Ministry

Different Worlds

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

While I’ve long known it, recently I’ve finding the following quote to be painfully all too true:

Following Jesus today requires you to practice the same single-minded non-conformity. And it will produce the same effect in your life that it did with Jesus.  If you truly follow Jesus, in addition to enjoying a most excellent adventure, you will likely end up seeming too Christian for many of your pagan friends and too pagan for many of your Christian friends.  When you truly follow Jesus, you’ll spend considerable time in the world like he did, and as a result, many of your religious friends will think you’re too irreligious. On the other hand, many of your irreligious friends will find it odd that you are so focused on the spiritual.  Thus, you end up seeming both too Christian AND too pagan.

~ Dick Staub, Too Christian, Too Pagan

Distinct, Not Separated

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

John Stott offers a reminder of the task and the tension we, as Christians, must continually navigate when he uses the phrase:

“spiritually distinct, but NOT socially segregated.”

And here is a quote expanding this perspective:

Your business and mine as Christian people is to be in the midst of this world and its affairs, and still remain true and loyal to God, and be kept from evil.  …The task of the Christian is to be right in the midst of this world and its affairs in order that he may do the work of evangelism, spreading the gospel and the Kingdom of God, while the whole time, keeping himself un-spotted from the world.

~Martyn Lloyd-Jones, from Safe in the World

Friend of Kuyper

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

For the better part of the 20th Century the Protestant Church in the USA seemed to have divided into two camps: Those interested in Evangelism and those concerned for Social Issues.  Which one adopted pretty clearly fell along the lines of how seriously one took the Bible.  Conservatives lined up for Evangelism; Liberals for Social Gospel.

One exception to this appears to have been in the Dutch Reformed Church.  Somehow, seemingly under the radar screen, these folks managed to engage in both Evangelical scholarship and Holistic Ministry – offering valuable contributions to Gospel understanding; and offering valuable contributions to their communities, engaging in meeting felt needs and addressing issues of social justice.

Perhaps the reason these Dutch Reformed folks were immune to the dichotomy that widely afflicted the rest of American Protestantism probably rest squarely at the feet of a man named Abaham Kuyper – a one time Prime Minister of the Netherlands, newspaper publisher, theologian, etc.  Kuyper was a 19th Century Renaissance Man.

I’ve seen Kuyper’s most notable statement posted all over the blogosphere, Facebook, etc.:

In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare: “‘That is mine!”

Kuyperian thought is worthy of exploration.

I have stumbled upon a website that offers a a great introduction to Kuyper: Friend of Kuyper

Here is a quick summary:

The Kuyperian worldview is a theological tradition in Christianity (often called “neo-Calvinism”) that focuses on the redemption of all things. It is also called “Reformational Christianity” because it holds to a worldview that tells the Christian story of

  • CREATION
  • FALL
  • REDEMPTION
  • CONSUMMATION

We are in the chapter of God’s Reformational Story called “Redemption,” and therefore are called to fulfill that portion of the Lord’s Prayer that says, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Here are four particular insights of Neo-Calvinism:

1. Creation Order

Because the Creation was created “very good,” there is an inherent potential in the created order that is good as well. The “Cultural Mandate” of Genesis 1:28 and 2:15 tells us that humanity has the task of harnessing this potentiality to develop culture as God intended. Technology, popular culture, progress, and yes, even politics, are to be understood as part of God’s original created order.

2. Antithesis

Sin not only runs through the hearts of every individual human being, but also through the entire cosmos. Romans 8 tells us that all creation is “groaning”—it suffers as well. While Sin is personal, it also manifests itself in the various organizations of society.

3. Common Grace

But God’s creation is still good, though tarnished by sin. If God’s creation is stewarded according to his good will, it still provides good benefits for human beings. By his grace, God not only allows believers to contribute to the common good, but also unbelievers. Because every human is made in the image of God, unbelievers can have true insights and perform beneficial works. This has vast ramifications on our understanding of cultural activity, by both believers and unbelievers, and how we interact together for the common good in societal renewal, technology, politics, etc.

