“That’s the latest question in the Washington Post/Newsweek forum On Faith. The question is brought about by the publication of An Evangelical Manifesto. Respondents include N.T. Wright, Cal Thomas, Chuck Colson, and Martin Marty.”
(HT:JT)
I’ve enjoyed all the stimulating discussion on this blog. Thanks everyone for weighing in and sharing your helpful insights. I love to come across quotes like the one I’m going to share. They are a breath of fresh air amidst all my striving to lead authentically and compellingly. This is from Reggie Kidd’s book With One Voice. Another must read for those who lead in worship. Here it is:
In some churches the quest for ‘excellence’ is an idol, regardless of whether ‘excellence’ is defined by standards of so called ‘classical’ culture or of ‘pop’ culture. Such ‘excellentism’ [I like this word] needs to be replaced with the quest to pursue the likeness of Christ crucified and him alone. As good as it gets this side of Christ’s return, we’re never going to get it completely right. There will always be a flat tenor, a broken guitar string, an overly loud organ, or a poorly placed hymn. But it’s okay. The cross means it’s covered.
Rick Mckinley, pastor of Imago Dei Community in Portland, wrote a book entitled This Beautiful Mess that was sent to me the other day by my friend David Kopp. I have only had the chance to skim it but yesterday I read some sentences that I think are relevant to the ongoing discussion re: the essence of the Gospel and how it relates to God’s Kingdom. I think Rick makes a helpful (and balanced) distinction:
Sometimes it seems as though we find two gospels in the New Testament–the gospel of Jesus and the gospel about Jesus. The gospel of Jesus is usually taken to mean His announcement of the kingdom and the life He embodied in His loving actions toward the world. The gospel about Jesus refers to his atoning work on the cross and His resurrection, through which we can receieve the forgiveness of sin through our faith and repentance.
I believe, however, that the two are actually one gospel and that when we lose the tension that comes from holding both together, we experience an unhealthy and unbiblical pendulum swing in our faith.
If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ’s message. Taken out of context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than what the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transferring of our lives into the new world of the kingdom.
“According to a September 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 15 percent of white evangelicals between 18 and 29, a group traditionally a shoo-in for the GOP, say they no longer identify with the Republican Party. Older evangelicals are also questioning their traditional allegiance, but not at the same rate…Young evangelicals are more of a swing constituency than they’ve been for decades, said Andy Crouch, an editor at Christianity Today, a national evangelical magazine: ‘This could turn out to be the election where both parties realize that the evangelical vote is so hopelessly split down the middle that it’s not worth courting them at all because what parties need are blocs that can be appealed to en masse,’ Crouch said. ‘Paradoxically, evangelicals would become less relevant than ever before.’”
Could this be the unforseen backlash of an over emphasis on politics among Evangelicals over the last 30 years?
As I mentioned in a post a couple days ago, the Bible teaches that God is on a mission to reclaim and replenish his corrupted territory—“making all things new” (Revelation 21:5). There is a growing discussion, though, over what role we play, if any, in God’s restoration project. Is the work of cultural renewal our job here and now, or not? Is this something God is doing, or we are doing, or both? You can read part one and part two of my answer.
Here’s my last part (a continuation of the previous two parts and an excerpt from my forthcoming book Unfashionable):
God wants us to join him in redeeming peoples, places, and things. He wants Christians to renew their cultures to the honor and glory of God. We’re to fill the earth — every aspect of it — with the knowledge of God, our Creator and Redeemer.
This means that while evangelism remains a priority, the salvation of individuals is not the church’s only mission. Churches are designed by God to be instruments of renewal in the world, not only renewing individual lives but also renewing cultural forms and structures, helping to make all that is crooked in our world straight.
Our mission involves both evangelism and cultural renewal. It is spiritual and physical, individual and communal. God wants us to involve ourselves in the rehabilitation of hearts and houses, souls and society. We’re to care about the renewal of both people and the environment. This requires word and deed, proclamation and demonstration. God is renewing human hearts and recreating all things through his church. This is our mission to the world.
To be sure, a transformational approach to culture does not assume an unrealistic optimism about what’s possible in our fallen world. Because the world will remain sinful until Christ returns, we know we can never achieve any utopia here and now. “Heaven on earth” will become a universal reality only when Christ comes back. We are, however, to be faithful in executing God’s mission — moving in the same direction God is moving — by seeking the renewal of all things. Of course there has always been considerable (and somewhat distracting) debate on whether, before Christ returns, things will get markedly worse, get markedly better, or just go on about the same. That’s God’s business, not ours. We’re told to plant and water; God alone controls the results.
