the-malling-of-mission-may-june-2000

THIRD WORLD DISSENT | MESSAGE AND METHOD | IS WORSHIP A PRODUCT?

MODERN REFORMATION THE THE

Malling Mission: OF OF

How Suburban Values Control the Church Growth Movement VOLUME

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THE MALLING OF MISSION: How Suburban Values Control the Church Growth Movement

15 The Ethnocentricity of the American Church Growth Movement In Brazil, Nigeria, and many other parts of the two-thirds world, some brothers and sisters are singing an interesting new tune: “Keep American pragmatism and consumerism out of our churches!” by Michael Horton

20 The Techniques of Church Growth Much of the church growth literature ignores theology altogether and is entirely ignorant of the fact that God is the audience of worship as much as is the seeker.

Their unquestioned assumptions are that church is a business, and worship is a product. by D. G. Hart

28 How Christian Worship (Not Consumerist Worship) Forms a Missional Community The Church does not add bits of information to the piles of data people obtain elsewhere. Rather, liturgy, preaching and teaching convey the framework of faith in which everything else is to be understood. by Marva J. Dawn Plus: Growth Mentality That is Biblical

38 “Success” Under the Cross: The Example of the Persecuted Church in China The rapid growth in the Chinese church has been accompanied by bloodshed, imprisonment, and poverty. It should cause us to reevaluate how we tend to associate faithfulness with cultural approval. by Jonathan Chao COVER PHOTO BY PHOTODISC

In This Issue page 2 | Letters page 3 | Ex Auditu page 6 | Speaking of page 11 | Between the Times page 12 Resource Center page 26 | Free Space with Bill Hull page 44 | Reviews page 47 | On My Mind page 52 M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 0 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1

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The Church Growth Movement

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief

Dr. Michael Horton Executive Editor

Benjamin E. Sasse Vice President

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very MR reader knows that we yearn for the growth of the Church. More

Diana S. Frazier Assistant Editor

Ann Henderson Hart

importantly, we are concerned about the eternal welfare of our neighbors. We believe that all of humanity is united with Adam in sin, and thus, that union with

Christ in his sinless life, atoning death, and justifying resurrection is the only hope for salvation. Theology exists for mission—“the ministry of reconciliation”—and not as a hobby for the intellectually inclined.

But saying that we long for church growth doesn’t mean that we are no longer obligated to evaluate the methods offered as means to the end. As this issue’s title reveals, we are skeptical about the church growth movement—and we refuse to have to choose between this movement and inaction. Even the names applied to the last two decades’ explosion of suburban, market-driven congregations signal that context is remaking the message as much as the converse: “megachurch,” “next church,” “full-service church,” “new paradigm church,” “seven-daya-week church,” “pragmatic church,” “shopping-mall church,” “seeker church.” To suggest that these are merely methods and not theological moves appears to us naïve.

Clearly the majority of these congregations are motivated by a noble desire to take the message of Christ to unchurched Americans. But just as clearly, the majority of these entrepreneurial leaders have been unwilling to engage self-critically with the Church across the ages to clarify exactly what the message of Christ actually is. We recognize that this sounds harsh.

Nonetheless, having been to a Willow Creek service where the “sermon” consisted of an inspiring nature video and the distribution of beautiful volcanic rocks to the “audience,” I can testify that, at least occasionally, the message of Christ and him crucified is entirely absent. Through Christ, “unchurched Harry and Mary” (as Willow Creek refers to unbelievers) might be reconciled to the Next Issue Creator, but apart from The Covenant the God-Man, the of Grace Creator is only a

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Production Editor

Irene H. DeLong Book Review Editor

Dr. Mark R. Talbot Column Editor

terrifying Judge to fallen human beings— whether awakened to some nebulous “spirituality” or not.

At the end of the day, the first problem of unbelief in our world, according to the fullservice megachurches, is not the human heart, but rather that traditional Word-andSacrament churches have been culturally irrelevant, subscale, unsophisticated in their marketing, and—worst of all—boring. If you read the growth literature (as we’ve been doing), churches are repeatedly instructed to imitate business. If congregations are to effectively “market” to the Baby Boomer demographic, they must ruthlessly reevaluate: “What is our business? Who is our customer?

What does the customer consider value?”

(This quote from management guru Peter Drucker hangs over Willow Creek pastor Bill Hybels’s desk and has become a mantra for the movement.)

Though we value church growth—no, because we value it, and because growth comes through the unadulterated proclamation of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments (that is, by supernatural rather than natural means)—we must dissent.

Marketing methodology, generational segregation, and the exaltation of “choice” are idols in our age; they must be challenged, not brought into the Church and baptized. We recognize many within this movement as brothers and sisters based on their confession of Christ, and we rejoice over any lost sheep that hear a bit of “Gospel” through these enterprises. But our prayer is that they would recognize that the Church is Christ’s bride, not our entrepreneurial project.

Brian Lee Copy Editor

Alyson S. Platt Layout and Design

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Kathryn Baldino Marketing Assistant

John J. McClure Alliance Council

The Rev. Alistair Begg Dr. James M. Boice Dr. W. Robert Godfrey Dr. John D. Hannah Dr. Michael Horton Mrs. Rosemary Jensen The Rev. Ken Jones Dr. J. A. O. Preus Dr. Rod Rosenbladt Dr. R. C. Sproul Dr. Mark R. Talbot Dr. Gene E. Veith, Jr. Contributing Scholars

Dr. Allen C. Guelzo Dr. D. G. Hart Dr. Carl F. H. Henry Dr. Arthur A. Just Dr. Robert Kolb The Rev. Donald Matzat Dr. John W. Montgomery Mr. John Muether Dr. Richard A. Muller Mr. Kenneth A. Myers Dr. Tom J. Nettles Dr. Leonard R. Payton Dr. Lawrence R. Rast Dr. Kim Riddlebarger Mr. Rick Ritchie Dr. David P. Scaer Dr. Rachel S. Stahle Dr. David F. Wells Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

© 2000 All rights reserved. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the church, amidst our dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the Reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship and life.

For more information, call or write us at: Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals 1716 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 546-3696 ModRef@Alliance Net.org www.AllianceNet.org ISSN-1076-7169

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Editors’ Reply We are persuaded. The November/December issue will be devoted to preaching.

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Worship in Our Age: New Psalms, Stapled Foreheads Little can be added to W. Robert Godfrey’s We Wish For … More Debate about Preaching excellent article on the Psalms Thanks for the exchanges in your letters’ section (November/December), which encourages a on preaching. You have put a name on the “type” greater use of them in the regular worship of the of preaching I have been yearning to hear: church. In early Reformed worship, the Psalms “Redemptive Historical.” Yes, that is true Gospel enjoyed a near monopoly on what was sung during preaching! Your explanation was absolutely the services. This was then carried over into beautiful. Maybe I haven’t just been dreaming all America by the Puritans. these years.

The Lutheran experience was somewhat Before reading this, I was continually asking different. Since a rich tradition of hymnody began myself: Why can’t preachers just preach Christ, and with Luther who wrote hymns to correspond to cut out most of the social lecturing? Everyone (but not replace) parts of the Latin liturgy, the role wonders why their churches are dying, and why of the Psalms in Lutheran worship is less obvious. there are no young people in them…. If we had a Today standard Lutheran hymnals do not contain few men who would preach the Second Adam, the the entire Psalter, but this may be rectified in an One they named Jesus, God would bring true anticipated new hymnal for the Lutheran revival.

Church—Missouri Synod. Psalms are, however, T. B. part of Lutheran worship, even though I suspect Granger, Washington that most of the congregation would be hard put to recognize that they were ou have put a name on the “type” of preaching I have been yearning to hear: singing or hearing Psalms— as they are often embedded “Redemptive Historical.” in the liturgy without clear identification.…

After reading the recent exchanges over Godfrey helpfully mentions the inspired songs preaching in your pages, I am wondering if a future of the Book of Revelation which mark the new era issue that addressed application in preaching might of salvation which has come in Christ. Add to the be appreciated. Perhaps articles by Horton, Jay church’s “new psalms”: Mary’s Magnificat (“My Adams, Tim Keller, etc. might illustrate the soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit doth significant differences and similarities in various rejoice in God my Savior,” Luke 1:46-55); Reformed camps. In addition, sample sermons or Zechariah’s Benedictus (“Blessed be the Lord God selections of sermons by Luther, some other of Israel,” Luke 1:68-79); and Simeon’s Nunc Lutherans, Calvin, Vos, Spurgeon, Lloyd-Jones, Dimittis (“Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant etc., might prove beneficial. depart in peace,” Luke 2:29-32). For Lutherans, Eric Landry along with the Psalms, the Magnificat is standard Escondido, CA in Vespers and the Benedictus at Matins. Luther

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inserted the Nunc Dimittis at the conclusion of the reception of the Holy Communion. People who have received Christ in the Sacrament have seen God’s glory. Churches joining in a Christological understanding of the Psalms are providing a living expression of the unity which Christians share in Christ, the psalmist, and one another….

David P. Scaer Chair of Systematic Theology Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana

Thanks for a thoughtful and well-written magazine. I was particularly impressed with Professor Bryan Spinks’ astute observations on contemporary liturgical trends (November/December). I am tempted to staple the article to the foreheads of several pastors in my diocese.

At the same time, the interview with Professor Gregory Boyd (September/October) on the “Openness of God” troubled me both theologically and philosophically. First of all, Boyd insists on a fundamentalist interpretation of those scriptural passages in which “change, potentiality and passion” are attributed to God, as if they were real attributes. Yet it no more follows from Genesis 6:6 that God is changeable than it does from Isaiah 40:10 or 53:1 that He has a body. Patristic,

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…Please accept my comments in the spirit of Christian inquiry.

Kevin G. Long, Ph.D., Director The Leonine Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies Arlington, Virginia

Thanks for the recent issue of MR on worship.

I have been teaching the worship course in the department of systematic and practical theology here at Reformed Theological Seminary for the past two years; your issue said just about everything that needed to be said.

Rev. Derek Thomas First Presbyterian Church, and Reformed Theological Seminary Jackson, Mississippi

American Worship of the Will I have always found it ironic that Western missionaries will spend much time discussing the syncretism of the people they work with (especially here in Africa). What is unnoticed is that they are often party to syncretism within their own culture. The “Openness of God” view (critiqued in your September/October issue) is a good example. American political values often influence American Christians much more than does Scripture. Witness the ere we stand and corporately confess our sinfulness (that is nothing new, I know), passion many devote to politics while remaining and then receive Absolution from the Lord through the pastor. It is like nothing we largely cool about theology.

The sayings of Rush have ever experienced.

Limbaugh are discussed at greater length in some circles than are the writings of the Apostle Paul.

The one Medieval, and Reformation theologians certainly philosophical assumption shared by almost all allowed for a metaphorical interpretation of such Americans is that they should have a right to passages, especially when a more literal reading determine their own future. Anything else simply would compromise God’s immateriality, eternity, would not be “fair.” Americans have been raised immutability, providence, etc…. with the “one man, one vote” and “self-made man” Secondly, Prof. Boyd rightly rejects the ideals—and many fail to recognize that these “classical view” in which divine providence negates values are more specifically American than biblical. free will, but replaces it with the equally These values are seen as absolutes, and it is by problematic doctrine that free will negates divine them that Scripture is interpreted—rather than the providence. Have not St. Augustine and others other way around. It is out of the need to claim proposed another option which preserves both? If human independence from God and to be in so, should it not be considered as an alternative to ultimate control of one’s own destiny that one feels both “classical” and “open” theism? the need to demonstrate that God doesn’t know

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the future. The belief that man has a free will is largely a myth stemming from the philosophy of the enlightenment and nurtured in American individualism. The notion that the will of a fallen man could still be entirely free is ultimately syncretistic.

Only when we can decide if we will be born, only when we decide when we are born (which period of time), only when we choose whether we are male or female, in which country/ society/language we are born, to which family we are born, only when we choose how our family will raise us and what types of experiences we will have, only when we can choose to be born into a Christian family—only then can we really speak of having complete freedom….

We as people are influenced by our culture. Only after we realize this can we begin to allow Scripture to challenge our assumptions, rather than our assumptions determining our reading of Scripture.

Leon Beachy Asmara, Eritrea, Africa

The Road to Wittenberg I write to express my appreciation for MR, and for the inclusion of articles that allow “Wittenberg” to speak. Some of the pieces have reflected my own journey from dispensational Baptist roots to Lutheranism.

It is so beautiful to be connected to the classical liturgy and the chanted Psalms. The “low churches” seem forever simply to follow by several years the entertainment standards of the world.

Moreover, I had always wondered if the Eucharist was really “merely” symbolic. Finally, I decided with Luther that it was better to err on the side of taking the Bible too literally rather than not literally enough. I can’t fully explain it, but taking weekly Communion has helped emotionally as I care for a parent with dementia.

In my upbringing, Moody, Scofield, and Spurgeon (all worthy men) were the gods of the church pantheon. But I wondered about the previous eighteen centuries. Were all consigned to hell because they didn’t baptize only believers or have a dispensational theology? Thanks for helping connect laypeople with the comfort from some of the earlier lights.

