Craig Groeshel had an interesting post over at Swerve:

Signs of a Lukewarm Pastor
Craig Groeshel

What am I forgetting? Do you see any of this in yourself?

The Resurgence had an interesting article about engaging culture:

In a recent interview, singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright surprisingly remarked: “We’re so obsessed about debunking Bush in this country that we don’t spend time on any other subjects. That’s a little depressing.” Wainwright’s point is that many Americans neglect a whole range of cultural issues, often neglecting political engagement for finger-pointing.

 

What’s more depressing is that many Christians are just as guilty of this charge as non-Christians. As a result, there are few citizens who think through cultural issues critically, and even fewer who think them throughredemptively. Here are six ways to promote critical and redemptive engagement with culture.

1. Engage culture prayerfully. I’m not suggesting that we should actually bow our heads and recite a prayer before reading a newspaper or book, watching TV or a movie, or going shopping, though that certainly wouldn’t hurt. Instead, we are to live life and engage culture in a spirit of dependence upon God; we are to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). We should approach culture just as we should approach all things: prayerfully.

   What should we pray? We should thank God for the gift of culture, confessing that all cultures contain truth, beauty, and virtue, asking Him to help us recognize and rejoice in these good gifts, which come down from the Father of lights (James 1:17). Alternatively, all cultures also disdain truth, beauty, and virtue. Thus, we are dependent upon God to enable us to recognize and reject those things that are harmfully false, ugly, and immoral. By asking God to give us the perspective of His Spirit, “the Spirit who searches out all things, even the depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:10), we can begin to discern between the things which are true, beautiful, and good and the things that are false, ugly, and evil.




2. Engage culture carefully. When approaching any given issue, from parenting to politics, we all have our biases. In order to engage culture well, we must strive to avoid the paths of both the sectarian and the secularist, of both blind rejection and uncritical acceptance. This will require careful investigation into the issues we face, taking the opposing view seriously and weighing its merits. Make a habit of hearing both sides of an issue before you baptize your opinions. Be slow to speak and quick to listen (James 1:19).




3. Engage culture biblically-theologically. Why hyphenate biblical and theological? Why not just say “think biblically”? Well, the plain fact is that the Bible does not explicitly address most cultural issues. It does not tell you who to vote for, which school to go to, what movies to watch, whether or not you should date, whether or not to abort your baby, or how to respond to cloning. Instead, the Bible offers theological principles which we can appropriate in order to form opinions and convictions about cultural issues. For instance, there is no verse in the Bible that reads: “Thou shalt not have an abortion.” However, the Bible does inform us that God is the author of life and that to take human life is murder, which is prohibited by God. The circumstances surrounding abortion can be complex. A mother’s life may be threatened if the life of the baby is not taken. The Bible does not say, “Preserve the mother’s life.” However, there are principles and practices in Scripture that can help us make wise decisions about cultural and ethical dilemmas.

   The problem, however, is that we often start with culturalassumptions about what is right, beautiful, and good and go to the Bible to prove them. Instead, we need to bring cultural questionsabout what is true, good, and beautiful to the Bible, reflect on them theologically and then prayerfully, and carefully form our opinions. Don’t begin with cultural convictions and end with biblical proof-texts; end with cultural wisdom by beginning with biblical-theological reflection. Start with the biblical text and reflect theologically on cultural issues. Move from Text to Theology to Culture, not the other way around.




4. Engage culture redemptively. Strive to connect your theological reflections regarding culture to redemption. We can redemptively engage culture in two ways: practically and positionally. To practically redeem, identify what is broken, what is in need of redemption, and take restorative action. Ask yourself questions like “How can I bring the gospel to bear on this issue?” or “How can I restore, forgive, or reconcile in this situation?” For example, if you come to the conviction that abortion is ugly and immoral, think about how you can help those who are suffering from the devastating affects of abortion. Don’t just debate others. Volunteer at a crisis pregnancy center. Learn how to counsel mothers. Don’t become self-righteous and inactive; practice your cultural convictions. Live them out redemptively.

   Our practice should flow from our position in Christ. Our actions ought to reveal our redeemed identity, not form our identity. Consider the danger of mistaking your newly-formed habits for who you are. For instance, do you think of yourself now as an environmentalist or as a citizen of Zion with an environmental conscience? Do you draw significance from being a “pro-lifer” or from being new creation in Christ Jesus? Ask yourself, “Am I confusing my practice with my position?” or “Am I finding my significance in what I do instead of who I am in Christ?” Guard yourself from subtly allowing cultural convictions to take the place of your identity in Christ. Ground your identity in the gospel and your practice will be more redemptive and more honoring to the Lord.




5. Engage culture humbly. Recognize that you have much to learn from a given culture. Read, converse, and reflect on cultural issues with a teachable heart. Ask God to shape your convictions through whomever or whatever He wills. Avoid proud dogmatism and cultivate humble conviction. Don’t put others down who believe differently from you. Consider others more important than yourself without surrendering your convictions. Yet, be willing to revise your opinions through a process of Text-Theology-Culture.




