Be Radical

rad·i·cal

–adjective

1.of or going to the root or origin; fundamental: a radical difference.

2.thoroughgoing or extreme, esp. as regards change from accepted or traditional forms: a radical change in the policy of a company.

3.favoring drastic political, economic, or social reforms: radical ideas; radical and anarchistic ideologues.

4.forming a basis or foundation.

5.existing inherently in a thing or person: radical defects of character.

–noun

6.a person who holds or follows strong convictions or extreme principles; extremist.

7.a person who advocates fundamental political, economic, and social reforms by direct and often uncompromising methods.

Radical – it is an interesting word with many definitions, I took this off dictionary.com and cut off a number of them in order to more easily make the point I wanted in this post. When people think of radical, they often think of definitions 3, 6 and 7. But I find 1 and 4 very interesting. I do not often think as radical as basic, fundamental, getting to the root. But there it is.

Now if I apply this to the phrase one often hears, radical Christianity, I can think of getting back to basics (think the New Testament church in the Book of Acts) rather than being extreme.

And the irony of it is that if one were to seek to get back to this kind of Christianity, this kind of basics, one would be viewed in our culture as being extreme. Imagine living out your faith as the NT church did, praying, sharing, doing life in this fashion. Radical.

Go ahead.

Be radical.

It’s pretty basic.

A Simple Message

I guest blogged this post on Worldprayr a few days ago. I participated in an evangelism seminar at my church yesterday. I thought this was worthwhile posting again here in my own blog. Here goes.

The Gospel of our Lord is a very simple message, and incredibly powerful in its simplicity:

• Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead
  

There it is in ten words. See, simple, really. If you do not believe me, check out what the apostle Paul has to say:

• Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)
  

But in that message there is so much more we can say to those who do not know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

• for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (Romans 3:23)
  

Yes, that means all of us, no exceptions. All of us fall short of the mark. (The Greek word for sin hamartia, comes from the root meaning to miss the mark). I am no better than you, with or without Jesus in my life. I am a sinner, and so are you.

• For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)
  

Yes, we are all sinners and earn the wages of our sin, eternal separation from a holy and just God. As sinners we earn that payment in full. So far, the message is not too hopeful. But wait, there is more.

• But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
  

It is the divine escape clause. We cannot escape our sin, we cannot pay the penalty for it, but someone came who can. Jesus Christ.

• For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
  

And the Lord gives us eternal life, gives us salvation, as a free gift because He loves us so. He loves us enough to send His Son to die in our behalf. And if you truly accept him as your Savior, if you tell Him you know you are sinner deserving of eternal punishment, if you tell Him you believe Jesus died for you and rose from the grave as the only way to your salvation, this gift is yours forevermore.

• Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. (John 5:24)
  

No one can take form you what God has given you here. You have eternal assurance of eternal salvation. The gift of God cannot be shaken.

So you see it is a pretty simple message:

• Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead
  

It is a simple message. Coming from the despair of a sinful life to the hope brought by a Redeemer. Eternal salvation, eternally assured as a gift from God once you accept Jesus as the Savior of your life and the only way to eternal life. Ten words that pack the most meaningful punch that your life can ever experience.

If you want more, check out http://www.evantell.org/ for more on as clear gospel message, and http://www.act111.org/ for free on-line evangelism training to help you share the message.

If you have some time, here is a short video to watch:

Be In and Of the Body

Yesterday morning, both my wife and I were a bit under the weather. In an act of self-mercy (as well as being merciful to others) we stayed home and watched our church services via webcast at the 121 Community Church webcast.

It was good to be able to participate in the worship service, to be able to hear the weekly sermon, especially since the whole church the study Experiencing God over a nine week period. Basically, you do the daily devotionals, come to church on study and listen to a message grounded in what was covered that past week, and then over the upcoming week discuss both the personal and corporate reflections in a small group setting. And we are doing it 1st graders and up. A pretty cool thing to do. (By the way, we have some good sessions on evangelism coming next weekend.)

But while my wife and I got to participate via a webcast, it drove home one point with crystal clarity: for us, there is no substitute for worshiping in person in the body as the family of Christ. It was good to be part of a service yesterday, but it was not what we would have chosen to do otherwise. Although it opens an avenue to worship when events require other than traditional, in person attendance, there is nothing like the genuine article. To open our church to others who may not experience our worship services is a great thing, but I pray it brings people in to worship with us in person when circumstances allow, I pray it drives a hunger to do so whenever possible.

There is nothing that strengthens a personal walk with God like spending some time walking it with others:

"and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near."
Hebrews 10:24-25 (NASB)

It was a good reminder in this age of burgeoning social media, where we can stay "connected" to others as never before, how alone we can truly become if we do not exercise that part of us that requires us to be social beings, in concert and connection with others on an intensely personal level. Do not be lulloed into thinking thatany connection is as good as being with people; being with people in heart, in spirit and in body.

