Tag: Center Church
1 Do We Need to Make the Gospel Understandable to Modern Culture?
And are United Methodists now reaping the bitter fruit of having done so a century ago?
I’ve been reading Tim Keller’s new book, Center Church, the past week. In it, Keller gives much attention to the task/question of contextualization; that is, how we do communicate our message to the given context in which we live.
Keller notes that it’s not really a question of whether or not we should contextualize.
We can’t avoid contextualization unless we’re willing to avoid communication altogether. Every time we paraphrase a scripture passage, every time we extrapolate a point or a meaning, every time we settle upon what we think is the ‘plain sense’ of scripture we’re contextualizing BECAUSE, after all, we’re also a part of the culture and formed by it in ways we don’t always know.
Just ask Harrison Ford in Witness, Christians can’t avoid being in the world and we never really cease to be of the world either.
Preaching, then, is just a simpler term for contextualization.
So the question isn’t if we should translate the Gospel to culture but how.
Keller argues that Mainline (liberal) Christianity in the early 20th century sought to make Christianity palatable to the modern world by redefining orthodox Christian doctrine in naturalistic terms– terms stripped of a reliance upon revelation and the supernatural.
The result was a Christianity redefined thus:
The Bible is filled with divine wisdom, but this doesn’t mean it’s inerrant. It’s a human document containing errors and contradictions.
Jesus is the Son of God but this doesn’t mean he was preexistent or divine. He was instead a great man infused with God’s Spirit.
Jesus’ death is not a cosmic even that propitiates God’s wrath at Sin. It’s an example of sacrificial love that changes us by moving our hearts to follow his example.
Becoming a Christian, then, doesn’t entail the supernatural act of new birth (conversion prompted by grace). It means to follow the example of Jesus, follow the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.
You can agree or not with Keller’s point of view, but there’s no question the breakdown above quite simply IS the dominant articulation of Christianity among most United Methodist (and other mainline traditions) churches and clergy.
This is what makes most mainline Christians ‘liberal’ even if they think of themselves as conservative politically.
Here’s Keller contention:
You can’t make such adaptations to what scripture is, who Jesus is, what the Cross does and how you become a Christian without creating a religion that is entirely new and alien to Christianity.
The Mainline/Liberal effort to reconcile Christianity to the modern world of the 20th century (the naturalistic world), Keller says, results not in an adaptation of Christianity but in an entirely new religion that contradicts orthodox Christianity.
Even if you would quibble with Keller’s characterization, his next question remains TNT:
By adapting the faith to the norms of the ‘modern early 20th century world’ did Mainline/Liberal Christianity back the wrong horse?
Mainline Christians a century ago assumed that what was ‘modern’ for them would remain so- that those who clung to a revelation-based, supernatural understanding of the faith would be judged to be on the wrong side of history.
Keller says this was a category mistake.
Late modernity and postmodernity, he notes, has rejected modernism’s confidence that science and reason can ultimately answer all our important questions and that technology can solve all our problems.
In other words, 100 years removed from Methodism’s capitulation to culture, that culture has shifted out from under the Church.
In other words, Mainline Christianity wedded itself to what is now a fading, obsolete view.
And since adapting its faith claims to the culture a century ago, Mainline Christianity has experienced steep decline; meanwhile, Pentecostalism (the least modern- Enlightenment based- form of Christianity) and Eastern Orthodox Christianity have grown exponentially in the past hundred years.
So its a cautionary tale.
The how of contextualization should refer more to our mode of communication than to the content of our confession.
2 Why Should We Plant a Church? Don’t We Have Enough Already?
If you were in worship this weekend, you heard that one of our goals for the coming 18 months is to discern whether God’s calling Aldersgate to plant a new faith community.
Some may wonder, I’m sure, why we’d start a new congregation when there are plenty of churches around all struggling to fill the pews and pay the bills.
Anticipating your questions, I offer you this essay from Tim Keller, the planting pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC, a congregation that has since gone on to plant hundreds of churches around the world.