D. L. Lebanon, Pennsylvania

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As there is not a theologically conservative Reformed Church within forty miles of our home, my wife and I have recently begun attending an LCMS congregation in our town. Here we stand and corporately confess our sinfulness (that is nothing new, I know), and then receive Absolution from the Lord through the pastor. It is like nothing we have ever experienced. May God continue to bless all that you do.

K. E. Via Internet

MR the Web-zine Thank you for placing back issues of MR on your website [www.alliancenet.org]. There are many visually impaired people, like myself, who have long depended on cassette tapes. Now with the internet and some computer software that reads to me, I can access additional materials. I realize that you probably did not have this in mind when you placed back issues on the web, but God allowed you to help fulfill the prayers of a hungry disciple.

T. M. Via Email

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I Corinthians 15:14

The Meaning of Christ’s Resurrection

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mong the evils which threatened the life of the church at Corinth (and to correct

triumphant solution. It seems to me we can set for ourselves which was Paul’s chief end in writing this epistle) were certain doubts and errors no more appropriate or profitable task this Easter day on the subject of the resurrection. Evidently Paul attributed to these very great than at the hand of the apostle to trace the inner importance. You can infer this from the fact that in nexus of our Christian faith dealing with the various abnormal conditions in the with the resurrection of church, he reserves the treatment of this particular Christ.

If the observance by From evil for the close of the epistle. He wanted the the church of special seasons GEERHARDUS VOS impression of what he had to say on this point to be associated with the great the final and most lasting impression left upon the epochs in the work of minds of the Corinthians. All the other problems redemption is to be justified concerning such matters as divisions and at all, it can be justified on no Professor partisanship, the relapse into pagan modes of living, higher ground than that such Princeton Theological marriages between believers and unbelievers— seasons as Christmas and Seminary 1893–1932 Easter and Pentecost invite us important though they were in themselves— to rise for a moment from the belonged after all to the periphery, the outcome, poor fragmentariness of our not the root and center of Christianity.

But with the resurrection, it was a totally average consciousness of salvation to that clearer different matter. Here the heart, the core, the very and more blessed vision whereby as from a foundation and substance of the Christian faith mountaintop we span the entire origin of our faith. were at stake. Paul felt that if on this vital point a Everything belongs to us of right, brethren, because serious departure from the truth were allowed to we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s; but we are develop itself unhindered, then sooner or later, by consciously rich insofar only as we learn to place the inexorable law of organic disease, the whole ourselves at least sometimes on those points of body was doomed to destruction. Thus, and thus elevation from which we may survey the land of only, can we explain the intensely earnest, careful, God’s promises as a whole. Perhaps we do not thoroughgoing manner in which the apostle sufficiently appreciate the extent to which the conducts the battle for this part of the Christian remembrance at stated seasons of these great facts position. Paul was so profoundly impressed with of the incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection, the vital character of this truth that no other the gift of the Spirit, has kept alive in the church the method of vindicating it could satisfy him than one spirit of true evangelical piety. I am sure we shall not by which it was placed in the center of the have meditated upon the words in vain if our Christian religion and all the light that streamed meditation leads us to realize in some measure how from its highest experiences and convictions entirely our holy religion stands or falls with the focused upon it. resurrection of Christ.

We may say Paul here exhibits the resurrection as that towards which everything in Christianity Resurrection and Justification tends; the goal in which all thinking and striving There are three trains of thought that I would and hoping of believers finds its perfect rest and like briefly to pursue with you. Let us ask in

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succession: what does the resurrection of Christ mean for our justification; what does it mean for our regeneration; what does it mean for our glorification? First of all then we observe that the resurrection stands for Paul in the center of the Gospel as a gospel of justification—of deliverance from the guilt of sin. To Paul the one religious question which overshadows in importance all others is the question: “How shall a sinful man become righteous in the sight of God?” Now if the resurrection of Christ had nothing to contribute towards the solution of this one stupendous problem, then (whatever significance in other connections might belong to it) it could scarcely be said to be of the heart of the Gospel. It would have to recede into the shadow of the cross. As a matter of fact, this frequently takes place in our minds when we think of the forgiveness of sins.

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elect; God justifies and none can condemn because it is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather that was raised from the dead (Rom. 8:33, 34). To speak in one’s heart despairingly, as if righteousness were still to be provided would be equivalent to saying: who shall ascend into heaven, viz., for the purpose of bringing Christ down to his life of suffering and humiliation; and who shall descend into the abyss, viz., for the purpose of bringing Christ up from the realm of death. The two things therefore on which righteousness depends are the descent of Christ from heaven to bear our sins and the resurrection.

Hence, “if thou shalt believe in thy heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9).

From all this, it is perfectly plain that we are not dealing here with an isolated form of representation, but with something that stood out in the apostle’s teaching as a fundamental truth on which o Paul the one religious question which overshadows in importance all others is: he dwelt repeatedly in the most various connections.

“How shall a sinful man become righteous in the sight of God?” We are therefore bound to That justification depends on the cross is one of put the question: “What is it that the resurrection the commonplaces of our evangelical belief; so contributes to our becoming righteous in the sight much so that we hardly deem it necessary to ask of God?” I think we can put the answer in the whether the resurrection perhaps may not have an simplest form by saying that the resurrection equally important bearing on this great concern of stands related to righteousness in the same way our souls with the righteousness of God. Now it that death stands related to sin. If we once clearly appears from these words of our text that to Paul understand what death meant to the apostle, then the resurrection is an absolutely necessary step in it will immediately become plain what the the work of atonement and justification. “If Christ resurrection of Christ meant to him. Death is a has not been raised,” he says to the Corinthians, word that looms large in the Pauline epistles. By “your faith is vain.” That is to say, your faith is no one perhaps has the terribleness of death been ineffective and worthless. And in which respect, so intensely realized as by the apostle. Death their faith would be ineffective and worthless on appears to him personified as a great enemy, a the supposition that Christ was not raised appears huge specter, casting its dreadful shadow over from the following words: “Ye are yet in your sins.” human existence, something that it is impossible It is justifying faith—faith in its connection with to become reconciled to, more horrible than any the forgiveness of sins—the efficacy of which is other shape or form to be encountered in the somehow bound up with the Savior’s resurrection. spiritual world. Now to what does death owe this “Ye are yet in your sins” means “ye are yet under the its unique terror in the mind of Paul? Is it simply condemnation of sin”; subject to the wrath of God; the inevitable aesthetic recoil from its exposed to eternal destruction. This appears still loathsomeness as a process of physical dissolution? more clearly from what the apostle straightway Or shall we say that the apostle shrinks from death adds: “Then they also which are fallen asleep in because of the strong, instinctive desire to live, as Christ have perished.” every living being shrinks from that which Nor is this the only place in the epistles of Paul threatens to cut short its existence? Both of these where the justification of the believer and the feelings are to a greater or lesser degree present in resurrection of Christ are joined together. the mind of every man. They were undoubtedly Elsewhere we read that our Christian faith, on present in the mind of Paul and colored to some which the imputation of righteousness depends, is extent his intense consciousness on the subject. in God as the one who raised Jesus our Lord from But they do not explain this consciousness the dead (Rom. 10:9). Christ was delivered for our exhaustively. In the apostle’s attitude towards sins; he was raised for our justification (Rom. 4:25). death, there is something more than this, Nobody can lay anything to the charge of God’s something different from this; there is an element

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of moral revulsion. Paul abhors and hates death because it is the wages—the penalty of sin.

Whatever else it might be, to him it appeared first of all as a minister of condemnation, the personified, incarnate sentence of God against sin. This is what death is when you strip it of all accidental features.

Death is the exponent of sin. Its sentence and penalty is one with which the criminality of sin ineffaceably stamps the sinner. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, and the law is nothing else than God himself personally confronting the transgressor and rendering judgment: “The soul that sinneth it shall die.”

Now if this be [the] significance of death in general, it follows that the death of Christ in particular must be interpreted on the same principle. Christ was made sin on our behalf.

When he assumed our guilt, it became inevitable that not merely some general form of suffering entailed by sin should fall on him, but that also the one great typical punishment of sin should be visited on him—that he should die. Though his whole life in the flesh was sin bearing from beginning to end, yet it was specifically in the cross and in the death that took place upon the cross that the condemnatory power of the law was concentrated on Christ. There it was made manifest that he had become sin for us, the curse incarnate. But if this be so, then the significance of the resurrection for the atoning work of Christ immediately springs into view. If the Savior’s death was the embodiment of the curse which rests upon the world, then so long as he remained under the power of death there could be no assurance that satisfaction had been rendered, the condemnation of the divine wrath removed. On the other hand, as soon as at any point the process of death is suspended and life permitted to emerge from death, this will be equivalent to a practical declaration on God’s part that the curse has exhausted itself, the penalty been paid. Now Christ’s bodily resurrection was the only way in which this could be impressively declared. As the curse laid upon him had assumed the visible form of separation between body and soul, it was necessary that in the same physical sphere, in the same palpable form, the divine absolution should be solemnly pronounced and placed on record. By raising Christ from death, God as the supreme Judge set his seal to the absolute perfection and completeness of his atoning work.

The resurrection is a public announcement to the world that the penalty of death has been borne by Christ to its bitter end and that in consequence the dominion of guilt has been broken, the curse annihilated forevermore.

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And all this was true of Christ not in his personal capacity so much but as our representative. We were concerned—you and I and all believers—in this momentous transaction.

The principle of our justification was given here as an accomplished fact. It is just as impossible that anyone for whom Christ rose from the dead should fail to receive the righteousness of God as it is that God should undo the resurrection of Christ itself.

Consequently, knowing ourselves one with Christ, we find in the resurrection the strongest possible assurance of pardon and peace. Brethren, when Christ rose on Easter morning he left behind him in the depths of the grave every one of our sins; there they remain buried from the sight of God so completely that even in the day of judgment they will not be able to rise up against us anymore. And not only is this true of the resurrection as an accomplished fact, it is true in an even higher sense of the risen Lord himself. The very life of the exalted Christ is a witness to the blessed reality of the forgiveness of our sins. In the living Savior Paul would have us by faith grasp our justification. In the same real sense in which on earth he was identified with our sin, he is now in his resurrection-life identified with our state of pardon and acceptance. According to the profound words of the apostle, we become the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor. 5:20) because he has become the righteousness of God for us.

Resurrection and Regeneration In the second place, the resurrection of Christ is of basal importance for the renewal of our life, for our regeneration and sanctification. We are all conscious that the creative, regenerating power which transforms our life, which expels sin and infuses holiness, proceeds from the Spirit of Christ.

And by this again Paul does not merely mean that in accordance with the Trinitarian constitution of the Godhead the Son sends the Spirit as his representative and agent to execute his task. The apostle clearly teaches that Christ as God-Man— as Mediator—in his exalted state has in a special, unique sense the disposal of the Spirit; inasmuch as the Spirit dwells in his own human nature and invests it with transcendent power and glory.

Christ is Lord of the Spirit; nay in even stronger language we say with Paul, Christ is the Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17). Now the point to be noticed for our present purpose is that this unique and close relationship between the Spirit and Christ dates from the moment of the resurrection. By the resurrection of the dead, he was effectually decreed to be the Son of God in power (Rom. 1:4). At the resurrection, he became the Second Adam who is a

life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). In still another form the same thought is expressed when Paul represents the glory of Christ as the source from which supernatural power is brought to bear upon the believer (2 Cor. 3:12). This glory of Christ again is none other than his resurrection-glory.

From various points of view therefore, the apostle teaches us that the resurrection of Christ, besides being the divine acknowledgment of his perfect righteousness, is also the fountainhead of all the renewing and quickening influences that descend from him to us. To preach a risen Christ means to preach a Gospel which claims to come with the demonstration of the Spirit and with power. It means to assume that this world is dead in trespasses and sins, that no word of persuasion, no force of example, no release from the body, in fact that nothing short of a new creation can give it life. Precisely here lies the point where the old apostolic Gospel of Paul and the modern moralizing interpretations of Christianity part ways. Because the modern world has ceased to take sin seriously, it has lost its sense for the necessity of the supernatural in the work of salvation; and to such a state of mind the message of the resurrection of Christ no longer appeals. At present it is believed by many who call themselves Christians that all that is necessary to reach a state of perfection is the self-evolution of the natural man. Now so far as purely inward processes are concerned this modern naturalistic spirit finds it easy to clothe itself in the old Christian forms and to retain the old Christian ways of speaking. But it will immediately rise up in protest when confronted with an intrusion of the supernatural in the external, physical sphere, such as the resurrection of the body. Need we wonder then that where Christians have begun to give ear to this seductive spirit, the doctrine of the resurrection should gradually have come to be regarded as a source of weakness rather than of strength? The conviction seems to be gaining ground that all practical ends of religion will be equally well served and a possible cause of offense removed by exchanging this doctrine for a simple belief in the immortality of the soul with reference both to Christ and believers. We may learn from Paul, brethren, that skepticism on this concrete point is symptomatic of infection with the poison of naturalism in the very heart of the Christian faith.

