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Last week I read And: The Gathered and Scattered Church by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, and am finally blogging a few of my thoughts.

I had heard of this book initially after a few friends were at Exponential this year.  I couldn’t go because I’d just been at the Q Conference in Chicago.  However, I probably should have been there because I’m in the throes of planting Fair Haven’s first multi-site right now called South Harbor Church (a week and a half from the first preview, with launch on 10.10.10.), but I couldn’t give up the Q experience.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, and will recommend it to several people – particularly certain chapters.  Let me begin with a critique, and end with some things I liked.

The premise of the book is basically to stop fighting over different models of the church and honor one another in our differences but seek to use whatever models work in seeking the kingdom.  The book talks often of mega and mini churches, and of missional and attractional.  These are important dichotomies on the one hand – and ones I’ve struggled with myself.  On the other hand, it’s too easy a division to hang a hat on and there are deeper issues than the book goes into.  Ultimately, I love title, but think the book got into too much about Adullam (Halter and Smay’s church), and only scratched the surface of these deeply ecclesiological issues of our time.

“And” does a good job of articulating the need for working together through various models with the same ends in mind, but in my estimation never gets to some of the deeper issues about how much a model influences the end goals.  For instance, Halter does a good job talking about moving people out of consumerism and into transformation and into dying to oneself for Christ.  He nails the issue that disciples are not consumers (chapter 3), but then never really deals with models of doing church these days that promote consumerism of a Christian sort.  In an effort to be unifying, Halter sometimes borders on not being critical enough where healthy critique is necessary.  Other times, though he says that both types of models are helpful, but then tends to tip towards favoring the missional impulse.  One question that would be more helpful to me would be around how the mega church can remain missional enough to be Christian and how does the missional church become attractional enough to stay alive and have an influence beyond a small group.  Overall, I think he tries to be balanced between multiple models, but speaks only out of the Adullum experience.  It would’ve been nice to see a balanced approach in this book with multiple models all expressing the unifying aspects of the gathered and scattered church.

Where “And” does hit the nail on the head in terms of what’s necessary for both the scattered and gathered, missional and attractional, mega and mini is the incarnational community.  Here is how it’s put on page 66:

“Whether you’re starting from scratch and moving down the missional flow or starting from an existing structure and moving up, you’ll notice that the center of the process is ‘incarnational community.’”

By incarnational community, they mean here bands of people with the missional heart of God integrating their lives with those who don’t know Him and are doing something intentional about.  Simplistic, yes, but true none-the-less.  Too many churches lose the core mission of God to reach his people far and wide and lose their very nature as church altogether.

For me, chapter 4, “Spiritual Formation for Missional Churches” was the best chapter in the book.   This chapter really deals with how to move someone from being far from God through the discipleship and growth process to the place of mobilization in ministry (in their words from Observance to Preparation to Participation to Partnership).  This is such a key issue, and one that churches tend not to do well.  We call it a “people pathway” or a “people process” – but who wants processed people!  However, churches today desperately need a pathway of discipleship that includes evangelism, grounds people in the basics, and moves them towards influential leadership in the use of their gifts.  With studies like Reveal and churches realizing their lack of depth, discipleship pathways are getting popular.  Chapter 4 is all about how to go about that, focusing on the transitions in stages, and developing a clear pathway.  I like it. This chapter is one that I will recommend several people read.

Chapter 5 is also very helpful in describing the difference between modalities (structures focused on caring for those already in the church) and sodalities (those that push toward those on the outside).  This is a helpful chapter, finding its roots in the missiology of Ralph Winter.  This is where the book gets closer to living up to its name.  I think if the book had moved this chapter earlier (after the biblical foundation of Chapter 1) and then built upon it, dealing with the centripetal and centrifugal forces necessary for the gathered and scattered church to remain in balance, it would’ve felt more balanced and helpful.  This chapter is one that I will recommend several people read (like church planting interns, student and children’s ministries staff, seminarians, etc.)

