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Acts 29 Director Scott Thomas talks about the growing diversity within our movement when it comes to how to "do church" in this recent interview clip.
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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.
Tim Chester and Steve Timmis present a vision for churches centered on gospel community. Find out more.
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
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?
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?
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?
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.
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.
The man who saves souls is like a fisher upon the sea.
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.
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.
Our following Jesus secures our education for soul-winning.
Adapted from Charles Spurgeon's sermon notes, which are in the public domain.
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.
Adapted from Charles Spurgeon's sermon notes, which are in the public domain.
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During a recent trip to Taiwan as part of the Upstream Collective, missiologist Ed Stetzer asked the question “Why are so many missional Christians uninvolved in God’s global mission?”
Read the whole post, including Stetzer’s proposed solutions, on his blog here:
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Learn more about Acts 29 at acts29network.org.
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.
In Light of the Ages Series: Click | View Series
"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." –John 1:14
This new era can be unnerving, especially if you are a creature of habit. The constant stepping into a new palette, the continual discovery of fresh ground, the never-ending job of being a pioneer can take its toll on some. But there is something common to even the world moving at our speed today. It is a thing that anchors and gives basis and meaning in this fast-paced flow. It is the person and presence of God.
The Scriptures say before the mountains were made, God was, and that he is God from generation to generation. And that one generation comes and another goes, but God remains the same.
The formula of incarnation is not just being present. John 1:14 makes it clear that Jesus was present with a fullness of Truth and Grace. Those are unchanging attributes of God. They existed before the incarnation. It was God being present in human form that amazed the Galilean fishermen.
Presence alone leaves us imbalanced and with only the empty draw of the age. The Industrial Age could tempt people into pragmatism, to think that simply by creating an acceptable system, they could make something work without the presence of the Holy Spirit.
This world without artifacts—the world of constant change—can mesmerize many with dizzying daily revelation of the new. In the Information Age, the nightmare is that people, especially church leaders, could become so enamored with the novel that they could forget the Eternal and the Permanent. They could leave Christ out as they incarnate. They could move into time without Truth, excitedly entering an age without God, and bringing to flesh—incarnation—only themselves.
Without understanding our cultural environment, we could become self-marginalizing people, holding the truth in an odd isolated bunker, sadly outside of the cultural norm. And yet, if we become people who are obsessed with culture without the love of Christ—hip without being grounded in the Eternal, trendy without Truth—ironically we are made irrelevant by our idolatry of relevancy.
Sociology is only valuable to the church when it connects to eternal truth and becomes missiology.
To be continued.
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.
Listen to Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church in Dallas, talk about why the Village is part of Acts 29. From his talk at the 2009 San Diego Boot Camp. Listen here.
The Resurgence is a reformed, complementarian, missional movement that trains missional leaders to serve the Church to transform cultures for Christ.