The most striking feature of Paul’s treatment of the resurrection here and elsewhere is that, far from representing it as an isolated fact, he makes it part of an organic work of renewal involving both the soul and the body of man. The resurrection is supernatural for no other reason than that from

beginning to end—in regeneration and sanctification, and in everything—the work of grace is supernatural in the most absolute sense of the word. According to Paul the same exceeding greatness of divine power is displayed in the production of spiritual life in the sinner’s soul as when God raised Christ from the dead and made him to sit at his right hand in heavenly places. The one is no more difficult to believe and no more essential to hold than the other. The great question for you and for me is not whether we shall believe or disbelieve the resurrection as a single historic event, but whether we shall maintain or surrender the character of Christianity as a resurrection-religion—a religion able to bring life out of death, both here and hereafter. Can the choice be difficult to any of us?

Resurrection and Glorification In the third place, let us very briefly observe that the resurrection of Christ is fundamental for our glorification. Ours is a religion whose center of gravity lies beyond the grave in the world to come.

The conviction that the Gospel is primarily intended to prepare man for a future life and that consequently neither its true nature can be understood nor its full glory appreciated unless it be placed in the light of eternity—this conviction broadly underlies the apostle’s reasoning both here and elsewhere. Christianity does many things for the present life, but if we wish to apprehend how much it can do, we must direct our gaze to the life beyond. What more eloquent expression of this feeling can be conceived than is found in immediate proximity to our text in the words: “If (nearing the end) we are such who have only hope in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable.” What else does this mean than that the Christian’s main thinking and feeling and striving revolve around the future state; and that, if this goal should prove to have no objective reality, the absoluteness with which the believer has staked everything in its attainment must make him appear in his delusion the most pitiable of all creatures.

What a gulf then lies between this statement of the apostle and the sentiment we sometimes meet with—that Christianity had better disencumber itself of all idle speculation about an uncertain future state and concentrate its energies upon the improvement of the present world. Paul could not have entertained such a sentiment for a moment because the thirst for the world to come was of the very substance of the religion of his heart. He felt deeply that the believer’s destiny and God’s purposes with reference to him transcend all limits of what this earthly life can possibly bring or

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possibly contain. Christ’s work for us extends even farther than the restoration of what sin has destroyed. If Christ placed us back there where Adam stood in his rectitude, without sins and without death, this would be unspeakable grace indeed, more than enough to make the Gospel a blessed word. But grace exceeds sin far more abundantly than all this: besides wiping out the last vestige of sin and its consequences, it opens up for us that higher world to whose threshold even the first Adam had not yet apprehended. And this is not a mere matter of degrees in blessedness, it is a difference between two modes of life; as heaven is high above the earth, by so much the condition of our future state will transcend those of the paradise of old.

It is for this reason that we know so little, and that even in the moments of greatest clearness of our spiritual vision we form such inadequate ideas of what awaits us hereafter. But, thanks be to God, in the resurrection of Christ for once the veil has been lifted. When Christ rose from the grave he rose as one whose human nature had been transformed into harmony with heavenly conditions. This was true not merely of his body, but of all the faculties and powers of his humanity hitherto exercised in humiliation and now set free and made fit for their perfect use in heavenly glory.

In this respect the resurrection of Christ is prophetic of that of all believers. As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man (1 Cor. 15:49). In the resurrection, therefore, we have the assurance that we ourselves also shall be made fit in our entire nature for our habitation in heaven. It is only by understanding this that we can understand the true significance of the resurrection of the body. Not that our bodies as such shall be restored to us is the great hope of the Christian, but that they shall be restored to us in such a state as to resemble the resurrection-body of Christ; that through them our spirits may dwell in perfect accord with their heavenly surroundings and may lead in its consummate form the life that knows no end.

In conclusion let us observe that these three aspects of the resurrection of Christ are not merely each for its own part fundamental, but are also, when taken together, a comprehensive summary of the Gospel which we are commissioned to preach.

Peace of conscience, renewal of life, and assurance of heaven: What more than this could we endeavor to bring to our fellowman? What less than this could we dare to offer them under the name of the Gospel?

As preachers of Christ and the resurrection, let us always remember to give due prominence to these three great things. Is there

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not a special satisfaction in being able to proclaim a Gospel that so completely covers the needs of a sinful world? “If Christ has not been raised—then is our preaching vain and vain the faith of all that hear us.” But now that Christ hath been raised from the dead and brought righteousness and life and heaven to light, now we can be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as we know that our labor is not in vain in the Lord.

Geerhardus Vos (Ph.D., Strausburg), 1862–1949, was a professor of biblical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Vos preached this sermon in Princeton Chapel on Easter, April 23, 1905, in Princeton, New Jersey. It was first published in Kerux: A Journal of Biblical-Theological Preaching, edited and published by James T. Dennison, Jr., 1131 Whispering Highlands Dr., Escondido, CA 92027.

Available: www.kerux.com Reprinted by permission of the Banner of Truth Trust.

Speaking of...

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f, in fact, what we witness today is the rise of the

“participatory congregation” the demand of laypeople to participate within them on their own terms— it seems reasonable to assume that congregations will adapt to conditions even more striking than those we have witnessed thus far. The “seeker church” already signals the rise of a multi-level religious community, a coexistence of “seekers” and “believers” in which there is creative dialogue between the two. In one reading of this newly evolved structure, it simply accelerates the pace of religious accommodation to the larger culture by institutionalizing a serious encounter between the religious and the secular.

Wade Clark Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion, 299.

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he new religious imagination [of the American 1960s] conceived of a church or temple that was egalitarian, concerned with subjectivity, driven by feeling rather than highly consistent doctrine, and it imagined a God who himself enjoyed rich subjectivity and was not very legalistic. This God was apparently also easy with pluralism, well aware that Americans are not likely ever to be very much alike in religion. That sixties God is pretty much the God that has been worshiped ever since in this corner of the world, whether by liberals or conservatives, Catholics, Protestants, or Jews.

Robert S. Ellwood, The Sixties Spiritual Awakening, 335.

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hese [church growth] churches are skillful with small groups, creating “a church of options” and offering a range of programs and ministries largely in response to a Boomer culture of choice and the wish to participate in hands-on activities. Groups and fellowship opportunities are organized largely on the basis of experience, life-situations, and interests. Efforts at playing down conformity and offering options for people to “create” their own religious styles within some boundaries are intentional.

Wade Clark Roof, Ibid., 95.

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t a March 12 party, Grace Evangelical Church of Redondo Beach, California celebrated its one-year anniversary as a particular congregation. In some ways, this level of specificity could appear a bit arbitrary to many bystanders.

Most of Grace’s nearly one hundred communicant members were formerly associated with its longextant forerunner body, North Redondo Chapel. But that difference—between “membership” and “association”—makes all the difference.

For it was one year ago, following a structured nine month process, that these parishioners became members of Grace Evangelical Church by formal profession of faith.

The older chapel had characterized itself as an “independent, interdenominational fellowship” and, like many evangelical bodies, had no membership or disciplinary structures.

The theology was largely dispensational, and meaningful interaction with the historic creeds and confessions of the Church was unheard of. Without realizing it, says veteran pastor Greg Bero, “Many of us were borderline heretics.

We didn’t sufficiently understand the faith.”

An awareness of the problem developed slowly at first, as Bero and others began to read Reformed literature. Finding themselves overwhelmed by “the pageantry of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection,” they sought ways to “elevate the Word and engage the sacraments in the worship service,” Bero recalls. There was a realization that ministers “don’t have to try to entertain.”

But a new soteriology had other consequences as well. Bero says that it quickly became apparent that “our eschatology and ecclesiology” were due for a review. “People began to understand that we are not alone; we are part of the historic Christian church.”

Starting with the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the definition of Chalcedon, many of the students began to discover that “these creeds protect us.

They were hammered out by faithful men, and they are trustworthy. They are guideposts for our theology and life. What we teach and preach is not novel. It

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has historical roots.”

Various creeds and confessions were thus introduced into the service, usually recited corporately following a brief introduction on why each of them had been adopted historically.

With the contagious grin of a native Californian, Bero remembers the tension of those early days: “The first few times, it was bit awkward, just trying to read them together.” But once the cadence was mastered, the minister began to notice that many of those reared at the beach—those that marketing experts insist yearn for even more individualistic selfexpression—were “tearing up at this point in the service.

They were realizing that we are not alone…. [The creeds] provided a platform for us, for digging more deeply into our faith. Months later, when we went through confessions we had studied previously [in their rotational system], we realized that we understood more and better than we had the first time.”

Not every moment was this blissful, of course.

Many left the body during

the self-conscious move toward more intentional submission to the Church universal. And those who remained faced difficult work. “We couldn’t just join the Presbyterian Church in America,” Bero jokes. “We were—and are—beginners.

We’re not ashamed to admit that this is ‘incremental.’

We are still working through many things.”

That process began with nine months of discussion and teaching. Pastoral visitation was increased, and the liturgy itself was consciously used as a pedagogue. People began reading more and listening to certain tapes and radio programs. Candidates for elder and deacon traveled together to “the Californiabased Growing Reformed Churches conferences as well as to conferences by R. C. Sproul.” These activities themselves could be daunting: “Reformed folk can be pretty intimidating. We had to learn a whole new vocabulary; learning theology is like learning a new language.” And, not

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surprisingly, “we’ve had people go through the ‘cage stage,’ where they are just a little too zealous” to convert everyone they encounter.

While there are issues yet to work through, the change thus far is radical: Communicants formally joining and submitting to the church; four elders and two deacons trained for their offices; and the body as a whole selfconsciously studying the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, as well as the “Prove It! [from Scripture]” catechism with their children. “We are admonished by Scripture not to be like waves … groping and racing after every new movement and fad…. We have found that doctrine brings stability to the body.

ÍThis spring’s rioting in Nigeria has destroyed many churches and left a significant number of Reformed ministers and their families homeless.

The tumult—which has often and inaccurately been described by Western news agencies as “Christian vs. Muslim”—was largely the result of a Muslim rebellion against the current government. A fund has been established to assist the displaced ministers and congregations in the town of Kaduna. Checks, with “Antiev” marked on the memo line, can be sent to: Trinity Presbyterian Church, 940 E. Valley Parkway, Suite G,

Rome, Surveys, and Sexuality

R Truth does indeed divide, but truth also unites. And unity around the truth protects us from a shallow unity centered on [personality].”

Even this party at the Portofino Inn communicated that things were different here. Wine and dancing previously wouldn’t have been part of this community’s festivities. “We used to have a bit of a Gnostic impulse,” Bero admits. “But we have been freed.”

oman Catholics continue to debate the significance of a recent Kansas City Star investigative report arguing that Catholic clergy are twice as likely as the general population to be gay, and nearly four times as likely to die of an AIDS-related illness. The newspaper’s study used two types of primary evidence: death certificates and survey data.

The dispute centers on the relevance of the survey results. A random sample of 3,000 priests—out of the 46,000 nationwide—was contacted by the paper. Of those who responded to the questionnaire, 15% claimed to be homosexual and an

Escondido, CA 92025. Í“Third Millennium Teens,” a recent report by Barna Research, warns that Christian commitment will decrease in the next decade—qualitatively even if not quantitatively. The study of teens from across the nation demonstrates that, while the younger generation is as likely as their parents to define themselves as “Christian” (80%) and as “born again” (44%), they are less exclusively committed to Christianity (26%) and much less likely to regard church membership as important. ÍBrant Gustavson, president of the National Religious Broadcasters

(NRB) association, is claiming victory for his member organizations after a recent fight with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the definition of “educational programming.” The FCC voted 3 to 2 late last year that TV stations holding “noncommercial educational licenses” would soon be required to broadcast at least 50% “educational, instructional, and cultural” material. Excluded from this category, the commissioners advised, was “programming primarily devoted to religious exhortation, proselytizing or statements of personally held religious views,” such as most church services. Now,

Ray Earley (center) celebrates the one year anniversary of Grace Evangelical Church with Augie and Pattie Mendez.

additional 5% bisexual. (Of all the highly disputed studies of homosexuality in the general population, very few have placed the overall percentage anywhere near even 10%.) The problem with extrapolating from this data about the Catholic clergy at large, critics charge, is that only 27% of those contacted responded, and those wanting to highlight homosexuality in the church body would probably be those most likely to cooperate. Both the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Vatican have repeatedly refused comment on the study; questions are referred to local bishops.

after significant outcry from NRB listeners and others, however, the FCC has overturned its ruling, 4 to 1. ÍCampus Crusade for Christ, which governs The King’s College in New York City, is discussing plans to roll out a number of evangelical colleges in urban centers, according to Friedhelm Radandt, president of King’s. The school, founded in 1938, was forced to close for financial reasons in 1994.

Bill Bright’s organization acquired the defunct Westchester County (NY) college in 1997 and moved it to the Empire State Building, beginning classes last fall.

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T H E M A L L I N G O F M I S S I O N | How Suburban Values Control the Church Growth Movement

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Ethnocentricity of the

American Church Growth Movement n October of 1999, a group of missiologists, missionaries, and church leaders gathered in Brazil for an important event sponsored by the World Evangelical Fellowship, based in Singapore. These leaders from fifty-three countries, many of them from the two-thirds world, rallied to the cause of world mission—but with a somewhat surprising twist. As Christianity Today editor David Neff reported, attention came to focus on the criticism of North American paternalism (December 6, 1999). And the form of that paternalism?

Pragmatic marketing paradigms, among others.

