The Expertly Contextualized Gospel

This is excellent:

(HT: Jared Wilson)

Filed under: Christ-centred, Cultural relevance, Doctrine, Evangelical, Evangelism, God's grace, God's holiness, Jesus Christ, Preaching, The Gospel, The word of God

Christianity in our Society is Now Dying

“Having absorbed the world’s values, Christianity in our society is now dying. Subtly but surely worldliness and self-indulgence are eating away the heart of the church. The gospel we proclaim is so convoluted that it offers believing in Christ as nothing more than a means to contentment and prosperity. The offense of the cross (cf. Gal. 5:11) has been systematically removed so that the message might be made more acceptable to unbelievers. The church somehow got the idea it could declare peace with the enemies of God.”
- John MacArthur
(HT: Allsufficientgrace)

Filed under: Cultural relevance, Evangelical, Evangelism, Jesus Christ, John MacArthur, Liberal Theology, Liberalism, The Church, The Gospel, Worldliness

Al Mohler’s New Book

Al Mohler’s latest book, “The Disappearance

of God”, can be ordered HERE

.

From the Publisher:

For centuries the church has taught and guarded the core Christian beliefs that make up the essential foundations of the faith. But in our postmodern age, sloppy teaching and outright lies create rampant confusion, and many Christians are free-falling for ‘feel-good’ theology. We need to know the truth to save ourselves from errors that will derail our faith.

As biblical scholar, author, and president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Albert Mohler, writes, “The entire structure of Christian truth is now under attack.” With wit and wisdom he tackles the most important aspects of these modern issues:

Is God changing His mind about sin?
Why is hell off limits for many pastors?
What’s good or bad about the emergent movement?
Have Christians stopped seeing God as God?
Is the social justice movement misguided?
Could the role of beauty be critical to our theology?
Is liberal faith any less destructive than atheism?
Are churches pandering to their members to survive?

In the age-old battle to preserve the foundations of faith, it’s up to a new generation to confront and disarm the contemporary shams and fight for the truth. Dr. Mohler provides the scriptural answers to show you how.

(HT: Todd Pruitt)

Filed under: Al Mohler, Attributes of God, Books, Cultural relevance, Discernment, Discipleship, Doctrine, Emerging Church, Evangelical, Liberalism, Postmodernism, Religion, The Bible, The Christian Life, The Gospel

Counterfeit Gospels

Tullian Tchividjia shares from Paul Tripp and Tim Lanes book How People Change regarding the seven counterfeit gospels, which Tchividjia explains as “religious ways we try and ‘justify’ ourselves apart from the Gospel of grace.”

See which one you are most prone to…

Formalism. “I participate in the regular meetings and ministries of the church, so I feel like my life is under control. I’m always in church, but it really has little impact on my heart or on how I live. I may become judgmental and impatient with those who do not have the same commitment as I do.”

Legalism. “I live by the rules—rules I create for myself and rules I create for others. I feel good if I can keep my own rules, and I become arrogant and full of contempt when others don’t meet the standards I set for them. There is no joy in my life because there is no grace to be celebrated.”

Mysticism. “I am engaged in the incessant pursuit of an emotional experience with God. I live for the moments when I feel close to him, and I often struggle with discouragement when I don’t feel that way. I may change churches often, too, looking for one that will give me what I’m looking for.”

Activism. “I recognize the missional nature of Christianity and am passionately involved in fixing this broken world. But at the end of the day, my life is more of a defense of what’s right than a joyful pursuit of Christ.”

Biblicism. “I know my Bible inside and out, but I do not let it master me. I have reduced the gospel to a mastery of biblical content and theology, so I am intolerant and critical of those with lesser knowledge.”

Therapism. “I talk a lot about the hurting people in our congregation, and how Christ is the only answer for their hurt. Yet even without realizing it, I have made Christ more Therapist than Savior. I view hurt as a greater problem than sin—and I subtly shift my greatest need from my moral failure to my unmet needs.”

Social-ism. “The deep fellowship and friendships I find at church have become their own idol. The body of Christ has replaced Christ himself, and the gospel is reduced to a network of fulfilling Christian relationships.”