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Why Plant Churches?
The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for 1) the numerical growth of the Body of Christ in any city, and 2) the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city. Nothing else–not crusades, outreach programs, para-church ministries, growing mega-churches, congregational consulting, nor church renewal processes–will have the consistent impact of dynamic, extensive church planting. This is an eyebrow raising statement. But to those who have done any study at all, it is not even controversial.
The normal response to discussions about church planting is something like this:
A. ‘We already have plenty of churches that have lots and lots of room for all the new people who have come to the area. Let’s get them filled before we go off building any new ones.”
B. ‘Every church in this community used to be more full than it is now. The churchgoing public is a ‘shrinking pie’. A new church here will just take people from churches already hurting and weaken everyone.’
C. ‘Help the churches that are struggling first. A new church doesn’t help the ones we have that are just keeping their nose above water. We need better churches, not more churches.’
These statements appear to be ‘common sense’ to many people, but they rest on several wrong assumptions. The error of this thinking will become clear if we ask ‘Why is church planting so crucially important?’ Because–
A. We want to be true to THE BIBLICAL MANDATE
1. Jesus’ essential call was to plant churches. Virtually all the great evangelistic challenges of the New Testament are basically calls to plant churches, not simply to share the faith. The ‘Great Commission’ (Matt.28: 18-20) is not just a call to ‘make disciples’ but to ‘baptize’. In Acts and elsewhere, it is clear that baptism means incorporation into a worshipping community with accountability and boundaries (cf. Acts 2:41-47). The only way to be truly sure you are increasing the number of Christians in a town is to increase the number of churches. Why? Much traditional evangelism aims to get a ‘decision’ for Christ. Experience, however, shows us that many of these ‘decisions’ disappear and never result in changed lives. Why? Many, many decisions are not really conversions, but often only the beginning of a journey of seeking God. (Other decisions are very definitely the moment of a ‘new birth’, but this differs from person to person.) Only a person who is being ‘evangelized’ in the context of an on-going worshipping and shepherding community can be sure of finally coming home into vital, saving faith. This is why a leading missiologist like C.Peter Wagner can say, “Planting new churches is the most effective evangelistic methodology known under heaven.”1
2. Paul’s whole strategy was to plant urban churches. The greatest missionary in history, St.Paul, had a rather simple, two-fold strategy. First, he went into the largest city of the region (cf. Acts 16:9,12), and second, he planted churches in each city (cf. Titus 1:5- “appoint elders in every town”). Once Paul had done that, he could say that he had ‘fully preached’ the gospel in a region and that he had ‘no more work’ to do there (cf. Romans 15:19,23). This means Paul had two controlling assumptions: a) that the way to most permanently influence a country was through its chief cities, and b) the way to most permanently influence a city was to plant churches in it. Once he had accomplished this in a city, he moved on. He knew that the rest that needed to happen would follow.
Response: ‘But,’ many people say, ‘that was in the beginning. Now the country (at least our country) is filled with churches. Why is church planting important now?” We also plant churches because–
B. We want to be true to THE GREAT COMMISSION. Some facts–
1. New churches best reach a) new generations, b) new residents, and c) new people groups. First (a) younger adults have always been disproportionately found in newer congregations. Long-established congregations develop traditions (such as time of worship, length of service, emotional responsiveness, sermon topics, leadership-style, emotional atmosphere, and thousands of other tiny customs and mores), which reflect the sensibilities of long-time leaders from the older generations who have the influence and money to control the church life. This does not reach younger generations. Second, (b) new residents are almost always reached better by new congregations. In older congregations, it may require tenure of 10 years before you are allowed into places of leadership and influence, but in a new church, new residents tend to have equal power with long-time area residents.
