D. A. Carson has written a critical review of emergent, and of my work in particular. Dr. Al Mohler has effusively praised Carson's book in reviews and articles of his own. Both reviews are grossly inaccurate and they misrepresent and misjudge my writings, thinking, and beliefs.
David Brent would never approve. 'Brainstorming', the buzz term used by executives to generate ideas among their staff, has been deemed politically incorrect by civil servants because it is thought to be offensive to people with brain disorders.
Instead staff at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) in Belfast will use the term 'thought-showers' when they get together to think creatively. A spokeswoman said: 'The DETI does not use the term brainstorming on its training courses on the grounds that it may be deemed pejorative.'
First Baptist Church in Euless, Texas, prides itself on its fiercely patriotic approach to the Fourth of July.
Last year, Marines rappelled into the sanctuary, church members in uniform stuck rifles and helmets into a Styrofoam grave site made by a Broadway set designer, and indoor fireworks exploded over a packed house in back-to-back services.
'It's just a big patriotic, feel-good moment,' said Robert Elkins, the church's music director.
First Covenant Church in Oakland, Calif., takes a different approach, allowing a salute to veterans but steering clear of any overtly patriotic messages. 'We want to be as inclusive as possible for all worshippers, whether they're red or blue,' said music director David Leestma.
Independence Day can be delicate for houses of worship. Many worshippers expect some recognition of the holiday, but appearing too nationalistic can alienate others who see God-and-country celebrations as political endorsements.
This website is for people in ministry who just need to be real and shed the "I AM PREFECT" image that we all get trapped into living. It's about ministry when your not Saddleback and you find yourself up a Willow Creek.
God was working with each person during that retreat. Both campers and staff, we were all touched by God's spirit through the words of scripture, through the hugs and smiles and words of one another, through the experiences of the week that affirmed life and love for all of God's people.
I think relevance is a crock. I don't think people care a whole lot about what kind of music you have or how you shape the service. They want a place where God is taken seriously, where they're taken seriously, where there is no manipulation of their emotions or their consumer needs.
Jelly review: John Medeski, the North Mississippi Allstars and Robert Randolph: The first ever jam session must have occurred in a church. When the Spirit starts to move, nobody watches the clock. Keyboard player John Medeski, on break from his full time gig with Medeski, Martin & Wood, gathered together the North Mississippi Allstars and pedal steel player Robert Randolph for this high-stepping dance through a session of gospel blues.
Randolph is the real revelation here, as his pedal steel work steers a wide path away from the weeping willow-isms his instrument is usually associated with in the country realm for some squealing blues work. The hand-clapping Sunday service stomper 'Without God' is converted into a Southern rock powerhouse. On 'Waiting on My Wings,' Medeski's clip-clopping organ notes lead a funk workout worthy of the almighty Meters.
As nobody in this band steps up to the mike to sing, all ten tunes are completely instrumental. Without gospel's soul-deep lyrics, this recording sacrifices much of its spiritual impact. Unless you're already familiar with the sermon-in-song messages of these mostly traditional selections, you won't likely receive their originally intended blessings.
But if you want to hear what church might sound like if the Sabbath is ever moved from Sunday morning to Saturday night, this is your fantasy disc.
On stage, Randolph is an energetic and inspiring presence, able to convert any beer-drenched, smoke-filled room into a temporary sanctuary. He's a time-stopping, trouble-erasing wizard who engages his listeners to march, press on, stomp their feet, clap their hands, scream. --Rolling Stone
[Joe Wood, this week's guest writer, leads the praise choir at one of upstate South Carolina's mega-churches, Brookwood Community Church. Brookwood has over 4,000 attendees each Sunday and is similar to Willow Creek.]
"We practiced for six hours and the director was still mad at us."
It was Father's Day, and I was eating at a breakfast that our church provided for the men singing in our once-a-year men's choir. I'd just told the guy next to me how great the group sounded, and that's when he said it. "Yeah, I can't believe we did it in one rehearsal. The last church I was in, we did this; and we practiced for six hours and the director was still mad at us." I was stunned, and really didn't know what to say.
