"We need to eat our unexciting meatloaf in our boring, single-family homes with a few more outcasts around our table."

Matthew Loftus writes well about the "boring" Christian life and the hope of the nations.  How do they fit together?  Here is his conclusion, but read the whole thing.  It's full of insight.

It is important for those of us who have grown up in cultures with strong churches & Christian institutions to recognize the concept of church-planting movements in foreign missions, particularly in regard to three self and unreached people groups principles when discussing foreign missions. For not only is there a larger percentage of faithful, boring Christians in Missouri than in Somalia, but the Christians in Missouri have developed the cultural, theological, and ecclesiological resources necessary to create new churches in their culture and language. This is not true for thousands of people groups that do not know Jesus and have no human means to learn about Him. People in North America certainly need evangelism, discipleship, and theological formation just as much as people in Central Asia. The difference is that the institutions and churches carrying out those works in North America are not merely present, but have the ability to self-sustain, self-fund, and self-reproduce in their own cultural milieu. Such institutions aren’t just virtually absent elsewhere, but often lack the resources and personnel to propagate and persist. If we are serious about the value of these institutions, we should work slowly yet tenaciously to establish them everywhere and send enough Christians to places without them so they might be strengthened. 

There are needs everywhere, of course. Not only are the suburbs of America full of lost people, they are full of Christians who need one another to stay and build one another up through fellowship, prayer, service, and worship. Raising families in an increasingly hostile and materialistic culture is hard work requiring great spiritual resources, and we ought not minimize its importance. However, if we look at the needs of the world and the concentration of wealth, power, education, health, and Biblical knowledge that we’ve been blessed with, it looks a little disproportionate—especially when it comes to the institutions that drive the growth of the church and help to keep her witness faithful. We need to be quiet and patient in a few more places. We need to use the dividends of our thrift a little more intentionally. And we need to eat our unexciting meatloaf in our boring, single-family homes with a few more outcasts around our table.

Read the rest.  

Missions: Rescuing from Hell and Renewing the World

John Piper cites an interesting sociological study and makes some astute observations concerning missions in our world today.

His conclusion:

The point is this: Conversion to faith in Christ by the Spirit through faith accomplishes two things — rescue from the wrath of God, and transformation of life. This is ultimately why Robert Woodberry found what he found. “Conversionary Protestants” changed the world, because they didn’t focus first on changing the world, but on faith in Christ. 

This means that the missionaries that will do the most good for eternity and for time — for eternal salvation and temporal transformation — are the missionaries who focus on converting the nations to faith in Christ. And then on that basis, and from that root, teach them to bear the fruit of all that Jesus commanded us (Matthew 28:20).

Read the rest.

"Progressive evangelicals can't tout social justice while side-stepping the sanctity of life."

Dan Darling and Andrew Walker:

As evangelicals who came of age during the culture wars, we're part of a generation ready to move past the pitched left-right debates. The critiques of Christian political activism have held some merit: A hyper-focus on elections, voter guides, and strategy has often buried the gospel story. Sometimes following Christ has strangely looked like following an elephant or a donkey. 

We need the hope, optimism, willingness of new generation of evangelicals to get dirty serving the poor, fighting for justice, and eschewing party labels. Their wide-eyed engagement has awakened new interest in bipartisan horrors such as human trafficking, environmental degradation, the orphan crisis, and child poverty in underdeveloped nations.
And yet, in our rush to justice, we cannot forget the prophet Micah's haunting words: 

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8, ESV) 

These words motivate our desire as God's kingdom people, to pursue justice where we can and pray for it where we cannot. But what about causes that push against the culture? Surely God's intention for his church didn't simply include only a portfolio of chic causes. 

And that leads us to the pro-life movement, dating back to the 1970s. Being pro-life was missional, incarnational, and radical way before those terms became evangelical buzzwords. And yet, caring for and advocating on behalf of the unborn remains controversial. 

Thankfully, its controversial status may be a thing of the past if trend lines continue. Younger generations are markedly more pro-life than their parents. We're observing a rising generation of pro-life Americans, many of whom (though not all) identify as Christian. 

But sadly, among progressive evangelicals, there's a reflexive hesitancy to tout or raise the banner of human life as a preeminent justice issue. 

Read the rest.  