Our task as faithful disciples is proclaimed by the Welsh poet, Ethelwyn Wetherald:
My orders are to fight;
Then if I bleed, or fail,
Or strongly win, what matters it?
God only doth prevail.
The servant craveth naught
Except to serve with might.
I was not told to win or lose —
My orders are to fight.
What we do know is that many Christians throughout the ages have sought cultural transformation, and in so doing they’ve had a huge impact. One of them was the English politician William Wilberforce, whose conversion to Christianity propelled him to fight against the slave trade throughout the British Empire. He did this for decades, paving the way for the abolition of slavery and the reformation of morals in England. He was truly a man who changed his times. When Christians take the cultural mandate seriously, real change for the better can and has happened. No Christian has ever “turned earth into heaven, or the world into the church. And sometimes they have made tragic mistakes. But they have also done a great deal of good.”
The good news is that Christ not only began the process but will also complete it. And by his Spirit, he now empowers us to carry on his work. Led by Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we thus have all that we need for our present task. In saving us, God has fully equipped us to carry out the cultural mandate he originally entrusted to us.
All of this shows that God has created us to live for something that will never die.
Lives that have been redeemed by Christ carry transformative power. The difference God has equipped us to make is neither small nor insignificant. Since God is on a mission to transform this present world into the world to come, and he’s currently using his transformed people to do this, our commitment to living unfashionably has cosmic implications. Our call to live against the world, for the world — to live unfashionably — carries the power to effect real, lasting change to peoples, places, and things both now and forever. So why waste time and energy living for “here today, gone tomorrow” trends, when we can live for something that will go on and on and on?
Ultimately, Christianity is not about isolated individuals “going to heaven.” It’s about God transforming this broken world and making things right. Christianity is about Christ making “everything sad come untrue,” straightening out all that is crooked and correcting every injustice. In Jesus, God is at work regaining, restoring, and extending what Adam forfeited by his disobedience. The Second Adam achieves for us no less than what the first Adam enjoyed, and much more. We won’t simply go back to the Garden; we’ll enjoy a whole new incorruptible world.
The exciting good news is that Christ is presently carrying out this cosmic renovation through those who have been reconciled to God through his atoning work on the cross. With the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God commenced a counterattack to reclaim his rightful territory, and Christians are his soldiers in that continuing battle.
In continuation of our recent discussion on Christians and the arts I want to share this quote from Bob Kauflin’s book Worship Matters, which I commend to everyone who leads in corporate worship. He’s an exceptional musician and a remarkable leader/teacher/communicator on biblical worship. Among other things I have heard, from folks who know him, that he is also a man of great integrity. But I’m struggling with this passage from his book. If you already own the book you can find the quote at the bottom of page 230. Here it is:
Even though musicians aren’t necessarily “elders” or “teachers” their presence in front of the congregation week after week implies that their life is worthy of emulation—not flawless, but demonstrating the fruit of the gospel. When that’s not true, the church gets the message that worship is more about music than the way we live. Likewise, when non-Christian musicians are used, we’re implying that the art of worship is more important than the heart.
My friend Collin Hansen wrote an engaging book that came out recently charting the growing interest in Calvinism among young adults. The name of the book is Young, Restless, and Reformed (based on this Christianity Today article by the same name published 2 years ago). Collin is an editor for Christianity Today and a seminary student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
The Henry Center at Trinity recently hosted a conversation between Collin and Dr. Doug Sweeney, professor of Church History at TEDS, on Collin’s book. The conversation took place at TEDS on April 28, 2008 and can be watched here.
My good friend Jon Elswick, who is the Creative Arts Pastor at West Pines Community Church, passed along this wonderful “artist’s manifesto” to me today. (Commercial break: He got it from Justin Taylor’s blog. If you’ve never perused this site then check it out. It’s not a trickle of theological insight but a steady stream. He makes several posts, daily.)
Back to my headline:
Aside from statement #8 (which I find a bit misleading) I fully endorse this document and commend it to every artist, everywhere. You’ll find the full pdf of the Artist’s Manifesto here.
In this brilliantly (and disturbing) written review of Daniel Radosh’s new book Rapture Ready, Hanna Rosin examines the deep contradictions of Christian popular culture. Please read!
As I mentioned in a post a couple days ago, the Bible teaches that God is on a mission to reclaim and replenish his corrupted territory—“making all things new” (Revelation 21:5). And there is a growing discussion over what role we play, if any, in God’s restoration project. Is the work of cultural renewal our job here and now, or not? Is this something God is doing, or we are doing? You can read part one of my answer here.