Last, (c) new socio-cultural groups in a community are always reached better by new congregations. For example, if new white-collar commuters move into an area where the older residents were farmers, it is likely that a new church will be more receptive to the myriad of needs of the new residents, while the older churches will continue to be oriented to the original social group. And new racial groups in a community are best reached by a new church that is intentionally multi-ethnic from the start. For example: if an all-Anglo neighborhood becomes 33% Hispanic, a new, deliberately bi-racial church will be far more likely to create ‘cultural space’ for newcomers than will an older church in town. Finally, brand new immigrant groups nearly always can only be reached by churches ministering in their own language. If we wait until a new group is assimilated into American culture enough to come to our church, we will wait for years without reaching out to them.
[Note: Often, a new congregation for a new people-group can be planted within the overall structure of an existing church. It may be a new Sunday service at another time, or a new network of house churches that are connected to a larger, already existing congregation. Nevertheless, though it may technically not be a new independent congregation, it serves the same function.]
In summary, new congregations empower new people and new peoples much more quickly and readily than can older churches. Thus they always have and always will reach them with greater facility than long-established bodies. This means, of course, that church planting is not only for ‘frontier regions’ or ‘pagan’ countries that we are trying to see become Christian. Christian countries will have to maintain vigorous, extensive church planting simply to stay Christian!
2. New churches best reach the unchurched–period. Dozens of denominational studies have confirmed that the average new church gains most of its new members (60-80%) from the ranks of people who are not attending any worshipping body, while churches over 10-
15 years of age gain 80-90% of new members by transfer from other congregations.2 This means that the average new congregation will bring 6-8 times more new people into the life of the Body of Christ than an older congregation of the same size.
So though established congregations provide many things that newer churches often cannot, older churches in general will never be able to match the effectiveness of new bodies in reaching people for the kingdom. Why would this be? As a congregation ages, powerful internal institutional pressures lead it to allocate most of its resources and energy toward the concerns of its members and constituents, rather than toward those outside its walls. This is natural and to a great degree desirable. Older congregations therefore have a stability and steadiness that many people thrive on and need. This does not mean that established churches cannot win new people. In fact, many non-Christians will only be reached by churches with long roots in the community and the trappings of stability and respectability.
However, new congregations, in general, are forced to focus on the needs of its non-members, simply in order to get off the ground. So many of its leaders have come very recently from the ranks of the un-churched, that the congregation is far more sensitive to the concerns of the non-believer. Also, in the first two years of our Christian walk, we have far more close, face-to- face relationships with non-Christians than we do later. Thus a congregation filled with people fresh from the ranks of the un-churched will have the power to invite and attract many more non-believers into the events and life of the church than will the members of the typical established body.
What does this mean practically? If we want to reach our city–should we try to renew older congregations to make them more evangelistic, or should we plant lots of new churches? But that question is surely a false either-or dichotomy. We should do both! Nevertheless, all we have been saying proves that, despite the occasional exceptions, the only widescale way to bring in lots of new Christians to the Body of Christ in a permanent way is to plant new churches.
To throw this into relief, imagine Town-A and Town-B and Town-C are the same size, and they each have 100 churches of 100 persons each. But in Town-A, all the churches are over 15 years old, and then the overall number of active Christian churchgoers in that town will be shrinking, even if four or five of the churches get very ‘hot’ and double in attendance. In Town- B, 5 of the churches are under 15 years old, and they along with several older congregations are winning new people to Christ, but this only offsets the normal declines of the older churches. Thus the overall number of active Christian churchgoers in that town will be staying the same. Finally, in Town-C, 30 of the churches are under 15 years old. In this town, the overall number of active Christian churchgoers will be on a path to grow 50% in a generation.3
Response: ‘But,’ many people say, ‘what about all the existing churches that need help? You seem to be ignoring them.’ Not at all. We also plant churches because–
C. We want to continually RENEW THE WHOLE BODY OF CHRIST.
It is a great mistake to think that we have to choose between church planting and church renewal. Strange as it may seem, the planting of new churches in a city is one of the very best ways to revitalize many older churches in the vicinity and renew the whole Body of Christ. Why?
