Everything is Backwards

I wonder how many young men would choose to enter the ministry if they knew, from the very beginning, that their churches would never exceed a few dozen people, their salary would always be meager, their church budgets would always be tight, and all their labors would be scarcely noticed by anyone outside of their faithful few?

Carl Trueman writes along these lines at his reformation21 blog in a recent post. In a world that is driven by larger than life celebrity personalities, it is no surprise that the church has a few of its own, leading large churches, writing books, and posting podcasts for listeners around the world.

Trueman notes that these celebrity churches are led by celebrity pastors who have one-in-a-million type gifts and it is unreasonable to try to replicate this into other churches.

Enter new Calvinism. Time Magazine recently pegged new Calvinism as the third most influential idea that is changing the world right now. And many of the celebrity pastors are staunchly Calvinistic, leading very large and influential churches in unlikely places, such as Seattle, NYC, or Minneapolis.

Here is the concern: new Calvinism’s ’success’ can turn it into a church growth fad. As more and more people become disillusioned with the spiritual fluff and high-tech frills of seeker driven ministry, new Calvinism offers depth and Bible meat to chew on.

Trueman writes:

Much has rightly been made by Reformed people of the problem of an understanding of Christianity that is driven by pragmatism as exemplified by the Joel Osteen `be a Christian and be a better you’ mentality; much criticism has also been lodged against the church growth movement because of its tendency…to find out what they like, and how they like it, and let them have it just that way.  But the dangerous thing about pragmatism is that it does not necessarily reject the truth; it merely renders it subordinate to the desired end.

To be precise, pragmatism evaluates means in terms of impact and results; and the implication of this is that even means that are intrinsically true can still be co-opted by pragmatism simply because they seem to be achieving the desired results at some particular point in time.

Now the gospel has always been true, in the good years and the lean; and we need to be certain that the current enthusiasm for Reformed theology is rooted in an acknowledgement of its intrinsic truth, and not simply in the fact that, at this point in time, Calvinism is cool enough to pull in the punters.

Who in the world would have ever thought, in our pluralistic time, that Calvinism would actually become hip enough to be reduced to a church growth strategy? What lies behind its popularity, however, is the power of the gospel which remains hidden in many other church growth strategies that promote self-help and feel good fluff.

There is a disillusioning danger for pastors here. On the surface, it appears that people are just flocking to churches because of the gospel, and to preach it hard and bold only swells the masses. But if Trueman’s observations are true, people may actually be flocking to Christian celebrity personalities who are on the forefront of new Calvinism, while other faithful men who are preaching the gospel faithfully, but lack the star appeal of these celebrities, cannot reproduce the same results.

What we need to pray for and prepare young ministers for is this sobering fact:

In the real world, many, perhaps most,  of us worship and work in churches of 100 people or less; life is not loud and exciting; each Lord’s Day we go through the same routines of worship services, of hearing the gospel proclaimed, of taking the Lord’s Supper, of teaching Sunday School… [We] keep going, giving, and praying as we can; we try to be faithful in the little entrusted to us.  It’s boring, it’s routine, and it’s the same, year in, year out.

Therefore, in a world where excitement, celebrity, and cultural power are the ideal, it is tempting amidst the circumstances of ordinary church life to forget that this, the routine of the ordinary, the boring, the plodding, is actually the norm for church life and has been so throughout most places for most of the history of the church; that mega-whatevers are the exception, not the rule; and that the church has survived throughout the ages not just – or even primarily – because of the high profile firework displays of the great and the good, but because of the day to day faithfulness of the mundane, anonymous, non-descript  people who constitute most of the church, and who do the grunt work and the tedious jobs that need to be done.   History does not generally record their names; but the likelihood is that you worship in a church which owes everything, humanly speaking, to such people.

Amen. Humbling words, these.

My prayer is to be willing to toil away in obscurity, and to be faithful to the end.