You see, I used to be the same kind of director. I was old school. I was a "crack the whip" kind of director ...
hammering on all the flaws. I think I learned it that way.
After all, I studied music at a Christian college where you felt like you were in trouble all the time. We focused on flaws and "scored points" in finding them. But then, years later, I sang in a volunteer community choir directed by a Jerry Step, a local minister of music. Jerry's primary training tool was encouragement. I think his spiritual gift was encouragement. Jerry would gush over everything we did.
He would even gush over things that I didn't think deserved to be gushed over. It didn't take long for me to long to recognize, though, that Jerry's encouragement motivated us to work harder. His encouragement painted an image of what we could sound like. And before long, we sounded about as good as Jerry had been telling us we did. More importantly, it was fun singing in Jerry's choir. When rehearsal was over, we went home feeling good about what we'd accomplished and looking forward to our next rehearsal.
So I started trying out Jerry's method on the groups I directed. And it worked! I was amazed at how people responded to encouragement. Instead of listening for flaws, I started listening for things that the groups were doing right and pointing that out. When I found a flaw I tried to approach it in an encouraging way ... like complementing someone who was doing it right and explaining to the group what that person was doing. It was transformational! I discovered that my groups made much more progress in an encouraging environment than they had under my old school ways. In fact, they started getting better than I'd thought they could be.
That's when I started to become passionate about working with "average" musicians ... and it's one of the reasons that I'm so excited about the emergence of the Praise Choir in so many of our churches. If you put a bunch of regular people who love singing in a group, and give them encouragement, a vision, good coaching, and music that fits their voices, they can sound great. Mix in their love for God, and passion for worshipping Him, and they can be a powerful voice that encourages the church to worship!
I'm so glad that the guy I was talking with at breakfast had the experience that he had with us on Father's Day. I think now that he knows he has a voice that God can use; and he knows a little bit about how wonderful it is to serve God through praise. Maybe we can lure him into our regular Praise Choir...
How'd the guys do? It was amazing! We rehearsed for an hour and a half on Wednesday night, and about thirty minutes on Sunday morning. We didn't worry about parts. We let them sing melody or whatever part they could find. We just wanted them to sing their hearts. We kept the focus on the praise that we were doing ... not on the technical details of the music. The sound was awesome and the impact was powerful.
How could it be anything else? A men's chorus, passionately opening our services singing "Lord, Reign in Me." By the time we got to the closing chorus of "A Few Good Men" (three of our Praise Team guys sang the lead parts), our congregation couldn't stay in their seats! The choir was blessed. The congregation was blessed. I think God was blessed. And the director didn't even have to get mad.
Lessons in vegetarianism
Today for lunch, steamed vegetables and tofu over brown rice (with a splash of soy sauce). Yummy. So, this got me thinking more about vegetarianism. Why would I eat meat? Well, the answer is mostly because I am tempted to glutony and vanity. I desire to please my appetite and I rationalize that if I eat more protein I will look trimmer and sexy. But are glutony and vanity Christian virtues?
So, I'm beginning to think of vegetarianism as a compelling Christian practice. My recent thoughts on it are that it is a prophetic witness against consumerism, consumption, and capitalism-run-amok. Arguably the food industry has become less about food and more about money. Check this statistic:
In the US, animals raised for food are fed 70% of the corn, wheat, and other grains we grow. The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people - more than the entire human population on Earth.
Its difficult to think about more food going to cattle than to those (esp. in 3rd world countries) who need it most. But the fact is that there is much money to be made by large corporations connected to the beef council. To be a vegetarian sends a compelling message to society that you will not participate in systems of over-consumption and gluttony (have you ever met an obese vegetarian?) in an age when millions of people live in extreme poverty without food.
Arguably there are other reasons to be vegetarian as well, but for now, lets consider the environment and economics.
