Terry Virgo: Spirit-filled church

C1: You shall receive power

They reminded me that it was not God who spoke in tongues on the Day of Pentecost, but that the disciples themselves spoke in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance

C2: I will be with you a little longer

If a bush burned for Moses, the whole mountain burst into life for the Israelite nation. Thunder, lightning, a glory cloud, a trumpet and a voice they all heard.

This was their claim to fame - a people distinguished by the manifest presence of God!

Tozer; Knowledge of the Holy

Chapter 1: Why we must think rightly about God

Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.

Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, 'what come into your mind when you think about God?' we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man. Were we able to know exactly what our most influential religious leaders think of God today, we might be able with some precision to foretell where the Church will stand tomorrow.

A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well. It is to worship what the foundation is to the temple; where it is inadequate or out of plumb the whole structure must sooner or later collapse. I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be trace finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.

The gospel can lift this destroying burden from the mind, give beauty for ashes and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. But unless the weight of the burden is felt the gospel can mean nothing to the man; and until he sees a vision of God high and lifted up, there will be no woe and no burden. Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them.

The first step down for any church is taken when it surrenders it high opinion of God.

Chapter 2: The Incomprehensibility of God

Darkness to the intellect
But sunshine to the heart
 -- Frederick W. Faber

Chapter 3: The Holy Trinity

Love and faith are at home in the mystery of the Godhead. Let reason kneel in reverence outside.

The Nicene Creed also pays tribute to the Holy Spirit as being himself God and equal to the Father and the Son:
I believe in the Holy Spirit
The Lord and giver of life,
Which proceedeth from the Father and the Son,
Who with the Father and Son together is worshipped and glorified.

"In this Trinity" runs the Creed, "nothing is before or after, nothing is greater or less: but all three Persons coeternal, together and equal."

The Person of the Godhead, being one, have one will. They work always together, and never one smallest act is done by one without the instant acquiescence of the other two. Every act of God is accomplished by the Trinity in Unity.

Trinity in the scriptures:

In the Holy Scriptures the work of creation is attributed to the Father (G1:1), to the Son (Col. 1:16), and to the Holy Spirit (Job 26:13 and Ps. 104:30). The incarnation is shown to have been accomplished by the three Persons in full accord (Luke 1:35), though only the Son became flesh to dwell among us. At Christ's baptism the Son came up out of the water, the Spirit descended upon him and the Father's voice spoke from heaven (Matt 3:16-17). Probably the most beautiful description of the work of atonement is found in Hebrews 9:14 where it is stated that Christ, through the Eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God; and there we behold the three persons operating together.

The resurrection of Christ is likewise attributed variously to the Father (Acts 2:32), to the Son (John 10:17-18) and to the Holy Spirit (Rom 1:4). The salvation of the individual man is shown by the apostle Peter to be the work of all three Persons of the Godhead (1Peter 1:2, and the indwelling of the Christian man's soul is said to be by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (John 14:15-23)

Chapter 21: The Holiness of God

Until we have seen ourselves as God sees us, we are not likely to be much disturbed over conditions around us as long as they do not get so far out of hand as to threaten our comfortable way of life. We have learned to live with unholiness and have come to look upon it as the natural and expected thing.

God's holiness is not simply the best we know infinitely bettered. We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable. The natural man is bline to it. He may fear God's power and admire his wisdom, but his holiness he cannot even imagine.

Holy is the way God is. To be holy he does not conform to a standard. He is that standard. He is absolutely holy with an infinite, incomprehensible fullness of purity that is incapable of being other than it is.

He hates iniquity as a mother hates the polio that takes the life of her child.

Chapter 22: The Sovereignty of God

Perhaps a homely illustration might help us to understand. An ocean liner leaves New York bound for Liverpool. It destination has been determined by proper authorities. Nothing can change it. This is at least a faint picture of sovereignty.

On board the liner are several scores of passengers. These are not in chains, neither are their activities determined for them by decree. They are completely free to move about as they will. They eat., sleep, play, lounge about on the deck, read, talk, altogether as they please; but all the while the great liner is carrying them steadily onward toward a predetermined port.

Both freedom and sovereignty are present here and they do not contradict each other. So it is, I believe, with man's freedom and the sovereignty of God.

In the meanwhile things are not as smooth as this quick outline might suggest. The mystery of iniquity doth already work. Within the broad field of God's sovereign, permissive will the deadly conflict of good with evil continues with increasing fury. God will yet have his way in the whirlwind and the storm, but the storm and the whirlwind are here, and as responsible beings we must make our choice in the present moral situation.

2 Corinthians 13: Research

Tom Wright:

this has been controversial. Coming to the know the one true God in and through Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified and risen one, and coming to know this God, and this Jesus, in and through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, demands a change of heart, life, community and behaviour so thorough and costly that many back away from it.

Once the light has begun to illuminate the world around you, enabling you to see everything and everyone in a new way, the choice is clear. Either you must go forwards, at great cost, into that grace, love and fellowship; or you must step back into the darkness. Paul wrote this, his most deeply personal and heartfelt letter, to urge the Corinthians to do the former. He would wish no less for us.

Phil Moore:

after 29 chapters, two letters and two lost letters Paul signs off his writings to the Corinthians. How does he do so? (With a 'ICNU' - I see God at work in you.)

He is convinced that they will listen to his admonition over sexual immortality, because he sees christ Jesus in them and believes that they will not unite Jesus with any illicit sexual partners. He is convinced that they will defy the money-grubbing culture of Corinth, because Christ Jesus is in them and those who have Jesus are assured of all they need. He is convinced that they will renounce their pride and party politics, because Christ Jesus is in them and calls them to die to themselves and be raised to live for him and for others. Seeing Jesus admist the mess made a world of difference to Paul, and it would to the Corinthians too.

• restoration - katartizo, repairing nets.

Paul's letters worked:

• Paul wrote Romans from Corinth in early 57AD during the three months he spent there between Macedonia and Jerusalem and we find several clues that the crisis was resolved:
• 1- R15: 'the Macedonian and Achaian churches were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem.' 
• 2- Paul wanted to go on to preach in Spain because 'there is no more place for me to work in these regions.' The Corinthians had clearly thrown off its division and sexual sin, disorder and worldliness because Paul felt that his work in that region was 'done'.

Can we see God in the midst of our mess.

• More chapters were written to Corinth in the NT that any other church.
• Of the western church The Independant wrote in April of 2000 'Church will be dead in forty years time'
• One Bishop is quoted as saying in 2000 'It is hard to see the church surviving for more than 30 years.' (Telegraph in June '09)

Arthur Puddy story:

Arthur Puddy a rifleman form Devon who fought in WWI. Dismissed as near dead by the doctors in 1917 out in a field hospital in Mesopotamia. To save room and free up a bed a doctor assessed his condition, saw the onset of sandfly fever (something that had already claimed the lives of many of his comrades) and declared 'this one won't make it 'til morning'. Two orderlies carried his limp body outside and laid him on a pile of dead bodies. Arthur Puddy lay there all night thinking of the wife he married only a few days before leaving for the war. As he lay there he remembered the words from a church service back home. God is faithful. God is faithful. As he lay there groaning he made those words his feverish prayer, laying hold of the only one who could save him from death.

Arthur Puddy survived. At first light a nurse noticed he was moving. He was loaded onto a stretcher moved back inside and nursed back to health in a comfortable bed. The man written off as too weak to survive returned to the front lines and helped win the war. The childless twenty-year old died eight decades later, surrounded by his family at the age of ninety-seven. Phil Moore married one of his great granddaughters and his father to four of his great great grandchildren and uncle to five more. God is faithful indeed.

Paul Barnett NCINT Commentary:

'Proof' - Paul's severe letter required proof of their loyalty to him which they did prove by disciplining the man who had wronged Paul. Something they did do. They now are saying that they require 'proof' that Christ is speaking in Paul. Much of the letter has been about that. Paul's reply to them is that they ought rather to be concerned with proof that they are in Christ, they need to be convinced for themselves that they are. He has offered them 'proofs' of his apostolic Christian leadership and so he says 'whether or not you consider these 'proofs' enough isn'y my primary concern. Instead we're mainly concerned that you pass the proofs test that your repentance and subsequent purity lines up with your profession of faith.

'Using the same blacksmith vocabulary in the next paragraph Paul expresses te hope that in his forthcoming visit he will not be 'disproved' in their eyes though he accepts that they my regard him as 'disproved'. It is more importnt, he says that you 'prove yourselves... understand within yourselves that Christ Jesus is in you.' That the Corinthians 'prove' themselves to be indwelt by Christ is more important than their opinion whether or not Christ speaks in Paul.

Weak powerful motif:
3b - Christ is not weak... he is powerful toward you
4a - He was crucified in weakness... lives through the power of God
4c - we also are weak in him... through the power of God
This serves as his second to last word of self-defence against their criticism.

crucified out of weakness is not weak it is powerful since christ's crucifixion was their forgiveness and power for transformation.

'Christ crucified is not weak' it is a powerful thing that transforms lives, confronts arrogance, heals, makes whole, restores. He was crucified in weakness yes but he is not weak, but strong and his crucifixion was not devoid of power but was in fact the power of God by which you/we have died to selves and now live for God.

Christ crucified is not a 'weak' message for 'weak' people: Thought they may despise as 'weak' the message of 'Christ... crucified' and the messenger who preached and embodied thagt message against the willful sinner, the reality was that Christ crucified is not weak in his impact ojnthe believer in his sins and pride.

weak in him, crucified in him, ineffective in discipling the rebellious Corinthians... yet by God's power.

One of the clearest proofs of his apostleship for Paul is the existence and establishment of them the Corinthians. If they approve of themselves as being 'in Christ' then they also must approve Paul as genuine.

Paul will not deviate one bit toward 'power' or imitating the SA because he is committed to the truth.

Kevin DeYoung:

• First paragraph is a warning - I'm coming for the third time and if you don't get this mess straightened out it's not going to be a fun visit! If they have sin there he is going to come and bring discipline, I won't spare you (excommunication).
• v5 - a call for self-examination. Two purposes. 1 - examine themselves to see if they're in the faith. 2 - provide confirmation for his ministry. He assumes that they'll pass the test and then realise in turn that he is genuine.
• It is fitting given the themes of the letter that he calls them to examine themselves. He has been under the microscope for a long time justifying his ministry and now he turns it on them - your turn.
• Greek order - Yourselves examine, yourselves test.
• We're very good at examining others: other drivers, the in-laws, the coaches, taught at school to critique and think critically and analytically, but we often don't look at ourselves (X Factor example perhaps). We've thought a lot about what's wrong with others but we haven't often thought to examine ourselves... what are we like? We put the emphasis on 'everybody else, examine' but how much pain and hurt could be avoided if we 'ourselves, examine'. There is nothing more important in the whole world for you than 'are you in the faith? are you a Christian?

• 1 John. 3 Categories of evidence: theological (what you believe), ethical (how you behave) and social (how you treat others) 
• 2 Corinthians same three issues: 
• Theological C11- stand fast in the gospel 'don't go after another Jesus'
• Ethical C12 - turn from your former sins
• Social - C2welcome back sinners, C9give generously

Order: Warns them calls for self-examination and concludes with some final instructions.

John Stott:

• most of us hate examinations - June & July the dreaded months for school children - because we hate examinations Paul's command to examination doesn't come as a welcome thing. 
• 3 times - examine yourselves, test yourselves, 'do you not know yourselves.' This is a proper test for us. The thing we're being called to is to know whether we are real Christians or not. Church attenders and members - examine yourselves, test yourselves. Are we true genuine authentic Christians?
• 6/7 times the verb 'to test' is used. After all the testing you're either 'approved' or 'disapproved' (blacksmith terminology). 
• Introspection is unhealthy but it's not the same thing as self-examination. To be turned in yourself and see introspection as the end in itself is unhealthy. Self-examination is an occasional discipline of the Christian who is normally turned outward but from time to time turns in on himself in order to serve Christ better.
• Assurance is the purpose of self-examination. Assurance is not presumptuous. 'Hope for the best' theology is not right, we can and should know - John's epistle 'that you may know' humbly and definitely know.
• Self examination is not introspection and need not lead to arrogance. 
• Tests: 
• Doctrine: v5 to see whether you are in the faith - 'the' faith is not something in us but something God has revealed, truth. The faith is the Christian faith. Are you standing in the Christian faith. The super-apostles Paul says were teaching 'another Jesus' not the true one/gospel. They were/are outside of the faith. Uses those three phrases in C11; another gospel/Jesus/spirit. This isn't the final test. It is possible to be orthodox and yet 'spurious'. We must be loyal to the faith. It is in believing in Jesus that we are saved and if we believe another Jesus we believe an anti-christ. The Creed 
• Experience: 'do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you.' The indwelling. 'I live and yet not I but Christ lives in me.' Galatians, 'I can do all things through Christ in me' philippians, 'Christ in you the hope of glory.' Colossians. Essential understanding of what a Christian is. Somebody in whom Jesus Christ lives. 'How do I know whether Jesus Christ is in me?' i) assuring us inwardly by his Spirit in us 'Spirit bears witness with our Spirit.' ii) by reproducing his character in us. not just a test of feeling but of character. 
• Fellowship: 12:20 'i worry that i won't find what i wish but instead will find jealousy, quarrelling...' how can you claim to be christians he says if these things are spoiling your church life. 13:11 'mend your ways' restore your nets. 'Agree with one another' Do we rejoice in our membership of the church, do we love the brethren? It is a test of our authenticity.
• God is a God of truth, righteousness and love.
• True or false? You've examined the leaders, now examine yourselves. 
• All of us will have to face a divine examination on the last day.

Rico Tice:

• There are some events in all our lives that cause us to stop and examine ourselves (like the death of a friend). It makes you stop. The whirlwind of activity that we call life stops. 1662 book of common prayer 'on sunday next i purpose through God's assistance i intend to administer communion next Sunday... my duty is to exhort you to consider the holy mystery and the great peril of unworthy receiving there of... that you may come holy and clean to such a feast. 
• 1Cor 11:28 'let a person examine himself.' before coming to communion meal. 13:5 'it's the burden of the whole letter' 13:5 is where it's all at - examine yourselves, test yourselves!
• They say... 'you don't take money as they do, you're not an orator as they are...' 'actually' he says 'it's you that needs to test yourselves.'
• most of us like to think that the days of examination and tests are over: driving tests have gone. This is a test we don't do on others, we do on ourselves. In Boots 'self-tests' like pregnancy tests and high-cholesterol tests 'I've not done either of them' but this is a self-test and it's not in Boots it's in the Bible. 
• This test is set by a friend not by Anne Robinson on the weakest link out to trip us up. Paul is a 'Spiritual Father' who will spend everything they have on his children... 
• he's a master builder doing a site visit. Is the building going to withstand the storms? 
• he's on his knees praying for them.
• This test is helpful it's positive to help them to see - Christ is in you. 
• This is not an entry exam to determine whether or not they are accepted by God. We have been made acceptable to God by Jesus, he has given us that qualification. Jesus gives me his perfection. 2Cor5:21 the great exchange. 
• at school in the 'self-tests' I did better when I could mark my own paper!
• God by his Spirit is insisting that we do it: 
• Belief and behaviour tests: Doctrinal and moral. They were so pleased with themselves, proud of themselves. Paul hopes they will past but he knows they need to examine yourselves. 

First: Belief: v5 - in the faith. Are you still in the parameters of the gospel? Don't assume it, test it. The false teacher's message may seem similar but it's a different gospel altogether. The Jesus who was crucified in weakness who brings me forgiveness, righteousness, reconciliation is the real Jesus.

• Two lies in our world are that we're accepted by our good works or by the act of dying. A third false belief is that we are victims and therefore don't need forgiveness.
• What is the faith in the culture that puts me right with God? in the newspapers/televisions/obituary page... 
• One lie = accepted by being a nice person (Lady Diana was so nice of course she's saved) 
• Second = lie, they're accepted by the actual act of dying. It's so horrible to die and for us to lose them that the pain they've gone through is their righteousness. 
• Third = my pain and difficult life means that I'm a victim and therefore don't need forgiveness. We are rebels as well as victims.

Does God come to fill you and meet your need or does he convict you? They had a gospel-lite. Have you let the culture walk in with you?

Second: Behaviour test.

• v5 - Christ is in you... unless of course you fail the test. Why mention this? The presence of Christ is in us individually and as a church and as a result sin is incompatible. Christ's presence in us is demonstrated by our repentance, by our driving out of sin from our lives. That sin is being driven out, that's our assurance? Oil and water do not mix. Oil will drive out water. Christ's presence will drive out sin. He's afraid he might flunk this test, that they don't drive out sin. Repentance is the proof that Christ's transforming presence is changing you. 
• Illus: A tourist visiting a small village a man asked someone 'were any great men born in this village?' 'no, only babies.' - there needs to be progress and development. 
• v11 - finally brothers... live together and God will be with you. God in their midst is the promise and their resource. Repent.

Doctrine of God: Impact Sept. 13

Teaching: Trinity (2 days)
Objective: to learn about God and to be drawn more intimately into knowing him

Trinity 1:

Lesson 1: 10:15-11:30 - 1hr 15mins : The purpose of our lives is to know God, knowing God is a different from knowing a book.
Lesson 2: 11:45-13:00 - 1hr 15mins : God's essential nature. Father, Son, Spirit
Lunch: 13:00-14:00
Lesson 3: 14:00-15:00 - 1hr : The Trinity revealed in scripture
Lesson 4: 15:15-16:15 - 1hr : The work of the Son
Lesson 5: 16:30-17:30 - 1hr :

Lesson 1:

Your life has purpose and dignity:

• In the beginning God is seen as the one who brings beauty out of chaos and meaning out of nothing.
• Creation account: Darkness and chaos into light, beauty and order.
• Psalm 139. Genesis 2. You have been handmade by an intelligent mind and given dignity and honour.
• Since you're 'designed' then there must be intention in mind. The tragedy is when people live their whole lives and never discover what that purpose is. Frodo & Sam at Mt. Doom without the Ring - oops, can't go back now. You're not just 'taking a walk', you have a destination to arrive at.

Activity: what is the purpose of your life?
Answer: to know God.

Your life's purpose is to glorify God

• Westminster Catechisms put it like this:

'The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.' John Piper restates it as 'to glorify God by enjoying him forever.'

• What does it mean 'to glorify'? 
• To show off, to magnify, to exult in, to honour and lift high. 
• We glorify him by enjoying him. 
• More you enjoy something the more you'll glorify it: favourite films, football teams, lovers. 
• Joy in the Christian life matters:
• George Muller quote. Martin Luther 'it is pleasing to God when thy laughest from thy heart.' and accompanying picture.
• Paul: Phil 4:? 'I have learned the secret of being content in every situation.' Contentment = happiness. How had Paul discovered happiness? His secret of happiness - I know God and am known by him.

Your life's purpose is to know God

• God invites us to know and enjoy him: Psalm 34:8 taste and see that the Lord is good. 
• Jesus reveals that his desire is to this end when he prays in John 17:3
• Paul sums up his life's perspective when he says 'i consider everything else rubbish compared to knowing Christ.'
• Jer. 9:23 - if you're going to boast in something let it be that you understand and know me.
• Hosea 6:6 'I desire... the knowledge of god more than burnt offerings' 
• knowledge of God is what we have been made for:

Packer quote: What are we made for? To know God. What aim should we set ourselves in life? To know God. What is the 'eternal life' that Jesus gives? Knowledge of God...What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight, and contentment, than anything else? Knowledge of God.  

• knowledge of God is deeper and bigger than simply intellectual understanding. 
• There is a difference between knowing about someone and knowing someone.
• Knowing God is different from knowing a recipe or a mountain. It is more complex as the object of our knowing is infinitely more complex. 
• What it means to know God from the Bible: 
• Metaphors: Marriage, friendship, family, 
• Activity: walking in the cool of the day, hearing him speak, speaking to him, worshipping him, crying out to him, being heard by him, dancing, trusting, clapping... 

• How do we assess how well we know God?
• Packer: We must learn to measure ourselves not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts. Many of us, I suspect, have no idea how impoverished we are at this level. Let us ask the Lord to show us. 
• how do we work out what God is like? is it a case of deducing things about him from the world around us or a case of receiving revelation.
• 1) Knowing God is a matter of personal dealing (difference between knowing about a girl and actually knowing her is huge).
• 2) Knowing God is a matter of personal involvement, in mind, in will in feeling. 
• 3) Knowing God is a matter of grace. 
• Marvel at the cost God paid to bring us into this knowledge and intimacy: 
• In the next session we're going to look at God's essential nature as he exists in himself. Relationship with God is the call to which we've all been summoned. Being a Christian involves following Christ but following is only a means to an end. Being a Christian involves more than being forgiven of our sin. As wonderful as it is, forgiveness is only a means to an end. That end, the end to which we've all been called is to know him and live in relationship with him. God invites us into relationship with him and he has done so at a great cost. He has done so at the expense of turning his face away from his son, of allowing his son to take upon himself the sin and evil of the world. He was stricken of God in order that we could be friends with God.
• Consider this: if you were to leave today and say that you hated me and that you never wanted to see me again, I would be upset but in a day or two I wouldn't be too affected. If my wife was to say 'I hate you and I never want to see you again.' The pain would be immeasurably worse. The depth of relationship and then length of time a relationship has been deepening correlates to the pain of rejection when rejection comes.
• God the eternal Father, Son & Spirit has existed for all time and been in perfect harmonious intimate, committed relationship with one another for all time. On the cross the Father turned his face away from the Son, rejected him as he bore the sin of the world. He broke intimacy with the Son in order that we might have intimacy with him, in order that we might be able to come to know him. Remarkable. 

Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven, to earth come down;
fix in us thy humble dwelling;
 all thy faithful mercies crown!  

