This is a keynote address delivered at the Mission America Coalition National Leadership Forum meeting October, 2003.
Keller says: "Christians have gone back to the book of Acts for centuries to learn ministry practice. But we have now a double reason to do so. Our world has become much more like the Mediterranean world of the 1st century. If we want to see how to spread the gospel in the 21st century -- the book of Acts has not been more directly and simply applicable to our situation in 2,000 years."
ADVANCING THE GOSPEL INTO THE 21ST CENTURY: Acts 13-19
Tim Keller, October 2003
Introduction
We are entering a globalized, urbanized, and post-secular world. This means that we are going to be more like the Roman Empire than anything seen in centuries.
• First, it is a globalized world again. The triumph of Rome's power created the Pax Romana and an unprecedented mobility of people, capital, and ideas. Cities became multi-ethnic and international in unprecedented ways. So today cities link as much if not more to the rest of the world than they do to their own geographically connected countries. Saskia Sassen in The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo makes case that increasingly the residents of these cities are more like one another than they are like other residents from their own country.
Case study-NYC: A major wave of immigration is changing NYC from an Irish/Italian/ Jewish city into a multi-ethnic city drawn mainly from the southern and eastern hemispheres. On the one hand this means New York City is going to increasingly influence other countries. 35% of the income of the country of Belize comes from expatriates in NYC. Churches in New York City will find it much more natural to begin daughter churches in the Philippines or Mexico than in Pennsylvania. On the other hand, these other countries are going to have a huge impact on New York City and the U.S. These are the areas of the world where Bible-believing orthodox Christianity is growing the fastest . Thousands of new indigenous church leaders are streaming into the city . They will change NYC from the outside-in as they move up in society and into the center city professional sectors over the next 2-3 generations where they will eventually come to wield great power in the areas of finance, media, and culture. This has the potential to radically change NYC spiritually.
• Second, it is therefore an urbanized world again. In the Greco-Roman world during the height of the Roman Empire, individual nation-states were weak, and large cities (Rome, Corinth, Ephesus) operated virtually as independent city-states. Cities, not national governments, ruled the world. Today, technology and mobility are again weakening the control nation states have on their own territory. It is becoming impossible to control the flow of information or capital in and out of countries. Multi-national corporations operate out of major cities but do not submit to or serve the interests of any country. Corporate and creative elites, who Pico Iyer calls ‘Nowhereians,’ live in several cities at once, rather than in any particular country. Everywhere we see the growth both in power and size of major cities.
• Third, it is a fragmented, pluralistic world again. For centuries--cultures and nations had much more widespread consensus about basic questions of truth, morality, and the nature of God and ultimate reality. Now, as in the Roman world, there will again be multiple vital religious faith communities and options in every society. We will have traditional, secular, and pagan world-views living side by side. Why? a) Globalization--the mobility mentioned above. b) Disillusionment with the Enlightenment in the West. For nearly 100 years the elites of Europe and North America were fairly uniformly ‘secular’--skeptical about any religion or spirituality at all. But the old idea that unaided human reason and science would solve the world’s ills and answer the heart's big questions finally is seen as a dead end. We are entering a truly ‘post-secular,’ pagan-pluralistic era much more like Rome. Most interesting is the fact that the number of orthodox Christians in Philosophy departments in this country has gone from 0% to nearly 25% in just 30 years. This means that for the first time in 80 years there is ‘intellectual space’ for Christians to do scholarship, art, and other cultural production. This is big news for center cities like NYC and LA.
No matter what their world was like, Christians have gone back to the book of Acts for centuries to learn ministry practice. But we have now a double reason to do so. Our world has become much more like the Mediterranean world of the 1st century. If we want to see how to spread the gospel in the 21st century--the book of Acts has not been more directly and simply applicable to our situation in 2,000 years. I would like to isolate four features of ministry strategy in the book of Acts that are crucial in our own world and time. New Testament ministry strategy was--
Church multiplying - Acts 14
Gospel-centered - Acts 15
Context-sensitive - Acts 16
City-focused - Acts 16-19
CHURCH-MULTIPLYING - Acts 14
A. This is the first strategic principle for ministry in the first century--and it is crucial for effectiveness in the 21st century. In the ministry in Acts--church planting is not a traumatic or unnatural event. It is not something odd or once-in-a lifetime. It is not forced on people by circumstances. Church planting is woven into the warp and woof of things; it happens constantly, it happens normally. Paul never evangelizes and disciples without also church planting. For decades, expositors looked to Acts to find 'the basic elements of ministry'. They always made lists such as these: Bible teaching, evangelism, fellowship, discipleship, worship. Yet right there along with everything else is church planting, but it is often ignored. There's a very dubious, tacit 'cessationism' going on here! Implicitly, almost unconsciously, readers said, 'well, but that was for then--we don't do that now". But the principle is--church planting must be natural and constant, not traumatic and episodic.
B. Text: 14:21-28. Here we see two phases to Paul's ministry. (1) First there is Christian formation. Paul produced new believers. There are two parts to this. (a) Evangelism. v.21-'they preached the good news'; but it does not use the word for preach, rather a more comprehensive word--they evangelizdomenoi 'gospeled' the city. There's a great deal more to that than simply preaching sermons. The book of Acts shows Paul spreading the gospel through preaching in synagogue services, sharing in small group Bible studies, speaking out in market-places or leading discussions in rented halls, or just talking to people one on one. But the point is--he won a large number of converts. (b) Instruction. v.21b-22. .21a - they went back to converts to "strengthen and encourage". These are two verbs used together chapter 9, 15, 18, and John Stott calls them an 'almost technical term' for building up new believers. How did they do it? He taught them and re-taught them "the faith" (v.22). This refers to a definite body of beliefs and theology. (2) Second, there is church formation. This also has two parts. David Hesselgrave, Planting Churches Cross-culturally uses the following terms. (a) First, the believers are congregated. All through chapters 14-16 we see new believers not simply go on living their lives as they were but they are led to assemble regularly and are brought into a community. (b) Secondly, the leaders are consecrated. They appointed elders each place. Paul chose elders, a plurality of leaders out of the converts, who now become the ones who teach and shepherd the people in the faith. Though we have to allow plenty of flexibility for different cultures (see below), the unavoidable principle is that he did not keep them under his direct authority or dependent on him. He made them churches in their own right--not just loose knit ‘fellowships.’ They had their own leadership, their own structure. When he began meeting with them they were "disciples" (v.22) but when he left them, they were "churches" (v.23). In summary, church multiplication is as natural in the book of Acts as individual convert multiplication.
C. How were churches started in the book of Acts? There are two basic launching models, as Tim Chester points out in his essay "Church Planting: A Theological Perspective" (in Multiplying Churches, edited by Steve Timmis). Basically, church planting was either initiated by pioneer individuals, or by church planting churches. (1) In Paul and his companions, we see pioneer church planting. Though he was sent out by the Antioch church, and was thus accountable for his doctrine and behavior (Acts 13:1ff.), his work in every city was pioneering work. He did groundbreaking evangelism in each place, without the cooperation or work of other churches. (Note: Thus even 'pioneer' works must be done under some ultimate accountability. Somewhere, the church in some form must lay hands on you and say: we examined your doctrine and life and set you apart for ministry.) (2) The other model is implicit, but there. Churches also plant churches. Where is it in the Bible? It's a simple fact that the churches Paul planted (in fact all Christian churches for 200 years) were household churches. Example: Lydia's conversion immediately becomes a bridge to conversion of her household, which then makes her home the first Philippi church. By v.40, they go to Lydia's home to meet the brethren. The same thing happens in Acts 18 with the household of Crispus. What did this mean? It means that the church at Philippi, Corinth, and everywhere else--very naturally could only grow by multiplying new assemblies or house churches. Though Paul writes to the "church" singular "at Corinth", it is obvious by the end of the book that he is addressing number of household churches--Chloe, Stephanus, etc. The point for us--Tim Chester says, because the household church is the basic building block, church planting was built into the church's very nature. You only grow by multiplying new assemblies of Christians who meet for edification, evangelism, and praise.
D. OBJECTION: There is a very common objection to reading the book of Acts that way. It goes like this: “That was then! Now, at least in North America and Europe, we have churches all over the place. We don’t need to start new churches; we should strengthen and fill the existing churches before we do that.” Here are some answers:
• New churches are by far the best way to reach 1) new generations, 2) new residents, and 3) new people groups. Studies show that newer churches attract new groups about 6-10 times better and faster than older churches do. It is because when a church is new, younger and newer people can get into its leadership faster. It is because when a church is new it has no tradition and can experiment. It is because when a church is new, its main goal each week is not to satisfy the desires of the long-time members (there are none!) but to reach new people. As a result new churches are enormously better at reaching new people in a city.
• Cities are filled with new generations, immigrants, and residents more than ever. Globalization means new mobile populations are coming constantly into cities; if there is not a lot of church planting, they will be lost. 2) Pluralization, though, means that even what one might call 'native' peoples are no longer homogenous. Different generations and groupings differ vastly from one another. I'm no expert, but from what I read, the diversity of peoples in each location makes the Anglican parish model pretty obsolete for mission. 3) And lastly, the death of 'Christendom' means that we now have something Acts did not--lots of dead churches, which is just one more reason to plant new churches than even Paul had.
