Midwestern Magazine - Issue 32

M I D W E S T E R N B A P T I S T T H E O L O G I C A L S E M I N A RY A N D C O L L E G E

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Building a heavenly church in an upside-down world

ISSUE 32

H OW PREA C H I NG ENGAGES CULTUR E | I NT E R V IE W WIT H R USSE LL M O O R E | C H UR C H OF M E R C Y

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CO NTENTS

Midwestern Magazine Issue 32

AT A G L A N C E

26

ALUMNI HIGHLIGHT

Dean Inserra

28

STUDENT HIGHLIGHT

Cody Barnhart

30

IN FOCUS Redeemer Fellowship

32

AROUND CAMPUS A review of news and events at Midwestern Seminary

40

BOOKS IN BRIEF

Recently published books by Midwestern faculty and staff

FROM THE PRESIDENT

6 A Bridge Between Two Worlds How Expository Preaching Engages the Culture

42

RESOURCES FOR THE CHURCH

A selection of articles from the For The Church resources site at ftc.co

ESSAY

INTERVIEW

APOLOGETICS

14 The Church of Mercy, Not Domination

18 Politics & Priorities for the Local Church

22 Christianity’s Rapid Adaptability

Is this church powerful? Yes, in Christ, it is the most powerful force in the cosmos, and its power is never more visible than when it is weak.

An interview with Dr. Russell Moore, President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC.

It is God’s goal to unite every tongue, tribe, race, and nation under the banner of his sovereign glory revealed in Jesus Christ.

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Dear Friends: In Charles Dickens’ famous novel, A Tale of Two Cities, he began his much-lauded work with the immortal lines, “It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”

As you flip through this magazine, and as we minister in the fall of 2016, I imagine you join me in feeling this contrast. There is a sense in which, for us at Midwestern Seminary and College, this is the best of times. This past academic year, we enrolled a total of 2,537 students, meaning Midwestern Seminary and College has more than doubled its enrollment in the past four years. What is more, this fall our enrollment is up another 20 percent. Signs of God’s favor and blessing are most everywhere we look on campus.

Not only are we encouraged by the number of students, we are also greatly encouraged by our students’ passion, conviction, and firm commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. As we look deeper into this academic year, we are finalizing plans to break ground on the Mathena Student Center, a beautiful 40,000-square foot edifice, which will house resources like a gymnasium, health and fitness center, recreation area, cafeteria, seminary bookstore, and café. It will be a capstone building on the campus, complementing the beautiful chapel building God enabled us to complete just three years ago. The confines of this letter fail me in space to convey to you the many other good things taking place in and through Midwestern Seminary. Suffice it to say, in many different ways, these are the best of times.

We must also acknowledge that, in many ways, this is the worst of times. As a culture, we find ourselves ministering in an increasingly complex and hostile social context.

Constrictions on our religious liberty, the rapidly changing norms of human sexuality, gender, and marriage, and a host of other complicated and challenging issues confront the church on a moment-by-moment basis. As Christians, we find ourselves with our backs against the wall, consistently having to speak a bold, prophetic word of witness for the Lord Jesus Christ, all the while knowing it often falls on unreceptive, if not hostile, ears.

Yet, we find this ministry milieu not one of discouragement, but one of exhilaration.

In this era, churches need preachers who exposit the Word boldly; the mission field needs messengers who speak the gospel urgently; and the Lord Jesus is looking to his church for her members to live humbly, holy, and convictionally for him. What more opportune time to be alive and to be given to Christian witness and ministry than the 21st century?

As you can see, these indeed are the best of times and the worst of times. As for me, I am determined to leverage all of Midwestern’s expanding strength to be an agent of change and a word of witness to a society that so desperately needs to hear of Jesus Christ.

Will you join us in this great work? Pray for us, root for us, support us financially, and send us young men and women preparing for ministry, that we might collectively encourage and strengthen one another for the great task of Christian ministry in the 21st century.

Sincerely,

Jason K. Allen, Ph.D. President Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

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Readers can visit DR. JASON K. ALLEN’S BLOG at jasonkallen.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE ISSUE 32

ADMINISTRATION Jason K. Allen PRESIDENT

Gary Crutcher

VICE PRESIDENT FOR

INSTITUTIONAL ADMINISTRATION

Jason G. Duesing PROVOST

Charles W. Smith, Jr.

VICE PRESIDENT FOR

INSTITUTIONAL RELATIONS

If you’re like me, you’re entering the waning months of 2016 more than a little weary from the political skirmishes taking place in our culture. This fall brings a very important election, to be sure, but the impact we face is not just on our nation, as critical as that is. I think we are also facing a critical impact on the local church. Of course, at Midwestern Seminary and College, the local church is our primary focus, and rather than shy away from the challenges you and your congregations are facing on the street-level frontlines of cultural engagement, we prefer to continue equipping and training young men and women for the spiritually perilous days ahead. As confused as our culture is, after all, we do have the eternal advantage of the unchanging and infallible word of God.

EDITORIAL Jared C. Wilson CHIEF EDITOR

ART Dave Wright

LAYOUT & DESIGN

Liz Stack

PHOTOGRAPHER

Special thanks to:

JASON MUIR

KEVIN STRATTON PAT HUDSON

In this edition of the Midwestern Magazine, then, we are highlighting some of the ways our seminary and college have intersected with the needs of the ever-shifting culture around us. You will read a few interviews from key leaders like ERLC President Russell Moore and local church pastor Dean Inserra on what cultural or political engagement may look like for a local church. We have “big picture” articles on cultural engagement and missional efforts, including: a look at how expository preaching might engage the culture from Midwestern President Jason K. Allen, a reflection on Charles Spurgeon’s interaction with the racial tension of his day by Spurgeon Library curator Christian George, and a book excerpt highlighting Christianity’s peculiar advantage in missional engagement in multiple cultural contexts from myself.

In addition, our local church focus, student spotlight, and curated collection of articles from the For The Church site (ftc.co) serve to further help you in your thinking and praying about cultural engagement.

© 2016 Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is strictly prohibited.

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My prayer for you and for all who Midwestern Seminary and College has in some way the privilege of serving is that you will not lose heart or hope, no matter how bleak the headlines get. Our Redeemer lives, and because of the powerful gospel of Jesus Christ, the future of the church, actually, is very, very bright. To this end, I commend this new issue of Midwestern Magazine to you.

For the glory of Christ, and, thus, For The Church, Jared C. Wilson Chief Editor, Midwestern Magazine Managing Editor, For The Church

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A BRIDGE BET WEEN S D L R O W T WO g ory Preachin it s o p x E w o H Culture Engages the K . A LL E N B Y JA S O N

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FROM THE PRESIDENT

In John Stott’s classic Between Two Worlds, he depicted the preacher as a man positioned between two civilizations—tasked to bridge the ancient world with the modern one, and the ancient text with modern hearers.

Stott argued that the preacher is a bridge, and if he is to be effective, he must be firmly grounded on both sides of the canyon. The preacher must be a careful student of both worlds; exegeting both his text and his times. To accomplish this, Stott contended the preacher must ask himself two questions: what did the text mean then, and what does it say now? The latter answer, of course, rooted in the former.1 Stott’s paradigm speaks to our ministry moment as well. In the year 2016, the American church faces unprecedented, and often unpredictable, cultural challenges. The American church seems placed in the middle of a never-ending session of bull-in-thering, with cultural pressures—especially related to gender, sexuality, marriage and family—coming from anywhere and at any time. The preacher’s task, therefore, to bridge the ancient world with the modern is an urgent one, and increasingly so.

Stott’s depiction, though offered more than three decades ago, is a helpful reminder of the preacher’s fundamental task—to bring the text of Scripture to bear on the lives of his hearers. But, if one is committed to biblical exposition, and especially to lectio continua, or, we might say, sequential, verseby-verse exposition, than to be a man between two worlds is occasionally to be a man in tension.

The stauncher one’s commitment to lectio continua,

the more heightened the tension at times will be.

The predicament is clear. Expository preaching, and especially sequential, verse-by-verse exposition is, at times, an uneasy partner with the prophet’s burden.

FRAMING THE DILEMMA

Biblical exposition is rooted in the Bible’s self-attestation, that “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” and that the preacher’s primary task is to “preach the Word.” As he does, he stands on promises like, “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls off, but the word of the Lord endures forever.”2 These passages, among many others, provide a rationale for biblical exposition, but they do not define it. In fact, a consensus definition for expository preaching proves stubbornly elusive.

Consequentially, and regrettably, the phrase “expository preaching,” has become quite elastic, with much preaching getting crammed under that heading though it bears little resemblance to more traditional marks of biblical exposition.

For the sake of clarity, let me suggest, minimally, four characteristics of biblical exposition: 1. The necessity of accurately interpreting the text, in light of its immediate and broader, biblical context.

2. The necessity of deriving the point of the sermon and the sermon’s points from the text.

3. The necessity of deriving the sermon’s application from the text and for the text to be brought to bear on the congregation.

4. More tenuously, the priority of lectio continua, or sequential, verse-by-verse exposition.

Condensing these marks, we might simply define

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biblical exposition as, “Accurately interpreting and explaining the text of Scripture and bringing it to bear on the lives of the hearers.” Again, the constants within expository preaching are: accurately interpreting the text, deriving the sermon’s main point and sub-points from text, and bringing the text to bear on the congregation, preferably through lectio continua.

Even this minimalistic definition of expository preaching necessitates subordinating the sermon’s application to the sermon’s text. The preacher does not preach from the text or on the text, he preaches the text—thus limiting the sermon’s application to the point of the passage preached.

The tension, therefore, shows up in most every form of exposition, but especially through sequential, verse-by-verse exposition. It also forces the question: how does one remain faithful to the text, and to sequential exposition, yet adequately engage pressing cultural concerns impacting the congregation?

Conversely, the less committed one is to sequential exposition, the less the tension. A topical preacher just preaches on the desired topic. A loose expositor just manufactures application from the text, even if there is no direct textual connection.

The wager of lectio continua is that over time the accrued week-to-week benefits offsets the weekly adaptability and flexibility offered by topical preaching. The upside of sequential exposition, though, does not obviate the periodic tension the expositor feels.

MY JOURNEY WITH THIS TENSION

In my early years of pastoral ministry, I was committed to preaching through books of the Bible.

Generally, next week’s sermon—and every week’s sermon—was pre-committed. That was the conviction with which I began my preaching ministry. It is a conviction to which I stubbornly cling today.

I would periodically surface to select the next book of the Bible to preach through, but week-to-week, there was little suspense in my life over what I would be preaching. My text, and thus my sermon and its application, was preselected.

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“The preacher does not preach from the text or on the text, he preaches the text—thus limiting the sermon’s application to the point of the passage preached.”

Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, July 4th or other national holidays were irritants, as I knew many congregants expected the sermon to reflect the calendar in this regard. I knew it would take time to wean my people off of this expectation.

Christian celebratory days, like Christmas and Easter, were easy, as they were days for believers to focus uniquely on Christ. Thus, I was happy to plan my preaching schedule with these days in mind.