Lesson 2

God's essential nature

• Having begun today by looking at ourselves, we've begun in a place the Bible doesn't. The Bible opens with revelation of who God is and what he's done and we would do well to take careful consideration of that. It (life) is not about you, it is about him. The Bible is about him, your life is about him, the world is meant to honour and glorify him and we find our bearings only as we get centered on him. The often used line is true: I am a tree in a story about a forest.
• God exists. The Bible assumes his existence and doesn't once try to offer an argument for his existence. 
• discuss in pairs - how did you come to believe in God? How would you try to convince others that God exists?
• Typically the various arguments can be summed up as:
• Kalam Cosmological Argument - Aristotle c350 BC: cause and effect : every known thing has a cause and therefore the universe must have an 'uncaused cause' or 'unmoved mover'
• Cosmological Argument from Contingency - 
• Teleological - argument from design first described by Plato and hen developed by the scientist William Paley with an illustration of a watch.
• Ontological - 
• Moral argument - argument from conscience.
• Arius and Athanasius: stories from church history (slide), printed pictures of each opponent and biographies. 
• Arius: what can we know about God from the world around us
• Athanasius: 'if the whole world is against Athanasius then Athanasius is against the world.' what can we know about God from looking at Jesus
• And the winner is... read Nicean Creed
• 'not one iota of difference'
• homo-ousios - same substance
• hetero-ousios - other substance
• after revision Arian's followers made allowances: homoi-ousios - similar substance. 
• Activity: in pairs read Genesis 1-3 and report back what we can learn about God from it.
• Athanasius' point: 
• From creation = creator, ruler, judge etc.
• From Jesus = God must be in himself Father. He has always been Father. Jesus is the beloved of God, God must be love. God is not on his own.
• God's essence is not ruler, creator etc. his essence is Father.
• If Father then life giver. If Father then love
• 1 John 4:7-8 Dear children let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
• Love is not one bit of God or a mood of his, it is who he is in his essential being. 
• A fountain by definition must overflow, so a Father must give life. 
• 1 John 4:9 'This is how God showed his love among us; he sent his only son.'
• What is the Father like? Paul says that he is the one from whom every earthly Father derives his name/title. We are copies, he is the blueprint.
• activity: in pairs go through the list below and write down what each verse tells you about what the Father is like: Then discuss 'which one do you find hardest to believe and why?'
• Psalm 139:1-18
• Psalm 103:8-14
• Romans 15:7, Zephaniah 3:17
• Isaiah 40:11, Hosea 11:3-4
• Hebrews 13:5, Jeremiah 31:21
• Exodus 34:6, 2 Peter 3:9
• Jeremiah 31:3, Isaiah 42:3
• Lamentations 3:22-23, John 10:10
• Hebrews 4:15-16
• Psalm 130:1-4, Luke 15:17-24
• Hebrews 4:15-16, Luke 15:11-16
• Psalm 130:1-4, Luke 15:17-24
• Romans 8:28-29, Hebrews 12:5-11
• The Son must always have existed in eternity past with the Father or else the Father could not have been 'Father'.
• John 17:24 'you have loved me since before the foundations of the world...'
• Therefore the Son must be eternal along with the Father.
• Hebrews 1:3 'the radiance of the glory of God.'
• Gregory of Nyssa: as the light from the lamp is of the nature of that which sheds the brightness and is united with it (for as as soon as the lamp appears the light that comes from it shines out simultaneously), so in this place the Apostles would have us consider both that the Son is of the Father and that the Father is never without the Son; for it is impossible that glory should be without radiance as it is impossible that the lamp should be without brightness.
• Lamp. 
• The Father loves and empowers the Son by giving him the Spirit.
• The Spirit is not a force but a person. As a person he (individual work sheet):
• speaks and sends Acts 13:2-4
• he chooses Acts 20:28
• the teaches John 14:26
• gives (Isaiah 63:14
• can be tested and lied to (Acts 5:3,9)
• can be resisted (Acts 7:51
• grieved (Is. 63:10, Eph. 4:30)
• blasphemed (Mt. 12:31)
• 'spirit' (pneuma) is neuter (gender neutral) but the NT uses male pronouns for him (see John 16:8

Lesson 3:

God is Triune

• Video clip: God's essential being is outward, giving, loving and overflowing. If we 'puree the members of the trinity' into one or isolate them out into three different 'moods' (or modes as per modalism and Bruce Almighty), it becomes impossible to taste the gospel. God is the overflowing fountain and the radiant lamp. God is 3 in 1. 
• Yet we mustn't reduce God from 3in1 to God on his own (on his todd). 
• God on his own is not a God worth worshipping. He is a God who needs us in order to be love and without us he'd be lonely. He creates to meet a need in himself perhaps or to have subjects that would serve him.
• The one thing that separates the Christian faith from any other faith on the planet is... Trinity.  
• It is what distinguishes the God of the Bible from everything else and yet it's rarely something that is taught or explained or celebrated in our churches: why? 
• Robert Parry: For many Christian the Trinity has become something of an appendix: it's there, but they are not sure what its function is, they get by in life without it doing very much, and if they have it removed they wouldn't be too distressed.'
• God the Father, Son & Spirit is so radically different from anything else on the shelves. We can't simply fit F,S,HS into our own understanding of God. Instead we need a complete overhaul of our ideas about God.
• Mike Reeves: Can we rub along with just 'God'?The temptation to sculpt God according to our expectations and presuppositions, to make this God much like another, is strong with us. You see it all down through history: in the middle ages it seemed obvious for people to think of God as a feudal lord; the first missionaries to the Vikings thought it obvious to present Christ as a warrior God, an axe-wielding divine berserker who could out-Odin Odin. And so on. The trouble is, the triune God simply does not fit well into the mould of any other God. Trying to rub along with some unspecified 'God', we will quickly find ourselves with another God. 
• That, ironically, is often why we struggle with the Trinity: instead of starting from scratch and seeing that the triune God is a radically different sort of being from any other candidate for 'God', we try to stuff Father, Son and Spirit into how we have always though of God. 
• Greg Haslam: The Bible does not give us exhaustive information about God's inner life, but it does offer substantial and authoritative glimpses of God's triune self, though much still remains mysterious to us. 
• The word Trinity doesn't appear in our Bibles. for a prize who can find out where it comes from? 
• How would you conclude from scripture that God is Triune?
• Although the word doesn't appear in the Bible it's thoroughly Biblical. Let's look at some of the evidence for it:

What we learn about God from the Bible: 

• God is one:
• OT maintains: Deut. 6:4 - The Shema - God is one
• NT reaffirms: Mark 12:29 - Jesus quotes the Shema, Eph. 4:6 there is 'one' God
• The Father is God 
• Gen. 1:1 in the beginning God created... 
• Hos. 11:1-3 (if 'son' then he must be parent and we see from elsewhere that God has revealed himself as 'he' and so 'Father' he must be.)
• Mt. 6:9 - 'Our Father in heaven...'
• The Son is God 
• John 1:1, 8:58 (he is eternal)
• Col. 1:15-19 (exact representation of God), 2:9 (fullness of deity dwells - written approx. AD63, put that in your Da Vinci Code pipe and smoke it.)
• Mt.9:2 - he forgave sins, something only God could do (bypassing the temple).
• The Spirit is God
• Hebrews 9:14 (he is eternal)
• 2 Cor. 3:17 (the Lord is Spirit)
• Acts 5:3-5 ('you have not lied to men but to God).
• Examples from scripture where we see the tri-unity of God: throw it open
• OT:
• Creation (hinted at in the 'us' and 'our') 'Elohim' is a plural noun,
• Is. 63:7-10 (YWH, Angel of his presence & HS mentioned)
• Is. 48:16 (ask aj is God the speaker here?)
• Ps. 33:6 'by the word of Yahweh... by the breath of his mouth)
• Haggai 2:5-7 (Yahweh, his Spirit and the 'treasured of the nations') 
• shadowy and mysterious, but surely highly significant as well 
• NT:
• John the Baptist (although technically an OT prophet) - Mt. 3:2 (repent toward God), Faith in the Messiah (Mt. 3:11), Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Mt. 3:11)
• Jesus' birth: God sends Gabriel to promise conception by the HS of the child 'Son of the Most High (on the throne of David). Lk1:32
• Jesus' baptism, Mt. 3:16-17
• Mt 28:19 - baptised into God (singular) but with 3 persons. One God, three persons.
• 2 Cor. 13:14 - Paul's blessing is Triune in distinction
• Rev 1:4-5 - blessing from 'him... seven (perfect) spirits, and Jesus
• 1 Cor. 12:4-6 (Trinitarian gifts to the church) 
• Illustrations of who God is (and what's wrong with them):
• Fire/Heat/Light, Ice/Water/Steam, Core/Flesh/Skin
• Cube
• in the Western church we've got all logical and confused about this: 1+1+1=3(!)
• Acceptable diagram - Grudem/Reeves's book
• God as represented in art: show slides
• Pic 1 - what do we learn?
• Pic 2 - ?
• Pic 3 - ?
• Eastern mysterious 'perechoresis' in dwelling one within the other, enjoined in unity and relationship, and indwelling dance.
• John 17: 'I in you and you in me...'
• Statements about who God is that we can conclude from the Bible's teaching on the Trinity:
• 1. There is only God
  2. God eternally exists as three distinct persons
  3. Each of these persons is fully divine
  4. Each of these person is distinct from the others
  5. The three persons relate together eternally as Father, Son, & Holy Spirit
  In short. There is one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
  Or less grammatically. There is one God who are Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They is God. 
• John Calvin: if we try to think about God without thinking about the Father, Son and Spirit, then  only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God. 
• St Hilary of Poitier (St Hilarious)  saw that trying to define God without starting with the Father and his Son, he saw, one would quite simply wind up with a different God.

Counterfeit Gods : TimKeller

Selection of quotes on idols:

ArBishop William Temple: ‘your religion is what you do with your solitude.’

Good quote around p168: ‘in other words the true god...

On what an idol is:

An idol is whatever you look at and say in your heart of hearts, ‘if I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.’ 

On our modern idolatry:

We may not actually burn incense to Artemis, but when money and career are raised cosmic proportions, we perform a kind of child sacrifice, neglecting family and community to achieve a higher place in business and gain more wealth and prestige.

On the result of the economic crash: 

In 2008 after global ec crisis began string of suicides. One man found hung in his basement, another shot himself behind the wheel of his jaguar, still another (a HSBC Sr. Officer) hung himself in the wardrobe of his £500-a-night suite in Knightsbridge, London.

On the need to be and feel significant that drives us to idols (who promise to deliver such things)

Madonna said in an interview in Vogue magazine: My drive in life comes from a fear of being mediocre. That is always pushing me. I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being but then I feel I am still mediocre and uninteresting unless I do something else. Because even though I have become somebody, I still have to prove that I am somebody. My struggle has never ended and I guess it never will.

From Lily Allen (not from Cf gods but same idea):

Lily Allen (expressing discontent - I think on Twitter): I’d give everything I own, if someone else could take my place. Will someone else please take my place?

Keller is fond of quoting from French Sociologist from 19th C Alexis deToqueville who visited the States and wrote about it: 

Alexis DeToqueville: a strange melancholy that haunts its inhabitants in the midst of abundance. ‘the incomplete joys of this world will never satisfy the human heart.’ 

Miscellaneous Keller quotes on idolatry (not from Cf gods)

‘your idol is the one thing you can’t control in your monthly budget, always wanting to spend more on.’

Chapter 1: All You've Ever Wanted

To idolise your son is to smother the child and strangle the relationship.

The firstborn belongs to God. 

Ancient cultures were not as individualistic as ours. People thought in terms of the community's or family's success. An individual didn't gain wealth and fame without it being a family gain as well.

Ex 22:29, 34:20 & Num. 3:40-41, 46-48 point out the instruction from God that the firstborn belong to him.

Notice God was not asking him to walk over to Isaac's tent and just murder him. He asked him to make him a burnt offering. He was calling in Abraham's debt. His son was going to die for the sins of the family.

In Psalm 130:4 we see that the 'fear of God' is increased by an experience of God's grace and forgiveness. 'Now I know that you love me more than anything in the world.' That's what 'the fear of God' means.

We may not realise how idolatrous our career has become to us, until we are faced with a situation in which telling the truth or acting with integrity would mean a serious blow to our professional advancement. If we are not willing to hurt our career in order to do God's will, our job will become a counterfeit god.

Abraham received Isaac back and many more besides:

Over half the people in the human race consider him their spiritual father. That would never have happened unless God had dealt with the idol of Abraham's heart.

Paul intentionally references this story in Romans 8:32

God said to Abraham, 'now I know you love me...' and now, how much more can we look at Jesus and say to God: 'now we know that you love us. For you did not withhold your own son whom you love, from us.'

Here God was turning Abraham into a great man - but on the outside it looked like God was being cruel.

Chapter 3: Money Changes Everything

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that with the absence of God growing in Western culture, we would replace God with money. He foretold that money in Western culture would become perhaps its main counterfeit god.

Innumerable writers and thinkers have been pointing out the 'culture of greed' that has been eating away at our souls and has brought about economic collapse. Yet no one thinks that change is around the corner. Why? It's because greed and appetite for riches are especially hard to see in ourselves.

Keller illustrates by saying: some years ago I did a men's breakfast series on the Seven Deadly Sins. His wife told him that the week on greed would have the lowest attendance. She was right. People packed out the hall for talks on lust and wrath and even pride but nobody thinks that they are greedy. He says:

As a pastor I've had people come to me to confess that they struggle with almost every kind of sin. Almost. I cannot recall anyone ever coming to me and saying 'I spend too much money on myself. I think my greedy lust for money is harming my family, my soul, and people around me.' Greed hides itself from the victim.

Everyone lives in a particular socioeconomic bracket. You don't compare yourself with the rest of the world but with the people in your particular bracket. The human heart always wants to justify itself and this is one of the easiest ways. You say 'I don't live as well as him or her or them. My means are modest compared to theirs.

Most Americans think of themselves as middle class and only 2 percent call themselves 'upper class'. But the rest of the world is not fooled.

Jesus warns people far more often about greed than about sex, yet almost no one thinks they are guilty of it.

Knowing God: J. I. Packer

Chapter 2: The people who know their God

story of a man going through trials and losing his job but saying 'it doesn't matter, for I've known God and they haven't.'

There is a difference between knowing God and knowing about God. One can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of him. Also, one can know a great deal about godliness without much knowledge of God. On can have a whole range of good influences and ideas and theologies and books without really knowing God at all.

We come back then to where we started. The question is not whether we are good at theology, or 'balanced' in our approach to problems of Christian living; the question is, can we say, simply, honestly, not because we feel that as evengelicals we ought to, but because it is plain matter of fact that we have known God, and that because we have known God the unpleasantness we have had, or the pleasantness we have not had, through being Christians does not matter to us?

Evidence of knowing God. Daniel in the OT is a good example of someone who knew God through trying circumstances. His witness is summarised in four propositions:

1. Those who know God have great energy for God.
2. Those who kno God have great thoughts of God.
3. Those who know God show great boldness for God.
4. Those who know God have great contentment in God.

Lord,it belong not to my care
Whether I die or live;
To love and serve thee is my share,
And this Thy grace must give. 

If life be long, I will be glad,
That I may long obey;
If short - then why should I be sad
To soar to endless day? 

How to grow in the knowledge of God. First recognise how much we lack knowledge of God.

We must learn to measure ourselves not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts. Many of us, I suspect, have no idea how impoverished we are at this level. Let us ask the Lord to show us. 

Second we must seek the Saviour.

It is those who have sought the Lord Jesus till they have found him - for the promise is that when we seek him with all our hearts, we shall surely find him - who can stand before the world to testify that they have known God. 

Chapter 3: Knowing and Being Known

What are we made for? To know God. What aim should we set ourselves in life? To know God. What is the 'eternal life' that Jesus gives? Knowledge of God. John 17:3.

What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight, and contentment, than anything else? Knowledge of God. 'This is what the LORD says: 'let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast or his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me.'"

In these few sentences, we have said a great deal. What does knowing God involve?

It is clear, to start with, that 'knowing' God is of necessity a more complex business than 'knowing' another person, just as 'knowing' my neighbour is a more complex business than 'knowing' a house, or a book, or a language. The more complex the object, the more complex is the knowing of it.

Knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a person's heart. The action of God taking Joseph from prison to become Pharoah's prime minister is a picture of what he doesto every Christian: from Satan's prisoner, you find yourself transferred to a position of trust in the service of God.

What does it involve?

Knowing God involves, first, listening to God's word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting God's nature and character, as his Word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting God's nature and character, as his Word and works reveal it; third, accepting his invitations, and doing what he commands; fourth, recognising and rejoicing in the love that he has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into this divine fellowship.

Jesus has gone to be with the Father and has sent his Spirit to 'so that anyone anywhere can enjoy the same kind of relationship with him as the disciples had in the days of his flesh.... Knowing Jesus still remains as definite a relation of personal discipleship as it was for the twelve when he was on earth... Jesus's voice is 'heard' when Jesus's claim is acknowledged, his promise trusted and his call answered.

1) Knowing God is a matter of personal dealing
2) Knowing God is a matter of personal involvement, in mind, in will in feeling.
3) Knowing God is a matter of grace.

Taste and see that the Lord is good,' says the psalmist (Ps. 34:8). To 'taste' is, as we say, to 'try' a mouthful of something, with a view to appreciating its flavour. A dish may look good, and be well recommended by the cook but we do not know its real quality until we have tasted it. Similarly we, we do not know another person's real quality until we have 'tasted' the experience of friendship. Friends are, so to speak, communicating flavours to each other all the time, by sharing their attitudes both towards each other (think of people in love) and towards everything else that is of common concern. 

Chapter 4: The only true God

Essentially this chapter is about the second commandment: 'you shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God...'

The reasons, Packer gives for this commandment are:
1) Images dishonour God, for they obscure his glory.
2) Images mislead us. They convey false ideas about God.

John Calvin 'A true image of God is not ot be found in all the world; and hence... his glory is defiled, and his truth corrupted by the lie, whenever he is set before our eyes in a visible form... therefore to devise any image of God is itself impious; because by this corruption his majesty is adulterated, and he is figured to be other than he is.'

Chapter 5: God Incarnate

Difficulties that theologians have with supernatural elements of the Christian message (resurrection, atonement, virgin birth etc.) are secondary issues. The first and only one that matters is - was Jesus fully God and fully man. Was he the God man? If he was then we can make sense of the others, if he wasn't then what are doing listening to him in the first place?

In large part it deals with the kenosis theory (or heresy I should say) that teaches that Jesus 'emptied' himself of his divinity when he became a man. Or at least that he emptied himself of parts of his divinity. It is taught that he emptied himself of his omnipotence and omniscience but kept his divine morality and justice. Packer points out however that if he emptied himself of his knowledge and made fallible statements since he wasn't God, it follows that we cannot trust anything he says as being authoritative.

The true kenosis was the emptying of his glory and the embracing of poor humanity. This is the true Christmas spirit, not the sentimentality of Christmas postcards etc. but the laying aside of riches for the sake of the poor and the spending of oneself on those in need.

It ends with a wonderfully scathing and challenging quote:

'It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians - i will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Chistians - go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord's parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet those needs) averting their eyes, and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians - alas, they are many - whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the sub-middle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian to get on by themselves. 

The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor - spending, and being spent - to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others - and not just their own friends - in whatever way there seems need.'

Page 71

Chapter 6: He Shall Testify

A chapter about the Holy Spirit and a reminder of the need to not have a two person God but a triune God. From John's gospel Packer shows how we can clearly see each personality of God as distinct from one another and in relationship with one another.

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

The opening line of John's gospel teaches us two huge things. The Word of God (seen in the OT as his creative voice) is eternal and divine and yet also distinct from the Father.

In the Old Testament God's word and God's spirit are parallel figures. God's word is his almighty speech; God's spirit is his almighty breath. Both phrases convey the thought of his power in action. The speech and breath of God appear together in the record of creation... John tells us in the prologue that the divine Word spoken of here is a person. Our Lord now gives parallel teaching, to the effect that the divine Spirit is also a person.And he confirms his witness to the deity of this personal Spirit by calling him the holy Spirit, as later he was to speak of the holy Father.

The Spirit comes from the side of the Father in the same way that the Son does. For both the word 'para' is used.

We see the following principles in place as it pertains to the inter-connectivity and distinction of the persons of the Trinity:

1. The Son is subject to the Father, for the Son is sent by the Father in his (the Father's) name.
2. The Spirit is subject to the Father, for the Spirit is sent by the Father in the Son's name.
3. The Spirit is subject to the Son as well as to the Father, for the Spirit is sent by the Son as well as by the Father.

The Holy Spirit is often ignored by theologians and Christians alike. There are plenty of books about the work of the Son and the Father but very few about the Holy Spirit.

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is the cinderella of Christian doctrines. Very few seem to be interested in it.

Christian people are not in doubt as to the work that Christ did; they know that h redeemed us by his atoning death, even if they differ among themselves as to what exactly this involved. But the average Christian is in a complete fog as to what the Holy Spirit does. 

Surely something is amiss here. How can we justify neglecting the ministry of Christ's appointed agent in this way? Is it not a hollow fraud to say that we honour Christ when we ignore, and by ignoring dishonour, the one whome Christ has sent to us as his deputy, to take his place and care for us on his behalf? Ought we not to concern ourselves more about the Holy Spirit than we do? 

What does the Holy Spirit do?

1) There would be no gospel and no New Testament without him.

He inspired and reminded the apostles of the teachings of Christ so that we could be confident that what they wrote down was and is the very words of God himself. Without him doing this, what sort of witnesses would they have been?

They had never been good pupils; they had consistently failed to understand Christ, and missed the point of his teaching, throughout his earthly ministry; how could they be expected to do better now he had gone?

2) Without the Holy Spirit there would be no faith and no new birth - in short, no Christians.

Here's a wonderful quote and good reminder for us:

It is not for us to imagine that we can prove the truth of Christianity by our own arguments; nobody can prove the truth of Christianity save the Holy Spirit, by his own almighty work of renewing the blinded heart. It is the sovereign prerogative of Christ's Spirit to convince men's consciences of the truth of Christ's gospel; and Christ's human witnesses must learn to ground their hopes of success, not on clever presentation of the truth by man, but on powerful demonstration of the truth by the Spirit. 

Chapter 7: God Unchanging

Reading the Bible we can come up against difficulties early on. It is written into a world that is vastly different from ours. One can't help but wonder, 'what use is this to me when I live in such a different society now? Packer suggests that the overriding truth that helps us to navigate God's word is the fact that God is unchanging.

God's life does not change
God's character does not change
God's truth does not change
God's ways do not change
God's purposes do not change
God's son does not change

God's revealed name is, of course, more than a label; it is a revelation of what he is in relation to us.

In Exodus 3, we read how God announced his name to Moses as 'I am who I am.' - a phrase of which 'Yahweh' is, in effect a shortened form. This 'name' is not a description of God but simply a declaration of his self-existence and his eternal changelessness; a reminder to mankind that he has life in himself, and that what he is now, he is eternally.
In Exodus 34 however we read how God 'proclaimed his name the LORD to Moses by listing the various facets of his holy character. 'The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to the thousands  and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children.

Repenting mreans revising one's judgement, and changing one's plan of action. 

Arthur Pink: The Attributes of God

The foundation of all true knowledge of God must be a clear mental apprehension of his perfections revealed in Holy Scripture. An unknown God can neither be trusted, serve, nor worshipped.

Something more than a theoretical knowledge of God is needed by us. God is only truly known in the soul as we yield ourselves to him, submit to his authority, and regulate all the details of our lives by his holy precepts and commandments.

The solitariness of God:

That God is great in wisdom, mercy and power is assumed by many to be common knowledge but in actual fact very few people have attained anything like a clear knowledge of God in those ways.

Ex. 15:11 Who is like unto thee o Lord, among the gods? Who is like Thee glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?'

'In the beginning, God' Gen. 1:1 There was a time when God existed all alone. There was no heaven, where his glory is now particularly manifested. There was no earth to engage his attention. There were no angels to hymn his praises; no universe to be upheld by the word of his power. There was norhing, no one, but God; that, not for a day, a year, or an age, but 'from everlasting.' During a past eternity, God was alone: self-contained, self-sufficient, self-satisfied; in need of nothing.