(HT: Erik Kowalker)

Filed under: Cultural relevance, Discernment, Doctrine, Jesus Christ, Liberalism, The Christian Life, The Church, The Gospel

Unfashionable

Book review by Kevin DeYoung:

They say you can’t tell a book by its cover, but with this book you can. Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World By Being Different, besides having a catchy cover, is exactly what you think it is, a book about the Christian’s call to be unlike the world in order to change the world.

Tullian Tchividjian is the grandson of Billy Graham, the founding pastor of New City Church outside Ft. Lauderdale, an author, a conference speaker, and as of a few weeks ago, the pastor at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (which merged with New City so Tullian could pastor both congregations). In addition to these claims to fame, Tullian is a friend of mine.

Unfashionable is divided into four sections: The Call (be different), The Commission (be agents of renewal), The Community (different looks like this), and The Charge (go big or go home). My favorite section is the first. Tullian makes a compelling case for the attraction of transcendence, irrelevance, and truth. The story of how the Lord brought Tullian back to the fold is the perfect example of the book’s main point. “I was a seeker being reached, not by a man-centered, trendy show, but by a God-centered, transcendent atmosphere. I was experiencing what Ed Clowney, the late president of Westminster Theological Seminary, used to call ‘doxological evangelism.’ It was, quite literally, out of this world. Here, finally, was the radical difference I’d been longing for.” Elsewhere Tullian adds, “Younger generations don’t want trendy engagement from the church; in fact, they’re suspicious of it. Instead they want truthful engagement with historical and theological solidity that enables meaningful interaction with transcendent reality. They want desperately to invest their lives in something worth dying for, not some here-today-gone-tomorrow fad.” Amen and Amen. This certainly rings true in my heart and in the hearts of the twenty- and thirtysomethings I run into.

Unfashionable is well organized, attractively laid out, and clearly written. Tullian sprinkles in a number of good quotations from other authors and livens the book with personal anecdotes. If there is anything I disagree with it’s that I may have a little more “two kingdom theology” and a little less “Christ the transformer of culture theology” in me than Tullian. I completely agree with his main point that we should be engaged in culture and seeking to make a difference in the world, but transforming our communities for Christ seems to be more of an implied New Testament teaching than something that gets top billing. I don’t think Tullian and I would disagree with much in practice, but we may want to put our emphasis on a different syllable.

Having said that, Tullian is very careful to strike the right balance, explaining that re-creation is individual and cosmic, that the kingdom has come and is coming, that we are rescued from a problem and for a purpose, that we change the world by persuasion not coercion, that we must have both purity and proximity when it comes to culture. All in all, I welcome Tullian’s reminder to create what is Christ-honoring in the finance, academic, fashion, entertainment, and political centers of the world. I’ve known enough Christians who care little for the world’s problems and attempt little to make the world more God glorifying, that I appreciate Tullian’s challenge to get out there and just do something (to coin a phrase).

Unfashionable would be ideal for use in small groups. The study guide at the back is thorough and the book’s subject matter lends itself well to group discussion.

The vision Tullian casts for us is biblical and bold. The church and the world will be better if we listen to his advice and start making a difference in the world by being different.

Filed under: Books, Christ-centred, Cultural relevance, Discernment, Discipleship, Doctrine, Evangelical, Gospel-centred, Missional living, The Christian Life, The Church, The Cross, The Gospel, The word of God

Ligon Duncan on How the Pastorals Help Us Avoid Two Huge Errors

Justin Taylor writes:

I want to take to heart this exhortation from Ligon Duncan’s TGC message:

If you take one thing home from this conference let it be a determination and commitment to read, re-read, live in, and live and minister out of the Pastorals (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus).

I was especially helped by his section on how Paul’s material in these letters helps us to avoid two errors from opposite sides of the spectrum:One of the reasons that it is hugely important that we let the Pastorals influence our mode of ministry and the shape of our church life is that two huge errors have bedeviled the Western church for closing in on two hundred years now.

• The first error says that the message must be changed if we are going to reach our culture.
• The second error says that our methods are the key to reaching the culture and our methods are not essentially related to our message.

• The first error is the error of classical liberalism.
• The second error is that of modern evangelicalism.

• The first error says: The church can’t be built unless the message is changed.
• The second error says: The church can’t be built unless our methods are changed.