I am in the middle of planting a church, Christ the King Church. We are in the core group development phase, and so this post from Luke Simmons is very helpful. Read the whole thing here, but here’s the basic list:

1. Your primary job is to create a culture that you and God will be happy about 10 years from now.

2. Your new pastor and church will eventually disappoint you and let you down.

3. Work to create an evangelistic texture to every ministry environment.

4. Always talk as though nobody knows who your heroes are. Don’t use names of people like “Tim Keller,” “John Piper,” and so on without explaining who they are.

5. Be known by what you’re for, not what you’re against.

6. Don’t moralize your personal preferences.

7. Leave your current church on great terms (or go make it right if you didn’t).

8. Relentlessly involve new people.

9. Be ready for change. Every decision is tentative because church planting requires constant flexibility and adaptation.

10. Direction, not intention, determines your destination.

HT: Acts29 blog

Great post on Baptisttwentyone.com about using hip hop and basketball as a means of reaching people.

The idea:

When we took that drive back in the summer and observed this sub-culture we recognized immediately two predominant things that interested them: basketball and hip hop music. We knew that we had the facilities and guys who could connect with these young men through basketball. We said, “This is out there but what might really be cool is a hip hop service of some kind with open gym afterwards…”

The young men:

They were 19-29 year old young men who play basketball nearly every single day, wear baggy clothes strategically placed to show off inked skin, work (or don’t work) part time to support various addictions, go from relationship to relationship sometimes producing children, and are heavily influenced regardless of race by hip hop music. These men, we recognized, may be directionless now and lacking maturity, but in reality they are the future of our community. They are in desperate need of being rescued by King Jesus and maturing into a manhood that is more about biblical masculinity than a macho bravado and locker room mentality. We decided that we were going to try our best and go after these guys.

What did we do? We started an open gym night in an amazing gym facility that God has provided at our campus. We began to have 20 or so guys showing up every week with whom we were building relationships. Then, we began to plan and promote a community 3 on 3 tournament. The event was a huge success. We had over 150 people in attendance. That meant more relationships and more chances for Gospel witness because since then we have been having at least 50 guys show up for each week’s open gym.

Read it all here.

The Acts 29 blog (Acts 29 is a church planting network of which I am a part), posted this summary of American Christianity from Ray Ortlund, Jr.

Ortlund describes our American idolatry, which not the real Jesus, but a shallow phony.

Our local deity is not Jesus. He goes by the name Jesus. But in reality, our local deity is Jesus Jr.

Our little Jesus is popular because he is useful. He makes us feel better while conveniently fitting into the margins of our busy lives. But he is not terrifying or compelling or thrilling. When we hear the gospel of Jesus Jr., our casual response is “Yeah, that’s what I believe.” Jesus Jr. does not confront us, surprise us, stun us. He looks down on us with a benign, all-approving grin. He tells us how wonderful we really are, how entitled we really are, how wounded we really are, and it feels good.

Jesus Jr. appeals to the flesh. He does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. He is not able to understand them, much less impart them, because Jesus Jr. is the magnification of Self, the idealization of Self, the absolutization of Self turning around and validating Self, flattering Self, reinforcing Self. Jesus Jr. does not change us, because he is a projection of us.

It is time to tear down Jesus Jr. It is time to rediscover the real Jesus. Still today, even to us, his invitation stands: “Come to me” (Matthew 11:28).

Between Two Worlds has this summary of a blog post by Curtis Allen. Curtis Allen, a black man, offers some of his insights regarding black people visiting mostly white churches.

Of particular note are these four challenges to African Americans joining a predominately white congregation.

From Between Two Worlds…

Here’s an outline of part 1:

George Yancey writes in One Body One Spirit that there are seven characteristics of multi-ethnic churches that are worth noting. Some of these were surprising.

1. Inclusive Worship. Music is so important to people that when they sing to God it needs to take on a form that is culturally meaningful for them. In the Euro-white culture, we have everything from Indie-Rock, to pipe organs, to Coldplay, to acoustic folk in our churches. But others prefer a keyboard and rhythm section driven sound. I suppose in India people would want a Sitar with Ravi Shankar sound. The point is that the musical style of the church must reflect the diversity of the people that come there.