• New churches are perhaps the best way to renew older churches and enhance all ministries. Why? (1) New churches are the best single way to re-vitalize older congregations in the area. The new churches help the overall Body of Christ by a) showcasing new ministry forms and ideas that would never have been adopted in older churches, b) creating an 'it can be done' mindset in older churches, c) providing many new converts in the city that find their way to older churches, d) supporting many new ministries that have city-wide benefits. Church planting helps an existing church best when the new congregation is voluntarily 'birthed' by an older 'mother' congregation. The daughter church brings the mother church into contact with many new groups of people and pioneers new programs that the mother church may have been too traditional to try. 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. Together the two churches usually see a major increase in numbers, joy, and confidence. (2) New churches are the only ministries that become self-supporting and expand the base for all other ministries. A city needs many ministries--youth work, schools, missions to new groups, and so on. Once they are begun, they need outside funding from Christian givers indefinitely. A new church, however, only requires funding at its beginning. Within a few years, it becomes the source of Christian giving to other ministries, not the object of it. Because it brings in large numbers of unchurched people, church planting is by far the fastest way to grow the number of new givers in the kingdom work in a city.
E. Application: Basically, there are two ways churches get planted--unnatural and natural: churches that are forced to do it, and those with a church-planting mindset, where it is a natural, normal part of its ministry.
Unnatural Church Planting (two varieties)
• Defiant church planting. Some people in the church get frustrated, split away and form a new church--because there is alienation over doctrine, or vision, or philosophy of ministry. Examples: 1) charismatic splits, 2) cultural splits--2nd generation leaders leave to do a church in opposition to the will of the 1st generation church, and so on.
• Reluctant church planting. Circumstances force the church leaders against their will to plant a new church. Examples: 1) They outgrow the building and don’t want to move, 2) Some members move to new area and begin to lobby for a church "out here", 3) Some members with a different vision (younger, different worship, etc.) begin to drop out or push for a new service or church. Though leaders may give only begrudging permission or even money and active support, it is still 'unnatural' because church planting won't happen again perhaps ever--unless circumstances again dictate it.
Natural Church Planting
By this I mean a mindset just like in the book of Acts. That means that church leaders will think of church planting as just one of the things we do along with the rest--we do teaching, evangelism, discipling, worship and music, education, and church planting! Church planting should not be like building a building--one big traumatic hiccup and we are glad that’s over with. Rather it is to have the mindset of Paul, who always did a) evangelism, b) discipleship, and c) church planting. This mindset can be broken down into two extremely important sub-strata. If you can't muster these, you can't have a natural church planting mindset.
• First, the ability to give away and to lose control of money, members, and leaders.
I hate to use a cliche, but its true--Paul "empowered" these new leaders. He gave them ownership, and thus he lost a lot of control. This is a huge barrier for churches. They cannot bear thought of money-giving families being lost, or key leaders, or just friends. Ministers are also afraid of giving away glory. If your ministry adds people and you 1) assimilate them into your church, 2) turn them into Bible studies under your church, or 3) spin them into new 'ministries' in your church, it swells your numbers, and you get both control and glory. If you organize them into churches, you are losing money, members, numbers, leaders, and control. But that is just what Paul did. There is an additional problem: when you let go, you lose direct control, but you can't really avoid responsibility for problems. It is like being the parent of an adult child. You are not allowed to directly tell them what to do, but if there's a problem, you are expected to help clean it up.
Example: I know of an evangelical congregational church in our area which existed in a small, historic building. They had filled 100 seats twice to max for 4 years in a row. They resisted church planting, fearing loss of money and people. Finally they sent 50 out to a new town to form a new church. Just two years later there were 350 coming to the daughter church. Meanwhile, the mother church filled its seats in about 3 weeks. Now they are kicking themselves, realizing that by now they could have planted 3 churches with nearly 1,000 people in the church family, and been able to do missions, youth ministry, and many other things together. They realize that they needed to make the transition from church-planting as hiccup to a church planting mindset.
• Second, the ability to give up some control of the shape of the ministry itself.
This is scary, especially to people who care about Biblical truth. But it’s a simple fact that the new church will not look just like you. It will develop its own voice and emphases. On the one hand, pains must be taken to be sure that the difference is not too great, or fellowship and cooperation is strained. Remember, the book of Acts speaks of “the faith". There is one body of true doctrine at the heart of Christianity. But on the other hand, if you insist that the church be a clone of your own, if you are not willing to admit the reality of contextualization in the Biblical sense of adapting and incarnating--so different generations and cultures will produce a different kind of church--then you won't be able to do church planting!
Example: As you see--Paul's adaptations from culture to culture are famous. No-one-size-fits-all for him. And why in Acts 16:13 did Paul 'expect' to find a prayer meeting at the river? Would you? He knew something about God-fearers. Frankly, it takes creativity and wisdom about people to do church planting--and many leaders cannot think 'outside the box'.
• Third, the ability to care for the kingdom even more than for your tribe. We see this in the way Paul talks of Apollos, who, though not a disciple of his (Acts 18:24ff.) Paul speaks of in the warmest terms (1 Cor.3:6; 4:9; 16:12) even though his disciples evidently considered themselves a particular party (1 Cor1:12; 3:4). We see it in the way Paul (as said before) constantly takes his hands off new churches, i.e. 16:40--then he left. What we have here is a concern not for his own power or his party's power (and even then, different apostles had their followers and emphases), but for the kingdom as a whole.
Test: When we "lose" 2 families to a church that brings in 100 new people who weren't going to any other church, we have a choice! We must ask ourselves: "Are we going to rejoice in the new people that the kingdom has gained through this new church, or are we going to bemoan and resent the two 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. Will we resent the 10 people we have lost or rejoice in the 80 people the kingdom has gained?
Conclusion: The church-planting mindset is not so much a matter of trusting new leaders etc. but trusting God. Paul does not give the new churches up to themselves or others. Rather he "committed them to the Lord". SUM: Since we live in the Acts world again, it is doubly important to make church multiplication a central ministry strategy
GOSPEL-CENTERED - Acts 15
A. This is the next strategic principle for ministry in the 21st (and the 1st!) century. I do not simply mean by ‘gospel-centered’ that ministry is to be doctrinally orthodox. Of course it must certainly be that. I am speaking more specifically. (1.) The gospel is “I am accepted through Christ, therefore I obey” while every other religion operates on the principle of “I obey, therefore I am accepted.” (2.) Martin Luther’s fundamental insight was that this latter principle, the principle of ‘religion’ is the deep default mode of the human heart. The heart continues to work in that way even after conversion to Christ. Though we recognize and embrace the principle of the gospel, our hearts will always be trying to return to the mode of self-salvation, which leads to much spiritual deadness, pride and strife, and ministry ineffectiveness. (3.) We must communicate the gospel clearly--not a click toward legalism and not a click toward license. Legalism/moralism is truth without grace (which is not real truth); relativism is grace without truth (which is not real grace). To the degree a ministry fails to do justice to both, it simply loses life-changing power.
B. Text: 15:1-25 Here we see Paul, in the middle of a church-planting career, going to Jerusalem for a big theological debate. Now, why do that? Surely we ministers need to be about the work of evangelism, not going in for theological discussions! But Paul makes no bifurcation here. Chapter 15 is down the middle of Paul's mission! It's clarifying the gospel itself. (1) The cause of the debate is that the earliest Gentile converts to Christianity had already become culturally Jewish. That is, many of them were “God-fearers” who had been circumcised and/or abided by the clean laws and the Mosaic legislation. (2) Then Paul began bringing in real pagans or God-fearers who had not become culturally Jewish. And he was not demanding that when they became Christians, they had to adopt Jewish cultural patterns. (3) Then a group arose (15:1) saying, "unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved". They had taken cultural norms and promoted them to be matters of virtue and spiritual merit. When they did that, they lost a grasp on the gospel of grace and slid into 'religion'. (4) The Council on the one hand, in Peter, got hold of one end of the stick: v.6-11 No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we [Jews] are saved, just as they are." (5) But, wouldn't you know it--James gets a hold of the other end of the stick. He agrees with Peter, but rightly asserts that Gentile Christians, though free from any requirements as to salvation, are not free to live as they like as members of a Christian community. They are obliged to live in love and to respect the scruples of culturally different Jewish brethren. So they are ordered (we tend to miss this) to live in a way that does not offend or distress their brethren who are culturally different. (They are not to eat raw meat, they are to abide by Levitical marriage laws, and so on.) There could hardly be a better case study of the old Luther-proverb that expresses the balance of the gospel. We are "saved by faith alone, but not by faith that is alone." We are not saved by how we behave, but once we are saved, we behave in love.
C. Point: So “religion” just drains the spiritual life out of a church. But you can “fall off the horse” on the other side too. You can miss the gospel not only through legalism but through relativism. When God is whoever you want to make him, and right and wrong are whatever you want to make them--you have also drained the spiritual life out of a church. If God is preached as simply a demanding, angry God or if he is preached as simply an all-loving God who never demands anything--in either case the listeners will not be transformed. They may be frightened or inspired or soothed, but they will not have their lives changed at the root because they are not hearing the gospel. The gospel shows us that God is far more holy and absolute than the moralists’ god, because he could not be satisfied by our moral efforts, even the best! On the other hand the gospel shows us that God is far more loving and gracious than the relativists’ god. They say that God (if he exists) just loves everyone no matter what they do. The true God of the gospel had to suffer and die to save us, while the god of a relativist pays no price to love us.
The gospel produces a unique blend of humility and boldness/joy in the convert. If you preach just a demanding God, the listener will have “low self-esteem”; if you preach just an all-loving God, the listener will have higher self-esteem. But the gospel produces something beyond both of those. The gospel says: I am so lost Jesus had to die to save me. But I am so loved that Jesus was glad to die to save me. That changes the very basis of my identity--it transforms me from the root.
