. To say, "doctrine about God doesn't matter" is itself a statement of doctrine about God - and therefore it does matter! So Lloyd-Jones concludes: "It is no use your saying, 'We are not interested in doctrine; we are concerned about life'; if your doctrine is wrong, your life will be wrong." [italics mine] (p. 23)

However, whenever Lloyd-Jones takes up the importance of doctrine, he always points out that there is a danger on the other extreme. He speaks of some Christians and says "There is nothing they delight in more than arguing about theology" and they do this in "a party spirit" (p. 24). One of the signs of this group is that they are either dry and theoretical in their preaching, or they can be caustic and angry. They have "lost their tempers, forgetting that by so doing they were denying the very doctrine which they claimed to believe" (p. 24). In short, ministers who go to this extreme destroy the effectiveness of their preaching. What is the cause of this? Lloyd-Jones answers that they have made accurate doctrine an end in itself, instead of a means to honor God and grow in Christ-likeness. "Doctrine must never be considered in and of itself. Scripture must never be divorced from life" (p. 25).

If we maintain this balance, we will get criticism. In another sermon, Lloyd-Jones makes a rare observation about his own reputation. He was considered by the mainstream British listener to be highly doctrinal and orthodox, but many in more conservative churches felt he put too much emphasis on human experience.  He responded:

"It seems to me that we have a right to be fairly happy about ourselves as long as we have criticism from both sides... For myself, as long as I am charged by certain people with being nothing but a Pentecostalist and on the other hand charged by others with being an intellectual, a man who is always preaching doctrine, as long as the two criticisms come, I am very happy. But if one or the other of the two criticisms should ever cease, then, I say, is the time to be careful and to begin to examine the very foundations." (From "Test the Spirits" in The Love of God: Studies in 1 John, Crossway, 1993, p. 18.)

Dr. Lloyd-Jones was very far-sighted. This insight and balance has never been needed more than it is today.

American cities saw twenty years of decline (1970-1990) and twenty years of resurgence (1990-2010). But the economic bubbles that largely fueled the growth of cities are over. Almost certainly, the renaissance of American cities over the past 20 years has come to an end. But what is the future?

There are a number of trends that will continue, and some will be in cities' favor. First, American cities will continue to globalize. That is, they will continue to increase international connections and influence, which will help to keep real estate values up, provide more jobs, and bring increased prominence and status. As a result, American cities will become more like other world cities and less like their own regions, culturally speaking. Second, urban planning will continue to create compact, transit-oriented, walkable mixed use developments (with residences, business, retail, education, cultural institutions, and entertainment all located in close proximity.) The emphasis will be on neighborhood schools, streets with sidewalks for pedestrians, lanes for bicyclists, and so on. This is sometimes called "the New Urbanism" or "Smart Growth." There are many factors driving this, including environmental concerns, and so cities will continue to develop as a desirable alternative to suburbs as a human social arrangement. Third, since immigration laws have not significantly changed at this point, there will continue to be immigration from around the world to the U.S. (There is always some place in the world where the economy is worse than ours!) The cities that receive immigration will benefit from the influx of both working class and professional energy and ideas. Fourth, as far as I can see, the postmodernism that leads young adults to prefer city life to suburban life is continuing. These trends are pretty well established, and they will sustain the growth and continued rise of cities.

However, there are several factors working against cities. First, there are likely to be greatly increased social service gaps in cities. During hard economic times there is a sharp increase in people needing services just at the time when tax revenues dry up. For example, one report says there are 34% more people sleeping on the streets in New York City than there were 12 months ago, at the same time that the city is having to make all kinds of cutbacks and layoffs. Schools, public transit - all of them are facing a crisis. This will have to have an impact on the quality of life in cities, and it may lead to a rise in crime. Second, there are those who say that the rise of technology will make "agglomeration" (that is, the economic and social benefits of many people being located in one place) unnecessary. Technology makes social networking and communication less dependent on physical proximity. Put this together with the economic downturn (it is argued) and people simply won't pay the higher costs of living in a city. This will lead to urban population decline, or at least to "bright flight" - the loss of the highly skilled workforce.

There is no complete consensus of experts about the future of cities. Some of the most troubled, such as Detroit, are going to have to make drastic changes, essentially shrinking their urban footprint deliberately and redesigning themselves as a smaller municipality. But that will not be the norm in the U.S. I believe that immigration and broader cultural factors still make cities highly desirable destinations for the most ambitious and innovative people, and that will be crucial in continuing the rise of cities. In a fascinating article about the demise of "big publishing" in Manhattan (see here), David Carr writes that "macromedia economics... have vaporized significant components of the business model that drives traditional publishing." He goes on to say that employment in communications in New York has lost 60,000 jobs since the year 2000. So does that mean young people who want to be in publishing and media have stopped coming to New York City? Not at all.

"For every kid that I bump into who is wandering the media industry looking for an entrance that closed some time ago, I come across another who is a bundle of ideas, energy and technological mastery. The next wave is not just knocking on doors, but seeking to knock them down.

"Somewhere down in the Flatiron, out in Brooklyn, over in Queens or up in Harlem, cabals of bright young things are watching all the disruption with more than an academic interest. Their tiny netbooks and iPhones, which serve as portals to the cloud, contain more informational firepower than entire newsrooms possessed just two decades ago. And they are ginning content from their audiences in the form of social media or finding ways of making ambient information more useful. They are jaded in the way youth requires, but have the confidence that is a gift of their age as well.

"For them, New York is not an island sinking, but one that is rising on a fresh, ferocious wave." (David Carr, "The Fall and Rise of Media", New York Times, November 30, 2009.)

Not only can we be confident of a good future for American cities, but also of good opportunity for urban ministry. If cities experience great gaps in social services, this only opens a door for our churches to help in such a way that their neighbors will rejoice that we are here (1 Peter 2:11-12). Whether or not cities are rising or falling, the Christian church's ministry in and to cities can and must continue to grow.

Cada año leo la Biblia [con la ayuda del plan La Biblia en un Año]. Me averguenza tener que decir que no la leo cada día, pero soy bastante consistente. Normalmente suelo atrasarme uno o dos días. El otro día estaba estresado porque no había leído en los últimos tres días. Me senté y simplemente empecé a leer tratando de leer en 30 minutos lo que tenía que haber leido en 3 días. 

En aquél momento sentí como si Dios me hubiera preguntado: Justin, ¿crees que obtener información acerca de mí equivale a la transformación que yo deseo traer a tu vida?

Durante los últimos tres años, he leído la Biblia con el plan Lee la Biblia en un año, ¿pero amo más a quienes me rodean?, ¿tengo una mayor capacidad para perdonar? ¿Soy más paciente, amable y gentil hoy que hace tres años? ¿O simplemente estoy acumulando información como si ésta, por sí sola significase transformación? Sé bastante acerca de Jesús. Sé mucho sobre la Biblia. Sé un montón sobre lo que significa ser cristiano - ¿pero lo que sé me cambia?
Tenemos un mayor acceso a biblias y a sermones, a blogs y a devocionales, a conferencias y a retiros, a libros en formato papel, audio y electrónico, y a páginas web que cualquier otra generación a lo largo de la historia - pero acaso eso nos hace cambiar? ¿Es toda esta información algo que nos esté trasnformando a ti o a mí [personalmente]? 

Los discípulos tuvieron muy poca información [a su alcance]. De acuerdo a nuestros parámetros, no tenían muchas posibilidades de éxito. No tenían un manual de instrucciones ni tampoco un servicio al cliente online. Fueron a una montaña y Jesús empezó a flotar elevándose en dirección al cielo y les dijo: "Id por todo el mundo; enseñándoles que guarden todo lo que os he mandado; bautizad a la gente, discipularles; y yo estaré con vosotros -aunque sólo en Espíritu, pues ahora mismo subo al cielo."

Con tan poca información empezó toda una revolución. Pero esta revolución de la que quiero formar parte, ¿no ha resultado más en un ir adquiriendo información que en el deseo de ser transformado? Si soy honesto he de decir que sí. 

Estas son las cosas que debo recordar de hoy:

No necesito más información para tener un mejor matrimonio - Io que necesito es ser un esposo que ame más a su esposa. 

No necesito más información para dejar de ser una persona resentida - lo que necesito es escoger perdonar una y otra vez a quienes me ofenden. 

No necesito más información para crecer en fe - lo que necesito es ceder el control que se supone que yo tengo sobre mi propia vida. 

No necesito más información para tener amistades más profundas - lo que necesito es ser un mejor amigo para mis amigos. 

No necesito más información para conocer la voluntad de Dios - lo que necesito es aplicar a mi vida lo que ya conozco acerca de Dios. 

Cuando tú y yo cambiamos transformación por simple información, estamos limitándonos a una serie de cambios externos que aunque pueden darnos la sensación de estar acercándonos más a Dios, la verdad es que no están produciendo ningún cambio real en nosotros.

______________

Puedes leer el original (en inglés) aquí

A lo largo de, aproximadamente, veinte años desde 1970 a 1990, las ciudades americanas sufrieron un marcado deterioro. La migración de población afroamericana del sur a las ciudades del norte provocó que muchos blancos salieran de las ciudades y se crearan guetos en el mismo corazón de la ciudad. A finales de los 70 y principios de los 80, hubieron largos periodos de recesión que hicieron disminuir la recaudación de impuestos tributarios y llevaron a algunas ciudades a la bancarrota virtual o incluso real. Mientras tanto, la planificación urbanística de mediados del s. XX privilegió el uso del automovil y la proliferación de grandes centros comerciales, estadios, un montón de garajes sin residentes y la construcción masiva de proyectos de vivienda para los más pobres. Todo esto llevó a que al atardecer, el centro de las ciudades fuera como una ciudad fantasma, y que los vecindarios estuvieran castigados por el crimen. La clase media huyó, llevandose consigo las pocas oportunidades de trabajo, dejando atrás a los pobres aún si cabe más pobres. Las ciudades se polarizaron, por un lado el centro de la ciudad era pobre y, generalmente, no blanco; por otro lado los ricos suburbios alrededor que, generalmente, eran blancos.

Sin embargo, durante los últimos veinte años, desde 1990, las ciudades americanas han experimentado un increible renacimiento. Durante este tiempo el declive de la población en muchas ciudades se ha invertido o por lo menos se ha relentizado. Una gran cantidad de gente empezó a volver a las ciudades y el centro de muchas ciudades empezó a regenerarse desde su misma esencia. ¿Por qué? Primero, durante este tiempo los Estados Unidos experimentaron un crecimiento económico formidable y lo que ahora llamamos una serie de "burbujas" económicas. Todo ello creó una gran cantidad de nueva riqueza y nuevos trabajos. Segundo, el crimen descendió en las ciudades, lo más probable es que fuera debido a las razones de las que tanto los liberales como los conservadores hablaban (creación de trabajo, aplicación de leyes más duras). Tercero, la tendencia cultural pasó a ser lo que ahora llamamos "post-modernismo", es decir una cultura que disfruta del eclecticismo, la mezcla de lo nuevo y lo viejo, la asimetría, [cierta] confusion y descontrol, la diversidad cultural y lo artístico. Todo esto son características más propias de la vida de ciudad que la de los suburbios, que suelen ser más controlados y homogéneos. Cuarto, y tal vez el más importante de todos, los cambios en la ley de inmigración en 1965 (the Hart-Celler Act) abrieron la puerta a un gran flujo de gente procedente de naciones no europeas. Entre 1965 y 1970 la inmigración en los Estados Unidos se duplicó y de 1970 a 1990 se volvió a duplicar. La mayoría de esta ola de inmigrantes fue a parar a las ciudades americanas, renovando y diversificando muchos vecindarios. También cambió por completo la vieja y estancada dinámica bi-color de la política urbana que acostumbraba a dividir entre blanco y negro, a una situación multipolar mucho más compleja en la que se encuentran presente muchas más etnias y nacionalidades.

Como resultado de todo ello, muchas ciudades americanas empiezan a resurgir. Vecindarios de una nueva clase professional se desarrollan a la par de la clase obrera o incluso de los más pobres. Aveces el aburguesamiento [de determinados barrios] ha sido más bien destructivo y molesto para el tejido social, mientras que en otras ocasiones ha sido más beneficioso. El principal grupo de residentes en este resurgir incluía párejas maduras de la generación de la posguerra (Boomers) que volvían a la ciudad después de haber criado ya a sus hijos, jóvenes profesionales buscando vivir y trabajar en la ciudad y una ola de inmigrantes en vecindarios dentro de la ciudad y también suburbios que produjeron una generación de graduados universitarios que se trasladan para vivir y trabajar en el centro de la ciudad. Estos grupos se juntaron a las comunidades gays y de artistas que siempre han escogido vivir en comunidades urbanas. 

Nuestra iglesia fue fundada justo al principio de este renacimiento, en 1989. Por aquel tiempo, irse al centro de la ciudad para empezar una iglesia parecía algo sin sentido. El año que nos trasladamos a vivir a la ciudad de Nueva York, se publicó el resultado de una encuesta que indicaba que la mayoría de residentes de Nueva York si pudieran se irían a vivir a otra parte. ¡Eran malos tiempos! Pero, a los pocos años de nuestro inicio empecé a recibir llamadas de Iglesias, denominaciones y líderes que habían empezado a notar el renacimiento en ciudades a su alrededor. Empezaron a darse cuenta que era el momento de empezar a plantar Iglesias que alcanzasen a todas esas nuevas comunidades residenciales. 

Pero veinte años más tarde, hemos llegado al final de una era. Estamos bajo la Gran Recesión, incluso aunque oficialmente haya terminado -¿o tal vez no?- esperamos un prolongado periodo de elevadas tasas de desempleo y crecimiento económico intermitente y lento. El mismo clima económico en los 70 y en los 80 fue devastador par alas ciudades. La cuestión para nosotros ahora es, ¿qué futuro le espera a las ciudades americanas?

