Everybody Needs a Coach

Four years ago, in a Famous Dave’s BBQ in Columbia, MD a good friend gave me some advice that changed my life forever. He had planted a church several years earlier and had been in ministry for many years. Ron told me that the best decision he ever made was finding a pastoral coach to help him work through issues of ministry, family, and life.

Leaving that lunch, I called a Christian counselor, Fred, who had helped me in the past. He and another therapist had come to my church and dialogued with me about the impact of Lust on a family. This dialogue was our sermon that Sunday morning. I knew Fred had been a pastor so I called his office to see if he did pastoral coaching. His practice said he did, and we scheduled time to be together. Four years later, I still visit with him regularly. He has helped me focus my life, understand who I was created to be, who I am, and how to deal with the issues life, ministry and family through at me.

In addition to the formal relationship that Fred and I have, I also have informal relationships and deep friendships with others whom I seek for advice. But I always look forward to spending time with Fred. There is something about this coaching relationship that exceeds all others.

Over the years, as I’ve spent a lot of time with people and whether it was formal or informal, I discovered myself either being coached or coaching people. It came natural to me. As an informal/formal coaching relationship, I coached them, trained them and mentored them in some area of ministry, life, or family. In addition to that, I spent five years formally as an IT administrator and programmer and am even Microsoft Certified. During those years, I found myself doing the same thing, just in a business and IT setting.

Over the past year, as I have narrowed down what I felt I was designed to do, I have come to understand that I was wired to teach, train, coach and mentor. As a result, part of the next phase of my life, moving from success to significance, will involve me formally engaging in coaching and teaching relationships.

I have started a new coaching and teaching ministry called Missional Strategy.  All coaching is done through live, interactive video and/or audio discussions which are archived for review purposes, as well as through a private, interactive website with additional resources such as podcasts, links and questions to help move you forward. I am focusing my coaching on the following areas:

Missional Practices:

1. Developing Missional Theology, Thought and Practice
2. Church Planting
3. Starting a Small Business

Personal & Ministerial Development:

1. Personal Life Coaching
2. Pastoral Coaching
3. Children’s Ministry Coaching (with my wife as participant)
4. Leadership Development

Social Media Strategy:

1. Personal and Ministry Social Media Strategy Development (facebook, twitter, blog presence including hosting, coaching and ghostwriting)

Publishing through our publishing partner Missional Press

Group Coaching:

1. Cohort of pastors
2. Staff coaching

Regarding the teaching ministry, Missional Strategy develops and teaches courses on a wide variety of topics. Courses can be developed to provide theological training or to supplement existing training. In addition, we can develop training for your specific needs as a church, a staff, or simply a group interested in a certain theological, philosophical, or leadership development topic. All teaching is done through live, interactive video discussions which are archived for review purposes, as well as through an private, interactive website with additional resources such as podcasts and questions or quizzes and discussion groups.

For instance, I have developed a course on the Parables of Jesus that are unique to Luke. In this course, we would all gather in a video chat room through tokbox and discuss the parable and its implications to living life in a world that does not appreciate Jesus. During the week, there would be a website where people could ask questions, engage in discussions, and post podcasts, links, etc that pertain to that weeks discussion. It is totally interactive.

I am particularly excited about the social media strategy development. We will coach you through setting up both ministry-based and community interest blogs, facebook pages and events, as well as twitter accounts and social media strategies. We will even do ghost tweeting and ghost blog writing if you desire such services.

Everyone needs a coach. Rick Warren says:

Every pastor needs a mentor. No matter what stage you are in your ministry, you need someone to coach you.

All sorts of organizations use the mentoring process to make people better at what they do. In medicine, doctors mentor younger doctors. In music, musicians mentor other musicians. Why? It works. We learn best when we have people who can speak into our lives and ministry.

Proverbs 19:20 says, “Get all the advice you can and be wise the rest of your life.” I will always need a coach – no matter how old I get or how successful I become. Lebron James is one of the best basketball players on the planet. He still needs a coach. You will never get to a point in your life you can say, “I’ve learned it all. I don’t need anybody else to help me.”

