Relevant?  Fitting in with their culture?  This is how silly and crazy some Churches can get as they seek to identify with their culture, and supposedly do things to reach people.  Notice that the name of the Church is the Wine Barrel Church. Maybe that should tell us all someting.   This would really be funny, if it were not so sad.  Thanks to Robin Foster for sharing such a wonderful video with all of us.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPzDfq1Lf_g&w=480&h=385]

I have given them Your Word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of this world, even as I am not of this world. I do not ask you to take them out of this world, but keep them from the evil one. They are not of this world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As you have sent Me into the world I also have sent them into the world. (John 17:14-18).

This paradox of grace and truth, in but not of, is a distinction that is often missing in this present age. In many ways it is an inevitable consequence of the seeker-driven church growth movement, as the pendulum swung away from absolutes and stances for truth to a Cole Porter culture of Anything Goes. Collectively the so-called “emerging church” movement is harder to pin down than Jell-O because it is an amorphous group with an eclectic feel. As such the whole postmodern phenomenon is hard to pigeonhole. Still the overarching idea is to contextualize the culture.

I do not think for a moment that the church should aspire to become irrelevant.

There is always a need for Christians to speak the gospel into their own context.

Rather, my concern is with the ever-present danger of overcontextualizing. Consider what happens to a church that is always trying to appeal to an increasingly post-Christian culture. Almost inevitably, the church itself becomes post-Christian.[ii]

Such a clarion call should be heeded as the note of a clear trumpet to every local church leader. In fact, this treatment is a short prescription to pastors and church leaders for discernment in the age of Oprah. Of course, the true cure will take much more medicine, but all of us can seek counsel from the Great Physician.

Perhaps the element most missing in an era of placebo prescriptions is the need for discernment. The pressing need is not for the church to emerge into something our culture would see as pertinent in a narcissistic society but that we recognize what is real and relevant is the redemption God offers through Jesus Christ. The church can not afford to market tunes on cyberspace ipods playing downloaded ditties for an adoring audience. Instead we need to engage our culture with something more than trivial pursuits. We need the truth. This is one element much of the emerging church wants to airbrush to minimize hurt feelings and assuage egos so that people might find healing (see how therapeutic our language has become).

Out of this all-too human tension and polarity is borne the perennially paradoxical quest for, and escape from, the truth. Truth is a daunting, difficult thing; it is also the greatest thing in the world. Yet we are chronically ambivalent toward it. We seek it . . . and we fear it. Our better side wants to pursue truth wherever it leads; our darker side balks when the truth begins to lead us anywhere we do not want to go. Let the truth be damned if the truth would damn us! We want both to serve the truth and to be served by it. Such is our uneasy lot, east of Eden[iii]

We as leaders have bought into this by the way we judge our own effectiveness. The usual question circulated in church circles is framed in the form of growth and success. The supernatural is reduced to a spreadsheet: budgets and bodies. Nothing is inherently wrong with numbers and spiritual growth, unless we throw out truth to expand our own empire. Many banish any mention of offensive words or topics and pander to the popular rather than the peccadilloes of our own personalities. Inevitably, there is a subtle tendency for the pendulum to swing too far away from truth and lose the paradox between grace and truth, in and not of. Ask Joel Osteen, the seventh flag over Texas, and pastor of the buzz of Houston, Lakewood Church, a megachurch with over 30,000 people attending each week. His appearance on Larry King presented opportunities to document his belief in the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as the only way to God and Joel passed repeatedly. He later apologized on his website:

God has given me a platform to present the Gospel to a very diverse audience. In my desire not to alienate the people that Jesus came to save, I did not clearly communicate the convictions that I hold so precious. I will use this as a learning experience and believe that God will ultimately use it for my good and His glory. I am comforted by the fact that He sees my heart and knows my intentions. I am so thankful that I have friends, like you, who are willing to share their concerns with me.[iv]

We should take that at face value and offer forgiveness. Still, even the posted response reveals a need for discernment in the paradox of grace and truth. The shift is subtle but substantial: the desire not to alienate trumps the truth we need to communicate. Jesus Christ is always a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to those who do not believe but precious and valuable to those who embrace the indescribable Christ (I Peter 2:7-8).