__________

Leer original (en inglés) aquí

During roughly twenty years from 1970 to 1990, American cities went into sharp decline. The migration of African-Americans from the south to northern cities resulted in white flight and the creation of inner city ghettoes. In the late '70s and early '80s there were protracted recessions that diminished tax revenues and drove some cities into virtual or actual bankruptcy. Meanwhile, urban planning in the mid-20th century privileged the automobile and big stores and stadiums and lots of parking and no residents and massive housing projects for the poor. All of this led to downtowns that were like ghost-towns after dark, and neighborhoods that were riddled with crime. The middle class fled along with many jobs, leaving the poor neighborhoods even poorer. Cities were polarized into poor non-white centers and affluent white suburbs.

However, for the last twenty years, since 1990, American cities have experienced an amazing renaissance. During this time many cities' population declines have reversed or at least slowed. People began moving back into cities in droves, and downtown/center cities began to regenerate at their cores. Why? First, during this time the U.S. experienced remarkable economic growth and what now is being called a series of economic "bubbles." This created a great deal of new wealth and new jobs. Second, crime went down in cities, probably for reasons both liberals and conservatives talked about (job creation, tougher law enforcement). Third, the cultural mood became what we now call "post-modern," that is a culture which enjoys eclecticism, a mixture of the old and new, asymmetry, messiness and unmanageability, cultural diversity, and the artistic. All of these are features of city-life rather than the suburbs, which are much more controlled and homogeneous. Fourth, and perhaps most important of all, changes in immigration law in 1965 (the Hart-Celler Act) opened the door to an influx from non-European nations. Between 1965 and 1970 U.S. immigration doubled and then from 1970 to 1990 it doubled again. Most of this wave of immigrants went into America's cities, renewing and diversifying many neighborhoods. It also completely changed the older, gridlocked, binary black-white dynamic of urban politics to a far more complex, multi-polar situation of many ethnicities and nationalities.

As a result many American cities began to surge. New professional-class neighborhoods developed along with working class and poor ones. Sometimes the gentrification was more destructive and disruptive to the social fabric, while other times it was more healthy. The main new residents in this upsurge included empty-nest Boomers returning to cities, young professionals seeking cities to live and work in, and a wave of immigrants in inner city neighborhoods and inner suburbs that produced second-generation college graduates who moved in to the center city to live and work. These groups joined the communities of homosexuals and artists who have always chosen urban communities to live in.

Our church was founded at the very beginning of this renaissance, in 1989. At that time, moving into the center city to begin a church seemed to be a fool's errand. The year we moved to New York City, a survey came out indicating that most of the residents of NYC would move away if they could. Those were bad times! Yet, within a few years of our founding, I began to get calls from churches, denominations, and leaders who had begun to notice the renaissance in nearby cities. They realized that it was time to plant churches to reach all of these new residential communities.

But twenty years later, we have reached the end of an era. The Great Recession is upon us, and even if it has officially ended - or has it? - we expect a protracted time of high unemployment and fitful, sluggish economic growth. This same kind of economic environment in the 70s and 80s was destructive for cities. The question for us now is, what lies ahead for American cities?

En mis lecturas durante el mes pasado, he descubierto que Immanuel Kant argumentó la validez de una ética Cristiana sobre la sexualidad sin apelar a la Biblia ni a la teología. En "Deberes [morales] hacia el cuerpo en relación al impulso sexual" (Kant, Lecciones de Ética) Kant argumentó que el sexo fuera del matrimonio deshonra la dignidad humana. Su razonamiento era que cuando le pides a alguien tener relaciones sexuales sin darte por entero a esa otra persona en matrimonio ("personalmente, en cuerpo y alma, para lo bueno y para lo malo en todos los sentidos"), lo que haces es convertir a la otra persona en un objeto sexual, un simple medio para un fin egoísta, en lugar de un fin en sí mismo o en sí misma. El famoso "imperativo categórico" de Kant era que el ser humano nunca debe ser tratado como un medio, sino sólo como un fin. Sólo a partir de esta premisa, algo que mucha gente moderna intuye de por sí, Kant argumentaba que uno nunca debe tener sexo fuera del matrimonio. 

Comparé todo esto con lo escrito por Wendell Berry (en Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community y otros volúmenes), quien también elabora todo un razonamiento de ética sexual cristiana sin apelar a fuentes o argumentos abiertamente religiosos. Berry dice que el sexo fuera del matrimonio es sexo para la autogratificación del individuo, sin miras a contribuir o edificar la comunidad. Esto, argumenta Berry, es una aproximación que percibe el cuerpo humano como un [simple] producto de Mercado, desde una perspectiva individualista y consumista. Pero en lugar de ser así, insiste Berry, el sexo solo debería ser usado dentro del matrimonio porque es en ese contexto que se convierte en una disciplina que nutre y [ayuda] a establecer la comunidad, creando esa profunda estabilidad entre los padres que es tan necesaria para el crecimiento sano de los hijos. 

Lo que estos dos hombres tienen en común es que ambos empiezan con premisas que la mayoría de lectores (modernos y seculares), también comparten; pero lo que estos autores hacen es usar esas mismas premisas para elaborar una ética cristiana sobre la sexualidad, que es algo que la mayoría de la gente secular ya ha abandonado por completo. Todo esto lo hacen sin apelar a la Biblia o a otras fuentes de autoridad religiosa

¿Significa todo esto que es posible demostrar que la moral cristiana es verdad sin apelar a la Biblia? No lo creo. Aunque Kant creía que la razón es todo lo que necesitas para descubrir la verdad ética, su elevada percepción de la dignidad humana era en último término una creencia. No se trataba de una inevitable conclusión lógica o [el fin al que llegas tras una exhaustiva] investigación empírica. [Por otra parte], la apelación que hace Berry a lo importante que es la comunidad por encima de la libertad del individuo es, al fin y al cabo, también una visión del progreso de la humanidad que no puede ser probada racionalmente. Los argumentos de Kant y de Berry no pueden demostrar la ética cristiana sobre la sexualidad a alguien que no acepte sus premisas-creencias básicas. Pero cuando se comparten esas creencias básicas, entonces los argumentos que tanto uno como el otro nos presentan son bastante poderosos. 

Hay varias cosas que aprendo de Kant y de Berry. Primero, se puede argumentar en público a favor de algunos aspectos del progreso humano desde una perspectiva cristiana, sin tener que apelar directamente a textos bíblicos o a Dios. Por ejemplo, si soy un cristiano que me dedico a la política y estoy hablando a un grupo de gente que se sentirán identificados con la visión de Kant sobre la dignidad humana, o la visión de Berry sobre la comunidad, entonces es posible crear argumentos convincentes que promuevan practicas que tienen su raíz en la verdad [que afirma] el cristianismo. ¿Por qué? Porque aún la gente que no se declara abiertamente religiosa, todavía se aferra a creencias que son verdad [en términos bíblicos] acerca de la dignidad humana o sobre valores de la comunidad que, espiritualmente, están "allí" en el alma, porque han sido creados a imagen de Dios. Sin embargo, no deberíamos vivir bajo la ilusión de que podemos "demostrar" la verdad del cristianismo a un mundo secular. La naturaleza convincente de nuestro argumento se basa en descubrir las creencias fundamentales que un no-creyente todavía tiene y que coinciden con la verdad bíblica. Sólo en la medida que estas creencias todavía tengan alguna validez para [el no-creyente], entonces podremos construir el diálogo. 

Segundo, encuentro que al predicar puede ser de gran ayuda formular de forma breve el tipo de argumentos que nos presentan Kant, Berry y otros. ¿Por qué? El último fundamento de todo lo que creemos como cristianos es la autoridad de la Palabra de Dios, pero a menudo la gente a la que le predicamos no están convencidos de lo fiable que es la Biblia. Por ejemplo: En primer lugar presentolo que la Biblia dice acerca de la sexualidad. Luego, puedo elaborar brevemente un argumento kantiano (algo que C.S. Lewis también hace en Mero Cristianismo) sobre cómo el sexo fuera del matrimonio deshumaniza, o un argumento de Berry sobre cómo daña a la comunidad. Entonces puedo añadir, "Estos son solo algunos de los terrible resultados que ocurren cuando violamos el diseño que Dios para la sexualidad. Sin duda, hay muchos más." Este planteamiento honra tanto a la Biblia como autoridad última para nuestras vidas, como también atrae [la atención] de oyentes que, aún cuando no están seguros de la inspiración de la Biblia, comparten las premisas [básicas] de Kant, Berry, o de cualquier otro autor que queramos usar.

Creo que en nuestra sociedad contemporánea, lo que los cristianos creemos acerca del sexo y género será uno de los grandes puntos de conflicto con nuestra cultura. Tendremos que apropiarnos de alguno de los grandes temas o discursos que todavía sirven como referencia propia de la cultura (la importancia de la dignidad humana y la comunidad), todo ello con tal de que lo que creemos pueda ser escuchado.

_______________

Puedes leer el artículo orginal (en inglés) aquí

Yesterday I spent most of day in the Brickell area. I led a Bible study, met with a core group member, met with my staff, a local community group leader and a music industry executive. In between the meetings I shook hands with city counsel members, introduced myself to a few local professionals and checked on the local real estate.

When we set out to start the Brickell site a month and a half ago, I confess that the attitude was one of launching a campus that looked and moved exactly like our main Pinecrest location. A few weeks into the gig my wife and I looked at each other while driving our way up for the Sunday night gathering and, in an unspoken way agreed that we have seen this movie before. The movie title is "church planting strikes back." If counted as a plant, this will be our fourth experience. Which means that by now we should have learned that church planting in order to be effective needs to be (3 things).

1. Missional. It has to operate out of need. You and your people have to know this and constantly be reminded that a church in that location is crucial for that area's gospel transformation. You and your team have to be reminded of this during the hardships that a church will always face. Without it (this sense of need to be missional) discouragement can easily creep in and destroy the vision. You and your people have to have a larger sense of purpose for being there other than just to grow your "enterprise." So, mission comes first.

2. Incarnational. One of the "duh" moments for me lately has been the "- of course they are a different crowd!" A few weeks in I've noticed that the people that live in Brickell operate differently than our South Miami/ Pinecrest/ Kendall crowd and because this is true, they respond differently. I have been reminded that there's always a need to adjust to the group you're trying to reach. This is called contextualization, and contextualization always follows mission.

3. Personal/ Relational. Call it one these two. Yesterday I was reminded that my team and I have to spend more time in Brickell with the people of Brickell. It's only through face to face time that you're able to contextualize the ministry to the people you're trying to reach. Through introductions and conversations you will see, taste and hear the sounds of their spiritual groanings and moanings. First, it's necessary to assess in order for you to address.

None of what I'm reminding you of in this post comes out of leadership books or church planting manuals alone. Look at the meta-narrative of Scripture and you will see God moving to our rescue in this exact fashion. In it, we see that the need of redemption propelled Jesus to identify with us sinners and to accommodate the language of salvation in a way that sinners would understand and respond.

In my reading this past month, I discovered that Immanuel Kant made a case for a Christian sexual ethic but without using any appeal to the Bible or theology. In "Duties Toward the Body in Respect of Sexual Impulse" (Kant, Lectures in Ethics) he argued that sex outside of marriage dishonors human dignity. He reasoned that when you ask for sex without giving your whole self to the other person in marriage ("person, body and soul, for good and ill and in every respect"), you turn the sex partner into an object, a mere means to a selfish end, instead of an end in him (or her) self. Kant's famous "categorical imperative" was that human beings should never be treated as means, but only as ends. Using only this belief, which is intuitive for many modern people, he argued that you should never have sex outside of marriage.

I compared this with Wendell Berry (in Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community and other volumes) who also makes a case for the Christian sex ethic without appealing to overtly religious arguments or sources. Berry says that sex outside of marriage is sex for its own individual fulfillment rather than for building community. That, he argues, is a market-shaped, individualistic, consumerist approach to the human body. Instead, he insists, sex should be only used inside of marriage because there it becomes a nurturing discipline that establishes community, creating the deep stability between parents necessary for children to flourish.

What the two men have in common is that they both start with premises that most modern, secular readers share, but then they use those commonly held beliefs to drive them toward a Christian sex ethic, which has been largely abandoned by most secular people. They do this without appealing to the Bible or to other sources of religious authority.

Does this mean that it is possible to prove Christian morality is true without appealing to the Bible itself? No, I don't think so. Though Kant believed that reason was all you needed to discover ethical truth, his high view of human dignity still was ultimately a belief. It was not the inescapable conclusion of logic or empirical investigation. And Berry's appeal to the importance of community over individual freedom is also, in the end, a vision of human flourishing that can't be proved rationally. Berry's and Kant's arguments can't prove the Christian sex ethic to someone who doesn't accept their basic premise-beliefs. But if you share those beliefs, then their case is quite powerful.

Here's what I learn from Kant and Berry. First, there are ways to argue in public discourse for various features of the Christian account of human flourishing without directly appealing to Biblical texts or to God. For example, if I am a Christian in politics, and I am speaking to a body of people who I know will resonate to Kantian views of human dignity or Berryan views of community, then it is possible to make a compelling argument for practices that are rooted in Christian truth. Why? Because people without an overt religious profession still hold many true beliefs about human dignity or community that are spiritually "there" in their souls because they are created in the image of God. We should not be under the illusion that we can "prove" Christianity to secular people however. The compelling nature of our argument relies on discovering the underlying beliefs that a non-believer has that match up with Biblical truth. Only if they grant these beliefs can we make our case.