The creating of angels, a universe, an earth, and human beings added nothing to God essentially. He changes not, therefore his essential glory can be neither augmented nor diminished.

He worketh all things after the counsel of his own will - Eph. 1:11

These kinds of thoughts and ideas are new to many people - therefore we must move slowly and appeal be to scriptures.

Romans 11:34-35 - who has been God's advisor or who has first given to him that he ought to be repaid? Who has known his mind? Similar is Job 35:7,8

'Our obedience profits God nothing' meaning that our obedience does not fill up anything in him that is lacking. He does not require our obedience in order to be who he is, divine, eternal, sovereign, love.

It is true that God is both honoured and dishonoured by men, that he is 'glorified' by creation, providence and redemption. This is indisputable. But this has to do with manifestative glory and the recognition of it by us. That is, the glory that emanates from God and is seen and recognised (and reflected by us).

Is. 40:15-18 "Behold the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance... all the nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted as less than nothing. To whom will you compare me?"

that is still an 'unknown god' (Acts 17) to the multitudes around us.

Is. 40:23 '...he brings princes to nothing; he makes the judges of the earth as vanity.'

how vastly different is the God of the scripture from the 'god' of the average pulpit!

God is solitary in his majesty, unique in his excellency, peerless in his perfections. He sustains all, but is himself independent of all. He gives to all, but is enriched by none.

Such a God cannot be found out by searching. He can be known only as he is revealed to the heart by the Holy Spirit through the word.

Analogy has been drawn between a savage finding a watch upon the sands, and from a close examination of it he infers a watch-maker. So far so good. But attempt to go further: suppose that savage sits down on the sand and endeavours to form to himself a conception of this watch-maker, his personal affections and manners; his disposition, acquirements, and moral-character - all that goes to make up a personality; could he ever think or reason out a real man - the man who made the watch, so that he could say 'I am acquanited with him'?

The God of scripture can only be known by those to whom he makes himself known.

2. The Decrees of God
decree - one of the eternal purposes of God by which events are foreordained.
a formal and authoritative order, especially one having theforce of law: a presidential decree.

God's decrees are:

- eternal: 'to suppose any of them to be made in time is to suppose that some new occasion has occurred; some unforeseen event or combination of circumstances has arisen, which has induced the Most High to form a new resolution.'
- Wise: Wisdom is shown in the selection of the best possible ends and of the fittest means of accomplishing them. 'In like manner we should satisfy our minds as to God's works when doubts obtrude themselves upon us, and repel any objections that may be suggested by something that we cannot reconcile to our notions of what is good and wise. When we reach the bounds of the finite and gaze toward the mysterious realm of the infinite, let us exclaim, 'O the depth of the riches! Both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!' Rom. 11:33'
- Free: He was alone with no outside influences when he made his decree.
Absolute and unconditional: He has decreed the end from the beginning and nothing can stop his decree from coming to pass.

Side by side with the immutability and invincibility of God's decrees, Scripture plainly teaches that man is a responsible creature and answerable for his actions

3. The knowledge of God
God is omniscient. He knows everything: everything possible, everything actual; all events and all creatures, of the past, the present, and the future.

Nothing can be concealed/hidden from God.
"I know the things that come into your mind, every one of them" Ezekial. 11:5
Though to non-believers this is a terrifying idea a reality to reject, to believers God's omniscience is a wonderful thing. It gives us much comfort 'he knows my frame he remembers that we are dust.' Psalm 130:14. In times of doubt and suspicion I can appeal to this very attribute: 'Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts and see if there be any unclean way in me. Psalm 139:23,24.
When our actions betray us and we fall into sin and we fell God say 'do you love me?' we can say with Peter 'Lord you know all things, you know that I love you.'

There is encouragement to prayer here. Nothing escapes God's notice. There is no danger of the individual saint being overlooked. The infinite mind is as capable of paying the same attention to millions as if only one individual were seeking its attention.

Psalm 147:5 'Great is our Lord and or great power. His understanding is infinite.'
It is no more possible for the divine counsels to fail in their execution than it would be for the thrice holy God to lie.

The application of this should amaze us and fill us with awe. The understanding/grasping of God's infinite knowledge should fill the Christian with adoration. The whole of my life stood open to his view from the beginning. He foresaw my every fall, my every sin, my every backsliding; yet, nevertheless, fixed his heart pon me. Oh, how the realisation of this should bow me in wonder and worship before him!

4. The Foreknowledge of God

What do we mean when we talk about God's foreknowledge?
'foreknow' is not mentioned in the Old Testament. The word 'know' appears often and when it is used in connection with God it often signifies 'to regard with favour, denoting not mere cognition but an affection for the object in view.'
Eg. I know thee by name (Ex33:17), before i formed you in the womb i knew you (Jer. 1:5), you only have I known of all the families of the earth (Amos 3:2), here knew signifies either loved or appointed.

The word 'foreknowledge' is never used in scripture in reference to events or actions, instead it always has to do with 'persons'. Passages where 'foreknowledge' is mentioned:
Acts 2:23 - Jesus handed over and killed according to God's 'foreknowledge.'
Romans 8:29 - those he foreknew he also predestined... (he foreknew the persons not their actions/decisions).
Romans 11:2 - God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew
1 Peter 1:2 - elect according to the foreknowledge of God (again the emphasis is on the people being foreknown and elected not those people's decisions).

Those are the only verses where the word 'foreknowledge' appears.
'Scripture never speaks of repentance and faith as being foreseen or foreknown by God. Truly, he did know from all eternity that certain ones would repent and believe, yet this is not what Scripture refers to as the object of God's foreknowledge. The word uniformly refers to God's foreknowing persons. God foreknows what 'will be' because he has decreed what 'shall be'. It is therefore a reversing of the order of Scripture, a putting of the cart before the horse, to affirm that God elects because he foreknows people. The truth is, he 'foreknows' because he has elected.

God purposed in himself to elect a certain people. not because of anything good in them or from them, either actual or foreseen, but solely out of his own mere pleasure.

5. The Supremacy of God

In one of his letters to Erasmus Luther said 'your thoughts of God are too human.'

The 'god' of the twentieth century no more resembles the Supreme Sovereign of the Bible than does the dim flickering of a candle the glory of the midday sun.

The God of scripture is no make-believe monarch, no mere imaginary sovereign but king of kings and Lord of lords. Job 42:2 'I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.'

God's supremacy over the works of his hands is vividly depicted in scripture. Inanimate matter, irrational creatures, all perform their maker's bidding. At his pleasure the Red Sea divided and its waters stood up as walls and the earth opened her mouth, and guilty rebels went down alive into the pit. When he so ordered the sun stood still; and on another occasion went backward ten degrees on the dial of Ahaz. To exemplify his supremacy he made ravens carry food to Elijah, iron swim on top of the waters, lions to be tame when Daniel was cast into their den, fire to burn not when the three Hebrews were flung into it flames. 

He is also in charge of the decisions of men. James 4: 'do not say we will go here and there etc. but only if the Lord wills it shall we do x, y, z.'

Here then is a sure resting-place for the heart. Our lives are neither the produce of blind fate nor the result of capricious chance, but every detail of them was ordained from all eternity, and is now ordered by the living and reigning God. Not a hair of our heads can be touched without his permission.

 6. The Sovereignty of God
The sovereignty of God may be defined as the exercising of his supremacy.

Psalm 115:3 'Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.'
God is sovereign. His will is supreme. So far from God being under any law of 'right' he is a law unto himself, so that whatsoever he does is right. Where does divine sovereignty end and human responsibility begin?

Here is where creature responsibility begins: in the sovereign ordination of the Creator. As to his sovereignty, there is not and never will be any 'end' to it!

Here is the highest and grandest display of the absolute sovereignty of God. He has 'mercy on whom he has mercy and he hardens whomever he wills.' Romans 9:18

7. The Immutability/Unchanging Nature of God

God is unchanging in:

- his essence. God has neither evolved, grown, nor improved. All that he is today he has ever been. He does not improve or deteriorate. Ex. 3:14 'I am that I am.'
- his attributes. Whatever the attributes of God were before the universe was created they are still the same today. His power is unabated his wisdom undiminished and his holiness unsullied. His love is eternal 'I have loved you with an everlasting love.' Jer 31:3.
- his counsel. God's purpose never alters. Herein we see the biggest distance between us and God.By nature we tend toward nothingness since we came from nothing. Nothing stays our annihilation but the will and sustaining power of God. No one can sustain himself a single moment. We are entirely dependant on the Creator for every breath we draw.

In God's unchanging nature is sold comfort and encouragement to prayer. Stephen Charnock (1670) says:

What comfort would it be to pray to a god that, like the chameleon, changed colour every moment? Who would put up a petition to an earthly prince that was so given to change as to grant a request one day and deny it another?

8. The Holiness of God

Revelation 15:4 'Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. And all nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.'
1John1:5 'God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.'

Power is God's hand or arm, omniscience his eye, mercy his bowels, eternity his duration, but holiness is his beauty.
Stephen Charnock

Holiness is the 'attribute of attributes' John Howe 1670.

God's holiness is manifested...
- in his works: The Lord is righteous in all his ways and holy in all his works (Psalm 145:17)
- in his law: The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever: the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether (Psalm 19:8-9
- at the cross: How hateful sin must be to God for him to punish it to its utmost desertes when it was imputed to his son!

Because God is holy he hates sin.

The 'god' which the vast majority of professing Christians 'love' is looked upon very much like an indulgent old man who himself has no relish for folly, but leniently winks that 'indiscretions; of youth. But the word says 'you hate all workers of iniquity.' (Psalm 5:5

A fallen creature could sooner create a world than produce that which would meet the approval of infinite Purity. Can darkness dwell with light?

Blessed be his name. 'That which is holiness demanded his grace has provided in Christ Jesus our Lord. Every poor sinner who has fled to him for refuge stands 'accepted in the beloved.' Hallelujah.

Tim Keller: Center Church

notes and quotes from Keller's Center Church.

Introduction:
How am I to measure success? 
Not in competence or in faithfulness but in fruitfulness which requires a combination of both.

Paul spoke of the pastoral nurture of congregations as a form of gardening. He told the Corinthian Christians they were 'God's field' in which some ministers planted, some watered, and some reaped. The gardening metaphor shows that both success and faithfulness by themselves are insufficient for evaluating ministry. Gardeners must be both faithful int heir work, but they must also be skilful, or the garden will fail. Yet in the end, the degree of the success of the garden (or the ministry) is determined by factors beyond the control of the gardener. The level of fruitfulness varies due to 'soil conditions' (that is some groups of people have a greater hardness of heart than others) and 'weather conditions' (that is, the work of God's sovereign Spirit as well).

Speaking of Redeemer's success he says that simply copying their approach or model is not what's needed to be successful. They have classical music in the morning and jazz in the evening and their preaching references a lot of secular media sources. Are those the key ingredients? no:

Preaching is compelling to young secular adults not if preachers use video clips from their favourite movies and dress informally and sound sophisticated, but if the preachers understand their hearts and culture so well that listeners feel the force of the sermon's reasoning, even if in the end they don't agree with it. This is not a matter of style or program. 

The difference between churches style and method needs to be a reflection of particular theological vision. Our doctrine can be largely the same as another church but our theological vision will be different and thus our church style very different from another church of similar doctrinal belief's, style.

A theological vision is about how my doctrinal beliefs relate to the modern world. A theological vision is a vision for what you are going to do with your doctrine in a particular time and place. A theological vision develops out of deep biblical reflection but also it develops out of what you think of the culture around you. We must discern where and how the culture can be affirmed and challenged.

The answers to these questions have enormous impact on how we preach, evangelize, organize, lead, disciple and shepherd people.

The questions below will help in defining what our theological vision is:

• What is the gospel, and how do we bring it to bear on the hearts of people today?
• What is this culture like, and how can we both connect to it and challenge it in our communication?
• Where are we located - city, suburb, town, rural area - and how does this affect our ministry? 
• To what degree and how should Christians be involved in civic life and cultural production?
• How do the various ministries in a church - word and deed, community and instruction - relate to one another?
• How innovative will our church be and how traditional?
• How will our church relate to other churches in our city and region?
• How will we make our case to the culture about the truth of Christianity?

A theological vision is a faithful restatement of the gospel with rich implications for life, ministry, and mission in a type of culture at a moment in history.

Richard Lints holds that what we believe about culture, reason and tradition will influence how we understand what Scripture says. 

Culture - as we ask what modern culture is and which of its impulses are to be criticized and which are to be affirmed.

Reason - Some see human reason as being able to lead a nonbeliever a long way toward the truth, others deny this. Our view of the nature of human rationality will shape how we preach to, evangelises, argue with and engage with non-christians.

Tradition - is it all bad or all good or somewhere in between?

Theological Vision for Tim Keller includes three key areas:

Centre - Gospel

Centre - City

Centre - Movement

Chapter 1: The Gospel is not everything

1. The gospel is good news, not good advice.

The gospel is not primarily a way of life. It is not something we do, but something that has been done for us and something that we must respond to.

The gospel has four chapters:

1. Where did we come from?           -  from God: the one and the relational

2. Why did things go so wrong?      -  Because of sin: bondage and condemnation 

3. What will put things right?           -  Christ: incarnation, substitution, restoration 

4. How can I be put right?                -  Through faith: grace and trust

C.S. Lewis: if there is a God we certainly don't relate to him they way people on the first floor of a building relate to people on the second floor. We relate to him the way Hamlet relates to Shakespeare. We (characters) might be able to know quite a lot about the playwright but only to the degree that the author chooses to put information about himself in the play. 

The gospel is news about something that’s happened, not advice about how to live.

Keller: there are two basic ways to answer the question ‘what is the gospel?’ One is to offer the biblical good news of how you can get right with God. This is to understand the question to mean, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ The second is to offer the biblical good news of what God will fully accomplish in history through the salvation of Jesus. This is to understand the question as ‘what hope is there for the world?’

The gospel as containing two key components:

• Personal salvation
• Cosmic salvation

As a message presented for and to an individual answering how they might be saved. We need to include: this is propositional

• Who God is
• What sin is
• Who Christ is & what he did
• What faith is

As a message about the world the answer can be given in terms of a story, the sweep of history from the Bible’s perspective, presented in chapters:

• Creation
• Fall
• Redemption
• Restoration

NB: on the above. The way the Bible uses ‘gospel’ is as is mentioned above, in terms of ‘good news’. It’s important to understand then that chapters 1, 2 & 4 aren’t strictly speaking ‘the gospel’. They are in that sense, prologue and epilogue to the great central story of redemption. 

Simon Gathercole argues that both Paul and the Gospel writers considered the good news to have three basic elements: 

• the identity of Jesus as Son of God & Messiah
• the death of Jesus for sin and justification
• the establishment of the reign of God and the new creation

Under that framework, the gospel squeezed into chapter 3 of the story is: incarnation, substitution & restoration

Tertullian: Just as Jesus was crucified in between two thieves so the gospel is often crucified between these two errors: religion and irreligion or legalism or antinomianism.

The gospel is the news about how we can be saved and about how the relational and social problems in the world will be and can be resolved. Horizontally the world is put right because of the vertical restoration found in Christ.

The gospel works by ‘tuning’ us to God.

Imagine an orchestra where all the instruments are out of tune. They need to first be retuned before they can play good music. In life we talk about being ‘tuned in’ and we describe the need to be ‘well-balanced’. The question could be asked ‘tuned to what?’ or ‘balanced according to whom?’ All of us need to be tuned to God and reconfigured to him before we can be described as in tune or ‘balanced’.

“The gospel does not begin by tuning us in relation to our particular problems and surroundings; it first re-tunes us to God.”

On the need to see the gospel as the main thing, the central thing and the inexhaustible, never to be graduated thing in the Christian life and church’s teaching:

When the preaching of the gospel is either confused with or separated from the other endeavours of the church, preaching becomes mere exhortation (to get with the church’s program or a biblical standard of ethics) or informational instruction (to inculcate the church’s values and beliefs). When the proper connection between the gospel and any aspect of ministry is severed, both are shortchanged.

The gospel is: news that creates a life of love, but the life of love is not itself the gospel. 

Just because it is news does not mean that it is simple. There is no such thing as a ‘one size fits all’ understanding of the gospel.

Chapter 2: The gospel is not a simple thing.

The gospel must be tied to the Bible's story line and themes. Two approaches to reading the Bible are:
- systematic
- redemptive historical (otherwise called biblical theology)

Systematic takes what the Bible says throughout its 66 books and puts them all together into categories. We believe that the Bible has one author and therefore we can ascertain his non-contradictory mind on various matters. In this approach the gospel appears as: God, sin, Christ, faith
Redemptive historical instead takes the Bible as a narrative and draws out what the Bible has to say about specific issues in each of the stand alone points in the story. In this approach the gospel appears as: creation, fall, promise and prefigurement, Israel, Christ's redemption, restoration

Systematic theology carries out in isolation from the redemptive historical approach can produce a Christianity that is rationalistic, legalistic and individualistic. Similarly the redemptive historical approach carries out in isolation from the systematic tends to produce a Christianity that loves narrative and community but shies away from sharp distinctions between grace and law and between truth and heresy.

One approach that tries to draw both the themes and the storyline of the Bible is to read the Bible through intercanonical themes. It seems that these are themes found in the Bible through which the gospel can be explained from beginning to end. Based on the table Keller puts out to explain what these are it seems similar to Andrew Wilson's GodStories which he systematised into breaks in the story/themes in the story. The table's contents is as listed below:

Home&Exile:

At creation we were made for:                A place of rest and shalom
Sin is and results in:                                 Self-centredness and the destroying of shalom
Israel is:                                                    Exiled in Egypt and then Babylon
Jesus is:                                                    The rejected & resurrected Lord who breaks power of death
Restoration looks like:                             The garden-city of God

RELATED THEMES:
Rest and sabbath. Sin has left us restless. How can we enter God's rest?
Justice and shalom. The fabric of the world is broken. How can we restore shalom
Trinity and community. We were made for personal and interdependent community with God and his people because we reflect the triune God. How can we become part of this community?

Yhweh&Covenant:

At creation we were made for:               A faithful covenant love relationship with God
Sin is and results in:                                Unfaithfulness, causing God's curse and wrath
Israel is:                                                    Called to faithfulness but is unfaithful
Jesus is:                                                    The suffering servant bt new covenant Lord, takes sin's curse
Restoration looks like:                            The marriage supper of the lamb

RELATED THEMES:
Righteousness and nakedness. We experience shame and guilt. How can our sins be covered?
Marriage and faithfulness. We long for true love and closure. How can we find it?
Presence and sanctuary. We are made to flourish in the presence of God. How can we stand in it?

Kingdom:


At creation we were made for:                God's kingdom and kingliness
Sin is and results in:                                 Idolatry, causing enslavement
Israel is:                                                     Looking for a true judge or king
Jesus is:                                                     The returning true king, who frees from world, flesh, Devil
Restoration looks like:                             True freedom under the reign of God

RELATED THEMES:
Image and likeness. Loving God supremely is the only way to truly love anything else and become your true self, to become truly free.
Idolatry and freedom. Serving God supremely is the only way to freedom.
Wisdom and the word. Submission to the word of God is the way to wisdom.

The gospel must be contextualised:

The gospel has supernatural versatility to address the particular hopes, fears, and idols of every culture and every person.

Paul presented the gospel of wisdom to Greeks who saw it as foolishness and to he presented it to the Jews as power to save and yet they received it as weakness. The reason that the gospel needs to be contextualised and presented in different ways to suit different audiences is because of both the intercanonical themes of the gospel  but also because of the richness and diversity of humanity.

The gospel is a singular message, but it is not a simple message.

Chapter 3: The Gospel Affects Everything

DA Carson on the need to think through how the gospel affects life:

It does not take much to think through how the gospel must also transform the business practices and priorities of Christians in commerce, the priorities of young men steeped in indecisive but often relentless narcissism, the lonely anguish and often the guilty pleasures of single folk who pursue pleasure but who cannot find happiness, the tired despair of those living on the margins, and much more.

The richness of the gospel. Simon Gathercole offers the following outline of the gospel:

1. The Son of God emptied himself and came into the world in Jesus Christ, becoming a servant.
2. He died on the cross a substitutionary sacrifice.
3. He rose from the grave as the first fruits of a whole renewed world.

Fleshed out the implications of these truths are endless.

1. This is a complete reversal of the world's way of thinking. The winning through 'losing' mentality of no. 1 in the gospel.
2. If I know in my heart God loves me freely and has accepted me then I can begin to obey out of inner joy and gratitude. Religion is outside in, but the gospel is inside out.
3. The now but not yet keeps us from utopian triumphalism on the one hand and from pessimism or withdrawal from society on the other.

Keller:

A church that truly understand the implications of the biblical gospel, letting the word of Christ dwell in it richly will look like an unusual hybrid of various church forms and stereotypes.

Grasping and applying these three key aspects of the gospel will make us look different:

1. Because of the inside-out substitutionary atonement: like an evangelical-charismatic church: personal conversion, experiential grace renewal, evangelism and church planting.
2. Because of the upside-down, kingdom/incarnation aspect: like an Anabaptist 'peace' church; deep community, cell groups, spiritual disciplines, living with the poor.
3. Because of the forward-back restoration/kingdom aspect: Kuyperian Reformed(?) church; cultural engagement, civic involvement, training people in 'secular' vocations.

A Centre Church champions all three: Inside-out transformation, upside-down values and forward-back hope.

Avoiding the opposite errors of legalism and license:

The power of the gospel comes in two movements. It first says, 'I am more sinful and flawed than I ever dared believe,' but then quickly follows with, 'I am more accepted and loved than I ever dared hope.' 

Keller gives a long list life areas and shows how the gospel forges a middle ground between two errors:

• Discouragement and depression
• Love and relationships
• Sexuality
• Family
• Self-control
• Race & culture
• Witness: The moralist we must convert because 'we are right and they are wrong'. The relativist denies the legitimacy of evangelism altogether.

We are courteous and careful with people. We don't have to push or coerce them, for it is only God's grace that opens hearts, not our eloquence or persistence or even their openness. together, these traits create not only an excellent neighbour in a multicultural society but also a winsome evangelist.

• Human authority: Moralists tend to obey family/tribe/culture too heavily since they rely heavily on their self-image as upright persons. 

It is not that Jesus usurped the throne of Caesar but than when we allow Caesar to overstep his bounds, he is usurping the throne of Christ and leading people into idolatry.

• Guilt & self-image
• Joy & humour: Moralism kills our humour by causing us to take ourselves, our appearance, our attitudes too seriously. Relativism kills humour by an inevitable cynicism about the state of the world.

It is a miracle we are Christians, and the gospel, which creates bold humility, should give us a far deeper sense of humour and joy. We don't have to take ourselves seriously, and we are full of hope for the world.

• Attitudes toward class

Part 2: Gospel Renewal

Chapter 4: The Need for Gospel Renewal

Personal and Corporate gospel renewal. Personal = when the doctrines of sin and grace become real to our hearts and we experience them. Corporate = when a whole body of believers experience personal gospel renewal.

