The Church - Created For What?

In his book A Community Called Atonement Scot McKnight writes that any theory of atonement should keep the end in mind - what was atonement meant to produce? In answering that question McKnight notes that the atonement was not just meant to produce forgiven people, but that “the work of God is to form a community in which the will of God is done and through which one finds both union with God and communion with others for the good of others and the world.” Thus, the atonement was meant to produce a certain kind of community.

I like his approach. I think it is very helpful in formulating a well-rounded and holistic view of the atonement. It avoids getting “stuck” in one particular place, overemphasizing one aspect of atonement to the neglect of others. In fact, he mentions the various views of atonement and likens them to a bag of golf clubs. A golfer might make it through a round with just one club (I think there are even friendly golf games that might involve just such a feat), but don’t expect to shoot par, or probably even close.

Perhaps McKnight’s approach would benefit our understanding of the church as well. Read more

Picture This

These are a couple of pics I took at our city fireworks show last week. You can see more at my flickr page.

Thank God For Karl Barth

I realize that’s a strange thing to be saying in some of the circles in which I run. Karl Barth is the poster boy for neo-Orthodoxy. But I think Barth gets too much criticism for the “neo” part and not enough credit for the “orthodoxy” part. It simply cannot be denied that Bart’s critique of liberalism was pretty devastating.

I know that many people do not like his understanding of the Word of God (the Bible becomes the Word of God as it takes shape in our lives), and that’s a different discussion for a different day. But Barth was interested in recovering orthodoxy from those who were leaving it behind and the church really owes him a debt of gratitude for his work in that area.

Most conservatives view liberalism as being pretty vacuous, me included. We joked in college about the liberal prayer: “Oh God, if there is a God, please help us, if you can,” and that pretty much summed up where it seems liberalism is headed. Barth saw that and responded with his Church Dogmatics. I’ve seen plenty of good, conservative friends of mine who take one of those online tests about which theologian they’d be and many of them end up being closest to Barth. That’s because even those who despise neo-orthodoxy have greatly benefited from the theological recovery it helped to bring.

In theology, as in life, sometimes you take the good with the bad. Karl Barth was not perfect nor a perfect theologian, but conservatives owe him a debt of gratitude for his work in re-orienting theology back to orthodoxy.

Whyfour?

Why do you suppose we have four gospels? More specifically, why do we have three “synoptic” gospels?  But this question really applies to all four.

Believing that God inspired the Scriptures what was his purpose in four canonical gospels?  Why not just give us the one definitive one?  Why not add the stories of Jesus’ birth and Mary’s Magnificat from Luke, the prodigal son, the boy with a demon in Mark 9, etc. to Matthew’s gospel and just have one?  Why give us varying accounts of the same events?  Why not give us one “God’s eye” view of the whole of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry?  Why give us accounts that need to be “reconciled?”

These questions are why I cannot subscribe to some sort of “dictation” theory of the Bible’s inspiration.  It makes God look a little schizophrenic.  Or at least like he might have MPD.  It is much easier to account for the differences when we maintain the human nature of the documents alongside their Divine inspiration.  Men wrote with particular (and different) perspectives and agendas.

But why should God inspire four of them?  Why not inspire one of them and make it the “definitive” one? Read more

Being With

I love theology and philosphy. I love to think and stretch my mind. It is one of the reasons I love to read so much. I once took a sort-of “spiritual gifts inventory” that gagued how we primarily relate to important things in our lives - specifically how we primarily find meaning in our faith. Some are primarily guided and energized by doing. Others are primarily energized by how they feel about God and their faith. Others, like me, find joy and fulfillment in thinking. It’s no wonder that one of the largest sections in my library is theology. While many pastors stock their shelves with books on leadership, method and/or devotion, those sections are small for me compared to theology and commentary.

It would be very easy for me to promote the idea that a significant part of our faith entails “right” theology. I believe theology is important and that there are some aspects of it that are vital, essential to the Christian faith.

But as I read the gospels I’m struck by how little those first disciples had right, doctrinally. Read more

Community

Yesterday our church experienced a great example of Christian community.

One of our church members has been in the process of re-roofing his house. Sunday night there was only a 20% chance of rain in the forecast, but if you are from around the Tulsa area you know that 20% quickly turned into what a friend of mine used to call a “toad strangler.” At about 3AM water started to drip from the ceiling in several places inside the house. One of those places was directly above where my daughter and one of theirs were sleeping. Soon the ceiling gave in to the weight of the rain-soaked insulation in several places and it wasn’t long before the whole house was a mess. I found out when my wife went to pick our daughter up in the morning.

By 10:30 AM we had people from the church showing up to help out in whatever way they could. In all there were more than 25 people, from youth on up, who came to help clean up the inside and finish roofing the back section of the house. It was a tremendous outpouring of help. At one point I told someone that it felt like an Amish barn raising with power tools. On their day off they volunteered their time and energy to help their brothers and sisters in need.

I just wanted to write this in celebration of Christ at work through his people in a dedicated, self-sacrificing way. Thank you Faith Baptist Church!

Perplexed

There’s a question I’ve had for some time now.  I’ve asked this question on other blogs and have never received an answer of any kind.  Perhaps you, dear reader, would like to take a stab at it.  [By the way, this isn’t one of those “set up” questions.  You know, the kind where I already have an answer and I’m just asking you so that I can pounce on your wrong answer if you give one.  I hate those kind of questions.  This is an honest one.]