Be in the body as well as being of the body; especially as you try to be be in the world but not of it.

Following Jesus-Part IV

This is the last day of my posting about the session at Dallas Theological Seminary hosted by the Center for Christian Leadership entitled Following Jesus In a World Like Ours.

We have covered Assessing Ourselves in Our Cultural Climate, Engaging One Another in Community. and Engaging God in Worship. The final topic is Mark Young covering Engaging Our World in Missions. Dr. Young started with some basic statements:

• It is naive to think that as Christians, we can live outside of the culture around us
  
• That culture was created by people and we need to be more interested in people than in culture
• When we view culture as the enemy we withdraw from it or fight it. That moves us towards the fringes of the culture.

Young gave a definition of culture as a shared way of life designed to achieve a shared vision of common good with shared patterns of behaviors lived out through shared institutions. As such, culture is not intrinsically good or evil, but it is created by people who are by Christian definition sinful and depraved (that includes us as well). We have terminal values that are the idealized end state (i.e., independence) that are arrived at by practicing instrumental values (i.e., individualism). Culture needs to be looked at as a gift from God so we could live together and enjoy the world He created for us.

Young described the Bible not as a book about God, but one about God and humanity.Everything we know about God is through the lens of human interaction with the divine as revealed in Scripture. We need to understand that we are in the image of God, image as revealing and representing His creation.

How do we live in mission within the culture? We need to be right (tell the truth of God), relevant (tell it in a manner understandable within the culture) and redemptive (people have to want what we have in our relationship with God). Young pointed to 1 Peter 2:9-25 as the type of morally blameless, non-retaliatory, trusting and sacrificial living we need to engage in.

During the day, I had posed this question anonymously, and it was used to wrap up the session. With all that was covered today, what is the one key take away each speaker would have us leave with:

• Bock: Spiritual formation (conforming ourselves to image of Christ) is not enough; we need to help people we are called to love by bringing Christ to them.

• Bingham: Scripture is the basis from which all perspectives are to proceed out from.

• Jones: We need to be bi-lingual; speaking the languages of both tradition and culture.

• Young: seek to live good lives amongst non-believers, They may argue with you but they will see your good deeds and lives and God will be glorified by that.

I thoroughly enjoyed this seminar and what each speaker had to offer. I hope you enjoyed my meager summary thes epast four days.

Following Jesus-Part III

This is the third day of my posting about the session at Dallas Theological Seminary hosted by the Center for Christian Leadership entitled Following Jesus In a World Like Ours.

We have covered Assessing Ourselves in Our Cultural Climate and Engaging One Another in Community. Now, Barry Jones will take us through Engaging God in Worship. Dr. Jones began with a very basic premise: we worship God because He deserves it. Our worship has that one purpose but many consequences as you candle God's faithfulness against the faithlessness of people. Jones noted that as a culture we deal less with theological concepts of spirituality and more with psychic well being. We are interested as a culture with feeling good more than we are with feeling God.

Jones covered four acts in the drama of worship:

• Gathering: the coming together in worship and attending to God. We need to pay attention to God. We need to pay attention to what is said about God. The concept of lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi (The law of prayer is the law of belief is the law of life; or as the church prays and worships, so she beleives, so she lives life). We need to pay attention to the Christian past. Do not just ask is it relevant, ask if it is ancient, has it passed the test of time.

• Word: we need to recover a robust theology of preaching, to focus on the importance of the sermon. We need to make the Gospel the center of the sermon. We need to preach by naming the idols we follow after in life. Bold, robust preaching.

• Table: we need to reconsider the weight of history, to note the spiritual nourishment in partaking in the Lord's Supper, to counter the logic of consumerism, of giving to get. Our spirituality has to be holistic, embracing our minds and bodies.

• Sending: worship has to be at the heart of our missionary zeal. Worship that doesn't result in mission is abortive, it does not give life from the sending out of the church.

Jones concluded by noting that worship should lead to living transformed lives serving others in mission. Tomorrow I will wrap up with Engaging our World in Missions.

Following Jesus-Part II

Monday I got the chance to attend a really good session at Dallas Theological Seminary hosted by the Center for Christian Leadership. It was entitled Following Jesus In a World Like Ours.