D. Application: I can't tell you how important this is in all mission and ministry. Unless you distinguish the gospel from both religion and irreligion--from both traditional moralism and liberal relativism--then newcomers in your services will automatically think you are simply calling them to be good and nice people. They will be bored. But when, as here in Acts 15, the gospel is communicated in its unique, counter-intuitive balance of truth and love, then listeners will be surprised. Most people today try to place the church somewhere along a spectrum from “liberal” to “conservative”--from the relativistic to the moralistic. But when they see a church filled with people who insist on the truth, but without a shred of superiority or self-righteousness--this simply explodes their categories. To them, people who have the truth are not gracious; people who are gracious and accepting say “who knows what is the truth?” Christians are enormously bold to tell the truth, but without a shred of superiority, because they know they are sinners saved by grace. This balance of boldness and utter humility, truth and love--is not somewhere in the middle between legalistic fundamentalism and relativistic liberalism. It is actually off the charts.
Sum: Paul knew that ‘getting the gospel straight’--not falling off into either legalism on the one hand or license on the other--is absolutely critical to the mission of the church. The secret of ministry power is getting the gospel clear. To be even slightly off to one side or another, loses tons of spiritual power. And people don't get really converted. Legalistic churches reform people’s behavior through social coercion, but the people stay radically insecure and hypercritical. They don’t achieve the new inner peace that the grace of God brings. The more relativistic churches give members some self-esteem and the veneer of peace but in the end that is superficial too. The result, Archibald Alexander said, is like trying to put a signet ring on the wax to seal a letter, but without any heat! Either the ring will affect the surface of the wax only or break it into pieces. You need heat to permanently change the wax into likeness of ring. So without the Holy Spirit working through the gospel, radically humbling and radically exalting us and changing us from the inside out, the religion of either the hard or soft variety will not avail.
Conclusion: Who is sufficient for these things? Not me! But fortunately, Jesus is the great church planter! He said, "I will plant my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it!" (Matt 16) and "Therefore, go to every ethnic group and bring them to be my followers." (Matt 28). It's a good thing he is really the church planter--or we'd have no hope. But since he is the church planter, we have all the hope in the world!
ADVANCING THE GOSPEL INTO
THE 21ST CENTURY: Acts 13-19
Part 2
Tim Keller, October 2003
DAY TWO
CONTEXT-SENSITIVE - Acts 16
A. The Principle of Contextualization (Acts 16:1-5)
This is third crucial principle of ministry for the 21st (and the 1st!) century.
(1.) What does this mean? To use this word could get me into a minefield. Contextualization can unfortunately be used to mean that one interpretation of Scripture is as valid as any other. Or, it could mean that every interpretive community has a perspective that helps us see aspects of God's self-disclosure that other communities cannot in themselves see or hear. That's better. But as a practitioner of ministry, I see contextualization is adapting my communication of the gospel without changing its essential character.
(2.) Examples in Acts.
cf. Acts 13:16ff and Acts 14:14-17. Examples of how Paul adapts to a new cultures abound in Acts. They are literally everywhere. Even Jay Adams, fairly rock-ribbed conservative in everyway, wrote a book Audience Adaptations in the Sermons and Speeches of Paul. In Acts 13 we see Paul sharing the gospel in a synagogue to those who believed in the God of the Bible, and in Acts 14 we see him sharing the gospel to a pagan, blue-collar crowd. The differences and similarities are striking. a) His citation of authority is very different. In the first case he quotes Scripture and John the Baptist. In the second, he argues from general revelation--greatness of creation. b) They differ in emphasis of content. It is hard to miss that with Jews and God-fearers he ignores the doctrine of God and gets right to Christ; with pagans here and in Acts 17, he labors the very concept of God. c) Finally, they differ even the form of the final appeal--how to 'close' with Christ--is different. In 13:39 Paul speaks of the law of God and says essentially: "you think you are good, but you aren't good enough! You need Christ to justify you." But in 14 he tells them to turn from "worthless things"--idols--"to the living God" who he says is the real source of "joy"--he, not material things--is the real source. So he is saying, in effect: "you think you are free--but you are not! You are enslaved to dead idols." d) Despite all these very profound differences-- (1) Both audiences are told about a God both powerful, yet good (13:16-22; 14:17), (2) both tell the hearers they are trying to save themselves in a wrong way (moral people by trying to obey the law 13:39 and pagans by giving themselves to idols and gods that cannot satisfy 14:15), and (3) both tell hearers not to turn to some scheme of performance, but that God has broken in to history now to accomplish our salvation. Even the speech of chapter 14, which was a spontaneous outburst, though it doesn't mention Christ directly, still points to the fact that salvation is something accomplished by God for us in history, not something we do.
• Act 16:1-5. Another fascinating example of contextualization is Paul’s circumcision of Timothy so as not to offend those he was trying to reach. The juxtaposition can't be accidental. Though Paul has just fought vehemently against mandatory circumcision for believers, he circumcised Timothy out of sensitivity to the culture of the people he was trying to evangelize (v.3) It is a remarkable case of discerning between abiding principle and cultural practice. If anyone would have felt circumcising was intrinsically a wrong thing for a believer to do, it would have been Paul--who had just fought a crucial battle for the gospel itself. Yet he immediately shows that he knows the difference between abiding principle and cultural practice. He knows that while the gospel of grace is an absolute--the practice of circumcision is culturally relative.
(3.) There is no ‘non-contextualized’ Christianity. Jesus didn’t come to earth as a generalized being; by becoming human he had to become a particular human. He was male, Jewish, working-class. If he was to be human, he had to come as a socially and culturally-situated person. So the minute we begin to minister we must 'incarnate', even as Jesus did. Actual Christian practices must have both a Biblical form or shape as well as a cultural form or shape. For example, the Bible clearly directs us to use music to praise God--but as soon as we choose a music to use, we enter a culture. As soon as we choose a language, as soon as we choose a vocabulary, as soon as we choose a particular level of emotional expressiveness and intensity, as soon as we choose even an illustration as an example for a sermon--we are moving toward the social context of some people and away from the social context of others. At Pentecost, everyone heard the sermon in his or her own language and dialect. But since Pentecost, we can never be ‘all things to all people’ at the very same time. So adaptation to culture is inevitable.
• This is not relativism! “No truth which human beings may articulate can ever be articulated in a culture-transcending way--but that does not mean that the truth thus articulated does not transcend culture.” (D.A.Carson) It is important to keep the balance of this statement! If you forget the first half you’ll think there is only one true way to communicate the gospel. If you forget the second half you’ll lose your grip on the fact that nonetheless there is only one true gospel. Either way you will be ineffective in ministry. Paul does not change the gospel--but he adapts it very heavily. Yes, this opens the door to abuses, but to fear and refuse to adapt to culture opens to abuses of the gospel just as much! The balance is to not, on one hand, succumb to relativism nor, on the other hand, think contextualization is really avoidable. Both are gospel-eroding errors.
• Missionary strategy then consists of two parts: a) On the one hand, be sure not to remove any of the offensive essentials of the gospel message, such as the teaching on sin, the need for repentance, the lostness of those outside of Christ, and so on. b) On the other hand, be sure to remove any non-essential language or practice that will confuse or offend the sensibilities the people you are trying to reach. The key to effective mission is to know the difference between essential and un-essential.
• If we over-adapt to a culture we are trying to reach, it means we have bought in to that culture’s idols. For example, we may take a good theme (e.g. “the freedom of the individual” in the West--which fits with the 'priesthood of all believers') and allow it to be an idol (e.g. “individualism” so our church can’t do pastoral accountability and discipline).
• If, on the other hand we under-adapt to a culture, it means we have accepted our own culture’s idols. To the degree a ministry is over or under adapted, it loses culture-transforming power.
• The gospel is the key to contextualization. Remember that religion leads to either pride (if I am living up to standards) or inferiority (if I am failing to live up to standards) but the gospel makes us both humble and confident at once. This makes us contextualizers! If we need the approval of the receiving culture too much, it shows a lack of gospel confidence. If we need the trappings of our own culture too much, it shows a lack of gospel humility. Gospel humility directs us to neither hate tradition nor be bound to it. It is proud to imagine that other Christians did not find much grace in past ‘contextualizations’ and therefore we do not ignore tradition. But it is also proud to think that new cultural trends have no grace in them and that former cultures were all more spiritually pure. Thus we adapt.
“[When] the church had lost track of an important element in the saving work of Christ and was teaching that believers are justified not by faith but by being sanctified...as a result it became very easy for the church to revert to an Old Covenant lifestyle.... Uneasiness about justification [by grace alone] produced a flowering of asceticism reflecting an unconscious need for lists of clean and unclean activities and a rebirth of Pharisaism. .....Thus [those] who are not secure in Christ cast about for spiritual life preservers with which to support their confidence, and in their frantic search they not only cling to the shreds of ability and righteousness they find in themselves, but they fix upon their race, their membership in a party, their familiar social and ecclesiastical patterns, and their culture as means of self-recommendation. The culture is put on as if it were armor against self-doubt, but it becomes a mental straightjacket which cleaves to the flesh and can never be removed except through comprehensive faith in the saving work of Christ. Once faith is exercised, a Christian is free to be enculturated, to wear his culture like a comfortable suit of clothes. He can shift to other cultural clothing temporarily if he wishes to do so, as Paul suggests in 1 Cor.9:19-23, and he is released to admire and appreciate the differing expressions of Christ shining out through other cultures.