Second, I find it is often helpful even when preaching to briefly recapitulate arguments such as these from Kant, Berry, and others. Why? The ultimate foundation for what we believe as Christians is the authority of God's Word, but often the people we preach to are not convinced of the Bible's complete trustworthiness. Here is an example. I may first present what the Bible says about sexuality. Then I may briefly make a Kantian argument (which C.S. Lewis also makes in Mere Christianity) about how sex outside of marriage de-humanizes or a Berryan one about how it harms community. Then I can add, "These are only some of the terrible results that come from violating God's design for sexuality. There are certainly many others." This approach both honors the Bible as the final authority for our lives and draws in listeners who, while not yet sure about the Bible's inspiration, share the premises of Kant, Berry, or whomever else you use.

I think that in our contemporary society, Christians' beliefs about sex and gender will be one of the biggest points of conflict with our culture. We will need to co-opt some of our culture's own baseline narratives (the importance of human dignity and community) in order to gain any hearing at all for our beliefs.

Hace unos cuantos años, prediqué una serie a través del libro de Proverbios, y aprendí un par de cosas al respecto. Primero, los Proverbios nos desvelan su significado en un sentido acumulativo. Es decir, ningún proverbio [aislado] te proporciona una perspectiva completa. Si un proverbio dice, "a quienes son moralmente correctos la vida siempre les va bien" y más adelante otro proverbio dice, "a veces quienes son moralmente correctos sufren", pensamos que es una contradicción.  Esto es porque pensamos en cada proverbio como si se tratara de una promesa en sí mismo. Pero no lo son. Todos los proverbios acerca de un mismo tema deben ser leídos en conjunto, cada uno modificando a los demás del mismo modo que lo hacen entre sí los paralelismos. Uno te da información sobre un aspecto; después el siguiente da respuesta a las cuestiones que el primero haya podido plantear, o condiciona y acentúa una anterior declaración de tipo más genérica.   

Los capítulos 10-15  nos dicen que el trabajador tiene suficiente para comer y que el vago será pobre. Pero al inicio del capítulo 16, aparecen las excepciones a cómo funciona normalmente la vida. Hay un orden que Dios ha puesto en las cosas que debemos cumplir pero, por otro lado, no podemos verlo todo y por lo tanto debemos esperar que hayan excepciones. Un ejemplo de cómo obtenemos el significado de los proverbios en la medida que los vamos acumulando es el famoso proverbio 16:25  -- Hay camino que al hombre le parece derecho, pero su fin conduce a muerte. Nunca he escuchado que se cite este texto, a menos que lo que el predicador quiera decirle a sus oyentes sea "no te fíes de tus emociones." Pero antes [de esta declaración el mismo libro de] Proverbios dice repetidamente -- "El camino del necio es derecho en su opinión." Es decir, los necios son un desastre a la hora de hacer planes porque rechazan lo que es sabio (no buscan consejo,  no son humildes, no vigilan sus palabras o controlan sus emociones, etc). Pero entonces leemos que 16:25 nos dice -- "Pero el camino que lleva a la destrucción no sólo le puede parecer derecho al necio, sino que a veces también a cualquier hombre." Incluso aunque trates de seguir a pies juntillas el camino de la sabiduría y hagas lo mejor que puedas tus planes -- aún así a veces tu vida se desmonta! Este es un mundo roto. El sabio sabe que algunas veces [no importa el camino que cojas] las cosas pueden ir igual de mal.

Así [en lo que se refiere a los Proverbios], no podemos tocar fondo. Sólo vale la pena estudiarlos cuando tienes en mente todo el libro y comparas entre sí los pasajes. ¿Cuál es la mejor manera de hacerlo? ¡En comunidad!  Algunos comentaristas son de la opinión que el libro de Proverbios fue originalmente escrito como un manual para ser estudiado por una comunidad de hombres jóvenes que tenían como mentores a un grupo de hombres mayores -- a lo largo de unos cuantos años. Cada proverbio tenía que ser  discutido, considerado y comparado con los otros. Se compartían ejemplos de la vida [misma]. En otras palabras, es posible que Proverbios fuera escrito para ser la base de un profundo y comprehensivo proceso de crecimiento personal a través de una comunidad de mentores. Tocaba todas y cada una de las áreas de la vida.

Vale la pena también destacar que en Proverbios la sabiduría constantemente hace oír su voz en los espacios públicos de la ciudad -- el Mercado o el lugar de los negocios (donde convergen las rutas), las cortes de justicia (las puertas), etc. (Prov 1:20-21, 9:1-4). Durante años algo que me ha sorprendido es lo diferente que es discipular a la gente para que vivan con un llamado de fidelidad en sus vocaciones [o puestos de trabajo], que hacerlo en otros contextos de discipulado. Cuando trato de discipular a alguien para que trabaje en la iglesia, esto ocurre en una sola dirección o sentido (yo soy el experto en Biblia y el ministro) y [todo ocurre en base a una cierta información] (yo transfiero mi conocimiento). Pero, ¿cómo discipular a un cristiano que es actor para que piense [de una forma correcta] qué tipo de papeles puede o no aceptar? ¿O cómo discipular a un cristiano [que trabaja en el mundo de las finanzas] para que sepa cómo invertir [de una forma correcta y aún así] sacar beneficios? La Biblia no nos da tanto una serie de normas fijas, sino más bien proverbios que guían nuestras motivaciones, el fin [que buscamos] y nuestros valores, para que los apliquemos con sabiduría a las situaciones [que vivimos a diario] en el mundo. Y esa sabiduría tiene lugar más en el contexto de la reflexión de  la Escritura (especialmente de textos como Proverbios) en comunidad.

¿Cuál es la mejor manera de integrar nuestra fe y nuestro trabajo? Creo que necesitamos de más gente experimentada en determinadas áreas que sean capaces de encontrarse con gente más joven implicada también en esas mismas áreas y juntos trabajen en comunidad un libro como Proverbios, siempre aplicando el conocimiento adquirido al trabajo que realizan en el mundo.  

Leer original (en inglés) aquí

Some years ago I preached through the book of Proverbs, and I learned two things I hadn't known about it. First, the Proverbs only give up their meaning cumulatively. No one proverb gives you the whole picture. If one proverb says, "the morally good always have a good life" and a later proverb says, "sometimes the morally good suffer" we think it's a contradiction. That's because we think of each proverb as an individual stand-alone promise. But they are not. All the proverbs on a given subject are meant to be taken together, each one modifying the others like the parallel clauses do. One gives you information about a topic; then subsequent ones come along and answer questions raised by the first one, or they condition and nuance a more blanket statement made earlier.

Chapters 10-15 tell us that the hard-working have enough to eat and the lazy will be poor. But starting in chapter 16, the exceptions to the customary-way-life-works come along. There is an order God has put into things that we must abide by, but, on the other hand, we can't see it all and so must expect exceptions. An example of how the Proverbs only give up their meaning cumulatively is the famous Prov 16:25 -- There is a way that seems right to a man, but that way leads only unto death. I've never heard this invoked except when the speaker wants to say to the listeners "don't trust your feelings." But earlier Proverbs repeatedly said -- "The way to destruction appears right to the fool." That is, fools are terrible at making plans because they reject the way of wisdom (not getting counselors, not being humble, not watching your words or controlling your emotions, etc). But 16:25 comes along and says -- "But the way of destruction can appear right not just to a fool, but sometimes to anyone (to 'a man'.) Even if you follow the way of wisdom to the "T" and make your plans as well as can be -- sometimes your life can still blow up! This is a broken world. The wise know that sometimes all paths may run ill.

So Proverbs cannot be "dipped into". It only repays very long study in which you keep the whole book in your head and compare passage with passage. How is that best done? In a community! Some commentators argue that the book of Proverbs was originally written as a manual to be studied by a community of young men under the mentorship of older men -- for a number of years. Each proverb was to be discussed and considered and compared to the others. Examples from life were to be shared. In other words, Proverbs may have been written to be the basis for deep, comprehensive personal growth through mentoring in community. It touches on every area of life.

It is also noteworthy that in Proverbs wisdom constantly raises her voice in the city's public places -- the commerce/market (where the roads converge), the court/justice system (the gate), etc. (Prov 1:20-21; 9:1-4.) For years I have been struck by the fact that discipling people for faithful living in their vocation is different than other kinds of discipleship. When I try to disciple someone to do work in the church, it is more one-way (I am the expert in Bible and ministry) and information-driven (I download my knowledge.) But how do you disciple a Christian actor to think out what roles to take, or a Christian financier to think out how to invest and how to treat profits? The Bible does not give us so much hard and fast rules as 'proverbs' -- motives, goals, and values that have to be applied with wisdom to situations in the world. And that wisdom happens more through communal reflection on Scripture, especially a text like Proverbs.

How can we best integrate our faith with our work? I think we need more experienced people in a field meeting with younger persons in that field and working through a book like Proverbs in community, always applying its insights to the work they are doing in the world.

Es sorprendente ver cómo David, el rey guerrero de Israel, escribe estas palabras del Salmo 131.

Señor, mi corazón no es orgulloso, ni son altivos mis ojos; no busco grandezas desmedidas, ni proezas que excedan a mis fuerzas. Todo lo contrario: he calmado y aquietado mis ansias. Soy como un niño recién amamantado en el regazo de su madre. ¡Mi alma es como un niño recién amamantado!

La metáfora que aquí se utiliza para la madurez espiritual es "niño recién amamantado." Por una parte, somos como un niño en el regazo de su madre, una imagen de total indefensión. Dependemos en todo de Dios. No podemos hacer nada sin él. Por otra parte, somos como un niño recién amamantado (lactante), una imagen de contentamiento. Los lactantes lloran en los brazos de sus madres, hasta que consiguen lo que quieren de ellas -- la leche. Sólo entonces se calman. Un lactante solo está satisfecho ante la presencia de su madre.

Aquí vemos un cuadro vívido y compacto de lo que Job tuvo que aprender a través de sus pruebas. Debemos amar a Dios sólo por él mismo, no por lo que pueda darnos. Esta la esencia de lo que para Jonathan Edwards, distinguía "la gracia verdadera" de "la experiencia de los demonios", quienes afirman la sana doctrina y aún así tiemblan ante Dios (Santiago 2:19). La gracia auténtica en el corazón nos lleva a ver "la belleza y el encanto de las cosas divinas, tal y como son en sí mismas" (tomado del sermón que lleva el mismo título en el volumen 25 de la edición de Yale de los trabajos de Edgard). Encontramos satisfacción en Dios mismo. Incluso su trascendente santidad es disfrutada como algo hermoso y magnífico, que llena el corazón para la contemplación, ¡aunque de hecho no saquemos nada de ello!

Si la gracia realmente ha cambiado nuestros corazones, en último término no nos importará demasiado si la vida no nos va como querríamos, en tanto que le tengamos a él. Los elogios, la riqueza y el poder [de este mundo] no son nada en comparación con la celebración, la riqueza y el poder eterno que tenemos en él. Un "lactante" no es solo quien sabe todo esto en principio, sino quien ha puesto por obra las verdades del evangelio en su vida y en su alma como palpables realidades espirituales. Interiormente, esto da paz de espíritu y [produce] profundo contentamiento y compostura. Externamente, significa humildad, la voluntad de aprender de otros y también de confiar en Dios. El creyente se da cuenta de que la razón por la que a menudo las acciones de Dios son opacas no es porque nosotros seamos más sabios que él, sino porque él es demasiado "grande" y "maravilloso" para nosotros.

Un cristiano jamás debería tener la actitud de preguntarle a Dios, "¿Qué es lo que has hecho por mí últimamente?" Spurgeon dijo acerca del Salmo 131 que era "uno de los salmos más cortos, pero uno de los que se tarda más en aprender."

Original (en inglés) aquí

It's remarkable to read David, the Warrior-King of Israel, writing these words from Psalm 131.

My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

The metaphor for spiritual maturity here is a "weaned child." On the one hand, we are a child at the mother's breast, an image of complete helplessness. We are completely dependent on God. Without him we can do nothing. On the other hand, we are a weaned child, an image of contentment. Unweaned children cry in mother's arms until they get something from mother -- her milk. Only then are they quiet. But a weaned child is satisfied just with mother herself, with her very presence.

Here we see depicted, vividly and compactly, what Job was taught through all his trials. We must love God for himself alone, not just for what he gives us. This is the essence of what, for Jonathan Edwards, distinguished "true grace" from "the experience of devils," who hold sound doctrine and tremble before God (James 2:19.) Real grace on the heart leads us to see the "beauty and comeliness of divine things, as they are in themselves" (from the sermon by the same name in volume 25 of the Yale edition of Edwards' works). We become satisfied with God himself. Even his transcendent holiness is enjoyed as a beautiful and magnificent thing, which fills the heart to contemplate, though we certainly get nothing out of it!

If grace has really changed our hearts, we don't ultimately care if life goes the way we want it, as long as we have him. The joys of acclaim, wealth, and power are nothing compared to the eternal acclaim, wealth, and power we have in him. A "weaned child" is not just someone who knows this in principle, but who has worked gospel truths into his or her soul as spiritually sensed realities. Internally, this quiets the soul into profound contentment and poise. Externally, it means humility, a willingness to learn from others and also to trust God. The believer realizes that the reason God's actions are often opaque is not because we are wise and he is foolish, but because he is too "great" and "wonderful" for us.

A Christian should never have the attitude toward God, "what have you done for me lately?" Spurgeon said about Psalm 131 that it was "one of the shortest psalms to read, but one of the longest to learn."

In March, a new church plant in partnership with Redeemer City to City began public worship in Kuala Lumpur, the largest city in Malaysia. The project is named City Discipleship Church and is led by Pastor Kay Hoe.

