Pillar on the Rock

Firebrand Preaching: A Call for Exultation and Exhortation

2012-05-24T08:00:00.000-05:00

—Chris Krycho

Note: this post was cross-posted to Ardent Fidelity, my personal theology blog.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones once famously defined preaching as “logic on fire.” I am afraid that in most churches, the preaching is more like logic in tepid bathwater, or emotional claptrap on fire. Neither is particularly helpful.

In the church circles I frequent, preachers have the logic part down. I might have a quibble here or there with an interpretive point, but these are quibbles and matters of personal taste. These pastors recognize the importance of truth and labor to communicate that truth to the congregation. Praise God for pastors who care that their congregations apprehend the truths of Scripture, and who care that the men and women in the seats walk away with some idea of how to put God’s commands into practice.

In my experience, though, the other half of Lloyd-Jones’ equation often goes missing. We have humor in spades and interesting anecdotes in surplus. That is, on the whole, a good thing: boring sermons are an offense to the hearer. But where is the fire? Where is the passion, the sense of urgency, the fervency of the preacher’s declarations and appeals?

One might suppose that a preacher’s task is primarily to deliver information; this is true, but woefully incomplete. A lecture, like a sermon, is designed to deliver information, perhaps even to inspire an audience to commit to some change. A sermon, however, is not merely a lecture; it includes the delivery of information with the aim of changing the hearer, and it is an act of corporate worship in which the audience should participate. Because a sermon is an act of corporate worship, we must go beyond mere information delivery.

Most sermons in evangelical church culture are structured in terms of explanation and application; this is as it should be. Unfortunately, most sermons in our church culture never get beyond explanation and application – this is not as it should be.

Where we often settle for explanation – simply stating what the text says and means – we need exultation. We need pastors who revel in the truth revealed by Scripture, who savor the profound realities of our salvation, who visibly delight in our great God and Savior. Explanation is necessary; but exultation subsumes it and directs both preaching and listening into acts of worship. When the pastor worships as he explains, the congregation learns to worship – and worships right along with him. Exultation requires that he not only understand the passage he is preaching, but also feel the weight of the glory of God. I don’t mean some faux emotionalism, but a passion for God that comes from meditating on him as revelead in the scriptures.

Likewise, we settle for mere application when we need exhortation. Again: we need to hear how that truth is applicable to the Christian’s life. However, there is a world of difference between the bare statement of fact and a heartfelt exhortation. Mere application contents itself with, “So, we see that the Christian life looks like this. Let’s all think about how we might grow in that this week.” Exhortation, by contrast, reaches out and grabs the listener with the force of the pastor’s sense that his congregation needs this truth. “Christian!” cries this pastor, “you must believe this every day! You must shape your life like this – the work and the very nature of God demand it of us.” The source of this urgency is twofold: meditation on God himself, and close relationships with the people of the church. No pastor can emphasize his congregation’s needs when he hardly knows his people.

You know a sermon that exults and exhorts when you hear it. Every pastor’s delivery will be different, of course. Exultation and exhortation are not a matter of style – as though a particular approach to public speaking were the issue. But there will be a common thread, a sense that the pastor feels this truth in his bones and that he knows you need to feel the truth as profoundly as he does. As a modern example, compare the preaching of John Piper, Matt Chandler, and David Platt. These men could hardly be more different in style, in tone, in delivery – but in each of them you can hear their passion for God and their urgent desire to stir up their congregations. Style matters little; firebrand preaching requires his veins to pump with urgency for his people and delight in God.

The sermon is more than a lecture; we need more than information. We need explanation and application, yes, but we need them transformed by holy delight and pastoral concern. We need to be challenged and encouraged, and we need to be led to worship together. We need exhortation and exultation. We need fire.

A link and an update

2012-01-30T09:11:00.000-06:00

—Chris Krycho

Regular readers of this site may be interested to know that I have relaunched my own personal website, including a section devoted to theology and reflection. You can stop by Ardent Fidelity if you're interested.

Look for more new old book reviews over the next several weeks, and sometime in the next few months another new post by yours truly on preaching.

Boundaries in Marriage [Book Review]

2012-01-18T08:30:00.000-06:00

—PJ King

[The following is a republication (and re-edit!) of a review PJ wrote for his own (now-defunct) personal blog some time ago. There is enough search traffic for this article that we felt it deserved to be archived here. We hope you find PJ’s review informative.]

Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend coauthored Boundaries in Marriage. Both authors maintain private practices in clinical psychology in Newport Beach, California. Cloud earned a B.S. in Psychology from Southern Methodist University and a PhD in clinical psychology from Biola University. Townsend earned a B.A. in Psychology from North Carolina State University, a Master of Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, and a PhD in clinical psychology from Biola University.

Boundaries in Marriage is one book in a series which also includes:

Boundaries
Boundaries in Dating
Boundaries with Teens
Boundaries with Kids

This book is divided into 16 chapters. The middle section (specifically, chapters 5 - 13), provides advice to married couples on concepts such as love, honesty, faithfulness, compassion, forgiveness, holiness, and resolving conflict. These chapters contain good, straight-forward advice which is easy to apply. However, these chapters with the best material were supported by the least unique concepts. It would be simple to find better Christian marriage books which presented this same material.

While chapters 1-4 and 14-16 do offer something unique to the marriage discussion, most of the content is taken straight from the original Boundaries book and applied to marriage. Some of this material is acceptable, but a minority of the advice in these chapters is badly edited or unhelpful. Because the middle chapters are uncontroversial and easily replaced with other books, I will focus on these problematic sections instead.

The authors claim, “This book is not about changing, fixing, or making your spouse do anything.”1 While I whole-heartedly agree with the premise—it emphasizes that spouses should act lovingly towards each other, regardless of reciprocity—this concept was contradicted many times throughout the book, as when the authors wrote, "[Boundaries] are to protect and structure you, and only secondarily to change and motivate him."2

Given the authors’ credentials, I was hoping to find biblical teachings in this book, but I ultimately found it lacking. One false teaching involves the "Law of Responsibility." According to Cloud and Townsend, there are "Ten Laws of Boundaries". The second "Law" is of "Responsibility." This law states, "We are responsible to each other, but not for each other."3 This presents a problem in light of Ephesians 5:23, "For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body." Because Christ is the head and savior of the church, He is responsible for the church, and particularly, for her sins. To properly relate the headship of Christ over His church to the headship of a husband over his wife, the husband must be responsible for his wife.

While the "Law of Responsibility" might be valid in most relationships, it is completely invalid in the relationship of a husband to his wife. Interestingly, the final chapter essentially affirms my argument—referring to Ephesians 5:22-23, 25 the authors write, "Basically this passage establishes a sense of order in a marriage. It places final responsibility for the family on the shoulders of the husband." Once again, the authors of this book directly contradict themselves, even contradicting one of their “Laws”. For more on the topic of a husband's responsibility for the family, I recommend Douglas Wilson's Federal Husband or Reforming Marriage.

The next major fault can be found in chapter four, "It Takes Two to Make One." This title points to Genesis 2:24, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh." Unfortunately, the authors take this biblical premise, and transform it into something incoherent and incorrect. Cloud and Townsend write, "You must become a complete individual on your own in order to have true oneness with your spouse."4 Indeed, the authors seem to view a ‘complete individual’ as one who can perform tasks in all domains of life:

You may have heard couples say, "We are such a good balance for each other." This can be good if, for example, he is good at business and she is good at building the nest, or vice versa. But it is not good if it means that she could not survive in the real world of work and commerce on her own without him. If this is true, she has married a "meal ticket," or someone to take care of her in a childlike dependency. And he has married a "mother" to make the home that he could not build for himself while he goes off and plays during the day.

Again, this is well-intentioned and partly on the right track, but the authors ultimately go off the rails. Genesis 2:24 doesn’t qualify ‘one flesh;’ there are no requirements on the ‘completeness’ of the husband nor the wife. A man and wife are ‘one’ in all marriages, regardless of the problems of each individual spouse. It disturbs me that the authors push the idea that, in order to be a "complete" individual, the woman must have business acumen and the man must be part domestic-diva.

Throughout my reading, I noticed that the authors studiously avoided the topic of submission in marriage (despite the prominence of the concept in the New Testament). The final chapter, "Avoiding the Misuse of Boundaries in Marriages," which does devote three pages to the topic, only slightly remedied this problem. The authors' take on submission is fairly healthy, but its placement in the book minimizes its impact and suggests that submission is merely an afterthought in the context of Boundaries.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, there is some good material Boundaries in Marriage. The best advice put forward is ownership; Cloud and Townsend teach that you need to own your actions toward your spouse. More importantly, no matter what your spouse does toward you, you must own your reactions to the situation. This is excellent advice for holy living in general and is a great nugget of wisdom for marriage, specifically.

In summary, Boundaries in Marriage is a poorly edited book with many contradictions. The good advice is not unique, and the unique advice is not good.

Review: skip it

Recommended alternatives:

Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas
Reforming Marriage by Douglas Wilson

We hope you found this review helpful. If so, we have several others available to you on our Book Reviews page.

1 p. 62, emphasis mine

2 p. 229, emphasis mine

3 p. 42, emphasis original

4 p. 91

Gutsy Confrontations, or: A Serious Deficit in our Churches

2011-11-29T08:30:00.000-06:00

—Chris Krycho

During our community group prayer time recently, I spoke to Jaimie in a way that demonstrated a lack of trust in her. I quickly apologized after the meeting ended, but the damage was done, and everyone saw it. Later that evening, one of the other young men in our group wrote me a concerned message confronting me for the way I had spoken to my wife. It was a humbling experience, to say the least – but also a beautiful picture of Christian community.

The next week, after I shared this same story with our community group, another member of the group commented to me privately how gutsy that confrontation had been – and so it was. It required a good deal of courage, and accordingly I held my friend up as an example for the rest of the group to emulate.

But the truth is that it shouldn't have been a particularly gutsy move to follow up with me like that. When one Christian confronting another about his sin is notably courageous, something has gone horribly wrong.

Slaves to our culture

This generation of Christians is more concerned about the possibility of hurting people's feelings than about the danger of sin. Christians are just following the trend here; our culture has a deep aversion to conflict and finds judgment abhorrent.

As accommodations to postmodern sensibilities go, this one has been sufficiently unobtrusive as to mostly slip under the radar. Unlike the many blatant attacks levied on the categories of truth and ethics, almost no one has directly argued for a church culture where sin goes unchallenged. It simply happened – an insidious, cancerous result of failing to evaluate our culture's values. We have made real sin a small thing and put in its place that great crime of our age: offending someone.

The sad result: most Christians now attend churches where their sins will never be confronted at all (unless – perhaps – if their sins are sexual in nature).

After all, in my own, relatively healthy church, it really was a brave move for my friend to urge me to repent of my sin toward my wife. How will people grow out of their sin if no one ever helps them?

Judge not!

The result of our silence in the face of sin is an awful stagnation. People cannot grow in holiness when they remain under the sway of sin. Further, none of us are perfectly aware of our own sins. We need other believers checking our blind spots. Unfortunately, if you dared to bring up someone's sin, you will inevitably hear, "Judge not, lest you be judged!"

That refrain is right, but most people shouting it completely miss the point. Look at Matthew 7:1-5 again, paying special attention to Jesus' conclusion:

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.”

When we actually read Jesus' words in full, his meaning becomes clear, and it couldn't be any further from an injunction against confrontation. Jesus simply calls us to deal with our own sin first so that we can confront our fellow Christians' sins appropriately and without becoming hypocrites. A host of other passages1 speak to this issue as well, most notably Matthew 18:15-20:

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.

If we take Jesus seriously (as I hope all our readers do), we should recognize that the confrontation should be neither rare nor considered particularly courageous in our churches. In fact, if we intend to shape our churches around Jesus' teaching, graciously confronting one another should be normative, one of the defining traits of the church.

Indeed, the whole process of church discipline should be a normal part of church life. Too many Christians hesitate to offer a strong critique, much less actual discipline, yet the New Testament clearly indicates that discipline is good for both the church and the individual being rebuked. Moreover, there is often no need for those final, painful steps if we faithfully confront each other early on, instead of letting sin go unchecked.

Loving One Another

Brothers and sisters, we need to recover a biblical vision of holy community.

When we are more likely to quarrel over the color of the carpet than to correct one another for quarreling, something has gone terribly wrong. When a kind and gracious rebuke to an obviously sinning brother (like me) has become a gutsy move, something has gone terribly wrong. When we cannot conceive of putting unrepentant sinners out of the church, despite Jesus' clear instruction to do just that, something has gone terribly wrong.

When we submit to Scripture's teaching in this area and love one another enough to call each other on the carpet – when we care deeply enough about one another's to fight against sin and grow in holiness together – we will see something beautiful. We will see a church that really does reflect Christ more perfectly every day.

1 See, for example, 1 Corinthians 5, Galatians 6:1-10, 1 Timothy 5:19-20, Titus 3:1-11, and James 5. For a more detailed discussion of Jesus' teaching on church discipline in Matthew 18, see PJ's treatment of the subject.