Here’s part two:
Looking at the Lord’s Prayer and its reminder that God’s ultimate goal is to make earth like heaven begs a question: What is going on in heaven that God intends to bring here on earth? Well, whatever else the Bible might have to say about the current environment in heaven, the Lord’s Prayer teaches us that it’s an environment — a culture — where God’s name is perfectly hallowed and his will is perfectly done. Obviously this is by no means the state of affairs on earth at the present time, but Jesus foresees the time when the perfect doing of God’s will and the perfect hallowing of God’s name will be true “on earth as it is in heaven.” And contrary to what many have come to believe, this process of transformation does not begin when Christ returns.
With Christ’s first coming, God began the process of reversing the curse of sin and renewing all things. In Christ, God was moving in a new way and, in the words of C.S. Lewis, “winter began moving backwards.” All of Jesus’ ministry, the words he spoke and the miracles he performed, was to show that there was a new order in town: God’s order. When Jesus would heal the diseased, raise the dead, and forgive the desperate, he did so to show that with the arrival of God in the flesh came the restoration of the way God intended things to be.
Tim Keller rightly points out that Christ’s miracles were not the suspension of the natural order but the restoration of the natural order. They were, in other words, a reminder of what once was and a preview of what will eventually be a universal reality once again—a world of peace and justice, without death, disease, or conflict.
The greatest miracle which proves this is, of course, the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus was “just the beginning of the saving, renewing, resurrecting work of God that will have its climax in the restoration of the entire cosmos,” as K. Scott Oliphant and Sinclair Ferguson remind us. The bodily resurrection of Jesus “was the first bit of material order to be redeemed and transfigured,” writes John Stott. “It is the divine pledge that the rest will be redeemed and transfigured one day.” Christ’s resurrection is both the model and the means for our resurrection — and the guarantee that what he started, he will finish.
Cornelius Plantinga puts it this way:
We have corrupted the earth through folly and sin, but God means to restore all things in the harmony, justice, and delight of shalom. This is a sign to us: On the third day Jesus rose again from the dead, the pledge that one day all things shall be renewed. And God has called people like us to become agents for the restoration project that is already in process.
The day will come when Christ returns and completes this process of transformation (read Revelation 21, for instance). Psalm 96:11-13 gives us a poetic glimpse of what will happen when Jesus returns to rule the earth:
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
let the field exult, and everything in it!
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
before the LORD, for he comes,
for he comes to rule the earth.
He will rule the world in righteousness,
and the peoples in his faithfulness.
For those who have found forgiveness of sins in Christ, there will one day be no more sickness, no more death, no more tears, no more division, and no more tension. There will be, for the pardoned children of God, complete harmony. We will work and worship in a perfectly renewed earth without the interference of sin. We who believe the gospel will enjoy sinless hearts and minds along with disease-free bodies. All that causes us pain and discomfort will be destroyed, and we will live forever. We will finally be able, as John Piper says, ‘to enjoy what is most enjoyable with unbounded energy and passion forever.’
However, in the meantime — the time between Christ’s first and second coming — we, the people of God, have been commissioned as God’s agents of renewal. For not only is Christ’s resurrection the pattern for our resurrection, but according to Romans 8:21 our resurrection is the pattern for the resurrection of all creation.
This is behind Jesus’ commissioning of all his transformed followers: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 29:19-20).
Commenting on these verses, theologian John Frame says,
You see how comprehensive that is? The Great Commission tells us not only to tell people the Gospel and get them baptized, but also to teach them to obey everything Jesus has commanded us. Everything. The Gospel creates new people, people radically committed to Christ in every area of their lives. People like these will change the world. They will fill and rule the earth to the glory of Jesus. They will plant churches, establish godly families, and will also plant godly hospitals, schools, arts, and sciences.
The Great Commission instructs us to bring every part of our lives and every part of our world under the lordship of Christ. And when we do, we bring the renewing power of God’s reign and rule “on earth as it is in heaven.”
We have been redeemed so that we might become instruments of redemption. This means that God’s ultimate purpose for Christians is not bringing them out of this world and into heaven, but using them to bring heaven into this world. Again, the Christian’s ultimate destination is not an ethereal heaven, but a new physical world, and God is ushering in this new world through his people. As we hallow God’s name and do God’s will in how we think, feel, and act (i.e., live unfashionably), the power of Christ’s resurrection flows through us — and as a result, we bring heaven’s culture to earth. In this manner we continue the work that Christ began and will one day complete.
Michael Wittmer beautifully pictures this process:
Just as sin began with individuals and rippled out to contaminate the entire world, so grace begins with individuals and ripples out to redeem the rest of creation. We humans are the bulls-eye of God’s grace, the target of his redemption. But though salvation begins with us, the God who redeems us does not want us to keep redemption to ourselves.
© 2007 · new city church (newcityfl.com)