Pastor Hoe was recruited for this project and is currently being mentored by Reverend Wong Fong Yang, a Malaysian pastor who attended the Fall Intensive in 2008. The 6-week course ended up being pivotal in Pastor Wong's life, both in his personal understanding of the gospel and in his gaining a passion for church planting that he took home to Kuala Lumpur.

Upon returning to KL after the Fall Intensive, Pastor Wong, with God's help, has initiated the planting of two new Malaysian churches including City Discipleship Church. Jay Kyle, CTC's Asia Director believes these two projects "will be outstanding churches that have a reaching impact in Malaysia for years to come."

In 2006, a church plant started in Berlin called the Berlinprojekt. Four years later that church has grown to several services in Berlin and also has launched two daughter churches. This month, its 2^nd daughter church, Kreuzbergprojekt began public worship in Kreuzberg, one of the best-known areas of Berlin. Its first service was attended by about 60 people. It is a very transient area with many artists, and for a long time it was considered the home of the punk-rock movement.

The lead planter of Kreuzbergprojekt, Fridtjof Leemhuis, was part of Berlinprojekt leadership before being commissioned to plant the daughter church. Frid also participated in the 2008 Fall Intensive in New York.

You can find out more about Kreuzbergprojekt here.

One of the important ways that our church is helping to integrate the gospel into the whole of a person's life is by spending time in our weekend worship services praying for God's kingdom to come in the various industry fields that dominate New York. We simply invite those who work in a particular field to stand, and we acknowledge them and what they do, while a person within that industry shares a brief testimony of how God is at work, then prays for all who are standing that represent that field in the city.

Here is an example of one of the prayers written and prayed by a member of our congregation in a weekend worship service. He works in advertising, and asked people to stand who work in advertising to receive grace and the Spirit's empowerment through this prayer.

Trinity Grace Prayer for the City - the Advertising and Marketing Industry

Lord, we come into your presence and pray for your hand to be felt mightily in this city. We lift up the industry systems in New York City which drive our culture and economy. Today we pray for the advertising and marketing industry, which weaves a fabric of messages and products encompassing the cultural environment of our lives. We pray for these culture making forces which are lined up on Madison Ave, in Soho, in Chelsea, and elsewhere to be transformed today for your kingdom.

We offer up to you the ad agencies, the PR firms, the media companies, the corporate marketing departments, the interactive shops, the design studios, and more to all be shaped according to your purpose. We pray for the range of consumer communications to have a positive impact on our society. We pray for the creation of inspired messages, visuals, and marketing plans to that can have an uplifting effect on the world, over those efforts which merely manipulate emotional desires and push corporate profits.

Father, we pray for all of the industry people who play a role in developing and producing brand communications. May our work paths be filled with integrity and a wise appropriation of the talents you've gifted us with. We pray for all in our church community - the account managers, media buyers, creatives, planners, managers, and sales people - who make up part of the small minority of believers in the industry. May we pursue a work life filled with character and your values amidst a work culture that can easily push us in other directions. May our identity be centered solidly on you as we strive for positions of influence and reputation within our industry. And in this rapidly shifting industry, may you open wide the right doors to align our career paths to support causes that will better the world. We pray for your hand to shape our work lives to fulfill our purpose in you, and for your presence to be felt in our lives in extraordinary, powerful ways this week.

We ask this in Jesus' holy and precious name,

Amen.

What these sort of prayers communicate to people in a congregation, is that they matter, their jobs matter, and that God is with them and for them as they seek to live for him all week. Holding this up every week as we gather to worship as God's people from across the city, sends a message that we are in the city, and that God is for the city, and that our church cares about the city as a whole.

Below is an email that someone in our church sent after we prayed for kingdom renewal amongst educators and education systems in New York.

"I just came back from the Chelsea service and I was really touched by the prayer for teachers. The guy that prayed at our service touched upon EVERYTHING that I was struggling with. I was amazed and encouraged by God's grace. Thank you for mentioning my name. I've really been struggling for a long time with teaching here in the city, especially this week. It's been tremendously rough. There's been lots of crying and I am not a cryer. It's caused me to doubt a lot of things and I've become so burdened, but this week God really pressed upon me "putting on the armor of God" and taking "every thought captive and making it obedient to Christ". Thank you for remembering me, you will never know how much it has encouraged me spiritually, physically, and emotionally. Have a wonderful week."

May God envision you to offer prayer for your city as a whole, bless those in your congregation who labor faithfully in it, and give us his heart so that we too love this great city.

Today is Easter Saturday 2010. In Latin America we call it "Sábado de Aleluia" which can be translated as Hallelujah Saturday.  Growing up I always questioned why they called it Hallelujah Saturday.  After all, if there was a sentiment that represented what Jesus' disciples were going through after the "raboni" was buried it would have to be despair. So, why not call it "Desperate Saturday"? That would go along better with what millions of Christians in Latin America have ritualized on this "Sábado de Aleluia": The lynching of Judas Iscariot.

It wasn't until recently that everything made sense to me.  The three days spent on accomplished salvation set the pace for salvation applied. Meaning, everything that Jesus went through in those three days to secure salvation for us should represent everything what we must go through in order to experience his salvation in us and for us. Here's the pattern his passion sets for us. Suffer - die - rest - be glorified.

On Thursday the Gospels tell us that Jesus grasped the deep reality of sin and sacrifice which brought him to despair. He wept, and sweat, and bled over our sins and then confessed his desire to Father to abandon the job last minute. At that moment, Jesus was taking sin very seriously.  So should we, if we are to receive the salvation God makes available to us in Jesus. Those to whom Jesus has secured salvation, will weep, and bleed, and experience despair over their hopeless condition. And most importantly, will confess their sins and see in Jesus the only possibility of rescue and absolution.

On Friday Jesus was crucified. He ascended the tree of Calvary to become the substitution for our sins. On the cross the Father's wrath brutally descended on the Son so that it would not descend on those to whom he was securing salvation for -- those he would latter call sons and daughters. As sun went down and the Son gave up his Spirit, we were justified and now able to be adopted into the family of the Trinity. Those to whom Jesus has secured salvation are called to look at the Cross and see their death vicariously lived out (or should I say died out) by Jesus. More importantly, they are called to die to self and to the sin that demanded their death.

Now we arrive on "Sábado de Alleluia". On Saturday there is silence in the text. In the soul there's despair and in the land there's rest. What an interesting tension huh? The disciples are observing the Shabbath while experiencing despair! Little did they know what "rabboni" had just done and was still doing for them. Jesus' body in the grave should represent REST for us. It should confront us with the anxieties that enslave us and the temptation that we have to still work for our absolution before God. Saturday is Hallelujah because it is a reminder that we can and should rest in Jesus. It's a reminder that there's nothing we can do. That is how we grow and are sanctified in the salvation he has accomplished for us. We are sanctified as we rest of our works (good ones) and as we stop looking for rest in other saviors.

Finally Sunday. The grave is empty and the master is walking in the garden beautiful and splendorous.  He has defeated our last enemy and for the next 40 days he gives us a preview of what life in kingdom will look like when "the glory of the Lord covers the earth as the waters covers the seas". It's what enables us to make sense of all that he did for us and unless there was resurrection there would be no sense in believing and living out this salvation. His salvation is accomplished at last and it is applied with hope.

So, suffer, die, rest and hope, because your glorification is coming.

Happy "Sábado de Alleluia".

Algunas personas me oyen hablar de la importancia del ministerio en la ciudad y piensan que lo que estoy diciendo es que todo cristiano (al menos quienes tienen una orientación hacia las misiones) debería acabar yendo a las ciudades. Pero no es eso lo que estoy diciendo. Lo que digo que es que muchas más agencias misioneras y muchos más cristianos de los que actualmente lo están haciendo, deberían desarrollar sus ministerios en las ciudades. ¿Por qué? Por la gran cantidad de gente que allí vive y por lo influyentes que las ciudades son en sus respectivas sociedades y culturas.

Así pues, se trata de una cuestión de énfasis -- en tanto que la iglesia no enfatiza lo suficiente el ministerio a la ciudad. Incluso en términos matemáticos, es obvio que las ciudades no son debidamente servidas por la iglesia. Por ejemplo, la población combinada de Georgia y Carolina del Sur es de unos 15 millones, mientras que sólo la ciudad de Nueva York y su área metropolitana tiene una población entre 18-19 millones de habitantes. Pregunta en cualquier denominación evangélica -- ¿Tenéis tantas iglesias en el área de Nueva York como en los estados de Georgia y Carolina del Sur combinados? Después pregunta por cifras. Pregunta entonces por qué dos estados con menor población tienen (en la mayoría de casos) muchas más iglesias que Nueva York. ¿Es eso justo? 

Al estudiar el libro de Proverbios, pude ver que un proverbio no es lo mismo que un mandamiento o una promesa. Proverbios dice cosas tales como, "En general, si te esfuerzas en el trabajo, no te faltará lo más básico, pero hay muchas excepciones. Por lo tanto, esfuérzate, pero no te sorprendas si las cosas van mal." Que las cosas irán bien a todo el que se esfuerce trabajando, no es una promesa o una garantía, tampoco un mandamiento. Es una declaración acerca de una manera sabia de actuar. Cuando digo que necesitamos poner más énfasis en el ministerio a la ciudad, hablo 'proverbialmente.' La Biblia y la historia nos muestran lo importante que son las ciudades como centros para desarrollar ministerio, y aún así la cantidad de esfuerzo que la iglesia invierte en las ciudades no es proporcional a la necesidad o la oportunidad [que estas representan]. 

Así que mi argumento es -- que muchas más iglesias, muchos más cristianos y muchas más misiones deberían dedicarse a alcanzar a las grandes ciudades del mundo. Esto no es lo mismo que decir que 'todo aquel que realmente está entregado a la misión de Jesús irá a las ciudades.'

________________

Original (en inglés) aquí

Some people hear me speak about the importance of city ministry and think I'm saying that all Christians (at least all those missions-minded) should move into cities. But I'm not saying that. I'm saying that many more mission agencies and many more Christians ought to minister in cities than are currently doing so. Why? Because of the sheer masses of people who live there and because of how influential cities are on their respective societies and cultures.

It is, then, a matter of emphasis -- as in, the church doesn't emphasize city ministry enough. Even mathematically, it is obvious that cities are woefully underserved by the church. For example, Georgia and South Carolina, combined, have an estimated population of 15 million, while the New York City metro area has a population of 18-19 million. Ask nearly any evangelical denomination -- do you have as many churches in the NYC area as you do in Georgia and South Carolina all together? Then ask for the numbers. Then ask why two states with a smaller population would have (in most cases) many times more churches than New York. Is that fair?

When I studied the book of Proverbs, I came to see that a proverb is not the same as a command or a promise. Proverbs say things like, "In general, if you work hard, you won't find yourself lacking the basics, but there are plenty of exceptions. So work hard, but don't be shocked if something goes wrong." That's not an iron-clad promise (that everyone who works hard will be well off) nor a command. It is a statement about a wise course of action. When I say that we need to put more emphasis on city ministry, I'm speaking 'proverbially.' The Bible and history shows us how important cities are as centers for ministry, yet the amount of effort the church puts into cities is not proportionate to the need or opportunity.

So my point is -- that far more churches, far more Christians, and far more missions should be dedicated to reaching the great cities of the world. That is not the same as saying 'anyone who is really sold out for Jesus' mission will go to cities.'

En mi tiempo diario de lectura bíblica durante el año pasado leí Probervios 3, un pasaje que he estudiado y predicado en numerosas ocasiones. Pero durante esta lectura, me di cuenta que entre los versículos del 3 al 12 tenemos todos los temas del resto del libro y, por lo tanto, una especie de mini-guía a una vida de fidelidad. Hay cinco cosas que constituyen un estilo de vida sabio y piadoso. Funcionan tanto como el medio para llegar a ser sabio y piadoso, así como también son signos que indican si uno está creciendo en ese estilo de vida:

1. Confia en lo más profundo de tu corazón en Dios y en su gracia. Recuérdate cada día a ti mismo de su pacto incondicional de amor por ti. No pongas tus esperanzas en ídolos o en lo que tú puedas hacer. 

Que nunca te abandonen el amor y la verdad: llévalos siempre alrededor de tu cuello y escríbelos en el libro de tu corazón. Contarás con el favor de Dios y tendrás buena fama entre la gente. Confía en el SEÑOR de todo corazón... (Prov 3:3-5a)

2. Sujeta toda tu mente a la Escritura. No pienses que sabes más que la palabra de Dios. Aplícalo en todas las áreas de tu vida. Sé una persona bajo autoridad. 

...y no [confíes] en tu propia inteligencia. Reconócelo en todos tus caminos, y él allanará tus sendas (Prov 3:5b-6). 

3. Sé humilde y déjate enseñar por otros. Perdona y sé comprensivo [con los demás] cuando lo que querrías es criticarles; disponte a aprender cuando otros sean críticos contigo. 

No seas sabio en tu propia opinión; más bien, teme al SEÑOR y huye del mal. Esto infundirá salud a tu cuerpo y fortalecerá tu ser (Prov 3:7-8).

4. Sé generoo con todas tus pertenencias, y apasionado por la justicia. Comparte tu tiempo, talento y lo que más valoras con quienes tienen menos. 

Honra al SEÑOR con tus riquezas y con los primeros frutos de tus cosechas. Así tus graneros se llenarán a reventar y tus bodegas rebosarán de vino nuevo (Prov 3:9-10)

5. Acepta y aprende de las dificultades y el sufrimiento. A través del evangelio, reconoce en ellos no un castigo, sino un camino par ir siendo refinado. 