Leaders must make sure that they are bringing the gospel to bear on people's lives and not just exhorting them morally. The gospel 'is not just a set of beliefs but a power that changes us profoundly and continually.'

Behaviour betrays deeply held beliefs: Christians believe in their heads 'Jesus accepts me; therefore I will live a good life,' but their hearts and actions are functioning practically on the principle 'I live a good life; therefore Jesus accepts me.'

The results are: Smug satisfaction if we are living up to the standards or insecurity, anxiety and self-hatred if we feel we are failing to live up to them.

Critiquing revivals

In the past a person's transformation into the image of Christ took place in community and was an entirely corporate affair. The family was involved as was the family's church. Beginning with infant baptism then perhaps catechisms (training in church creeds and instructions), then they were admitted to the table for communion, first communion, weddings etc. all the family were present at all events in the one, local parish church that was also the same place family members from the past had been members of. It connected individuals to the past and to communities and saw the Christian life as a gradual transformation into the image of Christ. One's faith was first inherited and then personally confirmed. 

The Industrial Revolution changed a lot of the way people did life. People moved around a lot more, moving away from their family home and 'market capitalism' mean that individuals had the power to act more autonomously, giving them more services and goods to choose from.

The ministries of the Wesley's and of George Whitfield took the gospel to where the people now were. To their workplaces, in the coal mines and urged for personal conversion to Christ in a way that didn't incorporate families and communities.

The problem with this in the eyes of church leaders were:

1. It makes church engagement an optional extra and makes it difficult for churches to discipline their members.
2. Emotional experience is placed above doctrinal soundness and holiness of life.
3. Christianity becomes a way of meeting felt needs instead of a means of re-forming a person into the image of Christ.
4. The individual is privileged at the expense of the community.
5. Every Christian becomes his or her own spiritual authority and there is no true accountability.

Many of these criticisms are still valid today:

Extreme revivalism is certainly too individualistic. Our truth-allergic, experience-addicted populace wants transformation but doesn't want the loss of freedom and control associated with submitting to authority within a committed community. Many 'converts' seem to make decisions for Christ but soon lose their enthusiasm because they are offered quick programs for follow-up and small group fellowship rather than a lifelong, embodied experience of community. Many churches do not even have a process for becoming a member. As a result, converts' lives are often not visibly different from those in the culture around them

However, Keller adds, the rebuttals of those skeptical of 'revivalism' aren't ultimately true since they: ignore our time in history and they don't give the 'heart' its biblical due. Or positively, revivalism is right since it fits our times and focuses on the conversion of 'the heart'.

A Biblical theology of revival:
- Israel's regular bouts of revival and forgetting
- Peter's instruction to beware losing an awareness of our past cleansing form sin (2P1:9)
- In Revelation Jesus calls the Ephesian church to 'return to your first love'
- The regular filling and empowering of the Spirit

The church-centric model for life broke down as people became increasingly mobile and society slowly became more pluralistic.

Conversion of the 'heart':

The heart occupies a position almost unique in the work of grace. (J. I. Marais, theology prof at Stellenbosch in S.A)

• In the heart God's spirit dwells with might (Eph. 3:16)
• In the heart God's love is poured forth (Rom 5:5)
• The Spirit of his Son has been 'sent forth into the heart' (Gal. 4:6)
• The 'earnest of the Spirit' has been given 'in the heart' (2 Cor 1:22)

The heart. Means more than just our emotions. It is true that we feel our emotions in our hearts (Lev 19:17; Pss 4:7, 13:2) but we also think and reason in our hearts (prv 23:7; Mk 2:8) and even act from our hearts (Eccl 10:2). Our heart is the centre of our personality, the seat of our fundamental commitments, the control centre of the whole person. Our mind, will and emotions are rooted there:

Saving faith is never less than intellectual assent, but it is always more than that. It combines rational knowledge with the conviction and trust of the heart.

In the OT prophets the critique of Jeremiah was that the people needed to be circumcised in heart as well as in their bodies. In Ezekial 11:19 salvation meant the removal of the stony heart and it involve the cleansing of the heart (Ps. 51:10) and the heart made steadfast (Ps. 112:7).

When Jesus called a religious leader to be 'born again' he was essentially making the same exhortation that Jeremiah had made in calling people to circumcise their hearts.

Chapter 5: The Essence of Gospel Renewal

Revival is necessary because religion ('I obey therefore I'm accepted') is so different from the gospel ('I am accepted by God through Christ; therefore I obey') but is such an effective counterfeit.

There are three ways to live:

 1) literally uncircumcised (pagans and nonbelievers who do not submit to God's laws)
 2) circumcised only in the flesh (submitted to God's law but resting and relying on it)
 3) circumcised in heart (submitted to God's law in response to the saving grace of God)

If you seek to be right with God through your morality and religion, you are not seeking God for your salvation; you are using God as a means to achieve your own salvation.

Richard Lovelace on the predisposition of the church and human heart toward religion:

Much that we have interpreted as a defect of sanctification in church people is really an outgrowth of their loss of bearing with respect to justification. Christians who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons... Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce defensive assertion of their own righteousness and defensive assertion of their own righteousness and defensive criticism of others. They come naturally to hate other cultural styles and other races in order to bolster their own security and discharge their suppressed anger.

In communicating the gospel we must not only distinguish between obeying and disobeying God but also between obeying God as a means of self-salvation and obeying God out of gratitude for an accomplished salvation: Always place three ways to live before your listeners.

In the end, legalism and relativism (license) in churches are not just equally wrong; they are basically the same thing. They are just different strategies of self-salvation built on human effort.

And is this next quote a 'key' to building healthy church? Is this what will unlock salvation and release the floodgates for new birth? Let's hope so...:

The only way into a ministry that sees people's lives change, that brings joy and power and electricity without authoritarianism, is through preaching the gospel to deconstruct both legalism and relativism.

How to change behaviour? Moralism stirs up pride or it encourages good behaviour out of a fear of being punished. But as Keller says, this approach only exacerbates the issue:

Stirring up self-centredness in order to get someone to do the right thing does not get at the fundamental self-regard and self-absorption that is the main problem of the human heart. Consequently it does nothing to address the main cause of the behaviour you are trying to change (such as lying).

This may have some power in 'restraining' the heart, it does nothing to 'change' it.

Moralistic behaviour change bends a person into a different pattern... rather than melting a person into a new shape.

Many people after years of being crushed under moralistic behaviourism, abandon their faith altogether, complaining that they are exhausted and 'can't keep it up.' But the gospel of God's grace doesn't try to bend a heart into a new pattern; it melts it and re-forms it into a new shape.

The gospel is the motivation for change: as in 2 Cor. 8-9 in motivating the church to give, as in Eph 5 motivating husbands to love their wives, as in Titus 3 with saying no to ungodliness.

The grace of God, Paul tells Titus, teaches us to say 'no' to ungodliness:

The word we translate teach is a Greek word that means to train, discipline and coach someone over a period of time... You must let the gospel sink down deeply until it changes your views and the structures of your motivation. You must be trained and discipled by the gospel.

I like his words 'over time' and in the next section 'slowly but surely' - this seems to match my experience too!

I can't help but keep typing up quotes!

And when the gospel brought home to our hearts, eats away at this sin-born neediness, it destroys the inner engines that drive sinful behaviour. We don't have to lie, because our reputation isn't so important to us. We don't have to respond in violent anger against opponents, because no one can touch our true treasure. The gospel destroys both pride and the fearfulness that fuel moralistic behaviour change.  

Obeying and changing: bird and fox

And here is an answer to a lot of my questions. I have often wondered about discipling people and the need for discipline and temporal 'restraints' on behaviour (like self-imposed legalisms and behaviour modifications) to help them overcome debilitating sins and behaviour patterns. Keller addresses this issue. He says that, in short, since it is always right to obey God we must do whatever it takes to be faithful in the moment even if that obedience comes from impure and less than grace-motivated behaviour. He says 'if I have an overwhelming urge to throw a rock at someone I should do all that I can to stop myself: it's wrong! I may go to prison. God won't be pleased... In the short run there is no reason a Christian can't use pure willpower if necessary to obey God. But, he says, obedience is not the same thing as change.' Our long term motivation is what will bring about long term change:

Imagine that a baby bird falls from its nest in the sight line of a fox. The bird cannot yet fly (hence the fall), but there is a small protective hole at the base of a tree that is within a scurry's reach. The fox pounces and sets out after the bird. What should the little bird do? Of course, it should scamper into the hole to get out of immediate danger. But is as time goes on all the bird ever does is scamper, it will never learn what it has been designed for: to fly. And eventually it will surely be eaten by the predators it is designed to escape. 

In the short run, we should simply obey God because it is his right and due. But in the long run, the ultimate way to shape our lives and escape the deadly influence of our besetting sins is by moving the heart with the gospel.

And it's place in church life. A clear job description right here:

The purpose of preaching, pastoring, counselling, instructing and discipling is, therefore, to show people these practical implications of faith in the gospel.

Idolatry and the gospel

Luther's teaching from the start of the 10 Commandments is this: anything we look to more than we look to Christ for our sense of acceptability, joy, significance, hope and security is by definition our god - something we adore, serve, and rely on with our whole life and heart. 

How to discern idolatry:

A sure sign of the presence of idolatry is inordinate anxiety, anger, or discouragement when our idols are thwarted. So if we lose a good thing, it makes us sad, but if we lose an idol, it devastates us.

Our failures in actual righteousness generally come from a failure to rejoice in our legal righteousness.
Our failures in sanctification come mainly from a lack of orientation to our justification.

Chapter 6: The work of Gospel Renewal

If prayer is a penultimate means to produce revival what are some of the things that stop it?
Things that cut the nerve of gospel renewal and revival:

• a church losing its grip on the orthodox tenets of theology that under-gird the gospel (trinity, deity of Christ, wrath of God).
• spiritual inertia: holding orthodox doctrines but with imbalance and with a lack of proper emphasis.
• giving too much energy to defending the faith rather than propogating it
• giving too much energy to matters such as prophecy or spiritual gifts or creation and evolution, becoming enamoured with the mechanics of ministry or church organisation.
• critical doctrines such as grace and justification and conversion are 'kept on the shelf'.

How to get the gospel into people's hearts:

1) Preaching
2) Training leaders and getting them to repent of idols
3) Small Groups with experiential elements
4) Conversations (1:1s)
5) Ensure that elders and pastors know how to use the gospel in counselling

The gospel must cut away both the moralism and the licentiousness that destroys real spiritual life and power.

5 Characteristics that define preaching for gospel renewal:

1. Preach to distinguish between religion and the gospel. 
2. Preach both the holiness and the love of God to convey the richness of grace.
1. Jesus was so holy he had to die for us and he was so loving he was glad to.
3. Preach not only to make the truth clear but also to make it real.
1. Preaching must not simply tell people what to do. It must re-present Christ in such a way that he captures the heart and imagination more than material things.

Lloyd Jones on preaching: 
As preachers we must not forget this. We are not merely imparters of information. We should tell our people to read certain books themselves and get the information there. The business of preaching is to make such knowledge live.

      4. Preach Christ from every text.
               - there are two basic questions we read every time we looks at the Bible. Is it about me or is it about Jesus?
      5. Preach to both Christians and non-Christians at once.
                - evangelise as you edify and edify as you evangelise.

Gospel renewal. How you know it's happening: When a group of people who on the whole think they already know the gospel discover they do not really or fully know it, and by embracing the gospel they cross over into living faith.

We want people to have a deeper sense of their sin debt and an intense sense of wonder at Christ's payment of it.

Gospel renewal produces people who are humbled (and thus not judgemental or dismissive of those who disagree with them) and yet also loved (and thus less concerned about other's opinions of them).

The active presence of a substantial number of genuine Christians thus changes a community in all its dimensions - economic, social, political, intellectual, and more.

PART 3: Gospel Contextualisation 

Chapter 7: Intentional Contextualisation 

Definition of contextualisation:

Contextualisation is not simply 'giving people what they want to hear.' It is instead, giving people the Bible's answers (which they may not at all want to hear) to questions about life (that those people in that particular place/time are asking) in language and forms through appeals and arguments with force they can feel, even if they reject them.


A contextualised gospel is marked by clarity and attractiveness, and yet it still challenges sinners' self-sufficiency and calls them to repentance. It adapts and connects to the culture, yet at the same time challenges and confronts it.

When we contextualise faithfully and skilfully, we show people how the baseline 'cultural narratives' of their society and the hopes of their hearts can only find resolution and fulfilment in Jesus.

Cultural narratives

Some cultures are pragmatic: prod members to acquire possessions and power.
Some cultures are individualistic: urge members to seek personal freedom above all.
Some cultures are 'honour and shame' cultures: emphasis on respect, reputation, duty and bringing honour to your family.
Some cultures are discursive: put highest value on art and philosophy and learning.

G. Linwood Barney speaks of culture as resembling an onion:

Inner core: our worldview (the world, cosmology and human nature)

Second layer: Values (the good, true and beautiful)

Final layer: Observable culture (customs, behaviour, products, buildings)

The 'traffic' isn't linear or one way in culture making but contextualising the gospel need take all of the these 'layers' into account.

We must be careful however as the call to contextualise has often been used as a cover for religious syncretism (or plain liberalism).

How do we judge whether or not we've moved from legitimate contextualisation into fatal syncretism?

Carson says: While no truth which human beings may articulate can ever be articulated in a culture-transcending way... that does not mean that the truth thus articulated does not transcend culture.

Maintain the balance in this statement:
1) There is no single way to express the Christian faith that is universal for everyone in all culture.
2) There is nonetheless only one true gospel. The truths of the gospel are not the product of any culture, and they stand in judgment over all human cultures.

Forget the first and insist on one particular way and approach leads to a narrow culturally bound conservatism. Forget the second and you may fall into relativsim which will lead to a 'rudderless liberalism'.

As soon as you choose words you are contextualising and you become more accessible to some people and less so to others.

Keller shares about a working-class Christian who attended a church led by middle class, highly educated leaders whose sermon illustrations were of things in their 'world' but not his (cricket, rugby, boarding school...). Eventually the man left the church and went to a different one. Did the church fail? Possibly, but then it is also true that:

There is a limit to flexibility. The preachers must choose some particular illustrations and concepts that will inevitably be more meaningful to some cultural groups than others... [stretch ourselves yes, but also] we should not live in the illusion that we can share the gospel so as to make it all things to all people at once.

As well as illustration type, another point of cultural contextualised connectedness is the emotional expressiveness and whether it is 'calibrated' to the person listening. He quotes an Hispanic member of his church who felt the need to reassure his friends 'he really does believe what he's saying with all his heart,' despite Keller's lack of emotion while preaching. To other cultures highly charged emotional expression appears 'ranty' and less convincing.

Field or garden?

Jesus' illustration in Mark's gospel about the mustard seed being planted in a field is different in Matthew and Luke. For Matthew, the word is 'agros' (field) while in Luke it's changed to 'kepos' (garden) to take into account their different audiences. There is a technical contradiction but not a material one.

Contextualisation involves:

• Language and vocabulary 
• Emotional expressiveness
• Illustrations
• The way we reason (logic or intuition)

The challenge of contextualisation for culturally dominant groups. A useful comment on cultural blindness:

Believers who live in individualistic cultures such as the US are blind to the importance of being in deep community and placing themselves under spiritual accountability and discipline. This is why many church hoppers attend a variety of churches and don't join or fully enter any of them. American Christians see church membership as optional. They take a nonbiblical feature of American culture and bring it into their Christian life. On the other hand, Christians in more authoritarian and patriarchal cultures often are blind to what the Bible says about freedom of conscience and the grace-related aspects of Christianity. Instead, their leaders stress duty and are heavy-handed rather than eager to follow Jesus' words that 'if anyone want to be first, he must be the very last and the servant of all.'

Chapter 8: Balanced Contextualisation

John Stott: Between Two Worlds likens preaching to building a bridge from the Scriptures to the contemporary world. To do this well we must go back and forth between two different horizons, between the two banks of the river in Stott's analogy.

Just as our reading of scripture can always be wrong and we must always be open to correction and learning, so to with our reading of the cultural contexts we find ourselves in. Remain open to more insight and correction.

The error of the illustration is that it assumes we are unaffected by culture and being neutral are therefore able to communicate authoritatively to another culture. Instead, since we are also the result of a non-biblical culture, we must allow 'two way traffic' on the bridge. We must ask questions and listen as well as speak.

We must beware also of a 'canon within a canon' a set of beliefs we value more than others simply because they are consistent with our culture's preferences. Attitudes to authority or God's love for all vs his judgement of the wicked for example are all to be found in the Bible but different cultures prize them/ignore them, differently. Interactions with different cultures help us lose our blinders and slowly but surely move to a more rounded biblical Christianity.

'Reductionism' is when we tame Scripture by not allowing it all to speak to us. We play down and thus distort the parts we don't 'like'.

Heavy traffic back and forth across the bridge is needed between cultures. We speak and listen, speak and listen, speak and listen.

Resource: Download Harvey Conn's 'contextual theology' course at Westminster.

Location 2701 has a list of books on the subject.

Chapter 9: Biblical Contextualisation

While many aspects of culture can be affirmed we must avoid uncritically accepting them.

This chapter is going to be about: the basis, motive and formula for good contextualisation.

Interesting! Common grace. By giving people, regardless of what they believe about God, a measure of wisdom, courage, insight and goodness, the Spirit works to check the power and influence of sin in the world and keeps it from being as bad a place to live as it could be.

Every culture assumes a set of answers to the big questions: Why are we here? What are therefore the most important things in life? What is wrong with the world? What will put things right? And every culture considers something of supreme worth; accordingly they seek to bring their environment into service to it.

Romans 1 makes it clear that general revelation exists in every heart and in every culture regardless of what it does with that knowledge. General revelation is defined as - a nonsaving knowledge and likeness of God that he grants to all those who bear his image.

Isaiah 28:23-29 talks about people being good at farming and says that 'God has instructed them'. Common grace.

General revelation as distinct from 'special revelation' which includes a knowledge of Jesus and our need for forgiveness.

Brilliant: One commentator says of this 'what appears as a discovery (seasons and conditions and farm management etc.) is actually the Creator opening his book of creation and revealing his truth.'

Every human culture is an extremely complex mixture of brilliant truth, marred half-truths, and overt resistance to the truth.

This is an important idea to grasp when considering the church in the world. The reason for that is:

Without this understanding of culture, Christians will tend to think that they can live self-sufficiently, isolated from and unblessed by the contributions of those in the world. Without an appreciation for God's gracious display of his wisdom in the broader culture, Christians may struggle to understand why non-Christians often exceed Christians in moral practice, wisdom and skill.

And then check this quote out!

The doctrine of sin means that as believers we are never as good as our right worldview should make us. At the same time, doctrine of our creation in the image of God, and an understanding of common grace, remind us that nonbelievers are never as flawed as their false worldview should make them.

Definitions of culture: (box insert loc. 2881)

As a result of seeing Romans 1 & 2 the idea of general revelation and common grace and the notion of suppressed revelation, we can see that there is a basis for doing contextualisation. But how are we to do it?

Effective contextualisation is choosing in love not to privilege yourself or to exercise your full freedom as a Christian so people can hear and follow Christ's call.

We don't want to remove the scandal of the cross however, it's just that we choose the right scandal to create:

Proper contextualisation means causing the right scandal.

The formula for contextualisation:

In 1 Cor. 1 in Paul's 'Greek's demand wisdom and Jews signs' statement he points out how the cross offends and is applied to each cultural supreme value differently. Paul is neither completely confrontational nor is he totally affirming. He leads people through their cultural idols to see Christ as the answer to their questions and longings.

In Acts we see Paul putting these concepts into practise. We see him adapting his message deepening on his audience:

Acts 13:13-43 -- Bible believers
Acts 14:6 -- Peasant polytheists
Acts 17:16-34 -- Sophisticated pagans
Acts 20:16-38 -- Christian elders
Acts 21:27-22:22 -- Hostile Jewish mob
Acts 24-26 -- Governing elites

How do the speeches differ?

• Paul cites a variety of different authorities : scripture, general revelation, creation, pagan poets.
• Biblical content changes depending on audience
• How he speaks of sin varies too : to Bible believers he says 'you think you're good but you aren't good enough.' with pagans he talks about 'worthless things' (idols) and points them to turn to the living God the true source of 'joy'.
• Emotion and reasoning vary
• Introductions and conclusions vary
• His figures of speech and illustrations vary
• His identification of the audience's concerns, hopes and dreams vary

How are they similar? 

Although there is no set presentation of the gospel, there is only one gospel. It is described as:

• The good news about the Lord Jesus, the good news, the message of salvation, the message of his grace, the message of God' grace, the gospel, the word of his grace

In every message there is:

• An epistemological challenge: people are being told that their understanding of God and ultimate reality is wrong.
• A personal challenge: regarding sin. 
• Truth about Jesus: he is the messianic king who can save you.
• A call to respond to Jesus by repenting and believing in him.

Consider Jesus' different ways of evangelising someone:

• The rich young ruler (law and repentance)
• The woman at the well (his ability to satisfy)
• Nicodemus (God's sovereignty and need for humility) 

Keller:

We all tend to be blind to how much our own culture and temperament shape how we do gospel ministry, but careful attention to the remarkable diversity of gospel ministry in the Bible can broaden us.

People of a conservative temperament may want to stress judgement even more than the Bible itself does, while people of a liberal temperament may want to stress unconditional love more than the Bible does. Those of a rational bent need to see the importance of narrative while those who love stories need to appreciate the extremely closely reasoned arguments of, say, Paul's letters.

6 motivations to use when appealing to non-Christians to believe the gospel:

Sometimes the appeal in scripture is to come to God out of...

1. ...fear of judgement and death: Heb. 2:14-18, H10:31
2. ...a desire for release from the burdens of guilt and shame: Gal. 3:10-12
3. ...appreciation for the 'attractiveness of truth' 1 Cor. 1:18
4. ...a desire to satisfy unfulfilled existential longings (John 4, living water is more than just 'eternal life after death')
5. ...a need for help with a problem (Mt. 9:20-21 whether sickness or rescue form judgement) 
6. ...out of a desire to be loved

Carson concludes the list by saying:

We do not have a right to choose only one of these motivation in people and to appeal to it restrictively.

Keller adds:

This address one of the greatest dangers for us as preachers and evangelists. Most of us come to Christ through one of these motivations, or we are part of a community of people who find one of these motivations to be persuasive. It is natural for us to exclusively use this motivation in our appeals to others.

Francis Schaeffer says about not adding rules and regs on things that scripture doesn't and how the church ought to handle itself:

Anything the New Testament does not command in regard to church form is a freedom to be under the leadership of the Holy Spirit for that particular time and place.

Chapter 10: Active contextualisation 

Demolition. Contextualising with balance and effectiveness we must both enter the culture sympathetically and respectfully and confront the culture where it contradicts biblical truth. like drilling a hole in rock and blasting it from the inside, we must do both drilling and blasting.