Hey Vaughn-
Thanks for the interesting statistics. We live in the heart of cattle country out here in the sticks and I must say that the situation is more complex than those statistics suggest.
In Colorado alone, the federal government pays over $38 million a year to farmers to not farm their land! This keeps many farmers from bankruptcy. We have plenty of land to farm for both cattle and human consumption. I thik the greater problem is water.
Colorado, as you know, has experienced terrible drought the last several years. Water consumption to produce food for animals is probably one of the main uses of water in our country.
But to be consistent, growing a lawn in Colorado is extremely poor management of water resources as well.
I believe there are responsible ways to raise animals for consumption. But those days are long gone as we have moved away from the farm to the city. Most people in the city do not know where there food comes from. They do not know how or where or by whom it was raised. The last several cows I've eaten, I've known who raised it, what they fed it, and what it's name was! I also know the butcher.
The issue of beef production is huge in the U.S, but there are also dangers lurking in the resources used for our fruit and vegetables. Some of these questions are very difficult to answer morally. For instance, today because of technology, we have incredible hybrids of corn and other vegetables which are more disease and drought tolerant than ever before. Because of this, the yields we see in these hybrids are greater than ever before using fewer natural resources.
Hybrids can help us feed more people while using less natural resources. Yet the debate around frankenfood is heating up! Are these genetically modified foods safe for the long-term? What are the long-term effects of GMO's?
I think one of the main considerations in food consumption from a Christian viewpoint is to support local, sustainable, ecologically responsible farming practices. That is easy to do out in the sticks but very hard to do in the city! Here we live close to the land and the producers. We know them and how they operate. In the city you have to trust the supermarket or a co-op and their word regarding whether the food product is organic, non-GMO, natural, or what have you.
From this standpoint, should a vegetarian eat a banana or a kiwi or a coconut? These are not local produce (in Colorado) and vast amounts of natural resources are used to provide them for us here.
One last thing that demonstrates the reliance on others we have in our food production: I find it funny that the vegetarian starter kit lists Fritos as an ingredient in one of the recipes. I have heard anecdotal stories that cause me to avoid Fritos like the plaque! (Namely that Frito-lay regularly purchases corn that is unfit for cattle consumption!)
I agree that a Christian's relationship to food and the practices that produce food are very important, but I don't think being a vegetarian is the only moral answer for a thinking Christian.
Grace and peace,
Steve
I was having a conversation with Fredrik, when I was in Sweden, about the growing popularity, of making 'private god spaces', of being post church, and making church something about not being church.
In this expression, we see a reaction to the idea that the church has so often seen sundays as the only valid space for God to be. In this paradigm, sundays are church, and the kingdom, only the sunday service is church.
So now we regale the congregation, and sundays, and see church as when I play golf, go shopping, play football. In this paradigm everything is church, and I don't need church anymore, I'm post church.
But in the old model where nothing is church, surely it's so restrictive that we have to say no! and find God elsewhere? And in the second model, where everything is church, then ultimately nothing is church, a kind of pantheistic ecclessiology.
A church that does not naturally lead to people connecting to God, in the places they work, and play, and live, isn't church at all. Conversely when church becomes just the place where I chose to connect with people who do just what I want, like football, I have stopped being church, just as completely.
In the reaction to church being so disconnected from the world, we think we are being radical by moving church outside of church, but we can end up not being church at all.
So where do I see church? What about the football guy, who finds God in his football sundays, and the water-skiing woman, who finds her time with God there. When they get together and ask, how are we going to talk about our faith, how are we going to celebrate christianity together - I hate football and you can't water ski - how are we going to connect together outside of our own exclusive narrow spheres of interest...then they get to start being church.
If sundays was all about me, jesus as my girlfriend worship, my blessing, my needs, lets not be fooled and think that church on my terms, on my interests, with fewer people is anything better, or different, it's just the modern church on steroids, hyper modern church.