I mentioned in an earlier post on the book “Multi-Site Road Trip” that I had the opportunity to meet Dave and Jon Ferguson several years back.  I remember meeting with them, and Dave Dummit, as they were considering a site in Brighton, Michigan.  They had graciously met with Dan Reeves and myself to share their wisdom then on multi-site and the Big Idea in a time when very few people were talking about it.  I later was able to hear from them again at Third Reformed in Kalamazoo (now CenterPoint), and also had a chance to visit the Big Yellow Box and bring some friends along while I was in Chicago back in 2005.  What’s been really cool is to see these guys stay so focused on the mission that God called them to long ago to reach the city of Chicago, and to do it consistently and yet creatively.  So much has changed in their movement in terms of the creative energy and leadership they’ve brought to multi-site, and yet in some ways, so little has changed.  The heart of the message to see people find their way back to God is consistent, persistent, and powerful.

All that to say that I’ve just finished reading Exponential:  How you and your friends can start a missional movement.

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This was a fabulous read for me.  First, something personal.  I’m embarking right now on Fair Haven Ministries’ first site called South Harbor Church that will launch on 10.10.10 in Byron Township in south Grand Rapids, Michigan(along with many others in the 10.10.10 Initiative).   In fact, this morning I’m headed to hand out free cookies and lemonade at a local Little League to meet people and learn about the community.  Anyway, this book right now for me is a God-send in the sense that it affirms so many things that God is doing out of our church right now and also gives incredibly practical handles for being lead by Jesus, leading and reproducing leaders, tribes, communities, and movements.  What I love about how Dave and Jon wrote the book, was that it’s written with deeply biblical values, immensely practical, tested, and proven in the trenches of missional multi-siting.  I also love the real-life stories of real people and real churches.  The story of Community Christian (and all it’s sites) and many of its leaders is woven throughout the pages and gives you a sense of the messy reality of a true movement as well as the powerful stories. This isn’t just ideas… it’s the real deal.

For the past 5 years, a couple of my responsibilities as a spiritual formation pastor at Fair Haven have been leadership development and small groups.  I’ve been to many conferences and read many books and tried to implement many theories and ideas in both of these areas.  What’s awesome in this book as well to see is how small group life really works in this church, and especially how the leadership development pathway is integrated with not only small groups, but also with missional communities and in the raising up of artists.

This is probably one of the best books I’ve read on the practical side of the church multiplication movement.  It’s a must read for any church that is serious about multiplying leaders, churches, sites, disciples, and influence.   This summer, we took on 4 interns in church planting and we also have an on-site venue with a Campus Pastor.  We just talked this past week about all of them reading this, and I hope we can make that a reality.

Here are a couple of great tid-bits you’ll find:

• Real practical help on the leadership development people pathway and the importance of apprenticeship.
• Great illustrations of vision and strategy on napkins!
• A wonderful passage on scripture reading and journaling and how it affects leadership and vision for Dave Ferguson (see my recent post on YouVersion and LifeJournals)
• A great chapter on coaching, its importance in leadership development, and practical questions and a format for coaching.
• Encouragement that you, too, can really be used by God to multiply disciples, leaders, teams, sites, and churches.
• A focus not just on church growth, but on being missional.
• Much more.

Loved the book, and look forward to re-reading it and reviewing it with more care for some direct implementation in our new site.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

That’s not exactly how he phrases it, but James Davison Hunter in his recent book To Change the World: Irony, Tragedy, and The Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World questions the possibility of Christians really changing the world through intention.   It’s not nearly that simple, particularly for this brilliant sociologist, but Hunter argues – among other things – that changing the world is a long, complicated process involving cultural elites and centers of power, particularly in politics, that run contrary to the biblical vision given to us by Jesus.  I’ve been reading this book over the past couple months and have finally brought it to conclusion, although I think I’ll read it again.  In a nutshell, Hunter challenges the assumption that aggregated individuals through grassroots efforts can make any lasting or significant change in culture, particularly without wielding the very power of coercion that Christianity rejects.

I think Andy Crouch from the Christian Vision Project sums it up well when he says, “The irony is that there is no phrase more beloved to a certain kind of Christian than ‘to change the world.’ But in Hunter’s persuasive account, the strategies those very same Christians have pursued are, by themselves, woefully incapable of changing the world…”  ”…the very idea of ‘changing the world’ is rooted in a quest for dominance that fundamentally misunderstands the Christian gospel and the way of Jesus.”