Doing our 'blasting' on the basis of our drilling (when we challenge the culture's errors on the basis of something it rightly believes) then the gospel will have an impact on people.

We want to avoid both cultural captivity (the refusal to adapt to new times and new cultures) and syncretism (bringing unbiblical views and practices into our Christianity). Both have different dangers: For the first we risk becoming incomprehensible and irrelevant and for the second we risk losing our Christian identity and distinctiveness.

Active contextualisation involves three steps:
1) Entering the culture
2) Challenging the culture
3) Appealing to the listeners

Entering the culture:

This begins with a diligent (and never-ending) effort to become as fluent in their social, linguistic, and cultural reality as possible.

It involves learning to express people's hopes, objection, fears and beliefs so well that they feel as though they could not express them better themselves.

Schaeffer:

Christianity demands that we have enough compassion to learn the questions of our generation... answering questions is hard work... begin to listen with compassion.

Learning a culture:

There is IQ, EQ (emotional intelligence quotient), but ministry leaders should also be characterised by CQ (cultural quotient). This includes examining our own culture:

Some questions to explore:

What institutions, schools, theologies, worldviews, regional cultures, artistic expressions, ministries churches and leaders have shaped me?
What forms of ministry have shaped me?
What can I adapt, and what must I discard?
Where do I need to detox and rehabilitate from those influences?

It also includes having our hearts shaped by the gospel

Third, immerse yourself in culture.

Fourth: Immersion in the pastoral needs of people in our community and continued involvement in evangelistic venues could not be more important. If we are deeply involved in the lives, questions and concerns of the people, then when we study the Bible in order to preach it to them, we will see God's answers to their questions.

David Hesselgrave speaks of three basic ways to reason:

• Conceptual (western). Analysis and logic.
• Concrete relational (Chinese). Convictions arrived at through relationships and practice.
• Intuitional (Indian). Insight and experience based reasoning. Stories matter most not proving through propositions/reasoning.

To enter a culture, another main task is to discern its dominant worldviews or belief systems, because contextualised gospel ministry should affirm the beliefs of the culture wherever it can be done with integrity. 

'A' beliefs & 'B' beliefs:

A = beliefs in the culture that correspond with Biblical truth. 

B = beliefs in the culture that are out of sync with biblical truth.

e.g. in NY what the Bible says about turning the other cheek is applauded. What it says about sexuality is rejected. In the Middle East it is the other way around.

Challenging and confronting the culture

Float B doctrines (stones) on top of A doctrines (wood) to get both across the river and effectively challenge the culture you're in.

Our premise for discussion needs to be drawn from the Bible but we will always find somethings in a culture's beliefs that are roughly true, things on which we can build our critique. 

E.g. 'you see this A belief you have? The Bible says the same thing - so we agree. However if 'A' is true then it is not right, fair or consistent for you to reject 'B'. If you believe this, then how can you believe that?

C.S. Lewis's attempt at helping his British readers accept the idea of a jealous, holy God:

If God is Love, he is, by definition something more than mere kindness... He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense...

When we fall in love with a woman, do we cease to care whether she is clean or dirty, fair or foul? Do we not rather, then, first begin to care?

In awful and surprising ways, we are objects of his love. You asked for a loving God you have one... not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate... but the consuming fire himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artists's love for his work... providence and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes. It is certainly a burden of glory no only beyond our deserts but also, except in rare moment of race, beyond our desiring.

People have a 'cultural allergy' to sin.

It used be of most importance in our society for a person to be 'good'. Now things have shifted that it is is of most importance that a person be 'free'. Exposing how idols enslave is one way of teaching how sin short circuits life's overall aim.

Alexis de Tocqueville on the American belief that prosperity could bring deep down happiness:

'The incomplete joys of this world will never satisfy the human heart.' He spoke of a 'strange melancholy often haunting inhabitants of democracies in the midst of abundance.'

David Foster Wallace: on atheism and worship

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

 Pressure points in our secular west:

1. The commodification of sex. Thinkers have long discerned the difference between a consumer relationship (characteristic of the marketplace) and a covenant relationship (historically personal relationships especially within the family). Traditionally 'you didn't give your body to someone unless you committed your whole life to them (and they to you)'. The bible teaches that sex should be used as a means of 'self-donation' not 'self-gratification'. Put like this it appeals to the culture's 'A' belief in the goodness of community.
2. The problem of human rights. In the west we have a strong sense of the value of personal value and rights. However, as many atheistic philosophers also point out, this is incompatible with a secular rationale. 
3. The loss of cultural hope. Whereas once our cultures hope may have been that we all lived and built and fought and died 'for the glory of God', now 'hope is narrowd to the vanishing point of the self alone.'Andrew Delbanco in his book argues that we are now in a cultural crisis. 'To say that the meaning of life is mere self-fulfilment cannot give a society the resources necessary to create a cohesive, healthy culture. A narrative must give people a reason for sacrifice - for living and dying - and the self-fulfilment narrative cannot do it.'

Appealing to and consoling the listeners:

Blaise Pascal:

Men despise religion; they hate it and fear it is true. To remedy this, we must begin by showing that religion is not contrary to reason; that it is venerable, to inspire respect for it; then we must make it lovable, to make good men hope it is true; finally, we must prove it is true.

Models of atonement as 'grammars' or 'languages'

1. The language of the battlefield. Christus victor.
2. The language of the marketplace. Ransom from slavery.
3. The language of exile. Scape goat and homecoming.
4. The language of the temple. Sacrifice and purification.
5. The language of the law court. Christ stands before the judge and takes our punishment.

Roger Nicole argues that the one irreducible theme that runs throughout all the models is: Substitution. Jesus does what we can't, steps in our place.

It's in our blood:

Ajith Fernando, a Sri Lankan evangelist, communicates the idea of substitutionary atonement to his listeners with this illustration:

Have you ever had an infected wound or sore? When you open it, what comes rolling out? Pus. And what is that? It is basically the collective corpses of white blood cells fighting the infection that have died so that you may live. Do you see? Substitutionary salvation is in your very blood.

Keller ends the chapter with this:

The gospel is the deepest consolation you can offer to the human heart. Once you have taken care to enter and have found the courage to challenge the world for your hearers, be sure to offer this consolation with the passion of one who has experienced it firsthand.

Part 4: City Vision

Chapter 11: The tension of the city

The city is humanity intensified. It brings out the very best and worst of human nature.
The Bible depicts cities as places of perversion and violence and also as places of refuge and peace.

The most common Hebrew word for city, meant any human settlement surrounded by some fortification or wall.

Most ancient cities numbered 1000-3000 in population, all packed within the city wall. Therefore for the Bible the essence of a city is not population size but density. A city is a social form in which people physically live in close proximity to one another.

Most ancient cities were between 5-10 acres (1 acre = approx. one football pitch), containing an average of 240 residents per acre. By comparison Manhattan houses only 105 residents per acre

Three features of ancient city life:

1. Safety and stability. Walls meant greater safety. This safety made life more stable and made possible the growth of human civilisation. Civilised literally means 'citifed'. 
2. Diversity. 
3. Productivity and creativity. The more people of the same profession come together, the more they stimulate new ideas and the faster these new ideas spread.

Human society requires several elements:

• An economic order where people work and business takes places
• A cultural order where people learn and create and enjoy art
• A political-legal order, where cases are decided and governing officials meet.

City Fact: People who live in cities larger than 1million are 50% more productive than those who live in smaller areas. This is the same even when we take into account the education, experience and industry of workers. Even if the workers IQs are taken into account.

City Fact: There is a near-perfect correlation between urbanisation and prosperity across nations. When the urban population rises by 10% the country's per capita output increases by 30%. Incomes are almost four times higher in countries where a majority live in cities. 

In all other ancient cultures the development of human technology is always mythologised and advancements attributed to the gods. This isn't the case in the Bible where instead man partners with God.

"Lot's decision to live in a city without a believing community led to spiritual disaster for his family."

Abraham stays away from cities and remains a shepherd and nomad his whole life. The book of Hebrews explains the reason for this:

"By faith Abraham lived in tents for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God."

The urban society in God's plan is based on service, not on selfishness.

The prophets and the city:

Alec Motyer notes that 'the Isaianic literature could be accurately described as 'the book of the city.' He says that in Isaiah, Jerusalem, Zion, mount/mountain, and city are used interchangeably showing the city's centrality in the divine thought and plan.

The great battle lines of history are drawn with this realisation:

The great spiritual conflict of history is not between city dwellers and country dwellers but is truly 'a tale of two cities.' It is a struggle between Babylon, representing the city of man, and Jerusalem, representing the city of God. The earthly city is a metaphor for human life structured without God, created for self-salvation, self-service, and self-glorification.

Exile

From Genesis to Revelation Babylon is pictured as the epitome of a civilisation built on selfishness, pride and violence and yet when in captivity God tells his people to "seek the peace and prosperity of the city." They weren't to form a ghetto but instead they were told to use their resources for the common good. This is quite a balance!

Chapter 12: Redemption and the city

Having an exilic model helps us understand the relationship of the church to the city in NT times.

In a significant statement Jesus tells his followers that they are a 'city on a hill' (not geographical Jerusalem). Communities of Christ-followers are God's 'city' within every earthly city.

The change in mission:

In the Old Testament the mission was 'centripetal'. The pagan nations were expected to look at Israel and be drawn to ask and look and worship God. But in the New Testament, mission becomes 'centrifugal' - moving outward from the centre. The people of God are sent out to the world to proclaim the gospel. The Babylonian exile and Jonah's mission are foreshadowings of this future change.

Another change:

The Jews in Babylon were still expected to keep the Mosaic code, dress differently and eat differently from the country they were in. In the NT (as seen in the example of Peter's invitation to see Cornelius) these regulations and distinctions become obsolete. Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinner as a strategy for ministry. Adopting these NT teachings frees Christians to participate in a city's culture more fully than the Jews in Babylon could. Although it makes the danger of assimilation and compromise more acute for Christians.

God's people lived together in three configurations in the scripture:

Abraham's day onwards: extended biological familyMoses' day onwards: nation-stateExile and onwards: dispersed fellowship of congregations (synagogues)  

The church continues to exist as a dispersed group of people (James 1:1, 1 Pet. 1:1).

Keller outlines the book of Acts' strategy of reaching cities with the gospel and concludes with this great one liner about the need for incarnational living:

Commuter Christianity (living in salubrious suburbia and commuting to an urban church) is no substitute for incarnational involvement.

In the book of Revelation we see the tree of life planted by a central river. This appears to be the Garden of Eden in its cultivated form, it is a garden-city.

Does this point to overall aim as well?

Many Christians assume that the final goal of Christ's redemption is to return us to a rural, Edenic world. Based on this assumption, the work of Christians is exclusively to evangelise and disciple. But Revelation shows us this is not the case. God's intention for human endeavour is that it raise up civilisations -cities- that glorify him and steward the endless wonders and riches that God put into the created world. 

Chapter 13: The call to the city

Cities. People are moving to cities at a much faster rate than the church is. in 1950, just 60 years ago there were only two cities bigger then 10m people in population (NY & London), today there are more than 20.

Western cities such as NY grow at an average of 125,000 people every year.

We have reached the point where over 50% of the world population now live in cities, compared to around 5% two centuries ago.

There are 5 million people moving into the cities of the developing world every month. We should be planting a thousand urban churches in the world every month just to keep up.

Waves of immigration from the Southern and Eastern hemispheres are coming to the cities of North America and Europe. Many of these immigrants come from parts of the world where belief in orthodox, supernatural Christianity is on the rise. As a result, thousands of new churches are being planted by non-Westerners in the formerly secular cities of London, Paris and NY. In fact most of the largest well-attended churches in London and Paris are led by Africans and in NYC we have seen hundreds of new churches started by Christians from Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa.

You can't reach the city from the suburbs but you can reach the suburbs from the city. Cities are like a giant heart drawing people in and then sending them out.

Cities appeal to:

1. Younger people. Findings by the Pew Research Centre show that 45% of 18-30 year old would like to live in NYC, but people with families and older people don't want to. Only 14% of people aged 35 or older are interested in living in cities.

2. The 'cultural elites'. MTV has been able to erode national identities faster than communism could. 15yr olds in rural Mexico are now more 'urban' in their sensibilities than their parents are, because of MTV.

3. Accessible 'unreached' people groups. Immigrants to urban areas have many reasons to begin attending churches, reasons that they did not have in their former, rural settings.

4. The poor. Our commitment to the poor is a testimony to the cultural elites, supporting the validity of our message.

The church can no longer ignore the profound and irreversible changes occurring in the world today. If Christians want to reach the unreached, we must go to the cities. To reach the rising generations, we must go to the cities. To have any impact for Christ on the creation of culture, we must go to the cities. To serve the poor, we must go to the cities. 

On the personal cost of living in the cities:

While Christians should not deliberately seek difficult for its own sake, can we not follow the example of the incarnate Christ, who did no live in places where he was comfortable but went where he was useful? Can we not face difficulty for his sake, embrace

Chapter 14: The Gospel For the City

Something close to 50% of the world's population live in cities.

Agglomeration refers to the economic and social benefits of physically locating near one another in business... the physical clustering of thousands of people who work in the same field naturally generates new ideas and enterprises.

Face to face vs electronic interaction:

Researchers at University of Michigan gave two groups of people rules to a game and gave one group 10 minutes of face to face interaction to discuss strategy and the other group 30 minutes of electronic interaction. The group of face to facers consistently did much better: 'face to face contact leads to more trust, generosity, and cooperation than any other sort of interaction.'

The city reveals the gospel to us and also our deficit in understanding it. We meet people who are more gifted, kinder, wiser and more generous than Christians. This forces us to relearn our gospel of 'grace' and not 'merit'. Why would we expect Christians to be nicer/wiser/better people if God's choosing of us is indeed by grace through faith.

Early in Redeemer's ministry, we discovered it was misguided for Christians to feel pity for the city, and it was harmful to think of ourselves as its 'saviour'. We had to humbly learn from and respect our city and its people. Our relationship with them had to be a consciously reciprocal one. We had to be willing to see God's common grace in their lives. We had to learn that we needed them fill out our own understanding of God and his grace, just as they needed us.

How the gospel affects us:

The gospel alone can give us the humility (I have much to learn from the city), the confidence (I have much to give to the city), and the courage (I have nothing to fear from the city) to do effective ministry that honours God and blesses others. 

What should Christians do about cities?

This is a useful, 'how should we think about others and population centres' not just 'cities':

1. Christians should develop appreciative attitudes toward the city. How can you as a church/individual live out this value if you are not located near a metropolitan area? I believe the best strategy is to include urban ministry in your global missions portfolio.
2. Christians should become a dynamic counterculture where they live. The city God wants is built on service not selfishness. 
3. Christians should be a community radically committed to the good of their city as a whole. We must work for the peace, security, justice and prosperity of their neighbours, loving them in word and deed.

Counter-cultural:

Christians are called to be an alternate city within every earthly city, an alternate human culture within every human culture - to show how sex, money, and power can be used in nondestructive ways; to show how classes and races that cannot get along outside of Christ can get along in him; and to show how it is possible to cultivate by using the tools of art, education, government and business to bring hope to people rather than despair or cynicism.

Not great churches:

Christians should seek to live in the city, not to use the city to build great churches but to use the resources of the church to seek a great, flourishing city. We refer to this as a 'city growth' model of ministry rather than a strictly 'church growth' model.

Seven features of a church for the city:

1. Respect for urban sensibility
2. Unusual sensitivity to cultural differences
3. Commitment to neighbourhood and justice
4. Integration of faith and work
5. Bias for complex evangelism
6. Preaching that both attracts and challenges urban people
7. Commitment to artistry and creativity

Respecting urban sensibility:

Christians who move to cities within their own country often underestimate the importance of the small cultural differences they have with urbanites. They speak and act in ways that are out of step with urban sensibilities, and if this is pointed out to them, they despise the criticism as snobbishness.

Marks of a true church:

What it does: the Word rightly believed and declared and the sacraments and discipline rightly administered.
What its purpose is: the worship of God, the edification of the saints and the witness to the world.

Culturally neutral church? Church for everyone?

No church can be all things to all people. There is no culturally neutral way of doing ministry. the urban church will have to choose practices that reflect the values of some cultural group and in so doing it will communicate in ways that different cultural groups will see and hear differently. As soon as it chooses a language to preach in, or the music it will sing, it is making it easier for some people to participate and more difficult for others.

Are using or loving?

Urban churches train their members to be neighbours in the city, not just consumers... Cities are theme parks that attract young professionals... who view the city as simply a place where they can have fun, develop a resume, and make friends who will be of help to them in the future. They plan to do this for a few years and then leave. In other words they are using the city rather than living in it as neighbours.

Personal piety and faith at work:

Traditional evangelical churches tend to emphasise personal piety and rarely help believers understand how to maintain and apply their Christian beliefs and practice in the worlds of the arts, business, scholarship, and government. Many churches simply do not know how to disciple members without essentially pulling them out of their vocation and inviting them to become heavily involved in church activities. In other words Christian discipleship is interpreted as consisting largely of activities done in the evening or on the weekend.

An 'occupational hazard':

renting space for a church to meet and worship rather than owning property can result in church members feeling very little responsibility to 'love their neighbours':

It is important for church that rent space to own their neighbourhood. Church leaders should therefore be intentional about inhabiting their neighbourhood. They should go to local community boards and neighbourhood association meetings, as well as contact local government officials and representatives to discover how they can best serve the needs of the neighbourhood.

Churches must be committed to evangelism:

Urban evangelism requires immersion in the various cultures' greatest hopes, fears, views, and objections to Christianity. It requires a creative host of different means and venues, and it takes great courage.

Evangelistic worship and preaching pointers:

• First: Ground moral exhortation in Christ and his work. 
• Second: Be very careful to think about your audience's premises. Eg. don't assume that the Bible is everyone's accepted authority. Reason from empirical science as well.
• Third: Do 'apologetic sidebars'. Try and devote one of the three/four sermon points mainly to the doubts and concerns of nonbelievers. Jude 22 'be merciful to those who doubt.'
• Fourth: Address different groups directly, 'if you are committed to Christ you may be thinking... if you are not a Christian or not sure what you believe...'
• Fifth: Consider demeanour. The young secularists of NYC are extremely sensitive to anything that smacks of artifice (trickery) to them. Anything that is too polished, too controlled, too canned will seem like salesmanship. They will be turned off if they hear a preacher use noninclusive gender languages, make cynical remarks about other religions, adopt a tone of voice they consider forced or inauthentic, or use insider evangelical tribal jargon. In particular, they will feel 'beaten up' if a pastor yells at them. The kind of preaching that sounds passionate in the heartland may sound like a dangerous rant in certain subcultures in the city. 
• Sixth: Show deep acquaintance with the same books, magazines, blogs, movies and plays that your audience knows. 

Artistry and creativity:

According to the US census, between 1970 and 1990 the humber of people describing themselves as 'artist' more than doubled from 737, 000 to 1.7 million. Since 1990 it continued to grow another 16% to nearly 2 million. 

Part 5: Cultural Engagement

Chapter 15: The cultural crisis of the church

The church is in a state of crisis. Arguing within itself about a lot of central theological issues, due mainly to not being able to agree on how to respond to and engage with the culture around it. Where and when and over what should the church fight? It finds itself within a new world of anti-christianity intolerance and can't agree on how to respond.

Keller says that as a result of fundamentalist-modernism at the beginning of the 20th C Christians began breaking from mainstream society to begin their own schools, universities, publishing companies, television networks, radio shows etc. thus leaving the mainstream institutions in secular, liberal hands.

The aftermath of World War II was that both in Europe and in the States church attendance nose-dived. Attitudes toward moral authority shifted radically as the basic 'mood' of society altered.

Stats:

Church attendance dropped from approximately 50% of the population in 1958 to about 40% in 1969, the fastest decline ever recorded in such a short span of time.

Even more striking was the decline among people in their twenties:

in 1957, 51% of the members of that age group attended church; by 1971, that number had fallen to 28%

European cultural shift:

Francis Schaeffer commented on the attitudes of thoroughly secular Europeans: to them the world is a mass of flying unrelated particles and they feel upon them the necessity of running away and standing still at the same time.

In the 'old world' many of the tenants of Christian belief were accepted and believed. In the 'new' world 'the gospel message [is] not simply being rejected; it [is] becoming incomprehensible and increasingly hated.'

In the 1940s a Christian minister could say to almost any young adult in the country, 'be good!' and they would know what he was talking about. By the late 1970s, if you said, 'Be good!' the answer would be, 'What's your definition of good? I might have a different one. And who are you to impose your view on me?'

What caused the shift?

Some point to the Enlightenment philosophies; the emphasis on the individual and the belief that everything had to be proved to one's own reason.

Others point to Romanticism which was a reaction against the emphasis placed on science and reason in the Enlightenment. It emphasises experience and feeling but is still deeply individualistic and anti-traditional.

Still others argue that it isn't so much intellectual beliefs as it is new social realities that affected social beliefs: capitalism, air travel, television, contraception, the Internet. As innovations they have undermined traditional moral values in favour of individual choice and freedom.

The stance of pietism

The most common response among evangelical churches was to ignore culture and instead stress personal conversion and the spiritual growth of the individual. Culture simply wasn't seen as the issue that needed to be addressed: if we had more Christians in the world culture would be more just and moral - was the implicit response.

Young Christians had ministers and missionaries - not artists or business leaders - lifted before them as the ideals, not because involvement in culture was bad; it just wasn't the important thing. All were encouraged to enter full-time Christian ministry in order to evangelise the world.

Pietism derives from German-speaking central Europe in the 17thC in which the emphasis moved from doctrinal precision to spiritual experience, from clergy-led efforts to lay ministry and from efforts to reform the intellectual and social order to an emphasis on evangelistic mission and personal discipleship.

Other models that developed: The religious right (a politically motivated model that sees Christ's lordship over everything as its main motivation), The seeker church movement:

It's recommended solution was not 'church as usual' (as with those who held on to pietistic stance); nor was it 'politics with a vengeance' (as with the Religious Right). Instead, this movement spoke frequently of the church's irrelevance and sought to 'reinvent church' - principally by adapting sophisticated marketing and product development techniques from the business world - so it would appeal to secular, unchurched people.

Both of these models emphasise different attitudes to culture:

• Religious Right sought to aggressively change culture
• Seeker church movement called Christians to become relevant to it

By the late 1990s a new trend appeared known as the 'emerging church' which emphasised Leslie Newbigin's call to 'have a missionary encounter with Western culture' was lifted up.

The emerging church saw that both the RR and SM was wrong in the way it approached culture: The RR was captive to a 'naive loyalty Americanisation and free market capitalism' and the SM had 'sold out' to individualism and consumerism:

To many Christians, both groups had become captive to Western, modern, Enlightenment culture.

Emerging churches know what they 'don't' want: the cultural obliviousness of pietism, the triumphalism of the RR and the lack of reflection and dept of most seeker churches.

