The Gospel Coalition

PLNTD is a new church-planting network that is “missionally focused” and “distinctively Baptist.” Their purpose is “to cultivate community for church planters and assist churches in the process of becoming church planting churches.”

Our purpose is derived from text and context.  Textually, we see that church planting is the natural outcome of enduring commitment to the Great Commission.  Contextually, we believe that a church-based network is not only the best way to advance God’s kingdom in an area but also the best place for church planters to be trained and supported.  It is our desire to be able to facilitate both: developing church planters as well as church planting churches.

It’s official. The Episcopal Church USA has been suspended by the Anglican Communion. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury writes:

I am therefore proposing that, while these tensions remain unresolved, members of such provinces – provinces that have formally, through their Synod or House of Bishops, adopted policies that breach any of the moratoria requested by the Instruments of Communion and recently reaffirmed by the Standing Committee and the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) - should not be participants in the ecumenical dialogues in which the Communion is formally engaged.  I am further proposing that members of such provinces serving on IASCUFO should for the time being have the status only of consultants rather than full members.

Nick Mitchell interviews Pauline scholar Michael Gorman on theosis, participationist understandings of justification, and union with Christ:

Q: How would you summarize Paul in a twitter (140 characters)?
A: Jesus is God’s crucified and resurrected Messiah and Lord whose Spirit creates communities of cruciform faith, hope, and love in anticipation of final salvation.

8 Snares Set by Fear of Man

Fretting is a worldly habit, not a Christian virtue. Nevertheless, I have been fretting about how to review the recently released book by Michael Spencer (the Internet Monk). Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality (WaterBrook, 2010) is Michael’s long-overdue, first and only book. Its release is filled with pathos, since the Lord took him home just a couple months before he could have held a copy in his hands.

Michael’s book is much like his blog. Parts of it made me want to shout for joy, open my Bible, and remember all the reasons why I love Jesus. Parts of it made me want to tear my hair out and say, Are you serious? The Internet Monk always succeeded in eliciting some kind of reaction from his readers.

Because Michael was a friend to me and a source of encouragement in the blogosphere, I am grateful for his life and work. Because the Lord saw fit to take him home so early (at least according to human understanding), I am torn by how best to review this book.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Michael wanted to start a discussion. He would have been more offended at the thought that I avoided serious critical interaction with his book than he would have been offended by my critique. And though I grieve the fact that he isn’t here to respond to my pushback, I am confident that serious conversation would be his desire. So that’s what I hope this review will provide.

Summary

Michael’s main point is to call us back to Jesus and away from “churchianity”, the kind of spirituality that is church-centered, but looks nothing like Jesus Christ. When the church becomes a place for like-minded people to rally the troops and put on smiles that mask the hidden reality of sin and brokenness, the church becomes an obstacle to true spiritual growth for people who love Jesus and want to be formed into his image.

What’s the solution? Get back to Jesus. Be challenged by his life, his teaching, and the meaning of his death and resurrection.

Positives:

I want to add an “Amen” to large portions of this book. It’s true that Christians often don’t look like Jesus. I’m always befuddled to find people who claim to follow Jesus yet know next to nothing about his life. Our marginalization of Jesus opens the door for groups to co-opt him for their pet causes.

So Michael’s main solution is right. Go back to the Gospels. You’ll find the real Jesus within the pages of the Scriptures. Listen to what he said. Watch what he did. Trust in the Jesus-centered gospel. Don’t settle for anything less than a Jesus-shaped life. Michael’s illustrations brilliantly buttress his point. (Example: Sometimes, our churches are like pecan pies without pecans. We advertise Jesus, but he’s not there.)

Likewise, Michael rightly critiques the prosperity gospel and the “health-and-wealth” teaching that seeps into even the most conservative evangelical churches. Other authors (such as Michael Horton) have provided critique from a theological perspective. Spencer’s critique comes from a pastoral point of view, wherein he shows how hurtful the prosperity teaching is.

By far, the best chapter in the book is “It’s a Bad Idea to Be A Good Christian.” Michael’s embrace of the Lutheran emphasis on justification is recounted in a poignant and pastorally sensitive manner.