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As Neff reports, Peruvian missiologist Samuel Escobar went after the “management missiology” whose “distinctive note … is to reduce Christian mission to a manageable enterprise.” “Escobar called this statistical approach ‘anti-theological’ and said it ‘has no theological or pastoral resources to cope with the suffering and persecution involved because it is geared to provide guaranteed success.” He was not alone, as Neff’s report observes. “Joseph D’Souza, chair of the All India Christian Council, also indicted missiological trends that ‘have tended to turn communication [of the Gospel] into a technique where we market a product called “salvation.” The consumer is the sinner and the marketer is the missionary.’”

Frustration was expressed concerning the obsession with quantifiable success, where crusades, marketing, and other campaign blitzes were expected to usher in the consummation by the year 2000. But American strategists are not apparently shaken in their confidence. Steve Hoke of Church Resource Ministries responded with a familiar refrain, “If all truth is God’s truth, we can borrow principles from marketing. Jesus was very felt-need-oriented in his approach.”

The fruit of the meeting’s reflections was the Iguassu Affirmation. The statement is divided into the following sections: a preamble, which explains the occasion of the declaration; declarations, which include “the absolute authority of the God-breathed Scriptures,” acknowledging, “We are heirs of the great Christian confessions handed down to us.”

Also emphasized in this section is the triune action in creation, redemption, and final restoration. The third section sets forth the key affirmations necessary in our time: the lordship of Christ over the world and his Church, his status as “the unique revelation of God and the only Savior of the world,” and the need to proclaim the Gospel and apply it to the wide range of human needs. The real business of spiritual warfare, which has often been sidelined by more sensational approaches, involves opposition to the spread of the Gospel, which brings suffering to the faithful Church.

Commitments in the Affirmation he next section is most relevant to our purposes in this article: Commitments. After stating the trinitarian foundation of mission, the statement declares, “We confess that our biblical and theological reflection has sometimes been shallow and inadequate. We also confess that we have frequently been selective in our use of texts rather than being faithful to the whole revelation. We commit ourselves to engage in renewed biblical and theological studies shaped by mission,

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and to pursue a missiology and practice shaped by God’s Word, brought to life and light by the Holy Spirit.” Sensitivity to diverse cultures is emphasized, while rejecting the adequacy of religious pluralism; an emphasis on spiritual warfare has too often sidelined the real issue of sin and grace.

Further, “We are grateful for many helpful insights gained from the social sciences. We are concerned that these should be subject to the authority of Scripture. Therefore we call for a healthy critique of mission theories that depend heavily on marketing concepts and missiology by objectives.” It is no wonder that the commitments, therefore, would also include a paragraph on “The Cross and Suffering” and that there would be a complaint that “Inadequate theology, especially in respect to the doctrine of the church …” has inhibited missions.

Having been a part of a similar gathering of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, with similar concerns, issuing a similar statement (viz., the 1996 Cambridge Declaration), I was particularly intrigued by the fact that two-thirds world missiological sentiment appears to be far more self-critical than North American Evangelicalism. Our concerns have been somewhat marginalized, while much of the same thinking appears to be emerging out of a quite different context. In my own limited missions experience and travel to two-thirds world churches, I have seen this played out time and time again, with the clear sentiment expressed, “Keep American pragmatism and consumerism out of our churches!”

All of this has led me increasingly to think that many of the movements in American Evangelicalism—especially those purporting to be multicultural and outreach-minded—are actually promoting and exporting a curiously sectarian and ethnocentric religion. No wonder my Reformed and Presbyterian brothers and sisters in rapidly growing churches in Nigeria, Brazil, and China complain of American paternalism.

A related example may serve to illustrate the point. At the most recent Lambeth Conference, the Anglican communion’s gathering of bishops every ten years or so in Canterbury, England, the irrepressible Bishop John Spong of Newark, New Jersey, vanguard of radical liberalism, accused the African bishops (who are, generally speaking, far more theologically conservative than their European and American counterparts) of being just a step removed from animism, after all. That explains their belief in “superstition” (i.e., God, sin, salvation, the resurrection, etc.). The outcry against his remarks required Spong to apologize for his racism and cultural insensitivity. What the African bishops were really after, however, was Spong’s repentance for having rejected Christianity in pulpit and print.

But can we really compare Spong’s liberalism, a blander version of which has made two-thirds world bishops consider schism from the Anglican communion, to the church growth movement? To be sure, there are certain important differences.

For instance, few American evangelicals would explicitly reject the authority of Scripture or its supernatural claims. (In fact, many would add to both considerably!) But when evangelical George Barna, for instance, tells us that the key principle of Christian communication is that “the audience, not the message is sovereign,” aren’t we really dealing methodologically with the same idea as theologian Paul Tillich’s “method of correlation,” in which the world determines the questions and Scripture (perhaps) gives its answers? Hasn’t much of modern theology argued, at least methodologically, along the “felt needs” approach to outreach?

Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, is the Anglican theological college of Oxford University and during my residence there as a Ph.D. student I witnessed this tension firsthand. Visiting two-thirds world scholars and ministers were predictably more committed to orthodoxy than their homegrown counterparts. They were also typically more committed to sticking to the liturgy, questioning “experiments” in contemporary liturgies whose ostensible purpose was to encourage multiculturalism and diversity. The only diversity present, according to many of these brothers and sisters, was a distinctly Anglo-American diversity. For the most part, they saw the latter as giving up the centuries-old and transcultural pattern of unity in worship for a mess of pottage.

In my present teaching position at Westminster Seminary, California, my contact with Nigerian students has reinforced this experience. Through the enormous missionary activity of the Christian Reformed Church in North America (and more recently, that of missiologists Timothy and Dorothy Monsma, now at the seminary), God has raised up a Reformed church there that is rapidly surpassing the number of North American Reformed believers in communicant membership.

But the success is as deep as it is wide. Nigerian students are surprised by the extent to which the Reformed churches here have traded their rich liturgical, ecclesiological, and in many cases doctrinal heritage for a distinctively American identity shaped by American revivalism. In their home churches, enormous growth coincides with rigorous demands in terms of church membership, especially catechesis. They complain that American sister churches tend to be undermined in their Word-and-Sacrament ministry by playing to consumerism and pragmatism.

All of This ut is this coincidence of growth and rigorous commitment to theologically driven patterns merely a two-thirds world phenomenon?

Not at all. Again, I can appeal to my own experience. About five years ago, Rev. Kim Riddlebarger and I planted a church in Anaheim, California, which quickly became a refuge for a rising generation of over-stereotyped Gen-X’ers and a fair number of older groupings (yes, even Boomers). They are tired of being segmented out, as they are in every other area of life, as a market niche. They like learning the faith while sitting next to older folks who have “fought the good fight” even though they, too, felt like giving up at times. Most of them fairly new converts, with great zeal for reaching out to unbelievers, these folks joined other generations in forming a community centered on Christ. Our technique was a rather simple Word-and-Sacrament ministry, including discipline (viz., elders visiting the members and assisting them in their Christian life; deacons actively caring for the welfare of needy members, etc.).

“Unchurched” visitors are present every week and some of them return, some of them even join.

I really do believe that those who are genuinely “seeking,” that is, who really have been given an interest by God in the things of God, far from being impressed, are actually put off by the paternalism that treats them like children. They expect to “have it their way” at Burger King but not at church. They are here not because they have the correct questions but precisely because they don’t. They may know what their felt needs are, but they come because they want to have some new needs, deeper needs, explored and brought to light. They are tired of being twenty-four-hour consumers and want to be parishioners—they want to be cared for and not catered to. And some of them become gripped by a sense of their own sinful condition that they never had—and wouldn’t have—apart from the Living Word encountered in preaching and Sacrament. They receive something that they never realized they needed: the Gospel. This church is not a model, but just one of many churches across the country that is, however feebly, intent on passing the faith that we have received down to the next generation, and to see it spread, even as it has, by God’s grace, to us who “were once not a people, but now are the people of God.” I know that there are stodgy, seeker-resistant Reformed and Presbyterian churches, and we have challenged this tendency in this magazine as well.

But we simply must resist the widespread conclusion that the church growth movement is a success, even on its own terms. According to one of its

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milder advocates, in fact, it has not led to any real statistical growth but has simply rearranged the furniture.1 Those raised in the often mindless and heartless traditionalism of one sort or another simply move to the megachurch where “life” is equated with age-segmenting programs and state-of-theart sound systems. But where will these folks be when these churches are “unplugged”?

We must resist the logic, then, which suggests that we need to rid our churches of a substantially Word-and-Sacrament based ministry in order to be truly engaged in outreach, mission, and multicultural unity. A growing chorus of church growth “experts” encourages us to abandon even the sermon in favor of a more entertaining medium, despite the apostolic promise that “faith comes by preaching”—not only in “tradition-bound” churches, but “for the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”

Modern evangelicals in America have not given up being tradition-bound (as if anybody could), but are merely bound by a narrower, younger, ethnocentric tradition that is deeply indebted to the very worldliness it routinely decries. The logic that

comes across in the church growth literature is not only market logic, it’s the logic of white, upscale suburban marketing. Ever read a good book or know of a famous church whose goal is to show you how to build a megachurch in a depressed urban area? It’s a religion of the mall, by the mall, and for the mall.

Furthermore, make of them what you will, the ancient creeds, confessions, and liturgies represent the most genuinely multicultural agenda. The Gospel preached has been “the power of God unto salvation” in every culture since Jesus issued his great commission. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper have been effectual means of grace since he ordained them and, by his Spirit working through the Word, “added daily to the church those who were being saved.” Remarkably, it is often urged that the use of an explicit liturgy, however lightly drawing on ancient sources, represents a “Eurocentric” perspective. But how so, when we are talking about prayers and forms that often are either direct biblical citations or date back to the first few centuries and come from Palestine, Asia, and Africa? This is

Who Do the Mega-Ch Beginning especially with the 1995 Peter Jennings special report on religion in America and the August 1996 Atlantic Monthly cover story, “Welcome to the Next Church,” seeker-driven megachurches have received a great deal of secular media attention. Perhaps most interesting about these reports has been the way these pragmatic churches—and their leaders—present themselves and their missions. Here is a sampling: We give them what they want, and we give them what they didn’t know they wanted—a life change.

— Rev. Kenton Beshore Mariners Church, Newport Beach1 People don’t work in their neighborhoods. People don’t shop in their neighborhoods. People don’t go to the movies in their neighborhoods. So why should anyone expect them to go to church in their neighborhoods? They’ll drive right by small churches in their neighborhood to get to attend a larger one that offers more in the way of services or programs…. The sound systems are state-of-the-art; the message is relevant and well communicated. People will demand from their church all the Willow

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Creek stuff, and if they don’t get it, they’ll go to Willow Creek.

It’s Wal-Mart versus the corner grocery. It ain’t a fair fight.

— Church growth consultant Bob Buford Dallas2 There are two million people within a one-hour drive of this place. In business parlance, we’ve got two percent of market share. We’ve got a long way to go.

— Rev. Bill Hybels Willow Creek, suburban Chicago3 A cross between Pearl Jam and Hootie and the Blowfish.

— Rev. Chris Seay, describing the “sound” of his praise band, University Church, Waco4 I think we’ve got to redefine church. There are a whole lot of people out there with a major failure in their lives—and they never find themselves acceptable to church again. They’re spiritually hungry, but they feel like second-class citizens.

— Rev. Randy Frazee Pantego Bible Church, Arlington, Texas5

more Eurocentric than services inspired by late night television? At least the music is Eurocentric, many say, when so many of the classic hymns follow the style of classical music. Do we expect Africans to sing Bach chorales? Of course, the classic hymns are not patterned on classical styles, but, as cultural critic Kenneth Myers and others have pointed out, on folk styles. And not only on European folk styles but on the Negro spirituals and the very multicultural style of Gregorian plainchant (the inspiration of the Genevan tunes, for instance). (If we sang more of the Psalms, this Eurocentric argument would make even less sense.)

What American evangelicals are giving up is far less diverse, both in terms of time and place, than what they are embracing.

So what if Boomers are too lazy to listen to a sermon, participate in a liturgy, and sing the faith of generations that lived before we were graced with their appearance on the stage of human history? And why should a generation that has largely sacrificed little, prospered enormously, lost interest in God and truth, contributed self-esteem to phi-

losophy, and the sit-com to cultural enrichment decide how much of Christianity we keep for the next generation? Are we going to abandon the “cloud of witnesses” across time and geography to satisfy the narcissism of a single generation in a single place? The day that “outreach” is set against God’s ordained means of grace is the day that we cease to plant churches of Christ and instead open franchises of religious consumerism. Who feels more at home in the spiritual equivalent of a shopping mall than a middle-class American? Some multiculturalism, isn’t it?

Our brothers and sisters gathered in Iguassu, Brazil, this past October might teach us a thing or two about what it really means to be multicultural. ■

Michael Horton (Ph.D., Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and the University of Coventry) is associate professor of historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in California, and serves on the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

hurches Say They Are? I’m convinced you can be a Christian on either side of those issues [abortion and homosexuality]. One of the tragedies of the culture is the tendency to draw lines where they needn’t be drawn. Christians ought to quit throwing rocks at Christians. We don’t have to agree on everything. And these are side issues. What we’re about is spiritual renewal.

— Rev. Michael Foss Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, suburban Minneapolis6 Denominations as we know them are a historical anomaly.