The second element that leaders need to examine is how this deconstruction of truth leads to a different message in terms of presentation. There is a sense that above all amusement matters in matters that matter. Entertain! Be creative! I am surprised we do not rewrite John 1 to say in the beginning was the image rather than the Word. Gurus from Brian McLaren to Leonard Sweet tell us unless we are image driven we are passé.[v] Attention spans are short and audiences do not know scripture so keep it short and keep it fluffy. The effective church service needs to be the EBay of the spiritual surfer. Such insight offers some probing analysis of where our culture is but offers little solution for transforming individuals into the image of Jesus Christ. There’s nothing wrong with offering different mediums in the Mars Hills of the American arena, but we should notice that the Acts 17 dialogue at the Areopagus in Athens led to sneering and snootiness when Paul mentioned repentance and judgment and a Man raised from the dead! The message conveyed did not amuse or bemuse but scored a direct hit. Damaris and Dionysius left the crowd to follow Jesus Christ.

It is interesting that many in the contemporary church insist that an insatiable appetite for innovation leads down a road that increasingly stiff arms Scripture and embraces experience and image. The seductive power of a media monopoly is indeed as Neal Postman so prophetically predicted amusing us to death.[vi] Reality television has created a world without substance. The corrective for the church is not to indiscriminately embrace image and discard substance. The paradox is we can do both by using Image to point to the inspired, but in the end faith still comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17). In essence, the ultimate goal is not amusement or bemusement but clarity that brings transformation by justification and sanctification. In a sense, we are back in the backwoods of biblical illiteracy in our culture and people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6). Rather than botoxing the Bible to make it appear more attractive, our greatest need is the unvarnished veracity of God’s Word. It seems leaders should be given out larger doses of truth rather than pre-packaged bite size bits of the paraphrased pragmatism substituted for Scripture. Personally, this pastor has heard it all as reasons for short sermons to the point of being called Pastor Pharaoh because I will not let my people go. Still, God tells us to preach the word not to condense the truth. Too many tell us to embrace the spirit of the age when we should embrace the age of His Holy Spirit.

Today, challenges to the faith come from a consumerist mentality. It’s ok to be a Christian today – just as long as you treat is as a consumer choice, as one option among many. . . Image is everything. That’s postmodernism in a nutshell.[vii]

Postmoderns need to emerge into a church that God can faithfully use to transform a culture. There is a greater sin than boredom – and that’s discounting the sufficiency of Scripture and a God that is able. The truth is the dying do not need the image of living water they need the substance of the person of Jesus Christ. The cleverness of the age will not satisfy the slake of the soul. Only the unadulterated milk of God’s pure Word can satisfy the craving of a generation without God. We do not need to dumb down the message but to lift up the cross so all might be drawn. God uses the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe. It is not the cleverness of speech, which in fact can void the cross of Christ, but the power of God that saves (see I Cor. 1:18, 21).

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[i] Randy Alcorn, The Grace and Truth Paradox (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 2003).

[ii] Philip Graham Ryken, City on a Hill (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2003), 22.

[iii] Douglass Groothus, Truth Decay (Downers Grove, Il.: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 9.

[iv] Joel Osteen, A Posted Letter, www.joelosteen.com/site/LarryKingLetter

[v] Leonard Sweet, Postmodern Pilgrims (Nashville, Tn.: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 2000).

[vi] Neal Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin Press, 1985), see pp 78-79.

[vii] Charles Colson, Lies that Go Unchallenged in Popular Culture (2005, Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale Publishers, 2005), 365.

Below is a post from guest contributor Tim Guthrie. Tim is Senior Pastor of Arlington Baptist Church in Knoxville Tennessee. To comment on this post, you can go to Tim’s blog here.

USA Today ran an article by Jonathan Merritt exposing his own views (not those of the norm in SBC life) related to homosexuality. Though Merritt, the son of SBC Pastor James Merritt and Liberty Grad (of which I am) presents his heart for loving people, he also reveals a dangerous view of Biblical understanding and application.

I do not question his heart. I do question several things in the article and I also question his use of “title” in describing who he is and what he does which I will explain later.

Issues that need to be addressed:

1. He seems to think that LOVE should cause us to defend the normalization of the homosexual agenda. He writes “As Christians, we clearly won’t be able to support any and everything. For example, our biblical convictions prohibit a redefinition of marriage. Yet, there are other areas where we may be able to offer support. We should support protecting our gay and lesbian neighbors from discrimination in the workplace and cleaning up the legal cobwebs that govern hospital visitation rights and inheritance for same-sex couples. ”

The above statement is contradictory at best. We cannot redefine but we can normalize which is redefining.

2. He seems to have a limited view of Biblical Law and application of such. Again he writes “Scripture says the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law, gives life. A spirit of love in public policy is one that all Christians can support.”

Maybe he has forgotten that it is whole of the law that gives life in the fact that Jesus fullfilled all of it on our behalf. Jesus did not negate it.

