DownshoreDrift

The Righteousness of Christ

I write a lot about social justice issues, missions, and reforming culture. But, it is only possible for the Christian to engage in any of that because we have first and foremost been set free from our sin, death, Satan, and Hell by the blood of Jesus and His sacrifice and victory on the Cross and through His resurrection. Because "it is finished" we no longer need to make striving for our own righteousness before God our all consuming focus. We are free to serve God and others!  We can entrust ourselves to God and truly believe that we are righteous with the imputed righteousness of Christ! What a great salvation!

I first ran across Dr. Rod Rosenbladt a few years ago when a friend of mine passed me a little booklet called Christ Alone. It was gold. I happened to see a link to a Dr. Rosenbladt mp3 on The Gospel for those Broken By the Church. I have not listened to this yet, but a couple of excerpts are printed that I found helpful:

If the Ten Commandments were not impossible enough, the preaching of Christian behavior, of Christian ethics, of Christian living, can drive a Christian into despairing unbelief. Not happy unbelief. Tragic, despairing, sad unbelief. (It is not unlike the [unhappy] Christian equivalent of "Jack Mormons" - those who finally admit to themselves and others that they can't live up to the demands of this non-Christian cult's laws, and excuse themselves from the whole sheebang.) A diet of this stuff from pulpit, from curriculum, from a Christian reading list, can do a work on a Christian that is (at least over the long haul) "faith destroying."

He goes on:

I'm Back

We had a great time on vacation. Lots of sitting, playing, resting, and reflecting. God is good and has blessed me so much. It was good to spend time with the family and just be together.

My birthday was on Sunday. I turned 34. I'm in my mid thirties and it seems weird and it is causing me to think about a lot of things. I used to see guys who were in their 30's as being old. Now, they seem a lot younger. I guess that will keep happening as I get older. Funny how your perspective changes. I'm not as young as I used to be - Profound, I know.

My church called me on Sunday morning and sang "Happy Birthday" to me over the phone. That put a big smile on my face! Thank you guys!

On another note, Steve McCoy and Joe Thorn are blogging together at Subtext: The Gospel in the Suburban Context. They have some interesting insight. I've been looking for thoughts on this issue for some time and have found few. Thanks, guys!

Russell Moore on Spiritual Warfare, the Family, and the Rule of Appetites

Either the prophetic cry regarding our lifestyle choices and pursuit of the American Dream is getting louder, or I am just paying closer attention. As our economy tanks and our culture declines, I think that more and more Christians will begin to consider how we are living. Russell Moore from Southern Seminary takes aim at Southern Baptists' acquiesance to a culture run amok in materialism and hedonism. He hits this topic much harder than I have over the past few weeks as he talks to Southern Baptists about some timely issues. He says, "both left and right in the American mainstream are captive to the ideology that the appetites are to be indulged; the heart wants what it wants, by whatever system will do it most efficiently."  Moore is at his best in this article when he exposes the spiritual warfare that is taking place in our midst and how we have been deceived as we fall in line with the materialistic pursuit of our culture. He aptly points out that our enemy is not flesh and blood.

Moore's only weakness is that he is writing from a middle-class perspective as he critiques families where both parents are working. This is the reality for many families and there is really nothing that can be done about it. Instead of making families who HAVE to do this to survive feel bad, we should help them and support them as they provide for their families. His focus, however, is rightly placed on those families who could easily make it on one income, but choose to put children in day care to pursue a lifestyle of affluence. That action does require some analysis and alternatives need to be considered.

Overall, however, his take on this subject is timely - especially his comments on spiritual warfare. 

If We Want to Follow Jesus . . .

Americans are clustering more and more into cultural, social, economic, religious, and political enclaves according to Bill Bishop in his new book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart. Basically, our affluence has led us to the place that most Americans want to live, work, and play with people just like them. The Homogenous Unit Principle that I spoke of a few posts ago, seems to be alive and well in an increasingly multicultural America. But, instead of becoming a melting pot, we look more like a salad bowl of Balkanized special interests. Of course, we have seen this for years with white-flight and the rise of the suburb, but it is now apparently happening across other areas of life and it has profound social, political, and religious implicatoins.

