Answering the question, how do you define the popular word “mission?”

“Fundamentally, our mission (if it is biblically informed and validated) means our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of God’s world for the redemption of God’s creation” (p23)

We are wrapped up in something so much bigger than our own lives and pursuits!

Belcher points to the work of Ed Stetzer in categorizing who fits into the emerging category. Stetzer suggests there are three main groups: “relevants,” “reconstructionists” and “revisionists.” These groups are largely defined by their take on cultural engagement, the form of the church, and the gospel. The “relevants” (which describes much of the Acts29 Network) are in most respects theological conservative evangelicals when it comes to the gospel and the church, but are looking to “update” their methodologies (worship & preaching technique, and outreach) to be more contextualized to their surrounding culture. The “reconstructionists” are fairly “orthodox” when it comes to the Gospel and Scripture,” but feel that the traditional and seeker models of the church have been unbiblical and irrelevant. In this category, “organic” church forms, such as house churches and new monastic communities are developing. And finally, there are the “revisionists,” such as Brian McLaren, Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt, who have received the most attention. Belcher writes, “Revisionists, contends Stetzer, are questioning issues ‘like the nature of the substitutionary atonement, the reality of hell, the complementarian nature of gender, and the nature of the Gospel itself’” (46).

As Belcher begins working through the seven protests of the emerging church, he is largely focused on the reconstructionists and the revisionists. He writes, “Influenced by Anabaptists and Mennonite sources, the reconstructionists’ biggest challenge to the traditional church lies in the area of ecclesiology and community. The revisionists’ epistemology, influenced by postmodernism, challenges the church’s stance toward culture and its proclamation of the good news” (47).

Up Next: moving through the protests launched by the reconstructionists and the revisionists!

Essentially, this work is for all who are seeking a vision for the deep church, one that acknowledges the validity within the protests of the emergent movement, but knows that the concerned response of the traditional church is not unfounded.

Up Next: how Belcher defines the emerging church

I grew up in a Roman Catholic family in the Northeast, came to a real saving knowledge of Christ in college and started attending a conservative Presbyterian (PC-USA) church in Richmond, VA, and now find myself at an Acts 29 Church, The Journey in St. Louis, which is best described as Reformed Baptist (doctrinally speaking), while simultaneously attending Covenant Theological Seminary, the seminary of the Presbyterian Church in America. Over the past two years, I have grown in my conviction that it is God’s intention that followers of Christ need to belong to a local church. But what does that look like? Furthermore, how should the Church be visibly expressed in a local body? How should the Church be governed? How should the Church be engaged in culture? Or even more simply, what does the Church really look like? Certainly Scripture speaks to these questions. I hope to spend much of my time at Covenant exploring those questions.

With a week and half break between January and Spring term, I was excited to find this book on the library shelves: Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional by Jim Belcher, Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA. Having finished the book, I hope to blog through it in the final few days I have before classes resume on Thursday.

In this work, after spending some time defining the “Emerging/Emergent” movement, he outlines seven protests that this movement has with the traditional (American evangelical) church, while also looking at the response of the traditional church, and evaluating. Neither the emerging/emergent movement nor the traditional church can be viewed as monolithic structures. There is great variety within each “camp,” which Belcher acknowledges, and thus, spends more time looking at the specific views of certain well-known individuals.

Here are the seven areas that comprise Part 2 of the Work, “Protest, Reaction and the Deep Church,” which I will use to arrange my posts: (1) truth, (2) evangelism, (3) gospel, (4) worship, (5) preaching, (6) ecclesiology, and (7) culture.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with what Belcher lays out regarding this “third way” or “deep church,” I believe he presents the emerging/emergent movement and the traditional church in a fair light. This book was incredible informative, and has helped guide my curiosity, while providing categories to process what every church in America should be wrestling with.

what's on the desk this semester!

Greek in Exegesis (Colossians): Greek-English Lexicon of the NT & other early Christian literature (BDAG), Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Wallace), Complete Vocabulary Guide to the Greek New Testament (Trenchard), Pillar New Testament Commentary on the Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon (Moo), Word Biblical Commentary: Colossians, Philemon (O’Brien), Introducing New Testament Interpretation (ed. McKnight), The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians: A Socio-rhetorical Commentary on the Captivity Epistles (Witherington)

Covenant Theology II: The Mission of God (Christopher Wright), The New Testament and the People of God (NT Wright), Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament (Christopher Wright), Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures (Ridderbos)

God and Humanity: Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2, “God and Creation” (Bavinck), The Doctrine of Humanity (Sherlock), Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Plantinga), Nature and Grace in Herman Bavinck (Veenhof), Why I Am Not An Arminian (Peterson & Williams)

Apologetics and Outreach: Living at the Crossroads (Goheen & Bartholomew), Learning Evangelism From Jesus (Barrs), The Heart of Evangelism (Barrs), Francis Schaeffer (Duriez), Evangelism in the Early Church (Green), Lost in Transmission (Perrin)

Homiletics: Between Two Worlds (Stott)

Oh and that is the game Stratego on the far left!