However, the vexing occasions for me were days like “Right to Life Sunday,” or when issues of sexuality, marriage or family came up in the culture in a way that truly merited—even necessitated—focused attention from the pulpit. Or, and most dramatically, when an adult entertainment store opened in proximity to my church, and the zoning regulations and city council wrangling which accompanied it drew the congregation’s attention. I simply had to address it.

This third category left me conflicted. I was committed to biblical exposition, but I had a nagging sense that I should be periodically instructing my church on the great social urgencies of our day.

Conversely, and of additional concern, I witnessed some ministers hiding behind their commitment to expository preaching. They professed readiness to preach boldly on issues of life, gender, sexuality and

marriage and to reprove and rebuke with all authority when they come across these issues specifically in the text. They just managed to never come across them in the text.

PREACHING AS CONTEXTUAL ACT

Every sermon is delivered in a context, situated in a cultural moment with space and time realities.

Preaching is not a sterile, or clinical, act. That is why seminary preaching labs can only accomplish so much. They are artificial, synthetic settings.

We do not preach to impersonal groups, but individuals with circumstantial concerns, distractions, questions and urgencies. The aim of the sermon is to speak the Word to them specifically, the gathered crowd. The Word is powerful enough to be preached anywhere and anytime with effect, but our full confidence in the preached Word should not minimize the need for the sermon to be tailored for the specific moment. The goal of the sermon is to impact

Perhaps the preaching of the Protestant Reformation furnishes the best example. As a case study, we can look to Uldrich Zwingli, the one who rediscovered lectio continua. Before Calvin was in Geneva preaching from the New Testament every morning and the Old Testament every evening, Zwingli was recovering lectio continua in the Grossmunster.

Zwingli, citing the pattern of Augustine and Chrysostom, ascended his Swiss pulpit in Zurich on January 1, 1519, and preached from Matthew 1:1, beginning his pattern of lectio continua, and in so doing began the Reformation in Switzerland.

Zwingli argued that the best way to reform the church was through preaching the whole counsel of God. The Reformers, including Zwingli and Calvin, applied their sermons to the pressing issues facing the Reformation, including social challenges and civic disruption. In fact, to read their sermons is to

“The Word is powerful enough to be preached anywhere and anytime with effect, but our full confidence in the preached Word should not minimize the need for the sermon to be tailored for the specific moment.” and change the lives of those gathered. As York and Decker note, “Sermons are not about just imparting information. They should be custom-built to change lives. We don’t want to fill their heads; we want the proclamation of the Word to grip their souls and motivate them to conform to the will of God.”3 In fact, apostolic preaching was strikingly contextual. Peter and Paul heralded the foundational truths of the Christian faith like the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, and salvation by repentance and faith. Yet, as they preached they engaged their audiences. This follows suit with the New Testament Epistles, each of which are written to address specific concerns, doctrinal or otherwise, facing believers.

be confronted with the throes of the Reformation and all the drama of their age. What is more, they occasionally interrupted their lectio continua to engage pressing civic and church concerns.

Therefore, we stand on solid biblical and historical ground to engage cultural concerns through our preaching, but knowing when to actually interrupt lectio continua is an altogether different matter.

WHEN TO ENGAGE CULTURAL CONCERNS

The preacher must always be engaged in three realms of exegesis—first the text, then his times, and finally his congregation. Preachers are not called to be politicians, but they are called to be alert. As the preacher exegetes his text and his times, he sees

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“The preacher must always be exegeting his own congregation. The best preaching takes place with full awareness of congregation and culture, and the preacher must be familiar with both.” how the two intersect, or do not intersect with his congregation.

When the preacher exegetes the text, he seeks the authorial intent of the passage, understanding every passage has a human and a Divine author. The exegetical process includes the broader context as well.

“What concerns are being carried forward?” “What are the themes of the book?” “What issues is the author is addressing?” “What is the cultural setting in which the book was penned?” “What does this passage communicate explicitly or implicitly about Christ?” “How does this passage fit into the overall schema of God’s redemptive history?”

Questions like these help us determine the parameters of application. Again, biblical exposition must derive its application from the text preached. If the text does not speak to the pressing cultural concern, it is better to change to another text that accurately relates what you intend to preach than to bend the text to fit your momentary need.

The text is the primary realm of exegesis, but it is not the concluding one. The preacher must also recognize how the culture is influencing his congregation and what, if any, are the pressing, disrupting concerns of the day.

Finally, the preacher must always be exegeting his own congregation. The best preaching takes place with full awareness of congregation and culture, and the preacher must be familiar with both.

The temptation, most likely, will be to interrupt sequential exposition too frequently, not too infrequently. Therefore, by way of analogy, the preacher should think of himself something like an insurance

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adjuster, who arrives in the aftermath of, say, a car accident, and surveys the damage. He analyzes the wrecked automobile, photographs and documents the damage, and writes out an assessment of how much it might cost to repair the vehicle.

The preacher functions something like that. He assesses the culture and his congregation, both of which are ever changing. He determines if the concern is so great that he should consider engaging it. If the answer is yes, he then discerns how best to engage it.

GAINING CLARITY FOR THE PREACHING NEED

How does the preacher gain clarity in his assessment of the culture and the congregation? Let’s consider these nine questions, which will serve as indicators for the expositor—helping him discern the extent of the concerns he is facing and whether or not it should impact his upcoming sermon: 1. Does the concern affect a substantial portion of the congregation in a substantial way? Does the problem, crisis, or concern on the minds of the church members move them to come to church hoping (and needing) to hear a direct and timely Word from the Lord? Given the sensationalized and never-ending news cycle to which we are now afflicted, the key word is substantial—are a substantial number of people affected in a substantial way?

2. Should this concern be affecting them? Is the distraction a legitimate one? Many church members stumble into worship with earthly distractions.

Everything from college football and pop culture personalities and circumstances to the rolling events of the never-ending news cycle all clamor for their attention. The last thing the preacher should do is give these issues legitimacy or draw attention to

them. To engage such is to forfeit biblical exposition altogether and become a topical preacher. Just because there is an elephant in the room does not mean one should engage it. Perhaps it needs to be ignored—or shooed out altogether.

3. Does this concern pose a threat to God’s people, morally, doctrinally, or in some other way? The faithful shepherd warns the sheep. This warning most commonly happens through the regular exposition of Scripture, but there are times when a more direct, timely word is needed. Hence, it may be necessary to preach an isolated, expository sermon on the Prosperity Gospel, historicity of Genesis, biblical sexuality, the Obergfell decision, religious liberty, etc.

4. Does this concern necessitate a pastoral response of comfort? The faithful shepherd not only warns the sheep, he also comforts them. For example, in the context of the Iraq War, I pastored a church comprised of nearly 50-percent military personnel.

During the ramp up to the war, when a number of our members were being deployed to combat, I interrupted my series to preach a particularly encouraging sermon from the Psalms. Or, to borrow a more recent event, if one pastored in Paris during their recent terrorist attack, it would be ministerial malpractice to ignore it. Or, in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, the sermon most needed by the congregation probably was not one of rebuke against the culture, but of hope in God and a reminder that Christ is building his church.

6. Is there a clear biblical connection between the concern and a specific text? Does the Bible actually speak to the issue? Just as bad as not speaking where the Bible speaks, is to speak where the Bible does not speak. For instance, as the presidential election approaches, issues like taxation, immigration, states’ rights, the Affordable Care Act, and a host of other issues will dominate the headlines, most of which would be a stretch to engage from Scripture or in the sermon.

7. Has this concern come to the preacher? Though I have argued the need for a preacher to have an antenna, the biggest concerns will surely find him.

Are God’s people, in essence, clamoring for a Word from the Lord?

8. Is there a biblical “therefore” to the text and the concern? Does the Bible not only reference the concern, but also speak to it? For example, as to the issue of marriage, we not only point out what it is not—same-sex—but what it is, the conjugal, covenant union of a man and a woman.

9. Are you moved by principle or just wanting to break the boredom? If the impulse to interrupt the series is to alleviate boredom, then the preacher may have bigger issues. If that is the case, you do not have a problem with the length of the series but the composition of the sermons—hence a problem with the preacher himself. Be wary of interrupting the series for anything less than a true congregational or cultural urgency.

HOW TO ENGAGE PRESSING CONCERNS

5. Does the preacher need to inform the church of a hazardous issue or circumstance? For instance, is there pending legislation, on marriage, of which the church must be informed? Is there a forthcoming issue that will roil the congregation? Events such as the Ashley Madison scandal, Planned Parenthood videos, the Obergfell U.S. Supreme Court decision, may necessitate the preacher to inform his congregation or interpret the issues for them. Additionally, there may be internal issues which merit direct engagement. Issues like disunity in the church, sexual immorality, or some knotty case of church discipline may necessitate interrupting the sermon series.

The wager of lectio continua is that over the long haul, the accrued week-to-week benefit of sequential exposition offsets the weekly flexibility of topical preaching. With lectio continua as the preferred approach to preaching, the proposed steps to engage pressing cultural concerns incrementally and only when truly necessary, away from it. Let’s consider five questions to help frame how we might accomplish this: 1. Does this week’s text speak to, or touch on, the concern? Can you legitimately derive implication or application from the passage before you? If so, the

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“When preachers run first from the text to contemporary application, they may speed-by the most prescient application point of all, the finished work of Christ.” problem is solved. Again, the key is to not bend the text to this end. To do so is to forfeit faithful exegesis. It is always better to change texts than to bend the text.

2. Does an upcoming text sufficiently engage the concern? One benefit of lectio continua is, generally, you know not only what you are preaching in the nearterm, but what you will be preaching down the road. In fact, cultural and congregational realities may rightly inform the book one preaches through.

3. Does this concern merit interrupting the sermon series? The greater the concern, as assessed by the previous nine questions, the more likely one should interrupt the series. Picture two ascending and correlating lines. The higher up the concern graph, the more likely the concern will merit interrupting sequential exposition to address it.

4. Can you preach a topical, expositional sermon on the urgent concern? Regardless what one preaches on, or from what passage one preaches, the congregation should be unsurprised by how one preaches.

To interrupt sequential exposition in order to let another text speak can reinforce the authority and relevancy of God’s Word. To interrupt sequential exposition for periodic, topical soapbox sermons undermines biblical exposition. It subtly infers verse-by-verse preaching is what one does when there is not a sexy, more captivating topic on which to preach.

5. Is this concern a gospel one, answered in Christ?

Remember, the ultimate points of application are found in Christ. Run to Christ at the end of the text and as the solution to crisis and need. As you run to Christ, you can point out the many signs of fallenness and the need for the gospel. After all, so many of our pressing cultural concerns go back to the effects of total depravity and the aftermath of Genesis 3.

The ultimate point of every sermon is Christ’s saving work, and the most profound points of application for pressing cultural concerns are found in him. When preachers run first from the text to contemporary application, they may speed-by the most prescient application point of all, the finished work of Christ. Yet, when they run to him, they apply the text to the deepest needs and longings of the human heart.

There is an old saying, “When heresy moves in across the street, evangelicals tend to move across town.” Though topical preaching certainly is not heresy, when it comes to us most committed to lectio continua, we can overreact against topical preaching by studiously avoiding contemporary concerns and the impulse for relevance altogether.