3. He seems to equate our command to love with a mandate to “affirm or endorse”. He writes “Our assertions that we love our neighbors must be accompanied by visible expressions of that love. Therefore, we need to begin looking for ways to affirm, rather than undermine, our claims to love our gay neighbors.”

Maybe Jonathan has forgotten or never heard his father preach on “tough love”. Though he quotes I Corinthians 13 for the phrases that fit his desired presentation, he leaves out words from that chapter such as:

1 Corinthians 13:5-6
5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;
6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth…

Add to this that Jonathan’s father has been clear in what the Bible teaches about homosexuality and how we should stand for what God says is right and yet love the sinner. In fact, I remember specifically hearing him state that “our loving people must never be used to compromise the TRUTH of God’s Word!”

And finally, I completely dislike the whole way that Jonathan is tagged as the writer of the article. At the end of the article appear these words:
“Jonathan Merritt is a faith and culture writer who serves as national spokesperson for the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative.”

Nothing is mentioned of the fact that Jonathan has NO position within the structure of the SBC. The appearance is left to allow anyone who does not know SBC details to think that this Initiative is indeed an actual SBC Initiative. It further leaves the impression that Jonathan is the spokesperson for such.

He is NOT! Period.

But then I discovered that his views actually run in line with those of the ACLU. Read the following:
“The American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to sue Tennessee public school officials if they do not stop restricting students’ access to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Web sites on school computers.

Tennessee schools are connected to a statewide computer network that uses filtering software that groups Web sites into different categories, eSchoolNews.com reports. Local school officials have the ability to block or unblock those categories.

In a letter dated April 15, the ACLU said as many as 80 percent of public school districts in the state might be blocking access to non-sexual sites that offer educational and political information about issues like gay marriage.

The letter alleges the software blocks all sites designed as such by default. Federal and state laws only require schools to use filtering software to restrict obscene or harmful information.
The ACLU demands the schools have a plan to restore access to sites designated as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender for the 2009-10 academic year by April 29, eSchoolNews.com reports.”

So if I follow the reasoning of Jonathan Merritt, I would be wrong in encouraging as a parent, Pastor, and more importantly a Christian, that the state and local authorities ignore the ACLU. In fact, I am writing to encourage them to fight the ACLU on this.

We are quickly seeing the rise of a movement that seeks to change perception more than it seeks to live in Holiness and Lordship surrender to Christ. It seems that some need the public perception more than they need the blessings of their God.

Wes Kenney over at SBCToday.com sums up this whole issue quite well when he says:
“As Jonathan Merritt is my brother in Christ, I love the “spinner” who wrote this article. I’m just not terribly fond of his “spin.”"

Maybe it would helpful for all of us to look to the courage of Miss California. In front of a television audience with the dream and goal of her life at stake, she stood true to her Lord and His Word.

May we all!

The theological reconcilers appeared in at least three guises. Some believed that importing evolution into theology, while it would change some things, would not so alter orthodox thought that it would become unrecognizable. Others felt less concern about conserving the traditional expressions of Christianity than about reformulating Christian doctrine in a manner in tune with the times. Still others made evolution the very cornerstone of their theological perspective. All three adjusted Biblical chronology as needed and preserved some form of an argument from design; but where the first faction gave the appearance of being forced into such reconciliation, the latter two reveled in the newfound opportunity to revitalize doctrines that were beginning to tax the loyalty of modern Christians. [Gregory, "The Impact of Darwinian Evolution on Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century," in God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers eds. (Berkley:University of California Press, 1986), p. 379]¹

I hear in our day a haunting echo from this quote. In what was once needing to be fought in the early days of Darwin’s writing–and is still needing to be spoken against today, we instead find too many Christians, and Christian leaders, who were willing to acquiesce to the new world view of their day. Today, although the challenge of evolutionary theory persists, we are faced with an equally challenging paradigm shift into a new, popular world view: Post-modernism.

Post-modern thinking is an undeniable reality. Such was the new Darwinism of the 1800s. In both cases God’s people in His churches are called to respond and faithfully carry-out the Great Commission we have received from our Lord. The issue for us is this: how are we to fulfill our commission in the face of such challenges. Unfortunately, many of the Christians in Darwin’s day chose apathy, acquiescence, or adoration to this new, God-less world view.