Qualifications of Overseers: 1 Timothy 3:1-7

2011-11-14T15:29:00.001-06:00

—PJ King

With PJ King currently attending seminary, and (God willing) formal theological education in Chris' relatively near future as well, Pillar on the Rock will make some of our papers available for wider reading and discussion as they're applicable for our audience. These papers are necessarily academic in tone and content, but we hope they will be informative to the interested reader, as well as accessible to the internet-searching theologian with a penchant for paper-reading.

This first paper was completed by PJ King a little over a week ago, and hits on a topic near and dear to our hearts at Pillar: church leadership. We've provided the introduction; the PDF of the full file is available here as a download. (Note that we have omitted citations in this introduction; they are found in full in the paper.) Enjoy!

Introduction

The passage of 1 Timothy 3:1-7 is generally understood to be a list of character-based qualifications for overseers in the New Testament Church. Although the majority of the passage is straight-forward and uncontroversial, there are a few matters which have generated much debate. First, there are questions about the tradition of Pauline authorship for the whole of the Pastoral Epistles (PE, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus). Second, in limited circles there is concern over the language of drunkard (πάροινος, v. 3). Finally, and of concern to all, is the ambiguous phrase husband of one wife (μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἄνδρα) in v. 2.

Context

The First Epistle of Paul to Timothy has been traditionally viewed as a letter written by the historical Paul to the historical Timothy. However, throughout the modern era there has been ongoing debate over the validity of the traditional view. I. Howard Marshall (who theorizes against Pauline authorship) provides this view of the scholarly divide:

A significant minority of scholars hold that the PE are the work of Paul, whether directly or indirectly by the use of a secretary/amanuensis. Nevertheless, most other scholars now take it almost as an unquestioned assumption that the PE are not the work of Paul.

The authorship debate hinges primarily on the author’s language, style, and thought, and not on historical timelines. This lack of historical concern undermines the majority argument. The linguistic and stylistic differences between the PE and the definitive Pauline corpus can be accounted for in at least two ways. First, consider the different style and vocabulary Paul might use with the recipients of the Pastoral Epistles (Timothy and Titus, with whom Paul has a close relationship) to the typical audience of a Pauline letter (a particular church facing a particular crisis, with the expectation of other churches reading the letter). A second explanation, which has been offered by many minority scholars, is that the amanuensis (secretary) changed between Paul’s other writings and the PE, or more license was given to the writer, which brought about the linguistic differences. Furthermore, the assumption of non-Pauline authorship brings with it a number of problems concerning the authenticity and authority of the Pastoral Epistles. As Walter Liefeld comments, “If the historical Paul and the historical Timothy and Titus are not the author and recipients, we move away not only from history towards fiction, but also away from a natural, legitimate understanding of the text.” For these reasons, this paper will take Towner’s position regarding authorship: “Paul is the author of these three letters however much or little others contributed to their messages and composition.”

Paul’s first letter to Timothy is noteworthy because of its unique blend of pastoral, ecclesiological, and relational concerns. Paul left Timothy in Ephesus to oversee the city’s church, perhaps as an apostolic delegate, in order to bring it back to health. Timothy remained behind, in particular, to protect the church from false teachers, who had already done the church some harm. This letter aimed to teach and encourage Timothy in the building up of the church in Ephesus, including instructions on corporate worship, church offices, and personal relationships. Between Paul’s instructions for corporate worship and methods for dealing with false teaching, we find a most important topic: the qualifications for church officers.

Passage

In this passage, Paul presents Timothy with a set of qualifications for elders, and follows with a similar list for deacons and a group of women. The qualifications largely focus on character and seem specifically nuanced for the problems facing the church in Ephesus. Each of these offices come from appointment or selection and clearly includes a period of testing (either before or after selection). Utmost importance is placed on the character of the candidates, followed by the quality of personal relationships (with the family, Christians, and the world), and lastly, a few qualifications fall directly on ability, e.g., having the ability to teach.

You can read the rest of the paper here. Let us know what you think!

Can you hear me singing?

2011-10-06T08:30:00.000-05:00

—Chris Krycho

Last week I was standing around chatting with some friends (after wrapping up our community group meeting), and we began discussing the volume of the worship music at most evangelical churches. Loud is the general rule, of course – rock-band loud. The topic had been on my mind ever since I read Matt Anderson's solid book on physical theology, Earthen Vessels.As he said there,

…the volume of the worship band is inversely proportional to the volume and vitality of the congregational worship.

Both a friend from our community group and PJ (playing devil's advocate; see some of his real thoughts here) made precisely the same point in response: Some people simply feel more comfortable singing when they can't hear their own voices. I think Matt's response in our interview with him was on target:

It's true that loud music might make some people feel more free to sing loudly, but you know what else might make them feel free that way? A congregation around them that is singing really loudly. Especially if a few of those voices are not as perfect as the ones on stage. That sort of congregational singing communicates that this is a place where people sing and are welcome to sing, but I'm not sure that loud music communicates that as well (in fact, it often communicates the opposite--this is a place where the band sings and people watch and nod their head). So to presume that the technological solution is the only one to engage all the members of the congregation is, I think, wrong. And if people are judgmental about the quality of people's singing in the congregation, well, that's a spiritual problem that an amp isn't going to solve either.

He hit a lot of right notes in that response, but I think there is more to be said.

Loners in a crowd

I am convinced the real reason many of us want the music to be loud is so that we can get lost in our own private, personal experiences. We want to sense the presence of God, to enjoy the engagement of singing our emotions to God, to come away having been moved by our time with.

The problem with this is that the experience we seek is so individualistic. The last thing we want is to be distracted by a crowd. We feel that ur neighbor's sniffles, a crying baby, and our own poor singing will only keep us from that experience. We gather not to be a gathering, but rather to increase the decibel level and, accordingly, our heart rates.

The desire for experiential worship is not inherently bad, however much it may run amok when unrestrained. We ought to hunger for the experience of God's presence, to enjoy pouring our hearts out in worship and to be moved by the act of praise. Just as importantly, though, we ought to want to worship God in community, not as loners in a crowd.

Corporate worship, you see, is not primarily about any one individual's experience – it's about the corporate experience. We gather to worship God together. God's people have always made times to worship him as a group, and make no mistake: a group singing together is vastly different from a mere conglomeration of individuals.

Another friend of mine recalled a large men's conference he had attended in the 1990's. During the conference, the men often sung a cappella, thundering out the great hymns and choruses of the church. Tens of thousands of men raising their voices to God in unison was different than those same men each raising his own voice in practical solitude, drowned out by a band. No doubt there were many imperfect voices raised, many notes missed, and many words flubbed, but they were united in their worship, and my friend remembers those times of worship to this day.

Not as mere individuals

When we cannot hear one another sing – worse, when we do not want to hear one another sing – we make it clear that we don't see the value of the gathered church praising God together. We demonstrate that we are concerned with ourselves first and foremost, and that's backward.

There is a place and time for individual experiences of worship, and each of us should actively participate in worship at every level ndash; emotional, intellectual, and physical – during corporate gatherings. But your experience of worship and mine are secondary. We come to worship together.

The church has many purposes – and none of them are about us as individuals. Obviously, discipleship, community, and worship all involve individuals, but each aims at something broader and deeper: the good of the whole church, and the unity of the whole church in glorifying God. Just as we cannot build community with a group of men and women seeking only their own gratification, we cannot worship God as we are meant to when we approach worship individualistically.

We need to remember: we come together to worship as a church – a community – not as mere individuals.

Worshiping God together

We don't have to go a cappella to make a meaningful shift in this direction. We don't even have to drop the rock band. For most evangelical churches, three simple changes would make a world of difference:

Drop the volume a few notches: It doesn't have to be a lot, just enough that we can hear one another.
Teach the congregation: Most congregations have no concept of the importance of the church – not to mention how God's dealings in history focus on his people, not simply on individual persons.
Lead by example: pastors, if your voice is terrible, you probably shouldn't lead the singing… but maybe you should sing with all your heart nonetheless, and help your congregation recognize that it's okay not to be a studio professional. Back that up with some exhortation from the pulpit, and your congregation might grow into singing together.

However you get there, I implore you: stop making corporate worship about individual experiences. Make it about the people of God worshiping Him together.

What do you think? Leave a comment and let us know.

Matthew Lee Anderson Interview, part 3

2011-08-11T08:30:00.003-05:00

—Chris Krycho

Matthew Lee Anderson is the author of the recently released Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter To Our Faith (you can read my review here). He's also a Biola grad (not Wheaton! Biola!), a reader of old books (50 years old is probably too recent for his tastes), a lover of musicals (even Rogers and Hammerstein) and, sad to say, a compulsive double spacer (even after colons).

More importantly, he's a thoughtful writer with a real passion for gospel-saturated lives and God-shaped theology. You can read more of his work at the group blog he runs, Mere Orthodoxy. He's generously given us a slice of his time to discuss some of the important points raised by the book. We hope you enjoy this second part of our interview—look for the conclusion later this week! And don't forget to pick up a copy of the book!

Tattoos, Sex, and Liturgies

In your chapter on tattoos, you studiously avoided offering an outright statement of your own views on tattoos—so what do you think about them?

Precisely what I wrote in the book. : ) I think part of the problem with this question is that people want an absolute "yes" or "no" to these questions, but I'm just not sure how helpful that is. I am not a relativist about these things (nor do I think one should be), but I also think that in the final analysis ethics needs to be done in particular situations, not in the abstract. And I think what people need on this question, more than a final affirmation or rejection of tattoos, is to understand precisely what a tattoo is and what it signifies and to deliberate reflectively about that.

In your chapter on sexuality, you wrote, "A church without singles has lost one of its main ways of warning against a sexual idolatry that has driven the whole world mad." For many of our readers, this concept may be almost entirely foreign. In our (good and necessary) rush to defend marriage, it seems we have marginalized not only singles but singleness, at least in the sense of framing it in a Christian light. This is a tense area, because many people are single who wish to be married, and the church wants to serve them. How have you seen churches walk this out well?

Framing the question around who is doing this well is interesting, and I'd love to hear from you and your readers what you have seen that has worked. I am pretty skeptical about the "singles groups" that were the trend for a while, as that sort of segregation often reinforces a second-class status and tends to make people feel like the groups are simply a cover to meet other single Christians. I have seen many of my single friends who want to get married really, really struggle to find someone and it breaks my heart. But there's a deeper goodness that I think the church has to speak of and to repeatedly call people toward.

In your chapter on worship, you suggested (fairly strongly, it seemed to me) that most evangelical churches need to reevaluate the structure and content of their services. After all, if our bodies matter, then our habits of worship matter too: standing and kneeling, listening, singing (and the kinds of songs we sing), and taking communion are all quite important. Can you sketch out, briefly, what a so-called "low church" service (like most of our readers experience) shaped by a concern for the body might look like?

Well, I'm not a worship leader and my hope is that worship leaders and pastors will go implement this in their own contexts and report back. But I would prefer to see a greater openness to something like planned and regular embodied responses, especially toward those (like kneeling) we see in the Bible. It would not be that significant of a change, for instance, to "low" churches to include kneeling pillows and to incorporate that into their services, even if its just to encourage those individuals who are so inclined to respond in that way. Or take communion every week and ask people to walk forward. These aren't "high church" or "low church" ideas, I don't think.

Following up on that, you suggested that we might do well to a "law" you've observed: "the volume of the worship band is inversely proportional to the volume and vitality of the congregational worship." I've observed this as well. It's pretty controversial to suggest that style and even volume might really matter, but you went there. So return for a moment: what about the people who find louder songs freeing to sing themselves, or more engaging of their emotions? We're left asking how we can best engage all the members of a congregation in worship, but we're all very different. What do you think?

It's true that loud music might make some people feel more free to sing loudly, but you know what else might make them feel free that way? A congregation around them that is singing really loudly. Especially if a few of those voices are not was perfect as the one's on stage. That sort of congregational singing communicates that this is a place where people sing and are welcome to sing, but I'm not sure that loud music communicates that as well (in fact, it often communicates the opposite--this is a place where the band sings and people watch and nod their head). So to presume that the technological solution is the only one to engage all the members of the congregation is, I think, wrong. And if people are judgmental about the quality of people's singing in the congregation, well, that's a spiritual problem that an amp isn't going to solve either.

What signs of hope do you see in evangelicalism in the area of theology of the body? What signs for worry? And last but certainly not least: what do you hope to see happen as a result of Earthen Vessels being out there in the evangelical conversation?

I'll have to reference my Christianity Today for the first one. And for the second as well. As to what I hope happens, my hope is that evangelicals will devote more of our intellectual capital to answering many of the questions you have raised. I think that's all I can hope for, really. The trick with writing a book, I'm learning, is letting go of whatever fruits and effect it might have and embracing the quietude of it all.

Thanks for your time!

We hope you have enjoyed this interview with Matthew Lee Anderson. Leave a comment sharing your thoughts—and go buy the book!

Matthew Lee Anderson Interview, part 2

2011-08-08T08:30:00.009-05:00

—Chris Krycho

Looks, Working Out, and the Cult of the Female Body

One point I had hoped you'd have opportunity to elaborate on, but didn't, was the notion that "when our original parents sinned, they did not simply destroy our relationship with God, with each other, and with the creation around us. They also destroyed our integrity as human persons so that our internal and external dimensions no longer work in harmony. How do our external and internal dimensions suffer this discord?