(4.) Finding the balance.
This raises a huge issue--sometimes called the 'homogeneous unit' principle. Are we going to 'target' some groups of people over others? How do we justify that? Paul's example again helps. a) On one hand, Paul did focus on groups he thought strategic. Chapter 16:13 - on the Sabbath, we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. Expected! How did Paul know a group of women would be down there? There are lots of good studies on this. Paul had enormous success among 'God-fearers' (Gentile adherents to Biblical faith) in every town. They were 'key'. On one hand, they already had rudiments of a Biblical world view--you could get right to Christ in a major way without (as Acts 14, 17 with pagans) working on the most elementary and basic doctrine of God. On other hand, they were Gentiles, not Jews, with automatic, deep, personal relationships to the majority Gentile pagan population. In short, Jews were culturally distant from the community; the pagans were theologically distant from the Biblical world-view. The God-fearers were thus a great "stewardship" of ministry time. The key place to start, the best stewardship, the best way to gather a core--was to find the God-fearers. Why did he go looking at the river? He would have immediately discovered that there was no synagogue in town, which meant that there were not 10 Jewish men in the city. So he looked for a female-dominated prayer meeting. He got to town and made inquiries to discover it. He did not simply walk in and raise his voice in the streets. He was strategic. b) Yet: Paul was trying to reach everyone. All through Acts 13-19 we see that Paul was clearly after everyone. He went to the synagogues to reach the religious. But he reasoned in the market place with the intellectual elites and he even hired out the Hall of Tyrannus to have open dialogues with pagans of all classes. c) Sum: I think the answer is this. Yes, we can 'target'. 'Contextualization' is unavoidable. You yourself have 'incarnated' Christianity into a culture. As soon as you choose a language to preach in and illustrations and humor--you've contextualized. You are 'closer' to some people and 'farther' from others. And it is also right to have a heart for a certain people group and seek to serve and win them over others, in an effort to make sure that the new church's leaders come from this group. But, we must also seek to make our churches as mixed income and multi-cultural as possible. That is the Biblical mandate. At 'intake', as we initially seek to love and win people with the gospel, a certain amount of homogeneity is necessary. It would be nice if non-Christian people would not care about cultural differences, but people cannot be sanctified before they are justified!
Sum: To communicate the gospel one click too legalistically or too lawlessly--and to over or under adapt to the culture--is how a ministry becomes ineffective. If you could minister at the center of the two “axes”--or to the degree you do--there is power and effectiveness.
B. The Practice of Contextualization.
The differences between three conversions of Acts 16 are amazing.
Racially: Lydia was Asian, The slave-girl was probably native Greek, the Philippian Jailer Roman.
Economically: Lydia was well off at the least, a business woman; The slave-girl was poor, economically exploited and powerless; The Roman jailer was blue-collar, working class.
Spiritually: Lydia was a God-fearer; she believed the Bible and the Biblical God. She was a moral, religious, good person who believed in the God of the Bible in a general way. She showed spiritual interest immediately. The slave-girl was spiritually devastated, and literally ran after Paul, in spiritual turmoil. She is the only one of three you could in any sense call a real 'seeker'! The Roman jailer was neither spiritually interested and satisfied nor spiritually empty or tormented, but evidences no spiritual interest at all. He was practical and indifferent.
Ministry Approach:
• Lydia: largely through words. Though we are not told here, almost surely Paul would have approached God-fearers and Jews (not enough for a synagogue which required 10 men) through teaching and expounding the Bible in a new way for them--Christocentric exegesis. Showing--as Jesus did with his disciples in Luke 24--that the whole Old Testament is really about him. This released Lydia from mere religion into gospel Christianity.
• Slave-girl: largely through deeds. It is interesting that psychologically, she was oppressed by demonic false masters, but economically she was oppressed and exploited by human false masters. When Paul frees her from one, it frees her from the other. What Paul does here, regardless of your views of miracles and exorcisms--is not just word but a deed. She is freed from demons, and freed from economic exploitation as well.
• Jailer: largely through embodied example. Just as Lydia was probably an educated woman, and needed an argument to be persuaded, and the troubled slave-girl needed deeds of service and liberation, so the jailer needed a practical example of godly character. He was shocked by transformed lives. a) He heard them singing God's praise in the face of suffering. Job 35:10 “-so men cry out under a load of oppression but no one says 'where is God my maker, who gives songs in the night?" Struck by worship and songs in trouble, b) he saw, in response to his cruelty, kindness. When they had a chance to escape, which would have ruined him, literally, they acted in integrity and stayed in the prison. Sum: They saw Christ-like character in community.
This is a church plant. What do we learn? That every church needs to engage its community in three basic strategies.
1. Acts 16:13-15 - WORD Ministry and The Gospel for the Religious
• Paul finds a group of 'God-fearers', Gentiles who had embraced the Biblical faith (v.13) Lydia is an upstanding religious person who does not understand the gospel.
• The Religious. Religion is 'outside in'--if I work hard according to Biblical principles, then God will accept/bless me. The gospel is 'inside out'--because God has accepted/blessed me, I work hard to live according to Biblical principles. Religion (explicitly in other faiths and implicitly in legalistic Christianity) makes moral/religious observance a means of salvation. Even people who believe in the Christian God can functionally 'base their sanctification on their justification' (Lovelace). Thus a prime need is to distinguish between general 'religion' and gospel Christianity as well as overt irreligion. Why? 1) Many professed Christians aren't believers--they are pure 'elder brothers' (Luke 15:11ff.) and only making this distinction can convert them. 2) Many, many real Christians are elder-brotherish--angry, mechanical, superior, insecure--and only making this distinction can renew them. 3) Modern and post-modern people have rejected religion for good reasons and will only listen to Christianity if they see it is different. The main way to reach religious people is through preaching. It must be 1) Christo-centric, 2) aimed at self-justifying roots of sinful behavior, 3) leading to worship rather than mere information transfer.
• Word ministry issues.
• Content-Linking the text into the 'Big Story'. What does it mean to 'proclaim the gospel'? How can you do so in a way that both wakes up and converts the religious and yet also engages more secular people? Answer: Christ-centered interpretation and preaching. You must always preach every text in such a way that it reveals Jesus and his saving work. Ed Clowney points out that if we ever tell a particular Bible story without putting it into the overall main Bible story (about Christ), we actually change the meaning of the particular event for us. It becomes a moralistic exhortation to 'try harder' rather than a call to live by faith in the work of Christ. There are, in the end, only two ways to read the Bible: is it basically about me or basically about Jesus? In other words, is it basically about what I must do, or basically about what he has done? Example: If I read David and Goliath as basically giving me an example, then the story is really about me. I must summons up the faith and courage to fight the giants in my life. But if I read David and Goliath as basically showing me salvation through Jesus, then the story is really about him. Until I see that Jesus fought the real giants (sin, law, death) for me, I will never have the courage to be able to fight ordinary giants in life (suffering, disappointment, failure, criticism, hardship). The Bible is not a collection of “Aesop’s Fables”. It is not a book of virtues. It is a story about how God saves us. Any exposition of a text that does not 'get to Christ' but just 'explains Biblical principles' will be a 'synagogue sermon' that merely exhorts people to exert their wills to live according to a particular pattern. Instead of the life-giving gospel, the sermon offers just one more ethical paradigm to crush the listeners.
• Method--Linking the text to the people's story: How will you verbally proclaim the gospel to people? We said above that you must incorporate every text into Christ’s story or else you are just being moralistic and you won't reach the religious with the secular. But secondly, you must connect your preaching the gospel with the stories of the people of your place. How do gospel themes address your culture’s hopes, fears, and tensions? (1) Begin with the familiar and show how the gospel confirms what is strong and good in the culture. Know the people's story extremely well. Show your sympathy with it. (2) But use the gospel to challenge and de-stabilize common cultural assumptions at points that they are weak or inadequate. (3) Finally, comfort and galvanize with the promises of the gospel. Show them that they can't finish their own story without God in Christ.
• Example: Traditional ways to 'argue' for the infallibility of the Bible are 1) evidentialist way of fulfilled prophecies, archaeological findings, historicity arguments of eyewitness accounts, etc. 2) pre-suppositional way of Van Till--assuming it as only way to explain life 3) moderate method of historicity-then faith in Christ-then belief in Christ's testimony to the Bible. But each of these methods tends to assume the listener is a modern, Enlightenment person whose 'story' is to live a life based on reason and science. Alternative approach: Most contemporary people are allergic to the idea of absolute truth or an infallible Bible. Enter the Story: Desire for a personal relationship with God. Wouldn't you want to have a God with whom you can have an intimate, living, personal relationship? Challenge: But if you want a personal relationship, the other person will have to be able to contradict you. If a wife can never contradict her husband, you don't have a real personal relationship (e.g. "The Stepford Wives") Now, if you pick and choose what you can believe in the Bible and what you can't believe (on the basis of modern thinking or personal feelings), then how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? Only if God can be or say things that outrage you will you know you have a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal, mystical relationship with God. It is the pre-condition. Jesus related to God on the basis of the Bible. You won't be able to finish your own story without the Bible Jesus believed in.