Yesterday I posted on Assessing Ourselves in Our Cultural Climate. Today I will talk about Engaging One Another in Community. Jeff Bingham presented this portion of the session. Dr. Bingham started with some statements of what is necessary for us to be authentic Christians:

• Authentic worship requires us to be reconciled to each other within the community
• Authentic language about loving God demands loving relationships with each other
• Authentic devotional life requires honorable relationships within the community, especially that of marriage
• God did not create us to be alone with Him; He created us to be with Him in community

Bingham discussed that we have reduced community activities due to items such as television and computers making leisure and entertainment making it easy to go it alone; with suburbanization making it more difficult to get together. Bingham went on to descibe several false concepts of Christian community:

• Individualism: thought that it is not essential to be spiritually nurtured in a communal fashion
• Tribalism: a commmunity is adequate unto itself without interfacing with other communities
• Presentism:the community is perfectly governed and provided for in the present without connection to past Christianity
• Concertism:if you get people in same place witnessing same event, you have Christian community without regard for whether there is actual communal interaction

Bingham pointed to scripture to deal with these false concepts, most specifically 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 for the utilizing of different giftsd together in community; Romans 12:4-5 for the concept that believers gather together and complete each other and Ephesians 2:11-22 for a description of a new Christian community. Practical steps included:

• Enhancing the communal nature and frequency of the Lord's supper
• Adapting the communal identity before the individual identity
• Acknowledge that some of the most significant spiritual growth occurs in community and not all in an individual personal relationship
  
• Establish accountability with other communities including the Chrisitian past

Tomorrow we will discuss how to engage in worship.

Following Jesus-Part I

Monday I got the chance to attend a really good session at Dallas Theological Seminary hosted by the Center for Christian Leadership. It was entitled Following Jesus In a World Like Ours. I will attempt a couple of blog posts to cover the information discussed. Four main speakers, all on faculty at DTS: Darrell Bock, Jeff Bingham, Barry Jones and Mark Young. All did a great job presenting and were very accessible to participants after presentations and on breaks throughout the day.

Dr Bock opened things up with a session entitled Assessing Ourselves in Our Cultural Climate. He laid out a road map of the issues facing the church today, that the follow on presenters would address. Dr. Bock noted 5 main issues from his perspective:

• Post-modern relativism: an entitlement culture that extends all the way to things of God. Will come up against the concept of grace, which would define us as not entitled. No revelation from above, the creator-creature interaction is obliterated.

• Pluralism: there are no valid exclusivity claims by any religion. Bock saw people moving down one of two tracks here; either towards more fundamentalism within their respective religion or more secularism, with both blocs trying to impose their worldview on others. Bock saw three potential reactions: 1)Dig in-and hold your line, 2)Withdraw-and step out of the culture or 3)Engage-both to understand other viewpoints and explain yours.

• Personalized Globalism: distance between people is shrinking, more diverse people moving into our culture generating fear and uncertainty in how to engage. We have mor epersonal knowledge of cultural differences than before.

• Materialism: An oldie but a goodie. it has been around a long, long time. Keads to life being defined by possessions and an excessive individualism. Religion is reduced to a transaction or consumer product-what can God do for me?

• Omnipresent Technology: open and instant access to information at an emotive level with much multiprocessing.

Bock gave a brief idea on how to tackle these issues which he would sum up as engage, engage, engage. Don't shrink away, understand the person before you explain your position, look for a Gospel message that is trans-national to fit a globalizing culture, use technology and use God's gifts to serve.

That is a mouthful, I hope I got it right. More tomorrow, but you can see the issues to be addressed in following Jesus today are not insignificant.

The Next Generation

I recently read a journal post from two years ago that centered on the following verse:

And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me, Until I declare Your strength to this generation, Your power to all who are to come. Psalm 71:18 (NASB)

As I thought about it, about teaching the next generation, I realize this is something that God has put on my heart, sharing what I know with men and women coming up behind in the following generations.

Why teach? Why is it so important? What happens if we drop the ball on that particular duty? Another verse I think about often comes to mind:

All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel. Judges 2:10 (NASB)

This is when the problems of disobedience to God and the subsequent cursing started after the nation of Israel came into the promised land.

Why invest in our young? The church is only a generation away from fading out to almost nothing. The Lord will always protect a remnant in even the toughest of times, but don't we all want a flourishing and growing church, not a remnant?

My thanks to all that have picked up the cudgel and are beating away the darkness by teaching. What others sacrificed and served to do for us; we need to do for the next generation about the Lord.

The Steps of the Church

I was listening to a recent podcast from The Fermi Project and the speaker, Jim Wallis was talking about a crime that happened on the steps a church he knew the pastor of. It talked about whether the church is responsible for what happens on their steps. In this case, they said yes and began some street ministry that reduced violent crime amongst adolescents. They took what was happening right outside their doors and turned it into community outreach. It got me to thinking about the phrase "the steps of the church". Where are they, really?

You can think of the physical location, the actual steps leading out of the building the church is located in. But the building isn't the church; the body of Christ worshipping within the building is the church. So what or where are the steps of the church?

I think of the world outside of the body of Christ as residing on the steps of the church. If we are not walking out of the church, out of meeting just within the body, are we going out and being responsible for what is happening on our steps? We need to get into our neighborhood, our community, our nation, our world. Those are the steps of the church. Thinking of it that way makes it very personal for me: it is not just the steps of the church I attend; it becomes the steps of my church, the church that is within me.

I am going to be thinking a lot of what that means and what I need to do to get off my own personal church steps. I hope it makes you think as well.