This is a great question, and it deserves a much longer and more nuanced answer than I can give it here. But I'll say this: the body seems to have engrained habits and tendencies that go against what we internally might desire or want. There's trickiness that we can get into here about second order desires, first order desires, etc., and how those different desires relate to us wanting to do something but not being able to do it. But I think what I could say now is that the body doesn't always do what we want it to, when we want it to, and how we want it to.

The evangelical community has quite the fixation on appearance. Whether it's the requirement for a suit and tie in some circles, or the emphasis on black-rimmed glasses and turtlenecks and ripped jeans in others, we seem to have let the way someone looks become incredibly important. You wrote,

When cleanliness and bodily order become required for entrance into our communities, as they clearly are in most evangelical churches, then we have adopted a standard inhospitable to those whose bodies either might intrude at inopportune times (such as infants and the elderly) or who lack the grooming that an affluent society has transformed into a requirement.

How does this impact the church's witness to the world?

I think it presents a false understanding of the immense diversity of the body of Christ and undermines our stated values of inclusion. And it communicates something other than the Gospel, which has set us free from the need to conform to external standards of appearance. That's no grounds for license or for Christian anarchy--form matters. But what kind of form is the whole question, and I don't think we've got that right.

In terms of solutions, you wrote,

[Our] fitness and our fashion needs to take its cues from the cross and the resurrection... We are to dress ourselves with a holy indifference to the broken standards of beauty and with the confidence that our identity lies not in our conformity to this world but in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

What would cross-shaped fitness and fashion look like? How do you apply that idea in your own life?

Well, it has actually started to mean dressing up just a bit more than I've gotten used to--but only for certain occasions. I don't particularly care these days about my clothing, but when I go out on a date I've started to take that more seriously as an act of sacrifice and giving to my wife. She hasn't asked me to, and I don't think she really cares all that much. But its a trivial way that I've found to think more about her (not sure she's noticed yet, though!).

As for fitness, this is a tough issue that I'm less consistent on than I should be (like, well, all the issues I write about in EV). I do think a cross-shaped fitness regime would pay careful attention to health, but with an openness to being distracted and derailed by other people in the gym. This is an area where I struggle, because it's one of the only times that I get to consume fiction (through audiobooks), so I tend to ignore everyone else. But like the Good Samaritan, I think I really need to be more open to being derailed from my audiobooks and present toward others who are near me in my working out.

Can I have the easy questions now, please?

In Jim Hamilton's God's Glory in Salvation Through Judgment, he writes,

Perhaps if Isaiah were prophesying today, he would indict the cult of the female body, worshiped by men gawking at pornography and by women giving themselves to eating disorders in attempts to attain the perceived ideal.

When I read that, I realized both that the worship of the female body is indeed one of the great idolatries of our age, and that it is certainly the one most like the pagan worship of old, where sexuality and divinity were related. Why do you think that impulse has such power in our culture, and what can Christians do to counteract it?

Well, as you point out, the female form doesn't just have power in our culture, which makes this an enduring issue. Helen of Troy had, after all, a face that launched a thousand ships. I do think, though, that female beauty has been degraded in our own culture to a sort of sexualized prettiness that is a cheap imitation, and that Christians would do well to learn to see the difference. Women are more than hair, makeup, and clothes, but most men can't see anything beyond that.

At the same time, we have to recognize that the cult of the female body, as you put it, isn't. It's a cult of the "fantasized female form that has been photoshopped into oblivion." The problem with all idolatry is that it corrupts the creation as much as the worshipper, because it is fundamentally a rejection of reality. And so a pornofied culture cannot bear to see real women for very long because they do not fit the falsified image. As Christians, we have to learn to see through those appearances to the hideous, false deceptions beneath.

We hope you have enjoyed the second part of our interview with Matthew Lee Anderson—look for the conclusion soon! Leave a comment sharing your thoughts—and go buy the book!

Matthew Lee Anderson Interview, part 1

2011-07-28T10:33:00.009-05:00

—Chris Krycho

More importantly, he's a thoughtful writer with a real passion for gospel-saturated lives and God-shaped theology. You can read more of his work at the group blog he runs, Mere Orthodoxy. He's generously given us a slice of his time to discuss some of the important points raised by the book. We hope you enjoy this first part of our interview—look for the remainder next week! And don't forget to pick up a copy of the book!

A Theology of the Body

I really enjoyed Earthen Vessels, and I think you've done the evangelical community a service in starting this conversation at a more popular level. Here's my first question: what got you started on this topic? And as an immediate follow-up, how exactly would you describe this topic (physical anthropological theology might work, but it's a bit wordy)?

Thanks. I'm not sure I've started this conversation, but I'm definitely trying to inject some life into it. I had lots of life events that moved me into the topic, but the first time I reflected about it intentionally was reading Dallas Willard's Spirit of the Disciplines, which made me realize just how pervasive the body is in St. Paul's thought. And then I read Plato and realized that Paul's understanding of the body wasn't just good because it's inspired by the Holy Spirit. It's good because Paul is a world-class genius who understands the body better than maybe anyone else in history, save Jesus. Dude is smart, and his stuff on the body is good.

You get lots of descriptions of the topic. Some go with body theology, others with theology of the body. I think I prefer the latter: it's not theology proper, which is about the doctrine of God, and it's not quite theological anthropology either. It's akin to a theology of work or a theology of technology. Stare long enough at it and you're going to find yourself entangled in all the problems of any properly theological problem, but the route into them is not through the doctrine of God but through the physical body.

Obviously, this theme is one that runs throughout Paul's letters, but of course there are places where it comes to the forefront. What are the main places where Paul develops his theology of the body?

Absolutely there are places that come to the forefront. It's hard to single out places in Romans, but chapters 6 and 8 are obviously crucial. 1 Corinthians 6 is a major passage, as is 1 Corinthians 15. And you can't leave out 2 Corinthians 4 and 5. Read all those and you'll have a solid handle on what Paul thinks about the body.

As someone with a background in a charismatic church, one of your more intriguing statements was,

"Yet emphasizing physical healing also carries risks; when it overwhelms our belief in the resurrection from the dead, it can easily slip into the sort of word of faith and prosperity gospel preaching that preys on the worst parts of the charismatic movement."

Similarly, you wrote,

"But it also narrows our attention to God’s power to heal the body, rather than God’s power to sanctify the body through reforming its habits and dispositions."

Would you elaborate on how the charismatic movement's emphasis on physical healing can overwhelm our belief in the resurrection, and how that leads to both the abuses and neglect of discipline for the body we sometimes see there?

I think bodily healing is possible, but it's important to ensure that is distinguished from the bodily transformation that is sanctification. Healing restores the health of the body, while sanctification conforms us to the unique reality of God's love which is revealed in the person of Jesus. While bodily health is obviously a good, it's a good that won't be made permanent until the resurrection from the dead, when the good of bodily healing is united with the good of sanctification. Keeping those two notions of how the Spirit interacts with physicality separate helps explain why not everyone who believes will be physically healed, even while (I think) some people might be.

That points me back to another thought: throughout the book, you note the ways that the Incarnation informs our view of the human body. What are some of the particulars we should take away when it comes to the body in view of Christ's taking on flesh?

By the same token, what are the ways that the Resurrection in particular should affect our understanding of the human body?

Rather than giving you a full answer to either of the first two questions, let me point out two quick points that I've been pondering. It's very easy to move quickly from thinking about the incarnation to being "incarnational." We've expended a lot of effort within the church in the last few years talking about the latter. But a lot of times, "incarnational" gets separated from the Incarnation and we end up with blanket affirmations of 'engagement' rather than a more narrowly construed understanding that takes its lead from the specific revelation of Jesus. As Karl Barth points out, the Gospels are almost wholly unconcerned with depicting the "normal affairs" of Jesus' earthly life and almost wholly consumed with his status as Lord and his unique mission. That should be instructive for thinking about our own bodily lives, I think.

As to the resurrection, I think we often lose sight of permanence as a theological category, but one of the many things the resurrection seems to do is underscore both the transience of our own lives and the stability and endurance of the life which God has for us.

As to your final question, though he doesn't directly talk about the body much, Oliver O'Donovan is always floating around there, as is C.S. Lewis. But go behind both of them and you'll find the thinker who they both learned from: Augustine.

We hope you have enjoyed the first part of our interview with Matthew Lee Anderson. Leave a comment sharing your thoughts—and go buy the book!

Earthen Vessels [Book Review]

2011-07-20T08:30:00.002-05:00

—Chris Krycho

It has become something of a truism in recent years that any discussion about the state of American Christianity will inevitably include a reference to Greek philosophy and latent gnosticism. It is a bit fitting, then, that Matthew Lee Anderson opens Earthen Vessels, his new book on theology of the body, by asking whether American Christians have the dualistic, negative view of the body so frequently attributed to them.

His answer? Actually, evangelicals have usually expressed their theology pretty well in this area—when they have expressed anything at all. Evangelicalism’s theology of the body has been characterized not so much by gnostic hatred as by general neglect punctuated by occasional reactions against culture. We need a fuller conversation about an area largely unaddressed, and Earthen Vessels is intended as a conversation-starter, not the final word on theology of the body.

The story matters

Unlike many of his conversation-starting emergent peers, though, Anderson doesn’t think the conversation is one without parameters. In his introduction, he writes, “Grace has a shape, and that shape is Jesus. My question is how that grace shapes our arms and legs, our skin, and other organs.“1 Throughout the book, Anderson is at pains to ground the discussion of our treatment of the human body in a coherent theology of God and his work in this world.

That’s a necessary corrective for two reasons. First, it stands in opposition to the secular anthropology that characterizes most people’s thinking about the human body, including many people inside the church. Second, it is impossible to build a theology of the body without reference to its creator, whose image it is made to reflect. It is true that “while the knowledge of God precedes the knowledge of ourselves, we cannot know who God is without reinterpreting what it means to be his creatures in light of that knowledge.“2

So what should we think of the body? The entire Christian narrative affirms that the human body matters to God. At the moment of creation, God shaped men from the physical elements of this world. Anderson comments, “If ever there was a question about the goodness of the physical body, the incarnation of Jesus Christ definitively answered it.“3 The resurrection of Christ puts an exclamation mark on that answer, and it emphasizes that our physical bodies are not prisons from which we will someday escape, but glorious temples to the God of all.

Good theology. Now what?

All well and good, but why does this matter? Anderson answers in his introduction:

If we do not cultivate a strong and thoughtful evangelical understanding of the body and enact practices that integrate this understanding into every part of our lives, then we will end up incorporating ideas and beliefs into our systems that are contrary to what we would consciously affirm.4

We need this theology of the body, and we need to apply it carefully to the questions our culture poses. Earthen Vessels tackles the controversial topics with a remarkable amount of both forthrightness and thoughtfulness.

In his chapter-long discussion of tattoos, Anderson drills down to the real core of the modern movement as one of self-expression and identification, arguing that “Tattoos and body piercings may appear on the body’s surface, but they contain a depth of meaning that is worth exploring.“5 Further, “Our bodies exist in communities, and we cannot fail to acknowledge this if we wish to live in them well. What we do to our skin matters as much as what we do within the skin.“6

His insight suggests to me Anderson isn’t particularly happy with the uncritical acceptance of tattooing, piercing and bodily alteration—but, interestingly, he never comes right out and condemns the practices, either. He addresses the relevant Scriptures and finds the arguments typically made from them wanting (as do I). It seems he is more interested in sparking a deeper, more thoughtful conversation than he is in making pronouncements at this point. Frankly, given the relative paucity of good discussion on this topic, that’s an approach I can get behind.

A home run

Anderson’s discussion of sexuality is equally nuanced and helpful. If I had to pick only one chapter of Earthen Vessels for everyone to read, this would be it. Unlike most evangelical discussions of sex, Anderson gets beyond the simple affirmation that marital sex is good and looks to the point of our sexuality—and, just as importantly, to the glorious purpose of single celibacy. Paraphrasing Oliver Donovan, Anderson writes, “Marriage points to Genesis, singleness to Revelation.“7 Continuing, he makes a point which deserves to be reproduced in full:

The teaching that our wholeness depends upon sexual fulfillment lies behind many of the problems in evangelical teaching about sex. We implicitly convey to young people that sex is a need by marginalizing those who are single or cordoning them off in singles groups so that they hopefully will get married. Then we expect them to live some of the most sexually charged years of their lives without yielding to temptation. No wonder young people struggle to stay sexually pure: either sex is essential to their flourishing as humans or it isn’t. And if everyone who is married thinks it is, then young people will too—regardless of whatever else we tell them.
I realize there are deep difficulties here, not the least of which are discerning the call of singleness and establishing structures and systems of support within the church for those called to it. But the absence of visible, lifetime singleness within our communities suggests that our affirmation of marriage and the goodness of sexual pleasure have overstepped their boundaries. We cannot affirm the goodness of the created order as Christians without also seeing how it has been caught up and renewed in Christ—which those who are called to celibacy bear witness to by their lives and their love. A church without singles has lost one of its main ways of warning against a sexual idolatry that has driven the whole world mad.8

I cannot emphasize enough how essential this point is to the recovery of a healthy view of sexuality among evangelical circles. Sex has become a god—perhaps even the chief god of our culture. We cannot take sex lightly, but we must stop honoring it with highest place. Sex, too, will pass—heaven promises delights far greater and deeper and richer and fuller. Only when we reorient our perspective will we be able to rightly respond to the questions posed by singleness, marriage, and yes, homosexuality.