Hunter goes on to critique the Christian Right (conservatives), The Christian Left (liberals or mainliners), and what he calls the “Neo-Anabaptists” made up of folks like Hauerwas, Yoder, Claiborne, and the New Monastics.  In this critique, Hunter betrays his philosophical (or sociological?) postmodernism in agreement with the likes of Foucault, Nietzsche, and others about language, power, and the coercive nature of culture creation.

There are several people who engage Hunter’s work, not the least of which are Andy Crouch and Chuck Colsen (see the posts below) who ask some great questions.  What I found interesting was that nowhere (I’m sure it’s out there somewhere) have I yet seen someone challenge the philological, linguistic, postmodern philosophical assumptions of Hunter’s work.  Don’t get me wrong, I actually agree with Hunter on these points about power and cultural transformation, but he doesn’t fully tip his hands about the philosophical foundations of those ideas, choosing instead to shroud them more spiritually in the non-coercive, non-violent leadership of Jesus.  I happen to think these two things are very compatible, but haven’t seen much work done to connect the two (which I’d love to do if I had the time).  Hunter does his sociological work as a Christian within a postmodern philosophical framework, but only acknowledges his indebtedness to the likes of Foucault at a cursory level hidden in the endnotes (yes, some of us do read them, cf. endnote 1, Chapter 4, Part I) and to Nietzshe with a short explication ofressentiment from Nietzsche and its relationship to Christianity in Chapter 7 of Part II.  Generally I find most Christians merely lambasting postmodern thought and philosophy without a) really understanding some of the seminal thoughts, b) seeing the ability to be a Christian and acknowledge some of these realities, or c) understanding how deeply these ideas affect issues of hermeneutics, missions, and even contextualization.

Don’t get me wrong, there are serious problems with postmodern philosophy, postmodernity as a cultural project, unthoughtful “postmodern churches” and edgy “postmodern pastors”.  But some of the more serious questions about our embeddedness in cultures of understanding based on would help us think through contextualization in mission, understanding of  power and language might help us avoid our sometimes coercive tendencies (in marketing, preaching, the use of guilt, etc.), and a greater honesty about our presuppositions and framing stories might help us get closer to real conversation with people about basic beliefs without mere condemnation and help our evangelism.  Recently Tim Keller told a group I was a part of that we need a new approach to apologetics, and I think this is part of it.  Hunter, in my opinion, opens the door to some of these conversations in a different (and potentially less volatile) way than Brian McLaren.

So, here are a couple wrap up thoughts on Hunter’s book:

1. This is a wonderful, scholarly work on how cultural change actually functions.
2. This work requires additional study on these issues by Christians and non-Christians alike.
3. There is much more work to be done in helping Christians to wrestle with some of these underlying issues of power, language, and culture (which, honestly, postmodern philosophy is mostly about).
4. This analysis is extremely helpful in understanding many of the drawbacks of the Christian Right, Christian Left, and the Neo-Anabaptist approaches and their rooting (or not) in ressentiment (which, interestingly enough, was the subject of one of my senior seminar papers in 1994 dealing with Neitzsche and the will to power.)

Enough of that for now.  I have more to say, and if I find the time I’ll write more.  Here are some helpful articles that give some more information about the book and Crouch and Colsen’s responses.

• Executive Summary of Is There a Culture War:  A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in 2006 featuring Michael Cromartie, Alan Wolfe, James Hunter, and others.
• Andy Crouch’s response Hunter and I Agree on Culture Making (He just seems not to know it) in Christianity Today and How Not to Change the World in Books and Culture.  I read Crouch’s book last year, and really enjoyed it.  Crouch takes issue with Hunter’s cursory overview of his book, and having read it, I agree with Crouch.  I ran into him at the Q Conference a few weeks ago and ask him, “What did you think of Hunter’s challenge to your book,” to which he responded, “Have you read my review in Books & Culture?”  Thanks for the tip, Andy, and it was good to meet you.
• Chuck Colsen responded in his article More Than a Faithful Presence in Christianity Today.
• Interview of Hunter by Christopher Benson Faithful Presence in Christianity Today.

