Tullian Tchividjian has a very good post on this subject today:

Following the lead of the advertising world, many churches today (and more specifically worship services) are targeting specific age groups to the exclusion of others. For years now churches have been organizing themselves around generational distinctives: busters, boomers, Generations X, Y, and Z. Many churches offer a "traditional service" for the tribe who prefers old music and a "contemporary service" for the tribe who prefers new music. I understand the good intentions behind some of these efforts but something as seemingly harmless as this evidences a fundamental failure to comprehend the heart of the Gospel. When we offer, for instance, a contemporary worship service for the younger people and a traditional worship service for the older people, we are not only feeding tribalism (which is a toxic form of racism) but we are saying that the Gospel can't successfully bring these two different groups together. It is a declaration of doubt in the reconciling power of God's Gospel. Generational appeal in worship is an unintentional admission that the Gospel is powerless to "join together" what man has separated. Plainly stated, building the church on age appeal (whether old or young) or stylistic preferences is as contrary to the reconciling effect of the Gospel as building it on class, race, or gender distinctions. Negatively, when the church segregates people according to generation, race, style, or socio-economic status, we exhibit our disbelief in the reconciling power of the Gospel. Positively, one of the prime evidences of God's power to our segregated world is a congregation which transcends cultural barriers, including age.

I agree. You can explain a lot of things by music and style, but when you see a church that has nothing in common in terms of music and style, but in which there is genuine love, you have to look deeper to the Gospel.

I'm looking forward to Tullian's upcoming book Unfashionable, by the way.

The more the Church has accommodated her message to suit the palate of the people the greater has been the decline in attendance at places of worship. (David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith 1939-1981)

More of his comments here

If something is not what God did in and through the historical Jesus two thousand years ago, it is not the gospel...[Christians] can only believe it, proclaim it and seek to live consistently with it. Only Jesus lived (and died) the gospel. It is a once-for-all finished and perfect event done for us by another.

That's good stuff.

But Glenn R. Kreider provides some counterbalance in a review of Goldsworthy's book in the latest issue of Bibliotheca Sacra:

Certainly the gospel (good news) is grounded in the work of Christ, but it would seem to include the future work of Christ as well (including His return and the new creation), as well as blessing for all believers (Gal. 3:8). Furthermore this limitation seems inconsistent with Goldworthy's definition of the gospel as "the event (or proclamation of that event) of Jesus Christ that begins with his incarnation and earthly life, and concludes with his death, resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father" (p. 58). Would not the proclamation of the work of Christ be something that Christians do, and would not that proclamation include living the message as well? In short, how does one separate the verbal and incarnational ministry of the gospel? Did not Paul indicate that Christians do live the gospel when he wrote that "we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus" (2 Cor. 4:10 NIV)? It would seem that one way to understand Paul's testimony in Philippians 3:10-11 is as affirming his desire to live the gospel. "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow, to attain to the resurrection of the dead" (NIV). Also, Goldworthy's emphasis on the eschatological trajectory of the biblical story seems difficult to reconcile with the strong limitation of the work of Christ completed in the past. He writes, "God's plan from all creation was the new creation and a people created and redeemed in Christ. The blueprint of creation and of all history is the gospel" (p. 223).

I still cringe a little when I hear people talk about "living the Gospel" but I think Kreider has a point. One of our greatest needs is to keep our definitions of the Gospel centered on the work of God in Christ rather than our own works, but then to include all the work that God did through Christ as good news of what God has done and continues to do. Tim Keller's recent article in Leadership Journal is an excellent resource on this topic.

Ten years ago today I began as the new pastor at Richview Baptist Church. Those were the days Windows 98 was a big deal (just a week old at that point), overhead projectors were still in common use, and I was skinny and had hair. (If you look carefully you can even see a bottle of liquid paper on my desk. When was the last time you used Liquid Paper?)

In September of that year we held an induction service.

I think it's safe to say that all of us look different today.

In those ten years Richview has changed a lot, and so have we. Jack Miller said to stay in one place until you've been humbled.

The best way...development takes place is by staying under one set of leaders to give them enough time to know you so that the obvious impossibilities of [leading] in your own strength can be pointed out and the younger leader broken before the Lord to abandon pride and move into Jesus' love. But this usually doesn't come very soon if a man moves about too much. People just don't get to know him, and he moves on before getting humbled by seeing how impossible ministry is. It's one thing to see things happen with others leading; it is another to see them happen to you and through you, and that takes time and sweat. (The Heart of a Servant Leader)

On Sunday, Sandy, worship leader and head blogger at Taste Buddy, spoke his love language and mine by presenting me with a basket of spicy snacks to mark the occasion:

Charlene and I were talking the other day about how much we love what Richview has become and is becoming. It's been a privilege to have been there ten years now through lots of ups and downs, and to have the sense that God isn't done working with us yet.