A quibble

The only points I found to quibble with in Earthen Vessels were in Anderson’s discussion of spiritual disciplines. Unsurprisingly, he takes a number of cues from Dallas Willard and Richard Foster, whose books have informed a generation on the spiritual disciplines. In many ways, that’s a good thing; both Foster and Willard take the body seriously, and they take the church’s legacy of spiritual disciplines seriously. However, both tend to overstate the case for some of the disciplines9—and here, Anderson follows their lead.

In his discussion of silence and solitude, Anderson seemed to suggest that these are necessities for every Christian. Unfortunately, that’s not an assertion I can find grounds for in Scripture. That’s not to say they aren’t valuable; to the contrary, both silence and solitude can be immensely helpful for believers—perhaps especially in this media-saturated age. Thus, Anderson is right to point us to these time-honored disciplines; I just wish he’d been a little more nuanced in his advocacy—especially because the points he makes about these disciplines are really good ones.

Conclusion

Earthen Vessels is an important book for the evangelical community. The human body matters, and God has said a great deal about it. We would do well to pay attention. Matthew Anderson has done the evangelical community a service in writing a book that is thorough, well-written, and solidly grounded in the gospel and a health focus on God himself. Good as the book is, it isn’t comprehensive—it couldn’t be, and was never meant to be. It’s a conversation starter. I, for one, hope the conversation is a lively one.

Review: required

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We hope you found this review helpful. If so, we have several others available to you on our Book Reviews page.

Update, August 11, 2011: You may also find our interview with Matt interesting—I asked some hard questions, and he answered them well.

1 Anderson, Matthew Lee (2011). Earthen Vessels (p. 17). Bethany House Publishers. Kindle Edition.

2 ibid., p. 50

3 ibid., p. 21

4 ibid., p. 48

5 ibid., p. 104

6 ibid., p. 108

7 ibid., p. 131

8 ibid., pp. 132-133

9 I have a few other concerns with the approach to spirituality advocated by Willard and Foster, in particular its tendency to overemphasize experience in our walk with God. While experience is a critical aspect of knowing God, it is not and cannot be foundational, because human experience is so limited and fallible. Gladly, however, Anderson does not seem to share this particular tendency.

10 When you buy through these links, a small credit goes back to us. This helps us a lot. Prices are those at the time the review was published.

The American Evangelical Story [Book Review]

2011-06-17T08:30:00.023-05:00

—PJ King

[Pillar on the Rock is devoted to teaching roundly and thoroughly on the church. From time to time, we'll put up articles that address issues in academia because the academy is deeply involved in preparing future leaders for church ministry. We hope it is helpful and encouraging!]

What does it mean to be an evangelical?1 This question is the starting point for Douglas A. Sweeney, Ph.D., (Vanderbilt University) in his concise look at the movement in The American Evangelical Story.2 Although Sweeney does attempt to define the movement, his work focuses more on a brief history of evangelicalism. Sweeney paints a broad picture of the evangelical movement, and does so in accessible language, while providing a number of useful details. Sweeney succeeds in his goal of testifying to the breadth of evangelicalism, and the Church’s continued need for the movement today.

Summary

Sweeney notes that defining the evangelical movement is difficult, but attempts it nonetheless, suggesting that “evangelicals are a movement of orthodox Protestants with an eighteenth-century twist” (24). From there, he explains the eighteenth-century twist came in the form of the first and second Great Awakenings, because with them came immense changes in how Christianity was spread and practiced. Sweeney goes on to describe how, as evangelicalism was sweeping (and saturating) America, a breakout in foreign missions occurred, bringing about cross-cultural evangelization on an unprecedented scale. He proceeds to trace the movement forward through history.

The final chapters of the book, rather than being chronological in nature, each discuss a particular theme in the history of evangelicalism: the rise in missions (as mentioned above), the successes and failures of black and white race relations, the holiness and Pentecostal movements, and the evangelical sub-movements of fundamentalism and neoevangelicalism. These chapters effectively depict the full breadth of the evangelical landscape.

Critical Evaluation

In his first chapter, Evangelical: What’s in a Word? Sweeney does a fine job of describing the difficulty of precisely defining the term evangelical. It was only in reflection upon that difficulty that I began to appreciate his definition.3 Indeed, his insight solidified in my mind when he described evangelical beliefs as being rooted in the Protestant Reformation, while evangelical practices are rooted in the Great Awakening. Likewise, I found it intriguing when Sweeney stated that evangelicalism is America’s folk religion. I would have appreciated his comments on the implications of this assertion, including the pervasive nature of evangelicalism across the US (especially historically) and the modern, secular view of evangelicals being stuck in bygone ways.

Within A Surprising Work of God: The Eighteenth-Century Revival, the second chapter, Sweeney begins to explore the historical beginnings of the evangelical movement. Although the Great Awakening is commonly known as a revival across the Western world, the side-effects of the first Awakening were its real legacy. By producing an interdenominational and pan-geographical movement, the revival gave evangelicalism the opportunity to become a lasting institution rather than a passing phase. Sweeney provides an excellent summary of the causes and events of the Great Awakening. His description of British Puritanism, Continental Pietism, and other precursors to the Awakening provided a succinct context for the movement. Furthermore, his focus on the major players of the Great Awakening (Whitefield, Wesley, and Edwards) aided in the flow of the chapter.

For the third chapter, Crafting New Wineskins: Institutionalizing the Movement, Sweeney turned to the second Great Awakening and the great revivalists (especially Charles Finney). Whatever his personal opinions, I appreciated that Sweeney even-handedly acknowledged the role and influence that women had in evangelicalism during this time. Similarly, I appreciated the author’s distinction that the first Awakening was largely Calvinistic while the second was largely Arminian. Given the nature of those two camps, I now more appreciate the practical differences between the two Awakenings. Of course, following both Awakenings (as with all revivals) was a decline in the faith. Of particular interest is Sweeney's note that the revive, decline cycle in evangelicalism has created a host of schismatic groups, each of which originally split in order to bring about enhanced growth. Indeed, it seems that evangelicalism still functions in that cyclical, schismatic manner.

Sweeney addresses one of my personal passions in his fourth chapter, As the Waters Cover the Sea: The Rise of Evangelical Missions. It was good to read about the history of missions as a stark reminder that we are not the first generation to care about cross-cultural evangelism and church planting. Sweeney's discussion of the preliminary work of the Moravians as well as the efforts of Jonathan Edwards and David Brainerd offered a broad, accurate picture of the early evangelical missions movement. However, the author was careful to remember the failings of evangelical missionary work, such as the exporting of American culture as part of Christianity. Worse still was the drive toward liberal missions, with its abandonment of the gospel in favor of social programs. Sweeney produced a helpful summary of the history of evangelical missions, while also describing the uniqueness of that movement within the universal Church.

Controversy is the word-of-the-day in Sweeney’s fifth chapter, Crossing the Color Line without Working to Erase It: Evangelical History in Black and White, in which the author shows an honest, striking view of race relations throughout American Christianity and the evangelical movement. It was saddening to be reminded of the realities of slavery and its effects on the evangelization of the slaves themselves. Many slaves were not permitted to hear evangelism because it might make them ‘uppity,’ and the slaves who were Christianized were not taught about the exile, and then exodus, of the Jews. The purging of blacks from the churches created an evangelical segregation that has never recovered. Indeed, one of Sweeney’s most striking pieces of information is that only 5.5% of today’s churches are interracial (128)! However, I am thankful for the work the author did in summarizing the black movement in Western Christianity and the great things that movement has done. With all the historical overtones of evangelical racism and segregation, it is easy to understand why most members of the Black Church would not call themselves evangelical, even though their movement is essentially evangelical in beliefs and practice.

The groups described in chapter 6, In Search of a Higher Christian Life: The Holiness, Pentecostal, and Charismatic Movements, are groups that I was not originally quick to identify as evangelicals. However, Sweeney made an excellent argument, rooted in history, that the Pentecostal and charismatic movements are actually sub-movements within the larger context of evangelicalism. Their predecessor, the holiness movement, has widely known beginnings with many evangelicals, including Wesley, Whitefield, and Finney. From this holiness movement came a charismatic movement, which was introduced to the world through the Azusa Street Revival. By the numbers, the charismatic movement is the largest in evangelicalism, far exceeding any other sub-group. Sweeney’s work has helped me to appreciate the scope and nature of the charismatic movement.

In his final chapter, Standing on the Promises through Howling Storms of Doubt: Fundamentalism and Neoevangelicalism, Sweeney primarily focused on the historical context of fundamentalism. I was shocked to discover that the fundamentalist movement was actually, at one time, a proper Christian movement with theological, rather than cultural, distinctives. The movement was not merely a cultural reaction to creeping evangelical liberalism, but was an assertion of historical, orthodox Christianity. Sadly, the movement we know of today as fundamentalism is a far cry from its founding vision, holding on to a distant, cultural idealism more than biblical truth. In fact, the neoevangelical movement actually was a schism from fundamentalism, because that group desired to maintain its orthodox values while re-engaging the culture and attacking the social ailments of the day. Billy Graham, Carl Henry, and Charles Fuller were all leaders of this new evangelical movement. Sweeney’s work in this chapter has helped me to realize that, personally, not only am I an evangelical, I am a neoevangelical.

Conclusion

In The American Evangelical Story, Douglas Sweeney has provided an approachable, even-handed account of the history of evangelicalism. Most importantly, the author does not dwell too heavily on any particular theme, but serves his readers well by summarizing the major groups of evangelicalism. To my great benefit, this book purposefully included the less well-known aspects of evangelicalism, such as the Black Church, the charismatic movement, and the fundamentalist movement. Reading Sweeney’s work has allowed me to expand my former definition of evangelicalism4 to include the entire movement, rather than only my niche. It is with great care that Sweeney offers this look at a history of the evangelical movement so that we can know where it has been, and, hopefully, where it is going.

Review: recommended

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1 This review is derived from a paper written in fulfillment of class requirements at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

2 Sweeney, Douglas A. The American Evangelical Story. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005. 208 pp. $20.00

3 As noted above, Sweeney defines the movement thus: “evangelicals are a movement of orthodox Protestants with an eighteenth-century twist” (24).

4 I now know my original view of evangelicalism only included neoevangelicals.

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Think [Book Review]

2011-06-15T08:30:00.008-05:00

—Chris Krycho

Over the course of the twentieth century, the evangelical church has been of two minds about thinking. On the one hand, many in evangelical circles (especially in the South) have embraced an anti-intellectual approach that substitutes experience for education and rejects the role of formal theology and rigorous thought. This is the mood that has characterized most evangelical churches over the last several decades.1

On the other hand, some church traditions, especially mainline denominations and those that have maintained Reformed convictions, have overemphasized the power of intellect and reason, sliding slowly into a faith without expression. With the resurgence of Reformed theology over the last five or ten years, there has been an uptake in these circles to the point where the intellectualism so feared by the rest of evangelicalism has in fact appeared in many churches.

People espousing each view have been guilty of pride, often accusing the other of missing the depths of God’s truths. Both camps have legitimate critiques of each other’s positions.

John Piper steps into this turmoil with Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God. The short volume (224 pages in the paperback edition) is an exploration of the necessity of thinking for the glory of God. Piper argues that thinking is not optional for the Christian life: Scripture demands that we worship God with our minds.

How do we worship God with our minds?

Piper’s thesis is simple but revolutionary:

But thinking under the mighty hand of God, thinking soaked in prayer, thinking carried by the Holy Spirit, thinking tethered to the Bible, thinking in pursuit of more reasons to praise and proclaim the glories of God, thinking in the service of love—such thinking is indispensable in a life of fullest praise to God.2

Piper first explains his own history and then begins by tackling the poles toward which evangelicals have historically tended. To the anti-intellectuals, he offers a bracing dose of Scriptural challenges. As he puts it,

The apex of glorifying God is enjoying him with the heart. But this is an empty emotionalism where that joy is not awakened and sustained by true views of God for who he really is. That is mainly what the mind is for.3

He explains this in detail and traces out some of its ramifications, noting that God has chosen to reveal himself in a book. Reading requires thinking—we can’t get off without engaging our minds, and doing so deeply. Not everyone should be a robust philosopher, but all of us should use our minds to know God as he really is.

But what about…?

Anticipating the objections some will raise, Piper takes on the passages in the New Testament that other use to suggest that knowledge is dangerous or bad—and he takes these passages head on. Whereas some have taken Jesus’ call to a childlike faith to mean that we should have an unintellectual approach to Christianity, Piper argues the real problem is prideful hearts. Do we come before God in humility, trusting him to reveal his truth to us, or do we come before him confident in our own strength in one way or another?

Piper likewise tackles the falsehoods offered by relativistic claims that there is no true knowledge, noting, “Jesus knew this sort of evasive use of the mind. He did not like it”.4 Venturing through the example provided by Pharisaical self-deception, he demonstrates the dangers of minds put to work apart from the love of God.