4. Sphere Sovereignty

Neo-Calvinism states that God has designed a differentiation within society between different spheres of authority. Sphere Sovereignty offers a different matrix for understanding society from the American “two-sided paradigm” which reduces society to individual and state. Sphere Sovereignty believes there are intermediary social structures such as families, churches, businesses, and schools that contribute to the social fabric as much as individuals and the state.

In addition to the introduction, this site are a number of contemporary essays exploring Kuyper’s work.

Holistic ministry is not a new development. Sure, it seemed to have gone away for a while. But what we are seeing in our day is a recovery of an old practice – a Biblical practice.

If you are an advocate of holistic ministry, I commend becoming of Friend of Kuyper.

No Need to Reinvent the Church

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

Let me just say it straight, up front: I see no need to reinvent the church. What I do see is the need for God’s People to act more faithfully as Christ’s Church.

I like what Kevin DeYoung has to say in the Introduction to his book, The Good News We Almost Forgot:

No doubt the church in the West has many new things to learn. But for the most part, everything we need to learn is what we’ve already forgotten. The chief theological task now facing the Western church is not to reinvent or to be relevant but to remember. We must remember the old, old, story. We must remember the faith once delivered to the saints. We must remember the truths that spark reformation, revival, and regeneration.

So, again, despite the assertions of the Emergents and Seekers and cutting-edge tweekers, I see no need to reinvent the church. God is still at work, just as he has been at work through the ages.

We would, however, be wise to remember what the Reformers of the 16th Century pointed out:

The Church is constantly in need of reforming itself to become more conformed to Scripture.

To do this we  need to be aware of:

  • What God says in Scripture His Church is to be
  • What God has done through history to build His Church

But while I do not believe we need to reinvent the church, I do believe we must always contextualize the ministry of our congregations to be relevant to the cultures where we live; and to be relevant to any cultures in which we may minister.

Consider what missiologist Lesslie Newbigin observed:

If the gospel is to be understood… if it is to be received as something which communicates the Truth about the real human situation, if it is as we say “to make sense”, it has to be communicated in the language of those to whom it is addressed and it has to be clothed in symbols which are meaningful to them.  Those to whom it is addressed must be able to say: “Yes, I see.”

The desire for Relevance does not necessarily change or minimize the Truths of our Faith.  Instead it is an attempt to express and communicate the historic Biblical Truths in ways that are meaningful and applicable to contemporary and changing contexts.

In other words, we want to embrace and embody the historic Christian faith in ways that are relevant to the culture(s) in which we live & minister.

Just as a missionary going to a foreign country would be expected to adopt the language, dress, and appropriate customs & mannerisms of that culture, so we ought to be sensitive to our culture (and various sub-cultures). We use our freedom in Christ to adjust & adopt appropriate forms that will enable us to speak clearly to the people of the glory of Christ, and of the eternal truth of the gospel.

But while we must be contextual, we must be contextual without negating or neglecting  the foundations laid by our forefathers in the Faith.

This is what the LORD says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’   – Jeremiah 6.16

Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your forefathers.   – Proverbs 22.28

Here are some practical principles:

  • I affirm God has worked through His church throughout history, and that the church is God’s primary mission agency.  Much wisdom has been gained through the ages, and we are wise to learn from those who have come before us.
  • Therefore we must be committed to doing ministry & theology, with intentional continuity with the Historic Christian Faith, under the authority of God’s Word.
  • At the same time, we must seek to be sensitive to our culture and contextualize our ministry accordingly. We must also be careful not to fall into the traps of syncretism or cultural accommodation, or any other practice that compromises the gospel of Jesus Christ.
  • Relevance also means that we should be sensitive to specific (sometimes unique) issues facing our contemporary culture(s), and the context in which we live and serve, and to speak prophetically to those issues in accordance with faithful Biblical theology.

