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.

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."

'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.

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?

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.

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.

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."

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.'

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

I often get asked how I personally became acquainted with the pervasive influence of idolatry in the human heart.

Like many younger ministers I worked far too many hours, never saying "no" to anyone's request for my pastoral services. When salary increases were offered to me, I turned them down. When administrative help was offered to me, I declined. I was quite proud of being the kind of person who worked very hard, never complained, and never asked for any help. This regularly brought me into conflict with my wife, who rightly contended that I was neglecting my relationships to her and to my young sons. It also led to health problems, although I was only in my early thirties.

Nevertheless, I continued to feel that the way I was living was noble and good. I believed I was sacrificially committed to the ministry of the Word. I was especially delighted to make sacrifices that nobody saw -- not my people or even my family. That made me feel most noble of all. If all this created some problems for me personally, wasn't that just evidence of how truly devoted I was? It was a very dangerous situation. My future was bleak, though I didn't know it. In the short run, this kind of ministry workaholism is often rewarded by admiring people all around.

Some well-meaning friends, however, saw the problem and literally "laid the law" on me, showing me that I was violating the commandments of taking Sabbath and of honoring my family. I usually responded with incremental changes that never endured. Others used the modern technique of self-esteem -- "You need to think of yourself; you need to do things that make you happy." I despised that advice as terribly selfish. I valued self-sacrifice.

It wasn't until I began to search my heart with the Biblical category of idolatry that I made the horrendous discovery that all my supposed sacrifices were just a series of selfish actions. I was using people in order to forge my own self-appreciation. I was looking to my sacrificial ministry to give me the sense of "righteousness before God" that should only come from Jesus Christ. People make idols out of money, power, accomplishment, or moral excellence. They look to these things to "save them" -- to give them the sense of purity, value, and acceptability that only Jesus can give. In my case, I was using ministry (and my own people) in this way.

In my blog post on Willow Creek, I said that many Reformed evangelicals think of sound, expository preaching as something of a 'magic bullet.' We may think that as long as we are preaching the Word--preaching the law and the gospel rightly--that everything else in congregational life will somehow take care of itself. We may give lip service to the other two marks of the church--the administration of the sacraments and discipline--but we don't give them proper weight. Fully considered, the administration of the sacraments includes pastoral care, education, and discipleship, while the ministry of discipline means rightly ordering the community, that is, pastoral leadership.

I have often seen many men spend a great amount of time on preparing and preaching lengthy, dense, expository messages, while giving far less time and energy to the learning of leadership and pastoral nurture. It takes lots of experience and effort to help a body of people make a unified decision, or to regularly raise up new lay leaders, or to motivate and engage your people in evangelism, or to think strategically about the stewardship of your people's spiritual gifts, or even to discern what they are. It takes lots of experience and effort to know how to help a sufferer without being either too passive or too directive, or to know when to confront a doubter and when to just listen patiently. Pastors in many of our Reformed churches do not seem to be as energized to learn to be great leaders and shepherds, but rather have more of an eye to being great teachers and preachers.

I'd point us to the example of John Calvin himself. No one put more emphasis on expository preaching as central to ministry. And yet Calvin sat nearly every Thursday in the Consistory, hearing hundreds of practical pastoral cases each year brought by the elders of the city to the council of pastors and other elders. He applied his theology to the intimate details of "adultery and fornication, disputed engagements and weddings, family quarrels, incest, rape, sodomy, buggery, prostitution, voyeurism, abortion, child neglect, child abuse, education disputes, spousal abuse, mistreatment of maids, family poverty, embezzlement of family property, sickness, divorce, marital property disputes, inheritance..." (Witte and Kingdon, Sex, Marriage, and Family in John Calvin's Geneva, Vol 1, p. 15.) Also, Calvin's voluminous correspondence shows what a forceful and wise leader and statesman he was. Because Calvin was not only a preacher but also a great shepherd and leader, he built up the church in a way that changed the world.

I pastor a church with a large staff and so I give 15+ hours a week to preparing the sermon. I would not advise younger ministers to spend so much time, however. When I was a pastor without a staff I put in 6-8 hours on a sermon. If you put in too much time in your study on your sermon you put in too little time being out with people as a shepherd and a leader. Ironically, this will make you a poorer preacher. It is only through doing people-work that you become the preacher you need to be--someone who knows sin, how the heart works, what people's struggles are, and so on. Pastoral care and leadership (along with private prayer) are to a great degree sermon preparation. More accurately, it is preparing the preacher, not just the sermon. Through pastoral care and leadership you grow from being a Bible commentator into a flesh and blood preacher.

This summer I spoke at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. It was an honor to be invited. No one pulls off a conference like Willow Creek. Who else could bring their content to 120,000 people? And the three other talks or sessions that I saw were extremely high quality.

The time at Willow led me to reflect on how much criticism this church has taken over the years. On the one hand, my own 'camp' -- the non-mainline Reformed world -- has been critical of its pragmatism, its lack of emphasis on sound doctrine. On the other hand, the emerging and post-modern ministries and leaders have disdained Willow's individualism, its program-centered, 'corporate' ethos. These critiques, I think, are partly right, but when you are actually there you realize many of the most negative evaluations are caricatures.

John Frame's 'tri-perspectivalism' helps me understand Willow. The Willow Creek style churches have a 'kingly' emphasis on leadership, strategic thinking, and wise administration. The danger there is that the mechanical obscures how organic and spontaneous church life can be. The Reformed churches have a 'prophetic' emphasis on preaching, teaching, and doctrine. The danger there is that we can have a naïve and unBiblical view that, if we just expound the Word faithfully, everything else in the church -- leader development, community building, stewardship of resources, unified vision -- will just happen by themselves. The emerging churches have a 'priestly' emphasis on community, liturgy and sacraments, service and justice. The danger there is to view 'community' as the magic bullet in the same way Reformed people view preaching.

By thinking in this way, it makes it possible for me to love and appreciate the best representatives of each of these contemporary evangelical 'traditions.' Nobody provides more practical help for organizing and leading ministry than Willow Creek. I also am humbled that Redeemer is well-regarded in each of these 'streams' of evangelicalism, though we have our feet firmly set in our own Reformed tradition. That is quite unusual, and it makes it possible for us to both teach and learn across the spectrum of church life today.