I spent this past week in Miami a meeting with a number of Church Planting Networks and planters too look at the possibility of beginning a North American Network for city movements.  This gathering was catalyzed by the folks at Redeemer City to City and brought together people from  Renew South Florida, Acts29, the RCA, many from the PCA, the SBC, the GCM Collective, and others.  It was an awesome time to meet other folks who are passionate about reaching North America, particular through cities.  It was great to hear the unique challenges and opportunities that cities bring and present to the church.  The outcome of this gathering was that a group will be formed, likely to be called the City to City Collective for shared resourcing, networking, encouragement, and more.  It’ll be great to see what unfolds.

Tim Keller of Redeemer in New York was the keynote speaker, and I want to share just a few things.  In the first session, The Challenge of North American Cities, Keller said that the expense of cities, the complexity of cities, and the mobility of cities makes a church plant there very hard.  Knowing that, it’s important to see larger trends, and in that vein he spoke about the decline of cities from 1970-1990 in which cities were hollowed out at the core, with suburban flight the order of the day.  This left an urban desolation in many cases, with increased crime rates, devalued properties, and a cultural malaise.  The rich would commute from the suburbs and leave the urban poor in the central city.  From the 1990′s to today, there was been an upsurge in cities, a renewal of the urban core.  In many ways this was due to gentrification (young professionals re-locating to urban environments).  Crime went down, cultural productivity increased, and the core of cities have thus seen a resurgence.  However, the poor are also often displaced as property values increase and the city finds cultural and economic renewal.  Each era presents a different kind of opportunity, different needs, and different responses by the church.    The follow up question is, then, what is the future of the city?

Keller, then, offered his analysis of what the future holds for American cities.  First, he spoke of the following positive trends:

• North American churches are globalizing.  This is a positive trend because strong international connections create stability and prestige.  Because the era of America as an economic self-sufficient engine is over, globalization is important.
• North American churches are urbanizing.  By urbanizing, Keller was particularly speaking to the trend in cities towards smart growth, urban planning of  the New Urbanism kind.  He referenced the return to a walkable, mixed-use human settlement in cities, including places to work, live, shop, play, and learn within 10 minutes as opposed to the suburbanizing affect in which everything is about commuting and doing life with people that are not the same people you live with.  There are lots of great books on this, and I think he’s right on about not only emerging urban planning, but also that this is a positive trend not only for cities and human beings in general who live there, but also for the church because it creates a possible parish that is not merely made up of people commuting to their favorite church or speaker.

Secondly, he spoke of negative trends:

• The rise of great need:  Here, Keller focused on the recent recession and global financial meltdown, particularly in American cities.
• However, though this is a negative trend in some ways in terms of urban development, Keller rewinded to remind us that through our history lessons we learn that God has often used urban dysfunction to win the hearts of people.  When we are in times of great need, there is also great opportunity for the church to respond.

So, for Keller, the future of urban ministry looks good because of globalization, new urbanism, and increased need.

Lastly, in terms of cities, Keller mentioned the following future trends to expect:

1. Increasing hostility in the culture wars.  He was particularly on target when he said that we are fighting a Two Front War:  Secularists think Christians are too moralistic.  Muslims and Hindus think we are too permissive.  There will, then, be increasing hostility from secularists and increasing hostility from fundamentalists (of all sorts, including Christians).
2. More opportunities for justice and mercy.  This is true particularly because of the increasing needs in the global financial meltdown and the increasing gap between the rich and the poort.
3. Culture-making will be increasingly important, particularly with respect to the integration of faith and work.  People in the city will desire more and more the integration between multifarious worlds.
4. A new kind of apologetics.  This part was particularly poignant for me.  Back in 2000, I started a class called “Beyond Apologetics” because I was realizing that because of the shifts we are experiencing in late modernity or post-modernity, that a new kind of apologetics is needed.  This doesn’t mean that the classic apologetics are wrong or bad, but merely that we need a new apologetic for a new emerging culture.  In Keller’s words, “We need to answer questions people are actually asking” or in one of the bylines of my former church in Ann Arbor, “Ask questions worth answering; seek answers worth believing.”  Here are some of the points and reasons for a new apologetic:

• The world essentially says to Christians, “You are not good neighbors.”
• We need more cogent and powerful answers to questions that people are actually asking.
• The basic objection alongside of evil & suffering, etc. is that Christians are bad citizens of pluralistic cities because as we grow and if we grow, we will take away people’s rights and freedoms.
• We are completely outflanked in the public arena.
• We have to care for the whole parish, including our secular neighbors.
• The public narrative is that Christians are intolerant, and that is very powerful and makes it extremely hard to enter public discourse.