Before I get to my critique, let me also mention the great number of pithy quotes in this book. The Internet Monk’s work is eminently tweetable:

• The life of faith is a battle fought in weakness and brokenness. The only soldiers are wounded ones.
• God is the Sun too bright for us to see. Jesus is the Prism who makes the colors beautiful and comprehensible.
• What speaks more loudly of grace: your theological definition of the word “grace” or the tip you leave at dinner?
• Some Christians claim biblical authority, while only telling you what they have decided in advance what the Bible has to say.
• Ask yourself this question: If I were to spend three years with Jesus, what kind of person would I be?
• Jesus-shaped spirituality is cross-centered and Christ-centered. The good news of the kingdom is that the King died to save us.
• Jesus isn’t looking for admirers. He’s enlisting followers.
• Evangelicals have invented a spirituality that has Jesus on the cover but not in the book.

Critique:

Now that I’ve praised the best parts of this book, it’s time to turn to my main problem with Mere Churchianity. I can sum it up in one phrase: pitting a Jesus-shaped spirituality against a church-shaped spirituality.

I understand why Michael goes in this direction. I feel the same frustration. Yes, organized Christianity has major problems. Just about everything that Michael critiques needs to be critiqued. We need to ask the questions that Michael asks.

But how does leaving the church help the church? How is it spiritually healthy to leave the church? How does leaving the church make us more Jesus-shaped?

Throughout Mere Churchianity, Michael’s view of the church goes back and forth like a yo-yo. He insists on the importance of community and yet also insists on the legitimate option of leaving the church as an institution. So, even though he remains within a church (and speaks well of his fellow church members), he doesn’t blame church-leavers at all and practically encourages them to head out the door.

Michael wants genuine community, but he divorces that idea from the church as an institution in a way that is impractical and unhelpful. Here are some examples:

“For many of you, leaving the church may have been the most spiritually healthy thing you ever did.” (57)

“Jesus-shaped spirituality has nothing to do with churchianity. Following Jesus does not require you to pledge allegiance to a religious insitution.” (6)

“Am I saying the people who left the church are in the right? I’m saying I don’t blame them at all.” (26)

“If someone doesn’t find Jesus inside an established church and chooses to leave, what is gained by labeling that person as carnal, or spiritually immature, or out of fellowship with God? I trust individual Christians – including those who have left the institutional church or are on the verge of leaving – to know where God wants them to be.” (212)

“Life as a Jesus-follower grows out of Jesus and the gospel, not out of the church.” (152)

I suppose the main reason I scratch my head at Michael’s encouragement to leave the organized church is because he is so gloriously right on the gospel for the individual. I am at a loss to understand why he fails to extrapolate that same teaching when it comes to the church.

For example, Michael rightly teaches that the gospel is for people who recognize they are messed up, rebellious, sinful, broken and dysfunctional. Christianity is for the losers, for the people who recognize their need for salvation outside of themselves. So far so good.

But let’s engage in a bit of logic. If churches are organized groups of these messed up, broken, dysfunctional people, why in the world would we expect the church to always live up to some unattainably high ideal? I’m not saying we shouldn’t shoot high. I’m not saying we should be satisfied with Christless churches. But surely Michael should give groups of broken people (churches) the same patience he gives individual broken people.

So in the end, I want to say, “Michael, you’re right about individual Christians. We’re broken, wounded, sinful and selfish. So why can’t you see that churches are going to be that way too? Please don’t encourage broken people to leave churches that are broken! Just as we need Jesus in us as individuals to slowly remake us into his image, we need Jesus-filled people in churches if there is any hope for the church to reflect the glory of Christ to the world.”

If Christ remains committed to us – as broken and messed up as we are – why would we not remain committed to his followers? Why would we bolt out the door when our church experience becomes a hassle? What looks more like Jesus – to hit the road? Or to stay with a congregation through thick and thin, through good and bad?

Michael thinks the church’s problems are an obstacle to Jesus-shaped spirituality. I think the opposite: commitment to bear with the church’s problems is the method by which we become more Jesus-shaped.

I share Michael’s craving for a strong presence of Kingdom focus and missional thinking in the Church. This desire is a God-given holy discontentment. Dissatisfaction should stretch our faith and stir our imaginations. But denigrating the church because of its shortcomings ultimately undermines the cause of Christ in the world.

Though no local church is perfect, and the universal Church often looks more like a cheating spouse than a faithful bride, we are to identify myself with this bungling bunch of believers. The church is home. The church is God’s beloved. The church has been bought with precious blood. Though the presence of the Kingdom is not as intensely felt in the church as I would like, it is the sign of the Kingdom in this age, faults and all. And if Jesus is content to give his life for an unruly Church, we should seek satisfaction in serving his church – warts and all.