Hijo mío, no desprecies la disciplina del SEÑOR, ni te ofendas por sus reprensiones. Porque el SEÑOR disciplina a los que ama, como corrige un padre a su hijo querido (Prov 3:11-12).

Al meditar en estos cinco elementos--arraigado en su gracia, obedeciendo y encontrando deleite en su Palabra, humilde ante otras personas, generosamente sacrificado en favor del prójimo, y firme en medio de la prueba-- [no puedo menos que pensar] en Jesús. El Nuevo Testamento nos dice que, de hecho, la 'sabiduría divina' personificada del Antiguo Testamento es Jesús (Mt 11:19). Y me he dado cuenta que a) el mostró una confianza y fidelidad absoluta a Dios al ir a la cruz [lo cuál también muestra su fidelidad hacia nosotros], b) su vida era una vida saturada y moldeada por la Escritura, c) era manso y humilde de corazón (Mt. 11:28-30), d) aún siendo rico, se hizo pobre por nosotros, e) y sobrellevó sus sufrimientos, por nosotros, sin levantar queja. Sólo podemos crecer en estas cinco áreas si sabemos que hemos sido salvados por una gracia costosa. Ello te mantiene apartado de los ídolos, de la auto-suficiencia y el orgullo, de ser egoísta con tus cosas, y de desmoronarte ante las dificultades. Jesús es la sabiduría personificada, y creer en su evangelio trae estas características a tu vida. 

A lo largo de unas cuantas semanas he pasado tiempo orando por estas cinco cosas para mi familia y los líderes de mi iglesia. No hay una mejor manera de infundir esto que es tan grande en tu propio corazón, que orar intensamente para que se den en la vida de aquellos a quienes amas. 

_________
Puedes leer original (en inglés) aquí

In my regular, daily Bible reading over the past year I read through Proverbs 3, a passage I've studied and preached through many times. But during this reading, I realized that in verses 3 through 12 we have all the themes of the rest of the book, and therefore a kind of mini-guide to faithful living. There are five things that comprise a wise, godly life. They function both as means to becoming wise and godly as well as signs that you are growing into such a life:

1. Put your heart's deepest trust in God and his grace. Every day remind yourself of his unconditioned, covenantal love for you. Do not instead put your hopes in idols or in your own performance.

Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. Trust in the LORD with all your heart (Prov 3:3-5a)

2. Submit your whole mind to the Scripture. Don't think you know better than God's word. Bring it to bear on every area of life. Become a person under authority.

Lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. (Prov 3:5b-6)

3. Be humble and teachable toward others. Be forgiving and understanding when you want to be critical of them; be ready to learn from others when they come to be critical of you.

Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. (Prov 3:7-8)

4. Be generous with all your possessions, and passionate about justice. Share your time, talent, and treasure with those who have less.

Honor the LORD with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine. (Prov 3:9-10)

5. Accept and learn from difficulties and suffering. Through the gospel, recognize them as not punishment, but a way of refining you.

My son, do not despise the LORD's discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in. (Prov 3:11-12)

As I meditated on these five elements--rooted in his grace, obeying and delighting in his Word, humble before other people, sacrificially generous toward our neighbor, and steadfast in trials--I thought of Jesus. The New Testament tells us that the personified 'divine wisdom' of the Old Testament is actually Jesus (Mt 11:19.) And I realized that a) he showed the ultimate trust and faithfulness to God and to us by going to the cross, b) he was saturated with and shaped by Scripture, c) he was meek and lowly in heart (Mt. 11:28-30), d) he, though rich, became poor for us, e) and he bore his suffering, for us, without complaint. We can only grow in these five areas if you know you are saved by costly grace. That keeps you from idols, from self-sufficiency and pride, from selfishness with your things, and from crumbling under troubles. Jesus is wisdom personified, and believing his gospel brings these character qualities into your life.

For a number of weeks I have been spending time praying for these five things for my family and my church leaders. There's no better way to instill these great things in your own heart, than to pray intensely for them in the lives of those you love.

I'll admit it - I spent some formative years in the 70s. One of the songs that was popular in '72 was Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway's "Where is the love"? If you are dancing, it's one of those songs you are better off humming to your girlfriend instead of actually singing the words, because Roberta and Donny are two lovers who oh-so-smoothly hurl accusations at each other throughout the song.

In the last two weeks, as I've become aware of four extra-marital affairs among pastors in our near and distant community, I've thought of that song.

You read that right - four couples - all in vocational ministry and all in the span of two weeks. This seems to go way beyond the Tiger Woods headline du jour.

My reaction is complex - first, shock and disbelief. Then, sorrow, anger, confusion. Eventually I would like to get to - hope -, but honestly, I'm not there yet. I think of the spouses that have been left (both women and men). The kids that are now questioning. Their congregations, now wounded and grieved. I think of the time, courage and work it will take to recover.

Wouldn't this be a good time for cursing and railing in frustration at our brokenness?

In this kind of offense I am left pondering how this happens and, invariably, I think of myself. Perhaps because I've always been scared to death that this would happen to me - whether as offender or offendee, it doesn't matter.

For 28 years I've been known and loved by my wife, and I've prayed that I would never break my vow to her. But it seems to me, I've broken my vow over and over again by not loving her well, by being self-centered, by overworking and pouring myself into ministry; in short, by running from soul-intimacy with her and also by isolating myself from others. Because we've never suffered an outright "affair," it is easy to think we are somehow "better" than these other couples but we may not be - there is mystery here. I hear people pontificating about these couples: how the "signs were all there from the beginning," and "if only they had been confronted and received care earlier." To me, the words ring hollow; the solutions overly facile. I have known too many who DID have accountability and discipleship but they hid anyway. The temptations came upon them and they refused to stop hiding. Accountability, community, vulnerability can be a great gift, if you find Christ in it. But it doesn't change you on its own, and I propose that it's not enough to stop a soul that is moving toward a sexual partner outside of marriage.

May I suggest that, actually, infidelity has nothing to do with lack of discipleship, with sex or lust or the internet? In my experience, this issue revolves around a lack of intimacy, and also a loathing fear of it.

In the most atomized, individualistic society in world history, don't we long for true friendship - to be known, to belong, to know our place; even as that strikes fear in our deepest soul? Because "to be known" is to give another the power to see your shame and to despise you, just like you may despise yourself; or that intimacy can enable them to see the real you and walk with you toward the healing of shame and growth toward who God created you to be. Honestly, I know very few pastors who are engaging with others on this level.

Unfortunately, we complicate intimacy by always linking it with sex. This is apparent all the time in film, and I'm sure, you've observed this personally: someone in a crisis begins to open up to another. The other responds by becoming vulnerable as well. They share their real selves. Soon, they?re in each others' arms. Why? Well, we're told, isn't that what happens when souls touch? Sex is almost expected in that kind of situation, right? Not at all! That would make intimacy nothing more than foreplay. Intimacy itself is so much more.

Many guys that I know are longing for the "Band of Brothers" kind of connection; yet, they hold back, deathly afraid of same-sex intimacy, not to mention heterosexual intimacy. Why? You know why. When you read "same-sex intimacy," I bet you aren't thinking 'guy friendships' or "best friend" or "a significant, vulnerable relationship with my brother-in-Christ." It just sounds like a sexual relationship, right? We've been conditioned to think that intimacy demands a sexual expression.

Intimacy is what we're made for. (Seriously, how many times have you either said or heard that in a sermon?) We all say it, but how many of us recognize that a marriage is not big enough to bear the relational freight of our immortal souls? We don't need more sex. We need more beings with whom to be intimate friends. We need healthy vulnerability with people other than our marriage partner - with both our same gender and the opposite. "Doesn't that set you up for greater temptation?," you ask. "Aren't you just opening the door for a similar fall?" No. Actually I think you guard yourself against sexual temptation when you experience friendship-intimacy with the opposite sex outside of your marriage partner - with other men and women. If we were "made for intimacy" as we keep saying, doesn't it make sense that we would "act out" inappropriately when we that basic relational need isn't realized? With all the lonely and isolated pastors and spouses in the U.S., is it any wonder that we're seeing this problem?

As Christians begin to explore relational intimacy with people of both genders, as we learn to love others in more meaningful ways, and to separate that love from sexual expression, we will find that we experience stronger marriages, genuine loving intimacy among the non-married, and, as Francis Schaeffer used to insist, a more full expression of the "final apologetic" (love) of Christian faith to the world.

1. La iglesia local tiene que apoyar la creación de cultura. La mayoría de jóvenes evangélicos interesados en integrar su fe con el arte cinematográfico, el periodismo, la financiación empresarial, etc., reciben apoyo e instrucción de redes de contacto informal u organizaciones para-eclesiales. El libro de Michael Lindsay Faith in the Halls of Power muestra cómo muchos cristianos que se encuentran en lugares desde los que se puede ejercer alguna influencia cultural, están alienados de la iglesia, porque en los mejores casos, no reciben apoyo de la iglesia por vivir su fe en el espacio público y, en el peor de los casos, lo que reciben es oposición.

A nivel teológico, la iglesia necesita ganar un mayor consenso sobre la manera de relacionar fe y cultura. Todavía existe bastante conflicto entre quienes quieren discipular a los cristianos para la vida pública, y quienes piensan que todo lo que sea "involucrarse en la cultura" al final conlleva su riesgo y [acaba por] distraer de la predicación del evangelio. Lo que hace [especialmente] difícil este debate es que ambas partes hacen una buena presentación de sus puntos de vista y presentan buenos argumentos.

A nivel práctico, incluso las iglesias que de entrada valoran la importancia de integrar fe y ocupación laboral, en realidad hacen muy poco a la hora de equipar a la gente para que ese sea el caso. A quienes estamos en el ministerio, el seminario sólo nos preparó para discipular a la gente sólo en la medida que los vayamos sacando fuera del mundo y metiéndolos cada vez más dentro de las paredes y ministerios de la iglesia. Así que, ¿cómo puede una iglesia ayudar realmente a sus miembros en esta área? Aquellos líderes que quieran empezar a trabajar en esta cuestión deberían echar un vistazo al Center for Faith and Work de Redeemer. 

2. Necesitamos renovar nuestra apologética.  En estos momentos hay una gran resistencia, por parte de líderes evangélicos más jóvenes, en contra de la apologética. Nos dicen que ya no necesitamos argumentos porque la gente [ya] no [sigue una lógica] racional. Lo que necesitamos es comunidad de amor. En mi opinión, éste es un planteamiento corto de miras por dos motivos.

Primero, los cristianos occidentales acabarán teniendo que hacer frente al reto que durante años muchos misioneros se han encontrado--cómo comunicar el evangelio a musulmanes, budistas, hindús y seguidores de otras tantas religiones populares.  Todos los líderes jóvenes deberían tomar cursos en y leer textos de las otras principales religiones del mundo. También deberían estudiar la presentación del evangelio escrita por misioneros que han estado interactuando con esas religiones. Una comunidad de amor será extremadamente  importante, tal y como siempre lo ha sido, para alcanzar a nuestros vecinos que tienen otras creencias; pero si han de venir a la iglesia, lo harán trayendo con ellos toda una serie de preguntas que un líder de hoy tiene que ser capaz de dar respuesta.

Segundo, existe un verdadero vacío en el pensamiento secular de occidente. Al morir Derrida, me sorprendió ver cuántos de sus antiguos alumnos admitían  que la Alta Teoría (lo que los evangélicos llamamos 'post-modernismo') es vista como un callejón sin salida, principalmente porque es tan relativista que no provee de ninguna base para la acción política. Y un importante intelectual británico como Terry Eagleton, en unas recientes conferencias en Yale (publicadas por Yale Press bajo el título Religion, Faith, and Revolution) no tuvo miramientos a la hora de cargar contra el viejo ateísmo científico de Dawkins y Hitchens al calificarlo también de estar en bancarrota. Eagleton sugiere que el optimismo de la Ilustración sobre el progreso de la ciencia y de la humanidad está muerto. No importa lo popular que sean los libros de Dawkins, pues el pensamiento occidental ya no va por esos caminos. Además, el postmodernismo no puede producir una base [sólida]  para los derechos humanos ni tampoco para la justicia. 

[Todo] esto es realmente una apertura, apologéticamente [hablando], para alcanzar a no-cristianos con inquietudes intelectuales, especialmente aquellos que son más jóvenes y que tienen conciencia social. Necesitamos pensar en nuevas maneras de entablar contacto, preguntar a la gente cómo pueden justificar sus inquietudes por los derechos humanos y por la justicia social. (Una excelente ilustración de este tipo de planteamiento se puede leer en  "Does Naturalism Warrant a Moral Belief in Universal Benevolence and Human Rights?" de Chris Smith en el recientemente publicado The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion(Oxford, 2009.)

Durante los últimos veinte años mi predicación y enseñanza se ha beneficiado mucho del esforzado trabajo de leer filosofía, especialmente la obra de viejos filósofos y eruditos cristianos (Plantinga, Wolterstorff, Mavrodes, Alston) y también de los más jóvenes. Un [predicador] tiene que ser capaz de escoger y dar unidad a varios argumentos [del pensamiento contemporáneo], presentándolo después de una manera que sea fácil de entender tanto al predicar como a la hora de evangelizar.

Estoy de acuerdo con los críticos que dicen que eI viejo racionalismo de las 'evidencias que exigente un veredicto' es algo que  hoy día no despierta el más mínimo interés. Pero ello no significa que la gente ya no haga uso de la razón o incluso construya argumentos. En estos momentos hay una gran grieta en la armadura del pensamiento occidental. La gente no quiere volver a la religión, todavía les asusta; pero tampoco le entusiasman tanto las implicaciones y los efectos de no-creer.