But the Bible teaches that God will build his church, that he has given us Gospel message and Gospel means, and the Pastorals shows us how our methods flow out of and are connected to that message and those means.

Does this mean that all creativity in ministry is bad? No! There is no such thing as an “unsituated” or “uncontextualized” ministry. We are all situated.

Traditionalists and Progressives both make mistakes in this area.

• Traditionalists tend to assume culture and unwittingly impose their cultural assumptions.
• Progressives tend to adopt culture and unwittingly impose their cultural adoptions.

But we [should] want neither an ossified traditionalism nor a faddish progressivism. Our contextualization must be consistent with our theology or we will subvert our own message.

Filed under: Cultural relevance, Discernment, Doctrine, Evangelical, Ligon Duncan, Preaching, The Church, The Gospel, The word of God

The Main Problem Churches Face Today

The “main problem churches face is not that they are culturally out of touch, but that they are theologically out of tune.”

Pastor Tullian Tchividjian

(HT: Extreme Theology)

Filed under: Cultural relevance, Doctrine, Evangelical, Knowing God, The Bible, Theology

Nothing in the Universe is More Relevant

From Missions Mandate:

Extended quotation from Michael Horton’s book Christless Christianity*.

“Where the gospel is not taken for granted, it is often a means to an end, like personal or social transformation, love and service to our neighbors, and other things that in themselves are marvelous effects of the gospel. However, the Good News concerning Christ is not a stepping-stone to something greater and more relevant. Whether we realize it or not, there is nothing in the universe more relevant to us as guilty image-bearers of God than the news that he has found a way to be ‘just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus’ (Rom. 3:26). It is ‘the power of God for salvation’ (Rom. 1:16), not only for the beginning, but for the middle and end as well – the only thing that creates the kind of new world to which our new obedience corresponds as a reasonable response.”

This is a great reminder to not take the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, for granted. Churches must guard themselves from this deadly omission. A passionate zeal for missions can, without proper guidance, lead to a pragmatic mindset. What guards us from developing an anthropocentric (man-centered) view of missions is the very thing that gives us spiritual life – the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Horton so aptly states, the gospel is the “‘power of God for salvation’, not only for the beginning, but for the middle and end as well…” The gospel is the source, the sustaining element, and the eventual glorifying element of our salvation, for “from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever (Rom 11:36).

*Michael Horton, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 22.

Filed under: Cultural relevance, Discipleship, Doctrine, Evangelical, Gospel-centred, Jesus Christ, Missional living, Missions, Power of the Gospel, Substitutionary Atonement, The Cross, The Gospel, The word of God

Revisiting The Shack

John Fonville posts this excellent review. I am amazed at how many Christians are singing the praises of ‘The Shack’. A sign of our biblically-ignorant, and doctrine-depreciating times? For further important critiques of this misleading book, check out articles by Paul Grimmond and Tim Challies.

This is an abreviated version of a longer review (9 pages) by Dr. DeYoung. For those who would like to read the longer review, click here: Revisiting The Shack and Universal Reconciliation.

Revisiting The Shack and Universal Reconciliation

James B. De Young
October, 2008

Seldom does one have the opportunity to review a work of fiction written by a friend that has risen to the top of best seller lists. Recently The Shack has been approaching sales of three million or more. There is talk about making a movie of the book.

What is so unusual about this success is not only that the novel is ostensibly a Christian work of fiction but that it also espouses a view of God that is creative but biblically challenged. It is novel both as literature and as theology. But does Christian fiction have to be doctrinally correct?

A brief look at the book uncovers an unremarkable plot. Willie retells the story of his friend, Mackenzie Phillips, who as a child was abused by his father which left him bitter toward God, the Bible, and the ministry. When his youngest daughter is kidnapped and brutally killed in a mountain shack, Mack’s anger freezes his total outlook in sadness and despair. Years later God invites him to return to the same shack. He encounters the Trinity in the form of a large African woman (“Papa” =the Father), a Jewish carpenter (=Jesus Christ), and a small Asian woman by the name Sarayu (=the Holy Spirit). These three lead Mack to discover a fresh meaning of God’s love for him and forgiveness.