• Speak to your whole community, not just the ones in the seats. If your church is to be a church for the whole neighborhood, you must preach and minister as if the people nearby who don't believe are there. You must conduct church as if the whole community was listening in. If you preach as if non-Christians from the community were there (even if they aren't!), it will not be long before they are there. Why? Even in thriving churches, the whole service usually assumes: 1) a lot of Biblical knowledge, 2) a 'we-them' mentality (we Christians vs. the big, bad world), 3) much evangelical terminology. Thus most Christians, even when they are very edified in church, know intuitively that their non-Christian friends would not appreciate the service. What you want is for a Christian to come to your church and say, "oh! I wish my non-Christian friend could see (or hear) this!" If this is forgotten, soon even a growing church will be filled with Christians who commute in from various towns and communities far and wide rather than filling up with Christians and seekers from your church's immediate neighborhoods.
2. Acts 16:16-19 - WHOLISTIC Ministry and The Gospel for the Post-modern
• The slave-girl (v.16) (literally "the Pythoness") was poor, and she cannot be liberated simply through preaching, but by a direct encounter with the powers that bind her, spiritually, socially, and economically. There is deed ministry here, as well as a word.
• Deed Ministry issues: Jesus considered a concern for the poor to be a mark of his presence (Matt.11:5). Increasingly, in a globalized world, we will win neither the elites nor the masses unless we embody the gospel in strong ministry to people with economic and material needs as well as spiritual.
"The renewal of Christ's salvation ultimately includes a renewed universe...there is no part of our existence that is untouched by His blessing. Christ's miracles were miracles of the kingdom, performed as signs of what the kingdom means....His blessing was pronounced upon the poor, the afflicted, the burdened and heavy-laden who came to Him and believed in Him....The miraculous signs that attested Jesus' deity and authenticated the witness of those who transmitted the gospel to the church is not continued, for their purpose was fulfilled. But the pattern of the kingdom that was revealed through those signs must continue in the church....Kingdom evangelism is therefore holistic as it transmits by word and deed the promise of Christ for body and soul as well as the demand of Christ for body and soul." (Edmund P. Clowney, in The Pastor Evangelist)
• Evaluation questions: How will you serve the people around you? How will you show that Christ is come to bring peace/shalom to the world?
• Think of community service content that fits the culture. How will you show the community you love them even if they don’t believe? (1) What are the 'felt needs' of the individuals in your community that are largely shared alike by Christians and non-Christians? This varies greatly depending on your neighborhood. What are the emotional needs of the elderly, families, teens, singles, men, women, children? What are the social or economic or educational needs of the same? (2) What are the flaws and difficulties with the systems of the community? Again, this varies greatly depending on your neighborhood. In prosperous communities, the educational and economic systems 'work' better. In other communities, even the streets are not safe to walk in. The key is to find ways to stand with the broader community to face effects of our fallen condition and be, as a church, a 'sign of the kingdom' of God. Find ways to bring emotional, social, and spiritual healing in a way that the world can see.
• Think of community service connection modes that fit the culture. How will you link your church to the needs of the community culture in such a way that is 'wholistic', weaving verbal witness and Christian community together with service to the world? In other words, do not simply create 'social programs' but link outreach service ministry with small group fellowship and with worship and verbal expressions of the gospel.
• Counter-intuitive wholistic ministry. Most people have a very powerful desire (need?) to place a church somewhere on an ideological spectrum from "Liberal/Left wing" to "Conservative/Right wing". There is nothing more crucial than to use the gospel in the life of our church to defy such stereotypes and to (thus) become impossible to categorize. On the one hand, the gospel of Christ and justification-by-faith brings deep, powerful psychological changes. Though I am sinful, I am accepted through Christ. This discovery "converts" people, so they sing, "My chains fell off, my heart was free; I rose, went forth, and followed Thee". On the other hand, the gospel of the cross and the kingdom brings deep powerful social changes. It defies the values of the world--power, status, recognition, and wealth. The gospel is triumph through weakness, wealth through poverty, power through service. This changes our attitude toward the poor, toward our own status, wealth and careers.
• Together, these two "sides" of the gospel's influence creates a unique kind of church. So many fundamentalist churches tend to be legalistic in their approach (even if they technically believe in justification by faith!). Therefore, though they stress evangelism, they are not all that attractive or effective. Legalism does not produce 'reciprocal' love for those without faith. On the other hand, so many liberal churches, though they stress social justice, are not all that effective at it. Their people's lives are not electrified by conversion. They do not have deep experiences that humble them and change the way they look at the poor. Therefore, a gospel-centered church should have a social justice emphasis and effectiveness that greatly exceeds that of the liberal church. Meanwhile, it should have an evangelistic fervor that greatly exceeds that of the ordinary fundamentalist church. This gospel-driven, counter-intuitive combination of 'zeals' can only come through teaching, prayer, and repentance.
• 'Post-modern' ministry issues: The slave-girl also represents the haunted insight of the coming 'post-modern' culture. Lydia lives on the Upper East Side, and the Jailer lives in Queens, but the slave-girl is an artist with a drug habit living in the East Village. (1) Apologetics is constantly necessary, but it should be mainly presuppositional. Show that relativism is intolerant. (2) Stress small groups over all other programs. (3) In preaching, Jesus is not a teacher of principles (for traditionalists) or healer of hurts (for moderns) but the savior in history. Religion is self-salvation through principles (modern or traditional) while the gospel is salvation through entering a story--the myth that became fact--Jesus' redemptive life. The result of religion is moralism and oppression; the result of relativism is selfish individualism--both are unacceptable. (4) Evangelism: (a) 1st, 'more evangelized' searchers will come right in to all services, groups and ministries. There must be participation before transformation. (b) 2nd, ‘less’ evangelized people are now reached through non-condescending cultural and social involvement. Do friendship (not even friendship evangelism--gospel character produces friendship about them). Evangelism is more about how we live with a new quality of life: we show how the gospel helps us embrace the excluded, be a servant of common good, live with integrity regarding sex, money, power. (c) 3rd, evangelism has more to do with excellence and thoughtfulness in the way we do our work. (5) Music/worship cannot be confined to the classical or the contemporary. High quality aesthetics are critical in our technological yet anti-rational age. (6) The preferable ministry area is again the parish--the neighborhood. (7) Stress racial reconciliation and multi-cultural community. This has always been Biblical, but now it’s practical. Society is becoming more multi-ethnic and concerned with building bridges. (8) Stress lay leadership--all deeply based on friendship (very organic) rather than program (inorganic). Skepticism about expertise will encourage lay leadership. (9) Communication style must have the ‘irony’ of gospel-humility rather than the typical pomposity of traditional Christianity or slick-cool-controlled nature of modern Christianity. But the challenge is to avoid the ‘irony’ of cynicism. Cynical-irony is seeing other’s sin as worse than yours (a plank vs. your splinter) while humble-irony is seeing your sin as worse than others’ (a splinter vs. your plank).
• 'Freedom' vs. 'Forgiveness' Gospel. The basic difference between people I meet today has to do with how and why they will see they need the gospel. People from traditional cultures and mindsets tend to a) have a belief in God, and b) have a strong sense of moral absolutes and the obligation to be “good”. This may be a sense of obligation to their family, their people, a general moral ethic, a tradition, a religion (including Christianity), and so on. These folk respond well to a presentation that says, “Sin keeps you from ever being as good as you need to be, and it therefore separates you from God.” People with more secular and “post-modern” mindsets tend to a) have only a vague belief in the divine, if at all, and b) have little sense of moral absolutes. Therefore, they feel the obligation to be free and true to their own selves and dreams. These folk respond well to a presentation that says, “Sin keeps you from being free as you need to be, and therefore it enslaves and de-humanizes you.”
• “The Gospel as Forgiveness”. The way to show the traditional persons their need for the gospel is by saying, “your sin makes you imperfect! You can’t be righteous enough. You may think you are looking to God for salvation, but you are really trying to save yourself.” (Imperfection is the biggest nightmare of the “duty-worshipper”. We say “you are not living up!” so they are threatened.) This approach creates anxiety and relieves it by showing how Christ forgives us, covers our sins, gives us a righteous record. b. “The Gospel as Freedom”. But the way to show more deeply secularized persons their need for the gospel is by saying, “your sin makes you a slave! You are actually being religious, though you don't know it--trying to be righteous in a destructive way”. (Slavery is the biggest nightmare of the “choice--worshipper”. We say, “You are not really in control” so they are threatened.) This approach creates anxiety and relieves it by showing how Christ redeems us (literally “ransoms us from slavery”), and it liberates us.
• Each approach is Biblical, of course. Romans tends to give the first approach (see Romans 6-8). Galatians tends to give the second approach. Paul insists that his pagan converts, if they go with the “Judaizers”, will only be going back into bondage. Paul equates religious moralism and pagan hedonism as being essentially the same thing. Each of the two approaches assumes a piece of common grace, a certain insight about truth. The older cultures saw duty as the key of salvation. The gospel says: “but you AREN’T living up to your duty unless you come to God through the finished work of X.” The newer culture sees freedom as the key of salvation. The gospel says: “but your AREN’T free unless you come to God through finished work of X.” Now in both situations, we must be careful. The first approach to the gospel must be careful not to let the hearers think that the gospel is just a way to get a free pardon. The second approach to the gospel must be careful not to let the hearers think that the gospel is just a way to get personal fulfillment. In former times, when churches were so filled with people who were traditional, we had to avoid preaching any “salvation through duty”. (We failed to avoid it, in fact.) Now churches are so filled with people who are therapized to seek fulfillment, we must avoid preaching any “salvation through discovery”. (We are failing to avoid it, in fact.)
