In our discussion about the Culture Driven Church, I keep coming back to one major question. You should know how questions affect me. Questions are the hobgoblins that niggle my brain. On more than one occasion my good friends have heard me begin a two hour conversation with the words, “There’s this question that’s been bugging me.” Questions are the launching pads for inspiration. And often I find if we let some questions simmer and bubble without rushing to a judgment, they tend to yield some useful insights. So here’s the question that been crawling up the side of my mind throughout the last year.

“What Christian critiques of the culture are truly scandalous?”

By “scandalous”, I don’t mean which ones fit the Pulitzer Prize nominated National Enquirer’s definition of scandal. I mean those aspects of our proclamation to the culture that are stumbling blocks that non-Christians (more…)

I received my copy of the September issue of Christianity Today this past weekend which contains the article “McLaren Emerging” by Scot McKnight. McKnight is the Karl A Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University in Chicago, IL. McKnight by his own claims is part of the emerging church (something I wrote on in February of 2007 Five Streams of the Emerging Church or Has the Church Sprung a Leak?). McKnight raises some good questions about McLaren and in the closing paragraph of the article writes: (more…)

The July 31, 2008 Chicago Tribune carried the article by Mara Tapp Celebrity again trumps real values. Mara used the occasion of someone taking Barack Obama’s note out of the Wailing Wall and publishing it. She correctly points out:

The problem is that Americans, as usual, focus on the celebrity rather than the deeper and more troubling issues the note’s fate presents. Its leak offers just another tidbit about those Obamas—a sacred variation on how cute Michelle Obama’s dress is or whether she yells at her husband about picking up his socks or his older daughter’s mortification when he shakes her friends’ hands. After all, to the celebrity-struck, don’t-bother-me-with-real issues average American, these are the details that matter.

Many in the church are trying to figure out how to minister to the post modern culture but don’t realize that as Dr. Ergun Caner has pointed out in his talk Christians Coming Out of the Closet that since September 11, 2001 we have lived in the transmodern culture. In the transmodern culture the spokesman for culture is celebrity. It is driven by feeling and the desire to be near or at least emulate celebrity. Real issues are set aside where they interfere with celebrity stuff and as it plays itself out in the world we are seeing that Young Adults and Liberals Struggle with Morality.

The “faith” vote is playing big on both sides of the aisle this election and Evangelicals are divided as can be seen in Evangelicals say McCain’s the one while Brian McLaren and others in the Matthew 25 Network claim that Barack is the one and act as an Evangelical advisory group to Obama’s campaign. As part of that coalition Donald Miller to Give DNC Benediction.

As those who are born again by grace alone through faith alone in Christ’s death, burial and resurrection alone, how are we to decide such important issues? The answers are not easy and I certainly do not have the inspired, inerrant and infallible understanding of the inspired, inerrant and infallible Scripture but perhaps we can lay out some basic guidelines for consideration.

Government will not save us but God uses government to preserve a relatively peaceful society (Romans 13:1-7). As I pointed out in Who Shall Rule? sometimes God allows (more…)

One of the topics I spoke on at a church retreat recently was Roman Catholicism. One of the points I made was that Rick Warren stated at the Pew Forum that he doesn’t see much difference between Roman Catholicism and what he believes. I pretty much followed the outline of our Journal article Thus Saith Rome! which poses some questions based on Rome’s official teachings. On August 1, 2008, John H. Adams published his article ‘Emerging church’ spreading in PCUSA on The Layman Online. To those reading these may not really seem connected at first glance. The connector comes in through a quote a friend emailed this week which bears on both of these issues. The quote is from the book Faithfulness and Holiness by J.I. Packer (Crossway Books, 2002). On page 38-39 Packer quotes the late J.C.Ryle, whom the book was about:

‘I believe the most powerful champion of the Pharisees is not the man who bids you honestly and openly come out and join the Church of Rome: it is the man who says he agrees on all points with you in doctrine …..all he asks you to do is to add a little more to your belief, in order to make your Christianity perfect….

‘I consider the most dangerous champion of the Sadducee school is not the man who tells you openly that he wants you….to become a free-thinker and a skeptic. It is the man who begins with quietly insinuating doubts…..whether we ought to be so positive in saying ‘This is the truth, and that falsehood,’ doubts whether we ought to think men wrong who differ from us on religious opinions, since they may after all be as much right as we are….It is the man who always begins talking in a vague way about God being a God of love,and hints that we ought to believe perhaps that all men, whatever doctrine they profess will be saved.’

Although this came from Ryle over a century ago his points are just as relevant and poignant today, perhaps even more so. It is more honest for a Roman Catholic to (more…)

One of the ways we keep up around here is to read what others are or will be reading. At any given time there are 8-10 books on my desk and I tend to take them on one at a time in between other aspects of the ministry. From time to time we post our reviews and since Stephen Burnett reviewed Why We’re Not Emergent by Two Guys Who Should Be two weeks ago it seemed about time for me to get a little caught up on this as well.

The first will be Mark Mittelberg’s latest offering Choosing Your Faith: In a World of Spiritual Options (2008; Tyndale House Publishers, $19.99). Mark has done a service to believers and non-believers in laying out and analyzing criteria by which we can and should examine our world view and embrace the beliefs which pass the test. Although an Evangelical himself the criteria he discusses can and should be applied to the Christian claims as well. The book isn’t an apologetic for Christianity directly as much as it is a call to ask the hard questions, understand relativism, pragmatism, tradition, authority, reality, intuition, knowledge, mysticism, logic, evidence and science. Each of these can be helpful or, if not properly understood, harmful. (more…)

Brian McLaren presents himself as all embracing as far as religions are concerned. In his latest book, Finding Our Way Again, his major premise is that we can go back to the middle ages and extract all the various mystical practices from Roman Catholicism (which are now being euphemistically termed “contemplative”) and throw them all together in a subjective stew in any manner and proportion that suits our spiritual fancy and come out just fine. If only he had gone back a little further and connected with the Apostles! The dark ages have nothing to offer us but dead traditions however there is life in God’s Word.

One thing that is very obvious in all of McLaren’s writings is (more…)

As I demonstrated last week, Jesus says that the disciples will actually be “where” He is going. That’s more than simply a spiritual sense. Being first century Jews there is more to the context and hence the understanding of the disciples which comes from what we now call the Old Testament.

The Wisdom of God

Craig Keener connects the notion of the way to the wisdom literature of the Old Testament:

“The LXX of Isaiah (30:11, 21; 33:15; 40:14; 42:24; 48:17; 58:2; 63:17; 64:5) and other biblical tradition [sic] (e.g., Exod 18:20; 32:8; Deut 8:6; 9:16; 10:12; 11:22, 28), especially the wisdom tradition, also apply the image of the ‘way’ to the way of righteousness and wisdom. In both biblical (e.g., Isa 55:7-9; 56:11; 59:8; 66:3) and early Jewish sources, ‘ways’ refer to behavior, as in the rabbinic use of halakot. ‘Ways’ as behavior represents a usage that would be understood in John’s circle of believers (Rev 15:3).”1

Keener continues, (more…)