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What should Americans learn from the post-Christian culture of western Europe? In this short interview, Steve Timmis talks about how the church is God's mission strategy and why Americans should learn from Europe.

Total Church

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis present a vision for churches centered on gospel community. Find out more.

1. The opportunity for extensive culture-making in the U.S.

In an interview, sociologist Peter Berger observed that in the U.S. evangelicals are shifting from being largely a blue-collar constituency to becoming a college educated population.

His question is, will Christians going into the arts, business, government, the media, and film

• assimilate to the existing baseline cultural narratives so they become in their views and values the same as other secular professionals and elites?
• seal off and privatize their faith from their work so that, effectively, they do not do their work in any distinctive way?
• or will they do enough new Christian 'culture-making' in their fields to change things?

2. The rise of Islam

How do Christians relate to Muslims when we live side by side in the same society? The record in places like Africa and the Middle East is not encouraging! This is more of an issue for the Western church in Europe than in the U.S., but it is going to be a growing concern in America as well.

How can Christians be at the very same time a) good neighbors, seeking their good whether they convert or not, and still b) attractively and effectively invite Muslims to consider the gospel?

3. The new non-Western Global Christianity

The demographic center of Christian gravity has already shifted from the West to Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The rising urban churches of China may be particularly influential in the future. But the West still has the educational institutions, the money, and a great deal of power.

What should the relationship of the older Western churches be to the new non-Western church? How can we use our assets to serve them in ways that are not paternalistic? How can we learn from them in more than perfunctory ways?

4. The growing cultural remoteness of the gospel

The basic concepts of the gospel—sin, guilt and accountability before God, the sacrifice of the cross, human nature, afterlife—are becoming culturally strange in the West for the first time in 1500 years. As Lesslie Newbigin has written, it is time now to 'think like a missionary'—to formulate ways of communicating the gospel that both confront and engage our increasingly non-Christian Western culture.

How do we make the gospel culturally accessible without compromising it? How can we communicate it and live it in a way that is comprehensible to people who lack the basic 'mental furniture' to even understand the essential truths of the Bible?

5. The end of prosperity?

With the economic meltdown, the question is, will housing values, endowments, profits, salaries, and investments go back to growing at the same rates as they have for the last twenty-five years, or will growth be relatively flat for many years to come? If so, how does the Western church, which has become habituated to giving out of fast-increasing assets, adjust in the way it carries out ministry? For example, American ministry is now highly professionalized—church staffs are far larger than they were two generations ago, when a church of 1,000 was only expected to have, perhaps, two pastors and a couple of other part-time staff. Today such a church would have probably eight to ten full-time staff members.

Also, how should the stewardship message adjust? If discretionary assets are one-half of what they were, more risky, sacrificial giving will be necessary to do even less ministry than we have been doing.

On top of this, if we experience even one significant act of nuclear or bio-terrorism in the U.S. or Europe, we may have to throw out all the basic assumptions about social and economic progress we have been working off for the last 65 years. In the first half of the 20th century, we had two World Wars and a Depression. Is the church ready for that? How could it be? What does that mean?

Copyright © 2010 by Tim Keller. Used by permission.
Check out more content from Dr. Keller at Redeemer City to City.

Resurgence Literature

Re:Lit is a ministry of Resurgence. There you will find a growing line of books to help guide the resurgence of the new reformed. Find out more.

Making Men-Catchers: Click | View Series

Matthew 4:19—And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

Our desire should be to be men-catchers; and the way to attain to that sacred art is to be ourselves thoroughly captured by the great Head of the College of Fishermen. When Jesus draws us we shall draw men.

A MODEL FOR US: "Fishers of men."

The man who saves souls is like a fisher upon the sea.

1. A fisher is dependent and trustful.
2. He is diligent and persevering.
3. He is intelligent and watchful.
4. He is laborious and self-denying.
5. He is daring, and is not afraid to venture upon a dangerous sea.
6. He is successful. He is no fisher who never catches anything.

See the ordination of successful ministers. They are made, not born; made by God, and not by mere human training.

See how we can partake in the Lord's work, and be specimens of his workmanship: "Follow me, and I will make you."

Adapted from Charles Spurgeon's sermon notes, which are in the public domain.

Vintage Church

In this book, Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears discuss the essentials of what it means to be a biblical church. Find out more.

Making Men-Catchers: Click | View Series

Matthew 4:19—And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

Our desire should be to be men-catchers; and the way to attain to that sacred art is to be ourselves thoroughly captured by the great Head of the College of Fishermen. When Jesus draws us we shall draw men.

GOD'S ROLE: "I will make you."

Our following Jesus secures our education for soul-winning.

1. By our following Jesus he works conviction and conversion in men: he uses our example as a means to this end.
2. By our discipleship the Lord makes us fit to be used.
   • True soul-winners are not self-made, but Christ-made.
   • The making of men-catchers is a high form of creation
3. By our personal experience in following Jesus he instructs us till we become proficient in the holy art of soul-winning.
4. By inward warnings he guides us what, when, and where to speak.
   These must be followed up carefully if we would win men.
5. By his Spirit he qualifies us to reach men.
   The Spirit comes to us by our keeping close to Christ.
6. By his secret working on men's hearts he speeds us in our work.
   He makes us true fishers by inclining men to enter the gospel net.

Adapted from Charles Spurgeon's sermon notes, which are in the public domain.

Rain City Hymnal

The first offering from Re:Sound is the Rain City Hymnal. Listen online and get the record from the Re:Sound website. Find out more.

Making Men-Catchers: Click | View Series

Matthew 4:19—And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

Conversion is most fully displayed when it leads converts to seek the conversion of others: we most truly follow Christ when we become fishers of men.

Our desire should be to be men-catchers; and the way to attain to that sacred art is to be ourselves thoroughly captured by the great Head of the College of Fishermen. When Jesus draws us we shall draw men.

Our ROLE: "Follow me."

1. We must be separated to him, that we may pursue his object.
• We cannot follow him unless we leave others (Matt. 6:24).
• We must belong to him, that his design may be our design.
2. We must abide with him, that we may catch his spirit.
• The closer our communion with Christ, the greater our power with souls. Near following means full fellowship.
3. We must obey him, that we may learn his method.
• Teach what he taught (Matt. 28:20).
• Teach as he taught (Matt. 11:29; 1 Thess. 2:7).
• Teach such as he taught, namely, the poor, the base, children, etc.
4. We must believe him, that we may believe true doctrine.
• Christ's own teaching catches men; let us repeat it.
• Faith in Jesus on our part is a great force to produce faith.
• We must copy his life that we may win his blessing from God; for God blesses those who are like his Son.

Adapted from Charles Spurgeon's sermon notes, which are in the public domain.

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