Andrew Jones Gives the "Skinny" on Missional

Check out Andrew's synopsis of the term "missional" and the movement that it has inspired HERE. This is really good stuff. I really like the term and since I picked it up in San Francisco at GGBTS in the late 90's from Andrew, Thom Wolf, Linda and Eric Berquist, Jonathon Campbell, Dr. Francis Dubose, and others,  then I feel pretty good about using it. I think that it is a helpful term, especially in describing the movement of God that flows from a missiological reading of the Bible. If we see God as the God who is coming after us and then sending us to help rescue others, then our reading of Scripture begins to make a lot more sense. Anyway, check out Andrew's post for some background of the term.

Believer's Baptism Vs. Paedobaptism and Covenant Theology

In an attempt to educate and inform on all things of even slight interest to me, I point you to a post by Jason Robertson at Fide-O on the Reformed Presbyterian practice of infant baptism (paedobaptism).  Being a baptist, I obviously believe in a believer's baptism by immersion, but I am still interested to know what other groups believe and what causes divisions between denominations. Some say that divisions don't matter and we should all just join together. On some levels that is true, but on others, the divisions actually mean something. Of course, we should have a charitable spirit toward all whether we agree on everything or not, but it is still interests me to understand where we are all coming from. Any thoughts on this issue?

Alan Hirsch Conference pt. 3 - Middle Class Consumerism and the Gospel

After talking about our views of Christ and calling us to discipleship to Jesus, Alan Hirsch began to talk about one of the major hurdles to discipleship in the West today: Pursuit of the Middle Class lifestyle and Consumerism. Hirsch said that the major issues in Middle Class living are safety and security. In the realm of Consumerism, it is comfort and convenience.

Hirsch said that the Market dominates our lives. It is the metanarrative of Western Capitalism and defines our identity and purpose in life through thousands of messages. Brands offer meaning, identity, purpose, and belonging. This has taken the place of religion in our society. This is the Matrix - the church has bought deeply into this. The Church Growth Movement has bought into this as well. We use entertainment to try and bring people into the Kingdom, but we cannot entertain people into discipleship. Our churches do not disciple people as they should - they primarily affirm our present lifestyles.

We buy more stuff and bigger houses to find our security against the dangers of the universe and to secure our status. We are experiencing status anxiety all throughout our culture. Status anxiety is defined by what others think of us and our rank in society. If everyone is below the line and we are all in the same boat, we are happy. If one person rises above the line by having success in some way, then everyone else is upset. We become unhappy when others move past us, not because our situation has changed, but because we feel less than because we constantly compare ourselves to others. We live in a meritocracy - our worth is based on merit.

All religions offer meaning, identity, purpose, and belonging. Consumerism is spirituality. It offers all of these things. Do we buy into a Consumerist spirituality, or do we follow Jesus? If we follow Jesus, then we have to die to this life. We have remade Jesus to provide a pleasant, middle class, consumerist lifestyle for us. As Christians, we have to live from an alternative story - the story of Jesus.

In our culture, our identity comes from what we look like. This destroys our soul.

The best way to change society is to tell a different story. We ahve to live a qualitatively different life. It must take place in community.

The traditional church is a dembodied message - Sermon is separated from life and people.

Contemporary church keeps the spectator perspective (disembodyment), but makes it entertainment oriented.

Emerging church shakes things up, but it still focuses on the presentaton. While creative, it still creates passivity.

Family has become an idol for many people. Instead of being a small community of faith that represents Christ to a hurting world, the family has become a place of withdrawal and protection. The gospel is a threat to this. In the name of the family, we attenuate (cut down) the real gospel. Jesus must becme mediocre to support this lifestyle.

All of our pietism must end up doing something.

Consumerism co-opts everything. Even our social causes and religion gets co-opted and sold back to us in trinkets and symbols. We buy good feelings.

Rodney Stark - How did Christianity grow in the Roman Empire? During the plagues, the Christians cared for the sick. They were different.

If we don't embody the gospel, then we cannot effectively transmit the gospel.

Live Jesus' dream for America instead of America's Dream for itself. What would the American Dream Redeemed look like? 

Alan Hirsch Conference, Pt. 2: Who Do We Say Jesus Is?