Having thoroughly critiqued both intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, Piper concludes, “The remedy for barren intellectualism is not anti-intellectualism, but humble, faithful, prayerful, Spirit-dependent, rigorous thinking”.5 Similarly, he reminds us that “pride is no respecter of persons—the serious thinkers may be humble. And the careless mystics may be arrogant”.6

What to do?

Piper’s turn toward practicality drives these truths home, applying them to everyone, the academic and the plumber alike. All of us are called to think about God, to know him better, to feed the fuel of our desire for God with true knowledge of him. The particulars will look different, but the command remains the same: each of us must love the Lord our God with all of his mind (Matthew 22:37).

This book is a treasure. It should be read and savored and taken to heart.

My only concern is that few people will finish this book who do not already value thinking. Although Piper has written an accessible book, it remains a book for those who are not intimidated by lengthy quotes from other authors, rigorous examination of Scriptural texts, and relatively high language. These things will endear the book to readers like me—I couldn’t stop reading—but for those who are opposed to intellectual engagement, the book’s very approach may be a barrier to their hearing its message.

My hope is that such people will hear this much-needed message anyway, that their pastors will be challenged by the book and will stir up their own congregations to begin truly worshiping God with their minds as well as their hearts and souls. It is not a long or difficult read, and if you’re a pastor who harbors suspicions about the value of serious intellectual engagement in the church, you need to read this book.

Similarly, the intellectuals among us should read this book. Those who struggle with pride and confidence in knowledge desperately need this reminder that our knowledge only matters if it is aimed at knowing, loving, and honoring God.

Even those who already love thinking humbly will find much to be challenged by here. All of us need our thinking about thinking sharpened, and Piper paves the way for us to truly think for the glory of Christ.

Review: required

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We hope you found this review helpful. If so, we have several others available to you on our Book Reviews page.

1 For a detailed discussion of the history and development of this view, see Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.

2 Piper, John (2010). Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God (Kindle Locations 336-338). Good News Publishers/Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.

3 ibid., Kindle Locations 477-478

4 ibid., Kindle Location 1234

5 ibid., Kindle Locations 1651-1652

6 ibid., Kindle Location 2103

7When you buy through these links, a small credit goes back to us. This helps us a lot. Prices are those at the time the review was published.

Slow Down, Criticizer

2011-06-07T08:30:00.002-05:00

—Chris Krycho

Every pastor at every church gets feedback from his congregation—lots of it. Some of it is encouraging, some of it is neutral, but much of it is critical. A pastor needs all three types of feedback. He needs to hear the ways his ministry is building up the flock as well as the ways he can continue to grow.

Unfortunately, sinful hearts tend to fixate on negatives far more than on positives: we latch onto faults, real or simply perceived. In marriages, in business partnerships, in friendships, and in the church, we are usually far less aware of others' strengths than their weaknesses. Every family knows that we are often far more aware of our spouse’s, parents’, siblings’, and children’s faults than their assets. Recognizing successes over failures and godliness over sinfulness requires work.

The result is that most pastors hear far more criticism than encouragement. Every sermon is up for in-depth analysis, every song subject to theological review, and every decision pending approval from the crankiest members of the congregation. This is wrong. It is sinful.

Real spiritual issues

Of course, I am not suggesting that church members turn off their brains or set aside their discernment. To the contrary, I am of the mind that most believers ought to be far more discerning than they are in practice. However, there is a substantial difference between spiritual discernment and a critical spirit. There is also a difference between true discernment and the glorification of one’s own tastes and preferences.

I recognize that I tend to be critical in the name of so-called discernment far more often than I care to admit. And I am not alone in this; I have seen many more theologically minded men and women come to a point of persistent dissatisfaction with their churches, no matter how healthy, because they are consistently critical.

There is nothing wrong with identifying points of difference with your pastor. There is nothing wrong with coming to the conclusion that your pastor is in fact wrong on a particular topic (although you should probably take the time to study carefully before holding too firmly to that conclusion). Indeed, if you have prayerfully and carefully come to the conclusion that your pastor is amiss, there is nothing wrong with humbly confronting him (while being willing to be proven wrong).

There is, by contrast, something very wrong with people who can find no good in their pastors’ sermons.1 A critical spirit is not a mark of maturity but of pride. Sometimes, our churches and pastors have real theological problems that demand criticism and confrontation. Other times, our criticism is the result of a real spiritual problem, but it is our own, personal spiritual problem.

The problem with preferences

For some people, theological arguments form the main point of criticism. For others, style matters to people much more than substance. This is the root of the “worship wars” in most churches: not an argument for theologically weighty songs, but rather disagreement about the form that content should take. Should there be a guitar on stage, or an organ? Are drums demonic, or delightful? Is a slow hymn the height of musical excellence, or dead trappings of old-time religion?

The answer, of course, depends on who you ask and the way the music is played. The same is true in many other areas of church life. Whether the church uses a high, formal liturgy or a common, informal liturgy2, it can be done well or poorly. Either way, someone will probably have a problem with it.

I heard a little while back of a well-intentioned woman suggesting that a particular church needed to sing more hymns. The worship pastor of the church told me with some bemusement that the church sings at least one hymn a week on average. The woman really meant she thought the church should sing more hymns in the style she preferred: simple piano accompaniment with singers. There is nothing wrong with her preference, nor indeed with her expressing it.

However, when we elevate our preferences to standards of churchly perfection, we are again headed out where the undertow can pull us down. My preference is for longer sermons, while some of my friends prefer group discussions. Neither preference is a problem, until it becomes a primary point of concern or a source of major criticism.

Do unto others…

Think about it this way: if you were in your pastors’ shoes, do you think it would be helpful to constantly hear how this or that thing should be different? Do you think you would be more motivated to preach good, theologically rich sermons by hearing encouragement following such sermons, or by strongly worded criticisms to your latest topical sermon?

Again, I’m not saying that there is no place for gracious, humble criticism when it is needed. I am saying that most of us are swift to offer criticism when it may not be needed, and far slower to offer praise where it is deserved, for men who serve us faithfully, week in and week out. Each of your pastors is imperfect, just like you, but if he is faithfully seeking to shepherd his flock and preach the word well, give him grace. Pray for him. Thank him for his hard work. Praise his best sermons, and be slow to criticize those that aren’t quite as wonderful. When he gets something really wrong, as he probably will at some point, come alongside as an encourager and a friend, not a finger-pointing critic. Love him and honor him. It’s not optional.

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.
(Hebrews 13:7)

1 There are of course times when a congregation has gone off the deep end, its pastor embracing theological liberalism or some other heresy, and no amount of pleading can bring them back on course. In such circumstances, criticism—even harsh criticism—may be justified, and a church member is warranted in leaving the church. However, the reality is that most criticism offered does not fall into this category. Nor do most people leave churches because those churches have run off into the weeds. The real root of many of these issues is simply self-centeredness or ego.

2 As we have noted before, every church has a liturgy; the question is simply what it looks like and whether it is done thoughtfully or not.

Praying for Water

2011-04-26T08:30:00.003-05:00

—Chase Russell

“Well, I do think someone might have arranged about our meals,” said Digory.

“I'm sure Aslan would have, if you'd asked him,” said Fledge.

“Wouldn't he know without being asked?” said Polly.

“I've no doubt he would,” said the Horse (still with his mouth full). “But I've a sort of idea he likes to be asked.”

(C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew)

In the account of Israel traveling through the wilderness from Egypt to the Promised Land, there are many times when they complain that they have no food or water (in Exodus chapters 15–17, for example). I have tended to read this, roll my eyes and say, “Stop complaining! Clearly God is taking care of you.” But here’s the thing: they actually didn’t have food or water when they complained. As they traveled, they saw their water run out, got thirsty, and panicked.

God was right at hand to give them those things—when they asked. I think what was supposed to happen was that they should have asked Moses (their mediator) to pray. Instead, when they saw that God had not automatically provided for them, they assumed that He had forgotten them or wished them harm. Yet God did provide for all their needs when Moses prayed, and He was angry that Israel didn’t understand him and considered Him a nuisance. They didn’t grasp the concept of their dependency on Him and wished He had never bothered them. This is why they wanted to go back to Egypt—yes, they had been slaves there, but at least they had some degree of consistency in their day-to-day affairs.

I think the same still applies—that God wants us to ask Him to meet some of our needs. I think this is why we pray for the Holy Spirit, for the lost to be saved, for our ministry to be effective, for forgiveness, for financial provision. When God doesn’t automatically provide for all of our needs, He hasn’t abandoned us or turned against us. I think what I tend to do is when I see that God seemingly hasn’t provided for my need, I assume either that it’s up to me to figure it out or that I need to just do without. After all, if God already knows that I need these things, wouldn’t it just make sense for him to be considerate and go ahead and provide them?

He actually speaks pretty clearly about this, but somehow I’ve always missed it. Let’s read the following carefully:

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
(Matthew 6:8b-13, emphasis mine)

He knows we need our “daily bread”, and yet we are still to ask Him for it. I think God likes to remind us that we need Him, and likes to remind us that He is faithful to provide when we ask. These are necessary reminders. We assume that if He loved us, He would anticipate our needs. In a way, He does—our greatest need is for a relationship with Him. Look what happened to Israel: God later gave them a system in which they didn’t have to ask to have their needs met. He promised to provide them with abundance if only they would follow His laws. What happened? They became disconnected from Him and forgot all about His laws. Prayer, on the other hand, keeps us connected with God.

If we are lacking something we need, it’s not because God forgot about us… it’s probably because we forgot to ask.

Running

2011-04-21T08:30:00.000-05:00

—Stephen Carradini

I am running down a street without a sidewalk early on a Saturday morning. I would not be doing this but for my friend Chris, who has exhorted me come along with him on this three-mile run. I do not usually run, nor do I get up early when I don't have to go to work. But I know it will be good for me, and I told Chris I would be there, so I am there. Upon arriving at the starting point, I found that two other men would be running with us.

I quickly remember all the reasons I hate running: my breath gets short, my heart feels like it's about to explode, and I can't even quit because I'm far away from home. I can stop and rest for a bit, but I have to keep going. With Chris and the other men continually encouraging me, it's hard to rest for longer than I need.

We near the two-mile mark, and I'm dragging. Even with the continued kindness toward me, I feel like I need to take the escape hatch on this run and cut it to two and a half miles. I tell Chris as much, and he agrees; I and another man split off, wishing the other two the best for the rest of their run.

After returning home and cleaning up from the exercise, I am thoroughly glad I ran. I was pushed and stretched; I was outside my comfort zone. It was good for me. I wouldn't have had the benefits (such as not falling over in exhaustion during Ultimate Frisbee games!) if the community hadn't pushed me to do what I ought to have.

A good church is much the same. A good church will exhort you to do what you ought, and hold you to what you’ve committed. Your fellow memebers will give emphatic or gentle exhortations to keep going in a way that you ought, but they will also slow down and walk with you when you need to walk. There should be those that can run much longer and harder than you, but who do not lord it over you. They use their discipline and experience for encouragement, not discouragement.

And honestly, there are a lot of things in the Christian life that I wouldn't do if I didn't have other people holding me accountable. It's a lot easier to be selfish with time, money and care when no one knows that you struggle with them. But once I'm running with someone, their care and exhortation strengthen my resolve to continue. When you're by yourself, it's easy to quit running, even if you're far from home. But it's not so easy when you're with someone. A sane person won't leave you sitting on a curb in the middle of nowhere because you think you can't go on. A God-honoring one won't do the same for you spiritually, either.

This is the church.

Get Them Involved! [Singles are People, Too]

2011-04-12T08:30:00.000-05:00

—Stephen Carradini

In my previous posts about the church's relationship to its unmarried members, I pointed out problems with only some cursory examples of fixes. It doesn't take much to point and yell—it takes a great deal more effort to find answers and even more to implement them. Thus, in this final article, I am humbly offering some suggested solutions.

The first problem I noted was that singleness is treated as a problem (curable only by marriage). The second problem is that singles are considered to be morally, responsibly, and fiscally inferior to married people. Both attitudes minimize the gifts and talents that singles can use with much greater freedom than their married counterparts. Church leadership and lay members sometimes require a gentle reminder of the work they did for the Lord before they were married, as well as the feelings they had during those times.

Leaders can also teach clearly about the usefulness of each Christian in ministry, whether married or not. To see marriage as a more (or less) preferable state of affairs than singleness is to minimize the fact that Christ calls us each to our own sphere of ministry. The ministry of a married person is not more (or less) important than that of a single person's. Instead of seeing one state as better or worse, we should shift our focus to our true calling—spreading the good news of Jesus Christ—and notice how it's the same for everyone, married or not.

Leadership can also involve single people in the church's affairs. Pulling single people out of the margins of “Singles groups” and back into the full body of Christ will combat the first attitude as well as the second. This also goes for young adults in general. Including young, single people on committees, planning teams and even leadership groups can help them grow into mature Christians.1 There will be mistakes, but mistakes are hardly limited to young people or singles. The more mature Christians who are also on the team should exercise grace for the error, patience in teaching and (if necessary) discipline for the younger Christian. If we are afraid or unable to administer these three traits to young, single Christians, how can we expect them to become mature Christians? (Also, older believers may benefit from, and even be challenged by, younger believers!)