Thanks Jason for these much needed thoughts! I have been thinking about this today as my churchs' attendance is horrible in the summer. When I run into members in town they tell me of how busy there are and the many trips they have been on, the many personal projects there are pursuing. One woman today expressed surprise when I recognized her because it had been so long since she had been to church.
Her comment portrayed the bigger issue for me. Church attendance isn't the issue. Gather together in community, with others, with people who are different from us is the issue. How can we love our neighbor as our self (remember how Jesus defined neighbor) if we aren't around long enough to connect?
At their best, these younger leaders want to challenge the North American church to a conversation about faith and mission in the midst of what they deem a postmodern transition. They want to engage in conversation about the philosophical, theological, methodological, and cultural challenges we face in our fast-changing world. At their worst, they become a new form of seeker-driven churches which use art, music, the digital revolution and the aesthetic pastiche of the moment to create new experiences.
At their best they courageously and joyfully enter the worlds of Goths and tattoo parlors to form Christian life in, with, beside and for people who would never be welcome in most congregations. At their worst they become the purveyors of more experiential, artsy, aesthetic forms of religious goods and services.
Liveplasma is a new way to broaden your cultural horizons according to your taste in music and movies.
Look for your favorite bands, movies or directors to obtain a map that details other potential interests.
Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.
What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com |
We examine the contribution of skeptics, cynics, and others who have followed the human impulse to challenge given wisdom, and to doubt. Poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht has published a sweeping, lyrical history of the world's great doubters, and she shows that the act of questioning, as much as the act of believing, has changed the world.
The joy of creating this program lies, in part, in having my own imagination about "faith" expanded. This week, Jennifer Michael Hecht provides a luminous account of how our common imagination about doubt, and its symbiotic relationship with faith, begs for investigation.
Hecht's subject matter, the history of doubt, is daunting. She defines doubt generously, broadly addressing the human impulse to question what is given in order to invest one's days with meaning. She counts Socrates and Jesus, Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson, among history's great doubters. She loves the ideas her work examines, and recounts their origins and the individuals who championed them as though she is recalling the adventures of friends:
You have to be a little bold and a little brave in most periods of time to be a doubter. And I liked them. I also was surprised by them because the dominant history basically suggests that doubt is very modern and that we have few doubters in the ancient world, but I kept seeing it everywhere. And so I just wanted to tell that story, to sketch it out. I found it was much more cohesive and self-knowing than I had ever dreamed.
According to the famous evangelist John Wesley, you have a healthy job when there is a certain percentage of things you like to do, a percentage of things you don’t mind doing and a percentage of things you don’t like to do at all – but you choose to do them anyway!
Tertullian wrote, 'It is our care for the helpless, our practice of loving-kindness, that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. 'Only look,' they say, 'how they love one another.'
The Body grows not only through preaching but through kindness in and outside the church. So this is a leader’s role: foster a joyful and patient community where people tolerate each other and are kind to each other.
Welcome to First Presbyterian Church located downtown at the corner of Nevada and Bijou Streets in the heart of Colorado Springs.
Our Church is committed to being more than the geographic heart of the city. We want to be Christ̢۪s heart as well.
Since the founding of the Church in 1872, God has blessed this congregation with the presence of His Holy Spirit and has called this congregation to serve Him in a unique way—challenging us to provide a Christ-centered, biblically energized witness to Colorado Springs and the surrounding area.
An abundance of people-oriented ministries and programs are provided here to meet human need in whatever form it takes.
Whatever your age or circumstance in life, we have a place for you in the family of God at First Presbyterian Church.
The doors of our Church and the doors of our hearts are open to you.
Blogging will help to develop sermons and classes
Now, a preacher will be able to post a sermon idea at the beginning of the week and have the congregation respond so that when he delivers the sermon he will have brought many along for the ride. They will be actively engaged in the process and be able to share ideas and thoughts. Soon a preacher that does not blog with his congregation will be out of touch and behind the pack. Just note: blogging will change how preaching is done!
