Avoiding Death by Nostalgia: My Denomination (The SBC) Today

iMonk’s post today goes to the root of evangelicalism and not only the SBC. It’s applicable across the spectrum, and it gives us some insight into the choices being made today as to church models and who’s driving the bus us evangelicals are on.

It’s a very different world than the evangelicalism I grew up with. I don’t think I will be around long enough to see some of the basic shapes it will take. No matter what, there will be a people of God who “get it.” The Gospel will have their hearts and denominational loyalties, charismatic platform personalities, cultural styles and publishing houses will not undo what the Holy Spirit is doing.

Since I have been out of seminary, Bill Hybels and Rick Warren have dominated the landscape of evangelicalism. (As to charismatic/Pentecostalism, that’s another story!) Resurgent Calvinism and a rejection of attractional models for church growth are picking us steam. Edgy communication that is not audience driven but message driven is making a comeback.

I think that the Warren/Hybels phase had to happen. Evangelicalism was too captive to its own culture. It had to break out somehow. But W/H were a transfer station. The bus was always going somewhere else. Today we are seeking where that somewhere else is. My guess is that we will reach a consensus identity after a few more years and then enjoy that model for the next 75-100 years.

This kind of thing has to happen. It cannot be avoided. Roman Catholicism looks attractive as a model of solidity and stability during times like this, but I don’t think it has the guns to keep up with secularization. I think evangelical Protestants can fight back and make advance at the same time RCs are retreating in western cultures.

In the meantime I might be retreating, but I am going back to some of the Puritans for my nurturing, especially John Owen. My opinion is that it has the theological power to not only provide a platform to answer the questions the living of the Christian life poses, but it has a Gospel-centeredness which does not give way when it is pushed.

Coming to church looking for a lover.

In what sense is the church family? When we call the church family we must work on our definitions, or some people are going to get their signals mixed up. More than a few times people have wanted the church to be what it is not and have ended up blaming the church just like they blamed the people in their own natural families. And the church’s responsibility to clarify what they mean by the term provides just another opportunity for hurt and disappointment.

I think the following words from Ronald Rolheiser in The Holy Longing, p. 117, can guide us here.

We have often confused church community with family in the psycho-sexual sense. This has brought us no end of disappointment. We speak of the church as a family, but it is not a family like a family created by a man and a woman and children is a family. A family in the normal, psycho-sexual, sense is made up to two persons coming together in love and sexaul relation and eventually having children together. Within that framework, which includes the sexual, a whole range of intimate needs can be met that cannot be met in other kinds of families. Perhaps a few mystics, like Teresa of Avila, who would occasionally go into an emotional and bodily ecstasy after receiving holy communion, will find their need for emotional and sexual inimacy fulfilled within a church. They are the exceptions. The rest of us need to go to church looking for something else. Church community can never be a functional substitute for emotional and sexual intimacy. It is not intended to be. One shouldn’t go to church looking for a lover.

I am convinced many people come to church doing just that, looking for a lover. These are people who don’t need people, per se. They have relationships, often lots of them. What they miss is a lover. They may be married, divorced, remarried, or single. But this gaping hole remains. And it something only a loving spouse can fill. That’s why when they try to get people immersed in their lives, it doesn’t, and can’t, work out. The church cannot be someone’s bride (the church is the bride of Christ) and it cannot be the groom, either, for the same reason. The church is only the bridal party.

I can’t recall the number of times people have stormed into church (and that’s the word) asking for attention, needing attention and giving all kinds of attention to people who give attention to them. But it is doomed to fail, and the relationships that once appeared so hopeful unwind and end up only falling apart. It can’t be marriage. You can’t be in the car with them when they drive home from church. Not every time. Not even most of the time. That’s what marriage does. There is an intimacy between a man and a woman that is “one of a kind” intimacy. Nothing takes it place.

Where that is not available, Christ promises grace. He believes we can make it when that kind of relationship cannot be entered into or held onto. But what replaces it is not the church. It is Christ himself.

So the church had better be more careful in describing what it means by family. There are some people who don’t get the necessary caveats and will only end up wearily slipping out the back door.

Why Hell should be one of your “in” doctrines

This is no doctrine to avoid. It gets us too close to the heart of the Gospel to not preach it and preach it well.  Here is Tim Keller’s spin on it.

The Importance of Hell
There are plenty of people today who don’t believe in the Bible’s teaching on everlasting punishment, even those who do find it an unreal and a remote concept.

by Tim Keller

In 2003 a research group discovered 64% of Americans expect to go to heaven when they die, but less than 1% think they might go to hell. Not only are there plenty of people today who don’t believe in the Bible’s teaching on everlasting punishment, even those who do find it an unreal and a remote concept. Nevertheless, it is a very important part of the Christian faith, for several reasons.

Video of Bill Hybels on Tim Keller – this is how I feel, too

Click here for the link.

Today’s Quote 3/24/09

Ethics and reading a menu have much in common. Never let the good be the enemy of the best.  JI Packer

Between Two Worlds

I grew up on Fanny Cosby hymns. She was a hero of the faith upon which I was nurtured.

more about "Between Two Worlds", posted with vodpod

Between Two Worlds

I was nurtured on Fanny Cosby hymns. She was one of the heroes of the faith with which I was nurtured.

more about "Between Two Worlds", posted with vodpod

Between Two Worlds

I was nurtured on Fanny Cosby hymns. She is one of the heroes of the faith with which I grew up. Here is a video introduction.

more about "Between Two Worlds", posted with vodpod