So much so, perhaps we err in running too far the other direction. We argue that the Bible does not need to be made relevant, because, as the Word of God, it is unfailingly relevant. This is true. Though we cannot improve upon the Bible’s relevancy, as we rightly exegete our text, our culture, and our congregation, perhaps we can make our sermons a touch more relevant.

[1] John Stott, Between Two Worlds (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982).

[2] I Peter 1:23-25.

[3] Hershael York and Bert Decker, Preaching with Bold Assurance: A Solid and Enduring Approach to Engaging Exposition (Nashville: B&H, 2003), 11.

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THE CHURCH OF MERCY, NOT DOMINATION BY OWEN S T RA C H A N

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Donald Trump met earlier this year in New York with evangelical leaders, and I read the transcript of that event with much interest.

Christian leaders asked some good questions, but as I read the record of their exchanges with Trump, a sense of sadness took hold of me. The gathered group of people had labored hard to strengthen America. Now, in dark times, many hoped hard for indications from Trump that he might join them in defending the permanent things.

Opinions will vary as to the clarity and sincerity of his remarks. I was not present in the room.

But as I read multiple Trumpian tangents to clear questions, I was struck by two things. First, Trump either does not know what religious liberty is or does not think much about it. His answers to such queries elicited some remarkable replies, including a 1200-word answer on religious liberty in the military that covered multiple American campaigns, but little about religious liberty. I am all for a strong armed forces, but I am not heartened by the lack of clarity in these words.

As on many issues, I am left asking: Who is Donald Trump? I genuinely do not know—but much of what I see unsettles me.

Second, and more significantly, I am struck afresh by the changed position of Christianity in the American public square. Some of Trump’s

statements played on the old evangelical desire for cultural dominance, and some of them drew applause. But that applause will not last. A secularizing culture is doing well at drowning it out.

In such circumstances, when marriage is changed and transgender policies are remaking public spaces, evangelicals need to do a few things. First, we need to keep making our case with truth and love in the halls of power. We should never retreat, and we should never withdraw. At the state level, there are many positive gains that have been made in recent years on the life issue, for example. We must avoid a unidirectional narrative of our culture that leads to disenfranchisement and despair, for it does not tell the whole truth. We cannot disengage.

But we must also see this at present: the church may not win back massive political power. If true, then God will be opening our eyes to understand that we are here not for political domination, but to catch the suffering innocents that our barbarian first-world neighbors have dropped.

Nothing is certain. Even our right to act in mercy could be taken away. But as long as our freedoms survive, the modern church must emulate the early church. By contrast, the early church had few rights in its ancient context. It suffered waves of persecution, with many believers having little recourse to common justice. Yet the church became known for saving “exposed” infants, for caring for sick people in times of plague, for welcoming the dregs of society cast off by the elites.

So may it be in our time. America today is much like Rome then. We are led by narcissistic elites who think themselves superior, morally and otherwise, to us. In performative terms, they may well be right. But the morality and worldview of the elites is not advanced; it is pagan, and degenerate. For

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“

Here’s what we must likely recognize: the glory days, such as they were, are not coming back. But we are here. We are alive. We are agents of mercy empowered by Christ. We have the opportunity, every day we live, to do good, preposterous good.

“

many, the body is an object of worship; sexuality is unbounded; life, especially the life of the unwanted, is devalued and cast aside.

The church must catch them. We must recommit ourselves to rescuing the abandoned and loving the unloved. We may think to ourselves upon hearing this, Sure. That’s good. But we might then move on to other things, yearning for public power, hungry for cultural triumph, lost in a world of dreams. Here’s what we must likely recognize: the glory days, such as they were, are not coming back. But we are here.

We are alive. We are agents of mercy empowered by Christ. We have the opportunity, every day we live, to do good, preposterous good.

The early church suffered and struggled in political terms. For centuries, it lived under threat of destruction. But the early church never let its political impotence rob it of spiritual vitality and ethical purpose. The same must be true for the modern church.

Let us be salt and light; let us pray for kings; let us use what rights we have as Paul did. Let us care for widows and orphans. Let us feed the hungry and heal the sick.

Let us seek to leave our mark on history. But much as we pray for our nation’s health, let us remember that such a mark may not look like political victory. It may M I DW E S T E R N M A G A Z I N E

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look very much like a pilgrim church, an alien people, who amidst their trials and challenges ventured out into the forests far from the centers of power and brought back the wanderer, welcomed the cast-off, and scooped up the Down Syndrome baby floating by in a basket in the river.

If this is who we are, we will look very strange indeed in our bronzed, whitened, status-snatching, image-curating society. Larger families will look ungainly and weird. Adopted children will be disdained (nobody is more nativist than an impressive secularist when it comes to family composition).

Disabled family members will seem a nuisance.

Multiethnic, multi-class churches will seem far less polished, less curated, than your average coastal brunch spot, brimming with the young and the airbrushed. The church will not seem glamorous; it will not look high-flown. It will seem positively ordinary, almost dull.

And that is when the church most shines. The elderly given meals by the young. Little kids with cleft palates, happiness glowing in their eyes as they play with their loving friends. Families of different ethnicities, the kids treating one another like what they are: brother and sister. Fathers bending over backwards to provide and lead, collapsing exhausted from a day spent pouring out for their family and pouring out into their family. Mothers with accomplished pedigrees who give it all up to make PBJs, and many memories, with little ones who accordingly think Mom is what goodness looks like. Pastors who give up the speaking circuit to be with dying saints, counsel the lonely, disciple young men, and preach the Word to a local body.

Single men and women who choose holiness and choose Christ, marveling at the lived wonder of the church, a family greater than any ever known.

Is this church impressive? No, the world despises it, and seeks because of its alienness and its savor of life to destroy it.

Is this church powerful? Yes, in Christ, it is the most powerful force in the cosmos, and its power is never more visible than when it is weak.

Originally published at The Center for Public Theology (cpt.mbts.edu)

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POLITICS AND PRIORITIES FOR THE LOCAL CHURCH

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an interview with

RUSSELL MOORE President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention

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2016 HAS BROUGHT A COMPLICATED political season to the United States, and many pastors and churches have felt the tension of civic duty, personal responsibility, and spiritual concern. In an exclusive interview with For The Church, Dr. Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s ERLC, answered a few questions on politics and pastoral ministry.

How political should a local church pastor get with his congregation?

ONE:

I think we already know how to do this. We do it all the time, when we’re addressing issues of personal morality. There are some issues of personal morality that the Bible is very specific about, and so we have to be very specific about. Someone says, “Should I leave my spouse, because I found my ‘soul-mate’?”

Well, no. We have a clear answer and a word from God on that. But there are other issues where we deal with principles but not specifics. So I’m not going to tell a single guy in my church who he should marry, but I’ll give him general principles on how to find a wife, what sort of woman he should be looking for. And then there are other issues we don’t address at all. We can have a Romans 14 kind of disagreement about them. So one family may home school, another family may have their kids in public school, some in Christian school, and we don’t divide up and fight over those things. And I think the same thing is the case with issues we define as political or social or what-have-you. Some things the Bible speaks very definitively to, and we should too.

So if you’re in 19th century Burma and you have the issue of widows being burned on the funeral pyres of their husbands, you can’t say, “That’s a political issue, and I’m not going to touch it.” You have to M I DW E S T E R N M A G A Z I N E

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speak to that and say, “This is wrong, and if you do this, you’re violating the law of God and you’re going to have to answer for that at the judgment seat of Christ.” If you live in 19th century America, and you don’t speak to the issue of human slavery, because you say, “Well, that’s political,” then you’re leaving people’s consciences burdened as they stand before the judgment seat, and you’re not equipping them to be free from that. And the same thing is true in any given age with any given set of issues. We speak very clearly on those things.

Other things we speak to in terms of principles.

We are called to care for the poor. But we may have different people in our congregations who disagree on whether the raising of the minimum wage is an effective way to help the poor. That’s not an issue we ought to adjudicate as a church. What we should deal with is if someone says, “We shouldn’t raise the minimum wage because the poor are takers and parasites.” Now, that’s a spiritual problem. It’s not a spiritual problem if someone says, “I’m afraid of raising the minimum wage right now, because I’m afraid it will lead to greater unemployment.” That may be right or wrong, but that’s not a spiritual problem. It’s a principle, “how do we get there?” sort of problem.

And there may be other political issues that we don’t address at all, where we can have multiple viewpoints within the body of Christ. There’s nothing in the Bible that gives us an energy policy or how we ought to think about a balanced budget amendment or a line-item veto or gun control. And we can agree to disagree within the body of Christ. So I think we know how to do that. We’re just reluctant to do that because we put this artificial barrier between personal morality and social ethics in a way that the prophets and Jesus and James just don’t.

What would you say to those who insist that abstaining from certain elections is sinful?

TWO:

I think that there is always a time in any of our vocations where we may be called to conscientiously object and say, I cannot in good conscience carry out what I’m being asked to do. And I think our vocations as citizens would be similar to any of our vocations when it comes to that. When you’re dealing with the question of “lesser of two evils,” any time you don’t have Jesus of Nazareth on the ballot, you’re dealing with the lesser of two evils because there’s only fallen, sinful people on the ballot! That, though, is not an excuse for the sorts of situations where you have multiple people on a ballot who are morally disqualified. I’ve seen elections where you’ve seen one candidate who denied the personhood of unborn children and the other has race-baited. Both of those two candidates are morally disqualified. So then Christians have to ask, “Well, what do I do? If I choose the pro-abortion person or I choose the race-baiter, I’m implicating my own conscience in Romans 1 of partially approving those things. I’m also violating Romans 12, which says we don’t do evil that good might result.” So we’re always going to be disappointed by the people we appoint to office, but there may be some cases where Christians say, “Neither of these choices can I in good conscience support.” But there are other options for Christians who come to that decision. Christians may vote a third party candidate. Some may write in a candidate. But what’s most important to us is, as Scripture says, “an appeal to God for a good conscience,” not just the pragmatics of any one particular election.

What is the one thing the local church must get right in the 21st century?

THREE:

It’s the thing that Jesus taught us to do, to “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be added to you.”

I think this is critically important, because if we understand what it means to be part of the kingdom of God, what it really means to be forgiven of our sins, what it means to be crucified with Christ, what it means to have a future that isn’t defined by our selves or our performance or our accomplishments, but defined by the life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and ongoing reign of Jesus, that changes how we view ourselves and our lives, and it frees us then to be able to love one another, to bear with one another, and to be able to model to the outside world what life in the kingdom of God looks like, even as we’re on mission together, calling people to be part of that kingdom.

I think if we lose sight of that, if we forget who we are, then we won’t be “good news people;” we’ll be self-protecting people. We’ll have guilty consciences we try to justify on our own; we’ll have shameful pasts we try to cover on our own. But if we pursue the right kingdom, if we proclaim the gospel consistently to ourselves and to the outside world, then we can be free from chasing after security in mammon. Then we can rest. The world needs to see this for our gospel to be plausible and credible. And there’s something in every human heart that longs to see that. And so if we don’t get this one thing right, we’re going to miss it.