1. First, the new churches bring new ideas to the whole Body. There is plenty of resistance to the idea that we need to plant new churches to reach the constant stream of ‘new’ groups and generations and residents. Many congregations insist that all available resources should be used to find ways of helping existing churches reach them. However, there is no better way to teach older congregations about new skills and methods for reaching new people groups than by planting new churches. It is the new churches that will have freedom to be innovative and they become the ‘Research and Development’ department for the whole Body in the city. Often the older congregations were too timid to try a particular approach or were absolutely sure it would ‘not work here’. But when the new church in town succeeds wildly with some new method, the other churches eventually take notice and get the courage to try it themselves.
2. Second, new churches are one of the best ways to surface creative, strong leaders for the whole Body. In older congregations, leaders emphasize tradition, tenure, routine, and kinship ties. New congregations, on the other hand, attract a higher percentage of venturesome people who value creativity, risk, innovation and future orientation. Many of these men and women would never be attracted or compelled into significant ministry apart from the appearance of these new bodies. Often older churches ‘box out’ many people with strong leadership skills who cannot work in more traditional settings. New churches thus attract and harness many people in the city whose gifts would otherwise not be utilized in the work of the Body. These new leaders benefit the whole city-Body eventually.
3. Third, the new churches challenge other churches to self-examination. The “success” of new churches often challenges older congregations in general to evaluate themselves in substantial ways. Sometimes it is only in contrast with a new church that older churches can finally define their own vision, specialties, and identity. Often the growth of the new congregation gives the older churches hope that ‘it can be done’, and may even bring about humility and repentance for defeatist and pessimistic attitudes. Sometimes, new congregations can partner with older churches to mount ministries that neither could do by themselves.
4. Fourth, the new church may be an ‘evangelistic feeder’ for a whole community. The new church often produces many converts who end up in older churches for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the new church is very exciting and outward facing but is also very unstable or immature in its leadership. Thus some converts cannot stand the tumultuous changes that regularly come through the new church and they move to an existing church. Sometimes the new church reaches a person for Christ, but the new convert quickly discovers that he or she does not ‘fit’ the socio-economic make up of the new congregation, and gravitates to an established congregation where the customs and culture feels more familiar. Ordinarily, the new churches of a city produce new people not only for themselves, but for the older bodies as well.
Sum: Vigorous church planting is one of the best ways to renew the existing churches of a city, as well as the best single way to grow the whole Body of Christ in a city.
There is one more reason why it is good for the existing churches of the region to initiate or at least support the planting of churches in a given area. We plant churches—
D. As an exercise in KINGDOM-MINDEDNESS
All in all, church planting helps an existing church the best when the new congregation is voluntarily ‘birthed’ by an older ‘mother’ congregation. Often the excitement and new leaders and new ministries and additional members and income ‘washes back’ into the mother church in various ways and strengthens and renews it. Though there is some pain in seeing good friends and some leaders go away to form a new church, the mother church usually experiences a surge of high self-esteem and an influx of new enthusiastic leaders and members.
However, a new church in the community usually confronts churches with a major issue–the issue of ‘kingdom-mindedness’. New churches, as we have seen, draw most of their new members (up to 80%) from the ranks of the unchurched, but they will always attract some people out of existing churches. That is inevitable. At this point, the existing churches, in a sense, have a question posed to them: “Are we going to rejoice in the 80%–the new people that the kingdom has gained through this new church, or are we going to bemoan and resent the three families we lost to it?” In other words, our attitude to new church development is a test of whether our mindset is geared to our own institutional turf, or to the overall health and prosperity of the kingdom of God in the city.
Any church that is more upset by their own small losses rather than the kingdoms large gains is betraying its narrow interests. Yet, as we have seen, the benefits of new church planting to older congregations is very great, even if that may not be obvious initially.