6. Engage culture selectively. Realize and embrace the limitations of your own time, experience, and interests. Spend your time wisely. Don’t sacrifice time with God, church, or family in order to become more culturally savvy. Everyone has been created differently, to live a unique life. Make the most of your experience by redemptively engaging culture, but try to avoid making the experience of others your own. There are too many issues in the world for you to become an overnight expert on Christ and culture. Be selective about what you engage.

Summarizing the Six Ways

When engaging culture prayerfully, we depend on the wisdom that comes from the Spirit who searches out all cultures, who can enable us to recognize and rejoice in what is true, beautiful, and good, and reject or redeem what is false, ugly, and immoral. As a result, engaging culture can become an act of communion with God. Relying on the wisdom of the Spirit will also mean careful investigation of cultural issues, being critical of our own biases while maintaining an open ear to the arguments of others. However, we’re not left to navigate the turbulent waters of our culture with only prayer and reason. God has given us his Word, a divine and authoritative Text from which we can glean wisdom and theological principles to engage culture.

When wrestling with issues, we must be careful to bring questions, not assumptions, from our culture to the Word, following a pattern of Text-Theology-Culture. This biblical-theological engagement with culture should always lead to redemptive action, restoring what is ugly and immoral from our position as accepted children of God, citizens of Zion. In turn, we can engage culture humbly and selectively, recognizing our limitations and rejoicing in our unique opportunities to engage the world around us.

Finally, try to practice these six ways of engaging culture not just as an individual but in community. To put a spin on Rufus Wainwright’s words: Only when the Church in this country becomes obsessed with glorifying God in all things will we critically and redemptively engage our culture on all kinds of subjects.

Enjoy the following thought from Catalyst Space: 

Jim Collins says that creating a “To Not Do List” is as important as creating a To Do List. In order to get more accomplished with our time, we need to not only stay focused on our tasks to do, we also need to stop wasting time doing things that are keeping us from accomplishing our goals.

What things are you doing that need to go on your To Not Do List?

Furthermore, regarding your Kingdom-purpose-mission-in-life-thing, what do you need to stop doing? Are you accomplishing the mission in life that God made you for? Do you need to stop playing it safe?

Enjoy the following post from Dr. Albert Mohler, the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:

A recent caller to my radio program raised an issue of obvious personal urgency.  He explained that he and his wife had recently experienced the death of a young child.  He spoke of his faith in Christ and of his desire to be obedient.  “But, can we question God?” he asked.

Of all possible tragedies, the death of a child is singularly horrific.  The caller did not relate details of this tragedy, but we all heard enough to feel the unspeakable grief experienced by this young Christian couple.  Do they have a right to question God?

It seems to me that the answer is both yes and no.  Beginning with the biblical affirmation that God is omnipotent and omniscient, sovereign and ever-reigning, we start with the understanding that whatever comes to pass does so by the express command, ordination, or permission of the Father.  Thus, the Creator is at all times responsible for his creation — and for his creatures.

So, is it legitimate to question God?

Perhaps we should consider how God has revealed himself to us as Father.  Considering a human father for a moment, we can recognize two different ways of questioning his ways.  The first way would be to rest secure in his love and fatherly care, but to express confusion over his ways.  Even the most faithful and trusting children wonder about their parents at times.  What are they up to?  Why did they make that decision rather than the other?  What was the purpose of that action?  As close as children are to parents, parents often perplex children by acting like adults.  In this mode of questioning, the child never questions the father’s love and faithful disposition, but does admit confusion — and perhaps even disappointment.

The other way of questioning a human father is to question his character, his faithfulness, or the authenticity of his love.  This is an altogether different mode of questioning.  In this second pattern of questioning, the child questions the father’s heart, not merely his actions and ways.

Now, move from considering these two different modes of questioning a human father to a parallel set of approaches to questioning our heavenly Father.  It is not unfaithful to admit and to articulate a sense of perplexity and pain in observing the ways of God.  There are times when we cannot offer an explanation of God’s ways.  At times, we cannot even detect any possibility of a purpose.  We can admit this to ourselves, to our brothers and sisters in Christ, and to our heavenly Father.

The other mode of questioning God, on the other hand, constitutes sin and implies unbelief.  We cannot remain faithful and question God’s own faithfulness.  His love for those who are in Christ is beyond question.  His character is a constant and his love never fails.  He is not loving and gracious toward believers at one moment, only to turn into a malevolent deity the next.  He never changes.

In this light, it would be sin to question God in this second sense — the sense in which we might question whether God really loves us, or if He is really faithful to his promises.  This is not the questioning worthy of a believer, but of an unbeliever.

In Numbers 23:19 we read:  “God is not a man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change his mind.  Has he said, and will he not do it?  Or has He spoken, and will he not fulfill it?”  To question God’s faithfulness is to assault his character.  Finite human beings are incapable of understanding the wisdom of God, except when that wisdom is mediated to us through the miracle of revelation.  We are not promised that all of our questions will be answered on earth.

We are promised, however, that on the Day of the Lord every believer’s eyes will be dry, and every tear will be wiped away.  We will understand all things in a transformed light.  We will know in a fully revealed sense what it means when we are promised that nothing can separate us from the love of God.  On that day will not be God’s interrogators or questioners, but worshipers who will see him face to face.

