Reflections on Church Planting – Volume 1

Ahead of the Curve

Love Letters from our Heavenly Father – Volume 1

All priced for a bad economy

There are those who argue that evangelism must come only through words. “The Gospel must be preached!” They yell.

Then there are those who argue that evangelism must come first through actions. “Preach the Gospel always and when necessary use words.” They parrot (supposedly attributed to Francis of Assisi).

Both sides are very adamant that they are right and yell at the other camp. Well more honestly, one side yells and the other side shakes their heads condescendingly but in the name of love will not address it publicly.
So Christians are again finding themselves fighting against other Christians instead of outshining the lost in the cause of Jesus.

This argument has grown very tiresome to me. Mostly because I believe that both the Gospel proclamation (with words) and Gospel living (with actions) are equally part of the Christian life.  Now don’t get me wrong, the Gospel is not something we live.  It is something that Jesus did and we proclaim His Person and work.  But what Jesus did calls all people into personal responsibility and James said it simply that “faith without works is dead”.

After hearing this argument being waged for some time, I felt that I received some clarity on the discussion. That clarity came in the form of Psalm 19. This glorious Psalm of David breaks down very simply.

vs 1-6 – God’s general revelation in nature

vs 7-11 – God’s specific revelation in His Word

vs 12-14 – God’s personal revelation

This Psalm shows us that God reveals Himself to the world in a general way (through creation), in a specific way (through His Word) but always in a personal way.

Then it dawned on me – this is the evangelism argument!  Although I doubt either side would characterize their position this way, this is what I realized.  There is one camp that feels that the only acceptable route in evangelism in general revelation; that Christians should live as Christ lived, in the power of the Spirit, and bless the world because God blessed us for this reason (thus proclaiming the Gospel in action, yet without using words).  There is another camp that feels that the only acceptable route in evangelism is specific revelation (that words are the only proper way to convey the Person and work of Jesus).  And both feel that there way is the only acceptable personal way to reveal Jesus.

It is my personal belief that we need personal revelation in both general & specific ways thus the argument itself is useless.

Here’s a few quick thoughts on why this argument exists-

a) There are 2 main types of churches within evangelicalism. One that you can call a  ’Cross’ centered church.  This church tends to be focused on the salvation of souls through the preaching of the Gospel.  They preach the cross and man’s need to repent in light of the death and resurrection of Jesus.  They tend to be more focused on saving souls then on anything else.  Then there is the ‘Kingdom’ centered church. This church tends to be focused on making the world a better place because Jesus inaugurated the kingdom.  These churches tend to be more focused on social justice and blessing humanity in practical ways.

b) To look at this same thing from another angle… Most scholars believe that they kingdom of God is both already and not yet.  It is very rare that a church can hold both aspects (already and not yet) in equal tension without letting one be predominant. For those who focus more on the already, they are apt to want to be about living the kingdom in the here and now.  Those who focus more on the not yet of the kingdom will be focused on the proclamation of specific revelation to try and speed the inauguration of the kingdom.

c) Up until more recent times, these two distinct styles seem to be a bit at odds with one another. There were only ‘liberal’ churches that were concerned with social justice. Or there were ‘conservative’ churches that were concerned with the saving of souls.  Social justice churches were ashamed (in some ways) to proclaim the Gospel and preaching churches thought that any work that was not Gospel proclamation was not worthy of the church.  But that has changed recently and this is a good development.

d) People have a tendency to want to maintain the status quo and are inherently resistant to continuing to reform in good and healthy ways.  Preaching churches get nervous if someone wants to include practical acts of service as part of the ecclesiastical life.  Social justice churches get nervous when someone wants to preach the pure Gospel and call people to repentance.

e) Preaching churches have been known only for preaching.  It is at the point today that most communities will not give churches a variance to build a church because they see churches adding little value to the community except the preaching (which the community at large doesn’t value).  So as the pendulum swings, now churches will say that we shouldn’t preach until we have shown them that we can be a blessing to them.  Because evangelicals have done a great job of preaching without subsequent social blessing, the tendency is to jump to the completely other extreme, only wanting to bless their communities without explaining the underlying motivation (Jesus’ substitutionary death and resurrection). This has set up a false dicotomy!