In the end, I don’t want to divorce Jesus-shaped spirituality from church-shaped spirituality. I want to see these two spiritualities become one and the same. I think Michael would agree, except that I believe leaving bypasses the cross. Committing to love fault-filled people we’ve identified with through baptism is the way to see Jesus-shaped spirituality become a reality.

From informant to informer: The story of the “Son of Hamas”

He grew up in radicalized Islam in the West Bank, was imprisoned in Israel, and eventually became disgusted with Hamas, the militant group his father helped create. He then came to Christ while working as an informant for Israel’s Shin Bet security service and helped prevent political assassinations.

Confession of a pastor:

In my more sober moments, I thank God that He often chooses others besides me to do His most powerful work, because otherwise I don’t think my flesh could handle it… If God always did His best work in a way that “increased” my stature personally, then the self-centeredness of my own heart would probably never be revealed. I would never be able to separate “thy kingdom come” from “my kingdom come.” I would never cease to be Satan and start to be a Son of God.

CNN on the dangers of being spiritual and not religious (HT – Z):

“People seem not to have the time nor the energy or interest to delve deeply into any one faith or religious tradition,” Greeley says. “So they move through, collecting ideas and practices and tenets that most appeal to the self, but making no connections to groups or communities.” Being spiritual instead of religious may sound sophisticated, but the choice may ultimately come down to pettiness…

Ed Stetzer is interviewed about his new book Viral Churches: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers:

We advocate the need for an alternative to inward-focused or addition based church planting. Viral Churches contains enough stories for participants in church planting at every level to find inspiration and specific help but we want to see a new breed of planters. Our country needs planters to shift from church planting to church multiplication movements. The message put simply: Church planting needs to go viral.

In Holy Subversion, I briefly recount the conversion story of my father-in-law, Florin Trifan. Bro. Trifan was a Communist party member in Ceausescu’s Romania back in the 1970′s. Sent to spy on a Baptist revival meeting, he heard the gospel and trusted Christ. He then abandoned Communist ideology and eventually became a pastor.

In 2007, we were fortunate to have Corina’s parents visit us here in the U.S. The videos below (part 1 & part 2) are of Bro. Trifan giving his testimony at our church (I’m the translator). I encourage you to listen to his story.

Bro. Trifan is currently battling throat cancer. He has been through an operation, three rounds of chemotherapy, and he will start radiations in the next few weeks. Please pray for him and for our family during this difficult trial.

Doug Baker on Baptists and the Bible, thirty years after the book’s release:

It was the research of Tom Nettles and Russ Bush that, in many ways, helped ignite the passion of many across the Southern Baptist Convention to regain their footing regarding the inerrancy of Holy Scripture. Against a denominational status quo that had all but placed the Bible on the level of something which contained the words of God, but certainly was not to be regarded as the vox Dei—the voice of God in Holy writ—Baptists and the Bible would become a bombshell and serve as a compass on the stormy seas of the SBC’s battle for the Bible.

How to leave a church well:

Give God all the glory, all the credit. Be amazed at all he has done. Thank him for his faithfulness, his kindness, his lavish generosity. Smile as you pray. Then entrust to his care the people that have been under your care.

Ordinary Time:

From Advent to Pentecost, we celebrate what God has done to inaugurate the new creation through Christ’s finished work. In the season after Pentecost, we celebrate what God does to empower us to live out the Gospel day to day and week to week in the context of our ordinary lives.

Coffee doesn’t make you more alert:

The millions of people who depend on a shot of coffee to kickstart their day are no more alert than those who are not regular coffee drinkers, say researchers. A cup of coffee, suggests a study, only counteracts the effects of caffeine withdrawal that has built up overnight.

Christians are a peculiar people with a peculiar vocabulary.

We talk about “sin”. We use words like “repentance” and “gospel.” We take common words like “sin” and “faith,” but fill them with meaning that flows from the Bible.

Other Christian words are important too:

• Trinity
• Justification
• Sanctification
• Imputation

Whenever we seek to proclaim the gospel in a way that is culturally understandable, we face the problem of our peculiar vocabulary.

Some Christians believe that we need to rid our speech of “Christianese.” Let’s root out our Christian lingo and speak in a way that anyone can understand! If the term “justification” is incomprehensible to most people, let’s do away with the word and just use the concept.

I sympathize with the desire to make the gospel understandable to those in our culture who are unfamiliar with our peculiar vocabulary. But I also think that we need these distinctive words. Why? Because our vocabulary reminds us who we are. Besides, we use specific and peculiar language for other areas of our life too.