Chapter 16: The Cultural Responses of the Church

The four types of response in church to the crisis in the culture:

• Transformationist model
• Relevance model
• Counterculturalist model
• Two Kingdoms model

Why use models at all in wrestling with the idea of Christ and Culture? 

We can't make sense of what people do without relating them to others and noticing continuities and contrasts.

Miraslov Volf argues that there are two dangers Christians face when thinking about culture : idleness and coerciveness

The Transformationist Model:

Since the Lordship of Christ should be brought to bear on every area of life - economics and business, government and politics, literature and art, journalism and the media, science and law and education - Christians should be labouring to transform culture, to (literally) change the world.

All people working within this model hold several commonalities:

1. They view 'secular' work as an important way to serve Christ and his kingdom, just as is ministry within the church. Christ saving purposes include not only individual salvation but also the renewal of the material world.
2. They celebrate and assign high value to Christians who excel in their work and enter spheres of influence within business, the media, government and politics, the academy and the arts.
3. They believe that the main problem is a secularism that has dishonestly demanded a 'naked public square' of beliefs while insisting that everyone in the public square does in fact hold to a belief, namely secularism.

Problems with this approach:

1. It places too much emphasis on worldview as being something learnt and taught, whereas much of it has to do with a set of hopes and loves. These are not at all adopted consciously and deliberately.
2. Transformationalism is often marked by 'an under appreciation for the church...' The 'real action' they imply takes place outside of the church. Much of the excitement and creative energy ends up focusing on cosmic or social redemption rather than on bringing about personal conversion through evangelism and discipleship. 
3. It tends to be triumphalist, self-righteous and overconfident in its ability to both understand God's will for society and bring it about. 
4. Transformationists have often put too much stock in politics as a way to change culture. Attitudes toward sexuality, as one example, have changed not because of legislation but because of pop culture, the arts, academic institutions. Legislation followed last of all. Politics then is 'downstream' from the true sources of cultural change. Politics helps to cement cultural changes, but it typically does not lead them.
5. It doesn't recognise the dangers of power. There are numerous examples of how the church loses its vitality when Christianity and the state are too closely wedded. 

The Relevance Model:

The common characteristics of those who hold this model:

1. Optimism about cultural trends. They feel less need to reflect on them, exercise discernment, and respond to them in discriminating ways.
2. An emphasis on the 'common good' and 'human flourishing'. They emphasise the modern church's failure to care about inequality, injustice, and suffering in the world.
3. The concept of 'worldview' isn't used. It assumes, in their mind, a much greater gap between Christian truth and human culture than they think exists.
4. They locate the main problem as being in the church's incomprehensibility to the minds and hearts of secular people and its irrelevance to the problems of society.
5. They see little distinction between how individual Christians should act in the world and how the institutional church should function. There is a blanket call for the church to become deeply involved in the struggle for social justice.

Some of the problems with the Relevance Model may be:

1. By adapting so heavily and readily to the culture, such churches are quickly seen as dated whenever the culture shifts or changes. By downplaying their doctrinal beliefs and by removing the supernatural element many of these churches look like any other social service. Causing some to ask 'why does it exist? Why do we need this institution when it is doing, often somewhat amateurishly, what so many secular institutions are doing more effectively?'
2. The attitude taken by this stance toward doctrine. Of all the models, this one most often downplays the need for both theological precision and the insights of Christian tradition.
3. The main energy behind churches that follow this model is often directed not toward the teaching of the gospel and seeking conversions but toward producing art, doing service projects, or seeking justice. Churches that lose their commitment and skill for vigorous evangelism will not only neglect their primary calling, but will inevitably fail to reproduce themselves. It takes new converts and changed lives for churches to truly be of service to the community. Tradition churches with their emphasis on theological training, catechesis and liturgical and ecclesiastical practices produced real character and ethical change, but this kind of spiritual formation often does not occur in the typical evangelical megachurch.
4. The distinctiveness of the Christian church can begin to get blurry. Traditionally the church has been seen as the only institution that ministers the Word and the sacraments; that determines what is the true, biblical preaching of the Word; and that brings people into a community governed and disciplined by called and authorised leaders.

The Counterculturalist Model:

The church is seen as a contrast society to the world.

1. Those operating in this model do not see God working redemptively through cultural movements: 'the world for all its beauty is hostile to the truth.' 
2. It calls the church to avoid concentrating on the culture, looking for ways to become relevant to it, reach it, or transform it. If there is a crisis at all today it is because the world has invaded the church, and consequently the church is not truly being the church. 
3. It criticises most other conservative evangelical churches for falling for the 'Constaninian error' of seeking to reform the world to be like the church.
4. Instead of trying to change the culture the church ought to instead follow Christ 'outside the camp' and identify with the poor and marginalised. The Christian life is a life of simplicity, of material self-denial for the sake of charity, justice and community. It means decreasing geographical mobility (by committing to a local church and a neighbourhood) and social mobility (by giving away large amounts of your income to those in need).

This model has a lot of intellectual firepower behind it. Criticisms of it and problems in it would be:

1. It is more pessimistic about the prospect of social change than is warranted. Wilberforce's accomplishment was a legitimate victory and a worthwhile good. 
2. The Counterculturalist model tends to demonise modern business markets and government. and as such they depend on the state and other powers being corrupt for their identity to hold together.
3. They overlook or don't recognise the impossibility of being culturally neutral. The human culture we live in affects how we live out the Christian life and by virtue of existing we are affecting the culture around us.
4. People in this model have tended to over emphasise the 'horizontal' nature of sin and donwplay the vertical aspect of it (an offence to God's holiness). Christus Victor is the atonement model of choice (Christ defeating the powers on the cross) and some Anabaptists theologians have rejected the notion of propitiation as a 'violent' theory of the atonement.
5. Because it emphasises 'belonging' over 'believing' so much it isn't particularly effective or faithful in its gospel proclamation and calling individuals to repentance.

Keller in this point (1. above) also quotes the following, that I thought good enough I wanted to separate it out:

A much subtler yet powerful example is the Christianisation of Europe. Christianity permanently altered the old honour-based European cultures in which pride was valued rather than humility, dominance rather than service, courage rather than peaceableness, glory more than modesty, loyalty to one's own tribe rather than equal respect for all individuals. Even though there is some slippage in Western society back toward that pagan worldview, today's secular Europeans are still influenced far more by the Christian ethic than by the old pagan ones. And, by and large, Western societies are more humane places to live because of it. In other words Christianity transformed a pagan culture.

Commenting on church models Keller also makes the following statement:

Any element within a model that cuts off the motivation for vigorous evangelism can undermine the entire model. Without a steady stream of new converts and changed lives, the vitality and vision of the model cannot be fully realised.

The Two Kingdoms Model

Probably the least known model among evangelicals.

Based on the idea that there are two kingdoms:

• The 'common kingdom' (earthly or sometimes 'left hand' kingdom). Humans beings all live in this kingdom of God's common grace: 'believers do not try to impose biblical standard on a society but instead appeal to common understandings of the good, the true and the beautiful shared by all people. We love and serve our neighbours in this common kingdom.' 
• The 'redemptive kingdom' (or righthand kingdom).

Advocates of this model believe the main problem stems from confusing these two kingdoms. The common characteristics in this kingdom are:

1. High value placed on 'secular' work. All work is a way to serve God and our neighbour. Luther: taught that - all work is the way in which God does his work in the world, and therefore all work is a calling from God.
2. We work in the world but do not seek to do our work in a uniquely 'christian' way. All that occurs in the temporal realm where work is done is bound to pass away. God's ruling power in the common kingdom is simply to restrain evil not 'heal' creation. Separate from transformationists and similar to counterculturists on this point.
3. Two Kingdoms advocates see the state/government as being neutral, neither is it bad needing to be transformed or is it violent and wicked needing to be resisted. 
4. Are very guarded about how much improvement can ever be made in the natural kingdom. 

There is still a range on opinions within this model particularly about how a Christian is mean to work within society.

Problems with this model:

1. It gives more weight and credit to the notion of common grace than the Bible does. It also overlooks the degenerate nature of man that makes him more inclined to suppress the truth and ignore the light in favour of sin and darkness and self-obsession. 
2. Overlooks the significance of Biblical revelation and insight and assumes that common grace is 'enough' to arrive at many of the virtues secular society holds to. Keller points out that the idea of 'human rights' originated in the Christian idea of Imago Dei. No other societies saw all people as equal and in fact people like Aristotle taught that some people were 'born to be slaves'. With Imago Dei, these ideas changed. Points out that although Wilberforce needed common grace in his non-Christian recipients to cause them to 'resonate' with what he was saying, it was his Christian teaching that showed him the error of slavery in a way that no one else was saying or had seen.
3. Implies that it is possible for human life to be conducted on a neutral basis. That isn't the case. Worldview's originate from non-provable statements of faith that aren't neutral.
4. It doesn't cause Christians to want to 'stand up' and help change society.
5. Contributes to too great a hierarchy between clergy and laypeople. 

Keller comments that:

Our practices are unavoidably grounded in fundamental beliefs about right and wrong, human nature and destiny, the meaning of life, what is wrong with human society, and what will fix it. All of these working assumptions are based on non provable faith assumptions about human nature and spiritual reality.

Michael Sandel (from Harvard):

states that all theories of justice are 'inescapably judgmental'. You cannot hold a position on financial bailouts, surrogate motherhood, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, or CEO pay without assuming some underlying beliefs about 'the right way to value things.' For example when one person says women should have the right to choose an abortion while another says women shouldn't have that choice, each is valuing things differently - a valuation based on moral beliefs that are no scientifically based. 

Reflecting on these realities Keller says:

While the New testament may not give believers direct calls to transform society, the gospel faith of Christians clearly had immediate and far-reaching impact on social and economic relationships, and not only strictly within the church. 

Keller finishes the chapter with some examples from proponents of transformationist and 2 kingdoms, showing that they are moving towards one another by recognising the blind spots within their models.


Chapter 17: Why all models are right... and wrong 

What is the real issue? The trouble is that every model has rightly identified a real need and yet focusing on and addressing that need, often leads to the exclusion of or oversight of other 'needs' within the church that are then rightly identified by the other models. Keller suggest two questions about culture to help carve a way forward together:

1) Should we be pessimistic or optimistic about the possibility for cultural change?
2) Is the current culture redeemable and good, or fundamentally fallen?

Our answers to these questions reveal our alignments with biblical emphases as well as our imbalances.

On 1 he says:

This complex and rich understanding of cultural change throws a new light on each model. Each model has a tendency, especially among some of its more strident proponents, to be either too optimistic or too pessimistic about culture change. And within the groups that tend toward optimism, they tend to be too limited in their understanding of how culture can be changed. Some see the importance of arguing for truth claims, while others put more emphasis on the importance of communities and of historical processes - but any one of these can be the crucial factor in a culture shift. All of them can play a part and none of the current models give equal or adequate weight to them all.

How the various chapters of gospel shed light on our attitudes to culture:

Creation:
The material world is important. Unlike other ancient creation accounts and religions, Christianity enforces a 'saw that it was good' attitude on us toward the created world. If God is actively involved in the created world and if he both cultivates creation and saves souls with his truth - how can one say that an artist or banker is engaged in 'secular' work and that only professional ministers are doing 'the Lord's work'?

Adam and Eve are called to be fruitful, multiply and have dominion:

A gardener does not merely leave a plot of ground as it is but rearranges the raw material so it produces things necessary for human flourishing, whether food, other materials for goods, or simply beautiful foliage. Ultimately all human work and cultural activity represent this kind of gardening.

Fall:
Sin infects and affects every part of life. Schaeffer comments:

We should be looking now, on the basis of the work of Christ, for substantial healing in every area affected by the fall... Man was divided from God, first; and then, ever since the fall, man is separated from himself. These are the psychological divisions... The next division is that man is divided from other men; these are the sociological divisions. And then man is divided from nature, and nature is divided from nature... One day, when Christ comes back, there is going to be a complete healing of all of them.

The Bible presents us as both cursed and yet preserved by non-salvific grace. The battle line between God and idols not only runs through the world; it runs through the heart of every believer.

Cultural products should not be judged as 'good if Christians make them' and 'bad if non-Christians make them.' Each should be evaluated on its own merit as to whether it serves God or an idol.

Redemption and restoration:
Isaac Watts: 'He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.'

Grace does not do away with thinking and speaking, art and science, theatre and literature, business and economics; it remakes and restores what is amiss.

The kingdom of God is both now and not yet. Geerhardus Vos puts it well in The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church:

The Kingdom of God means the renewal of the world through the introduction of supernatural forces.

He states that the kingdom of God is:

1) the main way to see the kingdom forces of God at work is in the institutional church, whose main job is to minister through the Word and sacrament to win people and disciple them in Christ.

2) when Christians are living in society to God's glory, this, too is a manifestation of the kingdom of God.

We need this balance to stop it becoming purely a spiritual reality operating only in the church or mainly a social one operating in the liberation movements out in the world.

The landscape of Christian cultural engagement

What do we learn from this brief survey? Balance. The word balance is thrust at us again.

There is then presented a great illustration picturing the various church streams against the others for where they emphasise cultural engagement / non engagement and common grace in society vs no common grace in society.

Chapter 18: Cultural Engagement Through Blended Insights

Given that we each have our own baggage (history, temperament, tradition and context) this chapter is about how to operate faithfully and skilfully within the model you inhabit.

Seek the Centre

Seek out and discern the various good bits of other models. He then lists the main 'good bits' of the other models:

Relevants: Since we're told seek the peace and prosperity of the city Christians should be known for serving the people whether those people embrace Christianity or not.
Transformationists: Good at discipling people in the world and not just taking people 'into the church' to train them as believers.
Counterculturalists: Rightly argue that the Christian witness is strongest within a redeemed corporate body called the church.
Two Kingdoms: Practical and useful insights into how excellent work within the world is a good form of Christian witness and pleasing to God.

The errors we must avoid: triumphalism or withdrawal, cultural compromise or cultural withdrawal. 
For example:

The Two Kingdoms model rightly lifts up the dignity and divine significance of all work done by all people. Regardless of who is doing it, any work done with excellence and skill that serves other people and the common good should be appreciated and celebrated by Christians. However the Transformationist model points out the idolatries animating out lives, including our work and therefore values work done from a distinctly Christian understanding of human flourishing. To combine both of these attitudes enables Christians to be both humble and appreciative of non-believing colleagues and yet not satisfied with doing work according to the reigning standards and philosophies in their field.

Miraslov Volf: Two noes and a yes.

No to dominating culture, no to accommodating to culture, yes to engaging with it.

We can do one of the following with every aspect of culture:

1) adopt it and embrace it
2) transform it and redeem it
3) reject if altogether

The question is asked; should we then create a new model that sits in the middle of every error? Keller doesn't believe so for the reason that culture is never static and so the church will always need to be different depending on context and time. Keller then presents a 4 season cycle to  church and culture:

Winter. Describes a church that is not only in a hostile relationship to a pre-Christian culture but is gaining little traction; is seeing little distinctive, vital Christian life and community; and is seeing no evangelistic fruit. In many cultures today, the church is embattled and spiritually weak.

Spring. Is a situation in which the church is embattled, even persecuted by a pre-Christian culture, but is is growing (e.g. as in China).

Summer. The church is highly regarded by the public and where we find so many Christians in the centres of cultural production that Christians feel at home in the culture. 

Autumn. Where we find ourselves in the west today, becoming increasingly marginalised in a post-Christian culture and looking for new ways to both strengthen our distinctiveness and reach out winsomely.

The second reason we cannot argue for a perfectly balanced model is because as well as there being cultural effects at work, there are also personal ones. Each model tends to attract people on the basis of their different ministry gifts and callings. 

Paul has famously told us: while every Christian must have all of the fruits of Spirit no Christian has all of the gifts of the Spirit.

So, how do we discern what spiritual gifts we have?

Evangelising is a duty of a Christian as is helping the poor but these are also gifts -  some people are especially gifted to do evangelism, and others to show mercy to those in need. The problems that people often identify and bewail are usually a sign of their gifts and passions. People often need to be shown how their gift is giving them tunnel vision but also they need to be released to express and use their gift as much as they can.

Act, don't react:

I've become convinced that one of the reasons we have not seen more balanced cultural engagement 'near the centre' is that many of us are not choosing our Christ and culture model in the right way. Instead of looking at scripture, the culture and our own gifts and calling, we tend to form our views in visceral reactions to the behaviour of other Christians. 

Some practical exhortations on how to a void reacting to other groups in order define our own:

1. Avoid arrogance.

It is extremely easy to believe that the culture model that has helped you the most is the best one for everyone. It is especially easy to feel superior if you compare the strengths of your favourite model with the weaknesses of the others. Don't do that. Do not think that your particular tradition is 'the new thing God is doing' and all the others are fading away. A balanced assessment shows that none of the various traditions for engaging with culture are dying. Each has serious weaknesses but also great strengths.

2. Avoid blame.

If you have grown by adopting another culture model, you may feel angry or betrayed by the former one. You may have had good or bad personal experiences at the hands of cultural elites, which may have influenced you unduly. You may blame a certain model for all the trouble of the church because rabid proponents hurt the last congregation of which you were a member. Forgive, and look for places where you can repent. Try to remove the personal histories as you think about culture. Look at the Bible, the cultural moment and your gifts.

3. Avoid frustration.

If you are in a church of denomination that does not share the cultural model you feel is best, it can have a radicalising effect on you. Opposition can push you into more extreme forms of your position. Don't let conflict make you too rigid a proponent for your approach.

4. Avoid naïveté.

Some people say 'a plague on all your houses' and insist that one church transcend all models or incorporate them all. Because every church and Christian has history, a temperament, and a unique take on various theological issues, every church and Christian will be situated in some tradition and model. It is inescapable. The gospel should give us the humility both to appreciate other models and to acknowledged that we have a model of our own. So enjoy the strengths of your position, admit the weaknesses, and borrow like crazy from the strengths of the others.

MOVEMENT

Part 6: Missional Community 

Chapter 19: The Search for the Missional Church

The word missional first became popular after the 1998 publication of the boot titled Missional Church. The word gets used in differing ways leading to confusion. Before its popularisation the word was used primarily in mainline Protestant and ecumenical circles, linked to the Latin phrase Missio Dei coined by Karl Barth referring to God's action in the world. After 1952 this action was more specifically used to refer to God's work to redeem the entire creation.

The shift went from: 

Mission is about saving souls or as a way of expanding the church but... when we understand that God is 'on mission' meaning that the whole of God's nature as Trinity is already on mission, then the church simply joins him on it. The Father sends the Son, the Father and the Son send the Spirit and the Spirit sends the church. Mission isn't a dept. of the church but concerns everything she does.

Seen in that way 'mission' becomes something that ought to be seen in the doctrine of the Trinity, not ecclesiology or soteriology.

God does not send the church on mission. God is on mission and the church joins him.

Newbigin saw this theology, although sound in doctrine, gave rise to form of liberalism that left the church with little relevance. People began to emphasise God the Father's activity in the world to bring peace and hope and justice and our Spirit-empowered mandate to help governing bodies and secular organisations achieve their goals. This way of thinking left little room for the Son's mission to seek and save lost souls. He insisted:

The church needed to grow through evangelism yet be involved in service and in the struggle for justice in the world as well. 

The story of Leslie Newbigin: a lengthy quote!

Leslie Newbigin had been a British missionary in India for several decades. When he returned to England in the mid-1970s, he saw the massive decline of the church and Christian influence that had occurred in his absence. At the time he left England, Western society's main cultural institutions still Christianised people, and the churches were easily gathering those who came to their doors through social expectation and custom. Churches in the West had always supported 'missions' in overseas non-Christian cultures (such as India). There on the 'mission field' churches functioned in a different way that they did in Europe and North America. Churches in India did not merely support missions or even do missions - they were missional in every aspect. They could not simply process Christianised people as churches did in the West. Rather, every aspect of their church life - worship preaching, community life and discipleship - had to be a form of mission.

For example on the mission field, visitors to a worship service could not be expected to have nay familiarity with Christianity. therefore the worship and preaching had to address them in ways both comprehensible and challenging. On the mission field, believers lived in a society with radically different values from those they were taught in church. This made 'life in the world' very complicated for Christians. Discipleship and training had to equip believers to answer many hostile questions from their neighbours. It also had to spell out Christian personal and corporate behaviour patterns that distinguished them and showed society what the kingdom of God was all about. In other words, away from the West, churches did not simply have a missions department; Christians were 'in mission' in every aspect of their public and private lives.

When he returned to England, Newbigin discover that the ground had shifted. the cultural institutions of society were now indifferent or overtly hostile to Christian faith, and the number of people who went to church had plummeted. Western culture was fast becoming a non-Christian society - a 'mission field - but the church were making little adjustment. While many Christian leaders were bemoaning the cultural changes, Western churches continued to minister as before - creating an environment in which only traditional and conservative people would feel comfortable. they continued to disciple people by focusing on individual skills for their private lives (Bible study and prayer) but failed to train them to live distinctively Christian lives in a secular world - in the public arenas of politics, art, and business. All they preached and practiced assumed they were still in the Christian West, but the Christian West was vanishing.

Newbigin rejected the view that the West was becoming a secular society without God, instead seeing that it had become a pagan one, a society filled with idols and false gods.

He then went on to argue that the church, far from being irrelevant ought to be:

'a hermeneutic of the gospel'

Ingredients for a missionary encounter:

1. a new apologetic (that takes on the so-called neutrality of secular reason)
2. the teaching of the kingdom of God (that God wants not only to save souls but heal the whole creation)
3. earning the right to be heard through willingness to serve sacrificially
4. equipping the laity to bring the implications of their faith into their public calling and so transform culture
5. a countercultural church community
6. a unified church that shows the world and overcoming of denominational divisions
7. a global church in which the older Wetsern churches listen to the non-Western churches 
8. courage

On the central role of the church to preach Christ:

The (literally) crucial matter is the centrality of Jesus and his atoning work on the cross, that work by which he has won lordship over the church and the world... 

It is one of the most pressing tasks for the immediate future to rediscover a doctrine of redemption that sees the cross not as the banner of the oppressed against the oppressor but as the action of God that brings both judgement and redemption for all who will accept it, yet does not subvert the proper struggle for the measure of justice that is possible in a world of sinful human beings.

David Bosch in his book Transforming Mission explains how we might be able to alert people to the universal reign of God:

1. We must avoid the two opposing errors of trying to re-create a Christian society (medieval Christendom's mistake) on the hand and on the other the mistake of withdrawal from society into the 'spiritual realm' (the error of modernity).
2. We must learn how to publicly and prophectically challenge the idol of autonomous reason and its results.
3. We must take pains to make our churches into contrast societies, countercultures that show society what human life looks like free from the idols of race, wealth, sex, power and individual autonomy.
4. We must model to the world as much unity between churches as is practically possible. 

What changed? 