The very large churches are becoming the new dioceses—and they don’t take a big cut of your income to do it.

— An anonymous midwestern Episcopal rector7 The fact is, these large churches have more in common with each other than with other churches in their denominations.

— Church growth consultant Bob Buford Dallas8 While the New Testament speaks often about churches, it is surprisingly silent about many matters that we associate with church structure and life. There is no mention of architecture,

pulpits, lengths of typical sermons, rules for having a Sunday school. Little is said about style of music, order of worship, or times of church gatherings. There were no Bibles, denominations, camps, pastors’ conferences, or board meeting minutes.

Those who strive to be New Testament churches must seek to live its principles and absolutes, not reproduce the details.

— Rev. Leith Anderson Wooddale Church, Eden Prairie, Minnesota9 To reach non-Christian populations, it is necessary for a church to become culturally indigenous to its “mission field.”

— Church growth expert George Hunter10 It would be naïve to say that there isn’t a business side to Willow Creek. Many of the problems we face are identical [to those faced by corporations]. But we’re not about moving dollars.

We’re about transforming lives.

— Rev. Bill Hybels Willow Creek, suburban Chicago11

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T H E M A L L I N G O F M I S S I O N | How Suburban Values Control the Church Growth Movement

Industrial or Pastoral?:

The Techniques of Church Growth hen the Apostle Peter wrote of his desire for the Church to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18), did he have in mind a bevy of megachurches, filled with American suburbanites, providing spiritual resources for every aspect of middle-class life, from Christo-centric ceramics classes to marital counseling in how to recover the feeling of being naked and unashamed? Or was he thinking less in terms of quantity—e.g., attendance, giving, programs—and more of quality, namely, hoping for greater spiritual discernment, more evidence of sanctification, and deeper perseverance in the faith? These two alternatives usually form the debating points for discussions about church growth. The evangelistically minded typically think in measurable categories. And they regard sticklers for doctrine or polity as impeding the spread of the Gospel. Theological and procedural nitpickers, in turn, judge many church growth plans to be at best crass and at worst a betrayal of God’s sovereignty in salvation. For them, the proper way to evaluate the growth of the Church is not by counting heads but rather by looking at levels of commitment, fruit of the spirit, and faithful preaching. The result inevitably is the kind of standoff that used to sell lots of Lite Beer for the Miller Brewing Company with various celebrities

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shouting back and forth, “Tastes great!” “Less filling!” The church growth equivalent might sound something like “Bigger celebration centers!” “No long passages at family worship!”

Actually, both sides have a point. The theological conservatives are likely correct to argue that Peter was more concerned with the quality of faith than with the number or size of individual congregations. Yet the evangelistically minded may also be right to think that the Church must use certain techniques to facilitate growth. The question then becomes whether it is possible to have it both ways: well populated and firmly faithful churches.

In other words, can attention to the mechanics of numerical growth be combined with theological and ecclesiastical rigor? As much as the current scene in American Evangelicalism appears to prove otherwise, it could actually be possible to be big and faithful. Of course, bigness and faithfulness are debatable characteristics. But the teaching of Scripture actually suggests that evangelistic techniques are just as important as theological precision. What is more, its instruction implies that when the Church uses the right methods, doctrinal fidelity and spiritual maturity follows.

Church Growth: The State of the Art concern for the right techniques of church growth does not lead to endorsing the contemporary methods that dominate the American church scene. The most popular literature on increasing the size and influence of churches is vast, redundant, and easily ridiculed. For instance, in Rick Warren’s highly popular The Purpose Driven Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), which many conservative Protestants use almost without a second thought, the pastor of the highly acclaimed Saddleback church observes the hang-ups of the unchurched that he and his staff have sought to remedy. The unchurched don’t like pitches for money, are suspicious of manipulation by fear, don’t want to have to attend every church meeting, and don’t want to have to stand up to introduce themselves. Warren and his staff regularly send out a letter to prospective church attendees informing them that Saddleback church is a “group of happy people who have discovered the joy of the Christian lifestyle,” enjoy “upbeat music with a contemporary flavor,” and listen to “positive, practical” messages that provide encouragement each week. But at Warren’s church the offense of the Gospel can easily be confused with a positivethinking, toe-tapping, grin-wearing Christianity that ignores the darker side of life.

Yet aside from questions about what it means to have a sober view of life, church growth leaders

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don’t seem to be aware of church life beyond the few “successful” megachurches where circumstances, as much as “strategic” thinking, account for large numbers. Take, for instance, the case of a recent article in Reformed Worship (“Different Strokes,” March 1999) where Charles Arn, the president of Church Growth, Inc., a company based in Monrovia, California, recommended that Christian Reformed Church (CRC) officers and members (the sponsor of Reformed Worship) add another worship service in order to attract more people. Whether you call it a “seeker” service, “alternative,” “contemporary,” or simply a “second” service, the question isn’t whether to have one but when. Arn promises that the extra service will increase total attendance, giving, and conversions.

The article is remarkable if only because it reads like a parody of the church growth literature. Arn makes no reference to theology nor does he consider the notion that God is as much the audience for worship as seekers. In fact, he looks at the Church as if it were a business and worship a consumer product.

Almost as troubling is Arn’s complete unfamiliarity with happenings in the CRC. During the same week that this issue of RW came out, another CRC publication, The Banner, the weekly denominational magazine, reported that the denomination’s membership had dropped to pre-1968 figures, down from an all-time high in 1991. What Arn seemed to miss, along with his editors at RW, is that at precisely the same time that the CRC began experimenting with new services and expanding its worship “repertoire,” the denomination lost members faster than any other time in its 150-year history. So if church growth executives are so smart, why did the CRC decline? No doubt, the controversy over women’s ordination accounted for some loss. Surely, however, the wonders of the extra service should have more than made up for the loss of CRC conservatives. But such hard cases rarely impede the sky’s-the-limit thinking of church growth’s “experts.”

Yet the kingpin of church growth is Lyle Schaller, whose wisdom is pervasive in the pages of Leadership magazine. What is amazing about this man’s advice to pastors and church leaders is how unaware either he or his editors are that someone might have principled objections to such pragmatic ways of looking at the Church. It is as if premodernity never happened, as if churches have always reduced the Church to measurable units, as if events like the Reformation or Vatican I are folk tales, and as if religious practices like preaching, prayer, and fasting had no higher reference than membership statistics. For instance, in one article explaining the

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myths of church growth, Schaller pontificates that “the congregation averaging 150 at worship will need $16 to $18 per worshiper per weekend to pay all operational expenses, including missions.”1 (Since when did missions need to be included as an add-on to operational expenses?) Schaller continues that the congregation averaging 500 at worship will need between $20 and $30 per worshiper, and when the congregation grows to 800 the figures goes up to $45. One of the reasons why Schaller’s views are so popular is because Christians so spiritualize the work of the Church and make it such an abstraction that they never take into account such practical considerations as how expenses go up when attendance increases. But Schaller’s general rules can’t explain the experience of many congregations in the past whose members sacrificed and saved—all for the good of the Church and from a higher sense of duty. At a certain point one begins to wonder what kind of people are flocking to Schaller’s churches? It seems likely that people who

sixty-five to ninety minute range.”2 Now it may seem like grousing, but shouldn’t Christian teaching about human nature, let alone corporate worship, suggest that Schaller is wrong and that all people need the same thing when they assemble to praise God and to hear the Gospel, even if their number is only two or three? Are Word and Sacrament more concentrated in a smaller setting?

Such questions never seem to trouble Schaller’s view of or prescriptions for the Church. Success apparently has no reference beyond a functional, well-staffed, prosperous church that is dispensing what its members want to hear and feel.

The Church as Organic and Mysterious ustomer satisfaction might be one way of describing Schaller’s notion of a good church, which is another way of saying that he and his church growth colleagues apply industrial and mechanical models to something that is fundamentally organic and mysterious, namely, the body of Christ.

Modern ideas about church Can measurements of "customer satisfaction," which have largely been borrowed growth stem directly from business techniques and are from the industrial and mechanical world, be helpfully applied to something that is one among many of the negative consequences resulting from the disestablishment of fundamentally organic and mysterious—namely, the body of Christ? religion in the United States.

Still, one would think it poswant churches to meet their felt needs are folks who sible to resist the commodification of religion may be too preoccupied to feel the needs of others while welcoming the freedom that comes with disestablishment. Equally puzzling is that none of or consider any notion of a higher purpose.

Equally frustrating about Schaller’s laws of mod- the promoters of these techniques appear to be ern church life are his reduction of rites and cere- aware of what their methods do to Christianity monies with historic religious significance to mere itself. So standard is the distinction between form mechanics of attracting and retaining worshipers and content that contemporary church leaders with an income appropriate to a congregation’s hardly bother with the effects of certain practices economy of scale. The larger and newer the upon the message communicated, whether implicchurch, Schaller glibly asserts, “the more time is itly or explicitly.

This is one of the many worthwhile points required for music and intercessory prayer to transform that collection of individuals into a worship- made by mainline Protestant critics Philip D. ing community.” Older generations of saints were Kenneson and James L. Street in their book, Selling under the impression that Sabbath preparation was Out the Church (1997). They also challenge the idea supposed to accomplish some of that transforma- that numerical growth is a reliable indicator of a tion, but today’s seekers are another matter. church’s success. They write, “We suspect that Schaller continues that “the larger the crowd, and judging success by measuring one’s market share is the greater the emphasis on teaching, the longer solid business if you are Coca-Cola; we believe it is the sermon.” But in long sermons preachers need not a good idea for First Church at the corner of to work in humor, “revealing personal anecdotes,” Main and Jefferson.”3 Church marketers assume and redundancy. One last liturgical tidbit from the that numerical growth is “an indication that someformer United Methodist minister is this—the thing exciting and meaningful is happening.”4 It is larger the crowd, the longer the service. “Forty to interesting that this statement precedes [George] fifty minutes may be appropriate when attendance Barna’s warning about the possible intoxicating is under a hundred, but if it exceeds five hundred, effects of growth. He seems not to see that his that worship experience should probably be in the assumption about growth contributes to such

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intoxication…. In other words, in a society that breeds both dissatisfaction and boredom and strips us of many traditional ways of living meaningfully, the growth of a particular church may be nothing more than an indicator that it has succeeded (for the moment) in providing two existential “products” that many people intensely desire: excitement and meaning. Of course, the excitement and meaning for which the Church may be a temporary vehicle may have nothing whatsoever to do with the Gospel.

Even though it might feel strange to agree with mainline Protestants, Kenneson and Street are exactly right. The emphasis on soul-winning and evangelism in conservative Protestant circles has fostered a vacuum about the Church and her ministry, such that to be a conservative about the ministry of Word and Sacrament is to have more in common with liberal denominations where traditional forms remain the norm, than with itinerant revivalists who refuse to let liturgy compromise effectiveness.

The Biblical Methods of Church Growth et, agreeing with mainline critics of church growth can only go so far. Yes, faithfulness is different from—and more important than—effectiveness. But numbers are also important, and here I am not referring to the unconverted who need to be reached but to the baptized who we let get away. Here again, the distinction between form and content is a culprit in the way Protestants conceive of the Church and her growth.

As much as the Church needs to see how the techniques of contemporary church growth alter the content of the Gospel, believers also need to recognize that God has ordained certain techniques or forms for the Church’s growth. And the one reliable God-given method is the natural and organic one of baptizing infants born to believing parents.

In the past, confessional Protestants, like Presbyterian and Lutherans, planted new churches in a remarkably calm way. Several families would move away from a community with an existing congregation to one where none existed. Once this group grew to five families, they would send word back to the office of home missions, the secretary of which would look for a pastor to shepherd the denomination’s émigrés. And the rest was history. The denomination would continue to support the mission work until it grew to a size that was self-sustaining. Some of the new growth came from grafting believers from other traditions onto the vine of a particular confessional tradition.

Some came from the children who grew up in the new congregation and became families of their own. And, of course, some came from new con-

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verts to Christianity. This older model of church growth and planting was inherently organic and covenantal. It ran along lines of familiarity; the core group had grown up in the particular communion. And it was zealous about retaining the covenant children. The church followed those members who had been reared in her bosom and the success of a new plant depended on another generation of believers remaining in the fold to support the new church.

In and of itself, Baptism is a technique for church growth unrivaled by modern methods.

What is more, Baptism, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism teaches, signifies our “engrafting” into Christ and “partaking” of the covenant of grace (93). It also admits persons into the visible church.

In other words, it is a ready mechanism for enlarging the Church. But aside from the phenomenological aspects of this Sacrament (i.e., how much, how big, how many), Baptism also nurtures the qualitative growth of individual believers. In the words of the Westminster Larger Catechism (167) the “duty of improving our Baptism” is a lifelong endeavor that consists partly in “growing up to assurance of pardon of sin, and of all other blessings sealed to us in that sacrament.” Pondering the significance of the sign that we wear daily because of the water of Baptism, then, is actually more effective and of deeper significance than wearing a WWJD bracelet. Consequently, Baptism gives exactly what church growth experts want, numbers and spiritual depth. More importantly, Baptism is what Christ commanded in the Great Commission, even though the legions of Protestants who look to Matthew 28:18–20 as the proof text for all manner of evangelistic endeavors rarely remember that Christ commanded his disciples to teach and baptize. Which means that one way to fulfill the Great Commission is to have more babies and see that they are baptized.