The reminder of usefulness in Christian ministry applies for this second problem as well. When married Christians stop expecting young singles to be wild and unreliable, and instead see them as equal bearers of the Great Commission, they will realize that singles are not inferior. They are Christians, plain and simple—young, but equal in the eyes of God.

Once married Christians see single Christians as equal laborers in the Gospel, it should inspire the breaking down of age and life-stage segregation. If we are equal in the eyes of God, why should we have separate buildings?2 This is not to say that there won't be age affinity. There will be, because there are aspects of the single life that are different than those of the married life. Still, as Paul reminds us, the temptations we face are common to all of us, married or not; we are all humans dealing with the same problems (see 1 Corinthians 10:13). Maturity is not imputed upon marriage; neither is freedom from the battle with sin. When segregation breaks down, singles and married people (and even their children) will be able to benefit.

A basic solution to the problem of segregation is pretty easy—mix up the small groups. Get the leader of the singles ministry in touch with the leader of other ministries at the church and partner on events. Encourage married people to invite a single person for dinner and vice versa (this goes both ways, of course).

Once singles are involved in meaningful ways with the married members of the church, it is a short step to their active participation in ministry. Those committed to involving singles as real Christians should endeavor to get them involved, even while acknowledging the potential for failure. As I noted in my third article in this series, I was recently allowed to sit in on a deacons and elders meeting. While I said nothing, I came away with a deeper affinity to my church. I was allowed to plan the housing for a mission trip that came to my town. I run the slides at my church. For starters, these are all excellent ways that responsibility can be given to single people.

Some other ideas: tap singles to be greeters. Let them be on planning committees. Entrust them with errands (bringing communion bread, bringing wine/grape juice) that, if they fail, will go undone. Ask the singles group what they think of the ministries that the church is currently running, and what they would do differently. If they have suggestions, challenge them to make them, or bring them to the leader of that ministry. If they are particularly mature, consider whether they might be ready to serve as deacons or even elders.3 Don’t underestimate the capacities for real, mature Christian faith in a 23-year-old single man or woman!

In short, challenge singles. Teach them how to be mature Christians. Trust them to do what they say they will, and give grace if they fail. Involving them will only grow the amount of ministry that is done, even if some of it is imperfect or collapses.

Singles are equal bearers of the Gospel with married people. There is no distinction in God's eyes between single and married, or young and old, when it comes to loving and serving the Lord with a whole heart. God's redemptive love for humans is displayed toward individuals in the Christ-centered community of the local church. Let us remember this, and we will have a much more integrated and healthy church relationships between married and single people.

1The same is true of young married people, who may also find themselves marginalized because of their youth. The problem is simply exacerbated for singles.

2This is not a straw-man: at least one generally healthy church in Norman has a “Singles Ministry” building separate from its main campus.

3Neither singleness nor youth is inherently an obstacle to serving the church in these offices.

Plant!

2011-03-17T08:30:00.005-05:00

—Chris Krycho

As I discussed at length in How Big is Too Big?, every church has a limit beyond which it struggles to support healthy community and its pastors are hard-pressed to collectively minister to everyone in the congregation. When this point is reached, each church must consider its options.

For much of the past several decades, only two options have really been in the running for most churches: expanding the size of the building (by purchasing or renting a new place or by expanding the current one), or multiplying services. More recently, a combination of the two approaches—adding campuses—has also entered the mix. Most churches have found building sanctuaries designed to hold thousands prohibitively expensive, so the multiple-service route has grown in popularity instead.

However, as I noted in Multi-Service Mistakes, when churches deal with growth by multiplying services and campuses, the functional result is multiple congregations, with all the problems that ensue. Meaningful church membership breaks down, pastoral relationships deteriorate, community fractures, church discipline becomes impossible to practice meaningfully—the problems go on and on.

What if the problem of overly large churches could be turned into an asset for the Kingdom? What if the creation of separate congregations was intentional and missional rather than an unhelpful, incidental effect of other decisions? What if, when churches got too large, they planted new churches?

I believe this option is far and away the best choice for churches confronted with unmanageable growth. First, it alleviates each of the problems I noted above. Each functional congregation is an actual congregation, with all the privileges and responsibilities that entails. The community is smaller and capable of full, meaningful integration. The pastors can actually recognize everyone in the congregation, and new faces do not simply disappear into the crowd. Church discipline becomes practicable.

Moreover, church planting offers a number of benefits in addition to the problems it solves:

It builds unity among churches in the area

One of the most troubling aspects of modern Christian life is the extent to which churches compete with each other rather than supporting each other. While it is good and helpful to acknowledge our doctrinal differences, it is also helpful to remember the points that unify us. Wherever possible, churches should be looking to partner with each other to advance the cause of the gospel in their area.

Church planting is one area in which churches can work to help each other succeed. Like-minded churches can actively plant churches together. Churches whose doctrinal distinctive divide them too much to plant together can nonetheless encourage church planters and even direct like-minded visitors to the newly-planted church.

It encourages evangelism

No pastor will be surprised to hear that, in my experience, most church members struggle with evangelism. In large part, this is simply because evangelism is hard—it calls us out of our shells and into faithful dependency on the Holy Spirit. It is uncomfortable, even awkward. Churches would no doubt do well to help their members grow in these areas. Yet I think there is more to the story than this. Most churchgoers look around and see full pews, a church comfortable in its own programs and successes, and struggle to grasp the necessity of evangelism at a practical level.

Church planting inherently encourages people to invite others to join the new church: if the church is to grow, it must be by invitation—hopefully including many new believers, not merely transfers from other churches.1

It allows greater opportunity for training leaders

Many churches suffer from an oversupply of qualified leaders. How many men are qualified to be elders, I wonder, but are overlooked because the church doesn't need any more elders? How many women would be delighted to play or sing in the musical service, but don't because the roles are already filled by others? How many could be stepping up to lead ministries (some of them even as deacons) but find no open doors?

All churches can find ways past these issues—but church plants do. If a church is committed to planting other churches both in its own community and elsewhere, its leaders must constantly be training more leaders. I have seen firsthand that, absent that pressing need, most churches simply do not prioritize the training of new leaders; there are simply too many other, more immediately pressing concerns.2

In all of this, planting can help remind churches that other churches are partners in the cause of the gospel—not threats to their own numerical growth.

It helps churches reach neighborhoods

One consequence of the move toward large churches can be a neglect of neighborhoods. Christians learn to build their communities with people who live far away from them. This is not inherently bad, but in a culture where neighborhoods are increasingly disconnected from each other, one of the most effective ways churches can reach the lost is by targeting neighborhoods.

This is also important because many people have no Christians in their lives apart from those in their neighborhoods. Churches should remember that neighborhoods, like workplaces, are uniquely valuable opportunities for reaching out to the lost. With some intentionality, they can also be among the most fruitful spheres of ministry.

People are desperately hungry for community, connection, and meaningful relationships. As the members of a church connect in a neighborhood—perhaps even moving into an area to partner together intentionally—they can make a dramatic impact on the residents. Neighborhood churches are not inherently better than other churches, but they do provide unique opportunities in our current cultural context.

It helps churches reach the world

Having a planting mindset can help churches keep their focus on worldwide evangelism. When a church is radically committed to advancing the gospel, its efforts will never be limited to its own community. The men and women it raises up for ministry will go out from the church to the ends of the earth. A network of gospel-focused churches committed to planting can plant churches anywhere, with vision and faith and cooperation.

Plant!

No doubt there are many challenges posed by church planting. It is not a panacea for the church's problems, only a step in the right direction. The process is emotionally taxing, financially risky, and spiritually challenging. Planting places far higher demands on everyone. Yet in some sense is that not a good thing? Would it not be helpful for the often too-comfortable members (and leaders!) of our congregations to be shaken out of the stupor of familiarity and into the hard work of evangelizing the lost world around us?

1One of the major obstacles to church-planting is the tendency to "cannibalize" members from other congregations—especially in a church culture in which membership and commitment are not highly valued. Healthy church plants should seek to avoid this, both by keeping a missional, evangelistic focus, and by establishing partnerships with other local churches.

2This issue is exacerbated by the fact that most churches think the primary responsibility for training lies with the seminaries. We could not disagree more strongly: seminaries should complement (and not replace) the church in training pastors.

Church and Parachurch: Friends or Foes | Outgoing Links

2011-03-08T08:31:00.002-06:00

Outgoing Links is a series in which we share interesting articles about the church. Be sure to leave comments below with your thoughts.

A little while back, we tackled the complicated and sometimes thorny relationship between churches and parachurch ministries. Apparently, we are not the only ones with this area on the mind; 9Marks recently published one of their bimonthly e-journals devoted entirely to the topic. The series covers some of the same territory ours did, but from a different set of voices, so we hope the two will be seen as complementary. Take a look!

Church and Parachurch: Friends or Foes

Having read this as well as our own series, what do you think?

Getting a Grip

2011-02-01T08:30:00.001-06:00

—Jaimie Krycho

The New Testament is filled with admonitions that are repeated over and over in order to stress their importance. One of the foremost of these appears in a number of books, including Philippians, Timothy, Hebrews and Revelation. It’s simple, but packed: Christians, hold on to your faith.

The fact that we are urged—even warned—to safeguard our faith suggests that it’s easy to let it slip. We live in a world that is currently, though not interminably, ruled by the “prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). He is, by definition, the “father of lies” (John 8:44) as he proved in the garden where he first twisted God’s word to humanity into a toxic half-truth. Today, these lies still creep in through means as seemingly harmless as an apple, particularly when we’ve spent so long immersed in the world’s belief system that we hardly notice it anymore. We begin to let go of our faith. Our perspective becomes skewed by cultural truth.

Cultural truth is a form of syncretism, or religious mixing, in which we pick and choose which biblical teaching we’re willing to stir in with the wisdom of the world. Cultural truth easily becomes our standard way of thinking, and God-centered perspective slips away. This is not a new problem; thousands of years ago, Habakkuk asked,

“Of what value is an idol carved by a craftsman? Or an image that teaches lies? For the one who makes it trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak.” (Habakkuk 2:18)

The things in culture we often make spiritually valuable—work, physical beauty, financial and social success—are idols, things of “our own creation.” Instead of trusting the Bible to determine what is righteous and acceptable to God, we define “good” by worldly standards, and then adopt these “good” things into our spiritual lives. For example, I frequently equate human approval with righteousness. Therefore, I make approval an idol—if just one person disapproves of a prayerful decision I make or a godly action I take, I question the decision and despair of the action. The word of man suddenly supersedes the word of God.

Our loss of perspective can be reversed, however, when we meet with other believers in a setting of worship or fellowship. It should be encouraging to spend time with other Christians in any context, but there’s much to be said for gathering specifically to corporately worship God. As we focus on praising the person of God, we remember his sovereignty, holiness, and faithfulness. It reminds us that he is on the throne and that what he says stands firm, even when circumstances seem to prove otherwise. Also, worship reinforces in our minds the character of God—he is good, and in all things, he works for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28).

Likewise, when we have meaningful relationships in the church, friends and mentors are often able to see things in our life that we, in our spiritual myopia, cannot. They can point out habits that perpetuate our skewed perspective, or confront us about sin for the purpose of glorifying God and bringing us to repentance. In fact, in Bible study a few weeks ago, two of my peers brought up the aforementioned passage from Habakkuk. Then, they led a discussion about the seriousness of idolatry. The Holy Spirit broke my heart about some long-unresolved idolatry in my own life, which is why I can offer this admonition in the first place!

Furthermore, God often provides one church member with the grace to understand the gospel in a certain way that another one needs at the time, so they can offer profound encouragement and turn their friend’s eyes in the right direction. Even simply observing the godly speech, actions, and attitudes of other believers helps us to reorient our thinking away from the world and toward God, for it is on him that we secure our faith.

To hold on to our faith as the New Testament writers entreat us to, we must hold on to truth. The Body of Christ is a place where truth is communicated in worship and fellowship. It is both a necessity and a privilege to participate with the Body, for God’s glory and for our good.

Multi-Service Mistakes

2011-01-21T08:30:00.094-06:00

—Chris Krycho

It's Sunday morning, 10:30 am. The pre-worship background music fades and the band comes in with a Chris Tomlin arrangement of an old hymn. In the sanctuary, a thousand people join in. The band finishes the set, and the preacher delivers a sermon, followed by a another song for a closer. The crowd walks out an hour later. Everyone gets a little bit of a break, and then at five till noon, the band comes back out to do it again—for the fifth time in 24 hours.

Over 4000 people will have passed through the doors of this one building by the time this final service wraps up at 1 in the afternoon. The band is shot from playing the set five times through—not counting rehearsals. The preacher's voice is tired, and he works to keep his delivery solid: five times through the same sermon is exhausting. The tech guys in the back have been tweaking levels, cycling slides, and adjusting lights for hours on end. Children's ministry workers are nearing exhaustion after have dealt with dozens of kids apiece.

Worst of all, almost none of those 4000 people will have any meaningful interaction with their fellow church members when all is said and done. They will hear a good sermon, sing good songs, and hopefully grow in their knowledge of God, but few of them will experience any meaningful community. Each polite, Hey, how are you? is met with an equally polite, I'm good, and you? and then everyone moves on—no openness or vulnerability or community in view. How could there be, when almost everyone in sight is a stranger?