The death of Christendom came about many assume as a result of eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinking working its way through society. Ross Douthat in his book 'Bad Religion' offers other ideas suggesting that after World War II there were 5 major contributing factors that brought about the change we now live in:

1. political polarisation between left and right which took many churches captive (mainline Protestants toward the left, evangelicals toward the right) and weakened credibility.
2. the sexual revolution and the birth control pill that fueled it.
3. the dawn of globalisation and the impression that Christianity was imperialistically Western.
4. the enormous growth in the kind of material prosperity that always works against faith.
5. the loss of the elites and academic cultural institutions they control (see ch. 2)

The two approaches: 'history-of-thought' (Newbigin's approach) and the 'sociology-of-knowledge' (Douthat's approach) both offer valuable insights. 

Another strain of thought would be to analyse the church's fault: the church becomes weak and even corrupt when it becomes successful in a culture. 

Missional muddle, decluttered. Keller then lists the four different ways churches have sought to understand and 'redefine' missional: 1. evangelism 2. incarnational 3. contextual 4. communal and reciprocal. 

Sin redefined:

in order to overcome the Enlightenment's individualism, the church must redefine sin, mission and salvation in corporate and communal terms. Rather than speaking of sin primarily as an offence against a holy God, sin is seen, in horizontal terms, as the violation of God's shalom in the world through selfishness, violence, injustice and pride.

Rather than speaking of the cross as primarily the place where Jesus satisfied the wrath of God on our sin, Jesus' death is seen as the occasion when the powers of this world fell on Jesus and were defeated.

The post-Christian age:

'in a previous age the church allowed the culture to do a lot of its heavy lifting infusing people with a broadly Christian way of thinking about things - respect for the Bible, allegiance to the 10 C, commitment to the ethical teachings of the Gospels; belief in a personal God, an afterlife, a judgment day, and moral absolutes.' 

The times have changed.

To the self-absorbed culture we say, "You must lose yourself - in service to Christ and others - to truly find yourself." To the rationalistic culture we say, "You cannot have the things you want - meaning, dignity, hope, character, shared values and community - without faith."

sent out to be a blessing.

A Christian is not a spiritual consumer, coming in to get his or her emotional needs met and then going home. A missional church, then, is one that trains and encourages its people to be in mission as individuals and as a body. 

In Christendom, you could afford to train people solely in prayer, Bible study, and evangelism because they were not facing radically non-Christian values in their public lives. Now, all people need to theological education to 'think Christianly' about everything and to act with Christian distinctiveness. 

A contrast community.

Rather than defining ourselves in contrast to other churches Keller suggests that it is more useful to define ourselves in relationship to the values of the secular culture. Our 'bent' should be in the direction of support and cooperation with other churches in the local area.

Chapter 20: Centering the Missional Church 

Observing potential problems within the conversation over missional church:

Problem 1: Not comprehensive enough 

We must be evangelistic however, the typical evangelical gospel presentation is too shallow.

It speaks cursorily about a God whom we have sinned against, a saviour who died for our sins, and a call to believe in this saviour. The simplicity of this communication presumes that those listening share the same essential understanding of the words God and sin as the speaker. 

But what if a growing majority of people outside the church live by such a radically different view of life that much of what is now said and done by the Christian community is inexplicable or even deeply offensive to them? What if many listeners hold a profoundly different understanding of the concepts of God, truth, right and wrong, freedom, virtue, and sin? What if their approaches to reality, human nature and destiny and human community are wholly different from our own?

This next bit really needs to be read twice. What we're facing isn't new. It shows me that evangelism among the sorts of people mentioned above may well take a long time. There is less shared perceptions than ever before:

For decades this has been the situation facing Christian churches in many areas around the world - places such as India, Iran and Japan. Evangelism in these environments involves a lengthy process in which nonbelievers have to be invited into a Christian community that bridges the gap between Christian truth and the culture around it. Every part of a church's life - its worship, community, public discourse, preaching and education - has to assume the presence of nonbelievers from surrounding culture. 

 Problem 2: Too tied to a particular form

Many people writing about missional church insist that missional = incarnational which = non-Sunday centric, oikos approach of relationships and deeply embedded in the community.

Keller pastored a small church in a working-class town for 10 years. He recognises that both attractional (large) and incarnational (small and house based) have their value:

In final analysis, I don't believe any single form of church (small or large, cell group based or midsize community based) is intrinsically better at growing spiritual fruit, reaching nonbelievers, caring for people, and producing Christ-shaped lives.

Problem 3: Loss of a clear understanding of the gospel

In restating the gospel many have redefined it. Many missional churches emphasis the horizontal (relational/communal) aspects of sin but at the denial and detriment of the vertical (it offends God) level.

The marks of a missional church

1. It confront the society's idols.
2. It realises that most of our more recently formulated and popular gospel presentations will fall on deaf ears.
3. It affirms 'every member missionary'
4. It understands itself as a servant community - a counterculture for the common good
5. It should expect nonbelievers to be involved in most aspects of the church's life and ministry
6. It should practise Christian unity on the local level as much as possible

These six marks of a missional church can exist in both large and small churches of various forms and are strengthened, not weakened, by a clear grasp of the understanding of the gospel that was recaptured by the Protestant Reformers. 

A missional church must equip its members to do three things: 1) to be a verbal witness to the gospel in their webs of relationships. 2) to love their neighbours and do justice within their neighbourhoods and city, 3) to integrate their faith with their work in order to engage culture through their vocations.

Church quote:

A sacrificial service church will show the world, then, a 'third way' between the individualistic self-absorption that secularism can breed and the tribal self-righteousness that religion can breed.

Good definition of a Christian living contextually: culturally like yet spiritually unlike the people in the surrounding neighbourhood and culture. 

Chapter 21: Equipping People for Missional Living

It is the responsibility of the ordained leadership to build up the church and its members through the ministry of the Word and sacraments. However, one critical focus of that ministry must now be the discipling of the laity for ministry in the world.

John Stott: There has always been a strong tendency for Christians to withdraw into a kind of closed, evangelical, monastic community.

In the book of Acts not only the apostles (5:42) but every Christian (8:4) did evangelism - and they did so endlessly. Every Christian was expected to evangelise, follow up, nurture, and teach people the Word. This happened relationally - one person bringing the gospel to another within the context of a relationship.

Michael Green: early Christianity's explosive growth 'was in reality accomplished by means of informal missionaries... in homes and wine shops, on walks, and around market stalls... they did it naturally.

Not all evangelism was informal however. There were also many forms of evangelism in the early church that required great training and expertise, including synagogue preaching and open-air preaching, as well as public teaching and 'dialogical' evangelism.

'Dialogical' is most likely a form of interactive dialogue with all comers about the Christian faith in the model of Paul who in the hall of Tyrannus daily for two years he discussed the faith with people (A19).

Evangelism however, started and took most root, at home:

A person's strongest relationships were within the household - with blood relatives, servants, clients and friends - so when a person became a Christian, it was in the household that he or she would get the most serious hearing. If the head of the household became a believer, the entire home became a ministry centre in which the gospel was taught to all the household's members and neighbours.   

We see this in Acts 16 (Lydia's and the jailer's homes in Philippi),  Acts 17 (Jason's home in Thessalonica), Acts 18 (Titius Justus's home in Corinth), Acts 21 (Philip's home in Caesarea) and 1 Corinthians (Stephanas's home in Corinth).

He also points out how many of the significant early church fathers became believers through a friend leading them to Christ.

Keller then gives lots of practical examples of what modern day gospelising could look like in the course of friendship. Really good material for helping people think practically about evangelism.

In all the examples the basic form of the gospel ministry is the same:

• Organic. It happens spontaneously, outside of the church's organised programs (even though it occasionally makes use of formal programs).
• Relational. It is done in the context of informal personal relationships.
• Word deploying. It prayerfully brings the Bible and gospel into connection with people's lives.
• Active, not passive. Each person assumes personal responsibility for being a producer rather than just a consumer of ministry.

Keller:

My experience has been that when at least 20-25% of a church's people are engaged in this kind of organic, relational gospel ministry, it creates a powerful dynamism that infuses the whole church and greatly extends the church's ability to edify and evangelise. 

Many people process from unbelief to faith through 'mini-decisions'.

In a 'post-Christendom' setting, more often than not, this is the case. People simply do not have the necessary background knowledge to hear a gospel address and immediately understand who God is, what sin is, who Jesus is, and what repentance and faith are in a way that enables them to make an intelligent commitment. 

The process of someone becoming a believer in this way often looks like this:

1. Awareness. I see it. They begin to clear the ground of stereotypes and learn to distinguish the gospel from legalism or liberalism. Mini decisions look like this: 'she's religious but surprisingly open-minded'... 'a lot of things the Bible says really fit me.'
2. Relevance. I need it. They begin to see the personal slavery that religion and irreligion bring and see how the gospel transforms. Mini decisions here looks like: 'an awful lot of very normal people really like this church!'... 'Jesus seems to be the key. I wonder who he was.'
3. Credibility. I need it because it's true. Mini decisions here look like 'you really can't use science to disprove the supernatural'... 'there really were eyewitnesses to the resurrection.'
4. Trial. I see what it would be like. They start talking like a Christian, even defending the faith at time.
5. Commitment. I take it. Conversion or a realisation that they have become converted already. Mini decisions here: 'I am a sinner.'... 'I need a saviour.'
6. Reinforcement. Now I get it. The penny drops and the gospel becomes even clearer and more real.

Fire needs air, heat and fuel and so it is that there is a type of environment that is most helpful and conducive for new life to occur: Believers with relational integrity, pastoral support, safe venues.

Relational Integrity:

Christians must be contextualised 'letters of the gospel'. They must be like their neighbours in the food they eat, clothes they wear, dialect, general appearance, work life, recreational and cultural activities and civic engagement. They participate fully in life with their neighbours. At first glance Christians should look reassuringly similar to others. They must provide a picture to an unbeliever of what they could look like if they became a believer; a financial worker meets a Christian in the same business, an artist similar. But Christians must also be unlike their neighbours. Integrity and honesty, transparency and fair, generosity

If employers, they should take less personal profit so customers and employees have more pay.
As citizens, they should be philanthropic and generous with their time and with the money they donate for the needy.
Believers should be known for their hospitality, welcoming others into their homes, especially neighbours and people with needs. Marked by sympathy and a willingness to forgive. 

Additionally they should be engaged with others.

Part of being engaged is to be willing to identify as a believer. Engaging relational without doing so could be called 'the blend-in approach.' Many Christians live in a social world of non-Christians but don't think much about their friends' spiritual needs, nor do they identify themselves as believers to their friends. Their basic drive is to be accepted, avoid being perceived as different - but this approach fails to integrate a person's faith with his or her relationships in the world.

These three factors - like, unlike, engaged - make up the foundation of being a Christian with relational integrity.

Why is there so little relational integrity among believers? Keller suggests that the answer is motivational:

People who are in the blend-in mode often lack courage. They are (rightly) concerned about losing influence, being persecuted in behind-the-scenes ways, or bing penalised professionally.

Those in the bubble mode are unwilling to make the emotional, social, or even financial and physical investment in the people around them.

The second necessary factor in personal evangelism:

Pastoral support

Pastors need to support their church in this mission by modelling how to talk to people about faith issues and how to pray for them.

The gospel also keeps us from being tied to our reputation and so frees us from the fear that stops us sharing our faith.

Keller:

I believe the single most important way for pastors or church leaders to turn passive congregation members into courageous and gracious members is through their own evident godliness.

And then this, which I love:

A pastor should be marked by humility, love, joy and wisdom that is visible and attracts people to trust and learn from them. As a pastor, you may not be the best preacher, but if you are filled with God's love, joy and wisdom, you won't be boring! You may not be the most skilful organiser or charismatic leader, but if your holiness is evident, people will follow you. This means, at the very least, that a dynamic, disciplined, and rich prayer life is not only important in the abstract and personal sense; it may be the most practical thing you can do for your ministry.

Safe Venues

Putting on meetings or gatherings in which nonbelievers are exposed more directly to both Christians and to the gospel. Avoid confusing newcomers and offending them. Using your ingenuity try to image a variety of meetings and places where people without faith can, through a winsome approach be stimulated to consider the claims of the Christian gospel. Some examples...

• A one-off event, such as an open forum. At Redeemer these have been artistic forums followed by a lecture that offers a Christian perspective on the art, with a time for questions and answers.
• A gathering in a small public venue with a brief talk and Q&A on a single topic that address problems people have with Christian faith. Redeemer call these 'Christianity Uncorked' events.
• A small group that is beginning to form is like 'wet cement' and is therefore easier for a person to get drawn into it.
• A worship service comprehensible to nonbelievers.
• A small group for listening to other non-Christian people talk about their faith.
• A non-Christian book club.
• Onetime 'salons' in which Christians bring friends to hear an informal presentation by a Christian speaker on a topic, followed by a discussion.
• Worship 'after meetings' including a Q&A session with the preacher.
• Affinity based outreach (men's and women's gatherings).

Evangelism should be natural and not dictated by a set of bullet points and agenda items that we enter into a conversation hoping to cover.

Part 7 : Integrative Ministry

Chapter 22: The Balance of Ministry Fronts

Integrated ministry is to the be the goal we pursue. Evangelism needn't be chosen over discipleship just as teaching needn't be chosen over practical ministry to address people's needs. Because of the gospel:

the church should disciple its people to seek personal conversion, deep Christian community, social justice, and cultural renewal in the city. These ministry areas should not be seen as independent or optional but as interdependent and fully biblical.

These traits need to be held together and can be held together by a thorough conviction that the gospel promotes and not just permits, all of them.

Many churches are committed to the poor and issues of social justice. Still others make much of the importance of culture and the arts. But seldom are these traits combined:

Indeed it is normal to find leaders of these various ministries resisting or even resenting the other ministry emphases. Those working with the poor think 'integrating faith and work' is elitist. those stressing community, discipleship, and holiness often think that emphasising church growth produces spiritual shallowness.

Unless we try to do all of them we won't actually do any of them very well.

The metaphors of the church. Edmund Clowney points out that there are literally dozens of them. He lists 81 of them:

• chosen people
• holy nation
• family
• body of Christ
• bride of Christ
• royal priesthood
• holy temple
• spiritual house
• God's field
• his harvest
• olive tree
• branches on a vine

Each of them give insights into the nature of the church. All of them must inform our practice of church life. Clowney points out how some metaphors of the church have come to dominate and push out others creating models of church. Clowney lists 5 different models based on emphasising one aspect of the church above the others.

1. The church as an institution model emphasises doctrine, theology and ordained ministerial authority.
2. The church as mystical communion points to the church as organic community and fellowship.
3. The church as sacrament accents corporate worship.
4. The church as herald preeminently does evangelism and preaching.
5. The church as servant is a radical community committed to social justice.

Just as no one Christian has all the spiritual gifts so it is that no one church can fulfil all the callings upon the church equally well. Keller sums up the different aspects of the church in four ministry fronts:

1. Connecting people to God (through evangelism and worship)
2. Connecting people to one another (through community and discipleship)
3. Connecting people to the city (through mercy and justice)
4. Connecting people to the culture (through the integration of faith and work)

Clowney speaks of the 'goals of ministry' as being: serve God, serve one another, serve the world.

We are not called to be specialists, only doing one and not the others for example. 

The two fronts: worship/evangelism and community/discipleship are preeminently the work of the institutional church. Individuals and parachurch organisations have been useful for this but the 'irreplaceable agent for this ministry is the local church.'

The third (serving the city) has an overlap from institutional to organic but is done by the members out in the community. 

The fourth front. The institutional equips the organic to go and do and be in the culture. But how?

By teaching the Christian doctrine of vocation, the goodness of creation, the importance of culture, and the practice of Sabbath, it should be inspiring and encouraging its members, for example, to be distinctively Christian in their art and work through solid Christian instruction. But in the end, I believe the local church should not form a production company to make feature films.

Chapter 23: Connecting People to God

Keller offers an explanation for his preferred style of worship services but recognises the cultural and personality dynamics involved in 'designing' a worship service. Helpful table that outlines the various historic, contemporary and 'convergence' approaches to worship. He lists where the typical style of service fits within denominational lines but also helpfully outlines what is 'central' in each of the services:

Historic liturgical - emphasis on the physical - eucharist is central
Historic traditional - emphasis on the mental - sermon is central
Contemporary praise and worship - emphasis on the emotional - praise music is central
Seeker-oriented worship - emphasis on the practical - theme is central
Convergence fusions of both Form & Music - emphasis on the mystical - story is central

Guiding principles for connecting people to God:

The Normative perspective: The Bible and the past. Tradition is valuable because it connects us to the saints and the church of the past, relying on the tested wisdom of the generations. 

The Situational Perspective: Calvin recognised that a worship service isn't to be shaped only by theological and historical considerations. He often said that 'whatever edifies' should be done; that that is the golden rule in worship: 'If we let love be our guide, all will be safe.'

Cultural context shapes the service. Observations from NYC:

• Generally, classical music and liturgy appeal to the educated. 
• Generally, contemporary praise/worship approaches are far more likely to bring together a diversity of racial groups.
• Generally, young professional Anglos, especially of the more artistic bent, are highly attracted to the convergence of liturgical/historical with eclectic musical forms.
• Generally baby boomer families are highly attracted to seeker-sensitive worship and the more ahistorical, sentimental Christian contemporary songs.

Think about who is in your community and skew your worship service toward them. Bear in mind that a church's model and core values shape the service. Every church should do worship, evangelism, teaching, community building and service - but every model relates these elements to one another in different ways. 

The existential perspective: Finally it is necessary to be aware of our own personal affinities, what we like or dislike in our own experience of worship.

We must be aware and be careful not to try to theologically justify what is essentially out personal preference for worship, nor should be put up with being in worship services that leave us personally feeling cold to God:

If we have the personality of the contemplative - one who loves quiet and thoughtful reflection - we may have a lot of trouble concentrating on God in a highly charismatic worship service.

Seeker or evangelistic?

A worship service can be both evangelistically effective and also edify and educate Christians. Keller's conviction is that we achieve this by aiming not at either of those goals but instead focus on being gospel centred.

Evangelistic worship: 1 Cor 14 promotes the idea that prophecy should be prized above tongues since he leads to evangelism. Acts 2 at Pentecost, the Spirit's activity leads to gospel interest and then salvation.

We can conclude then:

1. Nonbelievers are expected to be present in Christian worship.
2. Nonbelievers should find the praise of Christians to be comprehensible:

It is a false dichotomy to insist we must choose between seeking to please God and being concerned with how unchurched people feel or what they might be thinking about during our worship services.

3. Nonbelievers can fall under conviction and be converted through comprehensible worship.

We are called not simply to communicate the gospel to nonbelievers; we must also intentionally celebrate the gospel before them.

Three Practical Tasks For Evangelistic Worship

2. Get nonbelievers into a worship service:

The best way to get Christians to bring non-Christians to a worship service is to worship as if there are dozens of skeptical onlookers. If we worship as if they are there, eventually they will be.

1. Make worship comprehensible to nonbelievers:

a. worship and preach in the vernacular
b. explain the service as you go along
c. directly address and welcome nonbelievers
d. consider using highly skilled arts in worship: 'excellent aesthetics includes outsiders, while mediocre aesthetics excludes. The low level of artistic quality in many churches guarantees that only insiders will continue to come. For the non-Christian, the attraction of good art will play a major role in drawing them in.'
e. celebrate deeds of mercy and justice
f. present the sacraments so as to make the gospel clear
g. preach grace

3. Lead people to Commitment.

You can do this in the service or after. In Redeemer they use the Lord's Supper and state it like this:

'If you are not in a saving relationship with God through Christ today, do not take the bread and the cup, but as they come around, take Christ. Receive him in your heart as those around you receive the food. Then immediately afterward, come up and tell an officer or a pastor about what you've done so we can get you ready to receive the Supper the next time as a child of God.'

After-meetings have a been an historic way churches have struck upon the moment often created by the sermon. Asking people to come back or to come to a small group is asking a lot of them, but asking them to come into a side room for further enquiry may be just what they need. The preacher could host a simple Q&A session or guidance for the next step.

Chapter 24: Connecting people to one another

The gospel creates community. Therefore, or accordingly, it follows that the chief way we should disciple people (or if you prefer to form them spiritually) is through community. Growth in grace, wisdom and character does not happen primarily in classes and instruction, through large gatherings, or even in solitude. Most often growth happens through deep relationships and in communities where the implications of the gospel are worked our cognitively and worked in practically.

Just as the single most formative experience in our lives is our membership in a nuclear family, so the main way we grow in grace and holiness is through deep involvement in the family of God. Christian community is more than just a supportive fellowship; it is an alternate society. And it is through this alternate human society that God shapes us into who and what we are.

Western believers tend to think we show Christlikeness through our individual lives as believers. But it is just as important to exhibit Christlikeness through our corporate life together.

Community and our character

In the teacher/student relationship they connect primarily on the level of intellect. This isn't how Jesus connected with his followers. Instead he created a community of learning and practice in which there was plenty of time to work out truth in discussion, dialogue, and application. This example suggests that we best learn and apply what we are learning in small groups and among friends, not in academic settings alone.

Our character is mainly shaped by our primary social community - the people with whom we eat, play, converse, counsel, and study.

Community and our behaviour

Far mroe of the biblical ethical prescriptions are addressed to us as a community than as individuals. The 10Cs were given to Israel that they might be an alternate community. Most of the ethical principles or rules in the Bible are not simply codes of behaviour for individuals to follow; they are descriptions of a new community that bears the spiritual fruit of love and holiness.

The battle against sinful habits and idolatrous affections is best worked out in community.

Community and growing to know God better

It's through interacting with others that we see different aspects of God's dealing with them and us so grow to know him more too as a result.

...

Comment on midweek community and Sundays. Keller makes clear the challenges of building community in a city environment and concludes it by stating:

Unless the number of people in midsize and small groups is at least half the number of the people who gather for worship and teaching on Sunday, your church is heading in the direction of being a consumer centre rather than a community

...

Christians community is perhaps the main way that we bear witness to the world, form Christlike character, practice a distinctively Christian style of life, and know God personally.

...

A form of spiritual growth that isn't purely corporate (as in the medieval and pre-modern churches) or purely individualistic (as in the over emphasis on isolated spiritual experiences and disciplines).

In 'The Grounded Gospel' Gary Parrett and J. I. Packer urge contemporary Christians to recover catechetical instruction to the life of the church. They argue for a form of discipleship that includes three ancient and biblical summaries:

• The Apostle's Creed (belief)
• The Ten Commandments (practice)
• The Lord's Prayer (experience)

When considering how people grow Keller says:

1) Recognise that seekers need process.

He sites the shift from mid twentieth century 'crusades' and rallies to Alpha course style processes as the church recognised the need to help people from a more pagan background learn about Christianity.

Personal identity and sin

Our natural condition makes us 'glory empty' - starved for significance and honour and a sense of worth. sin make us feel superior and overconfident (because at a deep level we feel guilty and insecure). Some people's glory emptiness primarily takes the form of bravado and evident pride; for others, it takes the form of self-deprecation and self-loathing. Most of us are wracked by both impulses. Either way, until the gospel changes us, we will use people in relationships. We do not work for the sake of the work; we do not relate for the sake of the person. Rather, we work and relate to bolster our own self-image - to derive it, essentially from others.