3. Necesitamos una gran variedad de modelos de iglesia. En su libro, Models of the Church Avery Dulles realiza un gran trabajo a la hora de delinear los varios modelos de iglesia [que se han dado] en occidente a lo largo de los siglos.  Después de dejar claro que estos son modelos que muy rara vez se dan en su forma más pura, nos presenta cinco modelos. Cada uno estresando o enfatizando: a) Doctrina, enseñanza y autoridad, o b) un profundo sentido de comunidad y vida compartida, o c) alabanza, sacramentos, música y arte, o d) evangelismo, proclamación, y predicación dinámica, o e) justicia social, servicio y compasión.

Muchos evangélicos hoy día, en su deseo de llevar a cabo su ministerio en una cultura occidental post-cristiana, se han decantado por uno o dos de estos modelos. De manera que los que, por ejemplo, creen en una aproximación del tipo 'encarnacional' más que la que [descansa en la capacidad de atracción de la iglesia], enfatizan el hecho de estar y de servir puertas afuera en medio del vecindario, la creación de pequeñas iglesias en casa y [experimentar] una comunidad más intimidad (una combinación de los modelos b y e que Dulles nos propone).  Por otro lado, muchos evangélicos que no se fían del liberalismo tan sutil de la iglesia emergente, lo que enfatizan es la combinación más tradicional de los modelos a y d. Cada uno de los bandos es bastante serio en cuanto a lo acertado de su modelo y procura hacer uso del mismo en todas partes. 

Creo que nuestra situación cultural es demasiado compleja como para tener una perspectiva tan genérica. Hay demasiados no-cristianos que nunca han ido a una iglesia. Árabes en Detroit, hmongs en Chicago, chinos y judíos en la ciudad de Nueva York, anglos en el Noroeste y el Noreste que han sido educados por padres seculares--algunos de ellos son artistas e innovadores, otros trabajan en el mundo empresarial. Todos estos son varios grupos de un creciente número de gente que no conoce lo que es la iglesia, y cada uno de estos grupos son muy diferentes entre sí. De manera que aunque no hay un modelo que pueda llegar a todos y cada uno de ellos por igual--al menos cada modelo  sí puede llegar a alguno de estos grupos.

4. Tenemos que mejorar nuestra teología del sufrimiento. Los miembros de las iglesias occidentales no saben cómo reaccionar ante el sufrimiento y la dificultad. Esto es un serio problema, especialmente [si tenemos en cuenta el tiempo de transición que vivimos y toda la incertidumbre que ello genera] --aunmento de la marginalización social--y tal vez más inestabilidad social y económica. Existen una gran cantidad de libros sobre '¿por qué Dios permite el mal?' pero su principal objetivo es sacar a Dios de en medio con la impaciencia [característica] del occidental que cree que la [única] ocupación de Dios es darle una vida [lo más segura posible]. La iglesia en occidente debe [ser capaz de superar este gran obstáculo], preparando a su gente para que sean capaces de hacer frente al sufrimiento y a la persecución.

En esta cuestión también podemos conectar con el Nuevo cristianismo global. Tendemos a pensar '¿qué podemos hacer por ellos?'. Pero en una cuestión como ésta es cuando podemos dejar que sean ellos los hagan algo por nosotros. Gran parte de la la iglesia en el resto del mundo está acostumbrada al sufrimiento y a la persecución. Ellos tienen un tipo de fe que no languidece, al contrario, crece cada vez más robusta frente a la amenaza. Necesitamos que nos instruyan en esta área. 

5.Necesitamos un gran número de iglesias en las ciudades más grandes del mundo.

¡Sé que siempre se espera de mí que diga esto! Pero no se trata simplemente de un añadido a las otras medidas para hacer frente a los grandes retos [que hemos ido mencionando]. De alguna manera, esta es la 'Gran Idea' que nos ayudará a ir avanzando en todos los frentes.

Si hubiera un rápido y vital crecimiento de varios movimientos de iglesias--de teología ortodoxa, ministerio integral y comprometido culturalmente--en las grandes ciudades globales, de manera que entre un 5% y un 10% de los habitantes de las 50 ciudades más influyentes fuesen creyentes, a) ejercería un gran impacto en la creación de cultura, b) ayudaría a que la iglesia aprendiera nuevas maneras de alcanzar a quienes nunca han tenido contacto con la iglesia (puesto que tienden a concentrarse en las ciudades), c) conectaría de una forma más inmediata a las iglesias occidentales con las nuevas iglesias del resto del mundo, d) uniría iglesias de diferentes tradiciones y modelos.

- Puedes leer original (en inglés) aquí

Part 1: The Big Issues facing the Western Church

1. The local church has to support culture-making. Most of the young evangelicals interested in integrating their faith with film-making, journalism, corporate finance, etc, are getting their support and mentoring from informal networks or para-church groups. Michael Lindsay's book Faith in the Halls of Power shows that many Christians in places of influence in the culture are alienated from the church, because they get, at best, no church support for living their faith out in the public spheres, and, at worst, opposition.

At the theological level, the church needs to gain more consensus on how the church and Christian faith relate to culture. There is still a lot of conflict between those who want to disciple Christians for public life, and those who think all "engagement of culture" ultimately leads to compromise and distraction from the preaching of the gospel. What makes this debate difficult is that both sides make good points and have good arguments.

At the practical level, even the churches that give lip-service to the importance of integrating faith and work do very little to actually equip people to do so. Seminary only trained us ministers to disciple people by pulling them more out of the world and inside the walls and ministries of the church. So how does a church actually help its members in this area? Leaders who want to get started should look at Redeemer's Center for Faith and Work.

2. We need a renewal of apologetics. There is a lot of resistance right now among younger evangelical leaders toward apologetics. We are told we don't need arguments any more because people aren't rational. We need loving community instead. But I think this is short-sighted for two reasons.

First, Christians in the West will finally be facing what missionaries around the world have faced for years--how to communicate the gospel to Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and adherents of various folk religions. All young church leaders should take courses in and read the texts of the other major world religions. They should also study the gospel presentations written by missionaries engaging those religions. Loving community will be extremely important, as it always is, to reach out to neighbors of other faiths, but if they are going to come into the church, they will have many questions that church leaders today need to be able to answer.

Second, there a real vacuum in western secular thought. When Derrida died I was surprised how many of his former students admitted that High Theory (what evangelicals call 'post-modernism') is seen as a dead end, mainly because it is so relativistic that it provides no basis for political action. And a leading British intellectual like Terry Eagleton in recent lectures at Yale (published as Religion, Faith, and Revolution by Yale Press) savaged the older scientific atheism of Dawkins and Hitchens as equally bankrupt. Eagleton points out that the Enlightenment's optimism about science and human progress is dead. Serious western thought is not going back to that, no matter how popular Dawkins' books get. But postmodernism cannot produce a basis for human rights or justice either.

This is a real opening, apologetically, in reaching out to thoughtful non-Christians, especially the younger, socially conscious ones. We need to think of new ways to engage, asking people how they can justify their concerns for human rights and social justice. (For a great recent form of this approach, see Chris Smith's "Does Naturalism Warrant a Moral Belief in Universal Benevolence and Human Rights?" in The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion (Oxford, 2009.)

Over the last twenty years my preaching and teaching has profited a great deal from doing the hard work of reading philosophy, especially the work of older Christian philosophers and scholars (Plantinga, Wolterstorff, Mavrodes, Alston) and the younger ones. Ministers need to be able to glean and put their arguments into easy to understand form, both in speaking and in evangelism.

I agree with the critics that say the old, rationalistic, 'evidence that demands a verdict' makes people's eyes glaze over today. But that doesn't mean that people don't still use reason and still make arguments. There is a big chink in the armor of western thought right now. People don't want to go back to religion, which still scares them, but they are not so sanguine about the implications and effects of non-belief.

3. We need a great variety of church-models. Avery Dulles' book Models of the Church does a good job of outlining the very different models of churches in the west over the centuries. After qualifying his analysis by saying these are seldom pure forms, he lays out five models. Each one stresses or emphasizes: a) Doctrine, teaching, and authority, or b) deep community and life together, or c) worship, sacraments, music and the arts, or d) evangelism, proclamation, and dynamic preaching, or e) social justice, service, and compassion.

Many evangelicals today have bought in to one or two of these models as the way to minister now in the post-Christendom west. So for example, those who believe in the 'incarnational' (vs. 'attractional' approach) emphasize being and serving out in the neighborhood, smaller house churches and intimate community (a combination of Dulles' b and e models.) Meanwhile, many evangelicals who are afraid of the 'liberal creep' of the emerging church, stress the traditional combination of a and d emphases. Each side is fairly moralistic about the rightness of its model and seeks to use it everywhere.

I feel that our cultural situation is too complex for such a sweeping way to look at things. There are too many kinds of 'never-churched-non-Christians'. There are Arabs in Detroit, Hmongs in Chicago, Chinese and Jews in New York City, Anglos in the Northwest and Northeast that were raised by secular parents--some are artists and creative types, some work in business. All of these are growing groups of never-churched, but they are very different from one another. No model can connect to them all--every model can connect to some.

4. We must develop a far better theology of suffering. Members of churches in the west are caught absolutely flat-footed by suffering and difficulty. This is a major problem, especially if we are facing greater 'liminality'--social marginalization--and maybe more economic and social instability. There are a great number of books on 'why does God allow evil?' but they mainly are aimed at getting God off the hook with impatient western people who believe God's job is to give them a safe life. The church in the west must mount a great new project--of producing a people who are prepared to endure in the face of suffering and persecution.

Here, too, is one of the ways we in the west can connect to the new, growing world Christianity. We tend to think about 'what we can do for them.' But here's how we let them do something for us. Many or most of the church in the rest of the world is used to suffering and persecution. They have a kind of faith that does not wilt, but rather grows stronger under threat. We need to become students of theirs in this area.

5. We need a critical mass of churches in the biggest cities of the world.

I know I'm always expected to say this! But this is not a mere tack-on to the other measures for addressing the Big Issues. In some ways, this is the 'Big Idea' that will help us move forward on all fronts.

If there were vital, fast-growing movements of churches--orthodox in theology, wholistic in ministry, and committed to culture-making--in the great global cities, so that 5-10% of the residents of the 50 most influential cities were gospel-believers, a) it would have a great impact on culture-making, b) it would help the church learn new ways of reaching the never-churched (since they concentrate in cities), c) it would connect western churches more readily to the new churches in the non-western world, d) it would unite churches across traditions and models.

1. La oportunidad (por lo menos en los Estados Unidos) de influir en el devenir de la cultura. En una entrevista, el sociólogo Peter Berger opinaba que los evangélicos en los Estados Unidos están dando un giro, de ser mayoritariamente clase obrera a tener formación universitaria.

Su pregunta es-- Todos estos cristianos preparándose en letras, empresariales, política, medios de comunicación y artes escénicas a) ¿serán asimilados en la ya existente narrativa cultural, de manera que en sus puntos de vista y valores pasará a ser el mismo que el del resto de las elites y profesionales seculares? o b) ¿se encerrarán en sí mismos y harán de su fe un asunto privado [sin ingerencias en su trabajo], de manera que, a todos los efectos, no realicen su trabajo de una manera especialmente distintiva? o c) ¿trabajarán de forma lo suficientemente creativa desde una perspectiva cristiana en sus campos para que las cosas cambien? (Ver Peter Berger)

2. El avance del Islam. ¿Cómo se relacionan los cristianos con los musulmanes cuando les toca vivir codo con codo en una misma sociedad? ¡Lo datos que recogemos de lugares como África y Oriente Medio no son muy alentadores! Este es un problema que afecta más a la iglesia en Europa que a la iglesia en Estados Unidos, pero sin duda será una preocupación creciente también para América

¿De qué manera pueden los cristianos, en relación a los musulmanes, ser a) buenos vecinos, procurando su bienestar indistintamente de si se convierten o no, y aún así b) de forma atractiva y efectiva invitarles a considerar el evangelio?  

3. El nuevo cristianismo global no es occidental.  El centro de gravedad demográfico del cristianismo [a nivel mundial] ha girado, y ya no se encuentra en Occidente, sino en Asia, América Latina y África. Las iglesias urbanas que están despuntando en China podrían llegar a ser particularmente influyentes en el futuro. Aún así, Occidente todavía tiene las instituciones educativas, el dinero y un poder significativo

¿En qué términos debe desarrollarse la relación entre las antiguas iglesias occidentales y la nueva iglesia no occidental? ¿Cómo podemos utilizar nuestros bienes para servirles, de una manera que no sea paternalista? ¿Cómo podemos aprender de ellos más allá de lo superficial?

 4. El creciente distanciamiento cultural con respecto al evangelio.Los conceptos básicos del evangelio -- pecado, culpa y tener que rendir cuentas a Dios, el sacrificio de la cruz, la naturaleza humana, la vida después de la muerte -- están llegando a ser una rareza en nuestra cultura occidental por primera vez en 1500 años. Tal y como Lesslie Newbigin ha escrito, ahora es tiempo de 'pensar como misioneros'--para formular maneras de comunicar el evangelio que por un lado confronte, como también sepan conectar con nuestra crecientemente-descristianizada cultura occidental.

¿Cómo hacemos que el evangelio sea culturalmente accesible, sin poner en compromiso su integridad? ¿Cómo podemos comunicar el evangelio y vivirlo de manera que sea comprensible para gente que carece de la estructura mental básica para al menos ser capaces de entender las verdades esenciales de la Biblia?