A mentor brings out the best in you in three areas: your roles, your goals, and your soul. Mentors give us perspective. They help us look at ourselves and our ministry from the outside. We don’t always see what we’re doing outside of our own perspective. We see from our own limited focus. We need somebody else in our life to say, “Have you thought about…? What about this? What about that?”

…

Pastor, you need a mentor in your ministry. Whether you’re 35, 55, or 75, there is someone you can learn from. Find someone with character. Find someone with skills you desire. Find someone you trust.

Find a mentor.

(excerpted from “You need a mentor” http://legacy.pastors.com/RWMT/default.asp?id=376&artid=11714&expand=1)

If you are interested and would like more information on my coaching services, go to Missional Strategy (http://missionalstrategy.com) or click the contact link at the top and shoot me an email.

I would like to close with a short video from Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. He is asked, “What is the best advice you have ever received?” His answer? Find a coach.

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We are the World! Today!

Three years ago, I started my doctoral work at George Fox Seminary. At the time, I told my wife that when I finishd my degree she could go next. I meant it, and now that I’m done, we are trying to figure out how to finance a PhD in Education through an accredited program that she can participate in from anywhere.

When people ask me what’s next, I always mention that and then say, “If and when Brenna is done, I want to go back and get a degree in global business.” I believe that the church in USAmerica needs people with a global perspective because the world is coming here and they are not melting into the pot but congregating in their own communities. We need people in the church that understand GLOBAL leadership, not Western church culture.

I found out today that the school where I got my doctorate is starting a Doctorate in Global Missional Leadership. The Global Missional Leadership DMin program “focuses on equipping Christian leaders in church, non-governmental organizations, and mission communities to confidently, to constructively, and to effectively carry out the mission of the gospel of Jesus Christ in an increasingly connected world.”

“Students engage in theological/biblical, historical, and sociological analysis of the emerging global culture to gain cultural and theological self-awareness. They do specialized research in topics such as consumerism, colonialism, the enviroment, and social justice. They gain skills in the use of online and mobil social media tools and they develop an international network of scholarly relationships through real-world experiences in Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia.”

The lead mentor in this cohort-based program is Jason Clark. Jason Clark serves as a full-time pastor of Vineyard Church Sutton in Sutton, London (UK), which he and his wife planted in 1997 while he was an investment broker in London. That church has grown to around 300 adults and 120 children, in an area of London where 1 percent of the population are connected to a church.

Dr. Clark also coordinates the Emergent UK online resource network. This network serves alongside Emergent in the United States and several other countries. He also directs the deepchurch.org.uk project and writes a blog that has a 2,500-member mailing list and has over 250,000 visits per year, that arises from his research area, teaching, and church experience.

He is a council member of the Evangelical Alliance UK.

Dr. Clark is an adjunct professor at George Fox Evangelical Seminary for the MA/MDiv modules on “Missional Ecclesiology.” He also lectures and teaches in other countries on a regular basis in the areas of church and culture. He is currently working on several book- writing projects and articles. These include two chapters in a book titled, “Christ and Postmodern Culture” for Baker Academic’s Church and Post-Modern Culture Series and a book coauthored with Dr. Andrew Walker on ‘Deep Church’ for Paternoster UK’s Faith in an Emerging Culture Series.

Jason completed his DMin at George Fox, and is now a PhD candidate at Kings College London, researching theological assessments of consumerism and secularism and the implications for ecclesiology.

The degree starts in January 2010, with the first advance (not retreats, we advance) to be held in Nairobi. Other advances will be held in Malaysia and Europe.

There is no other school in the country, maybe even the world, that is pursuing this kind of vision.

I have nothing but great things to say about George Fox and their leadership. Truth be known I would love to teach there! I would suggest that if you really want to get a handle on global ministry, you consider this option. I believe it will be well worth your investment, and that the kingdom may be impacted greatly by this endeaver.