Another way to grow is to have more babies and see that they are taught everything Christ commanded. It is not sufficient to grow churches merely by reproduction and Baptism. The Church also needs to see that those babies are instructed in the faith. Of course, this preaching is not just for covenant children. According to the Shorter Catechism (89) preaching is a means of “convincing and converting sinners.” One of the proof texts for that answer is Paul’s teaching in Romans 10 that people will not hear the Gospel without preaching.

Paul didn’t ask, “How shall they hear without a clown, a dance, or liturgical drama?” And that’s because he taught that preaching is the means that God has ordained both to convince and convert sinners, and to build up believers in holiness and

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comfort. In other words, the Word inscripturated and the Word incarnate are very specific about the right techniques for church growth; they are the divinely given and divinely commanded means of Word and Sacrament.

On the basis of scriptural teaching, then, one could well argue that as opposed to the industrial and impersonal methods of church growth, the correct method of growing the Church is inherently agrarian and personal. And one of the wisest contemporary proponents of agrarian and local ways is the poet and farmer, Wendell Berry who lives and writes in Kentucky. In perhaps his most compelling book, The Unsettling of America, Berry contrasts industrialism and agrarianism in ways that are remarkably—though largely unknowingly—apt for highlighting the differences between church growth expertise and the ministry of Word and Sacrament: I conceive a strip-miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of the farmer.

The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter’s goal is money, profit; the nurturer’s goal is health—his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? … The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible.

The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order— human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to the other order and to mystery.

The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, “hard facts”; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.5 Not only does Berry bring into bolder relief the differences between marketing models and covenantal patterns of church growth, he also underscores the fundamental discrepancy between a minister who works according to the logic of church growth and the pastors and fathers who tend God’s flock in their particular pastures of con-

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gregation and family, respectively.

As far-fetched as traditional methods of growing the Church might seem to people who live in the suburbs, shop at supermarkets, and think the Amish are quaint, others have also noticed the usefulness of Berry’s insights for the Church. For instance, Eugene H. Peterson says of Berry’s book, The Unsettling of America, that every time Berry “writes ‘farm’ I substitute ‘parish’ or ‘congregation.’ It works every time.” Which means that comparing church growth experts or their clerical sheep to industrialists is not any more far-fetched than comparing a pastor’s duties to those of a farmer. The kind of growth that church-growthers look for has everything to do with numbers and solvency—what does it take to maintain this particular church enterprise; what are the demographics; what products do we need to offer; how can we build brand loyalty? But the pastor’s orientation, being different from that of a Wal-Mart manager, looks upon the needs of his flock no matter how large, sees those needs from the perspective of spiritual and physical health whether the flock agrees or not, and looks for growth that is qualitative and lasting.

Instead of looking for ways to attract outsiders, the pastor knows that his primary responsibility is to feed his own flock and ensure their growth in grace. This explains why so many church growth experts sound more like professional managers than men of the cloth. And that may also explain why Peterson says of Berry that he has learned “more usable pastoral theology” from him than from any of “his academic professors.”

Success or Proclamation? hen confessional Protestants begin to worry about the size of their churches, they should recognize that they are coming dangerously close to territory reserved for God. Only God knows how full or big our churches should be. Still, the question lurking in the background of discussions about church growth always comes back to the unsaved. Covenantal models of ministry may be wholesome and endearing, but if we rely on birth, Baptism, and preaching, won’t lots of people go unsaved? In other words, in an ideal world the organic ways of the Church would be desirable. But we don’t live in an ideal world and to reach all of the lost we need to exploit every means possible, from the Internet to bumper stickers.

This is a view common in conservative Protestant circles. But it is an odd one for any Christian who claims to believe in election. For the logic implicit in most models of church growth is that the Church won’t grow and the lost won’t be found unless we devise new schemes for growth

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and evangelism. Yet if we take seriously the words of the Westminster Confession (III), that the number of those predestinated unto eternal life is “so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished,” what happens to the logic of modern church growth experts who appear to assume that the potential for growth is limitless? There is a difference between saying that we can identify the elect, and therefore do not need to proclaim the Gospel to everyone and, on the other hand, concluding that church growth is only limited by human ambitions. Instead of being depressed that our churches are sometimes small or that new converts are sometimes rare, it could be that we should be delighted with the progress of the Gospel at whatever pace that God has ordained from before the creation of the world. In the same way, then, that it might be wrong for Christians to lust after a new car, it may also be unhealthy to long for bigger churches. In both cases, God is sovereign and it is the Christian’s duty to accept God’s ordained limits—or better put, to rejoice over each lost coin that is found.

Typically the doctrine of election is a comfort to individual believers because it teaches that God is sovereign in salvation and eternal life does not depend on the fickle whims of the human heart.

But the doctrine of election is also a tremendous comfort to the Church corporately. Salvation does not depend on clever programs, strategic plans, or marketing savvy. It depends utterly upon God and his mercy. The Church, accordingly, has a tremendous responsibility to preach the Word and administer the Sacraments, while parents have the equally large duty of rearing their children in the faith of their Baptism. The Church does not need to be in a constant state of anxiety, thinking up new ways of reaching the lost. The right techniques of church growth are the means of grace that God established when our Lord commissioned the apostles to disciple the nations by Word and Sacrament.

These techniques are not flashy. In fact, they are rather low key. But as the Bible reveals, God has a habit of saving his people through means that the world considers foolish. And that is because, as Paul told the Corinthians, God wants everyone to see “the transcendent power” of salvation belongs to him, “not to us” (2 Cor. 4:7). ■

SPEAKING OF Our faith rests on the absolute authority of the God-breathed Scriptures. We are heirs of the great Christian confessions handed down to us. All three Persons of the Godhead are active in God’s redeeming mission. Our missiology centers on the overarching biblical theme of God’s creation of the world, the Father’s redeeming love for fallen humanity as revealed in the incarnation, substitutionary death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and ultimately of the redemption and renewal of the whole creation. The Holy Spirit, promised by our Lord, is our comforter, teacher and source of power. It is the Spirit who calls us into holiness and integrity. The Spirit leads the Church into all truth. The Spirit is the agent of mission, convicting of sin, righteousness, and judgment. We are Christ’s servants, empowered and led by the Spirit, whose goal is to glorify God….

Jesus Christ is Lord of the Church and the Lord of the Universe. Ultimately every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. The lordship of Christ is to be proclaimed to the whole earth, inviting all to be free from bondage to sin and the dominion of evil in order to serve the Lord for his glory….

The Church in mission is central to God’s plan for the world. We commit ourselves to strengthen our ecclesiology in missions, and encourage the global church to become a truly missionary community in which all Christians are involved in mission. In the face of increasing resistance and opposition from political powers, religious fundamentalism and secularism, we commit ourselves to encourage and challenge the churches to respond with a deeper level of unity and participation in mission.

— From the Iguassu Affirmation, World Evangelical Fellowship Missions Commission in Foz de Iguassu, Brazil, on October 10-15, 1999

D. G. Hart (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins), head librarian and associate professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, coedits the Nicotine Theological Journal and is the author of the recently released book The University Gets Religion.

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In Print May/June Book Recommendations Selling Out the Church Philip D. Kenneson and James L. Street (Abingdon Press, 1997) Marketing the church is hot. For many church leaders, marketing might even be the first article of their creed, which goes something like this: “We believe that our church determines its identity and mission through the tactics of marketing strategies.” Theologians Kenneson and Street offer a thoughtful and provocative protest.

B-KENN-1 PAPERBACK, $13.00 In the Face of God: The Dangers and Delights of Spiritual Intimacy Michael Horton (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1996) Against pop culture’s assumption that a feel-good faith brings one into a chummy relationship with God, Michael Horton raises a warning about the dangers of spiritual intimacy. In short, getting close to God without carefully defining who he is causes us to miss out on his transcendence.

B-HO-10 PAPERBACK, $13.00 Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion Wade Clark Roof (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) The quest culture created by the Baby Boomers has generated a “marketplace” of new spiritual beliefs and practices and of revisited traditions. Drawing on surveys and in-depth interviews conducted over a decade, Roof reports on the religious and spiritual styles, family patterns, and moral vision and value for each of these subcultures.

B-ROOF-1 HARDCOVER, $25.00 Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover its Moral Vision David Wells (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) This critique of American culture and the church focuses on the fractured moral vision of society at large and its reflection in today's evangelical church. Can the church truly recover its moral character enough to make a difference in a society whose moral fabric is rent? Wells believes it can.

B-WE-5 PAPERBACK, $20.00 A Royal “Waste” of Time: The Splendor of Worshipping God and Being Church for the World Marva J. Dawn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) In this sequel to her book, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down, Marva Dawn helps churches navigate beyond today's worship wars and develop effective worship practices that are truly Christ-centered.

B-DAW-3 PAPERBACK, $18.00

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On Tape From the Alliance Archives Christian Ethics R. C. Sproul The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in God. They also overwhelmingly believe that there are no ethical absolutes. How can this be? In Christian Ethics, R. C. Sproul says that we face an alarming crisis of ethics. This series provides guidelines for biblically addressing the important ethical issues of our time, such as abortion, ethics in the workplace, truth-telling and divorce. Christian Ethics offers a timely application of God’s eternal standards in our morally confused times.

C-SPR-24 15 MESSAGES ON 8 TAPES IN AN ALBUM, $32.00.

The Greatest Story Ever Told White Horse Inn series Have you ever wondered what the Bible is all about? Why are there so many different Bible stories, and how do they all relate to one another? In this twenty-part series, hosts Michael Horton, Kim Riddlebarger and Rod Rosenbladt walk us through the highlights of redemptive history, showing how Christ is at the center of all the Scriptures.

C-GST-S 20 TAPES IN 2 ALBUMS, $84.80 Hosea James M. Boice The prophet Hosea’s whole life was lived as a vivid picture of God’s faithfulness, contrasted with the unfaithfulness of his chosen people.

In these messages, Dr. James Boice, speaker on The Bible Study Hour radio broadcast, traces the pattern of how we first forget God, the consequences of forgetting and, finally, God’s restoration. This study will help you answer questions like: What happens when a believer turns from God? How should a Christian respond to an unfaithful spouse? and What is spiritual adultery?

C-HOS 14 MESSAGES ON 7 TAPES IN AN ALBUM, $38.00 Theology of the Reformation Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, 1984 John Gerstner, James M. Boice, Roger Nicole and John Guest John Wycliffe, John Hus, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Hugh Latimer,

and William Tyndale. All names which read like an honor roll of the great men of Church history. And well they should, for it was through the work of God in these and others like them that the Reformation came to Europe in the sixteenth century. This tape series contains the messages from a weekend conference and focuses on the unique personalities and biblical theology of the Reformation, applying both the theological and historical lessons of that time to our own.

C-TOR 7 CASSETTES IN AN ALBUM, $38.00 Book of Hebrews White Horse Inn series This four-part series looks in-depth at the supremacy of Christ as laid forth by the author of the book of Hebrews. Hosts Michael Horton, Ken Jones, Kim Riddlebarger and Rod Rosenbladt discuss how this great New Testament book passionately illuminates the superiority of the new covenant over the old.

C-H-S 4 TAPES IN AN ALBUM, $23.00 Five Unaswerable Questions James M. Boice It is a good thing that there is not always an answer for every question. This is certainly true of the five questions that are examined in this series. As you go through these messages in Romans 8, you'll see why each question is unaswerable and also learn about the power of God’s great love.

C-FUQ 5 MESSAGES ON 3 TAPES IN AN ALBUM, $18.00 Spiritual Depression D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones Dr. Lloyd-Jones’s most popular book is now available on cassette tape in a two-volume set. Still as relevant as the day it was first preached, this study examines the problems that cause spiritual depression and uses the book of Psalms to address questions we all ask. The full set is sold in two volumes. (Note: chapters 2, 3 and 17-21 from the book are not available. This series does include 10 sermons not published in the book.)

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T H E M A L L I N G O F M I S S I O N | How Suburban Values Control the Church Growth Movement

How Christian Worship (not Consumerist Worship)

Forms a Missional Community “You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last….”

John 15:16

hat would happen if everyone in our pews for worship on Sunday morning departed afterward with a deep understanding of all that Jesus meant by the sentences above? For that to happen, our worship would have to be remarkably filled with the sense that we did not choose to come, but that God is the Subject who has invited us here. Immersed in the wonder that God has chosen us for his purposes, appointed us specifically for

W

our various ministries in the work, and equipped us to bear lasting fruit, we would depart with a vision for "being Church" the rest of the week.

My greatest disagreement with those who advocate turning worship into the congregation’s evangelistic tool is that this notion removes the responsibility of all the members for reaching out to their neighbors by being Church, by bearing the fruit of discipleship.

Furthermore, this is not an individualistic responsi-

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bility, for good worship also forms a people whose way of life is a warrant for belief.

The Alternative but Parallel Society In Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down and many others of my books, I especially stress that the Christian community must be an alternative society—offering its gifts of different ways to think and speak and be and behave to a world that is desperate for them.

Lately I have been emphasizing the pun that to live this way is to recover true "altar-nativity"—the presenting of our church bodies as a living sacrifice on the altar (actually the Greek word means burnt offering in the invitation of Romans 12:1)1 and then our rebirth into the new life of Christ in us.

