God In The Wasteland

In the book Unfashionable, Tullian Tchividjian quotes David Wells and his hope for young evangelicals and the contemporary church:

"I want the evangelical church to be the church. I want it to embody a vibrant spirituality. I want the church to be an alternative to post-modern culture, not a mere echo of it. I want a church that is bold to be different and unafraid to be faithful,...a church that reflects an integral and undiminished confidence in the power of God's Word, a church that can find in the midst of our present cultural breakdown the opportunity to be God's people in a world that has abandoned God. To be the church in this way, it is also going to have to find in the coming generation, leaders who exemplify this hope for its future and who will devote themselves to seeing it realized...They will have to decline to spend themselves in the building of their own private kingdoms and refuse to be intimidated into giving the church less and other than what it needs....To succeed, they will have to be people of large vision, people of courage, people who have learned again what it means to live by the Word of God, and, most importantly, what it means to live before the Holy God of that Word."

This is a good word for us at New Life Church. We should strive to be the church that God desires His church to be and to live that out with a high view of God, regardless if it brings 'church growth'.

Do You Trust Me? No Really!

Probably one of the best chapters that I have ever read on Christian community is in chapter 11 (The Truthful Community) of unfashionable.

Tullian discusses the first of six ways that Paul addresses the church, as a whole, for living and putting on the new self in Ephesians 4.22-32. The first of these counter-cultural marks is truthfulness. He says,

"We should be a truthful community. We're to put off lies and fully embrace truth. Why is this such a crucial step in our witness to the world? Because we live in a trustless culture, and people are hungry for an alternative to that trustlessness. Few people trust anyone these days, and it's for good reason: too few people these days are trustworthy. We live in a perpetual state of suspicion, wondering whom we can really rely on."

He then goes on to quote Francis Fukuyama in his book, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity....

"every culture that has been able to advance its economy, achieve technical proficiency, and develop innovative organizations has been a culture where trust is entrenched in the society. Fukuyama argues compellingly that in comparison with low-trust societies that need to negotiate and often litigate rules and regulations, high-trust societies are able to minimize the cost of doing business and, as a result, advance culture to a high level."

"Why is this? Because every healthy, functioning community is built on trust--in your home, in your neighborhood, at work, or wherever relationships among people are critical. Cities, towns, villages, countries, and cultures are all dependent on trust to function properly. Take away trust and you take away community."

"That's because healthy community relies on people who invest in one another, serve one another, provide for one another, and defer to one another. Without this 'one-anotherness' genuine community cannot exist."

Do you SEE the dilemma? Do you SEE the opportunity?

It's in this area where the church can literally stand firm the strongest in this culture. If the secular community around is growing in paranoia, because they can't even genuinely trust those in their own homes, the religious community (the Church) should be able to humbly stand tall and be the trustworthy people that others can look to and rely on. Our yes should mean yes and our no should mean no.

We ought to stand out like a beacon in the dark-blinding night, as a community of Christians who hold to truth and embrace it with everything we have and live truth. Truth is what enables us to live in such a way that is pleasing to Christ and that is illuminating to the dark world around us.

The irony of the whole thing is this, even though this culture we live in is shunning truth, it's the one thing that they desperately need. They desperately need to embrace the truth of God's sovereignty over all things. They desperately need to embrace the truth that they have sinned against God. They desperately need to embrace the truth that He has provided a way for them to be right with Him. And they desperately need to embrace the truth that the way to be right with Him is through His Son Jesus Christ.

Will we be the ones to live truth in a truthless culture, so that others can find the ultimate Truth--Jesus Christ?

Let us be that kind of 'true' church--NLC!

Against The World, For The World!

Over the last few days I've been reading through unfashionable by Tullian. It's definitely an interesting read and it's aim is to communicate to the Christian that we are absolutely supposed to be in this world (John 17.15 & 18), as Jesus Himself prayed to the Father, but we are definitely not supposed to be acting or living like this world.

One of Tullian's main ways of describing this through the book is, "we're to be against the world, for the world." We are to be against the world, by the way we live for Christ, and by living this way we would actually give ourselves an opportunity to allow the world to see this Christian distinctiveness in us. Living against the world would also serve to our benefit for being a true witness of Christ and the gospel.

