Archive for the 'Culture' Category
Book Review – Church Planter by Darrin Patrick
As I’ve said previously, I’m in the beginning stages of planting a church in Nashville Tennessee. That being the case, I’ve been reading everything about the subject that I can get my hands on as I prayerfully formulate the vision for the church. Deep Church by Jim Belcher was helpful. Vintage Church by Mark Driscoll is a wonderful book. Francis Chan’s Forgotten God provided a needed reminder that I must (and frankly long to) operate out the of the power that only the Holy Spirit provides. And my latest read, Church Planter by Darrin Patrick, has been a much needed encouragement and reminder about what it is I’m supposed to be doing.
Patrick lays out the book in three sections: The Man, The Message, and The Mission. I immediately connected with the first section. Personally speaking, I needed to be reminded and encouraged about my call to ministry and my call to church planting. Patrick helped me to do this. Section two of the book, the Message, was a good reminder of what the gospel is and how it needs to be preached. I was less moved by this section of the book, but simply because most of its content is material that I’ve been swimming in for quite some time. Section three was my second favorite part of the book (after section one). I grew up hearing only a 50% gospel message. I mean, I grew up hearing how Jesus died and rose again and how that should transform me morally, but I heard very little about how that message is supposed to send us on mission into our cities and communities. The mission I mainly heard was, “tell people how to get saved.” But the culture-transforming, missional-lifestyle aspects of the gospel were rarely touched upon. And yet the Bible calls it the “gospel of the kingdom.” It’s a message about how to be saved yes, but the saved are sent on mission to not only preach salvation but transform cultures and communities and families. I don’t want to say that I never heard anything of this sort growing up, but it definitely wasn’t a key feature of the Christianity that I was accustomed to. Men like Driscoll and Keller and Patrick continue to add clarity to my thinking in this area.
This is a great book, and honestly it’s usefulness goes way beyond church planting. If church members read this book and embraced its words, Godly pastors would rejoice at the wave of momentum that would occur.
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No commentsDeep Church by Jim Belcher – Quick Thoughts
I’m in the midst of a God thing right now, whereby I think I’m being led – with the help of others – to plant a church near downtown Nashville. It’s all very preliminary, but I’m in the process of reading a lot about church planting and trying to cinch down some ideas. So you, the reader, should not be surprised to see a lot of references to books on ecclesiology on this blog in the near future. My most recent foray into church planting has been Deep Church by Jim Belcher.
Deep Church is Belcher’s attempt to plot a course for a “third way” of ecclesiology between the emerging church and the traditional church. He wants to take the best aspects of both camps: the orthodox beliefs of the traditionalists, and the cultural concerns of the emerging churches and combine them into a new movement.
I listened to this book via audio and now I want to get my hands on a physical copy so that I can go back and underline / rethink many of Belcher’s insights.
But here are a few quick thoughts
1. Belcher is truly kind to both traditionalists and emerging folks.
2. He truly understands the ideas and complaints of both sides.
3. Belcher is an evangelical and his suggestions for a deep church are extremely well stated.
4. Personally, I think he’s a little too soft on McLaren, Jones, and Pagitt. I wonder if his tone might be slightly sterner now that McLaren’s most recent book, A New Kind of Christianity, has been released, because frankly it is pure heresy.
5. Belcher helped me gain a key insight into postmodernity. Different people define the movement differently. I’ve been well aware for quite some time that some think postmodernity is good for Christianity and some think it is evil, but Belcher helped me to understand that often these two sides talk right past each other because they define the movement differently. Some see postmodernity as ultra-modernity, while others see postmodernity as contra-modernity. This is probably why there seems to be so much confusion about postmodernism and why it seems so elusive to define.
6. I think the church that I’m helping to plant may gain important insights from thinking through some of Belcher’s ideas.
7. In the end, I’m not sure that Belcher’s Deep Church is really a “third way.” For me, it’s more or less “the way” that I’ve been striving after for quite some time. And, I don’t think I’m alone. However, Belcher’s ideas have helped me to add clarity to many of my thoughts and for that I am grateful.
For a more in depth review, check out DeYoung
Also, after I get a physical copy of this book and rescan it, I may post some helpful insights here in the comments.