From Mary Jo Leddy I learned another term besides alternativity for thinking about the uniqueness of the Church. She reported that the playwright-president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, was asked why the "Velvet Revolution" against the communists in the former Czechoslovakia was successfully nonviolent—and we might add, why it remains effective when so many other satellites of the former U.S.S.R. are presently in turmoil. Havel answered somewhat like this: “We had our parallel society. And in that parallel society we wrote our plays and sang our songs and read our poems until we knew the truth so well that we could go out to the streets of Prague and say, ‘We don’t believe your lies anymore’—and communism had to fall.”2 In the midst of our post-Christian culture, the true Church must be a similar sort of parallel society. We gather together in worship to speak our language, to read our narratives of God at work, to sing the hymns of the faith in a variety of styles, to chant and pour out our prayers until we know the truth so well that we can go out to the world around us and invite that world to share this truth with us. In our worship, we are formed by biblical narratives that tell a different story from that of the surrounding culture. Since we thereby come to know the truth that sets us free, we are eager to share that truth with our neighbors; thus our worship must equip us for that mission with a deep vision of the extravagant splendor of God. Rather than being “a vendor of religious goods and services” that cater to people’s tastes, the Church is called to be “a body of people sent on a mission.”3 We need both words, alternative and parallel, for describing the Church. To be parallel will deter us from being so alternative that we don’t relate to our neighbors; to be alternative prevents our parallel line from moving closer and closer to modes of life alien to the kingdom of God. Rather than becoming enculturated and entrapped by the world’s val-

ues of materialistic and experiential consumerism, of narcissistic self-importance and personal taste, of solitary superficiality, and of ephemeral satisfaction, members of Christ’s Body choose his simple life of sharing, his willingness to suffer for the sake of others, his communal vulnerability, and his eternal purposes. When our worship gives us continual hearing of and deep reflection on God’s Word, songs and prayers that nurture discipleship, and new visions of God’s appointment of us to bear fruit, then we will gain God’s heart of our mission and ministry of communicating the Christian story, of enfolding our neighbors in God’s love, of choosing deliberately to live out the alternative "Churchbeing" of the people of God’s kingdom.

Sociologists recognize that any alternative way of life that is substantively different from the larger society around it and that wants to maintain itself needs a language, customs, habits, rituals, institutions, procedures, and practices that uphold and nurture a clear vision of how it is different and why that matters.

Are we as Christians committed to the alternative way of life described in the Scriptures and incarnated in Christ, so that we are willing to invest ourselves diligently in order to transmit this valued way of life to our children and neighbors? If so, our worship cannot be too much like the surrounding culture, or it will be impossible to teach altar-nativity.

We Are a Christian Community Student evaluators of my course on Music and the Arts in Christian Worship revealed many misconceptions about musical style and about multimedia that contribute to a destructive narrowing of possibilities for worship to display the fullness of God’s splendor. On the other hand, one student evaluator listed “more research on other religions” as a suggested change in the course, even though the seminary intended the course to be specifically about Christian worship, as indicated in the course’s title.

It seems to me that some of the major problems with Christian worship these days arise because of our frequent addition of elements from other religions (like the idolatries of speed, excitement, or any others) and our failure to pass on faithfully the true identity of Christians. In this sense, we have to work hard to narrow our focus positively when we plan worship.

In a pluralistic world, what does it mean to participate in Christian worship? One of the wrong turns some congregations are making as society increasingly becomes more openly pluralistic and less supportive of Christianity specifically is that they blur their unique identity as the people of God, instead of accentuating it with loving commitment. If we understand ourselves to be a peo-

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ple sent on a mission as God’s ambassadors in the work, then we can’t become so much like the culture that we have nothing to offer.

Our Churches’ Loss of Identity Why is there such panic and confusion in churches these days over what it means to be the Church?

Jesus never told us that we had to be big, successful, attractive to nonmembers, or like the culture in which we live. In fact, he said the opposite of all those things—that the way was narrow (Matt.

7:13–14), that the first shall be last (Mark 10:31), that we would be persecuted (Matt. 5:11), that we would be hated by all because of his name (Luke 21:17)—and he wondered whether, when the Son of man comes, he would find faith on earth (Luke 18:8). When I think about churches in our time and culture, I am haunted by Jesus’ words, "Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!" (Luke 14:34–35). God have mercy on us, for we seem to have lost our savor!

On the other hand, Jesus never said that we should hide ourselves away from the world, ignore

our neighbors’ needs, keep silent about what we know, or be purposely elitist. Instead he told his disciples to let our light shine before others (Matt.

5:14–16), to heal the sick and announce the kingdom (Luke 10:1–9), to sell what we have to give to the poor (Luke 12:22–34), to proclaim repentance and forgiveness, and to be witnesses (Luke 24:44–49). How, then, will we equip congregational members with a vision for this mission?

First We Need a Language If our major question here is “What does it mean to be Christians in mission—and how are we equipped for that by worship?” we are greatly helped by George Lindbeck and other theorists of the “postliberal” (“Yale”) school. Lindbeck insightfully proclaims that Christianity is not merely cognitive (that is, solely intellectual assent to a set of doctrinal propositions), nor is it simply experiential (engagement in uplifting religious experiences).

Rather, Christianity is a cultural-linguistic system, by which we learn the language of faith.4 With regard to the plea for altar-nativity above—and in response to sociologists’ recognition that a culture different from the dominant cul-

Growth Mentalit

C

hurch growth as it is described in Scripture might be best explained by a three-tiered formula.1 It begins with spiritual vitality, which then leads to functional effectiveness, which in turn often leads to statistical increases. Statistical increase is the result of functional effectiveness and functional effectiveness is the result of spiritual vitality. The goal then is not church growth but church health.

We all know what statistical increase is. It's the "bottom line" everyone looks at when evaluating a church and its effectiveness.

But what is functional effectiveness? Simply stated, it is God's people doing what the Bible requires of those who are his "disciples." They have become "doers of the Word." They proclaim the Gospel, they love the brethren, they worship the Lord and they are lovingly doing all the hundreds of other things the Bible talks about as functions that mark genuine disciples of Jesus because the love of Christ constrains them.

How does that happen? Functional effectiveness is a result of spiritual vitality. Spiritual vitality is the Word of God being loved,

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learned, and obeyed by the power of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God in the lives of God's people under the Lordship of Christ.

Dying churches are frequently identified by the lack of statistical increase. But the real problem is the lack of either functional effectiveness or spiritual vitality, or both. Don't put a Band-Aid on the sore spot of statistical stagnation with special programs or hype designed to create numbers, nickels, and noise. Go directly to the infection. Programs cannot create real growth. Ministry programs accommodate and/or direct functional growth. The basic issue is whether the church is functioning (obeying the Word of God) or is failing to mature spiritually (quenching or grieving the Spirit of God).

The biblical vision for the growth of the Church includes this three-tiered view of growth, and one of a minister’s earliest tasks as a revitalization leader is to get the congregation to see that the lack of statistical increase is a symptom. The root cause lies in the church's spiritual stagnation and functional breakdown. If the root cause is removed, the symptoms most likely will change.

ture requires a language and habits and traditions to give a clear vision of how it is different and why that matters—Lindbeck wonders whether in our times “any religion will have the requisite toughness for this demanding task unless it at some point makes the claim that it is significantly different and unsurpassably true” (emphasis mine).5 For that reason our triune language essentially includes the conviction that in Jesus we know that God who is the Truth and that by the Holy Spirit’s power we are enabled to find a Way of Life that is momentously, transformingly, gratifyingly different from that of the world around us.

Lindbeck’s perceptions are extremely important for our considerations about worship in a culture that specializes in feelings and experiences, for he explains that a cultural-linguistic approach to faith reverses the experiential-expressivist relation of inner and outer. An example related to this article’s purposes is that some churches try to build faith in worship from the experiential side, by using music that creates emotions so that people feel "moved."

In light of recent studies on the effects of vibrations on the human psyche, we must question if the people are moved by God or by the music’s physical

effects. Lindbeck’s model of faith, on the other hand, supports the work of churches who focus instead on content. He gives this example: Thus, if one follows this account, Luther did not invent his doctrine of justification by faith because he had a tower experience, but rather the tower experience was made possible by his discovering (or thinking he discovered) the doctrine in the Bible. To be sure, the experience of justification by his exegesis then generated a variety of fresh expressive symbolisms, among which Lutherans like especially to mention the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Without such powerful experiences and their effective expression, the tradition would have neither started nor persisted, yet logically, even if not causally, a religious experience and its expression are secondary and tertiary in a linguistic-cultural model. First come the objectivities of the religion, its language, doctrines, liturgies, and modes of action, and it is through these that passions are shaped into various kinds of what is called religious experience.6

ty That Is Biblical Church growth statistics are a consequence to get us to the issue.

You don't tell your children to grow or set growth goals. You put them on a fitness plan knowing if they are healthy they will grow.

We can draw some parallels to a healthy church. Here are a few places to start: • Breaking Down Jealous Criticism of Other Churches. Dying churches become cynical and critical, especially if there are other churches nearby that are faring better. Some members of dying churches develop an unhelpful attitude that assumes that if you are faithful to God's Word you are consigned to be a "remnant," a "holy huddle."

• Biblical Homogeneity. In the part of Miami where Pinelands Church (PCA) ministered, tremendous social upheaval was taking place. Foreign immigration, legal and illegal, was producing traumatic social and cultural changes. In our neighbor-

hood, church growth "experts" said there was no settled homogeneous principle from which to work, and therefore the church needed to relocate. They were right and they were wrong: right in that racially, economically, socially, and culturally the neighborhood was totally diverse—it was a real hodgepodge of people groups—but wrong in that there was in fact a principle of homogeneity. They were all sinners, and if Christ called them, He would "break down the dividing wall.…” Our vision at Pinelands was for a multiethnic, multiracial, and economically diverse congregation. And by God's grace, it happened. After three years you could feel the excitement when you stood in the packed sanctuary containing people, one-third of whom were black, representing over twenty nationalities, some of them rich, some of them poor, and all of them holding hands and singing, "I'm So Glad I'm a Part of the Family of God." I have seen the Savior take those "who were [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 3 2 ]

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Objectivities can be passed on, shared with another, whereas subjectivities cannot be transmitted. One of the problems arising from many congregations’ emphasis on emotions is that it leaves out those who are at the moment struggling with the opposite feelings or encountering experiences that call those emotions into question. For example, if you tell me that I should get excited about Jesus when I am battling with anger at God because of a new physical malady, your invitation will only make me more depressed. If, on the other hand, you show me some objective truth about God that can produce in me hope for his presence in the midst of the new tribulation, then I might be able to move away from anger and into a more positive response. That is why the content of our worship music and preaching must proclaim primarily the splendor of God, rather than our feelings about him. (I’m not excluding feelings; but they simply aren’t as important as the One whose splendor stirs them.)

Let us return to Lindbeck, for he offers profound wisdom for our correlation of our present situations with who God is and what his kingdom means. To stress a faith of feelings would mean to start with an account of our present experiences and adjust our vision of the kingdom of God Lindbeck’s postliberal approach accordingly.7 reverses that order. He indicts churches for their destructive response to the

Growth Mentality That is Biblical

[ C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 3 1 ]

not a people" and make them "the people of God," cutting across social barriers as nobody outside the Kingdom would ever believe could happen.

• Pulpit Ministry and Intercessory Prayer. I believe the battle for revitalization is won or lost in the pulpit ministry of the pastor-teacher. Where a man of God, called and gifted to explain the Word of God, protects his life and schedule in order to prepare faithful biblical expositions that issue forth with loving application so that sin is exposed and Christ is exalted, God blesses that ministry with newness of life…. Spurgeon said that the Thermopylae of Christianity is the pulpit, and I believe him. More than that, I believe the Scriptures: "Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God" (Rom. 10:17, KJV). We are saved "through the foolishness of the

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rationalization, pluralism, and mobility of modern life [which] dissolve the bonds of tradition and community. This produces multitudes of men and women who are impelled, if they have religious yearnings, to embark on their own individual quests for symbols of transcendence. The churches have become purveyors of this commodity rather than communities that socialize their members into coherent and comprehensive religious outlooks and forms of life.8 The goal of our worship must be instead to give a clear vision of the reign of God so that participants are formed with the communal, coherent, comprehensive way of life that enables us to deal constructively with the perils of modernity and postmodernity.

If our worship truly immerses participants in the splendor of God and the way of life practiced by this people, then our entire direction of interpretation is reversed. What we do in worship and in educational processes is not to add bits of information to the piles of data people obtain elsewhere; instead, rich worship will convey the framework of faith in which everything is to be understood. In order for that to happen, worship cannot be superficial or merely entertaining; it must be full of as much God as can be put into it, and it must be

message preached" (1 Cor. 1:21, NASB). People won't come miles or even blocks every Sunday unless they can be sure they will hear a Word from the Lord. Fancy bulletins, catchy mottoes, personalities and innovation do not sustain life and growth. Only the Word of God preached in the "demonstration and power of the Holy Spirit," proclaiming "Christ and Him crucified," can keep life in the church. The towns and cities of America are littered with churches that have walked away from this, and that is why so many need revitalization. A strong biblical pulpit ministry must be restored.