2. Diverse Leadership. Yancey writes, “multiracial leadership is important because members of different racial groups desire to feel represented by the members of the church, especially racial minorities who historically have received a lack of respect for their opinions and perspectives.”

3. An Overarching Goal. Yancey observes that many multi-ethnic churches that he studied did not make racial diversity its highest goal, but rather a necessary component to achieving an even higher goal. He notes that “there is a certain amount of racial fatigue in our society. People are tired of discussing racial issues and trying to solve racial problems. But if members of a church are committed to another and higher goal – such as winning people to Christ or serving the community – then it becomes easier for those members to accept the importance of creating a multiracial environment.” This is right on point.

Another friend of mine who pastors a multi-racial church in Cincinnati recently told me that there is a generational element to this as well. Older people, who have long memories of segregation, bussing, and Jim Crow laws, need to have their racial prejudices more directly addressed. But it is the younger generation who grew up in the “Cosby Show” era and now the “Obama” era that grow fatigued, because they do not have these same experiences that were so difficult for their parents. There should be a sensitivity to where people are. But hopefully the days of addressing race will become less tense and emotionally charged.

In downtown Cincinnati, our goal is to reach the entire area, not just the white population. Thus in my context, we must build a multi-racial church to serve the unique needs of our diverse community.

4. Intentionality. Yancey writes, “it takes work to create and sustain multiracial churches. Their development does not just happen accidentally.” A church needs to know what they are trying to do and work to achieve it. Yancey notes that churches that became multiethnic almost by accident sustained the multiethnic environment by intentionally cultivating it.

5. Personal Skills. Some of this is simply having a well developed social IQ that understands the dynamics of relationships. Pastors especially have to have good personal skills since they are the ones who will be helping people to adjust to a multiethnic environment where conflicts arise from unexpected places. Specifically, Yancey identifies “sensitivity to different needs, patience, the ability to empower others and the ability to relate to those of different races” as key personal skills.

6. Location. You can’t create a multiethnic environment in a neighborhood that is almost completely monolithic. You have to be in a location that already has the diversity in the population. And all white or all black churches in all white or all black neighborhoods shouldn’t be regarded as inferior; they just reflect their neighborhoods.

7. Adaptability. Yancey says that “a monoracial church has only a single culture to adapt to. However, by definition, a multiracial church brings into it individuals from several different cultures. Learning how to blend these cultures together is an important part of adapting to the new social reality caused by the formation of a multiracial church.”

I would say that many of these fall into the biblical category of self-denial (Mk 8:34-35). We have to be willing to die to ourselves and our own cultural preferences and be willing to adopt, to some degree, the values and preferences of other cultures. This is the 1 Corinthians 12:12-15 vision of the church: we don’t merely tolerate one another, we need one another.

To do this not only requires spiritual maturity but it creates it as well.

Tim Chester posted about different types of church communities and how the ethos of the group affects individuals.

Communities of Performance

• People talk about grace, but communicate legalism
• Unbelievers can’t imagine themselves as Christians
• Drive away broken people
• The world is seen as threatening and ‘other’
• Conversion is superficial—people are called to respectable behavior
• People are secretly hurting
• People see faith and repentance as actions that took place at conversion
• The gospel is for unbelievers

Communities of Grace

• People can see grace in action
• Unbelievers feel like they can belong
• Attract broken people
• People are loved as fellow sinners in need of grace
• Conversion is radical—people are called to transformed affections
• People are open about their problems
• People see faith and repentance as daily activities
• The gospel is for both unbelievers and believers

No, racial reconciliation isn’t dead, but perhaps Christians need to talk about the topic differently.

God has put in my heart a dream of a multi-racial church in the heart of downtown Cincinnati. In that previous sentence, there’s about three things that people have told me are foolish ideas. I have been told that (1) Cincinnati is “rough soil” for church planting, and (2) downtown Cincinnati is especially difficult, but to be (3) multi-racial is just plain out of the question.

I believe that God can and will do it, however. And right now, God has answered my prayers of raising up a core group of Christian leaders who want to see the same thing happen downtown in Cincinnati. But I have been beating my head against a wall trying to figure out how to make our group more ethnically diverse.