For more information, go here: http://www.georgefox.edu/seminary/dmin/gml/index.html. It will be the begining of a journey that will change your life!

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Just a Few Social Media Tools

I am an extrovert by nature. I also exhibit characteristics of someone with ADHD according to my pastoral coach. For me, I need to be around people like some folks need to breathe. Relationships energize me and drive me forward through life. A day without a phone call or video chat or lunch makes me grumpy. Even a text chat via IM is better than nothing!

When I worked for 3 Internet start-ups in Florida, one of the things I hated was sitting around a computer all day. The computer couldn’t talk back to me. It blinked a few things on the screen, but social interaction was truly impossible.

When Twitter and Facebook arrived on the scene, I was skeptical. I really didn’t use them much. There weren’t many people on these social media platforms and so though I had an account, I didn’t participate much. It was an additional energy drain because there was very little interaction.

Slowly, as these platforms have grown, I have fallen in love with them as interactive media where I can have discussions, interactive chats, catch up with old friends, and get to know people I’ve never met. As a people person, I’m finding that it is a way to really enjoy people wherever I am whether it’s by myself in my home office, another state or in the middle of Panera Bread. More and more of my time is spent there; it really is an energizing discipline for me. Now don’t think I don’t get work done. I actually am more productive, creative and energized through this. It’s the nature of my personality.

A few months ago, it really was driven home to me how uplifting for me social media can be when I mentioned via twitter that I was having a bad day. My twitter account is connected to my facebook account, so when I twitter something, it shows up on facebook. I made that tweet in the late afternoon in May. That evening, I had prayers tweeted on twitter for me from people I did not know. On facebook, I had several folks ask and pray about what was going on. I even had a text message from a high school friend whom I still chat with from time to time. I was blown away.

In March of this year, I had to defend my dissertation. When I tweeted that I had passed and would graduate, friends from high school, college and from other walks of life congratulated me. I turned 40 in June, and I had so many birthday wishes on facebook, I couldn’t count them. I even got a birthday wish from Margaret Feinberg, whose books I absolutely adore but whom I’ve never met. My major professor sent me a birthday tweet which teaching a class! Again, I was amazed.

Kim's got a great smile!

A few weeks ago, I was on facebook and was checking out who was in the chat area. I noticed that a high school friend, Kim Denson Cook, was online so I started a conversation with her. She makes handmade items, and I knew of a website where people could sell their handmade wares and I wanted to make sure she knew of it. In fact, I was hoping to see some items because I thought my wife or mother might like something from her collection. During the course of that conversation, Kim asked me how my workouts were going. She hadn’t seen me mention those recently and was just asking.

I have a Wii and a program called “My Fitness Coach” which is a great workout program that develops a specific plan for you. Maya is the fitness coach and she’s tough. In the afternoons I would often tweet that I was about to spend time with Maya. Kim noticed that I had not made those posts in a while and called me on it!

This really impacted me. Kim and I didn’t hang out much. My junior and senior years of high school, I video taped the basketball games and ending up riding on the bus with the basketball team to away games. Kim was a cheerleader, a year below me and she rode on those same buses. She was (and still is) a great person with a great smile. However, we didn’t really run in the same circles. I was a brainy nerd type (some say still am) who was involved in everything and knew everybody but only hung out with a close set of friends. She was a popular cheerleader. Those two groups of folks didn’t tend to hang out together. So it made an impression on me when she was concerned and interested enough in me to not only ask me that question, but to cheer me on when I did note how I had started working out again. I think of her asking that question every afternoon around 3:00, which is when I usually tweeted my time with Maya.

Those instances have me examining my tweets and facebook messages even more intently. In the past week, a friend whom I met through the blogs tweeted that he was having a bad day. I lifted up a prayer for him on twitter – nothing long, just a short prayer that he could see that someone was interested in him and his needs. I’ve done that on several occasions and hope to do it more frequently.