Who is the author? For more than a dozen years I have known William P. Young. We have discussed much theology in a “think tank.” Over four years ago Paul embraced universal reconciliation and defended it on several occasions. He claimed that universalism changed his life and his theology.

The core belief of universal reconciliation asserts that love is the supreme attribute of God that trumps all others. His love reaches beyond the grave to save all those who refuse Christ before they die. God’s love will even conquer fallen angels and the Devil himself who will join the saints in heaven. This view of future destinies claims many texts that seem to teach that the reconciliation that Jesus accomplished on the cross extends to all creatures (Rom. 5:18; 2 Cor. 5:16-20; Col. 1:19-20), that all will lovingly confess him as Lord (Phil. 2:6-11), and that God’s will that all be saved (1 Tim. 2:4) will be accomplished without fail.

After the The Shack was written, the editors worked over a year to eliminate its universalism (as they assert on their web site). Paul now disavows universalism. Yet like all universalists he affirms that he “hopes” that none will experience eternal suffering. But the critical question is this: Does universalism remain in the book? By comparing the creeds of universalism with The Shack one discovers that many tenets of universalism and other errors are implicit in the book.

1. Universalism subjugates God’s justice to his love. The creed of 1878 asserts that God’s attribute of justice is “born of love and limited by love.” The novel asserts that God “cannot act apart from love” (p. 102, 191), that God “chose the way of the cross where mercy triumphs over justice because of love,” and that God did not choose “justice for everyone” (164-165).

2. The creed of 1899 asserts that God “will finally restore the whole family of mankind to holiness and happiness”; there is no future judgment. Similarly Paul denies that Papa (God) “pours out wrath and throws people” into hell. God does not punish sin; it’s his “joy to cure it” (120). Papa “redeems” final judgment (127). God will not “condemn most to an eternity of torment, away from his presence and apart from his love” (162). To judge is to act contrary to love (145).

3. Universalists deny a personal devil. He goes unmentioned in the book (134-137).

4. Paul reveals that the entire Trinity became incarnate, and that the whole Trinity was crucified (99). Both Jesus and Papa (God) bear the marks of crucifixion in their hands (contra. Isa. 53:4-10). These ideas suggest the heresy of patripassianism and modalism, that God is singular who assumes the different modes of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

5. Reconciliation is effective for all without exercising faith. Papa asserts that he is reconciled to the whole world, not only to those who believe (192). The creeds of universalism never mention the need to believe in Christ. Rejecting the idea that God willed humans to have a will that allows them to reject him is deterministic and coercive.

6. All are equally children of God and loved equally by him (155-156). In a future revolution of “love and kindness” everyone will confess in the power of the Spirit that Jesus is Lord (248).

7. The institution of the church is rejected as diabolical. Jesus claims that he “never has, never will” create institutions (178). This counters Jesus’ words in Matthew 16 and 18.

8 ) The Bible is only a revelation of God. In the novel it comes as an afterthought to other revelation (198).

Universalism began with Origen in the third century. In the sixth century it was condemned as heresy. In modern times universalism undermined evangelical faith in Europe and America. It opposed the Great Awakening in the 1730’s-40’s. By 1961 universalism joined with Unitarianism to form the Unitarian-Universalist Association, with its denial of the Trinity and the deity of Christ.

How does one answer the errors of universalism? From the Bible which I’ve cited at The Shack Review.com.

Near the beginning I asked: Does Christian fiction have to be doctrinally correct? In this case the answer is “yes,” for Paul’s intention is to teach theology throughout The Shack. If it is only fiction, why was universalism removed? Although a story may be quite helpful, if an author uses doctrinal impurity to teach how to be restored to a redefined God is one restored to the God of the Bible? Jesus warned that a house built on the wrong foundation will collapse (Matt. 7:24-28). So will a shack.

Filed under: Attributes of God, Biblical exposition, Cultural relevance, Discernment, Doctrine, Evangelical, God the Father, Heresy, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Knowing God, The Bible, The Trinity, The word of God

How to Fill Your Church with False Converts

How I wish this humourous take on ‘getting saved’ was not true.

