- Timothy Keller

I have a very short theory on why this is the case, namely paid church staff . . . career Christians. Their very existence and livelihood depends on the “conservative, button-down, moralistic people” paying the bills. So, church ends up looking like THOSE people. It’s just smart to run your country club well if you want your patrons to continue to pay their dues.

“What sort of foundation have we in Christ? Was he the beginning of our salvation in order that its fulfillment might follow from ourselves? Did he only open the way by which we might proceed under our own power? Certainly not.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III. XV.V.)

It seems very much like these sorts of churches make church culture into an essential part of faith, a way by which we in our own power might attain what only Christ has made way and attained for us. In the eyes of these churches, any church that is not innovating in similar ways as them is dead and should just give up, because people cannot and will not accept Christ without all of the “buzz marketing”. God in their eyes is powerless to redeem those who would know Him without us marketing the crap out of Jesus and candy-coating the gospel (if they’re even fortunate enough to understand it).

Piper says it best recently on his blog when described “not as an innovator”.

I heard Collin Hansen say in an interview that John Piper is not an innovator.

I hope I can live up to that tribute. I would like it to be true. I am very happy with the simple role of blowing the boredom out of people’s brains with long-forgotten, old-fashioned, faithful blasts of biblical truth.

So let me try to prove how uncreative I am theologically. Here is C. S. Lewis saying fifty years ago in his Reflections on the Psalms what I have spent most of my adult life trying to say:

The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever”. But we shall know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him. (p. 97)

And I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. (p. 95)

If it were possible for a created soul fully (I mean, up to the full measure conceivable in a finite being) to “appreciate,” that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude. (p. 96)

I am a shameless conservative (=conserver) in repeating and embellishing such magnificent biblical insights from the past.

So, if it’s all gone, all taken away, what’s really left over? When you innovate the crap out the Gospel, there’s no Gospel left. The Cross + anything = nothing. What would you be left with?

Personally I’ll stick with having my boredom blown out of my brain “with long-forgotten, old-fashioned, faithful blasts of biblical truth” and leave all of those other pastors’ cool opinions, stories, creative takes on the gospel, and video clips to bore the masses.

But they’re not because they seem to get it. It being that the most important thing is the Gospel. Many churches try their best to mold themselves as much as they can to whatever culture they’re attempting to reach. This place, from our first impression seems to get that it’s the other way around . . . that we are to imitate Christ as the body of Christ, we’re not to be showy. The scripture teaches us that there wasn’t any thing visually appealing about Christ, nothing that would attract people to him. The Church as the aroma of Christ is meant to point people to the Gospel, not church culture.

I’m not belittling the necessity of marketing, only the use of marketing as a ploy. If you show up at a church as a lost person and everything you experience there is simply just a show imitating everything the world does and is (even in the purest form you can come up with), then what have you really gained? What is there to experience that is any different from what you experience every day? Sure it may be fun, you might be entertained, and you may enjoy the time spent there, but in the end you haven’t experienced the community of Christ, but the communion of the church imitating culture just to get you to feel comfortable enough to come back again. The use of culture to reach culture should never never never be elevated above the importance of the Word and the Gospel–which have no culture.

This place seems to get the Gospel, they seem to be very missional–planting other churches and partnering to see other nations impacted by the gospel. They taught from the Word, not from opinion or feelings or convenience.

Anyways, I’m very wary of speaking too soon about a place because of past experiences, but so far so good. Looks like we’ll be sticking around. I’ll keep you updated with our experiences there and might even mention the name of the place and give concrete examples of what exactly gives me this “sense” i speak of as time goes by.

An invitation to the table (part one)

An invitation to the table (part two)

An invitation to the table (part three)

Please read them, some good stuff that we all really should hear.

For a moment, forget the political puzzle of getting money back when the country is nine trillion dollars in debt. The more immediate question is: How will you make much of Christ with your “economic stimulus payment”? The president says it will be in the mail in time for Cinco de Mayo.

Clue: Nobody in the world will see you spend your money on yourself and conclude that Christ is your treasure. They will assume you are just like them, no matter how loudly you thank God for this boon. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spend it on yourself (the way we do with most of what we earn). Not everything we do can look different from the world—eat, pay utilities, fill up the car, wear clothes (even thrift-store clothes). And yes, we hope (somehow) that spending on ourselves in some way contributes to our being more Christ-exalting people.

But do we really need this money? Very few do. We would have gotten on fine without it. If we didn’t know it was coming, we wouldn’t even be feeling the desires we are feeling right now.

May I encourage you to be radically creative and hedonistic. Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). And those crazy Macedonians in a “severe test of affliction” and in “extreme poverty” had an “abundance of joy” that overflowed in a “wealth of generosity.” They even begged Paul “for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints” (2 Corinthians 8:2-4). They really believed what Jesus said. Really.

Before the check comes dream of some person or ministry which might make much of Christ because you treasured him above your next home project.

The reason God created money and enabled us to earn it is so that we could show by the way we use it that money is not our treasure, Christ is. That’s why the checks are coming. So we can make Christ look great.

“Be content with what you have, for he has said,
‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’” (Hebrews 13:5-6).