In USAmerican, the cry of the heart is for relationships. We are an incredibly lonely nation. People need others to celebrate with them, to cry with them, to pray for them, to encourage them and to understand them. A colleague told me recently that he and his staff do more and effective pastoring via facebook and twitter than they ever have in the past. People are able to stay in communication at work quickly and quietly and church members are encouraged, provoked and ministered to. He has embraced social media (and whatever comes next) as the means to pastor to a new generation of people.

I don’t know how much you participate in social media, but your ministry and you as a pastor need to participate. You can move crowds and congregations with these tools. I actually think these are transitional tools to a more virtual church methodology. It’s going to be interesting to see how this all works out. I for one am anxious to find out!

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The Trusting Brain

Since my dissertation included a good bit of brain research, I subscribed to a number of blogs of scientists and brain researchers. One is called “The Frontal Cortex“, which is part of Science Blogs. This morning they have an article on trust and the brain.  The article primarily concerns the economic struggles our country finds itself in and to what degree we will trust the government, business leaders, and our own understanding of the economy. However, the research has implications for our own trust in the Godhead.

The Relevant Study

The writer, Jonah Lehrer, describes a 2005 study led by several Neuroscientists regarding trust.

The research was born out of a serious limitation of conventional fMRI, which looks at the brain by itself. (An individual is put in a claustrophobic scanner and told to perform a task.) Humans, of course, are a social species, so the scientists (led by Montague) pioneered a technique known as hyper-scanning, which allows subjects in different fMRI machines to interact in real time.

The experiment revolved around a simple economic game in which getting the maximum reward required the strangers to trust one another. However, if one of the players grew especially selfish, he or she could always steal from the pot and erase the tenuous bond of trust. By monitoring the players’ brains, the scientists were able to predict whether or not someone would steal money several seconds before the theft actually occurred. The secret was a cortical area known as the caudate nucleus, which closely tracked the payouts from the other player. (The caudate is usually discussed in the context of addiction, since it plays a central role in modulating our expectation of pleasure.) Montague noticed that whenever the caudate exhibited reduced activity, trust tended to break down.

But what exactly is the caudate computing? How do we decide whom to trust with our money? And why do we sometimes decide to stop trusting those people? At first the caudate didn’t get excited until the subjects actually trusted one another and garnered their separate rewards. But over time this brain area started to expect trust, so that it fired long before the reward actually arrived. Of course, if the bond was broken – if someone cheated and stole money – then the neurons stopped firing; social assumptions were proven wrong.

The moral is that trust is ultimately about the expectation of rewards. Trust may be an admirable social trait, but it’s ultimately rooted in a greedy calculation, emanating from our primal dopamine reward circuitry:

Taken together, these results suggest that the head of the caudate nucleus receives or computes information about (i) the fairness of a social partner’s decision and (ii) the intention to repay that decision with trust. In early rounds of the game, the ”intention to trust” is evident only after an investment is revealed. With experience, this signal shifts to a time preceding the revelation of the investment.

What does this have to do with the economy? Over the last few decades, investors have grown accustomed to predictable rewards coming from the financial markets. We were used to our 7 percent return in the stock market, that 4.5 percent return from a money fund, and that 2 percent return from our bank account. We assumed our homes would always increase in value. In other words, these “rewards” were taken for granted. (It hasn’t helped that the last severe recession arrived in the early 1980’s, more than 25 years ago. People forgot that these financial rewards were contingent, just like the players in the trust game who were shocked that someone would abscond with their cash.)

When those rewards disappear – when home prices fall, and borrowers default, and the markets flatline – the end result is a collapse in the bonds of trust that all markets depend on. The problem, of course, is that restoring trust is ultimately about rewards, not reassuring statements or grand plans from Congress. Until those financial rewards start to feel predictable again – and that may take a long, long time – investors will continue to be wary of each other, just like people who got burned in the brain scanner.