(HT: Thabiti Anyabwile)

Filed under: Church, Conversion, Cultural relevance, Discernment, Evangelism, False conversion, Humour, Repentance, The Bible, The Gospel

The Truth War – by John MacArthur

Filed under: Attributes of God, Christian Ministry, Cultural relevance, Discernment, Discipleship, Doctrine, Emerging Church, Evangelical, Jesus Christ, John MacArthur, Preaching, Satan, Sin, Substitutionary Atonement, The Bible, The Christian Life, The Church, The Cross, The Gospel, The word of God

The Danger of Practical Preaching!

From Daryl Dash. Amen!

One of the best little articles I’ve ever read on preaching is found in The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching. The title of the article is “The Danger of Practical Preaching: Why People Need More than the Bottom Line.” The author, Lee Eclov, writes:

The Bible spends much more time on shaping the spiritual mind than commanding particular behavior. We need far more training in the ways of grace, of spiritual perceptions, and of what God is really like than we do on how to communicate with our spouse. Understanding the glory of Christ is far more practical than our listeners imagine. Properly preached, every sermon based on a passage of Scripture is fundamentally practical. Every author of Scripture wrote to effect change in God’s people. It is our job as preachers to find the persuasive logic of that author and put that clearly and persuasively before our people through biblical exposition.

Filed under: Cultural relevance, Discernment, Doctrine, Evangelical, Preaching, The Bible, The Christian Life, The Church, The word of God, Truth

Tim Keller on Ministry in a Post-Christian Culture

My thanks to James Grant for this post:

Darryl Dash had the opportunity to interview Tim Keller, author of The Reason for God and the soon to be released The Prodigal God, on the challenges we face as we minister in a post-Christian culture. Dash will post that interview at his blog. To open it, he asked Keller the following question: “You’ve said that we need to change significantly—beyond ordinary approaches like new programs or staff—in order to meet the challenges of a post-Christian culture. What are some of the deeper issues the Church needs to face?” Keller responded with this answer:

The first “deeper” issue is the one that Lloyd-Jones spoke of in his lectures on revivals. He heard people saying, in London in the 1950s, that the solution to the decreasing church attendance and Christian influence in society was better apologetics, more emphasis on church growth or, in the case of the mainline, adapting theology more to the modern mood.

But Lloyd-Jones, of course, believed the need was for spiritual revival. The trouble with naming this is that, unfortunately, in many evangelical circles, especially charismatic ones, “revival” is always said to be the cure-all for our ills. But Lloyd-Jones was thinking of the historic revivals and of a theology of revival of Jonathan Edwards. This means we must, as in all the revivals, recover the gospel of grace.

I agree with Lloyd-Jones on this, but this is a very unpopular view right now in much of the evangelical world. In parts of the Reformed world, Edwards’ view of revival is under attack as individualistic and inimical to the importance of the Church. Oddly, in the emerging church Edwards’ view of revival is unpopular for the same reasons, because of its emphasis on the “individualistic” views of substitutionary atonement, forensic justification and so on.

I think these attacks on (or indifference to) the importance of revival are very wrong. We live in a society in which revival is necessary. As Peter Berger shows in The Heretical Imperative in contemporary pluralistic societies, everyone who believes a faith has to make an individual choice to believe it. There are no longer inherited, authoritative faith traditions. Whether you raise a child Lutheran, Muslim or Baptist the child at some point will have to choose to make the faith of his parents his or her own. In other words, they will have to have a conversion experience.

When revival breaks out through a recovery of the gospel, three things happen:

1. nominal church members realize they’d never been converted;
2. sleepy, lethargic Christians are energized and renewed;
3. outsider non-Christians are attracted into the beautified worship, community and lives of the converted and renewed church members.

That’s how it works. We need it.

The second deeper issue is the relationship of Christ to culture. The old Niebuhr book shows how the Church has never come to consensus on how it should relate to a culture that is sharply non- or anti-Christian. The evangelical Church is bitterly divided into groups that say, either we should change the culture “one heart at a time” by evangelizing individuals, or we should change the culture by penetrating the cultural institutions with Christians operating out of a biblical world-view.

Others say we will only affect the culture if the Church contextualizes—connects to people’s needs and concerns and serves the poor and needy—while still others say we shouldn’t be trying to change culture at all; we should just “be the Church,” because trying to change the culture inevitably corrupts the Church into the image of the culture.