Keller also spoke about the stages of development of the catachuminate which we need to revisit, and how the church is failing in its response to homosexuality.  That’s a long conversation for another time.

I’ll blog a bit more on this in the future if I can find the time, including some of his other sessions.

I’ve had about 10 books going for awhile, and I’m trying of focus on finishing one at a time. I just finished reading The New Monasticism: What it has to say to the church, “an insider’s perspective” by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. I’ve mentioned the new monasticism before, and I have a lot of respect for what they’re trying to do. The New Monasticism movement reminds me a little bit of the way George Hunger III described St. Patrick’s monastic project in the Celtic Way of Evangelism (a fabulous book, and a must read as far as I’m concerned.)  He talked about how the early missionary monks to the Celts moved into their cities and rural sprawl and created a kind of monastic island in the middle of these people.  These monastic communities had a strict rule of life, served the people in their community, offered hospitality to strangers, and sought to transform a culture from the inside out.

I really appreciate the 12 Marks of the New Monasticism.  Hartgrove gives a good basic understanding of how monastics have been a part of renewal in the church throughout various centuries.  He writes about how monastics seek not to separate from the church or become an alternative, but to bring renewal and reformation to the church by returning to some key roots such as hospitality, sharing all things in common, prayer, and serving others.  This is how Hartgrove begins, by sounding the call, “the church in America isn’t living up to what it’s supposed to be.  Somehow we’ve lost our way.”  The point of monastic movements is to remind the church of its true identity, and that’s true for the New Monastics as well.

I had a fabulous conversation with a gentleman from my church recently who’s feeling the same way.  He loves the church, and yet he feels like the church in America missing the point of the mission at so many levels by putting money and energy into too many things that are not the heart of the reasons for the church in the world on God’s mission.  In his words, “We’ve so boughten into the American dream, that we’ve forgotten what the church is supposed to be.”  Hartgrove writes about this very thing.

What’s unique about this movement is that it takes seriously the renewal of the church and the ancient practices of monasticism in a way that is both inclusive of married couples and families and is also deeply embedded within the cultures of this world, particularly urban settings.  These settings are often referred these days by many of us as “abandoned places of the empire,” referring to those places, particularly urban, that have been deeply affected by the contemporary empire’s of consumerism and progress.  I’ve appreciated everything I’ve read and heard from the many in this movement and am already seeing how they are affecting the church in dramatic ways, Shane Claiborne being one of the key players here.

The New Monastics have also, like many people I respect, been deeply influenced by John Perkins.  Years ago, I sent some students to learn from Perkins and his community, and it was a life-changing experience for many of them.  Particularly, his 3 R’s are foundational (Relocation, Redistribution, and Reconciliation) for only only the New Monastic movement, but for other renewal thinkers in the urban settings as well (ie. Christian Community Development Association).  The other thing I deeply value is people like this who are able to speak intelligently and passionately about justice issues, poverty, and concern for the least of these while also maintaining some of the evangelical commitments of the Scripture.  More and more voices are emerging that are neither conservative nor liberal, fundamentalist nor mainline, republican nor democrat but hold together the biblical truths which cross such narrow, dualistic, and truncated views of the Scripture.

Good read for anyone who is thinking about the emerging church, renewal of the church and culture, poverty, urban ministry, community, and what some consider a more “radical” Christianity, which I think is probably closer to the identity of the early church than many of the churches in America today.

These are some of my notes from the seventh session of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit.

• Focus, study and replicate the 2 that are stellar
• Look for the bright spots and find out what’s different; throw resources behind those and multiply

When going after big issues, focus on sequences of small solutions and small starts.

