The Power of the Whine
Yesterday Bill Streger posted a very intriguing blog post asking tough, critical questions of Acts 29 and the types of church planters they were recruiting. Bill is an Acts 29 planter, so he's an insider with insight that you and I don't have. His main contention with Acts 29 was that the recruits he was interviewing were all the same. In his words, “they all sound the same.” Apparently, they looked the same, talked the same, developed the same plans of action, and were all trying to reach the same hip, urban, sophisticated crowd. I thought his post was great and his point “that uncool people need Jesus too” was worth considering. So I commented...
Have you ever had that moment where you wish you could immediately hit unsend? As I was reading my comments right after I posted them, I wished I could’ve hit unsend. It wasn't the content of my comment but rather the tone of the comment. I sounded like a spoilt 11 year old girl.
"My wife and I have been working in Europe and concerned for Europe for the past 8 years. We’re moving back to Europe (to Portugal) in May which only has .08% born-again population according to the last sociology census. The sad/ironic thing is that we’re trying to scrape money together for our project and at the same time have been told that if we were considering planting in Las Vegas or Salt Lake that we would have an all expenses paid church planting career if we wanted it. I know a group that is pouring over 1 MILLION dollars into this project alone. There are more Christians in Mormon Salt Lake than in the entire country of Portugal and we can’t get $2000/month in support.
Am I missing something?"
The reason why I'm posting this here is two fold:
1) be careful not only of what you write on other people's blogs but how you write it. I think I gave the foreign mission crowd a black eye amongst the urban church planters by sniveling my way through that comment.
2) try to make your point when and where it will be heard. There's nothing wrong with my comment per-se. It's true. Why is it that if I wanted to plant somewhere in N.America I would have a $50,000 salary to do so today? Why are most church planting/missional orgs/congregations funneling MILLIONS of dollars into American cities and doing the same type of ministry as everyone else? Why do urban American church planters get money thrown at them but those of us wanting to plant and grow churches on foreign soil have to grovel on hands and knees? Not sure. But, having that kind of discussion is appropriate here, not on a blog post about Acts 29.
So here it is, the apology and warning. I’m sorry for sounding like a spoiled girl scout and next time I’ll be more careful with what I say or write.
Why is church planting important? (Part 3)
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
One of the great promises of God to his people foreshadowing the work of Jesus was the promise that a part of his salvific work would be a new heart, one that no longer desires sin and self, but one that longs to please God and seeks his fame as well as the well-being and salvation of our fellow man. Paul writes to Titus in Titus 2:11-14:
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
Jesus, through the Holy Spirit helps us throw off the yoke of worldliness and cleanses us from our worldly infection. Not only are we saved from something but saved to something. God works in his people and his church to cease producing evil culture and start producing a redeemed culture; “a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”
So how exactly can this look in the realm of today’s church planting? In the past, the image that comes to my mind is of missionaries going to exotic locations and trading shirts and ties for the loincloths of the “savages.” This reveals a belief that all of culture is bad and must be completely swapped out, it will not work in the West. As a participant in and member of Western culture there is much that can be celebrated while planting churches and transforming culture. Good food, fine wine, stunning architecture, productive workers, happy families, fun vacations, God honoring art and cinema, and cool gadgets can all be celebrated and embraced, as long as they conform to the word of God. “...whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4:8 As Christians we should be the first to champion these things without falling into excess; God has not called us to monastacism. However, those things opposed to God (as I mentioned earlier) must be redeemed or eradicated, meaning if something cannot be redeemed (made holy) it must go. Pornography for instance cannot be redeemed, it is an aberration of God’s design, a perversion of holy sex within the confines of marriage and cannot remain in the heart or mind of a child of God. A love for food however can be redeemed once someone becomes a Christian and learns self-control so that food is no longer their master. Healthy churches that plant healthy churches and understand these distinctions are our best hope to transform culture and reach the increasingly hostile West. Healthy churches as God designed them filled with redeemed people living redeemed lives is the primary means by which God is transforming us and putting an end to the soul diseases of our Modern/Post-Modern culture. This is our vision and the reason we have joined KontaktMission; God loves the West and wants it renewed and because of Jesus, so do we.
Why is church planting important? (Part 2)
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
Out of the ashes of sinful culture because of Jesus, Paul says, comes a redeemed culture formed and fashioned into the type of culture that God desired all along. It is a culture where people who lived estranged from one another are made one, where people actually get along, enjoy each other’s company, have a common purpose, where what they produce by design and intent is holy and good instead of sinful and ugly. What do we call this new culture? The ekklesia or the church. It is the medium where God (re)creates in Jesus what we ruined through sin.
So why is it important to plant churches? Because God wants to redeem culture and seeks to do that through his body, the church.
If you’re following my train of thought then you should see where this is going. It is high time we put more focus, more resources, more emphasis on planting in “Western” culture because this is where global influential culture is produced. It’s like trying to save a town from the flood of a broken dam; if money, resources and man power are sent in to put down sand bags and no one is sent to deal with the break in the dam wall its a waste of time. It’s not a bad thing to have been sending missionaries, planting churches, and teaching Jesus in the cultures of the East or in South America. It’s not bad that there has been a focus on the 10-40 window where 8 in 10 of the worlds poor live, because in all of these places people need Jesus. However, have you ever seen pictures of people in the East? Usually they are wearing designs from the west, they are listening to “western” music, watching “western” television, emulating “western” *ahem* stars. For much of the past 50+ years the focus has been on putting spiritual sand bags around the neighborhood but very few have been sent to repair the hole in the dam wall. The flood of debased, wicked culture from the West, being consumed in the East must be addressed. That means taking a hard look at the efforts being made to preach Jesus and plant New Testament churches in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. This is one of the reasons why we are a part of KontaktMission, because of their commitment to the cause of Jesus, planting churches where culture is produced and where it needs redemption. It is important that we seek to redeem the producers of culture...
Why is church planting important? (Part 1)
First off, we need to define culture. I am using the sociological definition for culture when I use the term. Simply put, culture is the thing produced when people of various walks of life come together to live out life together. There are several places in the Bible that describe the outcome of this type of coming together:
“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Genesis 6:5
Continuing on in Genesis we read this story:
“Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” Genesis 11:1-4
Now, let me be clear for my artistic friends, not all culture that is produced is bad but there seems to be a tendency for sinful humans to produce sinful culture more often than not. If you’ve ever been inside a museum of modern art you will understand what I mean; where else can you witness in one room an artist’s painting so exquisite that it brings tears of joy and awe to your eyes and in another room a piece of trash so hideous that tears of shame well up and children run and hide? (Anyone seen that painting?) Because we are simultaneously made in the image of God and fallen because of our broken sinfulness we tend to produce both. Culture produced by humans is important to God and when they produce sinful culture they are accountable to him. In both stories from Genesis God poured out his wrath upon those sinful cultures which should demonstrate to us that God cares about culture and as Christians, we should too.
There is however a type of culture that God rejoices with gladness over...