Is it legitimate for a believer to question God?  Yes and no.  Even the Apostle Paul admitted to being perplexed [2 Corinthians 4:8], but by his own affirmation he was not crushed.  We have no right to question the steadfast love of God for us, however, because this insinuates that God is either unable nor unwilling to keep his word.  As the Bible reveals, He is neither unable or unwilling.  He is ever faithful, even as his ways are “past finding out” [Romans 11:33].

One day, we will be beyond asking any questions about God’s ways.  Until then, it may help to remember that even the Apostle Paul was sometimes perplexed.  Perplexed, that is, but not unfaithful.

This week, we are going to look at several interesting blog posts that I have found from my daily blog readings over the last few weeks.  This will be replacing the weekly blog recommendations and instead I will just post a large amount of blog posts within the time-span of a week every few months.  I hope that you find these posts as interesting and helpful as I did.

Due to the insanity of finishing up group projects and final exams this week, I will not be posting on my blog.  You can check out some other awesome blogs under links on the right side of the screen and also check out some new things on the site including the podcast.  I hope you have a great week and a great beginning to the Christmas season!  Posting will resume December 8th so stay tuned.

The fifth and final cry of the protestant reformation is Soli Deo Gloria which means “to the glory of God alone.”  This phrase reminds me of my favorite chapel which is located at Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University.  This divinity chapel is designed to reflect the history of the Christian faith by having sculptures and pictures decorating the chapel of Christians throughout the history of the church.  At the pinnacle of the chapel is this saying engraved - Soli Deo Gloria.

The glory of God alone should be the fuel of our lives as Christians.  We should live to make the name of Jesus famous and to give glory to God alone.  These words if pondered and lived would radically change the way that we live and minister.  Let us always remember who we are making famous.  Not ourselves but God alone.

This is the first message in a two part series that I preached at a middle school retreat for Cove Church in Owens Cross Roads, Alabama. This message is about Jesus calling His disciples and how He is also calling us to follow him.  I hope that this is encouraging to you in your walk with Christ!

 

 Called by Christ- Cove Church [22:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

JD Greer, the pastor of Summit Church, had some interesting insights on his blog today from Mark Driscoll, Greg Surratt, and Larry Osborne that were very insightful.  Enjoy!

Continued from yesterday. (I got to spend the last 3 days in a small group with 3 great church leaders–Mark Driscoll, Greg Surratt [of Seacoast Church and one of the multi-site pioneers] and Larry Osborne [an ex-hippie of the Jesus movement, now pastor of 8000 attender North Coast Church of San Diego and truly one of the most insightful thinkers I've ever been around]. My time with them left me swimming with new ideas about innovation in ministry.

• The American idea to “achieve your potential” is a tyrannical goddess. It tells us that whatever we are doing is not good enough, because we have “more potential.” We should be living higher with more power. Potential is not a biblical concept, but an American one. “Calling” is the biblical concept, and often “calling” is simply taking the form of a servant (Phil 2:6-11) and not achieving your potential. 

• Most pastors turn ministry into a functional savior. When the ministry is going well, they feel closer to God; when it is going poorly, they feel farther away from God.
• To pastors who say: “I don’t count people.” Do you count money? Is money more important to you than someone’s soul? 

• In a rapidly multiplying church, we often have to settle for “good enough” rather than perfect. While we realize that we should do all things excellently to the glory of God, excellence can become an inhibiter to real ministry when it monopolizes our resources and keeps them from doing things that would increase our capacity to multiply. As we learn on the mission field, reproducibility is a crucial dimension of church planting. 

• The pastoral office includes “prophet, priest and king.” Kings are leaders. Prophets are guys who think about what the Bible says and it burns inside them to tell others. Priests care about people.” Whichever you’re not the strongest on, hire someone to do. (Mark Driscoll). (p.s. He asked me what each of us was… he then looked at me and said, “I know what you are. You’re freakin’ ‘open the Bible and yell at everyone’ guy.” Exact quote. He meant this as a compliment.) 

• Larry Osborne to me: “I’ve been at North Coast (a congregation of about 8000) for 28 years. The thing I am most grateful for is EVERY child of staff member has grown up to follow Jesus.” He went on to explain to me some things he’s learned about that. Of particular interest was his statement that one of the most important lessons to learn was that exuberance in the faith in the parent often works against the kid. What he meant was that often the ministry parent wanted their kid to feel the passion that they did for Jesus, evangelism, etc, and they often forced the child into situations hoping that would grow. Instead, it embarrassed the child and turned them off. The passions of the heart for Jesus must develop ‘naturally,’ by faith, and not be imposed from outside on the child. We expect our kids to grow up too quickly.”
• In Seattle we have a “Canadian arsonist nudist colony.’ I’m going to go ahead and tell you, unless they repent, they’re going to hell, but what a fun way to go. Getting naked and burning stuff down.” (Mark Driscoll) To note: comments such as this one do not reflect the opinions of jdgreear.com or its affiliates. Opinions are solely those of the ones being quoted).