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No comments
Brief Book Review/Rant: The Revolution by Ron Paul
Between Now and Eternity
Let me start out by saying that the ultimate hope for any government is only Jesus. On this side of eternity, every political theory is lacking. The only perfect government will be the future one, where Jesus is king and the heart of every individual has been made perfect. Until that glorious kingdom is fully made known, every government will be less-than-perfect. Political party affiliation, political candidates, and political ideas will all be found lacking. So I don’t put an exorbitant amount of hope or time into politics. However, I do think we are called as Christians to live out the implications of the gospel to the various cultures that we find ourselves in, and this includes the political culture within America. Between now and eternity, I want to recommend the ideas of Ron Paul as a good solution to a lot of America’s problems.
A.S.A.P.
To be perfectly honest with you, to fully review this book would be a waste of your time and mine. To fully say all that I wish to say about the book, would be to quote the whole book. Rather than writing a lengthy review, I would rather you just read The Revolution. In fact, if you want to stop reading this review right now (which honestly is not much of a review anyway), and instead go read Ron Paul, I would applaud you. There is no portion of The Revolution that I wish to synopsize. I like every word. There is no part I disagree with. It’s all good.
The two political parties, as they currently exist, both promote a future for America that is heading towards total and complete futility. Ron Paul offers an alternative path. Bush was an awful president. Obama seems no better. Does either one intend to lead America into futility? No. But the politics they promote are like a heavy weight tied around the ankle of this country. The nation is drowning. These days America is not the America that we wish it to be. It is not the America that the founding fathers wished it to be. And personally speaking, I like the America that they envisioned better than they one we currently have. So I’m recommending this book.
Simply put, and I know this sounds awfully dogmatic, I dare you to read this book and consider its ideas honestly. Maybe you’ll disagree with some of them, but I think you’ll agree with a lot of them. And that at least will be a step in the right direction.
P.S.
This is an awfully good audiobook (concise, about 5.5 hrs), that’s how I read it. But, I’m thinking of buying a physical copy so I can go back and underline some stuff (see previous post).
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No commentsJohn Piper on Environmentalism
My favorite line from this is:
“Love for people, not love for mother earth. Who cares about mother earth, as a mother!”
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No commentsBook Review: Vintage Church by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears
Slowly
Our church staff has been slowing, and I mean slowly, working its way through Vintage Church by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears. Time elapsed so far is probably nearing a year. Initially we were reading at a reasonable pace, but then everything got busier in “the ol’ church world” as they say, and we’ve all but postponed finishing the book for the time being. But, we will finish. In the mean time, and since I was nearly finished with the book anyway, I thought I’d read the last few chapters.
It’s good. I mean really good. It’s been good all the way through, but it got really good at the end. Driscoll and Breshears start out simple, and move to more complex subject matter. Perhaps complex is actually a bad way to say it, let’s say they move on to more timely subject matter towards the end of the book. All of it’s good reading though. Even the opening chapters, the ones I’ve now labeled as “simple,” are relevant and essential reading. One of the most under-taught areas of theology is probably ecclesiology (i.e. the theology of the church). And because church should not just be this service that we attend in a building once a week, we need to understand what a church is, and why it does the things it does, and even if it should be doing them at all. Vintage Church forces readers to interact with these questions.
My favorite chapters are definitely the last several. They include chapters such as:
Chapter 9) What is a missional church?
Chapter 10) What is a multi-campus church?
Chapter 11) How can a church utilize technology?
Chapter 12) How could the church help transform the world?
The chapters on preaching (chapter 4) and church discipline (chapter 7) also stand out in my mind as highly helpful and extremely insightful.
#12
The most important chapter may be chapter twelve, which as stated above, deals with the question, “How could the church help transform the world?” In this chapter Driscoll and Breshears interact with the collision of church and culture. How should the church influence, transform, and help create and cultivate the larger culture that is around it? I’ve heard Driscoll teach about this subject matter before, but I feel the treatment in Vintage Jesus is the most fully-orbed that I’ve heard so far. So, I want to touch on this specific subject matter for the rest of this review.
Driscoll starts out by defining four commonly held visions for how to transform culture, and then decries each of them as short sided. These visions are:
1) The Evangelistic Vision – if everyone gets saved, the world will change
2) The Political Vision – if we elect the right leaders, the world will change
3) The Fundamentalist Vision – we should flee the sinful, secular culture, which will be destroyed by God soon anyway
4) The Liberal Vision – if we just love people, even if we don’t share the gospel, everything will be ok
Driscoll then proposes a new, 5th vision for how to transform culture, one that has been largely developed by James Davison Hunter, a Christian and professor of sociology at the university of Virginia. Hunter concludes that Christians must abandon the short-sidedness of the previous visions for how to transform culture. They are all based on the false premises that culture will change because of great ideas, or a great man, or the purity of the hearts of individuals. Conversely, Hunter asserts that culture changes because of connectedness to a powerful network of cultural shaping individuals and institutions. He offers the following five ideas:
1) Culture is a resource and, as such, a form of power.