Yesterday, I met Alvin Sanders, the Chief Diversity Officer for the Evangelical Free denomination. He recommends talking in terms of simply “reconciliation” rather than the more emotionally charged “racial reconciliation.”

He told me that the racial reconciliation conversation is dead. Christians should be talking about how God is in the business of reconciling all things to Himself, not merely races. I agree with him, as I have argued here.

He wrote about this recently:

So let me define racial reconciliation from my perspective. To begin, the Duke Center for Reconciliation defines reconciliation as God’s initiative, restoring a broken world to God’s intentions by reconciling “to Himself all things” through Christ (Colossians 1:20): the relationship between people and God, between people themselves, and between people and God’s created earth.

It is important to note that racial division is but one of many forms of brokenness found in our world that needs to be reconciled. Therefore, reconciliation in any form is the mission of God in our broken world.

The church is the only institution that has been supernaturally commissioned to practice reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:16-21). In fact, Jesus told us that a blessing follows as we engage in bringing peace to divided situations (Matthew 5:9).

The only way reconciliation-whether racial or any other type-will become a priority within a church is if it is viewed as a mark of the gospel. Oftentimes, churches resist stressing reconciliation, offering up the explanation that they are focused on fulfilling the Great Commission.

My response is that it is impossible to fulfill the Great Commission without fulfilling the first and second greatest commandments-which, together, are a call to reconciliation (Matthew 22:37-40). Reconciling brokenness of all forms to a world dominated by political, cultural, racial, and ethnic conflict is a witness to the superiority of the authentic Christian life.

It is ironic that as I type this, many national news outlets are reporting that minorities as a whole will outnumber whites by 2043 within the United States. History has proven that with these demographic changes will come numerous racial incidents and ethnic tensions.

The church must have a uniquely Christian response to these demographic changes that reflects the love of Jesus Christ. Otherwise, we will be viewed as just another powerless institution.

Yeah, we changed the name of the church. I don’t like to backtrack and change decisions already made, but this one needed to happen. We originally named the church “Center City Church,” because it indicated our commitment to downtown and I liked the way it sounded. But this name was assigned even before we lived here, and we didn’t have a feel for the city yet.

Besides, with existing entities in Cincinnati such as “Center City Collision” and “City Center Properties” and “Cincinnati Center City Development Corp.,” it just sounded like a religious version of a name already well worn. Besides, I prefer a name that marks us in some spiritual way rather than a geographic way.

Thus, we have renamed the church “Christ the King Church.” Here’s our main reasons why:

1. It just sounds good.

2. It indicates a strong theological conviction that we share. Jesus is king and he wins.

3. Center City Church is a name with a geographical identity; Christ the King is a name with a theological identity.

4. It is fluid. I informally surveyed a number of people for their reaction to the name. Some thought it sounded Catholic or Lutheran, some thought Pentacostal, some thought African American.

I like that, because it means that people who become a part of this community from various backgrounds can have a church with a name that sounds comfortable and familiar to them.

We have also added the tag line, “a baptist community.” In an era when most church plants are eschewing denominational names, we have chosen to embrace it for a few practical reasons.

1. We are not ashamed of what we believe.

2. We do not want to be embarrassed by those who have generously provided funding to get us started.

3. The baptist tradition is a historically recognized faith tradition. We are not inventing anything new or progressive here. In fact, what we believe is very ancient and full of the beauty of tradition. We inherit the tradition of the English Puritan Baptists.

Ed Stetzer (church planting genius) says that a good church name is not going to get someone to visit your church. But a bad name can keep a person away. Thus a church name may not attract people but it certainly shouldn’t keep people away.

His scientific research has shown that Christians typically think that their denominational name is more negatively perceived by those outside the church than it actually is. After polling people inside and outside a particular faith tradition, he found that far fewer were turned off to the denomination’s name than what people on the inside thought.

Tradition (such as the word baptist indicates) implies stability and longevity. My goal and prayer is that this church would be the community that buries me and my family when we die and continues to have an impact on Cincinnati for centuries.