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CHRISTIANITY’S RAPID ADAPTABILITY

BY JAR ED C . WILSO N

When Jesus Christ ushered in the kingdom of God, announcing this gospel of his life, death, and resurrection to bring it to bear and make it available, he did so not just for his Jewish countrymen but for the non-Jew as well. This is something that the apostle Paul, himself a Jew, made his life’s ambition to pursue—mission to the Gentiles.

Only Christianity—begun by Jews localized in Jerusalem, later dominated by Greeks in the Mediterranean world, then centralized in Europe, then North America, and now, in terms of sheer numbers, “centralized” in China, Africa, and Latin America—has corporately gone on a global walkabout.

It is God’s goal, projected even in the Hebrew Scriptures, to unite every tongue, tribe, race, and nation under the banner of his sovereign glory revealed in Jesus Christ. And so it is the mission of the church to take this message everywhere, announcing the availability of forgiveness of sins and the eternality of life in Christ to people all over the globe, in every kind of nation, regardless of their ethnicity, their class, their religion, or their gender.

I think it is primarily because only Christianity teaches works-free justification.

How can this be?

Over the last two thousand years, what we’ve discovered is that Christianity is remarkably good at this. And it is divinely well suited for it.

“It is God’s goal, projected even in the Hebrew Scriptures, to unite every tongue, tribe, race, and nation under the banner of his sovereign glory revealed in Jesus Christ.”

Islam has been making inroads into the West and in Africa, but it is still largely dominant only in the Middle East. Buddhism has an affiliate office in Hollywood, obviously, but it is still chiefly localized in the Far East. Ditto Confucianism. Hinduism mainly resides in India and Nepal. There are more Jews in America than in Israel, but they are only 2.2 percent of the American population. They are 75 percent of the population in Israel.

There are religions in the world that compel a woman to travel hundreds of miles to kiss a statue, a man to walk across a wilderness to bathe in a sacred river, and men and women alike to crawl on their hands and knees. Every Muslim who is able must visit Mecca once before they die.

It is required.

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But there are no compulsory pilgrimages in Christianity, no far-flung hoops to jump through. The pilgrimage has been made: God incarnated in man. He comes to us in Spirit. Every religion, beside the true one, bids travel for power. In Christianity, power travels to us. The kingdom is not “out there.” It is “in here.” The temple is not “there.” It’s “here,” because Christ tabernacles with us. The gospel that goes into the world and grows and bears fruit goes into the world when we do.

Because every real Christian has the true gospel, every real Christian is equipped for mission work at the time of their salvation. Have gospel, will travel! Christ goes where we go.

And there is also the great adaptability of Christianity.

No, not of its truth claims. Christians don’t fudge on the essential beliefs that make them Christians. When we talk about contextualizing the faith to different cultures, biblical Christians are not talking about compromising the faith. But with so many other religions being almost inextricably tied to specific tribal or national cultures, Christianity stands apart as especially nimble in the global age.

You will find vibrant Christian communities among a wide variety of people groups all over the world, and while their expressions and cultural characteristics will be all over the map, their essential beliefs will be on the same page. Christianity is amazingly adaptable.

To become a Christian in Africa, you don’t have to dress like a Christian in Atlanta. This is not always true for the spread of, for example, Islam, which typically comes with customary dress and the like.

Christians are also relentlessly devoted to translating the Bible into the tongue of every people group in the world so that every person can study the Scriptures and come to know Jesus Christ in their native language. No other religion is so motivated.

This only speaks again to the desire of Christian missionaries and Christian churches worldwide to love and serve under the radar. You don’t have to jump through a hundred cultural hoops to come to Jesus. In fact, so far as we are able, we want to bring Jesus to you. So in the early centuries of Christianity’s existence, this new counterculture developed where good works were not auspicious, where conversion was not coerced, and where service was not timid.

While the Romans threw their babies away, Christians waited in the gutters and trash heaps to rescue them.

While barbarians were forcing “conversions” and violent adherence to pagan customs, Christians were providing faithful and bold witness to the gospel of grace.

This is what has made Christianity so enduring: a completely unparalleled message.

But it doesn’t hurt that Christians throughout the centuries have been willing not to kill for the message but to die for it.

Excerpted from Jared C. Wilson, Unparalleled: How Christianity’s Uniquness Makes it Compelling, published 2016

by Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Used by permission.

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The Reason Why America Burned Spurgeon’s Sermons and Sought to Kill Him

BY C H R IS T IAN T. GE O RG E Editor’s Note: One thing some of the events of the last few years have helped Americans to see is that our nation has not grown beyond the problems of racial tension and conflict. Perhaps we never will, this side of heaven. But it behooves the local church not to ignore the divides that constantly complicate the mission of the church, the hatred that still resides in the hearts of fallen makind, and the ongoing command of Christ to love our neighbors. May this reflection from Christian George, curator of the Spurgeon Library, serve to shine a light on a dark page in American history—and perhaps help us see more of the light of Jesus even today.

Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation 154 years ago, promising liberty to some 3 million enslaved black men and women. Charles Spurgeon also fought the evils of slavery: “[The] hope of deliverance seemed far away, it was God that gave an Abraham Lincoln, who led the nation onward till ‘Emancipation’ flamed upon its banners” (MTP 29:243).

Spurgeon exchanged correspondences with Frederick Douglas, received former slaves into his Pastors’ College and pulpit, and condemned slavery in his sermons and media articles: “I do from my inmost soul detest slavery . . . and although I commune at the Lord’s table with men of all creeds, yet with a slave-holder I have no fellowship of any sort or kind. Whenever one has called upon me, I have considered it my duty to express my detestation of his wickedness, and I would as soon think of receiving a murderer into my church . . . as a man stealer” (Pike, The Life and Work of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, p. 331).

How did America respond to Spurgeon’s abolition?

Here are a few published comments from different parts of the country:

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FLORIDA: Spurgeon is a “beef-eating, puffed-up, vain, over-righteous pharisaical, English blab-mouth.”

“A Southern Opinion of the Rev. Mr. Spurgeon,” The New York Herald (March 1, 1860).

VIRGINIA: Spurgeon is a “fat, overgrown boy.”

“The Great Over-Rated,” The Daily Dispatch (August 17, 1858).

LOUISIANA: Spurgeon is a “hell-deserving Englishman.”

“Spurgeon on Slavery,” The Bossier Banner (February 24, 1860).

SOUTH CAROLINA: Spurgeon is a “vulgar young man” with “(soiled) sleek hair, prominent teeth, and a self-satisfied air.”

“Spurgeon and the Lady,” Charleston Courier (June 15, 1858).

NORTH CAROLINA: Many “would like a good opportunity at this hypocritical preacher.”

“Rev. Mr. Spurgeon,” The North Carolinian (February 18, 1860). Additionally, anyone selling Spurgeon’s sermons in Releigh should be arrested and charged

with “circulating incendiary publications” (“Rev. Mr. Spurgeon,” The Weekly Raleigh Register [February 15, 1860]).

Spurgeon’s character was assassinated throughout the Confederacy. His sermons, which in 1862-1863 sold one million copies annually, were censured. His books, which sold 1,000 copies per minute at trade shows, were publicly destroyed. Sermon bonfires illuminated jail yards, plantations, and bookshops throughout the Southern states.

The following article appeared in an Alabama newspaper (Montgomery Mail, repr. in “Spurgeon’s Sermons—a Bonfire,” Nashville Patriot [March 15, 1860]): Spurgeon is in danger of an auto-de-fé. The “Montgomery Mail” (Alabama) says: “A gentleman of this city requests us to invite, and we do hereby invite all persons in Montgomery who possess copies of the sermons of the notorious English abolitionist, Spurgeon, to send them to the jail yard to be burned on next Friday, this week. A subscription is also on foot to buy of our booksellers all copies of said sermons now in their stores, to be burned on the same occasion.

Does anybody say nay?”

Apparently, not many people said “Nay.” For it was recorded a few days later in a ledger: February 24, (1860).—Several volumes of Rev. Mr. Spurgeon’s semrons, strongly tinctured with anti-slavery and abolition, were burned in the jail yard.

What would have happened if Spurgeon had visited the Southern states in 1860 as he planned to do?

America might have executed him: “If the Pharisaical author should ever show himself in these parts, we trust that a stout cord may speedily find its way around his eloquent throat” (“Mr. Spurgeon’s Sermons Burned by American Slaveowners,” The Southern Reporter and Daily Commercial Courier [April 10, 1860]).

(An expanded version of this research is in The Lost Sermons of C. H. Spurgeon, Volume 1, preface)

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ALUMNI HIGHLIGHT

DEAN INSERRA For this edition’s alumni focus, we visited with Dean Inserra, who is the senior pastor of City Church in Tallahassee, Florida, a church he planted in 2007. After attending Liberty University and Southern Seminary, Dean graduated from Midwestern Seminary with his Master of Arts in Theological Studies. The city of Tallahassee represents a fascinating mission field with constant challenges for cultural engagement. But Dean, who also serves on the advisory board of the ERLC, is leading his church to proclaim the gospel faithfully and love their neighbors well. We asked him about his approach to engaging this unique subculture.

Tell us about planting City. What was the primary driver for choosing this community?

I planted City Church in the summer of 2007. Tallahassee is my hometown and from the time I was in high school I wanted to plant a church in this city in order to reach my friends. It really was that simple for me in terms of the motivation. Growing up, I went to a mainline Protestant church every Sunday with my family. I never heard the gospel, nor had any clue about what the gospel was. I first heard the gospel at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes retreat and realized most of my friends were just like me—they had plenty of church exposure, but they’d never really been confronted with their sin, the need for repentance, and the true gospel story.

That realization continues to drive me to this day, and by God’s grace I am now able to look out from the stage on Sundays and see friends that I grew up with all across our congregation.

Tell us about the culture of Tallahassee.

Tallahassee is interesting in that we are 30 minutes from “Bible Belt” Georgia and Alabama, but because of the presence of state government in our city and of large state universities, there is an active and influential progressivism embedded here.

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MTS | 2015

Tallahassee is the “blue” you see in North Florida on election maps, but our neighboring counties are as “red,” rural, and Southern as one would find in Mississippi or South Carolina. It makes for quite the mix of worldviews and cultures.

What, if anything, has changed in the city since you planted, and how has City Church adjusted to stay on mission?

If anything, the city has become more hostile towards evangelicalism. Just think about how far the sexual revolution has come in just seven years and imagine being in a liberal college town. Florida State University is a dominating presence in our city and the campus seems to get more radical by the day. The way we have adjusted to this reality is to continue to be as highly relational as we can be with influencers in the city, while being all the more clear in what we teach and preach from the pulpit and in small groups.

What does contextualization look like for City Church? If you think at all about “engaging the culture,” how do you do it?

Cultural engagement for us means equipping our members to see themselves as going on a mission

Photo courtesy of City Church

trip each day when they pull out of their driveway and head to work, school, sports practice, or whatever they have planned for the day that involves interacting with people. It means leading Christians to rethink how they view their place of employment and to see that environment as critical to the Great Commission. A “win” for us is when our church members have great relationships with co-workers who aren’t Christians.