Today, we have those who would reformulate biblical doctrine for the sake of communicating the faith to a lost generation. In this camp we find that group of ‘emergent’ and even liberal believers. Ones like Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt…who also sound like the ‘Bishop’ Carlton Pearson, who although he does not believe in the devil or the need for the crucifixion or resurrection anymore, still thinks he can call himself a Christian. Such also is Dr. John Killinger. They glory in the fact that they can so easily redefine and reformulate what it means to be a Christian without any regard for a consistent biblical hermeneutic. These start from post-modernism as the “very cornerstone of their theological perspective,” and castigate those who would hold to the time-honored biblical world view. Others want to ‘baptize’ this new world view in Christian nuances and verbage while actually committing the very same compromise the first group undertakes.

The more dangerous groups involve those who will ”give the appearance of being forced into such reconciliation” and those who turn apathetically away from engaging this issue and the challenges presented to the Gospel. Some of those ‘reluctant’ reconcilers fit within the Mark Driscoll/Acts 29 camp. I must say that I applaud Driscoll for his stance in the recent Satan Debate televised on ABC’s “Nightline.” His assertions were right on the money. The reason I feel that he fits into the dangerous group of the ‘reluctants’ is in his approach to a more crass and worldly-centered style of ministry (For further insight on my position here, see this post here). I pray that he continues his distancing from the errors found within the emergent and emerging ‘movements’ in Christianity. The others are those who refuse to deal with the obvious challenges posed by this very real trend in thinking in our world. Those who chose to ignore the evolutionary theory of a by-gone day have left us with the likes of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris. If we will not stand up for the word of God, the timeless, culture-crossing, changeless revelation of God to man, we will lose our identity…we will become savor-less salt.

The bottom line is this…

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” [Isaiah 55:10-11]

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” [Matthew 24:35]

We must engage the world in which we live with this truth. Not change it to fit this world!! Not ignore it or repudiate it in order to be accepted by the masses. If missional means we cease to be convictional then we cease to be able to hold the exclusive claims of Scripture, the greatest of which are found…

“For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” [John 3:16]

“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” [John 14:6]

“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” [Acts 4:12]

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¹Morris, Henry M., The Long War Against God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1989), p. 96.

SOLA GRATIA!

[Join me at my blog, Sola Gratia! (http://sagordon.blogspot.com) for discussion of this post]

Frankly, last week Friday and most of Saturday, I was not keeping up with the blogs, yet through the preaching of God’s Word at the conference, God was dealing with me in how I represent His Word on the blogs. For what am I willing to suffer in the proclamation and upholding of His Word? This question was driven to me as Dr. Mohler preached from Colossians 1:19-28. Dr. Mohler’s point was that that we are “called,” men of God, not men working in a profession. This calling requires us to uphold the Word of God and suffer if we are called to do so in the proclamation of the truth. Essentially Paul was willing to suffer for the sake of the church to fulfill the Word of God.

It is my opinion that over the past couple of weeks, my name has been suffering for something that does not equate for what Paul is calling us to suffer. Though I believe I have done nothing ethically wrong in my blogging activities last week, I did in fact abandon my primary purpose of proclaiming the wondrous biblical truths of God and in articulating the overall situation Southern Baptists are facing. There is a systematic diverting of attention from doctrinal fidelity by the Southern Baptist (SB) ecumenist. This is being done by aligning oneself to the lowest common denominator for cooperation, a false redefinition of terms, and a pragmatic approach to missions cooperation.

I joined with the other men at SBC Today to bring awareness to the almost forgotten and severely neglected theology of Baptist ecclesiology. If anything, I wanted to be a part of the grass roots movement to help Southern Baptists journey back to their biblical heritage concerning matters of the church.

With this endeavor in SBC Today, I have frequently used a term called “ecumenical” or “ecumenist.” While some have dismissed using these terms as being unhelpful, by using them in the context of Southern Baptists, I have understood it and applied it in three ways:

1. Those in Southern Baptist life who are ecumenical are those who seek to cooperate using the lowest common denominator. Not only in Southern Baptist life is this a movement, but it is also in the wider evangelical community. The recent evangelical manifesto proved this as the document itself abandoned inerrancy as a distinctive for evangelicals. In the SBC calls for cooperating on the essentials of the Gospel is the mantra. After the 2007 SBC Convention in San Antonio the Garner motion was an effort of the ecumenists to keep SBC entities from making decisions beyond the doctrinal limitations of the Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M). The ecumenists saw the BF&M as a “maximal document,” limiting the trustees to doctrines only addressed in the BF&M. In other words, the trustees could not fully fulfill their mandate as agents of accountability of the SBC. Fast forward to today. No longer are calls given by the Southern Baptist ecumenist to keep the BF&M as the limit of doctrines that are necessary for cooperation. Now the caveats have increased and the ecumenist desires to cooperate solely on the “essentials” of the gospel as long as those essentials remain in a state of flux so that no one is eliminated from their tent of cooperation. The belief in a regenerate baptized (immersed) church membership no longer matters. The ecumenist wants to work with the paedobaptist or sprinkler whether they were baptized as an infant or not. These issues are not of great concern to the SB ecumenist and do not impede cooperation for them.