2) Culture is produced.
3) Culture production is stratified (i.e. arranged and sent out) from center to periphery.
4) Culture changes from the top down and rarely from the bottom up.
5) The impetus, energy, and direction for changing the world are most intense where cultural, economic, and even political resources overlap.
Driscoll seems to agree with these ideas and offers the following plan. Churches should be planted primarily in urban areas where they can interact with the culture-makers and become the culture-makers in society. In these large urban areas, the church should exist as a city within a city. It should demonstrate how life should be lived within its own small city (the church), and send its people out to interact with larger city where it is planted. The people of the church are transformed and trained to interact with the culture at large in loving and truth-filled ways. This God-centered culture will then flow downstream to smaller cities and more rural areas and effect them as well. This is a strategic method to reach the largest amount of people and effect the largest swath of culture.
I think the most eye-opening part of this chapter for me was that “the evangelistic vision,” and the “city within a city vision,” are not the same vision. Personally, I had been propagating both and assuming they were the same. But they are not. As Christians we must preach the gospel, and people must be saved. But, we also must create and effect the cultural systems at large by constantly interacting with the culture-shapers in our city. It’s not enough to simply teach our people to witness, they must witness yes, but they must also create and effect the culture in every area of their lives. This is being true to the entire message of the gospel, which is more than “pray this prayer and ask Jesus into your heart, and then be moral.”
This Keeps Making More and More Sense
I still have a lot to learn about what all this entails, and the following synopsis is incomplete, but I think I agree. Personally, I have no intentions of diminishing the priority of evangelism. But I think evangelism is just part of the solution, and actually becomes a more effective tool in the hands of a Christian who is constantly cultivating the culture around him as he shares the good news.
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No commentsBook Review: Religion Saves + Nine Other Misconceptions by Mark Driscoll
The Book
My beautiful wife gave me this book for Christmas, and ever since I’ve been slowly picking my way through it’s pages. It’s that type of book. You can read a chapter one night, put the book down, pick it up again a month later, and read another chapter. The chapters stand on their own.
Religion Saves was a sermon series at Mars Hill Church before it became a book. Driscoll gave his church members (and really anyone who visited the church website) the chance to vote on his sermon topics. The nine most popular questions, as determined by the online voting, were developed into the Religion Saves sermon series. The book came about after the fact.
The questions preached / written upon were:
9. Birth Control: There’s no doubt the Bible says children are a blessing, but the Bible doesn’t seem to address the specific topic of birth control. Is this a black-and-white topic, or does if all under liberties?
8. Humor: Why do you make jokes in sermons about Mormon missionaries, homosexuals, trench coat wearers, single men, vegans, and emo kids, and then expect these groups to come to know God through those sermons?
7. Predestination: Why does an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-sovereign God will into creation people he foreknows will suffer eternal condemnation – and the Romans 9:20 answer seems like a cop-out!
6. Grace: Of all the things you teach, what parts of Christianity do you still wrestle with? What’s hardest for you to believe?
5. Sexual Sin: How should Christian men and women go about breaking free form the bondage of sexual sin?
4. Faith and Works: If salvation is by faith alone, then why are so many verses that say or imply the opposite – that salvation is by works?
3. Dating: How does a Christian date righteously, and what are the physical, emotional, and mentally connecting boundaries a Christian must set while developing an intimate relationship prior to marriage?
2. The Emerging Church: What can traditional or established churches learn from “emerging” churches?
1. The Regulative Principle: Do you believe that the Scripture not only regulates our theology but also our methodology? In other words, do you believe in the regulative principle? If so, to what degree? If not, why not?
My Opinion
As you can see, some of this is pretty heady and some of it is pretty practical, but most all of it is interesting. One of my favorite things about Driscoll’s writing style is how well-stated and organized his books are. He manages again and again to state an unbelievable amount of information in a concise, understandable, well-organized, digestable-for-nearly-anyone format. Even if you are a pastor, and think you already know your answer / opinion on all of these questions, this is a useful resource. Because let’s face it, unless you’re D.A. Carson or John Piper, Driscoll probably answers these questions better than you would.
