The Gospel Coalition

What the Media Missed in the Nashville Flood:

We know from experience that when it rains in New York, the whole country gets wet. When it snows there, the Ice Age is upon us. But news goes on outside of New York and Washington. There’s a whole country out there. And stories worth telling.

Racquel Welch is disturbed by the consequences of the Sexual Revolution:

These days, nobody seems able to “keep it in their pants” or honor a commitment! Raising the question: Is marriage still a viable option? I’m ashamed to admit that I myself have been married four times, and yet I still feel that it is the cornerstone of civilization, an essential institution that stabilizes society, provides a sanctuary for children and saves us from anarchy.

Are Christians meant to feel guilty all the time? Kevin DeYoung responds:

I don’t believe God redeemed us through the blood of his Son that we might feel like constant failures. Do Peter and John post-Pentecost seemed racked with self-loathing and introspective fear? Does Paul seem constantly concerned that he could be doing more? Amazingly enough, Paul actually says at one point “I am not aware of anything against myself”. He’s quick to add, “I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.” But it sure seems like Paul put his head on the pillow at night with a clean conscience. So why do so many Christian feel guilty all the time?

A visual history of FaceBook’s default privacy settings:

We all know that Facebook has been making privacy changes over the past few years which supposedly reflects society’s trends toward becoming more open. A new infographic produced by Matt McKeon effectively illustrates how Facebook has steadily decreased the default privacy settings of users’ profiles to be more open.

Last week, Jerry Vines, a retired Southern Baptist pastor and a key leader in the Conservative Resurgence, commented on  ”gospel-centered preaching”:

We are hearing a great deal these days about gospel-centered preaching. Just what is meant by the terminology? In some circles it is a code-phrase for a particular systematic theology. Others use it to refer merely to evangelistic preaching.

Dr. Vines then turned to 1 Corinthians 15 as a summary statement of the gospel, focusing on the death and resurrection of Christ as the solution to human sin and death. He concluded by saying:

Gospel-centered preaching is declaring the cross and the empty tomb. If a preacher declares those twin towers of God’s provision for the two mountains of man’s misery, he is a gospel-centered preacher!

A few weeks ago, one of the questions for the panel at Band of Bloggers concerned the phrase “gospel-centered,” and whether or not this adjective was becoming merely a catchphrase void of meaningful content. In answer to the question “What does gospel-centered mean?”, I focused on the truth that the gospel is the fuel of the Christian life, not just the ignition that starts the journey.

But Vines’ blog post got me thinking specifically about how gospel-centeredness applies to preaching. It’s true that the gospel announcement focuses on Christ’s substitutionary death and his glorious resurrection. But when we say “gospel-centered,” we’re referring to the centered part as much as the “gospel” itself. We then contrast gospel-centered preaching with preaching that is centered on something else.

Here are some examples:

1. Gospel-centered preaching vs politics-centered preaching

Some pastors continue to give the essence of a gospel presentation and call people to faith, but they are not gospel-centered because the bulk of their preaching focuses on current events and societal transformation.

For example, let’s say you walk into this church during December and you hear a message called “The Battle for Christmas.” The message is about the controversy over saying “Merry Christmas!” or displaying nativity scenes in public. The sermon application is not repentance and faith, but “stand up and take back America!” (The implication is that this change will take place through the political process.)

The gospel may still have a place in this kind of message, but it has been relegated to the final remarks of the invitation. In no way is the message centered on the twin truths of Christ’s death and resurrection.

2. Gospel-centered preaching vs advice-centered preaching

Many pastors focus the majority of their sermons on practical themes like raising a family, managing your finances, or cutting down on stress at work. These messages may also include the news about Jesus’ death and resurrection, but the main focus of the sermon is how to improve your life.

In this kind of preaching, the gospel is viewed as an entryway into the Christian life. The rest of the Christian life is a do-it-yourself model. The gospel ignites the engine of faith, but “do this” and “don’t do that” becomes the main fuel for the Christian life, and these commands (biblical as many of them may be) are disconnected from the gospel that brings transformation.

In the end, we wind up with a Christianized version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The focus is on what we need to do, but these imperatives are disconnected from the truth of what Christ has done.

(Note: Imperatives are not bad; they are biblical! But they should always be grounded in the indicatives of what Christ has done for us on the cross.)

3. Gospel-centered preaching vs evangelism-centered preaching

One might wonder how I can separate evangelism-only sermons from gospel-centered preaching, since it should be assumed that evangelism-only sermons are gospel-centered. (I wish that were the case, but too often I have heard “evangelistic” sermons that focus very little on the death and resurrection of Christ.) Even if the evangelistic sermon does center on the evangel, I think we still mean something when we speak of “gospel-centered preaching,” since the latter generally refers to a steady diet of sermons.