“Shrink the change” – Take a large change, and run a micro version; get some small victory.  Then, resource and multiply and go big.

We owe it to people to prepare them for adversity.

Ideo's View of Hope to Confidence

There are people who have the “growth mindset.”  They are always thinking that with work, they can become better.  But built into that whole process is a tolerance for failure.

“Failure is not an option” is ridiculous.  It is often through failure that success comes.  It may be an early warning sign for success.

Sometimes we think we have a problem with someone who won’t change, or won’t accept our ideas.  In this sense, we think we have a “people” problem when we might actually have a “situation” problem.  This is called a fundamental attribution problem.

These are some of my notes from the first part of the fifth session of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit.  Thanks to Louis who helped me with this session while I answered a pager call.

Third culture is about adaptation.  Third culture is pain and discomfort because we interact with those who are different.  The Great Commandments are about third culture.

Third culture leaders go after the misfits more than the masses.

• FAILURE IS SUCCESS to God
• Your failure, your pain, is your platform to humanity, it is what the World connects to you on it is what gives quality to your voice for the generation to connect to you
• Most of the world doesn’t understand America’s success, but they will understand suffering, maybe suffering is success
• Do we set aside time to listen to people’s story?
• Gifts are important and skills, but our narrative is key
• Walk slowly, see the people
• Do I see them?  Do I have the eyes of a follower?
• Weakness will guide us more than our strengths
• We often worry about how to quantify a vision… DON’T we already have a vision?  LOVE GOD LOVE NEIGHBOR
• RELATIONSHIPS TRUMP VISION!
• You can’t have great vision without a great relationship with God
• Jesus only did what he saw his father doing (JOHN 5)
• We need more relationaries not visionaries
• People to walk for a while people to talk for a while, where you feel the vibe
• Best discipleship happens with life on life not a process or program

Third culture leaders have a different set of metrics.

• CHANGE PRIORITIES
• Hang out with people different than us
• Read people different than us

Third culture leaders know that obedience is more important than passion.

4 Acts of Obedience of a Third Culture Leader

1. Deeper Collaboration
2. Communal LIving
3. Prayer
4. Radical sacrifice for the outsider

I’ve spent the last couple of days in Grand Rapids at the Conference Poets, Prophets, and Preachers by Rob Bell.  Today is the last day, I’m really looking forward to it.  This is a preaching conference, and it’s been great to be around mostly young pastors from around the world because this is a representation of the next generation of preachers – and they are on fire.  It’s been a delight for me, too, to see some friends from our time in Ann Arbor who came up from Georgia and Alabama to be here, as well as to see friends from seminary and a bunch of other local friends, too.

To the conference:  I remember when I first began hearing about Rob Bell.  I was a pastor in Ann Arbor, Michigan, working with college students when Mars Hill was really growing in the early years of this decade.  Many of my students were from Grand Rapids, and sometimes they would go home for the weekend – and their home church was Mars Hill.  They would often come back and say, “You gotta hear this Rob Bell.  You guys think about and say a lot of the same things.”  That was fine and dandy, but I didn’t realize then what an impact Rob was beginning to have and would eventually have on the future of the church.  These students would bring me stuff from services and I started to listen to his podcasts and eventually read many of his books.  So, I’ve been reading and listening to Rob for years.  3.5 years ago I moved to West Michigan to serve in a church just a few miles from Mars Hill.  Interesting thing about the history of this church.  During the rise of Mars, this church went through a huge crisis in leadership and well over 1000 people left the church.  Many of them went to Mars Hill.  In the last 8 years, we’ve lost many young adults to Mars Hill, not to mention many disaffected with the church.  Though I heavily lamented the loss of so many young adults to our church (remember, I was in campus minsitry in Ann Arbor for years), 2 years ago, I remember just being thankful to Rob and Mars for providing a place for our disaffected young adults and those who were hurt by leadership division.  So I thanked Rob and the church in a sermon for this, and called for a greater unity among the churches and our brothers and sisters in Christ who are seeking the same things.  I hope to see greater unity and cooperation with one another in our community in the future.