But he does take a sharp turn in the book when he starts addressing that the Great Commission is more than just leading people to Christ and making disciples, by being unfashionable. He says that the holistic approach to the Great Commission is 'cosmic renewal'. He quotes Michael Wittmer saying,

"the corrosive curse of sin rippled out to destroy the entire world: human society, the animal kingdom, and even the ground itself began groaning beneath the weight of sin."

And because of this act of cosmic treason against God it 'diseased all of God's creation', and because of this God is on a mission to redeem not just man, but all of creation to Himself.

Tullian adds,

"So while God's original plan for people to build an earthly culture for his glory may now be corrupted by our attempts to build an earthly culture for our glory (like another tower of Babel), the mandate itself remains intact."

That is the mandate for us 'to build an earthly culture for his glory'. So because of this 'cosmic redemption plan' of God, it's not only good news for the sinner, but in essence it is 'cosmic good news' as well for all of 'sin diseased' creation.

So as God redeems us, He then redeems us to do something and that something is to fulfill a cultural mandate that God established with Adam & Eve. This mandate is to continue until Christ returns by establishing a culture that brings Him glory.

It's been a little while since I've read Heaven by Randy Alcorn, but it does have a similar ring to it. When addressing the issue of everything being renewed not destroyed, he even quotes Alcorn, "We will be the same people made new and we will live on the same Earth made new."

I'm a little more than half way through the book and I'm looking forward to seeing him really bring everything together. In addition, I'm looking for specific ways and strategies that he has begun, in his own life and ministry, for this work of 'cosmic renewal'.

I've really enjoyed his emphasis on living counter-cultural and not for the sake of being an isolationist or even living the sin of self-righteousness, but so that the world could actually have something to look at and call it Christian and it actually be Christian.

How refreshing that would be in today's culture!

The Irrelevance Of Relevance

In chapter 2 of unfashionable by Tullian Tchividjian he writes that there is sort of an irrelevance to the whole trying to be relevant to our culture thing. Today's generation is 'yearning' for something greater than themselves and that churches are actually doing a disservice to themselves and to the gospel, by trying to be 'fashionable' and cool. He writes about the now generation,

"they want truthful engagement with historical and theological solidity that enables meaningful interaction with transcendant reality. They want desperately
to invest their lives in something worth dying for, not some here-today-gone-tomorrow fad. Just as people are starting to seek after truth, many churches are turning away from it. As a result these churches are losing their distinct identity as a people set apart to reach the world.

I have good news for all of us who are becoming weary of this pressure from church leaders to fit in with the world: we don't have to. "The ultimate factor in the church's engagement with society," Os Guinness says, "is the church's engagement to God." Contrary to what we've been hearing, our greatest need as twenty-first-century churches is not structural but spiritual. Our main problem is not that we're culturally out of touch; it's that we're theologically out of tune.

We need to remember that God has established his church as an alternative society, not to compete with or copy this world, but to offer a refreshing alternative to it."

So, New Life Church, we must not forget that eventhough we may be living our lives in a counter-cultural way, we are still called to actually engage the culture. To live lives that are different for Christ's sake, and yet, are attractive to the world that would peek in and take a look at your life.

Paul's exhortation to Titus is exactly this...Titus was to live and to teach those in his church to show themselves 'to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified', in order that the world may see this attractive living.

"but showing all good faith that they (the world) may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect." ~ Titus 2.10

"Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven."
~ Matthew 5.16

Unfashionable...

I just received my copy today of Tullian Tchividjian's (pronounced cha-vih-jin) new book unfashionable: making a difference in the world by being different.

I'm only a little familiar with Tullian and I really try not to be a 'bandwagon' kind of guy, but the title and subtitle peaked my curiosity enough to check it out and with the myriad of endorsements (and I'm not even kidding), I thought I would take it up and read.

Even before you arrive to the table of contents, he has a quote from Spurgeon that is probably where the title originated from....

"The great guide of the world is fashion and its god is respectability--two phantoms at which brave men laugh! How many of you look around to society to know what to do? You watch the general current and then float upon it! You study the popular breeze and shift your sails to suit it. True men do not so! You ask, "Is it fashionable? If it is fashionable, it must be done." Fashion is the law of multitudes, but it is nothing more than the common consent of fools."

- Charles Spurgeon

I'll let you know how it goes from here...