SUMMARY
If we briefly glance at the objections to church planting in the introduction, we can now see the false premises beneath the statements. A. Assumes that older congregations can reach newcomers as well as new congregations. But to reach new generations and people groups will require both renewed older churches and lots of new churches. B. Assumes that new congregations will only reach current active churchgoers. But new churches do far better at reaching the unchurched, and thus they are the only way to increase the ‘churchgoing pie’. C. Assumes that new church planting will only discourage older churches. There is a prospect of this, but new churches for a variety of ways, are one of the best ways to renew and revitalize older churches. D. Assumes that new churches only work where the population is growing. Actually, they reach people wherever the population is changing. If new people are coming in to replace former residents, or new groups of people are coming in–even though the net pop figure is stagnant–new churches are needed.
New church planting is the only way that we can be sure we are going to increase the number of believers in a city and one of the best ways to renew the whole Body of Christ. The evidence for this statement is strong–Biblically, sociologically, and historically. In the end, a lack of kingdom-mindedness may simply blind us to all this evidence. We must beware of that.
APPENDIX A- HISTORICAL LESSONS
If all this is true, there should be lots of evidence for these principles in church history–and there is.
In 1820, there was one Christian church for every 875 U.S. residents. But from 1860-1906, U.S. Protestant churches planted one new church for increase of 350 in the population, bringing the ratio by the start of WWI to just 1 church for every 430 persons. In 1906 over a third of all the congregations in the country were less than 25 years old.4 As a result, the percentage of the U.S. population involved in the life of the church rose steadily. For example, in 1776, 17% of the U.S. population was ‘religious adherents’, but that rose to 53% by 1916.5
However, after WWI, especially among mainline Protestants, church planting plummeted, for a variety of reasons. One of the main reasons was the issue of ‘turf’. Once the continental U.S. was covered by towns and settlements and churches and church buildings in each one, there was strong resistance from older churches to any new churches being planted in ‘our neighborhood’. As we have seen above, new churches are commonly very effective at reaching new people and growing for its first couple of decades. But the vast majority of U.S. congregations reaches their peak in size during the first two or three decades of their existence and then remain on a plateau or slowly shrink.6 This is due to the factors mentioned above. They cannot assimilate well new people or groups of people as well as new churches. However, older churches have feared the competition from new churches. Mainline church congregations, with their centralized government, were the most effective in blocking new church development in their towns. As a result, however, the mainline churches have shrunk remarkably in the last 20-30 years.7
What are the historical lessons? Church attendance and adherence overall in the United States is in decline and decreasing. This cannot be reversed in any other way than in the way it originally had been so remarkably increasing. We must plant churches at such a rate that the number of churches per 1,000 population begins to grow again, rather than decline, as it has since WWI.
0 No, United Methodists, the Gospel Requires Words
There’s a saying (cliche) that’s floated around the United Methodist Church for as long as I can remember: ‘Preach the Gospel. If necessary use words.” Despite how often people quote this, it’s stupid.
It’s attributed to St Francis of Assisi but frequency of citation has made it almost a Methodist slogan of sorts. And, like all cliches, there’s some wisdom once you dig to the bottom of it. In this case, our actions and way of life with others should be in concert with what we believe about the God who comes to us in Jesus Christ.
Sounds good and obvious, right?
However, it’s a cliche that depends upon bad, unhelpful theology. Tim Keller, in his book Center Church, points out that ‘Preach the Gospel. If necessary use words’ relies on the assumption that the Gospel is primarily about things we do to achieve salvation, in which case communicating the Gospel can be done without words.
But that’s not the Gospel.
The Gospel’s not a message of things we must do.
The Gospel’s a message about what we could /can not do for ourselves. The Gospel’s a message about what God has done for us, once and for all. And that’s not a message that’s self-interpreting or self-evident.
The Gospel requires preaching or, rather, proclamation. As scripture says, salvation comes by ‘hearing.’ Good works are the fruit of hearing the Gospel; they are not the Gospel.