5. ¿El fin de la prosperidad? Con la crisis económica, la cuestión que se nos plantea es -- ¿volverá a crecer el valor de las viviendas, seguros, comisiones, salarios e inversiones, al mismo ritmo que lo han hecho durante los últimos 25 años? O, por el contrario ¿el crecimiento será relativamente nulo por muchos años? Si es así, ¿de qué manera la iglesia occidental --que se ha acostumbrado a dar de unos activos que crecían a gran velocidad-- se ajustará en la manera en la que lleva a cabo el ministerio? Por ejemplo, el ministerio en los Estados Unidos hoy está altamente profesionalizado --los empleados de una iglesia son mucho más numerosos de lo que lo eran dos generaciones atrás, cuando de una iglesia de 1.000 se esperaba que quizá tuviera dos pastores y un par de trabajadores a medio tiempo. Hoy día esa misma iglesia seguramente tenga entre 8 y 10 trabajadores a tiempo completo.    

También a tener en cuenta, ¿cómo ajustamos el mensaje sobre la mayordomía? Si los activos se han reducido a la mitad, [nos encontramos con la paradoja de que] un ofrendar más sacrificado y con mayor riesgo será necesario para poder realizar menos ministerio del que hasta ahora hemos estado llevando a cabo.

Si, además de todo esto, sufrimos un atentado nuclear o de terrorismo biológico en los Estados Unidos o en Europa, podríamos tener que vernos obligados a dejar de un lado toda nuestra asunción más básica sobre el progreso social y económico que hemos ido construyendo durante los últimos 65 años. En la primera mitad del s. XX, tuvimos dos guerras mundiales y una depresión económica. ¿Está lista la iglesia para hacer frente a una situación similar? ¿De qué manera? ¿Qué puede significar todo esto?

 - Puedes leer original (en iglés) aquí

His question is--will Christians going into the arts, business, government, the media, and film a) assimilate to the existing baseline cultural narratives so they become in their views and values the same as other secular professionals and elites, or b) will they seal off and privatize their faith from their work so that, effectively, they do not do their work in any distinctive way, or c) will they do enough new Christian 'culture-making' in their fields to change things? (See http://www.virginia.edu/iasc/HHR_Archives/AfterSecularization/8.12PBerger.pdf)

2. The rise of Islam. How do Christians relate to Muslims when we live side by side in the same society? The record in places like Africa and the Middle East is not encouraging! This is more of an issue for the western church in Europe than in the U.S., but it is going to be a growing concern in America as well.

How can Christians be at the very same time a) good neighbors, seeking their good whether they convert or not, and still b) attractively and effectively invite Muslims to consider the gospel?

3. The new non-western Global Christianity. The demographic center of Christian gravity has already shifted from the west to Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The rising urban churches of China may be particularly influential in the future. But the west still has the educational institutions, the money, and a great deal of power.

What should the relationship of the older western churches be to the new non-western church? How can we use our assets to serve them in ways that are not paternalistic? How can we learn from them in more than perfunctory ways?

4. The growing cultural remoteness of the gospel. The basic concepts of the gospel -- sin, guilt and accountability before God, the sacrifice of the cross, human nature, afterlife -- are becoming culturally strange in the west for the first time in 1500 years. As Lesslie Newbigin has written, it is time now to 'think like a missionary'--to formulate ways of communicating the gospel that both confront and engage our increasingly non-Christian western culture.

How do we make the gospel culturally accessible without compromising it? How can we communicate it and live it in a way that is comprehensible to people who lack the basic 'mental furniture' to even understand the essential truths of the Bible?

5. The end of prosperity? With the economic meltdown, the question is -- will housing values, endowments, profits, salaries, and investments go back to growing at the same rates as they have for the last twenty-five years, or will growth be relatively flat for many years to come? If so, how does the western church, which has become habituated to giving out of fast-increasing assets, adjust in the way it carries out ministry? For example, American ministry is now highly professionalized--church staffs are far larger than they were two generations ago, when a church of 1,000 was only expected to have, perhaps, two pastors and a couple of other part-time staff. Today such a church would have probably eight to ten full-time staff members.

Also, how should the stewardship message adjust? If discretionary assets are one-half of what they were, more risky, sacrificial giving will be necessary to do even less ministry than we have been doing.

On top of this, if we experience even one significant act of nuclear or bio-terrorism in the U.S. or Europe, we may have to throw out all the basic assumptions about social and economic progress we have been working off for the last 65 years. In the first half of the 20th century, we had two World Wars and a Depression. Is the church ready for that? How could it be? What does that mean?

Part 2: How Should Churches and Leaders Be Preparing to Address These Big Issues Facing the Church?

Algunas impresiones de Tim Keller sobre el best-seller La Cabaña de W. Paul Young:

Durante las vacaciones leí una buena (y devastadora) crítica de La Cabaña  de William P. (Paul) Young en la última edición impresa de Books and Culture: A Christian Review (Jan/Feb 2010). Fue algo que me recordó que yo era una de las últimas personas en el mundo que no había leído el libro. Así que lo leí. ¿Por qué escribir un artículo al respecto? [El libro en cuestión] vendió 7.2 millones de copias en poco más de 2 años, a mediados de Junio de 2009. Con esas cifras, seguramente ejercerá alguna influencia en el imaginario popular de lo religioso. Así que exige una respuesta. Esto no es una reseña [o crítica literaria], simplemente algunas impresiones:

El libro es un noble esfuerzo, en forma de narración, de ayudar a la gente moderna a entender por qué Dios permite el sufrimiento. El gran argumento que Young presenta en varias partes del libro es el siguiente: Primero, el mal y el sufrimiento en el mundo es resultado de nuestro abuso del libre albedrío. Segundo, Dios no ha impedido el mal, para así alcanzar un bien mayor y más glorioso que ahora los seres humanos no podemos comprender. Tercero, cuando tenemos amargura hacia Dios por alguna tragedia en particular, nos sentamos en la silla del 'Juez y Dios del mundo', y no estamos cualificados para ese trabajo. Cuarto, debemos adquirir una 'perspectiva eterna' y ver a todo el pueblo de Dios [lleno] de gozo delante de su presencia por siempre. (Al padre en la historia le es dada una vision de su hija muerta viviendo en gozo en la presencia de Cristo, y [esta visión] cura su dolor.) Todo esto es una teología pastoral bastante standard y ortodoxa (aunque un tanto excesiva en su defensa del libre albedrío). [Todo ello] es bastante accesible al lector por el uso que hace de la narrativa. He escuchado muchos testimonios de medio-creyentes y de no-creyentes diciendo que este libro les había dado respuesta a sus mayores objeciones a la fe en Dios.

Sin embargo, a lo largo del libro [se puede ver cómo] la historia de Young mina unas cuantas doctrinas tradicionales del cristianismo. Muchos se han metido de llenos a debatir sobre las creencias teológicas de Young, y yo tengo mis propias reserves. Pero este es mi principal problema con el libro. Cualquiera que haya quedado influenciado por el imaginativo mundo de La Cabaña  no estará en absoluto preparado [para un encuentro] con el Dios, realmente mucho más multi-dimensional y complejo, de la Biblia. En los profetas el lector encontrará un Dios que constantemente condena y jura juicio sobre sus enemigos, mientras que las Personas del Dios-Trino de La Cabaña no paran de decir que el pecado no les es ninguna ofensa. El lector del Salmo 119 es lleno de entusiasmo por los estatutos, los decretos y las leyes de Dios, mientras que el Dios de La Cabaña insiste en que él no nos da ninguna norma o ni tan siquiera tiene ninguna expectativa de los seres humanos. Lo único que quiere es una relación. El lector de las vidas de Abraham, Jacob, Moisés e Isaías aprenderá que la santidad de Dios hace que su presencia [sin ningún tipo de mediación] sea peligrosa o incluso fatal para nosotros. Alguien podría argumentar (tal y como Young parece hacerlo en la página 192) que a causa de Jesús, Dios es ahora sólo un Dios de amor; lo que hace obsoleto cualquier discurso sobre santidad, ira y ley. Pero cuando Juan, uno de los amigos más íntimos de Jesús, ve mucho tiempo después de la crucifixión al Cristo resucitado en la isla de Patmos, 'cayó al suelo como muerto' (Apocalipsis 1:17). La Cabaña deconstruye de forma eficaz la santidad y la trascendencia de Dios, Simplemente no están presentes. En su lugar, simplemente, amor incondicional. El Dios de La Cabaña no tiene nada de la estabilidad y la complejidad del Dios bíblico. Un Dios a medias no es de ninguna manera Dios.

Existe otro libro moderno que [también] busca comunicar el carácter de Dios a través de una historia. [Este libro] también intentó 'encarnar' la doctrina bíblica de Dios de una forma imaginativa que pudiera trasmitir el corazón [mismo] del mensaje bíblico.  Aquella historia tenía una figura de Cristo llamada Aslan. Sin embargo, al contrario que el autor de La Cabaña, C.S. Lewis siempre se esmeraba en mantener la tensión bíblica entre el amor divino y su abrumadora santidad y esplendor. En la introducción a su libro El Problema del Dolor, Lewis citaba el ejemplo del libro infantil El Viento en los Sauces en el que dos personajes, Rata y Topo se acercan al divino. 

"¿Miedo?" Murmuró la Rata, con los ojos brillando de amor. "¡Miedo! ¿De él? ¡Nunca! Y, sin embargo... ¡Oh Topo, tengo miedo!"

Lewis buscó trasmitir esto a lo largo de sus historias de Narnia. Uno de los momentos más memorables es la descripción de Aslan.

"¿Seguros? ¿Quién dijo algo de estar seguros? Por su puesto que él no es seguro, pero él es bueno. Y es el Rey."   

Esto está mejor.

Over the holidays I read a good (and devastating) review of William P. (Paul) Young's The Shack in the most recent print edition of Books and Culture: A Christian Review (Jan/Feb 2010.)  It was a reminder that I was one of the last people on the planet not to have read the book. So I did. So why write a blog post about it? It had sold 7.2 million copies in a little over 2 years, by June of 2009. With those kinds of numbers, the book will certainly exert some influence over the popular religious imagination. So it warrants a response. This is not a review, but just some impressions:

At the heart of the book is a noble effort -- to help modern people understand why God allows suffering, using a narrative form. The argument Young makes at various parts of the book is this. First, this world's evil and suffering is the result of our abuse of free will. Second, God has not prevented evil in order to accomplish some glorious, greater good that humans cannot now understand. Third, when we stay bitter at God for a particular tragedy we put ourselves in the seat of the 'Judge of the world and God', and we are unqualified for such a job. Fourth, we must get an 'eternal perspective' and see all God's people in joy in his presence forever. (The father in the story is given a vision of his deceased daughter living in the joy of Christ's presence, and it heals his grief.) This is all rather standard, orthodox, pastoral theology (though it's a bit too heavy on the 'free-will defense').  It is so accessible to readers because of its narrative form. I have heard many reports of semi-believers and non-believers claiming that this book gave them an answer to their biggest objections to faith in God.

However, sprinkled throughout the book, Young's story undermines a number of traditional Christian doctrines. Many have gotten involved in debates about Young's theological beliefs, and I have my own strong concerns. But here is my main problem with the book. Anyone who is strongly influenced by the imaginative world of The Shack will be totally unprepared for the far more multi-dimensional and complex God that you actually meet when you read the Bible. In the prophets the reader will find a God who is constantly condemning and vowing judgment on his enemies, while the Persons of the Triune-God of The Shack repeatedly deny that sin is any offense to them. The reader of Psalm 119 is filled with delight at God's statutes, decrees, and laws, yet the God of The Shack insists that he doesn't give us any rules or even have any expectations of human beings. All he wants is relationship. The reader of the lives of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Isaiah will learn that the holiness of God makes his immediate presence dangerous or fatal to us. Someone may counter (as Young seems to do, on p.192) that because of Jesus, God is now only a God of love, making all talk of holiness, wrath, and law obsolete. But when John, one of Jesus' closest friends, long after the crucifixion sees the risen Christ in person on the isle of Patmos, John 'fell at his feet as dead.' (Rev.1:17.) The Shack effectively deconstructs the holiness and transcendence of God. It is simply not there. In its place is unconditional love, period. The God of The Shack has none of the balance and complexity of the Biblical God. Half a God is not God at all.

There is another modern text that sought to convey the character of God through story. It also tried to 'embody' the Biblical doctrine of God in an imaginative way that conveyed the heart of the Biblical message. That story contained a Christ-figure named Aslan. Unlike the author of The Shack, however, C.S. Lewis was always at pains to maintain the Biblical tension between the divine love and his overwhelming holiness and splendor. In the introduction to his book The Problem of Pain, Lewis cited the example from the children's text The Wind in the Willows where two characters, Rat and Mole approach divinity.

"Afraid?" murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. "Afraid? of Him? O, never, never. And yet -- and yet -- O Mole, I am afraid."

Lewis sought to get this across at many places through his Narnia tales. One of the most memorable is the description of Aslan.

"Safe?...Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

That's better.

One of the challenges of pastoring people in a city center, is the amount of time people spend in their workplace. Unlike other parts of the country, people seem to live at their places of work. Rather than becoming frustrated that people are not available to serve in our church programs, we should see the time spent in a place of work as an opportunity to see the kingdom of God leave the confines of traditional church programming, come to the workplace, begin to do its work of industry and city renewal.

In order to move toward this vision, our church has been hosting industry roundtables for the last year for so. These roundtable discussions are designed to bring people from various industries together and help them form a theology of kingdom renewal for their respective career fields. Some of the questions we ask at these luncheons are...

What drew you to your industry?
What do you love about your industry?
What do you struggle with in your industry?
What ethical dilemmas do you often run into?
To what scripture do you turn to formulate a theology of your industry?
What are some of your doubts and uncertainties about how God could move in your industry?
What do wish that we as your pastors/leaders, knew about your industry?
How can the church help you live more missionally in your industry?
What is our church doing that is hindering you from being able to bring the kingdom of God to bear in your workplace?