The Impact on Life and the Gospel

The results of this study has a great impact for life and how we share the Gospel. Our trust in the Godhead comes only after levels of expectation and reward are observed and received. In other words, trust has to be developed; we do not give God our trust blindly. God, from the moment we are born, sets out to earn our trust. In earning our trust, we then can transition from the God who wants to be in relationship with us, to the the “Santa Claus” view of God to the deeply relational, Fatherly view of God.

In the midst of this process, we have to de-trust God in order to trust him deeper. Our brain has to have it’s’ neurons re-wired so that we can not only trust him more relationally but we can change our behavior in the trusting process. Our brains get wired in a certain way such that our thoughts and actions become automatic. However, to re-wired our brain and allow God to take us places through faith we could never other otherwise go, we have to de-trust what we already know. Then, and only then, can those new trusting circuits be rebuilt.

The reward changes during this process as well. We move from the Santa Claus view of God, where he gives us stuff, and helps us out (reward), to a deep relationship with the Father where the reward is the relationship. That takes a series of trusts and de-trusts where our reward changes over time.

This is what St. John of the Cross called the dark night(s) of the soul. It’s the Chrysalis of Alan Jamison. We will all have a series of stops and starts, a series of trusts and de-trusts, in our relationship with God.

Yet it has great impact on how we share the Gospel. We have to concede that blind trust is not given by humans to God without any relationship whatsoever. Could it be that our starting place is to discover how and in whom people have seen the activity of God. That becomes the starting point, not where will a person will spend eternity when they die. This may have worked in years past because people had some experience with God. However, fewer people have a positive experience with God, assuming they have any, and are less likely to understand that question, accept your premise of them being sinners and needing heaven, or even want to engage you in that conversation. Despite a belief in “God”, experience with Jesus or his followers is minimal. Our starting point, then, is wrong. Our starting point should be discovering what, if any, activity they perceive (or we help them understand) of how God and Jesus has worked in their life to move them to a point of actually being able to trust.

This isn’t brain surgery. It is not rocket science. It is time and relationships and a discernment by us of what the Spirit has done in their life to move them closer to Jesus.

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Leonard Sweet at The 2009 Northwest Ministry Conference during the General Session. He speaks on Versitus.

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Worship?

Is 43:22-44:23

In this sermon, I challenged our church to consider: How God-honoring is our worship In 43:22-24, God weeps at how bad their the nation’s worship was.

Yahweh expected to be called upon and counted upon. This tears at the heart of our individualistic mindset. We want to be able to accomplish things on our own. God, however, wants us to call on Him. It is not an ego trip. When we cry out to him we are acknowledging our inability to be God and accomplish all that He can accomplish. It is, for us, an expression of our humility, our understanding of our need, and creates an endearing relationship of love with God.

Just the opposite had gone on. The Israelites has worn themselves out trying to accomplish life on their own. In doing so, they were too worn out to rely on God. Life does that to us. The more we try to do on our own, the less time we have for God… And, the more tired we become. We burn the candle at both ends, not depending on God to provide us what we need to deal with life. In that activity, we act no different than the pagans.

God does not have excessive liturgical demands on us. We simply do not worship as He desire. We create rituals and practices that do not please Him, though they might draw a crowd. What God wants is a people with whom He can have fellowship because their character reflects His own.

God has not enslaved his people with endless ritual. However, His people have attempted to enslave and weary God with their sin. The nation was trying to use the ritual to trap God into delivering their own desires. They were worshiping God in an attempt to obligate God. Do we not often do the same? “God, I go to church every time the doors are open, why are you not giving me the desires of my heart?” “Why are you not answering my prayers?” “Why are you not listening to me?”

What about your worship? Do you rest solely upon God as an act of worship or are you attempting to provide for yourself and worry about all the things the pagan’s do? Don’t wear yourself out. Rest upon God! Rely on His provision. It is indeed an act of worship to cry out in dependence.

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Caminos Olvidados: Reactivemos la Iglesia Misional

Missional Press announces the publication of Caminos Olvidados: Reactivemos la Iglesia Misional, the Spanish edition of Alan Hirsch’s book The Forgotten Ways.