St. Philip's Anglican Church hosted its first post-service match on Sunday, hoping to attract new members with a more hip program that included a two-match show with six local wrestlers, most of them Christians.
The colourfully clad wrestlers presented a WWE-style program complete with smackdowns and headlocks.
Many in the congregation of about 40 regular members find wrestling a natural fit with religion because of the theme of good versus evil.
We are a family of faith with a single purpose; we want to honor God.
The purpose of Faith Bible Chapel is to honor God by:
Acknowledging the Holy Spirit in all we do -
We value prayer and continually ask God to lead us in our planning. He shows us the needs of people, the opportunities for service to Him and gives us specific ideas to keep our church active and fresh. It is His church and we want Him to shepherd us all.
Bringing people to Jesus and to membership in His family -
We have been blessed by God. God loves us and will give us His life! We work to share the good news with our next door neighbors and with people around the world. We want to be a blessing to others and to help people find a relationship with Him for themselves.
Celebrating His presence through worship -
It is refreshing and energizing to express joyful praise to God together. We encourage active participation in singing and other expressions of worship to God as a key part of each of our meetings as a church family.
Developing people into Christ-like maturity through the Word of God -
The highest goal for a person is to grow continually into the character of God Who made us to be like Himself. We study the Bible for practical advice on how to continue to change so that we fulfill His purposes more completely. We want to be fresh in our experience of His life in us.
Equipping people for their ministry in the church and life mission in the world -
We each have unique gifts that we can offer to enrich the experience of God by every member of our church family. We share a common mission to reach others with a clear message of God's love and power so that they can enjoy being in God's family also. Training and opportunities for everyone to serve God actively are always present.
The leadership style that once dominated our culture is becoming passe. Instead of the Lone Ranger, we have Frodo: the Clint Eastwoods and Sylvester Stallones are replaced by ordinary men. Frodo, Aragorn and Neo (the Matrix) are self-questioning types who rely on those around them for strength, clarity and purpose. Indeed, while they have a sense of the need and a willingness to sacrifice themselves, they may not even know the first step on the journey.
I don't claim to have a full understanding of all of these transitions, but I am convinced that as one moves toward such an understanding, one begins to see that postmodernism is not merely an epistemological shift from objectivity to subjectivity, from reason to emotion, from certainty to probability. Much more is involved, more than I can relate here. But what I must note here is the fact that insofar as postmodernism is more than a shift in epistemology, it is not exactly a set of ideas that one can choose for or against. [Emphasis added.] The issue before us is not whether or not we agree with postmodernism. That is like asking whether or not we agree with the year 2004. The question before us is the same question that faces Christians in every age: how should we then live? Given the fact of the postmodern cultural transitions of the last half-century, how should we live out our Christian faith? Answering this question will of course involve critically agreeing or disagreeing with the responses to our cultural context put forward by others, but it will also require serious self-criticism and a willingness to think creatively in directions not explored by Christians in previous eras. Doubtless, this is a task fraught with difficulty and danger, but I take it to be central to a life of faith that is lived out in truth and love in its actual context.
Woodmen Valley Chapel was founded in 1980 as a nondenominational, evangelical fellowship of believers.
Today, we strive to be an authentic community where people can experience God, be encouraged in their spiritual journey and empowered for service as they entrust a legacy to others. Located in northwest Colorado Springs--not far from the U.S. Air Force Academy--our campus highlights a spacious and modern worship center, designed in true local mountain style and surrounded by a 500-seat chapel and small prayer chapel. Our western architecture blends well with the backdrop of the rugged foothills of the Rocky Mountains' Front Range and majestic Pikes Peak. As we work together to become fully developed followers of Jesus Christ, Woodmen Valley Chapel strives to reach out to believers and non-believers who are single, couples, families or retired. Each weekend, we serve nearly 6,000 worshipers who attend one of the four services (one Saturday, two Sunday). A comprehensive education program is available for children of all ages on WVC's worship campus and in the spacious Windchime Center nearby.