This is the continuation of my notes on the conference that I attended in New Orleans last Saturday with Alan Hirsch.   Alan continued his presentation with a discussion on the views of Jesus that we have developed in our lives. He said that we will never become missional if our discipleship does not flow out of a correct Christology. We do not live missional lifestyles because we are not disciples of Christ. We are not disciples of the real Jesus because we have often replaced Him with a false Christ of our own making. He used a series of pictures with each view that I will try and replicate here. He said that our view of Jesus becomes heretical when we place our own image of who Jesus is upon the biblical Jesus. We must come to Him as He is related to us in Scripture, instead of as who we want Him to be.  Please note that all of these views of Jesus have some truth to them, but they are just not the whole story. We must take Jesus for all that He is, not just for the parts that we want of Him.

Spooky Jesus is the Jesus that is so otherworldly that his approachability and humanity are gone. We have so mystified Jesus that we forget that He took on flesh and made His dwelling among us. We forget that he suffered every temptation that we did, yet was without sin. If we lose the humanity of Jesus, then we lose the truth of the Incarnation and we also lose the truth of the Resurrection.  Jesus put on flesh. He humbled Himself and became a man. We must not forget that. If we do, we lose the Savior. We are not able to relate to Him or approach Him.

The other extreme is the Buddy Jesus.  Jesus is my buddy and he takes care of me. He is my co-pilot, the Big Guy upstairs. This is also heresy. In this view, there is no reverence and no submission to the Lordship of Christ. He continually meets us on our terms.  He does not transcend our human existence and instead of being Lord of Lords and King of Kings, He exists to take care of me.

The next faulty image of Jesus that we hold is the Sunday School Jesus. We see flannelgraphs of Jesus and the little children in pastoral scenes. Of course this is a partially true representation of who Jesus is, but it is not the whole story. The Sunday School Jesus is a sanitized version of Jesus for middle class people who like to have their lives neat and tidy. It leaves off all of the offensive edges and presents Jesus in a way that is very safe and secure. Jesus does love the little children, no doubt. But, he does not just love them by securing for them a safe lifestyle. As Mr. Beaver in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe said when asked if Aslan was safe, "Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good."

Hirsch went on to say, "If you want a nice, middle class life for your children, then hide the gospels from them. We have made Jesus into the teacher of middle class mediocrity."  Ouch. I think that many of the conference attenders began to squirm at this point. But, Hirsch went on, "It is easy for us to identity with the Pharisees. They created a manageable religion." He then asked us to list the good qualities of the Pharisees. We came up with this list:

• Kept theology pure - Anti idolatry
• Engaged in spiritual disciplines
• Defended Scripture
• Zealous, passionate
• Well-respected - custodians of the identity of Israel
• Holy
• Believed in miracles, the Resurrection, angels, were Messianic
• Tithed
• Leaders

These are the people who put Jesus on the Cross. Then he said that this is how Evangelical conservatives live today. Jesus affirms all of the actions of the Pharisees, but he told them that they had lost the heart of God in the midst of all of their good-doing.  God wants them to keep doing the former good things while not forgetting justice, mercy, sacrifice, and love. He said that it is easy for Evangelicals to do lots of good things, yet lose the heart of Jesus in the midst of it all.

Jesus surprises us. Everyone gets it wrong, even the religious experts. In Revelation 3, Jesus is knocking at the door of the Church at Laodicea to come in. Why? The Laodiceans have locked Jesus out. They love their wealth and oppulence.  But, you can't serve both God and money.  It is hard to live with Jesus. He demands everything of you.

Are the Suburbs in Decline?

Chuck Warnock thinks so. In anticipation of my next post from the Alan Hirsch conference on the dangers of consumerism, check out Warnock's post, The Decline of the Suburb.

I'll have a lot more on this tomorrow, but in the meantime, what do you think the future holds for the 'burbs? How has suburban life affected the witness of the Church positively or negatively?  What might a post-suburban evangelical church in America look like? I'd love to hear your ideas. I'm really thinking a lot lately about how the Gospel of the Kingdom relates to suburban/planned community living in America.