• Who are the two kinds of people? Every person must be considered on a case-by-case basis. But here are some ideas for who these two kinds of people tend to be, at least in the U.S. The first set of people (more traditional worldview) tend to include: people who are older, who are from strong Catholic or religious Jewish backgrounds, who are from conservative evangelical/Pentecostal Protestant backgrounds, people from the southern U.S., and first generation immigrants from non-European countries. The second set of people tend to include: people who are younger, who are from nominal/weak Catholic or non-religious Jewish backgrounds, who are from liberal mainline Protestant backgrounds, people from the western and northeastern U.S., Europeans (here in the states), and the children of families from non-Western countries.
• In most non-Western (non U.S-European), the traditional world-view is more prevalent in less urban areas and less educated classes, while the secular world-view is more prevalent in more urban areas and more educated classes. We must also notice that this division also runs along a divide between older secularists and newer secularists in the West. The older secularism has been called “modern” and the newer “post-modern”. In the earlier part of the century, modern secular people still had a high belief in reason and were very moral. But as the century has waned, “post-modern” secularists are far more relativistic and are skeptical of objective reality of any kind, whether empirical or moral. Therefore, very moral yet secular parents have produced very a-moral, secular children.
• Summary. In general, I want to show that it is best to communicate in the second mode, “The Gospel as Freedom” because the second mode critiques (as we see in Galatians) both ways of rejecting the gospel--both moralism/traditionalism and relativism/hedonism, while the first approach only critiques moralism.
3. Acts 16:20-40- CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY and The Gospel for the Secular World
Acts 16:25 - Worshipping Community
• Paul and Silas worship God before the unbelievers (v.25). Maybe Paul had this in mind when he spoke of the power of worship for the non-believer (1 Cor.14:24-25).
• God commanded Israel to invite the nations to join in declaring his glory. Zion is to be the center of world-winning worship (Isaiah 2:2-4; 56:6-8). In Acts 2 and I Cor. 14:23ff we see non-believers attracted and disturbed by worship. We learn 1) nonbelievers are expected in worship, 2) non-believers must find worship challenging and comprehensible, not comfortable. If the Sunday service and sermon aim primarily at evangelism, it will bore the saints. If they aim primarily at education, they will bore and confuse unbelievers. If they aim at praising the God who saves by sheer grace they will both instruct the saints and challenge the sinners. Evangelistic worship is especially important for post-modern people for whom context is everything and who need to see how the gospel 'works' in people's lives. What does it take? 1) General principle--worship as if non-Christians are present before they really are, and they will be brought. 2) Specifics: a) inclusive quality of speaking and music, b) noble simplicity of language (not sentimental, austere, archaic, or colloquial), c) solve people's problems with the gospel.
Acts 16:20-34 - Practicing Community
• We verbal, rational Reformed types won't be excited to see that only one of the three representative conversions is done through preaching. The other two happen through a power encounter and through the quality of true virtue--gospel character. The Jailer is shocked by joy apart from circumstances (v.25), attractive character and integrity (v.28).
• J. Edwards: there is ”common virtue” and “true virtue”. Virtuous behavior can be inspired by fear (“if you are not honest, God will punish you!”) or by pride (”I am not like the kind of people who lies”). But almost always we lie out of fear or pride. So in common virtue, you have restrained the heart, but not changed the heart. The virtuous behavior is very fragile, and it feeds insecurity, self-righteousness, and oppression toward others. You are nurturing the roots of sin within your moral life. Luther says that we only break commandments #2-10 because we first break #1--making some other 'god' our justification and righteousness besides Christ. Therefore, we cannot create true virtue unless we use the gospel on the root self-justification underneath the sinful behavior. “True” honesty only grows by a rejoicing sight of the glory of Christ and his salvation. It grows when I see him dying for me, keeping a promise he made despite the infinite suffering it brought him. Now that a) destroys pride on the one hand, because he had to do this for me--I am so lost! But that also b) destroys fear on the other hand, because if he’d do this for me while I’m an enemy, then he values me infinitely, and nothing I can do will wear out his love for me. Then my heart is not just restrained by changed. Its fundamental orientation is transformed. “Common virtue” brings the self-righteousness and exclusionary attitudes that post-modern people hate. “True virtue” is the only kind of new character and it creates the new community that will be the ultimate post-modern apologetic. Also, the way true virtue is produced is an application of the gospel of grace in worship and small groups. This means that both Christians and non-Christians can be included and hear with profit the same basic message. This kind of ‘virtue production’ is the only way to produce “spiritually inclusive’ community.
Acts 16:35-39 - Socially Engaged Community
• Paul and Silas are not hesitant to point out a miscarriage of justice. Stott thinks that this was necessary to 'create space' for the new young church. Christians are to judiciously bring their faith to bear on their lives in the 'public' sector.
• We must not form 1) a sub-culture in which we externally dress and talk (dialect) differently, avoiding certain gross behaviors, but internally we have the same values as the surrounding culture. (E.g. believers may not smoke or drink too much or have sex outside of marriage, yet in their core beings they may be as materialistic and individualistic, and status- or image-conscious as the society around.] We must also not form 2) an anti-culture in which Christians feel highly polluted by the very presence of the unbelieving schools, entertainment, arts, and culture. In this model they feel they cannot really function in the society without getting the cultural power back through legislation and storming institutions directly. We must also not form 3) a para-culture to expect a miraculous, sweeping intervention by God which will convert many or most individuals and explosively transform the culture. Instead of becoming deeply engaged with the society and people around them, working with others as co-citizens to deal with the troubles and problems, believers concentrate completely on evangelism and discipleship, building up the church and their own numbers. Rather we should form 4) a counter-culture. This is the reverse of a 'sub-culture'--we are to be externally quite like the surrounding culture (positive toward and conversant with it), without ‘jargon’ and other Christians trappings--yet in worldview, values, and lifestyle, demonstrate chastity, simplicity, humility, self-sacrifice. They are quite different in the way they understand money, relationships, human life, sex, and so on. Hananiah is an example of the 'para-culture' in Jer.28; Jeremiah is a proponent of the 'counter-culture' in Jer.29.
Acts 16:40 - The Unifying Power of the Gospel
• Think now of the membership in Lydia's house-church. The three converts show that it embraces different races (Lydia was Asian, the slave-girl was likely Greek, the Jailer was Roman), different economic classes (Lydia was white-collar, the slave-girl was poor, the Jailer was working-class), different cognitive styles (Lydia was rational, the slave-girl was intuitive, the Jailer was concrete-relational). The gospel leads them to embrace one another--they are 'brethren' (v.40). The ancient prayer was: "God, I thank you that I am not a woman, a slave, or a Gentile"--but those are the three groups to whom God shows his grace!
• One of the main problems that post-modern people have with both modern and traditional world-views (and Christianity is seen as falling within one or the other) is the way in which they exclude. If you have ‘the truth’ or ‘the universals’, that excludes and divides. But as Newbiggin shows, ‘relativism’ is as exclusive in its claims, and in the end can be a warrant for worse oppression than the modern and traditional. Christians must communicate and demonstrate that the gospel is different. Jesus says that a sign of gospel-faith: Matthew 5: 47. If you only greet your brothers, what do ye more than others? Since the Jewish greeting was Shalom! and an embrace, Jesus is saying much. We must show our uniqueness by following our Lord who always embraced the moral and spiritual outsider. Matt.21:31-”The prostitutes and the tax collectors are entering the kingdom of God before you.” If you understand the gospel of grace you treat the ‘other’: a) with respect: Grace means the non-believer may be a better person. b) With courage: Grace means the non-believer’s possible rejection of us is not so fearsome. c) With hope: Grace means you are a miracle and no one is beyond hope. No other world-view can produce this combination of humility and confidence.
Community Ministry Issues: How will you form a community that is rich and deep in love for one another and exhibits to the world the distinct life, individually and corporately, that we have in Christ?
• Think of community content that fits the culture. What will a gospel-renewed human society in your culture look like? Be sure to both honor the culture yet renew it with the gospel. Consider how your community will be shaped with regard to: (1) Leadership structure/decision-making. (How will it be led? How much authority will the leaders have vs. the entire membership? How will decisions be made?) (2) Infra-community structure. (How will your people love and know one another intimately? How will they hold each other accountable? How will they grow spiritually through mutual ministry to one another?) (3) Music/worship. (What will the worshipping community look like? What Biblical/worship tradition will connect you to the historic church? How will your culture shape the way music and the arts are used? What will the worship demeanor and voice of your congregation be?) (4) Being a ‘community of character’. What key ethical themes and personal changes will be encouraged? What picture of Christian family life will you hold up? What picture of mature Christian individual will you hold up?
• Think of community connections that fit the culture. How will you literally connect and welcome and draw people from the broader community into your Christian community? How will you meet and get to know the people of your neighborhood/region? (1) Remember that where the pastor and the core leaders live is all-important. The only organic, natural way to connect to the broader community is to live right in the area of ministry/worship and be co-citizens and face the life-issues of the community with everyone else. (2) Consider ‘front-door’ events: (a) historical church re-plant (using the building to reach out), (b) ‘open forums’, concerts, (c) evangelistically attuned Sunday worship ‘side-door’ events: counseling, house groups. Innumerable ideas are possible here. Spend a lot of time in brainstorming and reflecting. (3) Small groups that are well equipped to reach out to their own block, housing division, apartments buildings. Offer other off-site, weekday meetings that enfold new people well.