Lately I’ve been listening to a good bit of stuff from Keller and the similarities are uncanny. Really there are still a lot of differences stylistically, but the same philosophy of ministry is still in everything they say. Basically everything that they say in their sermons is a narrative of the Gospel. Meaning, the Gospel isn’t just this other thing that happened that we should remember as Christians, but instead that every biblical story is an exposition of the Gospel, everything we think, say or do can be boiled down to our understanding, or lack thereof, of the Gospel.

Needless to say, I’m very grateful for both Preaching ministries and happy to share a link I just came across that has tons of Tim Keller Resources. So please enjoy by clicking HERE

Watch it now:
The Supremacy of Christ and the Gospel in a Postmodern World

It begs the question, “How far are we willing to go to help and serve those who hate us or mean us harm?” For me this is a tough one. In many ways it would be easy for me to make the same decision the guy in the story did. At the same time, if this were the third, fourth, or fifth time I had experienced such a thing I would probably think twice before handing over my coat.

The story reminds me of an experience my wife had at our last church while serving in a volunteer role. She was asked to help out with the Youth and gladly agreed to do so. Over a period of months, anytime she had a question or asked for help, repetitively she was ignored and treated with a sort of willful neglect. Until one day, without any thing being communicated to her, she attempted to log into her volunteer email address only to find it had been deleted.

So she acted much like the guy in the story who extended his coat after being asked for his wallet. After extending a helping hand in one area only to have it rejected, she did her best to shrug it off and moved on to serve as a greeter on Sundays. Unfortunately she experienced similar lack of communication-going as far as to just show up early every Sunday because she never knew which Sundays they needed her. After experiencing many similar circumstances myself, my wife and I decided it was time to move on.

So, how far are we willing to go?. How far starts by realizing that our treasure is in heaven and whatever we have here, we are but temporary stewards of. How far we are willing to go may need to end when we realize that what we have extended in service gets mismanaged time and time again. Wise use of what we have been entrusted with is the key. We would do well to remember the Parable of the Talents, because one day the Master will return to reclaim what is his.

So give your wallet, go as far as to extend your coat, and give with joy more of yourself than you ever think you ought to give. But, time after time, when you see no fruit, no change of heart, do as Jesus instructed us to do and shake the sand from your shoes as you leave the village.

. . . there are more ways to preach ourselves than one might think. This word from James Denney has exerted a sobering effect on me since I first read it in 1982. He had these words framed and posted in the vestry of his Scottish church.

No man can bear witness to Christ and to himself at the same time. No man can give the impression that he himself is clever and that Christ is mighty to save. (Quoted in John Stott, Between Two Worlds, 325)

Easter Sunday my wife and I actually went to church somewhere–something we have done only once since we left our last church home several months ago. We went back to the same place we visited before because we have a few friends that go there. We got there a few minutes late, leaving us to park across the street at the Lowes because of the church’s overflowing parking lot. We were greeted by several smiling faces on the way in and then found it tough to find a seat once inside. There were people standing in the back of the worship area cause the place was absolutely packed. Luckily one of the greeter people found us a couple seats.

The worship was really good, several songs I have never heard, but still enjoyed mouthing along as the band rocked out in worship. It was good, but not showy if you know what I mean. We got to enjoy the Lord’s Supper. Then the pastor shared a fairly simple message comparing some of the miracles of Jesus to his death and resurrection. They ended the service with a song and everyone went on their merry way. We stayed around and talked with our friends a bit and headed to lunch at my parent’s house.

The thing that caught me off guard the most were some comments during the pastor’s message. The first was about the feeding of the 5 thousand and why Jesus did it. He already taught them because he had compassion on them, so it wasn’t so Jesus could teach longer. Jesus wasn’t trying to prepare them to go and do some huge task for His Father or trying to get them to go invite their friends. It’s really simple, he wanted to feed them because it was late and time for hungry people to eat. Jesus wanted to meet their need of hunger plain and simple.

The pastor commented briefly on Jesus’ first miracle of turning water into wine and asked why he did it. His response was “Jesus turned the water into wine so the party could go on”, which got some laughs, but is so true.

Then I got to thinking about the rest of Jesus’ miracles and tried to think of why Jesus performed them. None of the answers I came up with pointed to anything other than bringing glory to the Father and meeting people’s needs. The only exception was Christ’s death and resurrection–in which Jesus became a means to an end for His father and for our sake. Jesus became the “utility” by which we are saved.

Jesus wasn’t trying to use people for some greater purpose, he wasn’t trying to develop some large conference or entertain crowds or put on some sort of circus show that would attract more people. He wasn’t trying to get all of his followers to go “reach” people for himself. He wasn’t about making a name for himself. It was really simple, what he was trying and succeeded in doing was glorifying His Father and meeting people’s needs–thus pointing them to the Father.

It was very refreshing to go a church and not walk away feeling overwhelmed by entertainment and underwhelmed by the insistence to perform acts that undermine the value of the Gospel.

It was refreshing to go to a place that seemed to understand that when Jesus performed miracles, he didn’t do them as a means to an end. Jesus didn’t feed the 5,000 and post pictures somewhere showing how many people were there. He didn’t turn water to wine so people would like him more, nor did he use the testimony of the healed blind man to bolster support for himself. Jesus came to be a sacrifice for the sin of many and point those who would call upon his name to the Father. It is my hope and prayer that the Church as whole will pray along with John the Baptist, asking that He might increase and we (and all of our great utility) may decrease.