The retail price of the book is $19.99 and will be available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com and other online retail sites as well as in select stores in the US and Latin American.

You can also purchase the book through Missional Press for the discounted price of $17.99 by using our reseller CCNow.

Descripción del producto
Alan Hirsch está convencido de que las fórmulas de crecimiento heredado el Cuerpo de Cristo no funcionan más. Y en lugar de confiar en soluciones ligeramente revisada del pasado, él ve una visión de futuro crecimiento de la iglesia viene por aprovechar el poder de la iglesia primitiva, que pasó de tan sólo 25.000 fieles en el año 100 a un máximo de 20 millones de en el año 310. Esa también es increíble el crecimiento que experimenta hoy en día en la iglesia en China y en otras partes del mundo. ¿Cómo lo hacen? ¿Ha olvidado la formas explora el concepto de genio apostólica como una manera de entender lo que causó la iglesia para ampliar en diversos momentos de la historia, la interpretación de que para su uso en nuestro propio tiempo y lugar. A partir de la bases teológicas para la aplicación práctica, Hirsch lleva al lector a través de esta dinámica mezcla de pasión, la oración y la encarnación práctica de redescubrir el potencial latente de la iglesia moderna en Occidente.

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Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound

Monday Rewind: God’s Unyielding Grace – Is. 42:18-43:21

This is one highlight from a sermon I preached at Mission Fellowship Church on June 6, 2009, entitled, “You’re the One Not Listening!” The idea of this sermon was formulated by the the dispute from Is 42:18-23. The Israelites believed that God was not hearing them or their cries for help. God responds to his people that they were the ones not listening to him. He was disciplining them for their sins. Yet he had not forgotten them. In fact, he was about to bring relief.

In 43:1-5, God tells the people that, in fact, he was on his way with relief. What brought the relief that God promised? The people haven’t changed. Their sins and attitudes showed little change during their time of captivity. It is not a change in them so much as it was the grace and devotion of God. God had such an unyielding love and commitment to Israel that he repositioned them and their life in the world.

God tells Israel “Do Not Fear”. The basis for this claim is that God has redeemed the nation. Redemption can carry the idea of a family intervention where a stronger member of the family intervenes to assure the well being of the a weaker member. In addition to “do not fear”, God reminds the people that he has “called [them] by name”. This may be an adoption formula. Regardless, Israel is identified with, belongs to, and is cherished by God. John Calvin states, “God refuses to be deprived of his rightful possession”

God invested a great of love into his children. In 43:1-5 he reminds them that he:

• Created them
• Formed them
• Redeemed them
• Called them by name
• He will be with them

God loves deeply his children and though he disciplines them, he does not abandon them. He seeks to woo them back into a blessed relationship with them. It is not based on our merit or our goodness. It is based on God’s unyielding grace poured out upon his children.

Ultimately, what matters most about you is not what you deserve but whose you are. Whatever life throws at you, including God’s tough love, he will go with you into it.

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Virtual Small Groups

I want to experiment with a new aspect of ministry. It is a virtual small group. The group will connect through audio and/or video via tokbox.com. The group is limited to 20 persons due to the technology.

The Summer Session will begin Tuesday evening, July 7 and last for ten (10) weeks. You can join up after the session starts if you wish. Each session will begin each Tuesday at 7:30 pm EDT and will go for a maximum of one hour, thirty minutes (1:30). The topic of discussion for the summer session will be the Parables of Jesus from the book of Luke. We will discuss it from the viewpoint of Metaphors of Life Between the Sundays.

If you are interested, you need at least a microphone for audio conversation. If you have a webcam, we can all see you and share in the experience. You will get an email the day of the chat with a link to the chat room. You can connect from anywhere in the world.

In addition, there will be a member’s only access website that will contain additional information, materials and an archived audio copy of the the previous week’s discussions.