Alan Hirsch and the Centrality of Christ for the Missional Church

On Saturday, I travelled to New Orleans with Micah, our pastoral intern, and met Andrew, a former member of our church and a student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Andrew emailed me a while back to invite me to attend a one day conference with Alan Hirsch, co-author of The Shaping of Things to Come and author of The Forgotten Ways. I jumped at it and I'm glad I did. This was one of the best 7-8 hours that I have ever spent in a conference. Every moment was a bombshell. Every thought shared and digested was life changing. Alan Hirsch delivered truth about the person and work of Jesus Christ and the mission of the church in ways that were extremely challenging. Over the next few days, I'm going to share the notes that I took on the conference and also share some other thoughts along the way.

The title of his presentation was "Re-Calibrating the 21st Century Church." He began by telling a story about Swedish evangelicals. Out of 9 million people in Sweden, approximately 300,000 are evangelical. They are very passive and they have lost their adventurous spirit. If they do not make decisions to change things soon, they will be responsible, or will be the ones on watch, for the demise of Christianity in their land. Europe is now post-Christian.

We have to re-think church and mssion requires recovering our most ancient and powerful story.

The church is now in a post-Christendom culture. The problem is that we have innoculated people AGAINST Christianity. People think that they know who Jesus is, but we have not correctly represented Him because we do not really live for Him. Where Europe now is, America is headed.

Einstein said, "You cannot solve the world's problems with the same thinking that created those problems in the first place."

We must recover the centrality of Jesus Christ in His own movement. Christology lies at the heart of the renewal of the church. We must be refound by going back to the Founder. We must genuinely radicalize in order to missionalize. To radicalize means that we must go back to the root. We must return to Jesus and really know Him as He is and reveals Himself, or we will never become missional.

Christology > Missiology > Ecclesiology.  Jesus is not easy to live with. He demands everything from us.

What is the church meant to be about? That is answered by recovering Jesus. Not only is Jesus God-like, but God is Christ-like. We cannot look at God except through the lense of Jesus. How you think of Jesus changes everything.

We must go to the root (Jesus) to radicalize. Jesus defines the movement. When you go back to Jesus, you find the core of Christianity. When we radicalize (go back to the root), we become more like Jesus. Do we look like Jesus? Do our churches look like Jesus?

If we do not go back to Jesus, then Ecclesiology dominates. The Church becomes the focus and Jesus gets locked up within the Church and our religious activities. Jesus becomes domesticated to the church's agenda. Missions at this point becomes a sub-committee of the church so that we can get Jesus out of the church and into the world. In the correct view, ecclesiology should come last and our missiology should flow out of our Christology. Churches should form because people know Jesus. Our view of Jesus should propel us to a lost world because that is exactly where Jesus went. If we are His disciples, we should end up looking like Him.

Christianity minus Christ equals religion. Religion focuses on some type of experience that fades over time, so rituals are developed to guard and convey the experience to the next generation. A priesthood develops to manage this and represent it to the people. Jesus develops an anti-religion where everyone becomes a priest and everyone who believe in Him gets in. A priest ministers to God and mediates God to other people. We all get to do this. As priests, we should not try and control people, but we should introduce people to Jesus. We are not responsible for people's decisions, but rather, we should share the truth of God with people.

As evangelicals, we camp out in the death and resurrection of Christ. But, we forget the Incarnation. We forget that He became a human being and, as Eugene Peterson says, "moved into the neighborhood." We are not Jesus, but we must become like Him. The totality of Jesus' life and work must come into play through the Gospel of the Kingdom.

We must rediscover the gospels as primary texts. We must return to the gospels and rediscover Jesus. How does He live? What does He teach? Do our lives look like His? We must rediscover Christ. We must return to Jesus and stop just believing doctrine about Him and start living like Him in relationship with Him. Jesus changes everything, yet He is not easy to live with.

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Me - Instead of trying to get people to be more missional by trying to get them to engage or to be trained, we need to continue to connect people to the real Jesus. A lack of desire for missional impact can always be traced back to a flaw in our Christology and discipleship. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Nothing should get in the way of us joining Him in that mission. We are a sent people. Many Christians do not embrace this view, and our churches are dying as a result. But, instead of trying to revive our churches or work harder, we must return to Christ. We must return to our first love and live the way that He calls us to. Our whole perspective needs to be changed instead of just adding some stuff to an already broken system.

Much more later . . .