I've known about Martyn Lloyd-Jones for years. I knew he was a medical doctor who gave up a promising career to become a pastor. I knew he was stern and a gifted preacher who could take years to work through a book of the Bible. I remember being captivated listening to a cassette tape of him preaching on two words: "But God..." But when I kept hearing Tim Keller mention the influence of Lloyd-Jones on his own ministry, I had to learn more. I'm glad I did.

more from my book blog

I don't know how it happened, but somehow we got old enough to have a daughter graduate from Grade 8. That's right, we now have a daughter who is about to enter high school. Scary.

I have mixed feelings about all the graduations that take place these days - graduating from kindergarten, grade 6, etc. But this was a bit of a milestone, and we had fun the other night watching her enjoy the occasion.

One of the highlights was hearing one of the teachers use a poem Christina had written to end her speech. With Christina's permission, here's the poem she wrote to mark the end of her time at Quest Alternative School.

reflect
upon the waters
in which I've traveled,
where I've been

I just finished
not a quest
but a part of the journey

it is not the end
but the end of the beginning
there is still a ways to go
but I've finished
being a curious wide eyed kid
I am making a transition
to a ever wondering teenager

I am making the transition
past elementary
past that small island
onto the next stage of my life
my journey
my quest

A part of my heart
will stay at the island
will stay in my childhood
will stay at this tiny school
no matter how far I travel
how much longer I have to go

I am prepared to move on
to face the next part of my quest
my life, my all
but I still shed a tear
at the thought of leaving,
the thought of each friendship here
might slowly fade

but I still have the knowledge
to move through out my journey
and carry on my quest
this is not the end
but the end of the beginning

Sometimes I get pretty excited by a book in the same way that I get excited about a movie that's only worth watching once. Other times I keep returning to it over and over because there's so much there. Case in point: The Heart of a Servant Leader by Jack Miller.

I reviewed this book back in January, and I've thought about it many times since then. I just pulled it out again and man, do I need to read it regularly. I find it challenging and encouraging at the same time. It's one of those books that I would include as a must-read for any pastor if I had the power (and we're all glad I don't). I think I'm going to pull it out and keep it beside my bed.

If you haven't read this book yet, get it. It'll be good for your soul.

The church I pastor is trying to become more outwardly focused. Sometimes it helps to learn from examples, so a group of us traveled a short distance to one of the most outwardly focused churches we know: Sanctuary Ministries in downtown Toronto.

Sanctuary is more than a church. It's a ministry "that seeks to establish and develop holistic, inclusive and healthy community." They live in a neighborhood that's a little different from ours, one "plagued with homelessness, drugs, prostitution, unemployment and AIDS." Though it's not only a church, Sanctuary has the gospel at its core. "This Sanctuary is a gospel community at its heart, devoted to living out the good news that Jesus is God and Saviour," their website says. "There really isn't anything radical or new about it. It's just simple, orthodox Christianity at work."

We sat in a small room before Sunday night's service talking to the Executive Director, Greg Paul. As we talked, we noticed that our language didn't match up. We talked about Sanctuary as a mission; Greg talked about it as a community. We talked about targeting people; Greg talked about wanting to be with people where they are. We talked about servant leadership; Greg suggested that we'd be better off thinking more about servanthood and less about leadership.

When we come to a community with a set of services, Greg explained, there's a power dynamic at work. We serve; they receive. They remain disempowered. When we go into a neighborhood, spend time with them, listen to them, and allow them to serve us, we become servants, and the power imbalance disappears. The challenge is to find who the poorest people are in the neighborhood, and to discover how we can be with them. Stop looking for programmatic answers, Greg told us. Go to people and listen to who they are, where they are.

Greg talked about lessons he'd learned: about becoming a church of the poor, rather than a church that only served the poor; of learning early on that he had to shut up and do more listening than talking; of getting past the idea that church is only a service on Sunday; of connecting with those who are broken by being vulnerable about our own brokenness. Does he know of any traditional churches that have succeeded in becoming outwardly focused? Not many, Greg said, but he couldn't think of many churches that had tried.

It was time for the community to gather for worship, prayer, and learning. Music was homegrown. Those gathered called out the songs they wanted to sing; we sang home-grown blues songs to a band with bass, congas, and a B3 Hammond organ. Those who were gathered stood to read Scriptures they had picked. A man stood and talked about how Jesus had helped him become free, mostly, from his addiction to drugs and alcohol. A man stood up and broke the loaf, said that nobody could put it together again. Jesus came to restore what is broken, but then we broke him. God put him back together again on Easter, and he now lives to restore those of us who were broken. We came and ate the bread and drank the cup as we sang out Jesus. Then a break with sandwiches, cake, and coffee, and then we were taught about the armor of God.

The service was raw, less structured, more authentic than anything we were used to. Last year, a skeptic attended a service here and said, "Amidst all the pomp and circumstance of the Christian world out there, here lies a simple, honest place that really means it."