I am going to charge for this. The cost $19.95 for the entire 10 weeks. You can pay via paypal or if you wish to send a check, contact me by clicking on the link at the top of the page.

Sign Up for the Group Mailing List:

or

Sign Up for the VSM Summer 2009 Session

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Justification Part One

Today, we continue looking at Justification from Michael Gorman’s book Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology. Picking up on the last post, Gorman notes, “justification is not merely or even primarily juridical or judicial – the image of a divine judge announcing pardon or acquittal. That is part but only part, of the significance of justification. The judicial image must be understood within a wider covenantal, relational, participatory, and transformative framework.” (55)

That a wider covenantal and relational framework is necessary is demonstrated by Romans 5:1-11. In this passage, Paul situates justification and reconciliation in a parallel structure. This happens first in vs. 9-10:

9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. (NASB)

In this text, justification means reconciliation to God. This is a divine act, as the three occurrences of the passive voice demonstrate, not a human act. In addition, it is not a “private act of reconciliation but one both intended by God and experienced by people in community, as a people; the subject of the verbs in Romans 5 is ‘we,’ not ‘I.’” (55)

This is also evident in the next verse (Rom 5:11). It uses an active verb with passive semantic weight (”we have now been received”) to indicate the gift of reconciliation. The verse forms an inclusio with the first verse in the passage, which has already used the passive voice in speaking of justification and already indicates its relational character as “peace with God”.

Similarly, 2 Cor 5:14-21 give further evidence of this reconciliation/justification connection. Justification as reconciliation “includes both the forgiveness of sins (plural; ie transgressions: Rom 3:25; 2 Cor 5:19) and liberation from Sin (singular) as a power (Rom 3:24; 5:15-21). Since both sins and Sin affect human relationships with God and with others, forgiveness and liberation are inherently realities that can only be experienced in connection with others, that is in community and in relation to a wider world.” (56)

Furthermore, 2 Cor 5:14-21 indicates that native within the idea of reconciliation/justification are both participation and transformation. Participation is found in phrases such as “in Christ” and “in him”. “These references to participation…should be be understood both individually and corporately. Each believer is in Christ, but Christ himself constitutes a body, a covenant community of Jews and Gentiles. To be in Christ is a corporate reality, but it is experienced by individuals.” (56)

Transformation is inherent to the reconciliation/justification equivalency in 2 Cor 5:14-21 through the references of “new creation,” “become the righteousness of God,” and in the image of death and resurrection resulting in living for Christ rather than self. Therefore, “Paul’s understanding of justification is inseparable from the experience of death and resurrection, which is grounded in Christ’s own death and resurrection (Rom 4:25).”

For Paul, then, in light of Romans 5 and 2 Corinthians 4, justification has:

1. an objective basis, or means, which is Christ’s death as a gift of God’s gracious initiative (Rom 5:1, 6-8, 9-11; 2 Cor 5:18, 21), together (implicitly) with Christ’s resurrection as God’s life-giving power;
2. a required subjective response, or mode, that effects justification/reconciliation, which is usually (though not always) explicitly labeled pistis, normally translated “faith” or (in its verbal form) “believe” (Rom 5:1; 2 Cor 5:20)
3. substantive content, which includes reconciliation, participation, and transformation (Rom 5:1-2, 9-11; 2 Cor 5:14-15, 17, 21)

The essential content of this transformation is fidelity to God and love for neighbor, the very heart of the covenant.

To demonstrate this, Gorman sets out to address three questions arising from these conclusions:

• What is the distinctive meaning of Christ’s death for Paul?
• What is his distinctive understanding of pistis? and
• What is the connection between the meaning of Christ’s death and the meaning of pistis, on the one hand, and the significance and character of the transformation inherent in justification, on the other?

We will address these questions next Thursday.

Related posts:

• Theology of Justification: Michael Gorman – Part One
• In the Studio with Michael Card
• Book Review: Justification by NT Wright
• Thoughtful Thursdays – Liberation Theology
• A critic of Dr. Steve Lemke’s article on hyper-calvinism