Interacting with "The Hole in our Gospel"

D.A. Carson:

So now I come to the fairly recent and certainly very moving book by Richard Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us? This frank and appealing book surveys worldwide poverty and argues that the American failure to take up God’s mandate to address poverty is “the hole in our gospel.” Without wanting to diminish the obligation Christians have to help the poor, and with nothing but admiration for Mr Stearns’s personal pilgrimage, his argument would have been far more helpful and compelling had he observed three things: 

First, “what God expects of us” (his subtitle) is, by definition, not the gospel. This is not the great news of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. Had Mr Stearns cast his treatment of poverty as one of the things to be addressed by the second greatest commandment, or as one of several entailments of the gospel, I could have recommended his book with much greater confidence. As it is, the book will contribute to declining clarity as to what the gospel is. 

Second, even while acknowledging—indeed, insisting on the importance of highlighting—the genuine needs that Mr Stearns depicts in his book, it is disturbing not to hear similar anguish over human alienation from God. The focus of his book is so narrowly poverty that the sweep of what the gospel addresses is lost to view. Men and women stand under God’s judgment, and this God of love mandates that by the means of heralding the gospel they will be saved not only in this life but in the life to come. Where is the anguish that contemplates a Christ-less eternity, that cries, “Repent! Turn away from all your offenses. . . . Why will you die, people of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone” (Ezek 18:30–32). The analysis of the problem is too small, and the gospel is correspondingly reduced. 

Third, some studies have shown that Christians spend about five times more mission dollars on issues related to poverty than they do on evangelism and church planting. At one time, “holistic ministry” was an expression intended to move Christians beyond proclamation to include deeds of mercy. Increasingly, however, “holistic ministry” refers to deeds of mercy without any proclamation of the gospel—and that is not holistic. It is not even halfistic, since the deeds of mercy are not the gospel: they are entailments of the gospel. Although I know many Christians who happily combine fidelity to the gospel, evangelism, church planting, and energetic service to the needy, and although I know some who call themselves Christians who formally espouse the gospel but who live out few of its entailments, I also know Christians who, in the name of a “holistic” gospel, focus all their energy on presence, wells in the Sahel, fighting disease, and distributing food to the poor, but who never, or only very rarely, articulate the gospel, preach the gospel, announce the gospel, to anyone. Judging by the distribution of American mission dollars, the biggest hole in our gospel is the gospel itself.

Read D.A. Carson’s entire article.

(HT:  Dan Cruver)

A Theology of "Home"

Steve Timmis with a long, yet powerful article tracing the social conditions that have brought us to where we are today in terms of or notions of family and "home" and how the Biblical story fits into this.  These concepts are worthy of much reflection for the sake of church and mission.  His thesis:

Having tried to establish an historical perspective, let me state in fairly bold terms my thesis. The concepts of home and family are an important dimension of human identity, and there is something intrinsic to being human that craves for a context of refuge in which individuals have identity, and are accepted and secure. But the purpose of such 'units' is to offer a 'home' to the "strangers and aliens", and to face the world with an open face and welcoming arms.

Read the whole thing.  

Books by Steve Timmis here.

Care for the Socially Vulnerable in the Early Church—Aristides (2nd century)

BibleMesh Blog:

Aristides of Athens was a second-century Christian author who wrote an apology addressed to the pagan Roman emperor Hadrian (or Antoninus Pius). The purpose of Aristides’s treatise was to defend the Christian faith against false accusations during the time when the Roman government persecuted Christians. Among other things, Aristides argues that the Christian moral code surpasses the highest ethical ideals of pagan philosophers, especially as manifested by the Church’s concern for the poor and socially vulnerable.

They [Christians] help those who offend them, making friends of them; do good to their enemies. They don’t adore idols; they are kind, good, modest, sincere, they love one another; don’t despise widows; protect the orphans; those who have much give without grumbling, to those in need. When they meet strangers, they invite them to their homes with joy, for they recognize them as true brothers, not natural but spiritual. 

When a poor man dies, if they become aware, they contribute according to their means for his funeral; if they come to know that some people are persecuted or sent to prison or condemned for the sake of Christ’s name, they put their alms together and send them to those in need. If they can do it, they try to obtain their release. When a slave or a beggar is in need of help, they fast two or three days, and give him the food they had prepared for themselves, because they think that he too should be joyful, as he has been called to be joyful like themselves.[i]

Social Justice and Young Evangelicals: Encouragements and Concerns

The Upside-Down World of Jesus

Many of us in our churches think of ourselves as living upright and outstanding lives as faithful Christian women and solid Christian men, and that, therefore, God is going to accept us. He will not! All of us need to hear the law of God, taught frequently and powerfully, so that we may be convicted of sin and come to understand our continuing need for Christ. 