Gospel-centered preaching will, of course, be evangelistic, but it is driven by the realization that Christians need the gospel too. It’s not that the lost need to hear the gospel and now Christians need to move on to something deeper. It’s that the lost need the gospel and Christians need to move deeper into that gospel as well.

The gospel saves us (once and for all) from the penalty of our sin. But a continual exposure to the gospel is the means by which Christ delivers us from the power of sin and prepares us for the day we will be delivered from the presence of sin as well.

4. Gospel-centered preaching vs virtue-centered preaching

Sometimes, preachers mine the Old Testament looking for characters to make examples of, whether good or bad.

• “Dare to be a Daniel.”
• “Fight the giants in your life like David.”
• “Build up your leadership skills like Nehemiah.”

While these sermons may indeed be helpful, they are generally not what we mean by “gospel-centered,” in that they are largely disconnected from the overarching story of the Scripture that is pointing to Christ.

It is true that the Old Testament characters are given to us as an example, but it is also true that they are about Jesus. So David is more than an example of courage; he is foreshadowing the lowly Jesus who will defeat the Evil One and set prisoners free. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are more than an example of steadfast resolve; their faith unto death represents a vibrant hope in resurrection and restoration, which is the culmination of the Grand Story of Scripture.

Gospel-centered preaching takes the Old Testament texts and, while not ignoring helpful truths learned from the lives of these saints, connects them to Christ.

What do you think? What are some other descriptions that come to mind when you think of “gospel-centered” preaching?

The King James Effect – How the KJV Has Influenced our English:

Robert Alter’s careful examination of the ways in which the KJV informed the novels of six significant American authors aims to record how “the resonant language and the arresting vision of the canonical text” continue to echo in American cultural memory.

Al Mohler responds to a recent New York Times article on the moral instincts of infants:

These findings are truly interesting. Taken at face value, they indicate that babies have a very rudimentary innate moral sense — a sense of right and wrong — that they have not learned. They do not know why an act is right or wrong, but they have a sense that right is right and wrong is wrong. In other words, their moral reasoning is at a “gut level.” Further, their moral judgments “might be cognitively empty but emotionally intense.”

The Church of England paves the way for women as bishops, further alienating traditionalists:

Draft legislation introduced at the weekend said women should be consecrated as bishops on the same basis as men, disappointing the Anglo-Catholic and evangelical wings of the Church which had wanted a “two-tier” system. Some are now likely to consider Pope Benedict’s offer last October to make it easier for Anglicans to convert to Roman Catholicism.

Russell Moore on how it’s easy to love an abstract idea and hard to love a flesh-and-blood person:

We affirm all the right things, whether in Christian doctrine or Christian practice, even fight with one another about them. But it’s all just up there in the abstract. These things are “issues,” not persons.

• “The Family” never shows up unexpected for Thanksgiving or criticizes your spouse or spills chocolate milk all over your carpet; only real families can do that.
• “The Poor” don’t show up drunk for the job interview you’ve scheduled or spend the money you’ve given them on lottery tickets or tell you they hate you; only real poor people can do that.
• “The Church” never votes down my position in a congregational business meeting or puts on an embarrassingly bad Easter musical or asks me to help clean toilets for Vacation Bible School next week; only real churches can do that.

In the most recent issue of Christianity Today (May 2010), a number of people were asked about the wisdom of celebrating Mother’s Day in church. Here was my reply:

“Mother’s Day, even if it’s a good holiday and a good remembrance, is a consumerist holiday like Valentine’s Day. I think there’s a lot of good in celebrating motherhood, but I’d want to ask some further questions about how we order time in general. If Mother’s Day and a distinctively Christian holiday fall in the same day it might be good to honor both, to make sure we’re thinking through how we order our time and not simply catering to the whims of the consumerist culture we’re in.”

You can see a number of other replies, ranging from “absolutely, yes” to the “absolutely, no”.

(For the record, the church in which I currently serve does recognize the mothers in our congregation on Mother’s Day, as do most of the evangelical churches in our area. I am happy to celebrate Mother’s Day with my church family. Please don’t misconstrue my remarks as being anti-motherhood. I’m simply using  Mother’s Day as a launching pad for thinking seriously about how our churches order our time.)

Now… back to the question I posed in the title of this post. Many people wonder why we would even ask about celebrating Mother’s Day. The evangelical assumption seems to be “Of course!” Yet, if I were to ask about celebrating Pentecost, the Ascension or Jesus’ baptism, I suspect I would get some puzzled looks.