In short, we are informed by the past, and we should be connected to our heritage, but we must be a living community of learners, willing to adapt and change in order to be both more faithful to Christ and more effective for the sake of His Kingdom.

And rather than reinventing, and becoming like the Emergents, we can adopt convergence.  Convergence means that we take the best practices and resources of the past and integrate them with contemporary expressions in the context of our community.

This is, in large part, what it means to be Missional. And being missional does not require reinventing, just a little recovering and a little sensitivity and a lot of application.

Celebrating Gospel-Centeredness

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

A good article by Trevin Wax illustrating the importance of, not only Gospel-centeredness but, Gospel Celebration.  Wax asserts:

“What you celebrate as a Church is just as important as what you believe.”

I am not sure I fully agree with that statement, but I do see how what is celebrated practically shapes the church, and therefore its people and mission.  And, I suspect it is also true that if we truly understand the Gospel we will celebrate it – and especially the God who authored the Gospel and the Messiah who embodies the Gospel.  To celebrate anything else merely exposes our true values – in other words, our idols.  To not celebrate Christ above all else reveals that we do not actually understand the Gospel.

So, practically speaking, I guess I do agree with that statement more than I first thought.

Wax goes on to suggest:

Celebrate the gospel, and cross-cultural ministry will bubble up in surprising ways. Celebrate your church’s preferential distinctions, and your congregation will become an insular group of like-minded individuals.

Wax drives his point home with two true-to-life illustrations.

To read the article click: Celebration

Lord Save Us

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

I spent this morning watching the documentary, Lord Save Us From Your Followers.  I was prompted by a note from a friend and, despite it not being on my agenda for the day, I was intrigued.

Once again, I am not sure where I have been. This film came out over a year ago.  Some of it looked familiar, so I may have caught part of it on GMC or some other television cable network.  But for whatever reason, what I saw before did not capture my interest enough. Perhaps I had an initial wrong impression.  Perhaps I was just busy and could not watch the whole thing before. But even if that were the case, I am not sure why this went out of mind so quickly that I did not seek it out when I had the time to check it out.

The driving questions about this exploration of the Culture Wars in the United States is: Why is the Gospel of Love Dividing Our Nation? That is a great question.

Here are a few brief thoughts that come to my mind having just finished watching:

  • Ouch!  This cuts close to home.  This film clearly reveals how we as Christians (and I personally) are at fault for much of the perception the UnBelieving Culture has about Christianity and Christians.
  • I was encouraged by the responses of those who are opposed to Christianity and Christians when a Believer was willing to engage them in an honest discussion. I was moved by the power of humility, compassion, repentance and confession by the Believer. Apparently Jesus knew something when he commanded his followers to first take the plank out of our own eyes before confronting others about the specs in theirs.  (Matthew 7.5) Paul, too, when he instructed the Galatians to “gently restore” those who were astray of the way of God, but that they should be careful that they did not stumble in their own sin in in the process. (Galatians 6.1)
  • I am hopeful of a positive impact. But our strategic priorities must be in order. First is the reformation of the Church, including widespread repentance of God’s people for our failure to seek genuine righteousness.  Only later can we expect to have any positive cultural impact.  (2 Chronicles 7.14)

Now for the qualifications:

I know some who read this blog will be inclined to immediately dismiss the message behind this film because some of the theological premises expressed by those interviewed are questionable (to say it kindly), because it is not a theological discussion, and/or because some of the Christians represented do not reflect your tradition. (For the most part, this is true of mine too. Only John Perkins comes to mind who I know to share a similar theological heritage.)  But to dismiss this film for any of those reasons is a sad mistake.  At the very least recognize that this film depicts how a wide spectrum of our culture views us.