We were getting ready to leave, and Greg asked to see us. It would be a mistake, he said, to look at Sanctuary and focus on the style of music, their methods, or his leadership. Sanctuary isn't about that, he said. It's about becoming a church of people who are broken, welcoming the poor and needy, and giving them a voice. It's becoming a safe community for everyone, where they can meet Jesus.

I left thinking not about Greg or Sanctuary, but about the ultimate servant, the friend of sinners. I think we saw him that night.

Now Tullian Tchividjian has a great post that reinforces this thought. Tullian quotes Sinclair Ferguson:

Doesn’t Jesus teach us here [John 17:20-23] that His single greatest evangelistic agency is the church? And notice –I think this is significant –not the church simply as a random collection of individuals who have been converted, but the church as a new, counter-cultural community in which the fellowship of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit comes to expression in the unity, and community, and joy, and sense of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ among His people.

That’s the reason, you know, in the New Testament there’s hardly any instruction whatsoever about how to be a witness. And by contrast, in our evangelism manuals all the emphasis lies on ‘How can you as an individual be a witness?’ and ‘Here are the questions you need to learn to ask.’ Now what’s that a sign of? That’s a sign of the bankruptcy of the church, because when the church is full of the power of the Holy Spirit what happens is what Simon Peter describes in 1 Peter, chapter 3–that you’re in a situation that you need to be ready to give an answer for the hope that’s in you.

When the church fails to be the church, individual Christians need to learn how to ask questions that will make ungodly people think about godly things. But when the church is the church, the people of God simply need to answer the questions that the very character of the church is prompting the world to ask.

more

It's much harder actually. Becoming a counter-cultural community is a lot more work than running a program. It's also easier since it's much more organic and an overflow of who we are.

By the way, if you don't subscribe to Tullian's blog, you should check it out.

I've really been enjoying Iain Murray's biography, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years 1899-1939. Even though I'm reading about things that took place a century ago, it's striking how little things have changed.

Take this sermon by Lloyd-Jones, preached in March 1924. You may or may not agree with Lloyd-Jones, but it sounds an awful lot like a critique you could hear today. You'll notice that Lloyd-Jones was often confrontational in his approach. More on that some other time.

We get endless sermons on psychology, but amazingly few on Christianity. Our preachers are afraid to preach on the doctrine of the Atonement and on predestination. The great cardinal principles of our belief are scarcely ever mentioned, indeed there is a movement on foot to amend them so as to bring them up to date. How on earth can you talk of bringing these eternal truths up to date? They are not only up-to-date, they are and will be ahead of the times to all eternity.

As I say, you can disagree, but there's no doubt that the issues he mentions are still ones we're talking about today. This could have been preached at the T4G Conference a couple of months back.

Or check out this sermon, from 1927 I think:

We seem to have a real horror of being different. Hence all our attempts and endeavors to popularize the church and make it appeal to people...The man who only comes to church or chapel because he likes the minister as a man is of no value at all, and the minister who attempts to get men there by means of that subterfuge is for the time being guilty of lowering the standard of truth which he claims to believe. For the gospel is the gospel of salvation propounded by the Son of God himself. We must not hawk it about in the world, or offer special inducements or attractions, as if we were shopkeepers announcing an exceptional bargain sale...

Spectacular stuff. I can almost hear Eugene Peterson or even Michael Horton in these comments.

I was reading today about his first pastorate. The church was in decline and people wanted to see how Lloyd-Jones would tackle the problem. They guessed it might be by starting a new program. Lloyd-Jones didn't seem to rely too much on programs though. Murray writes:

Dr. Lloyd-Jones had nothing to say about any new programme. To the surprise of the church secretary he seemed to be exclusively interested in the purely 'traditional' part of church life...The church was to advance, not by approximating to the world, but rather by representing in the world the true life and privilege of the children of God. The fundamental need was for the church to recover an understanding of what she truly is.

That last sentence is great.

By the way, I got reading about the Doctor (as Lloyd-Jones is often called) because Tim Keller mentions him so much. I'm really enjoying the book. A good biography is always refreshing.

• Why are there so many denominations of Christianity?
• Why did the earthquake happen in China?
• How can we know if the Bible is true and is from God, not just fiction and superstition?
• Is the Bible in conflict with science?

And many more.

Should be interesting. If you're the praying kind, pray for me tonight.

From CTV:

It looks like the Mats Sundin era with the Toronto Maple Leafs might be about to end.

The Maple Leafs have given the rival Montreal Canadiens permission to speak with their captain, who is set to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1.

Not happy. Any team but the Habs would be OK.

What Wordle did with the words on my home page. Cool idea.

Here is this coming Sunday's sermon:

via

If you were to ask me to give a definition of a Christian I should say that he is one who, since believing in Christ, feels himself to be the happiest man in the world and longs for everybody else to be equally happy! (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, quoted in D.M Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years)