End Note: "If you're not in a small group, you're not in the church." How mobile our society has become! Fewer and fewer people live in the region where they were born and raised and that is filled with networks of their family, relatives, and long-time friends. But both church leaders and church members often expect that care and nurture will happen through informal, word-of-mouth communication and unplanned relationships between (usually) pastors and parishioners. It took us nearly two years to realize that the traditional approach can't work in a city. It is through a network of 'cells'--small group fellowships--that we can nurture and care for one another. Soon I began to warn people: "If you are a member or regular attender at Redeemer, and you have a spiritual problem, or you get sick, or you have some kind of acute need in your life--we certainly will try to help. But if you are not in a group and we are slow to respond, you don't really have a warrant to complain. It is through small groups that we can provide care and opportunities through learning, and it is through the groups that we know quickly if you have a need the Body can meet. So--practically speaking--if you aren't in a small group, you aren't fully in the church."
ADVANCING THE GOSPEL INTO
THE 21ST CENTURY: Acts 13-19
Part 3
Tim Keller, October 2003
CITY-FOCUSED - Acts 16-19
A. This is the fourth crucial principle of ministry for the 21st (and the 1st!) century. We should not ignore the rest of a nation, but we should focus our efforts on large cities in the greatest way possible. In the introduction we noted that now there is a mobility of ideas, people, and capital unprecedented since the Pax Romana, and this leads not only to globalization and pluralization (again) but urbanization again. As Wayne Meeks put it, travel during the Pax Romana was easier than it ever had been and ever was again until the 19th century. And when that happened, the cities rose again. The works of Wayne Meeks and Rodney Stark have shown that the rise of early Christianity was largely an urban phenomenon. Globalized cities became furiously multi-ethnic and international and thus became more enormously influential and central then their nations--essentially they were city-states. Why? Antioch was really a United Nations, with Asian, African, Jewish, Greek, and Roman sections. From Antioch there were powerful networks that led back into three continents. Capital and culture flowed back and forth through those networks. Thus Paul's mission strategy was remarkably 'urban-centered', and ours should be.
1. Urbanization
In 1950, New York was the only world city with a population of over 10 million people. Today, however, there are over 20 such cities, twelve of which have arrived in the last two decades, with many more to come. All of these new giant mega-cities are developing in what used to be called the "Third World". Why?
In the 18th century a combination of population growth and technology brought rural Europe to its "carrying capacity", creating a surplus population. In every family there were those who needed to leave the countryside and small towns to make a living elsewhere. As a result there were 150 years of urbanization in which the great cities of Europe swelled to be the largest in the world.
Many experts now believe this is beginning to happen in Africa, Asia, and to a lesser extent in Latin America, where the cities are literally exploding with new immigrants from the villages and rural areas. If urban-rural population in the southern hemisphere stabilizes at 75%-25% as it did in Europe and North America, then over the next few decades we will see over half a billion people move into the cities of Africa and Asia alone--i.e. one new Bangkok (8 million people) every two months.
It is this urban explosion that has been the main vehicle, in the providence of God, for the most important new development in Christian history in centuries.
While Christianity has declined in Europe and has only held its own (at best) in North America, it has been growing at many times the rate of population in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Now the majority of Christians live south of the equator. Christianity is growing more rapidly than any other faith, but the vast majority of believers will be neither white nor European nor Euro-American.
Why? It is because of the staggering growth in cities. The millions of newcomers to burgeoning cities have characteristics that make them far more open to Christianity than they were before arriving.
First, they are more open to new ideas and to change in general, having been uprooted from traditional settings.
Second, they have great need for help and support in order to face the moral, economic, emotional, and spiritual pressures of city life. The old kinship support networks of the rural areas are weak or absent, while the cities have "next to nothing in working government services". Churches offer supportive community, a new spiritual family, a liberating gospel message. "Rich pickings await any groups who can meet these needs of these new urbanites, anyone who can at once feed the body and nourish the soul."
2. Globalization
The technological/communication revolution has led to an unprecedented mobility of people, ideas, and capital, which is often called ‘globalization’.
First this means that major world cities are far more connected to other major cities around the world than they are to their own nations. On the one hand, the "business-class" and other elites of New York, London, and Tokyo are able to identify more with one another than with the non-urban citizens of their own countries. But the strong connections between major cities are not only through the 'elites'. Huge, diverse immigrant populations in global cities tie each urban area more tightly to scores of other countries around the world than to its own regional locale. In other words, thousands of residents of New York City are far more connected to the Philippines, Haiti, Columbia, China, and Nigeria then they are to New Jersey or Connecticut.
Second, these networked world-cities are becoming more economically and culturally powerful than the national governments of their geographical regions. Why is this? 1) The mobility of capital means national governments are now virtually powerless to control the flow of money in and out of their own economies, thus greatly decreasing their influence in general. The cities are the seats of multi-national corporations and international economic, social, technological networks. 2) The technology/ communication revolution means that national governments are powerless also to control what their people watch or learn. (This was a major factor in the collapse of communism in Europe.) As a result, it is the culture/values set of world-class cities that is now being transmitted around the globe to every tongue, tribe, people, and nation. A major city like New York or Los Angeles now is far more influential in forming the culture of residents in, say, rural Indiana or rural Mexico than are the national or local governments or civic institutions. We now have the overall major erosion of nation-state power in 800 years.
Harvie Conn concludes that we are witnessing again the rise of the 'City-State". He quotes N. Pierce: “Great metropolitan regions...not states, not even the nation-states--are starting to emerge as the world’s most influential players.” (p.182) Thus world-class cities are increasingly crucial to setting the course of culture and life as a whole, even in the areas of the world (Europe and North America) where cites are not literally growing in size. . In other words, urban culture now reaches out far beyond the city limits into the suburbs and even rural areas. Kids in Iowa or even Mexico are becoming more like young adults in L.A. and New York City than they are like adults in their own locales. The coming world ‘order’ will be a global, multi-cultural, urban order.
Sum: If anything, the city is even more influential now than it has been in the past. During the last 20 years we see increasingly in the ‘developed’ world that the young and the global citizens/ influencers want to live in cities. Meanwhile, in the less developed world, people are streaming by the millions out of the hinterlands and into the city. James Boice in Two Cities: Two Loves (pp.165ff.) suggests that if even ten percent of the evangelicals of the nation moved into the largest cities and lived out lives of love, truth, and servanthood, the culture would be fundamentally changed. The gospel alone can give us the humility ("I have much to learn from the city"), the confidence ("I have much to give to the city") and the courage ("I have nothing to fear from the city") to be effective in the city. Most Christians avoid the city because it is so filled with ‘the other’.
B. Text: Acts 16:6-12 -Here we see that Paul is called to Macedonia, but to reach it he automatically chooses to go to the largest city of a region (v.16). The apostle consistently targeted the largest city of a region and did extensive urban church planting and then left the region. Why? He knew that once he’d reached the city he’d reached the society and culture. Meeks explains why it was so brilliant to target cities. Humanly speaking: a) City dwellers go through changes and are more open to new ideas than more conservative rural people. b) City dwellers are more connected and mobile so that when one of them is converted, your chance of gospel spreading far and wide is much greater. Rodney Stark looks at why Christianity spread so rapidly, and it was because the cities also had more social problems, and the love and service of Christians, the family life and character of Christians, was so striking.
"To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as real hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachment. To cities filled with widows and orphans, Christianity offered a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity...I am not saying the misery of the ancient world caused the advent of Christianity...people had been enduring for centuries without the aid of Christian theology or social structures. I am arguing that once Christianity did appear, its superior capacity for meeting human problems soon became evident and played a major role in its ultimate triumph...for what Christianity brought was not simply an urban movement, but a new culture. (Stark, The Rise of Christianity, p.161)
C. The Biblical Mandate. Paul’s focus on the city should not surprise us. The rest of the Bible shows us the importance of the city.
1. Old Testament - God invents the city -- so, as the city goes, society goes.
• God tells Adam and Eve to "have dominion", develop the earth, to bring forth the riches God put in nature (and human nature) at creation. There was a call to engage in the arts, science, enterprise, family life--to develop a civilization and society under God. But Adam and Eve soon failed their commission to be servants of God, cultivating creation under his Lordship. Instead, Jesus Christ comes as the "new Adam". He becomes the head of a new humanity who creates a world under God.
• But when we look ahead to the ultimate fruit of the work of the new Adam--in Revelation 21-22--when we catch a glimpse of the climax of history, when the world is finally in the condition Jesus died to produce, we discover that the earth has become a city. God begins history in a garden, but he ends it in a city! In the middle of the City-to-Come we see the tree of life! Why? This is paradise restored. God's future world is urban. When God said, "develop the earth" he intended for Adam and Eve to build a city.
• Even today, in our broken world, cities continue to be the main way that the culture develops. As the city goes, so go the arts, scholarship, communication, philosophy, commerce, etc. From the beginning, cities have been centers of cultural power. Changes develop in the city and from there flow out into regions of city influence. Why? At the center of cities there has traditionally been some common space--called a 'town square' or 'marketplace'--that served as both a place for and a symbol of how people make commercial, political, social, and cultural connections in cities. In cities the number and diversity of human connections outstrips the possibilities for such anywhere else. (As testimony of this fact, the purpose of a convention is connection--a place people make connection with expertise, peers, money, and other resources--but the best way to facilitate these connections is to create a temporary city!) All the connections lead in the end to creativity--new alliances, new ideas, new art, and new movements. This is the third reason people who don't live in a city are at a disadvantage. They are marginal to the centers, the places of "cultural forging."
• How the city determines society/culture: The divinely given ability of the city to do 'culture-making' can be discerned at the most practical level by the urban resident.
• The city puts me together with unique numbers of people unlike me.