2. Those in Southern Baptist life who are ecumenical wrongly redefine terms in order to evoke action towards their cause. Terms have been used to invoke fear among various groups of Southern Baptists. “Fundamentalist,” “spooky fundamentalist,” “Landmark,” “neo-landmark,” and “avant-garde self-styled defenders of Baptist Identity,” have been used against confessional Southern Baptists. Recently the issue of closed verses open communion took front stage. Those who believe that a church should allow, at a minimum, only those who are saved and baptized by immersion to participate in the Lord’s Supper were called “neo-Landmark.” Yet, by this post here, it was shown that those Southern Baptists who practiced this are abiding within the parameters of the Baptist Faith and Message. Those who accuse confessional Southern Baptists as neo-Landmark are themselves outside of what Southern Baptists officially believe. The aforementioned terms have been wrongly used to describe those who are Baptist Identity.

3. Those in Southern Baptist life who are ecumenical focus more on pragmatism and cultural preference (or feelings) rather than Biblical principles in forging their worldview. For instance, one may not want a woman to pastor their church because their discomfort “is personal and cultural – and not Biblical.” But when an autonomous state convention of cooperating churches, because of biblical beliefs, decides to disfellow themselves from a church that has a woman for their pastor, the convention is scourged on blog posts saying that it is unfair for a state convention to hold, in particular, those biblical beliefs not only in doctrine, but also in practice. Autonomy is only held in cases where it benefits the ecumenist. The state convention of cooperating churches, for the ecumenist, is not autonomous in this decision, yet through out Baptist history, there is example after example of associations and conventions who have operated as an autonomous body of churches that did not allow themselves to compromise their doctrines by one church’s decision to act independently of the confessional belief of the body. To claim that cooperating churches in a state convention cannot act autonomously against one aberrant church is weak if not illogical to say the least.

The ecumenical reformer understands certain truths from God’s Word to be stumbling blocks to cooperating with others. Where the doctrine does not pragmatically fit, it must be removed. We see this time and time again in the seeker sensitive or emergent church movement that is creeping into our convention. Don’t misunderstand, doctrine is not unimportant to the ecumenical reformer if it aids their cause, but when it is perceived to being a stumbling block, it must either be removed or avoided because it takes away from the pragmatic benefit of cooperation.

There is no doubt that a movement is afoot to make doctrine of secondary importance behind the shortsighted pragmatical benefits one perceives. When inerrancy (truth without any mixture of error), believers baptism by immersion, and the Lord’s Supper are considered tertiary doctrines that should not impede cooperation in a convention, association, or network of churches, then those who are not ashamed of the doctrines that make us Baptist must speak up and “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.”

For the Anabaptist , the atrophied doctrine among Rome, Wittenberg, and Geneva was a biblical ecclesiology. Indeed, a proper ecclesiology was the essence of the Anabaptist movement. Foundational to proper ecclesiology is a proper understanding of the ordinances. It is no stretch to say that theologians since the Reformation have stated that a true church can only be recognized by a proper administration of the ordinances, or with a more Catholic nuance, the sacraments. That is to say it has generally been agreed that where there is no proper administration of at least the Supper and baptism, there is no true church.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

UPDATE:

As promised, the full paper is here.

In her essay, Miss Johnson contrasts the views of evangelism held by Classical Theology and the Emergent Conversation by writing,

On the surface, the churches seem to agree on what they believe to be fundamental doctrine. However, when further studied, there are major differences between the two. The funny fact is that you might not see the major divisions by listening to their sermons or by reading what each church believes off of their church sites, but you can find the major divisions by listening to their individual interpretations of various parts of Christianity through interviews. I thought that this was kind of odd. I would have thought that the differences would have been much more near the surface. Through studying, I found that there is a way to decipher the truth, and to my surprise, I found the truth to be very interesting and disturbing all at the same time.

She further delineates her argument by writing

The primary reason for the division of the beliefs between the two churches is due to their interpretation of why Jesus came to earth. Classical Evangels believe that Jesus came to earth to save sinners, to provide atonement, and to fulfill prophecy…However, the Emergent Church believes that the reason for Jesus coming to Earth is not contingent on providing a way for people to understand salvation and the path to Heaven; rather, it is contingent on changing people’s view of life from conversions to conversations in the community.

You may link to Miss Johnson’s complete essay here. Enjoy!