Now, I know that Rob has gotten a lot of criticism.  I, too, don’t agree with all of his theology – even if I thought I could know what it always was or is.  I would venture to guess that my friends don’t always agree with all my theology either.  But let me say this.  On a number of fronts, Rob has taken some hard hits.  One of those is that Rob doesn’t believe in the resurrection, that he preaches just from the Old Testament and avoids speaking of the resurrection.  Now, let me just say this to my conservative evangelical friends (and I don’t mean that tongue in cheek, you are my people in so many ways):  that’s slanderous.  I have not heard recently a preacher more passionate about the resurrection than Rob Bell.  His teachings at this conference on the place or resurrection, the power of resurrection, and the lamb who was slain seated on the throne are in my mind orthodox without question.  Where some of you miss the point is that Rob is teaching a more holistic gospel rather than an often prefered abbreviated, truncated gospel of the contemporary evangelical church.  He is preaching way better than I could about similar things that I’ve written about often in these blogs concerning the holistic gospel.  Rob understands and is teaching what was visceral to me in my conversion through Paul’s words “In him [Christ] all things hold together.”

Sometimes Rob is alsosometimes said to be a universalist.  I’m sorry, that’s also slander and just not true as far as I can see.  Sure, he believes that all truth is God’s truth wherever it shows up, and that all beauty and all goodness are from his good creation and under his reign and attributable to him.  So do I.  That’s not universalism.  In fact, those of you who are reformed should recognize the Kuyperian resonance and reformed theology that undergirds this as well as Rob’s understanding of the wide breadth of the sovereignty of God.  Don’t mistake innovation in words, culture, or even sometimes theology to necessary mean heresy.  Fear is the enemy of the good.

I have a lot more to say, but maybe later.

I finally watched the video last night between Cizik and Jacques Berlinblau on Faith Complex in the Washington Post.  A couple of follow up comments:

• It appears that Cizik does view homosexuality as a sin, but is not against political anti-civil unions.  Many people would say that’s a clear contradiction, but there is a big question that bears discussion on this and many other issues about the fact that the US is a political democracy founded on political liberalism (different than “liberal”).  Since we are not a theocracy, what can be and should be expectedand/ or demanded from the government according to our values is naturally limited by the type of liberal democracy we have.  The big questions are probably these:  What are those limits for Christians?  At what point are we unable to live in such a democracy without strong resistance (and I don’t mean violent resistance, cf. 1 Peter 2&3)?  How do we respond faithfully and biblicall to government laws and programs that we cannot agree to, or that may contradict our beliefs?  At what point do we violate political democracy by forcing our own values and beliefs up others, and is it ok for us to do that through political leveraging or rule of the majority, but not for others we may disagree with?  I’ve not heard enough conversation among Christians on those issues, which would be a great help to clarify where we stand on such important clarifications  (maybe some time would be helpful with William Wilberforce, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., and of course Paul and Peter in their time in Rome and Jesus in Jerusalem).  It’s simply more complicated than saying, “We are a Christian nation” or “We were f0unded on Christian principles.”  Even if that were true (and it is and it is not, depending what you mean), these questions are still important.
• Cizik spoke well about environmentalism.  The church in many quarters does seem to be waking up to these realities at a higher level, for which I’m very glad.  There are some great minds in this area within the Christian Church, great voices that need more air time, people like Stephen Bouma-Predegar and Wendell Berry and one of my favorites, Joseph Sittler.
• Cizik spoke of the Republican Party as the part of denial.  I thought this was interesting.  He was basically saying that if you deny something (that global warming exists, that millions are without healthcare, that poverty is epidemic) then you don’t have to do anything about it.  I found this a fascinating idea.

I was actually impressed with Cizik.  Whether you agree with him or not, this is an interesting video.  As I’ve said a million times, and Berlinblau gets at it at the beginning of the video, the future of evangelicalism, and particularly the leadership of evangelicalism is up in the air.  I’m fascinated and interested in how this will play out in the next 20-50 years of my lifetime and wonder if and how I might be involved in that dialogue and development.

I don’t know how I missed this film before.  I appreciate the Ordinary Radicals and the New Monasticism and much of what they’re about.  For a good intro to these and similar movements, read The New Conspirators by Tom Sine.