This documentary runs 1:42, so to watch it takes some time.  I suppose it would not lessen the appreciation to break it up into segments.  But I do encourage honest Believers, those interested in engaging in holistic mission to take the time, however you break it up.

To watch, click: Lord, Save Us From Your Followers

Is Church Growth a Biblical Expectation?

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

I was intrigued by the insights of Jay Childs in an article he wrote for Leadership Journal.  The article, titled Church Growth vs. Church Seasons, focuses on the American fascination with large numbers.  After telling some of his own story, Jay makes three primary observations:

  1. Our Situation is Not Unusual
  2. Non-Stop Numerical Growth is NOT a Biblical Expectation
  3. Healthy Churches Go Through Life-Cycles of Growth, Pruning, Decline, Blessing

While I appreciated the whole article, it was the insights of the second point that most resonated with me:

Ever since eminent missiologist Donald McGavran first published his seminal thoughts on church growth, American churches have often fixated on numerical growth. The basic assumption seems to be this: all churches should be growing numerically, all the time, and something is wrong if your church isn’t.

But as I’ve searched the New Testament and read countless other books on the subject, this assumption seems to be alien to the Bible. There is simply no biblical expectation that a local congregation will continually grow in size, uninterrupted. That seems to be an American presupposition forced onto the Scriptures.

If anything, Jesus told us to expect the opposite. He did promise that the gates of hell would not stand against the church, but he also commended the church in Philadelphia for standing firm though they had “little power.” He never criticizes any of the seven churches in Revelation for not accumulating numbers. He does scold, however, for moral and theological compromise.

Lesslie Newbigin writes in The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, “Reviewing the teaching of the New Testament, one would have to say, on the one hand, there is joy in the rapid growth of the church in the earliest days, but on the other, there is no evidence that numerical growth of the church is a matter of primary concern. There is no shred of evidence in Paul’s letters to suggest that he judged the churches by the measure of their success in rapid numerical growth. [Nowhere is there] anxiety or an enthusiasm about the numerical growth of the church.”

Continue reading →

Questions of Prophets, Priests, and Kings

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

Some time ago I introduced the concept of Tri-perspectivalism, the recognition that every Church ought to reflect the three offices of Christ: Prophet, Priest, and King.  Each person, or Christian leader, has a natural inclination toward one of these perspectives, but all three are equally necessary to reflect Christ in our Body.

There are many questions that can be, and have been, asked. Perhaps among the most practical is: How do I know which I am?  To answer that question there is no substitute for experience – exprience in service and experience of genuine relationships.  But questions may still remain if we are not certain what we are looking for. 

In an address from the 2009 Acts 29 Bootcamp, Darrin Patrick offers the following questions. Patrick suggests that persons inclined to each perspective tend to ask reflective questions:

Prophet

  • WHAT does the Bible say?
  • WHERE are we going because of what the Bible says?

King

  • HOW are we going to do that?
  • WHY are they/we doing that?

Priest

  • WHO?  (Priests are all about people and shepherding.)

Do you find yourself frequently asking any of these questions? Perhpas it is an indication of how God has wired you.

Passing the Baton

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

This past spring my wife and I would spend a few afternoons each week attending the track meets of our junior high daughter and our high school Senior son.  While each child has different specialties, both particpated on relay teams.  Few things offered as much pleasure as sitting out in the Spring-time sun, and watching our kids receive, run, and pass their batons.

Bob Kauflin uses that analogy, the passing of a baton in a relay race, to express the importance of ministry to the next generation.  For those of us who now see more sand in the botton half of our hour glass than is reamining in the top, Kauflin offers some important thoughts. 

Click: Receiving the Baton.

Can We Get Along Together?

/ Dennis Griffith / 3 Comments

One of my ecclesiastical/theological heroes, John Piper, came under a slew of criticism earlier this year for inviting “Purpose Diven” Rick Warren to be one of the speakers for the Desiring God 2010 Conference. 