Engaging the culture for us also means, in an appropriate way, simply being a part of it. Our church is right in the middle of Tallahassee life, and that is where we believe the church needs to be. We like to have our folks coaching little league baseball games, being a part of sororities on campus, organizing mom’s play groups, and inviting their coworkers and neighbors to come to their tailgate before a football game. You don’t have to work hard toward anything necessarily cool or trendy— just become a faithful part of regular Tallahassee life. This is our missional “secret sauce,” but it is so basic and easy to do.

What do you think church leaders often get wrong about cultural engagement? What are some biblical, missiological correctives for these mistakes?

I think what the church gets wrong is thinking they can get lost people to come to church through any marketing campaign, savvy social media presence, or attempt to be relevant or cool. Lost people are only coming to a church gathering if a trusted friend invites them. It also takes months and months, and sometimes even years before the relationship can get to the point where they will be open to attending. We have a family in our church right now that I invited to church repeatedly for seven years. It took a lot of patience and many meals where I intentionally would not bring church up in the conversation, and letting them know that my friendship had zero strings attached and if they never came to church it wouldn’t change a thing in our friendship. Contextualization is overrated.

Relationships are the real deal.

How did your seminary experience help prepare you for your current ministry?

I have tremendous amount of confidence in the pulpit and the only reason that is true is because of the Bible that I hold in my hands. My seminary training equipped me to have an unwavering belief in the truth of the Scriptures and the centrality of the gospel, and I am truly grateful for how I have benefitted as a preacher because of it.

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STUDENT HIGHLIGHT

MEET

CODY BARNHART Midwestern Seminary has been blessed with some of the best students in academia. One of our notable leaders is Cody Barnhart from Maryville, Tennessee. Currently and simultaneously pursuing both his Bachelor’s degree in Biblical Studies and his Master of Divinity through our Accelerate program, Cody has also served as a Spurgeon Scholar and an editorial assistant with the For The Church website.

Over summer 2016, Cody had the opportunity to work as an intern at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission in Nashville. The ERLC is the SBC’s organization dedicated to engaging the culture with the gospel of Jesus Christ and speaking to issues in the public square for the protection of religious liberty and human flourishing. We had the opportunity to sit down with Cody and ask about his experience with them.

How did you hear about the ERLC internship opportunity and what was involved in applying?

I had gotten to know a few of the guys from the ERLC at conferences and online, and one of them hinted that I should apply to be an intern. As I kept up to date with them, the idea of an internship kept coming back up. I initially applied through the ERLC website, and the application asked for some information about my spiritual life and what I would anticipate in an internship. After that, I underwent a few phone interviews with ERLC staff members.

What were some of your responsibilities as an ERLC intern?

For the most part, the internship focused on intellectual formation. We spent a lot of time engaged in discussions of readings, lectures, or other resource assignments that had been given to us. Of course, just like with many other internships, there was an element of administrative and organizational “grunt work” involved, but our supervisors did a good job of actually keeping busywork to a minimum. They really did want us to find our time in the organization helpful.

What would you say were your favorite lessons learned?

My natural disposition when thinking about “cultural engagement” is on an academic level. The Nashville office

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(as opposed to their Washington D. C. office) focuses on how the ERLC can help create space for local churches and Christian leaders to have conversations about what’s going on in the broader culture. It really helped me to have to consider what cultural engagement looks like taken out of the realm of the purely theoretical and placed in the practical context of local church congregations.

I had the opportunity to help (in a very, very small way) with a statement the ERLC released titled, “Protecting the Future of Religious Higher Education.” It was written in response to California Senate Bill 1146, which initially would have given grounds for government interference in the moral and theological codes of faith-based colleges and universities. Some of the nation’s brightest thinkers signed the statement, and SB 1146 was almost immediately pulled off the table (at least for the time being). That was a memorable experience.

What would you say are some wrong or misguided ways church leaders approach “engaging the culture?” And what are some biblical correctives?

I see church leaders make two major mistakes when trying to engage culture, and they are related to one another.

First, they think culture is something “out there,” as if they are separate from it. Second, churches don’t want to feel like they’re getting their hands dirty. When you look at Jesus’ ministry, however, you see a completely sinless man dining with tax collectors and prostitutes. Jesus was even accused of being a drunkard. Some of the greatest scenes in Jesus’ public ministry happened smack-dab in the middle of the prevailing culture of his day. Jesus was always swimming in culture, while still holding to the firm anchor of God’s will and being led by the Spirit.

A lot more church leaders need to learn that engaging culture is about making the gospel primary—not shying from what makes us uncomfortable or trying to sing U2 songs in your church services. It happens in adoption agencies and small groups and back porches. It happens in coffee shops and over cubicle walls and across backyard fences. It happens in the everyday plodding of living a faithful, humble, and quiet life.

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“CHURCH-BUILDING” Redeemer Fellowship Location: Midtown Kansas City, Missouri and Overland Park, Kansas

The Redeemer Fellowship story is one of cultural renewal on several different levels, beginning with the culture of the church itself. A planting effort begun out of the final chapter of historic First Calvary Baptist Church by a team led by Pastor Kevin Cawley, what was once a declining congregation with an uncertain future is now a growing, vibrant church with two locations across the Missouri-Kansas divide.

When the members of First Calvary made the difficult decision to close the doors on their church for good, they were determined it should not signal the end of the gifts God had given them. So they gave their building to Cawley and his team to plant a new work in the old structure. Most mission-minded church leaders will know that healthy transformations like this are only possible after deep and meticulous work is done in the hearts of the congregation. Rehabilitating a dying church entails dismantling old ways of thinking and recovering from entrenched patterns of dysfunction.

Pastor Cawley once explained to Kansas City magazine The Pitch, “I was coming [to the city] periodically and talking with people about what a church that addressed Kansas City’s real needs would look like. The resonant frequency was that Christians had abandoned the city — in Kansas City, but also everywhere, almost every urban area.

There were lots of reasons for it. There are historic elements of racial division. And, frankly — and respectfully — I think many Christians fear the city. I like the city. I like how it’s beautiful and broken. It invites learning and conversation. It allows me to

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be proximate to people I wouldn’t otherwise be proximate to.”

But once the difficult work of “clearing the land” was accomplished, the way was paved for Redeemer’s official launch in June 2008. The church’s Director of Communications Andy Bean writes, “Long before we had a building or a public service, God was awakening a movement of people who were united in prayer and desperate for God to move in the city.”

This vision has certainly taken root and grown to flourishing in the eight years since Redeemer effectively “rose from the ashes.” With nearly 2,000 attending each week, the church has also expanded its heart for cultural engagement in the city and beyond. Again, Bean says, “We long to see Kansas City flourish, which means we are always asking the question, ‘How can we give ourselves away to serve, resource, and catalyze renewal and innovation in our neighborhood?’ To borrow language from our mission statement, what are practical and sacrificial out-workings of a church that exists for the good of the city?”

For Redeemer, this self-reflection has led to outward ministries like The Drugstore, an art studio intended to house creative exploration of addressing city renewal. The interconnection between the church, the arts, and cultural “problem-solving” proves a compelling mix for those invested in seeing positive change in the city.

But Redeemer is also involved in other, more direct means of local community

To learn more about Redeemer Fellowship, visit redeemerkansascity.org.

WE EXIST TO CULTIVATE COMMUNITIES OF TRANSFORMED DISCIPLES WHO LIVE FOR THE GLORY OF GOD AND THE GOOD OF THE CITY

“We long to see Kansas City flourish, which means we are always asking the question, ‘How can we give ourselves away to serve, resource, and catalyze renewal and innovation in our neighborhood?’”

ANDY BEAN Director of Communications

development. The church hosts sports clinics, facilitates neighborhood and school partnerships, and runs an annual program called Affordable Christmas, which empowers underprivileged parents and grandparents to provide an enjoyable holiday experience for their families.

Out of these efforts, Redeemer has seen many opportunities for gospel conversations and evangelistic mission result.

Relationships are built, connections are made. Through the innovative partnership between the community of Kansas City and the church’s missional endeavors, the biblical vision for restoration of the city becomes more and more compelling.

And Redeemer Fellowship is not just engaged in gospel-centered cultural engagement locally—they maintain formal international partnerships, including supporting church-planting efforts in the Middle

East and sponsoring community development efforts through Children’s Village in Gonaïves, Haiti.

The vision for the future relies, of course, on a continued move of God through his gospel and the blessed hope of Christ’s return and the day when all cities will be restored completely. Cawley says, “Our prayer and plan for the years to come is that we would continue to multiply disciples of Jesus, and facilitate local mission by multiplying congregations throughout the neighborhoods and municipalities of our city. We will never arrive, but, in God’s grace, we want to steward our growth and maturity in such a way that contributes to the larger movement of what God is doing throughout the metro.

As we look to the future of our life in Kansas City, my prayer is that we would remain relentlessly committed to the conviction that brought us here.”

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AROUND CAMPUS

Center for Public Theology announced by Midwestern Seminary during SBC luncheon

by T. PAT R I C K H U D S O N

The Center for Public Theology at Midwestern Seminary (CPT) was unveiled publicly during the school’s Alumni and Friends Luncheon on June 15 at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in St. Louis.

During his report to alumni and friends, President Jason Allen announced the launching of the CPT, describing its purpose as “equipping the church of Jesus Christ for theological engagement in a fallen order and a secularizing public square,” and naming its director.

“It brings me great pleasure to announce that Midwestern Seminary is initiating the Center for Public Theology under the guidance of Dr. Owen Strachan,” Allen said. “In being a seminary that exists to serve the local church, the CPT offers another

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vital training tool to equip pastors, missionaries, and ministry leaders to fulfill the Great Commission amidst a lost and morally-confused culture.

“Our aim is to prepare believers theologically to engage the swiftly-declining matters of society, politics and culture knowledgeably and confidently, yet humbly and in a Christ-like spirit. We accomplish this mission through complete trust and assurance in the truthfulness of Scripture and the transforming power of grace.”

Allen noted Strachan’s capabilities in leading the CPT. “The center could not be in better hands than those of Dr. Owen Strachan. His fingers are placed firmly upon the day’s cultural pulse, and he addresses those issues candidly, employing the truths of God’s Word as he interacts with them.”

Strachan, who serves as Midwestern Seminary’s associate professor of public theology, has been at the school since 2015. He also presides over the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and writes extensively in a number of publications and blogs.

Of the CPT, Strachan said, “The center will offer an example of public theology. In other words, we engage the public square from the 600-horsepower worldview created by sound doctrine. We’re living in strange days. The news cycle is dominated by confusing political events. The church is perplexed over how to be the church in this moment. It’s my hope that the CPT can help believers think well about our world and engage it as gospel-shaped salt and light.

“We will do this by providing

COMING JANUARY 2017

the church with solid resources as it engages the public square,” Strachan said. “We want to help Christians to live faithfully in this world. The fallen-ness of this world has not changed in two millennia, and also the church’s commission – its task, its call to preach the gospel and live faithfully in a fallen world—has not changed either.