Several years ago, when I was working in my dad’s print shop, I used terms like “glossy,” “cover,” “80#,” “varnish.” I also knew that ink colors were called PMS. Yet there were times that we would speak of PMS colors in front of guests, and I would feel the need to explain what these colors were (so as to make sure they weren’t thinking of a more common understanding of PMS!).

Baseball is not commonly played in Europe. When my wife first attended a ballgame with me, she was introduced to terms like “double header” and “pinch hitter,” “foul ball” and “home run”. If I hadn’t explained these concepts to her, she would have nodded her head but not known what we were talking about.

It would be foolish for me to advocate changing all of baseball’s terminology so that Europeans can more easily understand the game. Instead, Europeans who move to America deserve an initiation into this sport so that they can comprehend the language, understand the purpose of each term, and enjoy the game with us.

In the same way, we shouldn’t lazily rely on Christianity’s peculiar vocabulary without explanation. Neither should we abandon important words for the sake of cultural relevancy. We need to take the hard road – explaining Christian concepts to outsiders in a way that can be understood. Then, we need to initiate them into the Christian community where these words are used and celebrated.

Maintaining our peculiar vocabulary while at the same time seeking to make our words understandable is beneficial to both the Christian and the non-Christian.

It’s beneficial to Christians because it challenges us to think more deeply about the terminology that gives expression to our faith. If we tend to rely on Christian lingo, we need to be forced out of our comfortable ghetto of word usage, to to figure out what we mean by these concepts before we can teach them to others.

Try defining “sin” without using the word. Define “glory” in a way that makes sense biblically. Explain “justification” to someone who’s never heard the gospel. Until you yourself know what these words mean, you won’t be able to explain the concept to others.

It’s beneficial for non-Christians because we are able to present Christian truth in a culturally comprehensible way, and yet we are not sacrificing the distinctiveness of our speech. We are initiating them into a new way of speaking, helping them not only walk the walk, but talk the walk as well.

Our purpose in maintaining our distinct vocabulary is not so we can check off boxes on a vocab matching test. It’s so that we will know who we are, know what God has done, and fulfill our mission as his called-out people.

A  glimpse into the life of Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird (which is celebrating its 50th anniversary):

After what I had heard about her, I was too scared to knock on the door of her residence of record, a neat brick, reportedly book-lined house she shared with her older sister Alice, or even to request an interview through the closest thing there are to proper channels.

An editor for Touchstone lists fifty movies that have a Christian view of the world:

I’m asking all you out there, what movies would you include on a list of the top 50 Christian movies of all time?  Again, it doesn’t mean that the movie is explicitly religious, but rather that a Christian view of the world informs the whole.

Kevin DeYoung on “godly grief”:

There is an eternal difference between regret and repentance.  Regret feels bad about past sins.  Repentance turns away from past sins. Most of us are content with regret.  We just want to feel bad for awhile, have a good cry, enjoy the cathartic experience, bewail our sin and how selfish/stupid/sorry we are.  But we don’t really want to change.  We don’t really want to live different than we have been.

Denny Burk posts a video showing where the oil spill in the Gulf may eventually spread. This doesn’t look good.

Lord, teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to ask for reward,
save that of knowing that I do your will.

- Ignatius, 1491-1556

What is important is not that we should always fear (or hope) about the End, but that we should always remember, always take it into account.

An analogy may here help. A man of seventy need not be always feeling (much less talking) about his approaching death: but a wise man of seventy should always take it into account. He would be foolish to embark on schemes which presuppose twenty more years of life: he would be criminally foolish not to make – indeed, not to have made long since – his will.

Now, what death is to each man, the Second Coming is to the whole human race.

- C.S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays

Seven links for your weekend reading:

1. Is the Holy Spirit a Relativist or a Colonialist? Joe Carter points out the conflict inherent in Episcopal advocacy of homosexual bishops.

2. Ray Ortlund, Jr. with a classic post on how we can Judaize the gospel with the doctrine of justification.

3. Michael Horton reviews N.T. Wright’s After You Believe, arguing that Wright’s theology of sanctification would line up with the Reformers and wondering why Wright seems to disagree.

4. Time magazine: “Young Evangelicals – Expanding Their Mission”

5. How to forecast the weather without any gadgets

6. Interesting interview with the grandson of Martin Lloyd Jones

7. John Piper’s view of Genesis 1-2 and the creation narrative.