Should it not trouble us that “Of course!” is the default answer when it comes to a consumer holiday and yet it doesn’t even cross our minds to mark the historic celebrations of the Christian church?

I think the reason Christianity Today asked me to comment on this question was a post I wrote two years ago called “Earth Day or Easter? Mother’s Day or Pentecost?” You can read the whole post here, but here is an excerpt that might provide some food for thought:

Every church has a calendar. Whether the church chooses to follow the traditional calendar of the Church and preach according to the readings in a lectionary does not change the fact that every church has a way of ordering time.

The question is not, Will we follow a calendar? but Whose calendar will we follow? In other words, does our church’s ordering of time follow the wisdom of the ancient church or the whims of the consumerist American culture?

Many of our churches have a list of unofficial celebrations that order our congregational time.

• New Year’s Day.
• Valentine’s Day.
• Mother’s Day.
• Father’s Day.
• Fourth of July.
• Memorial Day.
• Halloween.
• Veteran’s Day.

By rejecting the traditional church calendar, we did not reduce the number of our celebrations; we merely replaced them with the celebrations of the culture at large.

Granted, churches do well to emphasize many of these celebrations. We can benefit from using the cultural opportunity to speak to the biblical vision of motherhood and fatherhood, etc.

But we should be willing to listen to the tough questions from those outside our culture about what our church calendars represent.

Why should the consumerist culture of the United States dictate what we celebrate as a church?

Why is it that so many American churches celebrate with great fanfare the birth of their nation (July 4) without even so much as mentioning the birth of the church (Pentecost)?

Does the way we order our time shape us as the unique, called-out people of God or merely reinforce our nationalist, consumer-shaped identity?

The New York Times reports on Ken Starr’s new post as president of Baylor University:

On June 1, Mr. Starr vacates the deanship of Pepperdine University School of Law to become president of Baylor University.

Topographically, it is a drastic move, but it is also a promotion to a more visible pulpit. Pepperdine is affiliated with the evangelical Church of Christ; Baylor is the world’s largest Baptist university. With this new job, the former solicitor general, the man who helped bring Paula Jones to prime time, completes a rebirth as one of America’s most prominent Christian educators.

Matthew Lee Anderson reflects on the hymn, “Jesus Paid it All” – reminding us of some alternate stanzas:

And when before the throne, I stand in Him complete
I’ll lay my trophies down, all down at Jesus’ feet.

Here again there’s discrepancy on the words.  Many versions of the final lines read, “Jesus died my soul to save, my lips shall still repeat”-a move that seems to adopt the central sentiment of the older fourth stanza.

But count me partial to laying our trophies down, as it does a better job of taking us full circle to the refrain:  Jesus paid it all, ergo, all to him I owe.  There is a reciprocal giving that the atonement applies-we are given to, and hence give.  And what we return is our worship, our praise which rends the skies and our crowns to lay at his feet.

Tony Reinke answers the question: “Does God delight in non-Christian art?”

It seems to me that until we are open to this idea that God delights in the display of beautiful art by the non-Christian, we will find it difficult to glorify God through the art we see. This is specially true in the artisans who are not Christians, who bear the marks of their Creator while remaining under the guilt of their sin, and who are in desperate need of a Savior.

“How do I discover my spiritual gift?” Juan Sanchez says it’s better to ask, “How can I serve the Body of Christ?”

A prayer from Scotty Smith, pastor of Christ Community Church in Franklin, TN:

Heavenly Father, I’m gladly driven today to Romans 8:28 in the midst of our  unprecedented ordeal. Seeing the aerial view of tens of square miles… driving through several neighborhoods… checking on numerous friends… dragging ruined furniture and belongings to the street from my son’s home… it’s all quite sobering. But it’s also quite centering.

Father there are no exceptions to the category called “in all things” in which you work for the good of your children. There’s no fine print qualifying the limits of your goodness. There’s no hidden rider in this passage excluding certain crises or delineating mitigating circumstances. There’s no broken situation too big or too little NOT to be thought of in terms of you, and your purposeful calling on our lives in the gospel.

We love you, NOT because you’ve promised a life free of hard things and confusing providences. We love you because you first loved us and gave your Son, Jesus, for our redemption. May this good news never be cliché to us, but evermore profoundly humbling, gladdening and centering.