He added that believers should not be reluctant, but rather they should be plunging in, as they have major contributions to make. In fact, they have the most important contributions to make because they represent the very mind of almighty God. Strachan added, “The rising generation needs to know what the Bible teaches, and how it can be applied to a secular order. We find ourselves in a fifth-century moment. Rome is decaying, and all theology is apologetics. All theology is cultural engagement. Your

doctrine of God? Your understanding of the atonement? Your vision of the church? It is directly connected to your engagement of the world. For the boundary between the church and the world has fallen, and Christians must continually make their case in the public square, or else take their place in the ash-heap of history.”

At present, the CPT’s primary offering is its website, cpt.mbts.edu, which will feature essays, podcasts, lectures, and other content predominantly from Strachan. However, he said a lectureship series, and the potential for adding different contributors to the website, will be available in the near-future.

“The vision for the CPT is not small; it is not limited,” Strachan noted, “and we will be unveiling this vision in coming days in an effort to strengthen the present and future shepherds of Christ’s church.” •

In 1857, Charles Spurgeon - the most popular preacher in the Victorian world - promised his readers that he would publish his earliest sermons. For almost 160 years, these sermons have been lost to history. Beginning January 2017, B&H Academic will start releasing a multi-volume set that includes full-color facsimiles, transcriptions, contextual and biographical introductions, and editorial annotations. Written for scholars, pastors, and students alike, The Lost Sermons of C.H. Spurgeon will add approximately 10% more material to Spurgeon’s body of literature and will constitute the first critical edition of any of Spurgeon’s works.

Download a free sampler at blog.spurgeon.org

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AROUND CAMPUS

Midwestern Seminary and Moody Publishers Partnering on New For The Church Imprint

By T. PAT R I C K H U D S O N

Midwestern Seminary announced a partnership with Moody Publishing that includes the launching of a “For the Church” imprint. President Jason Allen said the strategic collaboration is intended to further the school’s mission of existing to serve the local church.

“We, at Midwestern Seminary, are pleased to work alongside Moody Publishing in launching the For the Church imprint,” Allen said. “This is an important partnership, as it enables us to further our reach in equipping pastors, missionaries and ministers for gospel ministry through the publishing of books and other vital materials.

What is an imprint?

An imprint of a publisher, according to Jared Wilson, director of content strategy & managing editor of the school’s For the Church website, is a trade name under which a work is published. He noted that a single publishing company may have multiple imprints, with the different imprints often used by the publisher to market works to different demographic consumer segments.

“We will have a ‘For the Church’ imprint with Moody where certain books mutually agreed upon will carry the FTC logo, and thus, the vision—on the spine, back cover, and in a back page. It is a way for both FTC and Moody to reach a greater audience with this common vision of equipping ministry leaders and laypersons with solid resources for

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gospel ministry.”

— Moody NEW RELEASES Publishers is a THIS YEAR FROM nonprofit ChrisFOR THE tian publishing CHURCH house located in AND the River North MOODY neighborhood of PUBLISHERS Chicago founded —

by D.L. Moody in 1894. Since that time, Moody Publishers has distributed more than 300 million books, spanning from Bible commentary and reference to spiritual and relational growth, as well as award-winning fiction.

“Moody Publishers is delighted to partner with For the Church, said O C TO B E R 2 0 1 6 Drew Dyck, editor of the Church Leaders Line at Moody Publishers.

“Our missions could hardly be more closely aligned. We’re both unapologetically pro-church and dedicated to equipping its leaders. Moody Publishers exists to ‘resource the church’s work of discipling all people’ while For the Church seeks ‘to engage, encourage, and equip the church with gospel-centered resources.’

“While we share a similar vision, we bring different strengths to the partnership. Moody has a legacy name and proven book publishing expertise,” Dyck said. “For the Church has a knack for digitally equipping church leaders—and its association with Midwestern Baptist Theologi-

SEPTEMBER 2016

JUNE 2016

cal Seminary ensures the training it provides remains Already published and forthcoming joint books demonstrate the promise of the Midwestern/ Moody partnership, Dyck added.

This summer, Moody released On O C TO B E R 2 0 1 6 O C TO B E R 2 0 1 6 Pastoring, in which veteran preacher H. B. Charles gives 30 instructive reflections on the pastor’s heart, leadership, and public ministry. This fall, the publisher released Allen’s Discerning Your Call to Ministry.

Allen’s book helps people answer the notoriously difficult question, “Am I really called to be a church leader?”

Moody will also continue working to release more books in the future featuring the FTC imprint. “I look forward to the days ahead and seeing how the Lord uses this significant partnership with Moody Publishing to further his kingdom by offering these tremendous resources to church leaders across the evangelical spectrum,” Allen said. •

MARK YOUR CALENDARS

SEPTEMBER

25-26 2017 | KANSAS CITY

FEATURING JASON K. ALLEN | MATT CHANDLER | JARED C. WILSON | MATT CARTER | RAY ORTLUND, JR. | AND OTHERS

SUPER-EARLY BIRD (ENDS NOV. 1)

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AROUND CAMPUS

Vanhoozer headlines Scudder Lectures at Midwestern Seminary

by T. PAT R I C K H U D S O N

Midwestern Seminary’s Center for Public Theology hosted its first major event on Sept. 22-23, as a very well-respected evangelical theologian delivered the school’s C.W. Scudder Lectures.

Kevin Vanhoozer, author and research professor of systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, was the keynote speaker for the lectureship dedicated to exploring the biblical basis for dealing with contemporary social challenges and ethical issues.

“One of the greatest aspects of having the Center for Public Theology, as one of Midwestern Seminary’s resources in serving the local church, is hosting events like the Scudder Lectures with scholars like Dr. Vanhoozer,” said President Jason Allen. “Dr. Vanhoozer brings a great deal of experience and insight into the topic of theology, as well as the pastor’s role within it. We are grateful he could share that in such a winsome and intuitive way with our seminary community.”

The Center for Public Theology was launched in June during a seminary event at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in St. Louis. Owen Strachan, Midwestern Seminary’s associate professor of Christian theology, was named the center’s director.

According to Strachan, the mission of the CPT is “to equip pas-

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tors to give gospel-shaped answers in the public square. Too often, the church struggles to know how to engage the culture. With the Scudder Lectures, we have a premier lectureship aimed like an arrow at this pressing need.”

He added of the guest lecturer, “Kevin Vanhoozer is one of the world’s top theologians and is, in the judgment of some, the holder of this illustrious title. His skill in handling the Word of God, his ability to explain biblical doctrine, and his deep love of the church commended him to us, and his lectures made good on our hopes for his coming. Dr. Vanhoozer’s

conception of the pastorate is robed in glory, and it was a thrill to have him unfold this vision for so many future pastor-theologians of Christ’s church.”

In what was the CPT’s initial public event, Vanhoozer lectured on a two-part series entitled, “The Pastor-Theologian as Minister of the Gospel: Understanding What is in Christ” and “The Pastor-Theologian as Minister of the Gospel: Acting Out What is in Christ.”

In Vanhoozer’s opening lecture, he noted an “incredible shrinking evangelical imagination.” By this, he meant that the church, over the years, has failed

“to see our world as the staging area for God and his plan of salvation. We just stopped seeing the reality of God.” Ever-increasing secularization and a shift in the cultural view of the church and pastors, in general, infiltrated the church, Vanhoozer added. To correct this secularization of the church and negative view of the role of the pastor, what needs to take place, Vanhoozer posited, is “that we adopt biblical rather than cultural criteria for success, especially in the ministry.”

The lecturer, who has authored or edited more than 20 books, noted that two urgent social and ethical issues needed to be addressed in his two-part series: 1.

“How we need to recover biblical metaphors, biblical pictures, for the pastor” and 2. “How pastors need to awake, liberate, and then disciple the imaginations of their congregations.”

The two metaphors Vanhoozer employed to describe pastors were those of a shepherd and an artisan. “The pastor is a theologian who leads the church toward greater understanding of Jesus and His way – that is shepherding – and then who helps the church act out that understanding by building a faithful community – that is the artisan part,” he said.

Ultimately, the role of the pastor is to make disciples, Vanhoozer said. He also needs to be discerning because the culture around the congregation is working overtime to capture people’s imaginations and cultivate their spirits to its ways.

“Pastors have to know one big thing, and they know it

because the Bible tells them so, not because they are geniuses,” Vanhoozer suggested. “They have to know what God is doing in Christ, through the Spirit, to create a people for His treasured possession.

“If you want to become a pastor-theologian, you want to be the kind of grown-up who can help others grow up into the fullness of the stature of Jesus Christ,” Vanhoozer said. “We all need to grow up into Christ. We need to graduate from skim milk to whole milk, and then from whole milk to solid theological food, if we are to become mature disciples.”

In the second lecture, Vanhoozer pictured the role of the pastor-theologian in terms of a theatrical production, with the pastor being an artisan who communicates what it means to “be in Christ.”

“That is the special mandate of the pastor-theologian—to present Christ as the high point of God’s revelation and God’s redemption, to help people understand what is in Christ…to help people lean into and live out what is in Christ,” he said. “Pastors respond to the great pastoral commission to make disciples and to build God’s house by ministering the gospel and thereby communicating Christ.”

Additionally, Vanhoozer said the pastor’s role is to deliberate, discern, and demonstrate what it means to be a disciple in today’s world. “To do this, I think pastors need to know and to be able to teach Christian doctrine.”

Referring back to his theatrical metaphor, Vanhoozer stated, “Why not think of doctrine as a kind of theatrical direction for Christian disciples, direction for

walking across the world’s stage, direction for playing our parts to the glory of God. Doctrine, you see, helps us understand the script….

“The Bible is the church’s holy script,” he continued. “It has an authority that no other social script has…And the church is a company, summoned and gathered together to be a theatre, to perform this script and not any other.”

Vanhoozer said the pastor’s role in this production is that of actor and assistant manager. “The pastor is a believer, but also an overseer, a shepherd. The primary role of a pastor is to lead the church toward understanding, and into understanding.” This understanding is not just theoretical; it’s practical.

The pastor helps congregants understand what is happening, and enables them to participate and work out in their lives the truth of what God is doing in their lives, Vanhoozer added.

The lecturer wrapped up the series stating, “Jesus is the metaphorical theologian…par excellence. Jesus spoke in parables, and the church that lives out what is in Christ will become a living parable and challenge our society.

This is the hope: that Christian doctrine will help us to learn our parts so that we can perform them well to the glory of God.” Strachan noted that one way to stay abreast of the happenings at the Center for Public Theology is to tune into its new podcast, “City of God,” which comes out twice weekly. He added that the podcast “is a short burst of cultural engagement for busy leaders who want to think well about the city of man.” •

To view the 2016 SCUDDER LECTURES in their entirety, visit cpt.mbts.edu.

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CAMPUS LIFE

RUN FOR THE NATIONS | SEPT. 10

SCUDDER LECTURES WITH KEVIN VANHOOZER | SEPT. 22-23

FOR THE CHURCH CONFERENCE | SEPT. 26-27 M I DW E S T E R N M A G A Z I N E

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MWI WELCOME EVENT For MORE CAMPUS EVENTS AND PHOTOS visit our events page at mbts.edu/events.