Keller writes, “In my estimation what current science tells us about evolution presents four main difficulties for orthodox Protestants” (2).

Here are the four areas:

1. Biblical authority: accepting evolution means we must take Genesis 1 as non-literal. What is the relationship between faithfulness to the Scriptures and literalism?
2. Confusion of biology and philosophy: The strongest proponents of evolution (including Dawkins) take it as a “Grand Theory of Everything,” which essential is a worldview that attempts to explain all deep philosophical and existential questions through evolutionary biology. Does accepting evolution necessarily mean that we must accept this “Grand Theory”?
3. The historicity of Adam and Eve: If they are only symbolic in Genesis 1-3, how do we handle Romans 5 & 1 Corinthians 15, which tells us that our sinfulness comes from Adam? If we don’t believe in a historical fall, how do we explain our “fallenness”?
4. The problem of violence & evil: In Keller’s words, “The process of evolution, however, understands violence, predation, and death to be the very engine of how life develops. If God brings about life through evolution, how do we reconcile that with the idea of a good God? The problem of evil seems to be worse for the believer in theistic evolution” (2)

In pastoral ministry, Keller has found the first three areas as the most pressing concerns from parishioners. Before getting into his answers to these questions, there is a really remarkable statement that Keller delivers in regards to the role of the pastor:

In short, if I as a pastor want to help both believers and inquirers to relate science and faith coherently, I must read the works of scientists, exegetes, philosophers, and theologians and then interpret them for my people. Someone might counter that this is too great a burden to put on pastors, that instead they should simply refer their laypeople to the works of scholars. But if pastors are not ‘up to the job’ of distilling and understanding the writings of scholars in various disciplines, how will our laypeople do it?

I will provide here his three questions and three short summary answers, read the article for his complete analysis.

Question #1: If God used evolution to create, then we can’t take Genesis 1 literally, and if we can’t do that, why take any other part of the Bible literally?
Answer: The way to respect the authority of the Biblical writers is to take them as they want to be taken. Sometimes they want to be taken literally, sometimes they don’t. We must listen to them, not impose our thinking and agenda on them.

Keller does a great job discussing genre and authorial intent that I believe is missed by many that would say they read Scripture literally, while others “spiritualize it” (and I am not referring to allegory here).

Question#2: If biological evolution is true—does that mean that we are just animals driven by our genes, and everything about us can be explained by natural selection?
Answer: No. Belief in evolution as a biological process is not the same as belief in evolution as a world-view.

Question #3: If biological evolution is true and there was no historical Adam and Eve how can we know where sin and suffering came from?
Answer: Belief in evolution can be compatible with a belief in an historical fall and a literal Adam and Eve. There are many unanswered questions around this issue and so Christians who believe God used evolution must be open to one another’s views.

Keller moves very careful in this area. His discussion of Pauline thought in Romans & 1 Corinthians is exceptional. He does uphold the view of a historical Adam & Eve, which the Apostle Paul certainly did. His articulation of Federal Headship makes no sense otherwise.

The opening paragraphs of the final chapter (p. 124):

6. What must we be? The Call to the Church

The church is the bearer to all the nations of a gospel that announces the kingdom, the reign, and the sovereignty of God. It calls men and women to repent of their false loyalty to other powers, and to become believers in the one true sovereignty, and so to become corporately a sign, instrument, and foretaste of that sovereignty of the one true and living God over all nature, all nations, and all human lives. It is not meant to call men and women out of the world into a safe religious enclave but to call them out in order to send them back as agents of God’s kingship. What does the calling imply for a church faced with the tough, powerful, and all-penetrating culture that we have been considering in these chapters?

It cannot imply a renewal of the attempt to create the kind of synthesis of church and state that shaped the life of western Europe for a thousand years. We can and must acknowledge our incalculable debt to the medieval church, which created a reasonably just and stable order out of the chaos of northern European barbarism and gave birth to the world that we have inherited–its science, its political democracy, and its traditions of ethical behavior. But there is no way in which we can, and no sense in which we should attempt to reestablish the medieval corpus Christianum.

Nor on the other hand, can we accept the view that the only task of the church is to provide for individuals a place in the private sector where they can enjoy an inward religious security but are not required to challenge the ideology that rules the public life of nations. The privilege of the Christian life cannot be sought apart from its responsibilities. The Christ who said, ‘Come unto me and I will give you rest,’ also said to those same disciples, ‘As the Father sent me so I send you,’ and showed them the scars of his battle with the rulers of the world (John 20:20-21).

“If you had two minutes to talk to the pope, what would you say to him?”

click here for the response

If you guessed it had to do with justification, you are correct!

And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail,

but God is the strength of my heart  and my portion forever.”

[Psalm 73:25-26]