Even if it’s hard for us to imagine what good things you might bring through this bad flood… (or any of a number of mind-blowing, heart-wrenching, envelope-pushing situations many of you may be going through right now)… we have NO reason NOT to trust you… NOT to anticipate great grace and profound mercy… NOT to stay present in whatever stories of redemption and restoration you choose to write by the waters of this flood.

You are the Lord of the flood and the fresh-water spring… you are the God of the tornado and the cool morning breeze… you are the Ruler of the fear-producing earthquake and the promise-laden rainbow. You alone are God, and you alone are good. Give us enough gospel-manna to worship you and serve our neighbors all day long. So very Amen, I pray, in Jesus’ wonderful and merciful name.

I wish I could travel back in time to hear how Bishop Mileto of Sardis delivered this homily in the second century:

This is he who made the heavens and the earth,
and formed humanity in the beginning,
who is announced by the Law and the Prophets,
who was enfleshed in a Virgin,
who was hanged on the Tree,
who was buried in the earth,
who was raised from the dead,
went up into the heights of heaven,
who is sitting at the right hand of the Father,
who has the authority to judge and save all things,
through whom the Father made the things which exist,
from the beginning to all the ages.

This one is “the Alpha and the Omega,”
this one is “the beginning and the end”
the beginning which cannot be explained
and the end which cannot be grasped.

This one is the Christ.
This one is the King.
This one is Jesus.
This one is the Leader.
This one is the Lord.
This one is he who has risen from the dead.
This one is he who sits at the right hand of the Father.
He bears the Father and is borne by the Father.
To him be the glory and the power to the ends of the ages. Amen.

- Melito, Bishop of Sardis, from “Concerning the Passover”

My seven picks for your weekend reading pleasure:

1. Here’s how you can help Nashville flood victims.

2. Christine Rosen on “The Death of Embarrassment”

3. Can Atheism Be Legal?

4. Six words that open the door for you to share the gospel

5. Tim Keller on long-distance spirituality

6. “Here on the Island: A Scholarly Critique of the Style, Symbolism and Sociopolitical Relevance of Gilligan’s Island” (This is actually quite fascinating.)

7. Ted Traylor discusses his candidacy for president of the Southern Baptist Convention. (See my endorsement here.)

I recently came across the initial reporting from Baptist Press on the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Reading these documents made me so grateful for the Conservative Resurgence in the SBC.

The attorney who filed the initial lawsuit in Roe v. Wade was a Southern Baptist and member of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas. (BP interviewed her for a Jan. 29 story, see below.)

The lead paragraph of a Jan. 31 news analysis about Roe says the decision “advanced the cause of religious liberty, human equality and justice.” The story also says the court was a “strict constructionist” court and not a “liberal” court. It also says there “is no official Southern Baptist position on abortion.” (See below.)

__________________________________________________________

January 29, 1973
Abortion Court Decision Interpreted by Attorney
By Robert 0′ Brien

A Southern Baptist attorney who activated the legal machinery resulting in the Supreme Court decision overturning abortion statutes in some 30 states said here the “Supreme Court decision does not absolve anyone of individual moral or religious responsibility.” Linda N. Coffee, a 30-year-old brunette sat in her Dallas law office and pondered the contrasting complexities of her stance on abortion – legal vs. personal.

It’s a stance which would legally allow more constitutional freedom for others than she would exercise as an individual, she said in an interview. She expressed fear “the emotional reaction to the ruling will result in failure to distinguish between the legal principle of the decision and the moral implications now left to the doctor patient relationship.”

“The abortion decision could be as widely misinterpreted as the Supreme Court’s prayer decision, but I hope not,” said Miss Coffee, daughter of Nellene Coffee, a secretary in the Texas Baptist Christian Education Commission. ”From my personal perspective as a Christian,” she said, “It would tear me up to have to make a decision on abortion except in the early stages. And I would have to have a compelling reason even then,” she emphasized, speaking as a person.

But, as lawyer, Miss Coffee authored a series of legal proceedings which led to the 7-2 Supreme Court decision. Crux of the pleadings, drafted originally by Miss Coffee for argument before a three-judge federal court in Dallas, centered on whether the state has a right to interfere in a doctor-patient decision.

The eventual decision, she explained, declared the state may not interfere with the decision to terminate a pregnancy until the fetus becomes “viable” sometime between the beginning of sixth and seventh months of pregnancy. ”But the decision does not say any doctor has to perform any abortion–or that any patient has to have one, Miss Coffee said.

She observed that the decision also denied the fetus status as a legal person under the due process clause of the 14th amendment. ”But the ruling does not relieve each individual of standing firmly behind his or her moral or religious viewpoint about what a person is or when life begins, she emphasized. Illegal personhood is separate entirely from a moral or religious view of personhood, added Miss Coffee, a member of Park Cities Baptist Church, Dallas.