BONFIRE & S’MORES

DINNER AT THE DEAN’S

FOR THE CHURCH CONFERENCE | SEPT. 26-27

FOR THE CHURCH ST. LOUIS JUNE 14

ROYALS PRE-GAME TAILGATING MBT S .EDU

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RECENT PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS IN BRIEF New and Upcoming Releases from the Midwestern Seminary Community

FIRST FREEDOM: THE BEGINNING AND END OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

THE LOST SERMONS OF C.H. SPURGEON, VOLUME 1

by Jason G. Duesing, Thomas White, Malcolm B. Yarnell III (B&H Academic)

by Christian T. George (B&H Academic)

Challenges to religious liberty are increasingly common today as historical Christianity comes into conflict with a new, secular orthodoxy. In this thoroughly revised second edition of First Freedom, leading evangelical scholars—including Midwestern Academic Provost Jason Duesing, who also serves as one of the volume’s editors—present the biblical and historical foundations for religious freedom in America.

The first of a planned 12-volume series, this book represents the landmark discoveries and research of George, curator of Midwestern’s renowned Spurgeon Library. Written for scholars, pastors, and students alike, The Lost Sermons will add approximately 10% more material to Spurgeon’s body of literature and will constitute the first critical edition of any of Spurgeon’s works.

JANUARY 2017

UNPARALLELED: HOW CHRISTIANITY’S UNIQUENESS MAKES IT COMPELLING

by Jared C. Wilson (Baker) This work from Midwestern’s director of content strategy and managing editor of the For The Church website is a fresh approach on apologetics. Wilson helps Christians and non-Christians alike see the utter uniqueness of the Christian faith both in its truth claims and in its appeal, showing not just Christianity’s intellectual sense but its emotional sense, as well.

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THE COLSON WAY: LOVING YOUR NEIGHBOR AND LIVING WITH FAITH IN A HOSTILE WORLD

by Owen Strachan (Thomas Nelson) Chuck Colson’s life reveals that there is no division between truth and love, between embracing biblical guidance and loving one’s neighbor.

In his book The Colson Way, Owen Strachan, professor of Christian theology at Midwestern and director of The Center for Public Theology, uses Colson’s legacy and wisdom to show Christians a way of living a public faith with conviction and generosity toward all.

BOOK REVIEW

DISCERNING YOUR CALL TO MINISTRY

BY JASON K. ALLEN

Book Review by Tim Challies We know the concept and are well-familiar with the phrase: “called to ministry.” We know that some men are called in a special way to a special task—the task of gospel ministry.

But exactly what constitutes the call, exactly how to understand it, exactly how to know we’ve experienced it—these are matters of more than a little confusion. Thankfully we have been well-served in recent years with books attempting to bring clarity. New to the field is Jason Allen’s Discerning Your Call to Ministry: How To Know For Sure And What To Do About It. It is a short guide, but one that packs a punch.

Allen begins by distinguishing between three related terms: called to minister, called to ministry, and called to the ministry. All Christians are called to minister, and church leaders are to equip the saints for this work—this work that is crucial to the functioning of God’s church. In this broad way every believer is a minister. Some Christians are called to ministry, to become involved in a vocation that has a significant ministry component. This might include counselors at Christian camps, coordinators of children’s ministries, or professors at seminaries. Then a few Christians are called to the ministry, the formal category defined in passages like Ephesians 4:11-16, 1 Timothy 3:1-7, and similar ones. The Bible refers to these people interchangeably as elders, pastors, overseers, or bishops. It is this final category that is the special concern of Allen’s book.

The Bible describes the function of these ministers and also describes the qualifications they must possess. Based on these, Allen frames his book around ten important questions. As a man prayerfully reads and considers these questions he will come to a deeper understanding of whether or not he is experiencing God’s call.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Do you desire the ministry?

Does your character meet God’s expectations?

Is your household in order?

Has God gifted you to teach and preach his Word?

Does your church affirm your calling?

Do you love the people of God? Are you passionate about the gospel and the Great Commission?

8. Are you engaged in fruitful ministry?

9. Are you ready to defend the faith?

10. Are you willing to surrender?

Within these ten questions is an examination of a man’s character, knowledge, skill, and willingness to serve. Perhaps best of all is the constant call to seek and receive the affirmation of a local church, for the call to the ministry is not merely an internal call that a man feels but an external call he receives from those who have been called before him. This is an emphasis sorely lacking in too many similar books but present and repeated here. This is one of the most prominent strengths of Allen’s work.

The church is in desperate need of men who are willing, who are skilled, who are called. This book may be exactly what they need to evaluate themselves, to hear the call, and to heed the call. Discerning Your Call to Ministry comes endorsed by quite a list of trusted Christian leaders, Al Mohler, John MacArthur, Steven Lawson, and David Dockery among them. The accolades are well-earned and I gladly add my commendation to theirs. This little book is an excellent primer on the what, why, and how of the call to ministry. It is a book for pastors to have on-hand and to distribute freely.

Even better, it is for them to read with the men in their churches who ask, “What about me?”

Originally published at challies.com/book-reviews/discerning-your-call-to-ministry TIM CHALLIES is a pastor at Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Ontario, the author of five books, a writer for WORLD Magazine, a co-founder of Cruciform Press, and the blogger at Challies.com.

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RESOURCES | FTC.CO

GOSPEL-CENTERE D R E SOUR CE S

FOR THE CHURCH Re c e n t a r t i cle s

MO RE RES O URC ES A VA I L A B LE AT F TC . C O

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Embarrassing Christianity

by R O N N I K U R T Z

It’s a refrain I hear often from Christians my age, and it goes something like this: “Yeah, I’m a Christian, but I’m not that kind of Christian.”

The “that” in the sentence can refer to an abnormally large amount of items.

In the last few years, it seems to have a lot to do with cultural realities. You know, that kind of Christian—the one who doesn’t peruse around the coolest blogs or podcast, the one who enjoys early 2000’s contemporary Christian music, or isn’t up to date on the latest satire filled comedy show.

It seems as if young, millennial Christians today have to meet a kind of embarrassment quota of different items in Christian sub-culture in fear that they might not be accepted by those “less weird” Christians.

WHAT WE SHOULD BE EMBARRASSED BY

Now, I get it: as someone who didn’t grow up in the church and is now submersed in the Christian culture, there is a lot that looks strange to those on the outside and to a growing number of those on the inside. We use strange words, listen to strange music, give strange side-hugs, and for the most part are really strange. This article isn’t written with the intention of getting you to think that Christian sub-culture isn’t weird – because it most assuredly is and I hope a lot of it dies off rather quickly.

Instead, it’s written as a hopeful warning and correction.

The warning is that for all of our efforts at distancing ourselves with old and

outdated Christianity and the current Christians we’re embarrassed of, we oftentimes come across much more pretentious than we think we do. I’m also scared of the fact that it appears some of us find a sort of quasi-self-justification by not being on the socially abnormal side of Christianity.

The correction comes as a hopeful replacement and reshifting of embarrassment. What I mean is that, in today’s church, it seems as if we are embarrassed about the wrong things.

Instead of being embarrassed about the untalented, four-chord, cheesy-lyric, Christian song that will somehow get a ten year shelf life, we should be embarrassed that for hundreds of years Christianity and the Scriptures were used to perpetrate systemic racism and the fact that there are an absurd amount of Christians who are convinced that this is no longer an issue today.

Instead of being embarrassed of that friend who wants to awkwardly tell the waitress who couldn’t be less interested about Jesus, let’s be embarrassed that when many non-believers think of Christ, they think of judgmental sticklers who make it seem like rules and regulations are the backbone of the Christian faith.

Let’s be embarrassed that, for many Christians, the idea of enjoying your faith is a foreign concept and the idea of God as the wellspring of all pleasure is an uncomfortable thing to think of.

Let’s be embarrassed at the misuse of the word “faith” to promote a detrimental

form of anti-intellectualism in the church.

Let’s be embarrassed that the gospel has been so easily replaced with self-help, prosperity garbage that we’ve exported to other countries.

These things, and many more like them, are worth being embarrassed about, not our outdated, silly sub-cultures. If we would spend half as much time dreaming of ways to repent of these actual embarrassments and pursue reconciliation as we spend dreaming of new ways to sarcastically make fun of Christian sub-culture, then people might start to see the Church as a refuge for weary souls as opposed to an unwanted tag-along.

IN ALL OUR EMBARASSMENTS, REMEMBER ONE THING

Again, one doesn’t have to look far or deep in the church today to find numerous amounts of reasons to be embarrassed. Yet in our embarrassment, let’s remember one thing: these embarrassing people happen to be Jesus’ bride.

It seems as if we as Christians don’t think that the devil does his job very well, for maybe our sarcastic words and mocking finger pointing comes out of the idea that he’s not a skilled enough accuser.

Christians, the church doesn’t need another accuser. The Church needs men and women who love the bride of Jesus.

As he set his face to give his life for her, we set ours to seeing her thrive. She belongs to him. His torn flesh and spilt blood was for the embarrassing—those like you and me. •

RONNI KURTZ is the Pastor of Teaching and Equipping at Emmaus Church, a church in the metro of Kansas City, Missouri. He is also an M.Div student at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He is happily married to Kristen Kurtz. You can follow him on Twitter via @RonniKurtz.

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RESOURCES | FTC.CO

The Dirty Jobs Pastor

by D A N I E L D A R L I N G

“I just wish I got to do what you—get paid to serve Jesus,” he said to me, with eyes betraying the wariness of facing another Monday under the hot sun.

This longtime church member, who owned his own landscaping business, loved talking theology but could not see the connection between our worship and teaching on Sunday and his work in the trenches on Monday.

I wish I could say this attitude was rare among so-called “lay Christians,” but it is not, sadly. My years of ministry experience tell me that most still feel that the work they do with their hands during the week is inferior to the work of people whose paycheck comes from a Christian 501(c)3.

WHY IS THIS? I THINK THERE ARE SEVERAL REASONS:

First, we’ve lost a robust view of calling somewhere in the twentieth century, creating a dichotomy between the secular and sacred that we are only now recovering, thanks to the emerging faith and work movement.

Second, pastors, I believe, have failed to preach faithfully, holistically, and robustly on the integration of work and worship.

Third, those of us who have theological training and are the “professionals” of the Church have too highly valued our own position and have subtly and

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sometimes not-so-subtly devalued the vocational worth of the average working man and woman.

So how do we recover this? I think it begins at the local church level with pastors who intentionally affirm the worth of the work their people do every day. I think there are three ways we do this: 1. We avoid a discipleship reductionism that destroys a doctrine of vocation.

That’s a mouthful, I’ll admit, but I believe some of the reason church members have poor attitudes about their work is because pastors devalue it, even in well-meaning ways. For instance, how often do we say, either in our missions’ appeals or even as we are (rightly) pointing our people toward singular devotion to God: “This is all that matters. Nothing else in your life and in your world matters.”