Jesus preaches the gospel of forgiveness to those who seem farthest away from God: the prostitutes, sinners, tax collectors, and Samaritans. Today, our equivalent would be perhaps prostitutes, drug addicts, gang members, homosexuals, adulterers, corrupt business people and politicians, and any others whom we think of as being hopelessly wrong in their beliefs and lifestyles. These people have already graduated from the school of sin, and are often deeply aware of their need and shame. It is to the people who seem farthest from truth and righteousness that Jesus preaches the good news of salvation with the utmost grace and gentleness. 

This may seem completely wrong to us, a kind of upside-down world. Think of attitudes in our society as well as our attitudes often found within the church: “Condemn the poor, the weak, the sinners! Commend the rich, the powerful, the upright!” Jesus, however, does precisely the opposite.

- Jerram Barrs, Learning Evangelism from Jesus, p. 146

"25 Things I learned from staying with Katie Davis"

Powerful post here.  Read it.

The Black Family in Politically Conservative Discourse

Very helpful thoughts here from Thabiti Anaybwile.

Evangelism and Social Renewal Are Inseparable

I found this quote profoundly helpful in light of recent debates in Reformed evangelicalism.

Given that the greatest need of people is to be reconciled with God and given that this need can only be met through the message of the gospel, it might seem logical to say that evangelism has priority. The problem is that it is not clear what "priority" means in this context. It suggests a choice between the two, and so evangelism should be chosen; it sets the two activities up as competing priorities in which social action can be neglected. We prioritize by making a list and doing the activies at the top of the list. If there is no time left for item lower down the list, then this does not matter because we have deemed such things less important. The implication of saying evangelism has priority in this sense is that it does not matter if we have no time for social action.

However, such choices rarely bare any relationship to reality.  In our involvement in the lives of others, we cannot choose to ignore their social needs.  We cannot treat people in isolation from their context.  Evangelism alone might make sense in the lecture room.  It may even just about make sense in a middle-class suburb.  It makes no sense at all when working among the poor.  Mission takes place in and through relationships and relationships are multi-faceted.  Proclamation should be central, but a center implies a context and our proclamation should take place in the context of a life of love.   

So social action and evangelism should neither be identified with one another, nor separated.  Evangelism and social action should be viewed as distinct, but inseparable activities in our mission to the poor in which proclamation is central.  In any relationship with poor people or with a poor community, we must as evangelicals be looking for opportunities to share the message of the gospel.  This is not because our social action is invalid without evangelism.  It is because love requires that we share the message of hope that meets people's greatest need.  

- Engaging With The City, Porterbook curriculum, Year 1, Module 12

David Platt on Caring for the Poor and Discipleship

RSS readers, click through to view.

Generosity Redefined - Part 3 "What's wrong with TOMS?"

Guest post by John Poitevent

I've dreaded writing this post. I confess, I own a pair of TOMS. Most people I know own a pair of TOMS. Because of this, your response to this article might be defensive, or annoyed or to just write it off as hype. I beg you not to. If the church is going to actually make a significant impact on the lives of the poor, in a way that brings God glory and proclaims the gospel, we have to start taking things like this seriously. Good intentions are not enough, and they can actually do damage to a community. If you really want to educate yourself on how to do serve the poor well, check out whenhelpinghurts.org. I would also really encourage you to watch the Restore videos. In the mean time, consider this...

From The Harvard Crimson

Although TOMS likely has good intentions, its donation strategy may negatively impact the communities it seeks to support. Like the litany of organizations that donate shoes, clothes, and other items to developing countries, TOMS may be undermining the development of local businesses. And while making in-kind donations benefits consumers in the short run, stifling local industry and increasing unemployment in this way will intensify poverty in the long-term.

Another issue with organizations like TOMS is that donating shoes can be financially inefficient. Shoes are typically inexpensive in developing nations—in Mumbai, as in Port-au-Prince, one pair is sold for as little as $2. Shipping a used pair of shoes often costs more; for instance, Soles4Soles solicits donations of $3-$5 to ship a pair of shoes to Haiti. In addition to hurting local business, in-kind donations sometimes simply waste money. We could actually save money and simultaneously help stimulate local economies by just keeping our old shoes and instead buying new ones from community-based vendors.

It is critical that we consider these types of unintended consequences of charitable giving. By pinpointing these problems, we can determine more effective ways of helping communities in need. For instance, TOMS might do better to alter its business model. As one blogger suggests, “Instead of donating a pair of shoes for each pair purchased, take the cash equivalent of that donation (the production cost of the shoe plus the shipping/handling/storage/distribution costs) and instead sink that into local shoe manufacture.” Rather than providing imported handouts, TOMS could partner with local shoe producers to provide low-cost or free shoes to children in need. In doing so, it could support local entrepreneurship and still fulfill its mission of helping children who would otherwise go barefoot.