In conclusion, we need both general and specific revelation in a personal way from the body of Christ. Whether that is led by the general or specific revelation matter not.  All that matters is that the church both proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ AND lives in the world in light of the Gospel in such a way that people might see our light so shining amongst men that they may glorify our Father in heaven.

2) I debuted a new quartet this weekend. We really hit on some business on this outro. Enjoy it
here if you like this kind of jazz.

I’ve been feeling a rant coming on for some time now. I’ve been detaching myself from blogging because when I go on a rant I always end up tweaking someone’s stuff.

I am a Christian who lives in the 21st Century. Twitter has now given us a lens into the social media posturing of ministers and pop stars alike

I just find that I don’t understand Christianity today. As a way to assuage my Monday morning angst, I’m going to rant for a bit. Please don’t think I’m down or judging anyone.  I’m just riffing on some things that I think about.

1) By all statistics, Christianity is declining in numbers in America.  Yet churches are being planted with much rapidity (and I’m a church planter).  What this means is that most church plants are growing because of transfer growth (the pillaging of existing churches in the area) not conversion growth.  This is a big problem.

2) How can a pastor call himself missional while wearing $500 designer glasses, a $50 silly hat, a $60 silly deep v-neck shirt, woman pants sporting a manicure and new tattoo?  I think ifJesus’ mission would have a pastor looking like that and stewarding God’s money that way than we need the real Jesus of Nazareth to please stand up.

3) I love and respect Francis Chan.  I respect a man who can follow the Lord’s call.  The only problem is that I hear more about him now that he stepped out of his existing church then when he was there.  And he did that so that people would talk about Jesus more?

4) David Platt’s book Radical is a great book.  But the fact that it’s a NY Times best seller is the irony of all ironies.  How the Christian book sellers pumped the book to Christians for Christmas was exactly what David was talking against.  I hate to sound negative, but I would love for someone to do a survey of people who read the book and see if they are actually living more radically generous a year after reading the book then what they were before.

5) I’m a big fan of Acts 29.  But they are reaching that over-saturation of the market point that the New Kids on the Block hit in the early 90s, as did President Obama did within his first year in office.  I recently spoke to someone who left a church that they were at for years to go to the new A29 church in the area.  I said, “What made you decide to go to the A29 church?”  They said, “You can’t deny a church where the pastor talks about local microbrews to make biblical points.”  I’m sure Jesus was excited at that reasoning.

6) Concerned about the growing expression of legalism/elitism in the young Calvinists.  It’s the natural evolution of how these things go but I hope that someone steps in and staves it off.

7) Is it just me or do people like talking about the ‘gospel’ more than ‘Jesus’ these days?  Now I know that the gospel is all about Jesus.  But the trendy Kelleresque (who I love) everything focuses on the gospel thing is just over the top at this point.  We are saved by Jesus.  We trust in Jesus.  The gospel is simply the telling of what Jesus has and is doing.  We need to point people to Jesus.  Look at your Twitter feed, my bet is that the word gospel will appear twice as much as Jesus. I don’t understand that!

8) I am realizing that the church that can really reach the truly unreached Western mindset and the church that Christians want to attend are in radical opposition to each other.  Plus I think if a church was started that could reach the nonChristians it would fill up with Christians so fast that it would stop reaching the lost.  This is a problem.

9) The Great Purge – I’ve been reading much about the organic launching of the Monastic movement as a way to truly experience Jesus when the churches had gotten worldly and trendy.  The stage is set for faithful disciples of Jesus to do the same thing, flee the institution of church because of its worldliness.

10) How is Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Living Grace podcast not the most popular Christian podcast in America?  Why would anyone want to listen to any of the darlings of today when you can listen to a giant from every age!
Here is the link!

11) I have a total man-crush on John Stott.  Now because he was never married and I live around San Francisco, that could surely make some internet waves, but this guy is just too brilliant.  And all his teachings are online for free download for free!
Here’s the link to get Stott’s sermons (you have sign up for free to have access) Love this site

12)It is true that the center of Christianity is heading east (and the centers of Eastern religions are heading west).  Recently back from India and the churches are flourishing in such an amazing way.

13) We really need to do something with contemporary Christian worship music.  If I play one more set where every chorus is a I-V-vi-IV progression I’m going to die of boredom.  Can someone please be the Beethoven to todays Mozart expression of worship?  We need some dissonance please!

I’ll stop there.
For now