Although “troubled” that few laws now exist throughout the country on abortion in the aftermath of the decision, Miss Coffee hasn’t decided “what laws, if any, should be drawn to cover the final three months of pregnancy. I tend to feel the state should be neutral on abortion because it should never appear either to sanction an abortion or to interfere improperly with a doctor-patient relationship.

“But I would have little personal sympathy for use of abortion as a contraceptive or to avoid personal responsibility,” she emphasized. Miss Coffee was originally retained to handle the case of a young, unmarried women in Dallas, who was denied an abortion because Texas law allowed it only in cases where the prospective mother might die. In early 1970 she agreed to represent “Jane Roe, ” who revealed her identity as Norma McCorvey in another Baptist Press interview.

__________________________________________________________

January 31, 1973
High Court Holds Abortion To Be ‘A right of Privacy’
By W. Barry Garrett

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision that overturned a Texas law which denied a woman the right of abortion except to save her life, has advanced the cause of religious liberty, human equality and justice. At the same time ‘the court struck down a Georgia law that imposed unconstitutional procedures, in getting medical approval for an abortion…

The two decisions raise numerous other questions which Baptists and others should seek to understand. Among them:

Question: Was this a Warren type or “liberal” Supreme Court that rendered the decision?

Answer: No. This was a “strict constructionist” court, most of whose members have been appointed by President Nixon.

Question: Did the Supreme Court violate religious propriety by its abortion decision?

Answer: The Roman Catholic hierarchy insists that the Supreme Court blundered by making an immoral, anti-religious and unjustified decision. It has vowed to continue the fight against relaxed abortion laws.

However, most other religious bodies and leaders, who have expressed themselves, approve the decision. Social, welfare and civil rights workers hailed the decision with enthusiasm.

The Supreme Court itself recognized “the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy. It said, however, that “we need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus,” the court continued, “the judiciary at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.

Thus, it appears to be the view of the court that it decided a constitutional question without attempting answers to the medical, philosophical or theological problems in abortion.

Question: What is the Southern Baptist position on abortion?

Answer: There is no official Southern Baptist position on abortion, or any other such question. Among 12 million Southern Baptists, there are probably 12 million different opinions.

Question: Does the Supreme Court decision on abortion intrude on the religious life of the people?

Answer: No. Religious bodies and religious persons can continue to teach their own particular views to their constituents with all the vigor they desire. People whose conscience forbids abortion are not compelled by law to have abortions. They are free to practice their religion according to the tenets of their personal or corporate faith.

The reverse is also now true since the Supreme Court decision. Those whose conscience or religious convictions are not violated by abortion may not now be forbidden by a religious law to obtain an abortion it they so choose.

In short, if the state laws are now made to conform to the Supreme Court ruling, the decision to obtain an abortion or to bring pregnancy to full term can now be a matter of conscience and deliberate choice rather than one compelled by law.

Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.

Nathan Finn on baptism and the Great Commission:

This question is important because Southern Baptists are not just a generic group of missions-minded Christians—we are Baptist Christians. And as Baptist Christians, we believe that New Testament churches are regenerated assemblies of immersed believers. When Baptist Christians spread the gospel to new places, we “do” Matthew 28 because we not only win the lost to Christ, but we baptize those new disciples and then attempt to teach them all things in the same way we honestly believe happened in the earliest New Testament churches.

Thom Rainer gives an update on the flooding in Nashville, asking Why not me, Lord?:

I never asked, “Why me Lord?” when I thought we had lost all of our material possessions. I knew I had already been blessed so far beyond anything I deserved. But I was having trouble reconciling why we were spared the most devastation when others were not. I do find myself asking, “Why not me Lord?”

I have a theological understanding of grace, that undeserved and unmerited favor given to us by our Lord. But today I am having trouble grasping why again I have been blessed. I know I don’t deserve it. I know I’ve done nothing to merit it.

Here’s a round-up of pictures of the flood, showing many Nashville landmarks under water.

Michael Kelley gives a personal update on the flooding in Nashville:

The boat we’re in is this: Our downstairs is pretty much ruined. Fortunately, we were able to save very much of our stuff that was down there. We’ve pretty well dried it out as best as we can; ServPro is supposed to come in the next day or so to take care of what we couldn’t. Because our top floor is jam-packed with our stuff and also because me and Jana’s bedroom was downstairs, we’ve moved out of the house until the downstairs is livable again. We’re staying with a good friend for a while.