Last time, I highlighted an important question for churches to consider: How big is too big? While the last twenty years have seen a boom of megachurches, and large churches have existed throughout history,1 size poses significant challenges to churches. Pastoral care becomes incredibly challenging as elders find it difficult to keep track of all the members of the church—much less newcomers. Fellowship tends to fracture as the community simply becomes too large to sustain integration across life-stages, ethnicities, and other barriers—even in good churches with an emphasis on healthy relationships. Physical limitations leave services crowded, children's rooms overfull, and parking lots packed. The church has to do something. The question is: what?

If you build it...

Some churches have opted to continue building larger and larger venues, able to host thousands or even tens of thousands in a single service. For most churches, this is simply impractical: the financial cost of such a building is staggering. Moreover, most pastors recognize how anonymity is heightened in such contexts, and want to avoid the problems inherent in attempting to preach to, counsel, and encourage so many at once.

Thus, the recent trend has been toward both multiple services and multiple venues. The idea is not new, of course, but it has caught on significantly, especially in the wake of the church growth movement, significant advances in video capabilities, and the explosion of successful megachurches across the country.

Numerical superiority?

I find this trend unfortunate, because I think this approach is deeply flawed. If numerical growth is the only measure of success, then this is a fine outcome—but no one I know actually thinks that numerical growth is the best measure of success for a Christian church. Of course, most healthy churches will grow, both through evangelism and as believers move into the area. However, because numerical growth in and of itself is secondary to discipleship, fellowship, and worship, churches must consider how best to accomplish those ends in the midst of growth.

The scenario I outlined at the beginning of the article highlights many of the problems inherent in multiple service approaches: the anonymity of the crowd, the extraordinary demands on preachers and worship leaders, and the drain on those serving throughout the service. The problems do not end here, though.

Ships passing in the night

Consider two average church members who show up for a Sunday school class during one service, then attend another service, then head home. They happen to attend different Sunday school classes and different services. In all likelihood, they will never see each other at this church.

With their differing schedules, they probably will not have the same teachers, save perhaps the person delivering the sermon, and most members of megachurches have little opportunity for personal relationships with their teaching pastors. Meanwhile, the burden of pastoral care is spread across many associate pastors, so even if each of these churchgoers knows a pastor, the likelihood that they know the same pastor is slim. The likelihood that it is the regular teaching pastor is almost zero.

In what sense, then, are these individuals actually part of the same church? Their only connections are the slim threads of common location, service format, and weekly preacher. I submit that they are hardly more connected to each other than if the two people were listening to the same church's sermon podcast.

Ships in different oceans

If this is a problem for multiple-service churches, it is a catastrophe for multiple-campus churches, where people from different campuses simply will not meet—ever. Moreover, the pastoral problems are intensified: practically speaking, there is no difference between hearing a 20-year-old sermon displayed on the screen and a sermon being simulcast.2 (In fact, many megachurches do replay recordings of the sermon, simply so the pastor does not have to preach five times in a row.) How is the preacher on the screen actually pastoring the people in that sanctuary any more than if John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, or Craig Groeschel were being broadcast?3 In short, he is not.

In the end, these approaches leave a "church" functionally separated into multiple congregations, who have in common at most their preacher and their facility. The multiple site approach removes even the common meeting place.

Now what?

The question should occur to you (if it has not already): might there be some benefits to actually being two separate churches, partnering closely but distinct in name as well as in practice? As you will see in my conclusion to this series, I think the answer is a resounding yes!

[Ed. note: readers interested in a lengthier discussion of multi-site churches, covering theology, history, and practic issues—from people on both sides of the argument—should spend some time reading 9 Marks eJournal: Multi-Site Churches.]

A note to my readers, especially those from Wildwood:
Obviously, Wildwood has multiple services, so this article could be read as directly criticizing Wildwood. I do not mean it that way. This issue was a serious concern of mine even before I began attending Wildwood, but I do not consider it a make-or-break issue: otherwise I wouldn't be at Wildwood. I love and appreciate very many things about Wildwood, and have benefited much from many of the elders and pastors. Here, however, I simply disagree!

I am also aware from talking with staff that the leaders are thinking through how to handle Wildwood's continued growth, and that adding another service is on the table. Thus, I feel I should also note that PJ and I planned this series out before I became aware of that information. This is an important topic we have always planned to discuss. I know Wildwood's pastors and elders are all considering how to handle Wildwood's growth in a way that honors God and serves the people. I hope the thoughts I offer may sharpen their thoughts and provoke further discussion; know that I do not mean this as an attack on them.

Jaimie and I take our membership very seriously; we are committed to following our pastors' and elders' leadership for as long as we remain in Norman, and we are confident we can do so because they have consistently demonstrated a commitment to honoring God and following His word in their leadership of the church—attitudes for which I commend them, and for which we are very grateful.

1Charles Spurgeon's congregation, for example, numbered over 10,000. The early church saw massive conversion rates, but by dint of the structure of the early church, it is unlikely they faced these issues: rarely, if ever, would all the thousands of believers in Jerusalem have congregated together.

2I recognize that some megachurches have their own campus pastors who preach the vast majority of the time. The intensity of my critique on the whole remains unlessened in their case: these are already separate churches in every meaningful way; they simply share leadership among their elders. In essence, the overarching "churches" are actually small presbyteries, not one local church!

3As it turns out, this precise issue exists in each of those men's churches—and while I have a good deal of respect for each of them in their own ways, I think this critique is just as applicable for them.

Language of the Heart [Race and the Church]

2011-01-18T08:30:00.022-06:00

—PJ King

What does it say about the kingdom of heaven if each of our churches represents only one ethnic group, despite the fact that there are many ethnicities all around our churches? What does it say if the white Christians go to this church, the black Christians go to that church, the Hispanic Christians go to that other church, and the Vietnamese Christians go to yet another church?

The purpose of Race and the Church is to develop a doctrine of diversity, discover why so many of our churches tend to be mono-cultural, and discuss how we might turn the tide.

Missions work offers us the concept of “heart language:” the language that a person knows best, typically his first language. Modern missionaries work hard to learn the heart language of the people they are working with, so that the gospel message can be best received in a tongue the hearers know by heart. The idea is that, in our “heart language,” we have a breadth of vocabulary, culture, and emotion which we can communicate in a way we cannot with any other language, no matter how well we learn it. Accordingly, missionaries generally regard this approach as superior to evangelism in a shared, but secondary language.

Segregation vs. Integration

I believe the same concept applies to church life. Because a person can best relate to God and others in his “heart language,” it is ideal for that person to interact at church using that language. This, of course, poses a dilemma for us. The idea of segregating people based on language seems to run against the argument I have advanced throughout the series: that we should integrate churches across ethnic and cultural lines. Language, however, provides a truly limiting barrier: it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a church to function while integrating multiple languages.

Integration Calamity

Think about the worship service: every part of it would have to be translated. Translations for the music could be provided so that everyone can sing in their primary language. The sermon, announcements, and congregational sharing could be translated live, in back-and-forth style, or translation could be provided electronically, through ear-pieces provided to the minority language speakers. While these solutions might work, they would probably be kludgy at best, and those who don’t speak the primary language would still be hearing a mere translation. As any student of language knows, much is lost in translation.

The real difficulty, however, would come in forging community. Even if a church managed to integrate the languages during services, the community of the church would be segregated functionally by the simple fact that speakers of one language cannot communicate with speakers of the other (bilinguals excluded, of course). Efforts could be made to bring these constituencies together, such as setting up language buddies and having church-wide events, but true community across a language barrier is practically impossible.

Segregation by Necessity

After pondering these situations, I have concluded:1

Integration is best, but segregation is acceptable when absolutely necessary.

We already practice this principle in our churches: we have nurseries for babies because they can distract from the service and have little ability to benefit from it and Sunday School for little children because they need to learn at a lower level than the adults and teenagers. Similarly, we have freedom to segregate by language because the communication barrier necessitates it.

One Church or Two?

The next question is just as important: should we split churches by language, or should we segregate languages within a church? While both options provide relief to the immediate need (allowing Christians to worship and congregate within the context of their own heart languages), I believe that only one option provides an ideal long-term solution.

Having different churches for different languages offers only short-term benefits. Consider a Spanish-speaking church in America: the church might serve first-generation immigrants well, but to what extent will it benefit the second and third generations? I assume that one of the goals of immigrants is to learn their new country’s language (at least well enough to survive). This desire is more pronounced, and fulfilled more completely, with each successive generation. If the area stops having an influx of immigrants, then the church will eventually develop into an English speaking church, segregated, not by language, but by cultural heritage—the very problem I outlined in an earlier article. On the other hand, if the area of the church continues to receive immigrants, there will be a continuing need for the heart language, but those who excel at the new language (particularly the second generation) will have to choose between remaining segregated unnecessarily and leaving their church to find an English-speaking congregation.

By contrast, having one church segregated by languages internally allows for long-term success at integration. As immigrants and their children continue to learn the new language fluently, being in a mixed-language church allows them to participate in services and community based in their ideal language, whether that be their native language or the new one. As children grow into adults and fluently function in the new language, they will be able to worship and fellowship in the common language of the land, enabling their growth for the future. This approach also encourages locals in the church to learn the language (or even languages, depending on how diverse the community is) spoken by immigrants in their area, opening up fruitful new avenues for evangelism and relationships.

Leading in Multiple Languages

Having congregants of multiple languages obviously poses many challenges for a church, among the most significant of which is developing a proper leadership structure in such a unique environment. This task is much easier when a church is already led by multiple pastor-elders. Obviously, each group in the church needs pastors who can tend to their souls in their own heart languages. However, those pastors for each language are also going to have to be able to communicate with the rest of the pastors as well—how else could there be a unified leadership? This will require, undoubtedly, that at least some (but ideally all) of the minority language pastors are bilingual. Optimally, all of the staff would learn to communicate in each others’ languages, over time, as a means of serving each other and the whole of the congregation.

Getting There

Many of these approaches are most easily implemented in new church plants. As we have seen before, though, the challenge facing the American church is that our congregations are already separated. English-speaking churches who would like to reach out to minority-language groups in their communities can take one of two steps:

Merge with a minority language church in your community.
Bring on a bilingual pastor who desires to begin this ministry.

Obviously, the difficulties inherent in both suggestions are quite substantial and my summary is overly-simplistic. However, I do think they are both possible.

Language barriers in the church do not receive much consideration in conversations today. However, if you take a look around, you’ll realize that this is an important topic in every one of our cities. Our churches are segregated by language, and that is setting us up for long-term problems.

This concludes my series on Race and the Church. What are your thoughts on language segregation? Should we integrate regardless of language? Should we all have separate churches? Leave a comment below!

1With the help of Chase Russell, who is dealing with this situation as an English speaker in Nicaragua.

How Big is Too Big?

2011-01-14T08:30:00.005-06:00

—Chris Krycho

From its inception, Pillar on the Rock has tried to emphasize how essential community is to Biblical churches. Our gatherings should not be individualistic events, oriented primarily on our own experiences with God. Rather, the church is called to be a community of people who are deeply involved in each other's lives, who demonstrate the love of Christ in our unity and self-sacrificial service to one another. We have written a plethora of articles and even series devoted to some of the ways churches can go about building community more effectively.1 One subject we have yet to cover, though, is perhaps the most controversial of all: size.2

There are several important questions we should ask about church size:

Is there a size beyond which healthy communities are impossible?
Are there ways to mitigate the detrimental effects of large churches on congregational community?
Is there such a thing as a church that is too large?

Many healthy churches grow steadily, both through evangelism and through Christians moving into their region.3 Along the way, both physical limitations in size and relational limitations like those outlined above come into play. When that happens, a church has a decision to make: either to keep growing numerically (by expanding facilities, moving to a new building, implementing multiple services, etc.), or to find a way to diffuse that growth out into new church plants. If the church is facing simply physical constraints, either of these options may make sense.

Americans, with our entrepreneurial bent and economically-oriented sense of success, are predisposed to think that growing in numbers (and the corresponding growth in budgets and buildings) is always a good thing. The reality is that growing numbers can hurt a church if it does not have a plan for maintaining healthy community through that growth.

Each of us can only sustain so many relationships at a time. It is clear to me that, for each church, there is some size limit beyond which meaningful community between all members is impossible. However, the real question is: at what size does the church begin to struggle with consistently forming real community? When it becomes difficult to form cross-generational relationships, or to get to know people in a different social niche, or to engage with people of other ethnicities in the congregation, a church has probably reached its limit. When pastors are finding it difficult as a team to identify all the congregants, the church has certainly grown too large. If a visitor goes unnoticed because the average congregant doesn't recognize most of the people around him (new or not), the church is well beyond its capacity for meaningful community.

There may not be a single definite numerical cutoff at which it becomes difficult or impossible to sustain meaningful community. Each church is different, as is its cultural context and the social patterns of its members, so it is certainly fair to say that different churches may have different maxima. However, each church does have a line—a boundary I would venture is somewhere far lower than the thousands that attend megachurches—and once it is crossed, simply building a bigger facility will not relieve the problem. (It may in fact make it worse as yet more people attend!)