As consumers of “socially conscious” products, we need to be aware of the impact of our purchases. In a culture where giving back through consumption is increasingly popular, and where myriad companies market items that purportedly help those in need, we should be cautious and deliberate about how we choose to support international development. In some cases, what at first seems like a good business idea could turn out to be detrimental to the communities we hope to help. Even as something as innocuous as buying a pair of shoes could do more harm than good. In the long term, if we want to alleviate poverty and its associated problems—like the lack of shoes for children—individual consumers as well as organizations like TOMS would do better to support directly local businesses for economic growth. It is up to us to invest responsibly in social change.

Read the entire article at The Harvard Crimson.

In case you're wondering if this is just one person's perspective, check out these articles on TOMS from Forbes, Fast Company, Time, GoodIntents.org, aidwatch.com, Made in USA Blog and WhyDev.org.

"Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world."

Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main, direct objects you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you. You are only likely to get health provided you want other things more—food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilization as long as civilization is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more. 

Most of us find it very difficult to want “Heaven” at all—except in so far as “Heaven” means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.

- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 118-119

“He Smelled of Urine and Infection”

Owen Strachan with a powerful post concerning adoption.

Top 12 Quotes from Keller's "Center Church"

Eric McKiddie:

I read Tim Keller’s Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City toward the end of 2012, and found it extremely formative in regard to philosophy of ministry. Out of my 132 Kindle highlights, here are my top 12.

1. On the inescapability of contextualization

If we never deliberately think through ways to rightly contextualize gospel ministry to a new culture, we will unconsciously be deeply contextualized to some other culture. Our gospel ministry will be both overadapted to our own culture and underadapted to new cultures at once, which ultimately leads to a distortion of the Christian message.

2. On busting conservative/liberal categories with your philosophy of ministry

A missional church will be more deeply and practically committed to deeds of compassion and social justice than traditional fundamentalist churches and more deeply and practically committed to evangelism and conversion than traditional liberal churches. This kind of church is profoundly counterintuitive to American observers, who are no longer able to categorize (and dismiss) it as liberal or conservative. Only this kind of church has any chance in the non-Christian West.

3. On influencing the local culture with the gospel

Only if we produce thousands of new church communities that regularly win secular people to Christ, seek the common good of the whole city (especially the poor), and disciple thousands of Christians to write plays, advance science, do creative journalism, begin effective and productive new businesses, use their money for others, and produce cutting-edge scholarship and literature will we actually be doing all the things the Bible tells us that Christians should be doing! This is how we will begin to see our cities comprehensively influenced for Christ.

4. On designing worship services

As you design your worship, you cannot naively assume you are “just being biblical” about many things that are actually cultural and personal preferences. Think of who is in your community and skew your worship service toward them in all the places where your biblical theology and historic tradition leave you freedom.

5. On community as means of discipleship

The chief way in which 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 worship gatherings, or even in solitude. Most often, growth happens through deep relationships and in communities where the implications of the gospel are worked out cognitively and worked in practically — in ways no other setting or venue can afford.

6. On community as means of evangelism

It is natural to think of “community” as a category separate from evangelism and outreach, or from training and discipleship, or from prayer and worship. And of course, we have done this by calling it a distinct ministry front. But to do so can be misleading. Community itself is one of the main ways we do outreach and discipleship, and even experience communion with God…The real secret of fruitful and effective mission in the world is the quality of our community.

7. On ministries for social reform

For both theological and practical reasons, I believe the local church should concentrate on the first level of assistance (relief) and to 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 for believers to work through associations and organizations rather directly through the local church…I have seen that most churches in the United States that are deeply involved in caring for the poor have found it wisest to spin off nonprofit corporations to do community development and reform of social structures rather than seek to do them directly through the local congregation under the oversight of the elders.

8. On faith/work integration

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 neighborhoods, or at school. They did not need (or did not think they needed) to reflect deeply about a Christian approach to business, art, politics, the use of community resources, or race relations, to name a few examples. In a missional 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.

9. On the inevitability of institutionalization, and what to do about it

Scripture suggests that churches cannot choose between being a movement or an institution; they must be both. And yet in this book we are emphasizing movement dynamics over institutional ones. Why? Because over time, movements inevitably become institutions. Therefore, it is necessary for churches to intentionally cultivate the dynamics that characterize a healthy movement. This process is difficult not only because movement dynamics push against organizational inertia but also because the movement dynamics themselves can be in tension with one another.