Our strong global commitment sends many members of WVC and more than 10% of our budget to support God's work beyond the walls of the church. Our missionary partners are at work across the world in countries including South Africa, Russia and Brazil and include affiliations with such organizations as New Hope International, Habitat for Humanity and many others.
Woodmen Valley Chapel is a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) and the Willow Creek Association.
At Cherry Hills Community Church, we’re committed to serving the greater Denver community. And we’re a true community of Christian faith, including people from a variety of backgrounds—Presbyterian, Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal and those who are exploring Christianity for the first time.
It has been said that New Life Church is the smallest big church in the country.
Though we number 11,000, we are a close family. We don't just meet together on Sundays -- we spend the whole week together, too. Through small groups that meet all over the region, New Lifers get together each week to have meals, pray, study, play, and serve the city of Colorado Springs.
New Life Church services occur four times each weekend in our sanctuary, called the Living Room. Our weekend gatherings are our lifeblood -- they are more like a family reunion than a traditional church service. We worship God and study the Bible in a lively but relaxed atmosphere. We catch up with each other and talk and laugh. We take care of one another. We give life to one another, and we learn what it really means to be a church.
Betsy Hoffman's self-serving and phony warning about 'McCarthyism' at CU - in the middle of what should be an impartial investigation of Ward Churchill - was disgraceful.
But if the University of Colorado president needs a genuine case of discrimination at her school, here's one:
Studying with our head. Studying with our heart. Studying with our life. All three are essential approaches to Scripture if we are to preach the Bible for spiritual formation.For my preaching, I ususally begin meditating on the scripture passage. I quiet myself with a Taize style service, listening to music from Taize and John Michael Talbot. After quieting myself, I practice Lectio Divina with the text that I will be preaching from. I have found that this time often is the best time for me in my sermon preparation. There have been numerous times the Spirit has spoken to me through the word as I meditate on the text I am preaching. Sadly, I did not learn this in seminary. After this meaningful time, I turn to the mind and studying commentaries and asking further questions of the text. Following this, I create a mindmap of what I am going to say. For those of you who preach how do you prepare your sermons?
What music does: It makes listeners more optimistic, joyful, friendly, relaxed, and calm, and helps vanish feelings of pessimism and sadness.
But even those with serious concerns about the results of so many Christians bailing on church commitment see a potential silver lining in it--if, rather than just deciding that they don't like what church is, those leaving get serious about what they think it should be.
'I'm happy that people are asking the questions,' Hunter says. 'I'm sad that it is keeping them away from church.'
While 44 percent of respondents called themselves 'religious,' 35 percent said they are 'spiritual but not religious' and 18 percent said neither.
At Roanoke College, in Salem, Va., where he has been chaplain for more than 20 years, Paul Henrickson said he is quite familiar with the 'spiritual but not religious' phenomenon.
'You have a lot of kids that understand in their hearts that there is a mystery about life that is larger than they are and larger than they understand, and they would call that 'spiritual.' And they are very interested in that,' Henrickson said.
But, he added, 'they pursue that in private ways' and 'in kind of a shotgun approach. They'll look at all kinds of things from Eastern religions to yoga to New Age stuff to the standard Christianity. But they are unlikely to have that solid commitment to a religious institution (like) church membership.'
The survey's authors challenged American colleges and universities to be more responsive to the spiritual hunger of their students. They said previous studies have indicated older college students are disappointed with how infrequently they have been challenged to think about "meaning of life" issues in class.
Previous research by Chris Smith, a University of North Carolina sociologist and adviser to the UCLA study, found 13-17 year-olds are highly conventional in their religious practices, following how they were raised. But just 9 percent of the UCLA respondents said they felt compelled to follow their parents' religious practice. While 42 percent described themselves as "secure" in their spiritual and religious views, 10 percent said they were "doubting," 23 percent "seeking" and 15 percent "conflicted" (respondents could choose more than one response).