The gospel makes us neither self-confident nor self-disdaining but gives us boldness and humility that can increase together.

Community:

Strong community is formed by powerful common experiences, as when people survive a flood or fight together in a battle. When they emerge on the other side, this shared experience becomes the basis for a deep, permanent bond that is stronger than blood. The more intense the experience the more intense the bond. When we experience Christ's radical grace through repentance and faith, it becomes the most intense, foundational event of our lives.

We often think of community as simply one more thing we have to follow in the rules of behaviour. "Ok, I have to read my Bible, pray, stay sexually pure - and I need to go to fellowship." But the community is best understood as the way we are ot do all that Christ told us to do in the world. Community is more than just the result of the preaching of the gospel; it is itself a declaration and expression of the gospel.

Chapter 25: Connecting People to the City

Biblical foundations for ministries of mercy and justice

1. Christians are to love their neighbour. (in OT they were commanded to recognise the poor, immigrant and single-parent families as neighbours), in the NT Jesus' parable of Good Samaritan reemphasises the idea of the needy being our neighbours. God is a God of justice and anyone who has a relationship with him will be concerned about justice as well.

2. Christians are called to serve. The Christian pattern of greatness takes its lead from Jesus are declared 'I am among you as one who serves.'

3. Christians are instructed to 'do justice' or 'live justly.' OT scholar says 'the righteous are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community; the wicked are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.'

Most people think of 'wickedness' as disobeying the Ten Commandments, as actively breaking the law by lying or committing adultery. And those things are, of course, wicked! But lying and adultery are best understood as the visible tup of the iceberg of wickedness. Below the surface, less visible but no less wicked, are things like not feeding the poor when we have the power to do so, or taking so much income out of business we own that our employees are paid poorly, or shovelling snow from our own driveway without even thinking to do the same for our elderly neighbours. In all these ways we disadvantage others by advantaging ourselves.

With this understanding, we begin to see that justice is an everyday activity; it is not to be pursued only in courts or legislatures. Living justly means living in constant recognition of the claims of community on us; it means disadvantaging ourselves in order to advantage others.

Practical approaches for ministries of mercy and justice

Once we answer the question of 'why' the church should participate in ministries of mercy and justice, we must still address the question of 'how' it will do so. How...

1. Relief. Giving direct aid to meet physical, material and social needs. Good though this is, when not combined with other types of assistance, it will invariably create patterns of dependency.

2. Development. Bringing a person or community to self-sufficiency. Individually this may look like education, job-training/creation. For a neighbourhood or community it means social and financial being reinvested into a system - housing development, home ownership etc.

3. Reform. Social reform moves beyond the relief of immediate needs and seeks to change the social conditions that caused the problem.

How should the local church participate? Keller suggests:

I believe the local church should concentrate on the first level of assistance (relief) and some degree the second (development). At the second and third levels, in the domains of community development, social reform, and addressing social structures, I think it is generally best of believer to work through associations and organisations rather than directly through the local church.

 Considering our philosophy of ministry to the poor:

1. Level of priority: How much should we help? Given how expensive this ministry can be, how much of a priority should be it? Consider the distinction made in Acts 6 where deacons were appointed to give concerted focus to the serving of needs within their church. Someone in your church should be set apart to meet material and felt needs through deeds. 

2. Defining 'the poor': Whom should we help? 

3. Conditional or unrestricted: When, and under what conditions, do we help? Galatians 6:10 is a good guiding principle here 'let us do good to all, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.'

4. Relief, development, and reform: In what way do we help? Should the church get into politics or stick with feeding the hungry?

Consider Emperor Julian's objection to the 'impious Galileans' who support 'not only their own poor but ours as well,'

Chapter 26: Connecting people to the Culture

In the West during the time of Christendom, the church could afford to limit its discipleship and training of believers to prayer, Bible study and evangelism because most Christians were not facing non-Christian values at work, in their neighbourhoods, or at school:

In a mission church today, however, believers are surrounded by a radically non-Christian culture. They require much more preparation and education to 'think Christianly' about all of life, public and private, and about how to do their work with Christian distinctiveness.

Legalism and dualism are actually related. The gospel of grace challenges both. If we assume that we are saved by the purity and rightness of our lives, we are encouraged to stay within the confines of the church, content to be in relationships and situations where we don't have to deal with nonbelievers and their ideas.

The opposite of dualism (sacred/secular divide) is worldview Christianity. christianity is more than simply a set of beliefs I hold so I can achieve salvation for my individual soul. It is also a distinct way of understanding and interpreting everything in the world

Work that honours God:

The sixteenth century Protestant Reformers believed that 'secular' work is as valuable and Gond honouring as Christian ministry. When we use our gifts in work - whether by making clothes, building machines or software, practicing law, tilling fields, mending broken bodies, or nurturing children - we are answering God's call to serve the human community. Our work then, whatever it is, matters greatly to God.

And 'God matters to all our work' The gospel shapes the motives, manner and methods of our day to day working life as well.

We must help people see how the gospel shapes our work in at least four ways:

1. Our faith changes our motivation for work. We work for him under his watchful eye.
2. Our faith changes our conception of work. Simple tasks such as making a shoe or digging a ditch are ways to serve God and build up human community.
3. Our faith provides high ethics for Christians in the workplace. 
4. Our faith gives us the basis for reconceiving the very way in which our kind of work is done. Every society has a map of what jobs are most important. With the gospel at the centre of our worldview our idols come down and we value things more accurately.

The worldview behind your work:

Are you helping people think about the worldviews behind their work? Encourage them to ask questions like these:

1. What worldviews are predominant in my profession?
2. What are the underlying assumptions about meaning, morality, origin, and destiny?
3. What are the chief fears or threats? What groups or ideas are seen as the enemy?
4. What are the idols? What are the hopes?
5. What is the story line of the culture in which I live?
6. How do those worldviews affect both the form and content of my work? How can I work not just with excellence but with Christian distinctiveness?
7. Which parts of the culture's dominant views/theories are basically in line with the gospel and make it possible for me to agree with and use them?
8. Which parts of the dominant views/theories are basically irresolvable without Christ? How can Christ finish the story? In other words, where must I challenge my culture?
9. What opportunities are there in my profession for serving people, serving society as a whole and witnessing to Christ and the kingdom of God?

The church ought to help people work in three specific ways: accountably, distinctively and excellently.

Accountably. We need to provide wha Keller calls 'the most basic means of grace': prayer, mutual accountability, community and shepherding oversight to everyone regardless of work - life balance. Reflect on these questions: Should some groups meet only monthly face-to-face but weekly online? Should some church staff be released to do more frequent one-on-three shepherding and discipleship?

At Redeemer they have 'vocational fellowships' made up of Christians in the same vocation who band together to minister to one another in the ways mentioned above.

Distinctively: Worldview development and training. The question for the church is this: If we believe that Jesus is Lord in every area of life, how do we train our people in the practice of that lordship? This requires some older accomplished Christians in a field, younger arriving Christians in a field and teachers knowledgable in the Bible, theology and church history.

Excellently: Mentoring and cultural production. Discipleship and entreprenuership within the workplace. At Redeemer they have an annual 'Dragon's Den' type thing for profit and non-profit ventures. In these competitions those who present plans must show how the gospel informs the integration of their faith and work.

Part 8: Movement Dynamics

Chapter 27: Movements and Institutions



Keller starts by describing the problem created by pioneering missions of the 19th C. Too often these missions created dependant churches unable to reproduce themselves since they were dependant upon the missions organisation/denomination to provide them with money and leaders. A different approach pioneered by the likes of Hudson Taylor sought to create independent churches able to reproduce themselves from inception. Hudson Taylor and the like:

Wanted churches to have a dynamism that made them able to grow from within without needing to be propped up with money and leaders from outside. They wanted these churches to be more than just sound institutions; they wanted them to be vital and dynamic movements.

Church growth. Referring back to the garden analogy in chapter 1 Keller reminds us that church growth considers at least three different dynamics: The skill/diligence of the gardener, the soil's fertility and the weather conditions. Only one of these aspects of growth has to do with our ability and effort, the other two rely on God's sovereignty. Keller makes the useful point that a lot of church-growth gurus tend only to emphasise the 'human dynamic' and don't give enough due attention to 'God's sovereignty'.

Movements and institutions. It is not the case that movements are good and institutions are bad. Organisations should have both institutional characteristics and movement dynamics. Institutionalising things helps. Keller uses the example of buying groceries. There are institutionalised ways of buying groceries that shops change at their peril. For organisations institutionalising can be a useful when it preserves an established authority that preserves values from the past. Institutions bring order to life and establish many of the conditions for human flourishing.

Movements however have more to do with the assertion of individual preference and bringing forth the realities of the future.

Four key characteristics of movements would be:

Vision, sacrifice, flexibility with unity and spontaneity

1. Compelling vision of the future. Movements state 'if this is where you want to go, come along with us.' Whereas in an institution it is the rules and established patterns that guides day-to-day choices, in a movement it is the shared vision. This motivates all manner of activity.
2. Sacrificial commitment due to shared vision. In the early days of any movement the main actors often work without compensation, constantly living in the threat of bankruptcy. There is no more practical index of whether your church has movement dynamics than examining whether you have a culture of sacrifice. If top leaders of the church are the only ones making all the sacrifices, then you don't have a movement culture.
3. Generous flexibility toward other organisations and people outside their own membership.
4. They spontaneously produce new ideas and leaders from within. Institutions tend to reward leadership according to tenure and the accrual of accepted qualifications and credentials whereas movements take risks and hire/reward based on results.

David Hurst a Harvard scholar sums up how movements become institutions:

Vision becomes strategy, teams become structure, networks become organisations and recognition becomes compensation.

We mustn't however draw up too many 'good = movement', 'bad = institution' in our thinking. As much as there is a lot to be avoided about institutionalising church, the reality is that movements have to institutionalise aspects of what they're aiming for if they're to be effective. Keller states:

The vision becomes a 'tradition' that the movement guards and passes on... Any vision that is compelling will be a big one and big visions require long-term effort - an effort that will require for example, brining in enough revenue so that the founders can pay off their credit cards and have enough to raise their families.

 He then helpfully says:

A movement that refuses to take on some organisational characteristics - authority, tradition, unity of belief and quality control - will fragment and dissipate.

The job of the movement leader is to steer the ship safely between the two perils of a movement losing its vitality or its effectiveness.

Chapter 28: The Church as an organised organism

As much as we clarify the differences between movements and institutions, Kellers says, we must recognise that:

churches are and must be institutions. But they must also be movements. 

The scriptures envision churches that are both organism and organisation. They are organised organisms.

The biblical language implies that there is an organic, self-propagating, dynamic power operating within the church - the word of God bearing fruit all on its own with little institutional support. And yet whenever Paul sees a church started he very quickly appoints leaders to cultivate it and emoby the church's apostolically inherited teaching and purpose.

From the beginning the church was both institution and movement. The dual nature of the church is grounded in the work of the Spirit, and it is the Spirit who makes the church simultaneously a vital organism and a structures organisation. 

Jesus: the General and special office

He was prophet (since he preached and embodied God's word and character) but also priest:

While a prophet is an advocated for God before people, a priest is an advocate for the people before God's presence, ministering with mercy and sympathy. 

The General office of believers

1. Every believer is a prophet. Christians are called to witness to the truth before non believing friends and neighbours and also to admonish believers with the word of Christ. The assumption is that word of Christ is dwelling in us richly.

2. The Bible calls every believer a priest. We are to daily offer ourselves as living sacrifices but also 'do good and share with others' (H13:16)

3. Every believer is a King. We rule and reign with Christ (Eph. 2:6). We are to confess our sins to one another, not just an elder, we are called to minister to each other, to pray for one another. The kingly authority in each believer also means that each one of us has been empowered and called to defeat the world, flesh and devil.

The Spirit-equipped calling of every believer to be a prophet, priest and king has been called the 'general office' we each occupy.

Keeping a healthy understanding of this prevents us from becoming a top-down, conservative, innovation-allergic bureaucracy. 

 The Special office of minister

The Spirit gives every Christian believer spiritual gifts for ministry to ensure the church remains able to produce innovation and life from 'grassroots'. For these gifts to best be utilised within the church requires some level of governance and organisation or structure.

The distinctive blueprint for your church - the pattern of ministries God desires it to have - is shaped by the gifts assigned to the leaders and members by Jesus himself.

Centuries of history have taught us that it is quite difficult to keep order and ardor together. There needs to be a healthy, organised and honouring of all the gifts in place.

Movement dynamics within the local church

A compellingly articulated church vision is in reality a contextualised way of expressing the biblical teaching about the gospel and the work of the church.

Selfless devotion is not something that leaders can create (apart from emotional manipulation). Only leaders who have the vision and devotion can kindle this sacrificial spirit in others.

Movement-oriented churches think more about reaching the city, while institutionalised churches put emphasis on growing their church's particular expression or denomination.

Movement dynamics are often created by social and external factors. One writer points out that it is in settings where the church has been marginalised and Christians rejected (even though there may not be any overt persecution), that they also become the most active missionally. Think about how the Jews and gays, a small minority in society have gained such a loud voice and been so missionally active.

It isn't a size thing: Experience has shown that churches and ministries of all sizes can have an institutionalised form or can exhibit movement dynamics.

Spontaneity without top-down command enables growth.

Organising for movement dynamics:

The Bible instructs churches to have elders but it says virtually nothing about how this team is to be organised. A key to navigating the creative tension of scripture is to avoid allowing humanly made structures to become idols.

The way God renews his people in the OT is a helpful pattern for church renewal for us:

1. The people returned to biblical texts in order to remember the things God had called them to do and be.
2. They looked forward to the next chapter, to the new challenges facing them.
3. They rededicated their lives and resources to God for the next stage of the journey.

This renewal must happen frequently in any church for it to remain an organised organism.

Church Planting as a movement dynamic

A church that is an organised organism will exhibit movement dynamics not only inside but also beyond itself.

A key aspect of a healthy church is church planting and that planting must be natural and customary, not traumatic and episodic.

Normal ministry in Acts:

1) They evangelised (or 'gospeled') the city. To 'gospel' is to do a great deal more than preach sermons. Paul preached in synagogues, shared in small group Bible studies, spoke in marketplaces, lead discussions in rented halls, and spoke to people one-to-one.
2) Incorporation into community. New believers were 'congregated' into a community that assembles regularly.
3) Leadership development. In each place Paul appointed a plurality of elders who took on the task of teaching and shepherding the people in the faith.

When Paul began meeting with them (the converts) they were called 'disciples' (A14:22) but when he left them they were known as 'churches' (A14:23).

To put it simply, the multiplication of churches is as natural in the book of Acts as the multiplication of individual converts.

 Churches are planted by pioneering work or by churches giving planting new congregations.

We should work to make church planting natural.

A natural church planting mind-set means that church leaders will think of church planting as just one of the things the church does along with everything else. Church planting should not be like building a building - one big traumatic event followed by a deep collective sigh of relief that it's done.

To make church planting natural a church must:

1. Be willing to give away resources and lose control of your money, members and leaders.

2. Be willing to give up some control of the shape of the ministry itself.

3. Be willing to care for the kingdom even more than for your tribe.

Ultimately though we don't look to Paul to teach us about church planting, we look to Jesus.

Objections:

But we have churches now. We should renew existing ones rather than plant new ones!

We need fully-evangelistic churches rather than evangelistic events. Experience teaches that many of the people who make 'decisions' for Christ at one off events, don't result in changed lives. Why?

Many decisions are not true spiritual conversions; they are only the beginning of a journey of seeking God... Many people come to faith through a process of mini-decisions.

To summarise: Vigorous church planting is one of the best ways to renew the existing churches of a city, as well as the best single way to grow the whole body of Christ in a city.

The 1% Rule:

Lyle Schaller talks about the 1% rule: 'Each year any association of churches should plant new congregations at the rate of 1% of their existing total; otherwise, that association is in maintenance and decline. If an association wants to grow 50% plus in a generation, it must plant 2-3% per year.

How many churches does the city need? Answer: Far more than you think.

Because of the institutionalised pull on churches it is inevitable that some in a city are enduring because of being continually revitalised, some lose flexibility, some stagnate and some die - each year.

We should not simply aim to maintain the church's traditional place in a city or society. We long to see Christianity grow exponentially in conversions, churches and influence in our city. While it requires many kinds of ministries to achieve this outcome, aggressive church planting is the trigger for them all.

How to plant a church: the stages

LEARN - about people in your community, seek to know them, what their fears and hoeps are. Interview and read sociological reports on them. Create a profile of the religious bodies int eh area. How is the church doing? How is it organised?

LOVE - grow in your love for God by learning to maintain healthy spirituality. Cultivate good gospel habits. Begin to share the gospel and spiritually direct people in your neighbourhood and community. Model the gospel through community service and in your family life. Experience the gospel in deep community as you develop friendships.

LINK - Embody the gospel and show how it connects with the people you're wanting to reach. What will make the people in your neighbourhood glad that you're there? Connect with individuals and community leaders and begin to meet the perceived needs of the community.

LAUNCH - Develop action steps and goals that be used as benchmarks to track progress. Reality will always alter your plan, but the planning process will equip you to deal with surprises and new realities in a way that is informed by and consistent with your model and vision. Include these basics: goals for funding and how tot reach them. Goals for concrete ministries and how to reach them. Goals for leadership development and how to reach them.

The effectiveness of plants

New church planting is the best way to increase the number of believers in a city, and one of the best ways to renew the whole body of Christ. The evidence for this statement is strong - biblically, sociologically and historically. Nothing else has the consistent impact of dynamic, extensive church planting.

Chapter 30: The City and the Gospel Ecosystem

It takes more than one type of church to reach a city.

Unity is not simply the work of the Spirit but the very instrument through which the Spirit works. This is why it is vital to maintain the unity of the Spirit.

Because of this belief:

Redeemer Presbyterian Church has for a number of years given money and resources to churches of other denominations that are planting churches. We have helped to start Pentecostal churches, Baptist churches, and Anglican churches, as well as Presbyterian churches. Four our efforts we have received sharp criticism and a lot of amazed stares. 

Statement worth getting in your heart:

There is no single way of doing church that employs the right biblical or even the right cultural model.

 Keller shares form his experience of being pastor at a small community church for 9 years. He wasn't aware of the different ministry emphases a church can have (doctrine/community/worship/evangelism/justice) and so tried to impose the one model of healthy church he had seen previously in a college city that did intense Bible studies:

Years after I left this church, the congregation hosted a reception for Kathy and me on the twenty-fifth anniversary of my ordination. At one point in the festivities, a number of people shared one thing they remembered hearing me say during my ministry among them. It struck me afterward that not one person quoted my words from a sermon! Every single person shared something I had said during one-on-one pastoral care. 

Without an acceptance of the value of different church models and the realisation that you cannot be a church that is excellent/emphasised at everything you'll struggle to both appreciate the catholicity of the church and be as fruitful as you might otherwise be:

Your own movement may plant cookie-cutter churches in neighbourhoods where that model is inappropriate or may employ leaders whose gifts don't fit it. Your own movement would risk becoming too homogenous, reaching only on kind of neighbourhood or one kind of person, and fail to reflect the God-ordained diversity of humanity in your church. As much as we want to believe that most people will want to become our particular kind of Christian, it is not true.

 Producing a movement and being effective in reaching people.

Referring again to the metaphor of gardening Keller points out that we cannot produce a movement on our own:

Gardening is the way we humanly contribute to the movement. But the second set of factors in a movement - the conditions - belongs completely to God. He can open individual hearts ('soil') to the Word ('seed') in any numbers he sovereignly chooses. And he can also open a culture to the gospel as a whole ('weather'). 

In working well with others Keller gives a list of 'how to do polemics' (acknowledge and challenge differences). He stresses the need to represent others fairly, not attribute beliefs to them that they don't hold, represent their opinion in its strongest form and seek to persuade rather than antagonise. He quote Calvin on a good point about popularity:

'There are, as you know, two kinds of popularity: the one when we seek favour from motives of ambition and the desire of pleasing; the other, when, by fairness and moderation, we gain their esteem so as to make them teachable by us.' John Calvin

What is the ecosystem that the Holy Spirit uses to produce a gospel movement? Keller picture it as three concentric rings

First ring: Contextualised Theological Vision
Second ring: Church planting and church renewal movements
Third ring: Specialised ministries

Tipping points that led to change:

In sociological terms neighbourhoods stay largely the same if the new types of residents comprise less than 5% of the population. When the number of new residents reaches somewhere between5-25% the whole neighbourhood shifts and undergoes rapid and significant change.

Evangelical Christians (as a stereotype) are as strange and off-putting to urban residents as gay people used to be to most Americans.

How likely is it that an urban gospel movement could grow so strong that it reaches a citywide tipping point?

We know this can happen through God's grace. The history books give us examples. We see how the exponential growth of Christianity changed the Roman world in the first three centuries AD and how it changed pagan northern Europe from AD 500 to 1500. We have stories of how the evangelical awakening in the eighteenth century changed British society in the nineteenth. But we don't yet know what it would look like for one of the great culture-forming global cities of our world today to become 10% (or more) gospel-believing Christian in its core, with believers playing key roles in the arts, sciences, the academy, and business, while at the same time using their power, wealth and influence for the good of those on the margins of society.

Epilogue: Late Modernity and the Center Church

The root idea of modernity was the overturning of all authority outside the self. Until then and for a long while until that root idea took effect people were able to root their identities to a large degree in their family and their nation: Yet today, even these institutions are eroding, worn away by the 'acid' of the modern principle that individual happiness and autonomy must come before anything else. 

We're not so much 'post' modern as we are 'late' modern: The main principles of modernity, the autonomy of the individual, and personal freedom over the claims of tradition, religion, family and community, is what we have today - intensified.

Effective ministry:

It is not a cliche to say that a sense of inadequacy is a prerequisite for any success you will ever have in such a ministry.

And here's a great illustration and quote to end this book (and these notes) on:

'Palm Monday'

The little donkey awoke with a smile on his face. He had been dreaming of the previous day. He stretched and then happily walked out into the street, but the many passersby simply ignored him. Confused, he went over to the crowded market area. With his ears held high with pride he strutted right down the middle of it. "Here I am, people!" he said to himself. But they stared in confusion, and some angrily struck him to drive him away. "What do you think you are doing, you ass, walking into the marketplace like this?"

"Throw your garments down," he said crossly. "Don't you know who I am?" They just looked at him in amazement. 

Hurt and confused, the donkey returned home to his mother. "I don't understand," he said to her. "Yesterday they waved palm branches at me. They shouted 'Hosanna' and 'Hallelujah.' Today they treat me like I'm a nobody!"

"Foolish child," she said gently, "don't you realise that without him - you can do nothing?"

You can do this ministry with God's help - so give it all you've got. You can't do this ministry without God's help - so be at peace. Jesus captured both of these truths in one verse recorded in John's gospel: "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit' [but] apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5)