10. On the importance of planting new churches for maximum conversion growth

Studies confirm that the average new church gains one-third to two-thirds of its new members from the ranks of people who are not attending any worshiping body, while churches over ten to fifteen years of age gain 80 to 90 percent of new members by transfer from other congregations. The average new congregation, then, will bring new people into the life of the body of Christ at six to eight times the rate of an older congregation of the same size. Why is this so? As a congregation ages, powerful internal institutional pressures lead it to allocate most of its resources and energy toward the concerns of its members and constituents rather than toward those outside its walls.

11. On the importance of planting new churches where healthy churches already exist

Studies and anecdotal evidence indicate that if there is one church per ten thousand residents, approximately 1 percent of the population will be churchgoers. If this ratio goes to one church per one thousand residents, some 15 to 20 percent of the city’s population goes to church. If the number goes to one per five hundred residents, the number may approach 40 percent or more. The relationship of the number of churches to churchgoing people is exponential, not linear. We should not, then, 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.

12. On relying on God to be fruitful in ministry

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).

Who is Coming to Thanksgiving?

John Piper:

There is in every human heart a terrible and powerful tendency to live by the law of earthly repayment, the law of reciprocity. There is a subtle and relentless inclination in our flesh to do what will make life as comfortable as possible and to avoid what will inconvenience us or agitate our placid routine or add the least bit of tension to our Thanksgiving dinner. The most sanctified people among us must do battle every day so as not to be enslaved by the universal tendency to always act for the greatest earthly payoff.

The people who lightly dismiss [Luke 14:12–14] as a rhetorical overstatement are probably blind to the impossibility of overstating the corruption of the human heart and its deceptive power to make us think all is well when we are enslaved to the law of reciprocity, the law which says: always do what will pay off in convenience, undisturbed pleasures, domestic comfort, and social tranquility. Jesus's words are radical because our sin is radical. He waves a red flag because there is destruction ahead for people governed by the law of reciprocity.

Why does it make such an eternal difference whom you invite to Thanksgiving dinner? It is not so much that this one afternoon is all-determining. The reason it makes an eternal difference is that it, along with many other occasions, reveals where our treasure is. Is Jesus, with his commands and promises, more valuable to us than tradition and convenience and earthly comfort? Is he our treasure or is the world?

That question is not decided during an invitation at church. It is decided at Thanksgiving dinner, and hour by hour every day, by whether we are willing to inconvenience ourselves for those who can't repay, or whether we avoid them and so preserve our placid routine.

It matters whom you invite to Thanksgiving dinner because it matters where your treasure is.

Read the rest.

"...in this land of the free and home of the brave, many people were not allowed to vote."

Powerful post here from Garrett Kell.

RESTORE - Sometimes Helping Hurts

If you are committed to justice in the world today, take a few minutes and watch these videos. They are very well done and will likely lead to conversations that many church leaders and mission leaders need to have.

 





 Get the book here, When Helping Hurts (paperback for $8 and eBook for $3)

Onetime top California football prospect Brian Banks exonerated of kidnap-rape conviction

The NY Daily News:

The kidnap-rape conviction of a once-promising prep football star was dismissed Thursday following a recantation by his accuser.

Brian Banks collapsed in sobs on the counsel table during a court hearing where a prosecutor quickly conceded the decade-old case and moved for the dismissal.

In the summer of 2002, Banks’ future looked bright: He was a 17-year-old high school football star being heavily recruited by a number of colleges. But in a single day that changed with the accusations of kidnapping and rape by a female student.

He maintained there was no rape and their sexual contact was consensual, but his lawyer urged him to plead no contest rather than risk a sentence of 41 years to life in prison if convicted. He followed the advice and went to prison for six years, shattering his dreams of gridiron glory.

Lawyers for the California Innocence Project were prepared Thursday to argue he should be exonerated.

In a strange turn of events, the woman who accused him a decade ago friended him on Facebook when he got out of prison. Wanetta Gibson explained she wanted to “let bygones be bygones.”

According to documents in the case, she met with Banks and said she had lied; there had been was no kidnap and no rape and she offered to help him clear his record.

But she subsequently refused to repeat the story to prosecutors because she feared she would have to return a $1.5 million payment from a civil suit brought by her mother against Long Beach schools.

She was quoted as telling Banks: “I will go through with helping you but it’s like at the same time all that money they gave us, I mean gave me, I don’t want to have to pay it back.”

Justin Brooks, a lawyer who heads the innocence project, said that Banks has remained on probation, under electronic monitoring, has had to register as a sex offender and has had trouble getting a job.

He said Banks continues to train for what he hopes will be a future chance at a football career.

MARANATHA.