Many individuals in such a church may still have meaningful community, so it is easy to overlook the problem, because the average longtime member is not going to suddenly stop having connections to other members of the congregation. However, it will be increasingly difficult for newcomers to the church to find real fellowship. Moreover, it will become increasingly difficult for leadership and other members to help newcomers plug in, leaving all the responsibility for finding fellowship on individual attenders. The system no longer encourages or actively supports the formation of healthy community. While some responsibility for building relationships falls to individuals, some of it surely also lies on the church itself.

Just as troubling are the pastoral issues that arise when congregations exceed a certain size. Pastoral work involves far more than simply preaching: it demands ongoing relationships.4 At some point, it becomes difficult even for a large and dedicated group of elders to maintain contact—much less deep relationships—with everyone attending the church. When there are too many people in a sanctuary, no group of elders, no matter how skilled, will be able to identify visitors. Meaningful membership becomes difficult to practice, church discipline impractical to administer, and effective discipleship with all the congregants nearly impossible.

Most churches today take one of three distinct approaches to the challenges posed by growth:

Expanding the size of the building.
Moving to multiple services (or multiple campuses).
Planting new churches.

Through the rest of the series I will attempt to address each of these in light of Scripture.

How big is your church? Do you struggle to form meaningful relationships in the community there? How big do you think your church could get before it started to struggle? What have your pastors done well or poorly in dealing with this challenging issue?

1You can easily read all of our posts on community here. Alternatively, you might take a look at any of the following articles and series:

2I am skipping over the issues faced by small churches. The challenges small churches face rarely result from a lack of community, but rather from unhealthy community—a topic we have addressed at length in the various articles highlighted above. It is much more difficult (although not impossible) not to engage with thirty or forty other people than with three or four thousand other people!

3I recognize that many healthy churches are in areas that have relatively stable populations, and accordingly grow slowly as converts are slow. I am not meaning to diagnose health in terms of growth, but rather looking to deal with the consequences of growth in healthy churches.

4See Ben Arbour's article, He's Not Your Pastor.

Segregating Singles is Stupid [Singles are People, Too]

2011-01-11T08:30:00.007-06:00

—Stephen Carradini

If you haven't read the other articles in this series, or if it's simply been a while and you need a refresher, we recommend you start with Stephen's overview of the problems singles face in the church today: Singles are People Too.

In my previous article about singleness, I discussed two quietly prevalent wrong attitudes that drive singles away from the church:

Singleness is a problem.
Singles are inferior to married people.

These two attitudes each lead to a catastrophic problem for singles in the church today:

Singles are segregated.
Churches don’t involve young, single people in real, meaningful ministry.

The notion that singles are inferior to married people—whether explicit or left unspoken—leads directly to the action of segregating singles in everything. The proliferation of classes, events, service opportunities, and even church services for singles is a result of many things, but aggressive separation of singles from families is bad for everyone—including the families! The church should be different than the world, and one of the ways it is different is the relationships that can, should, and often do form between young people and godly older people in healthy churches.

When singles are segregated, those God-mandated1 relationships don't form; worse, the church stops focusing on its unity as the body of Christ and focuses instead on marital status and age level. That's exactly how the world organizes its strata, and the world often has immediate gratification (sleeping in, drinking, sex, cohabitation, etc.). We ought to be different; churches must integrate singles in their church services, small groups, Sunday school classes, service projects—in short, in the whole life of the church.

Meanwhile, churches that believe singleness is a problem fail to entrust singles with real responsibility for ministry. After all, if there is something wrong with a person, something that even prevents them from getting married, then why would a leader want to trust that broken person with responsibility? Of course, the reality is that there often is no problem—the person is simply single. If there is a problem, the biblical response is discipleship. In a healthy church, older people who know the young adult (through their integrated small groups, etc.) can step in to help when they see a maturity issue.

But for those who aren't dealing with major roadblocks (such as addictions, refusing to admit consistent sin, or a refusal to grow in Christ), being stuck on the sidelines of the church is frustrating. Singles have an abundance of time and a minimum of distractions, making them excellent helpers and even planners of service events. They can get there early and stay late, because they don’t have kids to put to bed, a spouse to coordinate schedules with, or PTA meetings to attend. Failing to utilize singles as active parts and even leaders of service ministries is robbing them and the church of potential effectiveness.

Singles also can and should be treated like the adults and full church members they are. I recently was allowed to sit in during an elders and deacons meeting, and it made me feel very much a trusted member of the church, regardless of my age or marital status. I said nothing, and did not expect to, but the fact that they trusted me enough to see how the church decisions are made encouraged me deeply. As I have noted before, I was trusted with the housing plan for a medium-sized mission trip to Norman. I also run the slides for worship at my church. In turn, those responsibilities keep me actively involved with the church, helping me be a better church member. I am given responsibilities like any other member, and I love it.2

Responsibilities help me grow, benefit the church, and advance the cause of the gospel. We need to put all of our singles to work, or, if they are lacking in that the maturity necessary for such work, train them until they are ready.

Read the whole series!

1See Titus 2:1-6 and 2 Timothy 2:2.

2Note that the extent of responsibilities open to singles is wide: even young single men can be deacons or elders. After all, Timothy was apparently a young, single man responsible for appointing elders in young churches, and Paul exhorted him not to let others look down on him for his youth (see 1 Timothy 4:12).

Contemplations for Correction [Race and the Church]

2011-01-06T08:30:00.002-06:00

—PJ King

The purpose of Race and the Church is to develop a doctrine of diversity, discover why so many of our churches tend to be mono-cultural, and discuss how we might turn the tide.

Last time, I noted that the process of integrating a mono-ethnic church is inherently difficult, regardless of a church’s desire. However, the difficulty of the task does not allow us to ignore the ethnically-segregated state of our churches today. Below, I will propose some methods churches and Christians could to encourage integration. These suggestions are equally applicable for churches composed predominantly of any single ethnicity; neither minority churches nor majority churches are off the hook.

Personal Outreach

It all starts here. Put simply, we Christians need to go and find ourselves friends of other races and cultures. Think about it: how many people of other races do you personally interact with in a given week? I know my answer is, “Not many.” I have black next-door neighbors whom I have yet to befriend. A few houses down lives an East Asian couple whom I still haven’t even met! Now, is this because I’m racist? Probably not—generally, I do a poor job of making friends with any of my neighbors, regardless of race. It’s something I need to work on. But I digress; my point is that I have opportunities to engage with people of other ethnicities with whom I can seek to build relationships.

Individual Christians having significant relationships with people of other races is the first, and most important, step to integrating churches. If our outreach in our neighborhoods is consistent across race lines, then the people we help draw to Christ and his Church will start going to our church—no matter their race. I’m not talking about individually choosing people to befriend based on their race, but I am encouraging you to consider whether you have been limiting the types of people you are developing relationships with. Let’s make sure we are witnesses to all races in this world (our own included).

Corporate Outreach

Aside from encouraging church members to integrate their personal outreach, churches certainly have the ability to target people and areas that they may have otherwise overlooked. As I mentioned previously, in the rare case that a church is in a mono-ethnic community, then that church has little obligation to have a multi-ethnic congregation. However, for the rest of the churches out there, outreach can be done in such a way as to improve the diversity of the church.

You can help international communities by providing language-enhancing conversation partners. For a community of any race or culture, you can provide a VBS-type ministry in their neighborhood so that you have a visible presence. You can provide tutors to their schools. You can do community evangelism. Whatever outreach activities you would normally do as a church, you can do for these people where they live. Through these relationships, and as these people come to Christ and desire to join a church, you will be able to welcome them into the fold.

Multi-cultural Service

Once your church has congregants of different cultures, you should consider bringing elements of their cultures into the church service. This is particularly helpful if the individuals are long-term believers and have a Christian culture they have inherited. While I’m not advocating that you change your entire service to mimic another culture, I am encouraging you to find aspects of each culture in your congregation that can be translated into your church in a way that is meaningful to all the congregants. Clear teaching along the way can help smooth out any bumps in the road and reemphasize the unity we have in Christ, over and above culture or race.

Multi-ethnic Leadership

Again, after your church starts to have a representation in the church from multiple ethnicities, you should think carefully about the spectrum of visible leaders within the church. Doing this is actually quite simple in a healthy, multiple elder, multi-ethnic church because, as all of the men in the church are discipled and trained, men of all races will be called to lead and serve the church as elders and deacons. Churches which hire their pastors from the outside may find this more challenging, because affirmative action and quotas are not healthy methods of integration. Only qualified men should be considered for leadership positions, but a diverse church will be best led by a diverse set of elders, so sensitivity to this issue is in order even when hiring a candidate from outside the congregation.

Conclusion

Integrating our churches will require conscious decisions and effort from all of us, regardless of the method. The most important decision, though, is the choice to buck the trend of mono-cultural churches and show your community the unity that all Christians have in Christ Jesus. So, what are you going to do about it?

Do you have experience integrating churches? What methods have you found to be successful? Leave a comment below!

The Difficulty of Desegregation [Race and the Church]

2010-12-21T08:30:00.005-06:00

—PJ King

The purpose of Race and the Church is to develop a doctrine of diversity, discover why so many of our churches tend to be mono-cultural, and discuss how we might turn the tide.

Would you attend and join a church in which you are in a minority race?

How about if you had an equivalently healthy church, just down the road, full of people who are just like you?

I imagine that even as Christians, we still prefer to be surrounded by people who are like us. I experienced this myself when I was looking for a church here in Fort Worth. Katie and I visited a church which was heavily influenced by the hipster Christianity sub-culture. Now, while there were many reasons why we didn’t pursue that church, we definitely felt out of place in the midst of a church which had an artist-in-residence, where the typical congregant had exposed Christian-influenced tattoos, where most men had piercings, and where Genesis 1 was preached as God giving us art. Theological issues aside, we simply felt like we were outsiders to this church’s culture and had little interest in attending the church.

Obviously, the problem in the Church today is more wide-spread than occasional sub-culture churches—the American church is still largely segregated by racial and ethnic lines. As I’ve said before, I don’t believe our current segregation stems from systemic racism. I truly believe that nearly all Christians today would be relatively comfortable being a part of a multi-ethnic church. Therefore, the difficulty of desegregation is not from teaching Christians a multi-ethnic ideal—the difficulty is in changing mono-ethnic churches into multi-ethnic ones.

Again, let’s consider the relationship between the black church and white church. Because of the hundreds of years of separation, these churches have different church cultures, a natural development in light of the segregation. The difficulty of integration is no longer primarily caused by race; it is caused by the differences in the churches’ cultures and theological leanings.

Rather than using stereotypes1 of typical white churches, black churches, and other mono-ethnic churches, I will address the types of cultural differences that can arise between all churches, generally. As an exercise, imagine trying to integrate churches across the following theological or practical lines:

Preaching to a silent congregation vs. preaching to a responsive congregation
Topical preaching vs. expositional preaching
Expressive worship vs. reserved worship
One library of songs vs. another library of songs
Organ driven worship vs. band driven worship
Band driven worship vs. gospel, hip-hop, and rap driven worship
Calvin-ish congregants vs. Arminian-ish congregants
Middle-to-upper class congregants vs. lower-to middle class congregants
And many more...

Can you imagine the difficulty of trying to integrate churches with the above differences? You might even be inclined to think it impossible to find unity between those contrasting preferences.

On top of the differences in church culture, there is the more obvious difference in general culture. Integrating multiple cultures in a single local church is inherently difficult. How is the rich man supposed to relate to the poor man? The Mexican immigrant to the life-long American? The soccer fan to the football fan? All churches probably struggle with this at some level, but the problem is much more pronounced when teaching people to relate to others who share little in common background and shared experiences. Indeed, the only common thread may be Christ himself. Sinful humans simply don’t relate this way, so this kind of community will require great effort, plenty of instruction, and diligent modeling by the leaders.

The final challenge for churches is stopping the momentum of segregation. Part of the success of the civil rights movement came from the government requirements to open schools, businesses, and jobs to people of all races. In some school districts, this even required busing kids in so that the schools would be integrated. In this context, it was the government which stopped the momentum of segregation, rather than the collection of all institutions being of one mind on the matter.

Within the autonomous–local-church polity structure, there are no mandates from above. We cannot force all churches to adopt the multi-ethnic model. In fact, if your church decides to strive to break the mono-ethnic mold, it will be doing so largely on its own, without explicit support from other churches.2 No one is going to bus in a load of new congregants. Ethnic integration will require significant effort on the part of mono-ethnic churches. Not only will you have to teach your congregation the importance of diversity in the local church, you will have to convince those outside your church to join you in your endeavor.

How can a mono-ethnic church begin to bring in people of other races and cultures? What can churches do to instill love between all the congregants toward each other—even across racial and cultural lines? And how can Christians develop this within themselves? These are the types of questions I hope to answer next time.

What do you think? Are there other difficulties to be found in desegregation? Am I blowing anything out of proportion? Leave a comment!

1 Please note that “stereotype” is not equivalent to “prejudice.” Stereotypes, when used properly, are not bad things. In fact, it is impossible to discuss any group of people without using stereotypes. However, even the most accurate stereotypes can be misused when one attempts to pigeon-hole an individual person/institution into the stereotype for whatever group(s) he/it may represent.

2Mostly because many churches are not going to prioritize being a multi-ethnic congregation.