I have been surprised and overwhelmed by the response of people in our church to these events. People have felt empowered, encouraged and have been given a new vision for what they do all week. Many of them now sense that it is making a vital difference in the world, and that it is important to God. I have also had several people comment on how good it is to hear that the church has a vision for something outside of itself, and how good it is to know that a pastor "gets" what they do Monday through Friday.

I have found that having an awareness of what it is people love, struggle with, are tempted by and need encouragement in, makes me a more effective pastor. My counseling is more empathetic, my preaching more informed, and the word of God more contextualized to do its work. I am not simply projecting my life and wishes onto their work-week, but am able to help bring the gospel to bear on the temptations, trials and joys they live in every day.

In order to really see a movement of the gospel through a city, it is going to take the equipping of our people to live and share the gospel where they spend most of their time: the workplace. Hosting an industry roundtable is a small step in that direction, but also an important one to see a local congregation begin this work.

Dimas Salaberrios, lead pastor of Infinity - a church planting project in the Bronx - has been in Haiti for the last week with a team of 4 men from his church. The team members include two medical doctors from New York City .

You can follow the progress of Dimas and his team here and you can donate to support them here. Please join us in praying for them.

Nuevo artículo de Tim Keller. En esta ocasión, el Dr. Keller nos habla de los motivos que han llevado a Redeemer a ser una iglesia de esas que se conocen como multi-sitio. Es decir, iglesias que se reúnen en múltiples localidades dentro de una determinada área geográfica; en este caso, tres vecindarios del distrito de Manhattan.

Hace poco Redeemer fue presentada ocupando un lugar prominente en un artículo de USA Today sobre [el fenómeno de las] iglesias multi-sitio. Aparte de mencionar el hecho de que Redeemer no utiliza la video conferencia,  [el artículo] no se refirió a las diferencias que existen entre nuestro enfoque y el de otros. Y en la consiguiente discusión online después del artículo, era evidente que a todas las iglesias multi-sitio se las ponía en un mismo montón [sin diferenciar unas de otras].  Para aclarar cualquier duda, puede que sea de alguna ayuda saber por qué y cómo Redeemer es una iglesia que se reúne en múltiples localidades.

1. Primero, no adoptamos el ser multi-sitio porque fuera más económico o más eficiente para nosotros. Cuando hace diez años empezamos a reunirnos en varias localidades, ya teníamos un culto por la mañana y otro por la tarde en un mismo local que era bastante grande. Hubiera sido menos costoso y a la vez efectivo simplemente incrementar los cultos, hasta cuatro o cinco, en ese mismo lugar. Trasladarnos a otro local significó un aumento considerable en gastos de alquiler, servicios de atención para niños, música y muchas otras cosas.

2. Segundo, no nos convertimos en multi-sitio para alcanzar más deprisa a más gente. El auditorio donde empezamos a reunirnos hace 10 años tiene capacidad para más de 2.000 personas sentadas, y otros espacios del mismo tamaño no están disponibles. Los lugares que hemos alquilado en otras partes de la ciudad son bastante más pequeños. Si hubiéramos continuado en aquél lugar y hubiéramos multiplicado allí mismo las reuniones, podríamos haber alcanzado a un número mayor de gente de forma más rápida.

Así pues, ¿qué nos llevó a adoptar el modelo del multi-sitio?

 1. Primero, extendemos nuestras reuniones a diferentes lugares para que la gente pueda celebrar el culto cerca de donde viven. La gente puede involucrarse mucho más en la comunidad e invitar a sus amigos [a la iglesia] con mucha más facilidad si los encuentros son en su vecindario. [En realidad esto lo hicimos a sabiendas que iba] en contra de la mentalidad típica de la mega-iglesia, puesto que las grandes iglesias generan un gran número de miembros que recorren grandes distancias para asistir a la iglesia. Nosotros queremos frenar esta tendencia y arraigar más a la gente en su contexto local.

2. Segundo, el modelo del multi-sitio es algo que hemos diseñado como una transición. Redeemer tiene un plan para convertir cada uno de los sitios en los que se reúne en una congregación o iglesia en sí misma para el vecindario en el que se encuentra, con su propio liderazgo pastoral. Yo he sido el predicador principal en todas las localidades, pero hace dos años pasamos de cuatro a tener cinco reuniones en tres lugares distintos, [con sus respectivas predicaciones], algo que resulta excesivo para mí en un solo domingo. Pero en lugar de proyectarme en video, decidimos que otros pastores en el equipo pastoral predicasen siempre al menos en esa quinta reunión. Cuando lleguemos a seis y a siete cultos, en unos dos años, en cada uno de los lugares habrá un pastor al frente que compartirá el peso de la predicación conmigo. 

Entonces pasaremos del modelo 'multi-sitio' al modelo 'colegiado'. Y aunque todavía continuaremos unidos bajo un mismo consejo de ancianos, cada iglesia tendrá su propio equipo pastoral, ancianos y líderes laicos. Otros modelos colegiados que podemos encontrar en nuestra denominación (PCA) serían Harbor Presbyterian en San Diego y Brooklyn Presbyterian también en la ciudad de Nueva York.

Durante la entrevista con el periodista de USA Today, me cuide mucho de no criticar a otras iglesias muIti-sitio. No sé qué es lo que motiva a otras iglesias a usar el modelo del multi-sitio, pero lo que aquí he expuesto es lo que nos motiva a nosotros.

___________

* Artículo original (en inglés) aquí

It has got to be the third person in the last two weeks that has asked me about the existence of God in light of the tragedy in Haiti. The last words I heard before I walked out of that Starbucks were "How can a good god exist and allow these things to happen, a god like that has no place in this world". As I reflected upon what I judge to be an honest angry statement I was reminded of another episode just last week. It happened here at my own church during a presbytery meeting.

At that meeting a Haitian movement leader updated us of the situation in Port Au Prince in the aftermath of the 7.2 earthquake. At the occasion he said that the situation was much worse than what has been reported by the American TV networks. Out of his own suffering he shared the fact that he had lost 10 of his pastors, all of their church buildings and many of their church members. He said that there was no food, scarcity of gas to transport whatever supplies they could gather from the DR or other immediate towns, tons of orphans roaming the streets and a lot of violence. But in the midst of all the destruction around them the church remained strong. He said that every single night sounds of prayers and songs are heard through out the desolated streets of the city. That in the midst of immense suffering people are turning to God more than they are turning to nations and to other human beings.

Interesting. Here we have one of the greatest catastrophes of history and then we have two kinds of people. Those who are mere spectators and those who are living in it. On one side you have those, like myself that can drive into a Stbx and pay $4 for a cup of coffee and then go home and watch what's going on on TV and then you have those who are actually there. A fool like the one I encountered today who can afford to have a comfortable life asks the question that the homeless, orphan, hungry, mutilated is not asking on the other side. They usually never do. On this side of the tragedy people are using what happened to run away from God while victims are desperately running to God. To me if someone had the right to ask the question; it would be the Haitian people. Except, they are not.

I've heard it say that "atheism ends at the grave" and I guess that's true for both types of people.

Last week I was able to hook up with an old friend of mine who happens to be a pastor as well. He's not a senior pastor, a youth pastor, a ministry pastor, a worship pastor nor a, family's pastor. He's an "Availability Pastor."  Have you heard of such thing? I hadn't 'till then.  When I first heard him state his new title I had two feelings. One of disturbance and another one of compassion. Let me try to flesh my reactions out.

Disturbance - It's quite disturbing to me at times that the Church of Jesus Christ has institutionalized to the point that ministers perform according to labels. If you're a worship pastor you sing - can't preach. If you're a senior pastor, you preach and so why would you want to visit with someone who's sick? It disturbed me that I've followed this flow and that the western American church has become so industrialized that ministry roles have been created according to an organizational system and a personal profile to the point of naming someone "Pastor of Availability." I've never found these labels while reading the New Testament. Plus, what's this guy supposed to do anyways?

Compassion - To me it sounded like they had created "the bench pastor position." Now, I know my friend and I know the church he has worked for for many years. He has been instrumental not only in my spiritual formation but in the life of many godly men and women to this day. My wife included. Why would you put someone like him on the bench? He's a strong player! Much stronger than some of the "starters" I know they have. That's how I felt. For a minute I felt sorry for the guy and sorry for his church.

But then it dawned on me that if there was a title to define who he was and what all pastors are supposed to be, that was it! - Pastor of Availability. While in the New Testament you can't find the titles we've created for pastors, you find that pastors were available to people and to whatever Jesus required of them at the time. If healing the sick was needed they were there, if preaching was required they were there, if counseling was required they were there. They ministered to children, to the youth, the elderly and to people in prison.They were not bound to a tittles except that one of availability. Which to me is one that communicates both humility and boldness. Humility because they existed to serve as Jesus served and boldness because no challenge was a challenge. I could never imagine Paul saying to Jesus: "-Lord, send John, he has the gift compassion. He's our outreach pastor!" Nope. They did whatever came their way. They faced demons, incredulity, diseases, conflicts and, crisis whenever and wherever needed.

So- what at first was source of disturbance and compassion latter became a source of fascination and reflection. I started to ask myself: why am I not a pastor of availability as well?  I know from my own experience that the title I have received has many times handicapped me to truly be what Jesus wants me to be. I recall myself saying "I won't see him. That's not my job!" or "I don't have time to sit with that couple, I have to sermonize." I know that there's always a risk of being distracted off of our focus/ responsibility but is it possible that sometimes Jesus wants us to be available to meet random needs of people? And is it possible that we have hidden behind titles and have used them as an excuse to minister spontaneously? I'll say yes. What about you?

Recently Redeemer was featured prominently in a USA Today article about multi-site churches. Outside of the fact that Redeemer doesn't 'do video,' the differences between our approach and others were not referred to. And in much discussion on line after the article, it was clear that all multi-site churches were being Lumped Together. Just for the sake of clarity, it might be helpful to know these facts about why and how Redeemer does the multi-site.

1. First, we did not go to multi-site because it was more economical or efficient for us. When we began meeting at multiple sites ten years ago, we were already holding a morning and an evening service at a single site that was quite large. It would have been much more cost-effective to multiply to four or five services in that single location. Moving to other sites meant greatly increased costs for rent, for children's ministries, for music and many other things.

2. Second, we did not go to multi-site to quickly reach more people. The auditorium where we began meeting 10 years ago seats over 2,000 people, and other spaces that size are not available. The spaces we have rented in other parts of the city are far smaller. If we had stayed in that space and multiplied services there, we would have reached greater numbers more swiftly.

So what were the reasons that we adopted the multi-site model?

1. First, we sent our services out into different locations so that people could worship closer to where they lived. People can become more deeply involved in the community and can more easily bring friends if they attend services in their neighborhood. This was an 'anti-mega-church' move, since huge churches create a large body of commuters who travel long distances to attend church. We wanted to resist this tendency and root people more in their locales.

2. Second, the multi-site model is a transition design for us. Redeemer has a timetable for turning each site into a congregation in its own neighborhood, with its own pastoral leadership. I was the main preacher at all sites, but two years ago we went from four to five services at three sites, which is too many for me to preach in a Sunday. Rather than beaming me in by video, we determined that other pastors on the staff would always preach at least that fifth service. When we get to six and seven services, about two years from now, each site will have its own Lead Pastor who will share the preaching with me.

We will then transition from a 'multi-site' to a 'collegiate' model. Though still under one unified board of elders, each church will have its own pastoral team, elder team, and set of lay leaders. Other collegiate models in our PCA denomination include Harbor Presbyterian in San Diego and Brooklyn Presbyterian here in New York City.

I was careful in my interaction with the USA Today journalists not to criticize other multi-site churches. I do not know what motives other churches have for using the multi-site model, but those are ours.

Recientemente, varias personas me han preguntado: "¿cómo afrontas la crítica?" En cada uno de los casos, quienes me han hecho la pregunta han sufrido lo que ellos han considerado ataques injustos contra su persona. En esta era de internet, cualquiera puede tener sus puntos de vista censurados de forma injusta por gente que ni tan siquiera conoce. Por lo tanto, ¿qué haces cuando eso ocurre? He aquí la esencia del consejo que suelo dar cuando me preguntan al respecto. Por muchos años he encontrado de gran ayuda una carta de John Newton, normalmente, titulada "Sobre la Controversia."

El mayor peligro [que corres] al recibir crítica no es para tu reputación, sino para tu corazón. Sientes la injusticia [de la crítica] y sientes lástima por ti mismo, y ello te tienta a no sólo despreciar a la persona crítica, sino a todo el sector o grupo al que pertenecen. "Esa gente..." susurras por lo bajo. Todo esto con el tiempo puede hacer de ti una persona más orgullosa. Newton escribe: "Cualquier cosa que nos haga pensar de nosotros mismos que somos, comparativamente, más sabios o más buenos, de manera que tratemos con desprecio a quienes no comulguen con nuestras doctrinas, o sigan a nuestro partido, es una prueba y fruto de un espíritu de justicia propia." Newton argumenta que cuando quiera que el desprecio o el [sentimiento de] superioridad acompañan a nuestros pensamientos, es una [clara] señal de que las "doctrinas de la gracia" están actuando en nuestras vidas "como simples conceptos y especulaciones" sin "ninguna influencia saludable sobre nuestra conducta."

Así pues, ¿cómo puedes evitar esta tentación? Primero, tienes que mirar a ver si hay la más mínima señal de verdad incluso en el más exagerado e injusto de los ataques. Normalmente, esa mota de verdad está ahí cuando la crítica viene de amigos, y a menudo también está ahí