Until we can break through these warring views and factions we are in trouble. Don Carson’s recent book Christ and Culture Revisited is a good starting point because he shows that each approach has a lot of biblical warrant, but each approach, taken as the exclusive one, is seriously imbalanced. I believe the different approaches are actually responding more to other parts of the Christian Church than they are to the world. They are defining themselves as being “not like those Christians over there” and so are falling into what Don calls “reductionisms.”

Filed under: Christian Ministry, Cultural relevance, Discernment, Discipleship, Doctrine, Evangelical, Jesus Christ, Postmodernism, The Bible, The Christian Life, The Church, The Gospel, The word of God, Tim Keller

Twelve Theses on the Mission of the Church in the 21st Century

An excellent post from Justin Taylor:

Andreas Kostenberger:

1. The church’s mission–in both belief and practice–should be grounded in the biblical theology of mission.
2. Reflection on the church’s mission should be predicated upon the affirmation of the full and sole authority of Scripture.
3. The church’s mission should be conceived primarily in terms of the church’s faithfulness and responsiveness to the missionary mandate given by the Lord Jesus Christ as recorded in Scripture.
4. The church’s understanding of its mission should be hermeneutically sound.
5. The church’s mission is to be conceived ultimately in theocentric rather than anthropocentric terms.
6. The church’s mission, properly and biblically conceived, is to be trinitarian in its orientation, but not at the expense of neglecting the distinct roles of the three persons within the Godhead.
7. The contemporary context of the church’s mission, while important, ought not to override the church’s commitment to the authority of Scripture, its need to be grounded in the biblical theology of mission, and the understanding of its task in terms of faithfulness to the gospel.
8. The church is the God-ordained agent of his mission in this world today.
9. The way in which the kingdom of God is extended in this world today is through regenerate believers acting out their Christian faith in their God-assigned spheres of life: the church, their families, their workplace, the societies in which they live (Eph 5:18-6:9; 1 Pet 2:13-3:7).
10. There is no true lasting social transformation apart from personal conversion through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
11. Human organization does not necessarily entail a lack of acknowledgment of God and his initiative in mission.
12. The church’s task today is to nurture, renew, and plant churches composed of a spiritually regenerate membership and constituted in keeping with the biblical teaching regarding church leadership.

Read the whole thing for an explanation of each point. Kostenberger invites feedback.

Filed under: Christian Ministry, Cultural relevance, Discernment, Discipleship, Doctrine, Evangelical, Evangelism, Hermeneutics, Jesus Christ, Mission, The Bible, The Christian Life, The Church, The Cross, The Gospel, The word of God

Spurgeon on Revivalism

Adrian Warnock says: it is interesting in the context of today that some argue against emotionalism in preaching, while others try and by human effort create an atmosphere. Spurgeon would disagree with both approaches:

“Nor is it soul-winning, dear friends, merely to create excitement. Excitement will accompany every great movement. We might justly question whether the movement was earnest and powerful if it was quite as serene as a drawing-room Bible-reading. You cannot very well blast great rocks without the sound of explosions, nor fight a battle and keep everybody as quiet as a mouse. On a dry day, a carriage is not moving much along the road unless there is some noise and dust; friction and stir are the natural result of force in motion. So, when the Spirit of God is abroad, and men’s minds are stirred, there must and will be certain visible signs of the movement, although these must never be confounded with the movement itself. If people imagine that to make a dust is the object aimed at by the rolling of a carriage, they can take a broom, and very soon raise as much dust as fifty coaches; but they will be committing a nuisance rather than conferring a benefit. Excitement is as incidental as the dust, but it is not for one moment to be aimed at. When the woman swept her house, she did it to find her money, and not for the sake of raising a cloud.

Do not aim at sensation and “effect.” Flowing tears and streaming eyes, sobs and outcries, crowded after-meetings and all kinds of confusions may occur, and may be borne with as concomitants of genuine feeling; but pray do not plan their production.”
— C. H. Spurgeon

Filed under: CH Spurgeon, Christian Ministry, Church, Cultural relevance, Discernment, Evangelical, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Revivalism, Sovereignty of God, Spirit of the age, The Bible