Now I know what the pastor means when he says that because I said those phrases myself. What we mean is that work, ambition, money, power—these things are all unworthy idols. They are cheap substitutes for worship, worship that should be singularly focused on Christ. Only he satisfies those deep longings in our hearts.

But guess what the working man, hands still dirty from digging ditches, hears when he hears you say “Nothing else

matters.” He hears you say: “Your job on Monday doesn’t really matter. Yeah, it gives you money to help with missions and provides opportunities for evangelism but what we do here on Sunday is all that matters.” So he goes to work on Monday feeling a bit like he’s on the Christian Junior Varsity team. If only God would allow him, one day, to really serve Jesus on the front lines.

In some sense, we are communicating a truncated gospel, that faith in Christ is only about personal piety and has no distinct mark on the way we work our vocations. What’s more, we do damage to the Creation mandate, redeemed by Christ (Ephesians 2:10) that empowers us to create as we were created to do.

Our work not only is a means to an end.

It’s a form of worship to the Creator of all things. It’s a way we contribute to the human flourishing of our neighbor.

And while our work should not replace Christ as an object of worship, it does, indeed matter.

Pastors, we need to use clear, unambiguous language, to hold both the call to sacrifice for the sake of missions and maintain a healthy, robust doctrine of vocation and doctrine of creation.

2. We don’t overvalue our own positions as pastors or ministry leaders.

Growing up, it was an axiom in our household and our church that the

hardest job on earth was the job of the pastor. He had the most pressure, the hardest decisions, and the most strenuous tasks. This may be true, at times.

The job of the pastor is a high and holy calling; one that James reminds us we dare not take lightly (James 3:1). However, we should not so flatter ourselves as to create a martyr complex and diminish the difficulty our church members face in faithfully living out their vocations in fallen world. Sometimes the job of pastor is the most difficult in the culture. Sometimes it isn’t.

We should not be so focused, in our preaching and in our conversations, about our own difficulties that we cannot empathize with the struggles and hardships others face. Some are forced to work long, hard hours just to make a basic living and support their families. Some go to work every day on edge, wondering if they will lose their jobs. Some face pressures that you and I may never face.

In many ways, pastors live in an unnatural bubble, surrounded daily by Christians while the average church member goes to work in a marketplace where being a Christian makes him a distinct minority. They are the real evangelists, who must embody the gospel in the ways they interact with people whose values might be very different than theirs. The pressures to cheat, to lie, to cut corners are very

real. They are the real foot soldiers.

conversations in your community.

Pastors can affirm the value of the work their people do by simply entering into the daily work struggles of the people they pastor and by inquiring, often, about new ways to pray.

And when you apply applications to the workplace, don’t reduce them to evangelism opportunities, but other situations like relational conflicts, difficulties with hard bosses, leadership principles, and the value of the work they are required to perform. Be diverse in your application, so that the hotel maid feels as much worth in her work as the corporate executive and the blue-collar worker is as affirmed in what he creates as the local artist.

3. Seed your sermons with real-world, on-the-job, applications.

Put away the illustration books with the cheesy one-liners that make your people groan. The best illustrations in preaching are from real life and not just your real life, either. They may not relate to that time in the coffee shop when you were surrounded by your theology books and a secularist college student questioned you about Nietzsche. Sure, add in your own examples of good and bad, pepper your preaching with foibles from family life, talk openly about conflicts you face.

But you might also, when applying the Scriptures to real life, speak of the types of situations your parishioners might face in the workplace.

This assumes, of course, that you are active among your people as a pastor and not just a preacher. It assumes that you are interested in curious about the way they work in their vocations, what constitutes success and a job well done. It assumes you leave your Christian thought bubble and are in the marketplace aware of the

This doesn’t have to be contrived or canned. In fact, your people will know, by the way you preach and talk and relate, if you are really in touch with their everyday reality. Most importantly, they’ll start to get the message that Sunday is not the only day that matters to the God they worship. The gospel of Christ also affects what they do on Monday. •

DANIEL DARLING is the vice president for Communications at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He is a weekly contributor to Leadership Journal and the host of a weekly podcast, The Way Home. Dan is the author of several books, including The Original Jesus. He and his wife Angela have four children and live in the Nashville area.

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RESOURCES | FTC.CO

Evangelical Engagement in Evil Times

by D R E W G R I F F I N

We live in an evil era. There is no doubt about this. One cursory look across the landscape of culture and media confirms that the world lies under the rampant influence of the evil one. In fact, it could be argued that from Jesus’ very ascension into heaven Christians have been living in what Paul would describe as “the last days.”

With this in mind, how do Christians engage this evil culture? Every four years this question becomes even more pertinent as Christians begin to navigate the unique and glorious responsibility of voting. God has given American Christians the opportunity to have a voice in their leadership and indeed in almost every level of governance. This was an opportunity denied Christians in the times of Paul, Constantine, Charlemagne and George III. But, with dawn of the American experiment came an unprecedented chance; Christians could now guide and participate in their government, in addition to praying for it. Ever since there has been a palpable tension in the heart of the conscientious Christian about which path is better: the political road of civic involvement or the Kingdom road of spiritual reliance. Which path leads to the most effective engagement in repsone to these evil last days?

It should not surprise us that the Bible speaks to this issue with razor sharp clarity and concision. While there are many texts which speak to both governors and the governed, few texts provide evangelicals with the kind of roadmap we find in 2 Timothy 3:1-4:5.

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There is much that one can draw from this text, so much that it far exceeds the reasonable length of a blog post. However, there some key elements worth drawing out and some conclusions worth making.

1. PAUL DOES NOT SUGARCOAT THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL.

The first 9 verses of chapter 3 are devoted exclusively to the topic of evil’s existence in Paul’s day, with an eye toward its acceleration in the last days to come. This provides us with valuable encouragement. We take no small measure of comfort in knowing that the “good ole days” were not really that good. Evil has always stood in opposition to God and His people, and will until Christ’s return.

2. PAUL ACCURATELY DESCRIBES EVIL IN REALISTIC AND RELEVANT TERMS.

Paul looks out onto his world and forward to our own with explicit realism. The times Paul describes are marked by people who will be “lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self control etc.” Does this sound at all familiar or reflective of our own time? We also must be conscientious enough to accurately define evil in our own time.

3. PAUL STRESSES THE PRIMACY OF THE WORD OF GOD.

Paul encourages Timothy (the evangelical engager) to root his

hope in the all sufficient Word of God, which is “breathed out

by God, profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness.” The only way this first-century evangelical was going to be equipped to engage his fallen culture with every good work was if he continued in what he learned from the sacred writings, the Scriptures.

4. PAUL DELIVERS THE METHOD OF ENGAGEMENT.

Finally, Paul instructs our early evangelical as to the manner in which he must engage this fallen culture; “preach the Word.” Paul could have said many things here; he could have said run for local magistrate, he could have suggested that Timothy lead a sit-in at the local basilica, but he did not.

Paul’s advice, or rather his command to Timothy is to “preach the Word in season and out of season.” “To reprove” (with the Word), “to rebuke” (with the Word), “to exhort” (with the Word) and to do all this with patience.

What can we conclude from the above elements? As Christians, we are called to engage the culture, to be salt and light.

And I think that we have reached an era when “people no longer listen to sound teaching.” Post-modernity has robbed our generation of ability to argue philosophical positions effectively on a broad scale. Once we as a culture robbed ourselves of the definitions of right and wrong, sound teaching became nearly impossible to define, let alone engage in. The only hope we have is in the explicit unapologetic proclamation of God’s Word.

I am not arguing for a second fundamentalist retreat into the hills of cultural isolation. On the contrary, I am arguing that we must follow Paul’s model in this passage. We must recognize evil’s existence in our culture, we must be adept enough to realistically define it, we must root ourselves in God’s sufficient Word, and then we must engage the culture through the proclamation of that Word. This must be done in our churches, our homes, in our offices, at our jobs, in our neighborhoods, and even in the public square.

Vote, yes. Campaign, if you must. Advocate for life, absolutely. But above all, preach unceasingly the glory of the Kingdom that is here and is to come; it is the only hope we have in these “last days.” We must all “do the work of an evangelist.” •

DREW GRIFFIN is lead planter and pastor of Cross Church NYC and the director of the SBTS Extension Center in NYC. He has written for the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood as well as ERLC’s Canon and Culture blog. He and his wife, Emily, have a daughter, Charlotte, and reside in Manhattan.

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Sensitivity in the Midst of Sensationalism

by Z A C H C R O O K

Flip on your television set to a news channel, and there is a pretty good chance you’ll hear talking heads boisterously proclaiming the digression of culture after the Supreme Court’s most recent decision to redefine marriage.

Or, pick up a magazine and see a transgendered man celebrated in a photo shoot as he revels in his newfound identity as a woman.

To a lost and dying world, these are marks of progress. These narratives are celebrated and sensationalized ad nauseam to show how enlightened our current culture has become. To Paul, and to any conservative theologian, these are undoubtedly marks of progress as well. But what type of progress?

The progression of a sinful world that exchanged the truth for a lie and is serving the creature rather than the creator (Romans 1).

In a relativistic culture, it shouldn’t come as a shock that these cultural shifts are celebrated. Neither should we be surprised when this sort of progress is sensationalized and broadcast loudly over the airwaves.

But, while we shouldn’t be surprised, and we should be ready to respond, it would behoove the conservative evangelical world if we thoughtfully measured our response.

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While it is tempting to try to join into the current media trend of “whoever yells the loudest must be right,” there might just be a better way.

Before we pound our pulpits and rant and rave about the topic du jour, let’s remember the broken, lost souls who are in the middle of these societal shifts. Let’s remember the compassion that Jesus had for the lost.

In Matthew 9, it says that He saw that people were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. As we fight to convey a biblical worldview and try to help people understand why we believe what we believe, let’s not lose sight of the fact that the problem isn’t simply a cultural or societal issue. Jesus points out the problem towards the end of Matthew 9: they were lost.

The truth of the matter is that no individual will “find” himself or herself by changing genders. No true, lasting satisfaction will be found in a same-sex marriage, or a heterosexual marriage, for that matter. The only way those who are lost will truly find themselves is when they embrace their lostness and willingly give themselves to the Lord.

Further, when the salvation offered up by cultural progress is revealed to the lost and thirsty as an empty cistern,

the question becomes where will they go next.

It will be a lot easier to embrace the refugees of cultural progress if we put down our bullhorns and open our arms.

In the current twenty-four hour constant news cycle, we must remember that it isn’t about who yells the loudest; but rather, who cares the deepest. •

ZACH CROOK has been serving in ministry for over a decade and has been serving as the pastor of Friendship Baptist Church in Weatherford, Texas, since January of 2013. Zach graduated from Wayland Baptist University with a Bachelor of Arts in 2006 and he holds two master’s degrees: a Master of Christian Ministry from WBU and a Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has been published in Baptist Press, Southern Baptist Texan, Baptist Standard, Baptist New Mexican, and Weatherford Democrat. Zach is married to Jill, and they have two children—Isaiah and Caleb. You can follow him on Twitter at @zach_crook.

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