Part of me fears Francis’ quote is so popular in the Methodist world because we’ve lost the ability and the boldness to proclaim, in pulpits and in every day speech, the Gospel. The cliche has become, for us, an excuse. (And part of me wonders if our denominational inability to communicate the Gospel is what has led to us being behind the curve in communicating via social media.)
But with all due respect to Francis, the message about the Word become flesh very definitely and even primarily requires words.
1 What Gay People Have In Common With Christian People
I’ve been reading Tim Keller’s new book, Center Church. Essentially it’s a book on ecclesiology, theology of the Church.
QWriting about the increasing numbers of unchurched people and how this new context will demand that Christians learn again how to witness to their faith in a gracious manner, Keller makes this analogy:
50 years ago everyone knew a gay person, at work, in the neighborhood, in family or social circles. Only, they didn’t know they knew a gay person because gay people seldom shared that part of their lives. As a result, it was easy for people to harbor inaccurate or hurtful stereotypes about gay people. As election day showed, those stereotypes are gradually eroding because know everyone knows they know a gay person, often someone they love or care about or respect.
Here’s how Keller threads the needle:
Today, everyone knows a Christian, at work, in the neighborhood or in social circles. Only, increasingly, they don’t know they know a Christian because Christians seldom share that part of their lives and churches do not equip them to do so in a normal, gracious way. As a result, it’s easy and increasingly common for people to harbor inaccurate or even mean stereotypes of Christians.
Christianity then will be increasingly marginal to the extent Christians lead people to believe its marginal to their lives.
0 I Hate Institutional Religion
I hear it all the time when I’m planning a funeral service for someone who was not a Christian. Families often have a strong need to mis-remember their loved one as someone who was more religious than was actually the case. Families also presume that someone like me won’t perform the funeral service for someone who was not a disciple, which isn’t so. In those instances it’s not uncommon for me to hear equivocations like: ‘so and so believed in God; so and so just didn’t believe in institutional religion.’
Here’s the thing that always takes them by surprise: I hate institutional religion too.
Rowan Williams’ replacement as Archbishop of Canterbury has just been appointed by the Queen. Williams is a giant in the theological world and a hero of mine. He straddles the liberal-conservative divide in a way that makes him hard to peg and wins him few allies.
By most accounts, Williams’ ten year run as archbishop was ineffective or, worse, disastrous. His ten years in Canterbury prove a cautionary tale. Even someone with a peerless mind, an obvious love of God, a gentle spirit and a healthy dose of creativity was incapable of changing the institutional blight of an established denomination (the Church of England).
Rowan Williams and my own United Methodist tradition sprang to mind as I read Tim Keller’s new book, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City.
Keller’s emphasis on church renewal is combatting the natural tendency of churches to drift towards institutionalism by recovering a sense of the church as a movement of believers towards a unifying vision.
Keller helpfully distinguishes the characteristics of institutions and movements. It should come as no surprise where almost every mainline church and denomination falls in this rubric.
Institution
Held together by policies
A culture of rights and quotas, a balance of responsibilities and rewards
Emphasis on compensation, extrinsic rewards
Changes in policy involve long process, much resistance and negotiation with many parties
Decisions made procedurally and slowly
Innovation from top down, implemented in department silos
Feels like a patchwork of turk conscious mini-agenices or committees
Values: security, stability, predictability, ‘we’ve always done it this way…’
Slow to change
Emphasis on tradition and custom, future trends are dreaded and denied
Jobs given to those with tenure, next in line
Few can articulate mission, or mission is actually the agendas of many different groups
Movement
Held together by common purpose, vision
A culture of sacrificial commitment
Emphasis on celebration, intrinsic rewards
Vision comes from leaders trusted by group with loyalty
Decisions made relationally and rapidly
Innovation bubbles up from all, executed by all
Feels like a unified whole
Values: risk, creativity
Dynamic, quick to respond to needs
Emphasis on present and future
Jobs given according to fruitfulness
Everyone can articulate mission and every endeavor contributes to it