My favorite chapters are: Birth Control, Predestination, Sexual Sin, Dating, and The Emerging Church. I would argue that each of these chapters warrant the purchase of the book alone.
Really good read!
p.s. – you can watch all the sermons online rather than read here:
http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/religionsaves?direction=asc&order_by=date
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No commentsHave you read 9mark’s review of the Nooma Video Series?
http://www.9marks.org/books/scoopa-nooma-part-1
Here’s an excerpt:
“The gospel as Bell communicates it in NOOMA runs something like this: All of us are broken, sinful, selfish, and prideful people. We carry around the baggage of our hurts, our resentments, and our jealousies. As a result we are just a shell of the kind of people God intends us to be. But our God is a loving God who accepts us and loves us just as we are. He can comfort us, heal us, and make us whole, real, authentic, living, laughing people. Not only that, but Jesus came to show us how to live revolutionary lives of love, compassion, and acceptance. By learning from his teachings and following him, we can live the full and complete lives that God intended.
And that’s about it. That’s not just the introduction that leads to an explanation of the cross, atonement, the resurrection and salvation, either. So far, at least, that’s what NOOMA holds out as “The Gospel.” Full stop”
My Opinion
I admire Bell’s creativity , his desire to help people, and his desire to point them towards God, it just doesn’t seem like he’s pointing people towards the God of the Bible.
Also helpful on this topic is Mark Driscoll’s chapter on the Emerging Church in his book Religion Saves (Religion Saves is also a sermon series by Driscoll that mirrors the book, see the link to the video below).
http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/religionsaves/emerging-church
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2 commentsBrief Book Review: Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
Dan Brown’s Writing
I like Dan Brown. He writes entertaining, conspiracy-theory laden novels about religion, history, government, science, and technology. Digital Fortress is his earliest novel, published in 1998. It’s a good book, but as might be suspected, it’s not as good as some of his later work. In my mind both Digital Fortress and Deception Point (Brown’s third novel) pale a bit in comparison to his more popular novels: Angels & Demons (his second novel) and The Da Vinci Code (his fourth novel). This may be because his writing has gotten better, or it may be because the subject matter is more intriguing in Angels & Demons and Da Vinci.
Uber-Brief Synopsis
Digital Fortress is a book that follows the inner-workings of the NSA (National Security Administration) and code breaker Susan Fletcher. David Becker, Susan’s fiance, plays an equally large role within the book, and finds himself in Seville Spain trying to track down an item that he has been told is vital to national security. The larger issue in the novel is about balancing national safety with the right of each individual’s personal privacy. In other words, “How much about our personal lives does the government need to know to truly keep us safe?” This topic seems like old hat in a post-911, post-George W. Bush presidency era, but Brown wrote Digital Fortress before these events had taken place, so kudos to him for having insight into an important debate ahead of time.
The Good & the Bad
I liked this book, but some of the terms and technology referred to are a bit dated now. I also think that Brown’s writing becomes somewhat predictable as the story builds. To be honest, I’m not a person who usually tries to figure out how a novel or a movie is going to end. I’m more interested in experiencing the emotion that the story brings to life in the moment (novels in this sense are an escape for me because so many other types of books that I read require constant mental awareness), but even as someone uninterested in figuring the story out, I could foresee how some of the situations in Digital Fortress were going to end. I think some of this predictability is also present in Deception Point, but happily not in Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code.
One more thing to Brown’s credit: some of the characters in this book are spot on. The NSA’s lead sys-sec, Jabba, is perfectly believably and at times annoyingly so. Midge, an internal security analyst, is a perfect rendition of that snarky, intelligent, domineering woman whom you love to hate, but truthfully need. There were times within the book where these two characters, especially Jabba, were so believable, that I was getting irritated just listening to them speak.
Verdict
If you like Dan Brown’s writing, Digital Fortress is worth the read. But, read Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, and The Lost Symbol (his newest book, which follows The Da Vinci Code, and which I assume is great) first.
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No commentsMark Driscoll on Repentance and why Celebrity Pagan Neo-Catholicism doesn’t cut it
I love how Mark Driscoll is able to articulate the truth of Scripture in such a culturally-aware manner. He is probably better at this theological/cultural mixture than anyone else that I know of.