Christians tend to fall into two opposite and equally unhelpful responses to cultural expressions such as postmodernism. Some simply 'baptize' every new development. They jump on the latest bandwagon thinking that this is the way to stay relevant. Others 'demonize' what they see happening around them. In their estimation, the 'new' is always dangerous or evil, whereas the 'old' is safe and good.
I seek to promote a third response, critical engagement with culture. I believe that like the modernism that emerged from the Enlightenment the postmodern ethos is a mixed bag, containing much useful material, but also harboring certain potential pitfalls. Our task as Christians, therefore, is neither to hail the arrival of postmodernism as the savior of humankind nor to fight against it in the name of a return to modernism. Rather, our goal ought to be to understand how we can bring the gospel to postmodern people in ways that communicate meaningfully to them.
During a discussion following his lectures on preaching at Beeson Divinity School some time ago, Haddon Robinson expressed concern that, "The model for the preacher has changed. Up through the 1940's into the 50's — at least among evangelicals — the model for the preacher was the evangelist . . .
"In the late 50's and 60's, the model in many circles became the Bible teacher . . . [corresponding to the emergence of the Bible church movement]
"In the 80's to 90's, the model of the preacher (became) the therapist — the task of the preacher is to meet the needs of the converted people who are still secular . . . Sermons today are much more likely to be topical than expository . . . and many of the materials in the sermon come out of the behavioral sciences . . .
"The aim of most sermons today is not to explain the biblical text. The aim of most sermons is to connect with the listeners' felt needs . . . The Bible is used as a way to get a divine imprint on what is simply good advice."
The postmodern era rejects the idea of authority. For us to preach with authority, it is not by being an authority ourselves. It is by trusting in the authority of God to speak through the scriptures. We believe that scriptures are a means of grace whereby we can encounter the living God.
In the modern era, many preachers were enamored with their own reasoning ability. Many sermons, especially in mainline churches, only briefly touched on the scripture de jour. In the postmodern era, this will not be tolerated. Postmodern people want the real thing, not some preacher's essay on life. They crave to encounter the living God through the scriptures.
This suggests that the best of postmodern preaching will be expository in nature. Expository preaching explains the scripture and builds from there. The particular form of the sermon does not matter —logical presentation, story, drama or role playing. The important thing is that we allow the listener to be involved in the world of the text before we draw out the implications.
Worship is a furnace of transformation because it is there we learn to know Him who is beyond our knowing.
Unfaithful evangelical lifestyles are a blatant denial of Jesus’ Gospel. If the Gospel were merely the forgiveness of sins, then we could accept the Gospel and go on living in the same racist, adulterous, materialistic way. But if the Gospel is the Good News of the kingdom, as Jesus taught, and if that means that part of the Gospel is that right now a new redeemed community of transformed persons living in the power of the Holy Spirit is breaking into history, then whenever so-called Christians live like the world, their very lives are evidence against Jesus’ teaching that the kingdom is now breaking into history.
One of the greatest scandals today–at least as devastating as the “scandal of the evangelical mind” that Wheaton historian Mark Noll has lamented–is that vast numbers of evangelicals do not practice what they preach. The polling data is clear. “Gallup and Barna hand us survey after survey,” Michael Horton says, “demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered and sexually immoral as the world in general.” One wonders if the central evangelical belief in a new birth through personal faith in Christ who sends the Holy Spirit to transform us into the very image of Christ is really a farce, fraud or false promise.
Obsessed with cool. Trnedy. Impulsive. Self-focused. Caught up in the moment. Probably sounds like a description of some of the kids in your youth group.
But, actually, um....well...this is not an article about youth culture, or the world of today’s teenagers. This is an article about us—those of us in the youth ministry culture, those of us who work with teenagers—and how we seem to be sliding into an adolescent approach to our faith and mission. Look at our “must read" books, listen to our conversations, go to our seminars, and measure our values. Even a quick survey of the current youth ministry culture tells the story: we’re not just working with teenagers; we’re starting to think like them.
But why a class on U2, one of the world's most adored rock bands, at a conservative Christian college?