• The city attracts the minorities of any society who can band together for mutual support. Thus the city is deeply merciful to those with less power, creating safe enclaves for singles vs. families, the poor (and even the rich!) vs. the bourgeois, immigrants vs. longer-term residents, racial minorities vs. majorities. Thus the city will always be the most diverse human-life structure.
• Because I am put together (by its density) with unique numbers of diverse people, all my thinking and views are radically challenged. I am confronted with creative new ways to think about things, and I must abandon my traditional ways or become far more knowledgeable and committed to them than I was before. Thus I become vastly more creative, committed, and skillful in all I am or do.
• Sin takes this divine-strength--the diversity of the city--and turns it into a place (also) of conflict and strife. The gospel is needed to resist the dark side of this gift.
• The city puts me together with unique numbers of people like me.
• The city also attracts the strongest as well as the weakest (see above). The challenge of the city attracts the most talented, ambitious, (and restless, see below). Thus, whoever you are, when you come to the city you are confronted by far more people who are far better than you at whatever you do.
• Because I am put together with unique numbers of like-but-extremely skilled people in my field, I am radically challenged to 'reach down deep' and do my very best. More than that, I feel driven and pressed by the intensity of the density to realize every ounce of my potential.
• Sin takes this divine-strength--the culture-forming intensity--and turns it into a place (also) of both deadly hubris and burnout. The gospel is needed to resist the dark side of this gift.
• Cities draw and gather together human resources and tap their potential for cultural development as no other human-life organization structure can.
2. New Testament -God sends to cities--as urban ministry goes, national mission goes.
• Paul's missionary journeys essentially ignored the countryside. When he entered a new region, he planted churches in the biggest city and then left!
• Why? The reason for ministry in cities mirrors what we've seen about the nature of cities.
• Cultural cruciality. In the village, you might win the one or two lawyers to Christ, but if you wanted to win the legal profession, you need to go to the city where you have the law schools, the law journals published, etc.
• Global cruciality. In the village, you can win only the single people group that is there, but if you want to spread the gospel into 10-20 new national groups/and languages at once, you go to the city where they can all be reached through the one lingua franca of the place.
• Personal cruciality. In the village, little changes, and people live in very stable environments. Thus they are suspicious of any major change. Because of the diversity and intensity of the cities, urbanites are much more open to radically new ideas--like the gospel! Because they are surrounded by so many people like and unlike themselves (see above), and so much more mobile and subject to change, urbanites are far more open to change/conversion than any other kind of resident. They may have moved to the city out of a searching restlessness. But even if not, once they get to the city, the pressure and diversity makes even the most traditional and hostile people open to the gospel.
• Result? By year 300 AD, 50% of the urban populations of the Roman empire were Christian, while over 90% of the countryside was still pagan. (Note: Some believe that the very word "pagan" comes from the Greek paganus meaning a farmer or man of the country.) Because Christianity captured the cities, it eventually captured the society, as must always be the case. What captivates the cities also captivates the art, media, scholarship and the professions. Cities are the "culture forming wombs" of the society, made by God to be so.
• God's urban alternative When Israel made Jerusalem its capital, God directed that the temple be built on Zion, an elevation within the city, so that it rose above the city as its 'skyscraper'. But unlike the skyscrapers of the "city of man", designed for their builders own prosperity (e.g. the skyscraper of Babel built "to make a name for ourselves"-Gen 11:4) God's city is different. "In the city of our God, his holy mountain is beautiful in elevation--the joy of the whole earth." (Psalm 48:2) The urban society God wants is based on service, not selfishness, and on bringing joy to the whole world with its cultural riches, not just the individuals within it. Jesus probably had Psalm 48:2 in mind when he spoke to his disciples and said to them: "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill..." (Matthew 5:14). Jesus calls his disciples to form a society that is an alternate city within the city -- a mini-city where sex, money, and power are used in life-giving ways, a mini-city where people who cannot get along outside can get along inside, a center where artists show it is possible to produce cultural products that bring hope to people rather than just despair and titillation.
• Somebody might ask: "But can't Christians be an alternate city out in the suburbs?" Well, of course. Absolutely. I have just discovered over my years in New York that it is considerably easier to show the world God's urban alternative in an actual human city. In racially homogeneous towns it is pragmatically harder to show how the gospel uniquely undermines racial barriers (Ephesians 2:11ff). In places where fewer artists live it is pragmatically harder to show the gospel's effect on art. In economically homogeneous places, physically removed from the human poverty that is so pervasive in the world, it is pragmatically harder for Christians to realize how much money they are spending on themselves.
D. Global Cities and the Mission of the Church What are the implications for mission?
First, reach the city to reach the world. In general, missions should concentrate more on cities than on anywhere else. I think the evidence is overwhelming and obvious for this. This, of course, is no argument for neglecting any particular people group or part of the world. The church needs to minister the gospel wherever there are people! But many of the current 'unreached people groups' in remote areas of the world may be gone within twenty years (into the cities!). The problem is that white evangelical Protestants who control the U.S. mission apparatus are themselves overwhelmingly non-urban in background. They neither understand nor like urban life. But
It may be helpful to those who harbor misgivings about cities...to reflect on the fact that urbanization, as a present fact of life for most of the human family is a reality under the providential control of God. In Acts 17:26-27 the apostle Paul observes: “...he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him.” Viewed in light of these verses, city growth is not something to be perceived as entirely the work of the devil, but as part of God’s providential plan in history. God’s redemptive purpose behind urban growth is that ‘men should seek him and reach out for him’. By means of these enormous gatherings of people, God provides the church with one of history’s greatest opportunities for evangelization. Pressed together in metropolises, the races, tribes, and diverse people groups are geographically more accessible than ever before. In some cases the processes of change that new urbanites pass through make them more receptive to the gospel. If this is the case, world urbanization should be viewed in an eschatological as well as missionary framework. God in our time is moving climactically through a variety of social, political, and economic factors to bring earth’s peoples into closer contact with one another, into greater interaction and interdependence, and into earshot of the gospel. By this movement God carries forward his redemptive purposes in history. A sign of our time is the city. Through worldwide migration to the city, God may be setting the stage for Christian mission’s greatest and perhaps final hour.
Second, reach the city to reach both your region and 'overseas'. The old distinction between 'home-missions' and 'foreign-missions' is made obsolete by global cities--and yet the city is more than ever the key to both! One urban church in Queens has planted three daughter churches: one in neighboring College Point, one in the neighboring Bronx, and one in the neighboring Philippines! Why? The church reached so many Filipino immigrants in its neighborhood that the new Christians wanted to plant a daughter church among their friends and relatives in their country of origin. Each major city is now a 'portal' to most of the nations of the world. That is where they must be reached. But not only are cities the key to what used to be called 'foreign missions', but they are the key to 'home missions'. You can't reach the urban centers from the suburbs, but you can most definitely reach the suburbs from the city. Regional people-flow is from the urban center outward. Students grow up, singles get married, immigrants make money and want more space--and all of them move out from the center to the suburbs. Ministries that begin and thrive in the city will eventually spread all through the suburbs, following their converts out to their new neighborhoods. But ministries that begin in the suburbs only reach inward toward the city center with great difficulty.
Third, reach the city to reach 'the culture'. As we have seen, cities more than ever influence the culture and values of the world. The single most effective way for Christians to influence the culture of a nation is to have large numbers of them stay in cities and simply "be the church" there. Also, for all the reasons noted above, we would find increasingly that ministry which is effective in a world-class city has remarkably wide applicability, especially with the emerging generations.
Fourth, reach the whole city to reach the world. As we have seen, there is no part of the city that can be neglected. First, the poor cannot be neglected, because God has always worked mightily among the urban poor. 'Word' and 'deed' ministry will have to be combined, both in ministries to Christians within the community and outside of it. The church's attitude toward and work with the poor will be a significant sign of its validity to others. Second, the immigrants--the 'nations'--cannot be neglected, because they are far more open to (and more conscious of their need for) gospel ministry than they ever were in their homeland. Third, the 'elites' cannot be neglected, because they are disproportionately powerful and must be called to use their educational, economic, and cultural power for the service of others and the Lord. The church in the city must show its concern for the peace of the whole city (Jer 29:7).
Fifth, reach the whole city to reach your own heart with the gospel.
In the city you'll find many things that will challenger your grasp of the gospel. You will find many people that seem 'hopeless' to you spiritually and morally. But if the gospel of grace is true, why would you think that their conversion would be any more a miracle than your own? You will find people of other religions and of no religion who are wiser, kinder, and deeper than you. Even after growth in grace, lots of Christians are weaker people than lots of non-Christians. But if the gospel of grace is true, why did you think that Christians are basically 'better' kinds of people than non-Christians? After a while these and other examples will begin to show you that even though you may intellectually understand the doctrine of justification by faith alone, you functionally assume salvation by moral goodness and works.
Early in Redeemer’s ministry we discovered that it was not enough for Christians to feel pity or even just affection for the city. Staff and leaders had to humbly learn from and respect New York City and its people. Our relationship with the people of Manhattan had to be a consciously reciprocal one. We had to see God's 'common grace' in them. We had to learn that we needed them to fill out our own understanding of God and his grace, just as they needed us for the same. We had to be energized and enriched by the city, not just drained by it. Even Jesus so united his heart with the people he ministered to that he 'needed' their friendship (Matt.26:36-41). Ministry in the city, then, will help you grasp the gospel of grace in powerful ways. You may even come to see that you spiritually need the city more than the city needs you.