It’s specifically a “Baptist” question, but even if you’re not Baptist and you have a perspective I hope you’ll share it.  Let me begin with some background. Read more

Psalm 137 For The Year 2010

Alan Roxburgh shares this poem that was written by a participant at a conference he was leading a few years ago.

137 For 2010

In the midst of this crazy world I look around and
wonder what has happened.
How do I talk to a kid with a ring in his nose?
Does “The Old Rugged Cross” mean anything to him?
He asks me to sing a song about “my Jesus”.
From what I can tell he is from another planet,
or am I the stranger here?
I think it’s time to sell the wurlitzer.
So how do I tell Martians about Jesus,
when the only language I speak is 1955?
How do I write a headline for them
that doesn’t screw up the Good News?
I kind of wish it were the way it was,
but it’s not. So I need to figure out
how to sing the old lyrics
with a whole new tune.

Missional MapMaking

Alan Roxburgh has a writing project that’s posted on the Allelon website titled Missional MapMaking: The Art of the Missional-Shaped Church.

In chapter one he discusses the assumptions we bring to life - assumptions about what the world is like, who we are, what is of value and importance, how to get along in life, etc. In western cultures we live under the assumptions of what is often called “modernity.” They are assumptions we inherited from the Enlightenment project and the philosophy of René Descartes. You may not know much about the Enlightenment or who René Descartes was, but if you’ve seen a recent job posting (either secular or religious) or if you’ve been to church lately, then you’ve seen the Enlightenment and the philosophy of Descartes in practice.

Does this sound familiar?: Wanted, self-starter who is highly motivated, can multi-task and is seeking to maximize his/her potential in a setting that offers great advancement opportunities. Or have you read “40 Days of Purpose” or “Your Best Life Now”? Whatever you may think of the content of any of those examples, they all share a common way of looking at the questions above and they all answer them from that fundamental understanding of life. Most modern preaching is more of the same, by the way (even those of you who assume you are giving good old fashioned expository/exegetical sermons. No, especially you).

Roxburgh writes:

We’re born into a world and cultures that already have maps. …[F]or us in the West that map has been modernity and that modernity in many ways has profoundly reshaped, even deformed, the Christian imagination in our culture. From birth we’re formed and shaped by the maps of the culture into which we’re born to the point where we assume this map (in our case modernity) simply describes the way the world is. Our cultural map of modernity shapes how we see the world, ourselves, and our relationships. These maps “make sense” because we a live inside their world.

We don’t know how profoundly we have been influenced by the “maps” of the world we’ve been given because this is all we’ve known. As a fish doesn’t notice the water it swims in (until, of course, it is out of it), so we do not fully understand the culture we swim in, the presumptions we make about life. But as Roxburgh says, the map of modernity has, in some cases, deformed our understanding of God, life and the church, even many of the religious expressions of this modern mindset. Roxburgh calls us to become new mapmakers.

[W]e are in a time when the maps of modernity with their promises of management, control, and predictability are no longer sufficient to describe the places where we find ourselves. The rapidity and extent of these changes create disequilibrium, anxiety, confusion and disorientation among people in North American culture, and this means that our maps of modernity again need to be re-imagined. Once more we are required to become mapmakers. In order to move into God’s future, we must assume that the maps we have inherited no longer adequately describe the realities we face. We must release the desire to copy our inherited maps and … learn to listen to the stories of pioneers so that we can make new maps. In this way, we can re-shape the imagination of God’s people.

Check out chapter one of Missional MapMaking here. You can find the Introduction and other chapters here.

Heaven, I’m In Heaven

Very interesting discussion in our Bible study yesterday about “the eternal state.”

Thanks to Steve Walker for the N. T. Wright links. Another good resource I used was Wright’s Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship. The last two chapters are especially good regarding this subject, chapter 11, Heaven and Power and chapter 12, New Life - New World.

Here are some of the topics we discussed:

• Is heaven our final destination? (If it is, then what does Hebrews 11:39-40 mean when it says that “apart from us they (OT saints) should not be made perfect?”) [emphasis mine] What is it about us that they were waiting on (notice that it doesn’t say that apart from Christ they should not be made perfect). What is it that we will experience together and when will that take place?
• In 1 Corinthians 15 why is the apostle Paul so obsessed not only with Jesus’ resurrection, but with ours as well? If we go to heaven when we die, and we live there in a disembodied state, what does it matter if we are resurrected or not? Do we need these resurrected bodies to enjoy God more? What’s the purpose of having them back?
• What does it mean in 2 Timothy 2:12 when the apostle Paul says that “we will reign with him?” What does it mean in Revelation 5:10 when the apostle John says the same thing, but adds that “they shall reign on the earth?”
• When the apostle John describes the new heaven and new earth in Revelation 21, why does he describe it not as our going up to be with God, but God’s coming down to be with us? What does that say about eternity? The world?

The reason we were asking those questions is this: in Hebrews 11 the writer lists these great people of faith who were commended by God and concludes that none of them “received what was promised.” He describes a hopeful faith, but what is it they were hoping for? Whatever it was must have been powerful because many of them endured horrible suffering and none of them lived to see the fulfillment of God’s promises to them. It seems that whatever it was had something to do with that phrase in v. 40 - that “apart from us they should not be made perfect.” What was that? Whatever it was, it would certainly do us well to see what gave them such hope so that in sharing that hope we might also share in their faith/faithfulness.

But often modern visions of heaven are not inspiring. Read more

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