I like the way Collin Hansen introduces the controversy, in his article, Piper, Warren, and the Perils of Movement Building:

You only thought junior high was over. But lately the evangelical blog world has been abuzz because John Piper invited Rick Warren to speak for his Desiring God National Conference… You see, a lot of folks who like John don’t like Rick. So now some of John’s friends aren’t sure they want to hang out with him anymore. They may not come to his party in Minneapolis. And they aren’t sure that you should either.

I’ll admit I was a little surprised when I heard about it. But I really gave it no thought, until these past few days.  There was nothing specific that compelled me to reconsider the issue. I stumbled upon a few articles that made reference to the matter. And as I began to think about it I wondered to myself: “What is the real problem here?”

Frankly, I see only possible benefits. I am no Warren proponent. But honestly, I find much admirable about the guy and his ministry. I may have concerns about some aspects of his ministry style, and I do have some theological differences with him. But then again, I have theological differences with many people I admire – Piper included.  Nevertheless I gain insights from many people in areas where I do agree. And I am challenged to think more deeply by thoughtful expressions with which I disagree. 

Some time ago I posted The Jesus Pledge, authored by my friend, Paul Miller. Those embracing that pledge declare a willingness to “learn from all types of Christians”.  That is something that I don’t think we Evangelicals do enough.  And it is something that Piper appears to be attempting to explore. At least that is the sense that I get from him in a video he did explaining and defending his reasons for inviting Warren to his party. (Click: Why Rick Warren?)

Two final thoughts:

First, do we implicitly endorse what someone from another Christian tradtion, or with a different ministry methodology, believes and practices simply by entering into conversation and fellowship?  I don’t think so.  Without such conversations, though, how would we become acquainted with anyone outside our own circles?  We can maintain our own convictions, even distinctions, without isolating ourselves from others.

Second, I wonder if there is a possibility of synthesizing Piper’s Christian Hedonism and Warren’s Purpose-Driven Life/Church.  I don’t know what that would look like, and I am not sure I would embrce it, but I know I would not ignore it.  In fact, I am intrigued by the possibility.

Mistaken Identity

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

Like many churches throughout the land, our church is entering into a season of officer nominations. As a presbyterian congregation, specifically, we are inviting the members of our congregation to submit the names of fellow church members who they believe fit the Biblical requirements, found in Titus & 1 Timothy 3, for the offices of Elder and Deacon. 

Also, like many in other congregations, some of the members of our church are not quite sure what exactly these offices mean, nor what those who serve them are responsible to do. 

In a post on Coram Deo, Bob Thune offers a brief but helpful explanation, dispelling one of the more common misconceptions about Elders…

Click: Elder vs. Board Member

95 Theses for the American Church

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

Just as Martin Luther offered some suggestions for the Church of his time in Germany, Jared Wilson has some ideas for us to consider.  On his blog: The Gospel-Driven Church, Jared has posted 95 Theses for the American Church.

Never Exchange the Pulpit

/ Dennis Griffith / 4 Comments

 

With all the hubub that has surrounded Glen Beck and his aspiration to ascend to top of the Religious Right leadership, I was encouraged by an open letter written by Nancy Guthrie to the pastors of her church. 

Guthrie states that what has concerned her more than the fact that Beck is a Morman is a statement Beck made on The O’Reilly Factor:

“240 pastors, priests, rabbis, and imams on stage all locked arms saying the principles of America need to be taught from the pulpit.”

In short, Guthrie affirms her love for America, but is grateful that her pastors have refused to neglect the preaching of the gospel in exchange for preaching American principles. 

Like the Apostle Paul, I am “astonished” that so many are turning from the Gospel that they claim to have received (and are charged to preach) and are turning to another gospel – which is no gospel at all. (Galatians 1.6-9) 

If the ministers of the gospel turn to preach politics, who will proclaim the Word of Life?

To read Nancy Guthries thoughts, click: Open Letter