• The Pastor's Perspective on the Church and Commitment to Evangelism.

The first part of my ministry of revitalization at Pinelands was not spent in advertising, neighborhood canvassing, or new program implementation. I began by first visiting the families of the existing congregation, accompanied by an elder. For many it was the first time in years a pastor or elder had been

formative of discipleship and community. If our language is both to form us and to be deepened in a never-ending spiral, we can’t practice only a firstgrade vocabulary.

Moreover, as Lindbeck insists, it is not, as is often said in our day, that believers find their stories in the Bible, but rather that they make the story of the Bible their story. The cross is not to be viewed as a figurative representative of suffering nor the messianic kingdom as a symbol for hope in the future; rather, suffering should be cruciform, and hope for the future messianic…. It is the text, so to speak, which absorbs the world, rather than the world the text. 9 This is a critical observation, for worship that is too much like the world can hardly redescribe it! How will our suffering be made cruciform if our worship does not form us to be an alternative society?

Lindbeck insists that the community of faith "is likely to contribute more to the future of humanity if it preserves its own distinctiveness and integrity than if it yields to the homogenizing tendencies associated with liberal experiential-expressivism" or (we could add) if it gives in to the contemporary push for worship that suits the culture. Our worship will be more practically relevant in the long

run if churches do "not first ask what is either practical or relevant, but instead concentrate on their own intratextual outlooks and forms of life."10 In other words, we are more helpful to the world if we concentrate on being Church for the world’s sake.

What Lindbeck is saying and I am affirming, he admits, will not be popular with those who argue that the faith has to be translated into cultural idioms, with those chiefly concerned to maintain or increase the membership and influence of the church.

This method [for reaching those outside the Church] resembles ancient catechesis more than modern translation. Instead of redescribing the faith in new concepts, it seeks to teach the language and practices of the religion to potential adherents…. In the early days of the Christian church, for example, it was the gnostics, not the catholics, who were most interested to redescribe the biblical materials in a new interpretive framework.11 Lindbeck is, of course, talking about the developments of contemporary doctrine, but his comments also apply to what we do in worship and in our catechumenal training that enables people to participate in the life of the Church. Are our worship services inviting people into the practice of the

in their homes on a ministerial visit. In fact, one family told me it was the first time in twenty-two years that a pastor had been in their home. Is there any wonder the church was dying?

Another important thing to do is to contact those who have fallen away from the church. My first three months at Pinelands were spent visiting the existing congregation. We called on forty families and then went looking for the hundred members who were on the books but unaccounted for. The parable of the shepherd seeking the one that was lost took on new meaning as ten who were converted to Christ or reaffirmed their faith were restored to the congregation. Two other families in the middle of divorce proceedings were reconciled through a renewed commitment to Christ and his Word as a result of the visits. The bottom line is that in three years we went from an average attendance of sixty to over 400.

More than half of those added were by conversion or reaffir-

mation of faith in Christ. But almost as gratifying as the conversion growth was that only one family from the original congregation was lost to another communion in the process of revitalization. Instead of feeling disenfranchised or being dismantled, the former members became a vital part of the "new work" of the Lord in Pinelands, rejoicing in what the Lord was doing and with a vested interest in the church's ministry and the new vision for the community we served. Finally, a biblical vision for the church must not simply include evangelism as one initiative among many. The evangelistic dimension must be emphasized in everything the church does.

Evangelism is not supplemental. It is fundamental.

Harry Reeder, III (D. Min. candidate, Reformed Theological Seminary) is senior pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, Alabama.

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I was really a Christian, I had to learn to sing more difficult songs."14 Notice that this is Churchbeing, rather than a matter of taste or choice.

Reagon emphasizes that "the community is healthiest when it sings. Singing is the process of creating a communal voice…. Singing together expresses the community on a level that goes beyond anything you hear, see, or say." When she is giving a concert and is working to get everyone to sing, she wants everyone to feel that there isn’t a choice. "I think I make people feel that if they don’t sing they are going to die." That is the great possibility—and the challenge for our worship as people in our culture become more and more passive and thereby neglect the essence of liturgy, literally the "work of the people." Reagon declares, "I will build a space that makes people feel very bad if they decide they don’t want to sing…. It’s a way of giving credit to the African-American congregational tradition, which means you pass the audition when you walk in the door."15 On her Good News album, she confesses these words from a traditional What we do in worship and in educational processes is not to add bits of African-American song: "It was good news to lay down the world and shoulder the information to the piles of data people obtain elsewhere; instead, rich worship will cross of Jesus. It’s not a good time, but it is good news."16 convey the framework of faith in which everything is to be understood.

Are our congregations conducting worship that is deep enough to equip people to lay down the Immersing the Newcomer in a Way of Life13 world’s follies and shoulder the cross, or do we simWe can learn some lessons about being a commu- ply seek a good time? Does our worship welcome nity that teaches to others the language and prac- us into the community and its way of life, its willtices of faith from Bernice Johnson Reagon, a ingness to learn more difficult songs for the sake of founder of the singing group "Sweet Honey in the Churchbeing? Does it equip us to be hospitable, Rock," a gifted a cappella ensemble that performs welcoming the strangers into our songs so they feel mostly music from African-American traditions. that if they don’t sing they will really miss the These singers are especially good at evoking audi- goodness of this way of life? Does our worship ence involvement; when one of the members of thereby strengthen us to be friends with our neighthis ensemble performed in the inner city of bors? Does it fill us with such joy from the good Portland, it was a stunning experience to sit in the news that we can bear the not-so-good times? middle of everyone’s powerful participation in To Be an Outreaching People exquisite soaring sound.

In an interview with The Other Side magazine, The kind of Churchbeing that I am advocating, Reagon described the African-American tradition’s which requires learning a language of faith, is a understanding of being "given a sign," rather than potent argument against the present drive toward being "born again." She said, "When this time came megachurches, for smaller communities with intiin your life, you didn’t eat or drink. You fasted and mate mentoring and communal life are more able prayed. When the sign came, it was a powerful to train members in the constant particular acts of experience for you and a real point of celebration for care that genuinely "love the neighbor." Wendall the whole community." Notice that this is a commu- Berry’s observations (see also D. G. Hart’s article in nity concern. Reagon continued, "I became a mem- this issue) about nature lovers who only want to ber of the church and a Christian. After that, I did- preserve the spectacular provide a parallel example. n’t act the same. I was less frivolous in the way I con- As Berry says, "it is going to be extremely difficult ducted myself. I can also remember thinking that if to make enough parks to preserve vulnerable Christian faith or translating the faith into the framework of our present consumerist culture?

Lindbeck’s insights are enormously helpful in the face of present confusions concerning the relationship between worship and outreach to the world.

We must understand that the work of the Church is to teach people the language, the habits, and the practices of Christianity, so that people are both formed by the canonical texts of Scripture at the heart of the language of faith and then also sent out to bear the fruit of the discipleship thus nurtured.

The rules of doctrine are the grammar, to guide our first-order speech of worship and life, so that we know how to converse as a people in this culture.

If worship is planned simply to entertain or appeal, will we be immersed in the language of faith? Especially if the main idioms of the Christian language are scriptural and we want our lives to be formed by the biblical narratives, can we conform ourselves too much to the language of the world around us?12

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species and the health of ecosystems or large watersheds."17 These things can be done only if everyone participates in the small acts of care that ensure their preservation. So Christianity requires the gifts of all the members of the community to invite the world into our faith. Genuine outreach necessitates faithfulness on the part of everyone, rather than spectacle.

A similar case is made by Ferenc Maté’s A Reasonable Life: Toward a Simpler, Secure, More Humane Existence. He discusses worker-owned companies and companies in which employers and employees live close by, and how much more caring they are about pollution, how much less fuel is wasted in commuting.18 We might note some parallels with smaller, neighborhood churches. In such congregations, everyone can be more involved with each other and more personally caring; the members are able to be involved together in their neighborhood and serve their neighbors.

I am not advocating small churches for smallness’s sake. I am simply wanting to counter the constant advocacy these days of largeness for its own sake. Both sizes of congregations offer particular advantages. Let us make sure that whatever quantity of people our churches involve, we equip all the members for participation in Churchbeing.

The Missional Church’s Worship19 If the Church’s worship is to result in equipping its members to be missional in their daily lives, it cannot be planned according to what will appeal to those who do not even know the One who calls us into mission, those not yet committed to a life of Christian service and outreach. Questions about marketing and the appeal of musical style or liturgical form usually miss the point. Rather, the three criteria that I am constantly emphasizing establish essential foundations for worship:

These criteria will raise questions of integrity, propriety, coherence, and diversity to guide our choices of worship elements. Our goal will be to practice the language of faith by reading and preaching about the faith narratives carried in the Scriptures of the community, to sing our songs of faith (in all sorts of styles), to chant and pour out our prayers until we know the truth so well that we can go out to the world around us and invite it to participate with us in the reign of God. If worship forms us to be a people who dwell in that reign, then we will carry God’s kingdom wherever we go—and we will be equipped to reach out to the culture around us with words of Gospel truth and deeds flowing from Gospel faithfulness. God grant our churches such worship—for his glory and for the love of the world. ■

Marva J. Dawn (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) is a theologian and author with Christians Equipped for Ministry and an adjunct professor of spiritual theology at Regent College.

This article is an edited section from Marva J. Dawn, A Royal Waste of Time, © 1999 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Used by permission of the publisher; all rights reserved. This book is available at bookstores and online booksellers, or by contacting the publisher at 800-2537521 or at sales@eerdmans.com.

1 that the biblical God be the Infinite Center of worship, that worship enable its participants to "waste" their time (that is, worship is an end in itself) immersed in all the fullness of God’s splendor; 2 that worship form believers to be disciples, following Jesus and committed to God’s purposes of peace, justice, and salvation in the world; 3 that worship form the congregation to be a genuine, inclusive Christian community linked to all God’s people throughout time and space in worship, doctrine, fellowship, the breaking of bread, prayers, signs and wonders, communal care, and social involvement (see Acts 2:42–47).

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Experience the Difference: Marke

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eting 101 Meets Church Growth

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T H E M A L L I N G O F M I S S I O N | How Suburban Values Control the Church Growth Movement

“Success” Und E

very Christian would like to see the Church of Jesus Christ grow. Church growth is the norm. Nongrowth is abnormal and needs reassessment on the part of the leaders. But how does the Church grow? Churches grow as the believers share the Gospel of Jesus Christ by word of mouth and attract opportunities for this by their transformed lives. Sometimes the

ordinary role of the Spirit is especially observable in times of massive growth. In some places, like in China, the Protestant church has grown a hundred times during the last fifty years (1950–2000) under adverse circumstances and a hostile environment.

That environment has been one of persecution by an atheistic state.

Does persecution, which brings much suffering for the believers, lead to church growth? Yes, it seems so in the history of modern China. In January 1950, a directory published by the National Christian Council indicated that there were 834,000 Protestant communicant members.

Today, while there is no reliable survey available, an educated estimate would put the number of believers at nearly 85 million. Of these, 15 million worship in the state-approved churches under the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), the other 70 million are found in a variety of house churches scattered throughout the land. The rate of church growth has increased dramatically during the last twenty years. During the 1980s, house churches expanded rapidly in the provinces in interior China; during the 1990s, the missionary

movement arising from interior China has spread to the border provinces. Today in North and Northeast China, reports indicate that there is a church in every village.

Factors Contributing to Church Growth in China here are many factors besides persecution that contributed to Church growth in China. The first factor involves the destruction of ecclesiastical, educational, and medical institutions established by foreign missions by the Chinese communists through its agent, the TSPM during the first sixteen years of the People’s Republic and the emergence of noninstitutional house churches which carried on a secret movement in the homes of those believers who held on to their faith under severe pressure (1950–1966).

Christians also suffered during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), when believers were physically and mentally persecuted for their faith. Additionally, China saw the rise of itinerant evangelists during the latter years of the Cultural Revolution and the early post-Mao years

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der the Cross: (1976–1982). These itinerant evangelists were responsible for the restoration of timid, hidden believers and organizing them into worshiping and missionary-sending churches. Another factor contributing to church growth was the development of a voluntary, lay ministry and models of evangelist training, which is radically different from those in the so-called free world. Also, there is an environment of deep spiritual hunger resulting from decades of atheistic-materialistic educational imposition, producing what has been called a “crises of faith” or spiritual vacuum. The ongoing help from churches abroad, such as radio ministry, Bible delivery, training, financial aid, and prayer has also affected growth. Finally, persecution has been a factor, which should be understood within the context of Chinese political history under an authoritarian government. Even in post-Mao, economic reform-oriented China, persecution has not ceased to this day. In noting the relationship between persecution, suffering, and church growth in China, it would be best to keep these other factors in mind as together they contribute to a vital growing church under the sovereignty of God working out his plan in human history. If one asks any Christian in China, “Why has the Church grown so fast in China?” his answer would be, “God did it.”

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Context of Persecution and Christian Suffering side from Marxist hostility to Christianity, there exists a church and state relationship in China that can best be summarized in terms of the supremacy of the state over all aspects of the people’s lives, including their ideological thinking and religious faith. A concept of orthodoxy and heterodoxy was at work in traditional China for over a thousand years before modern Christianity landed in China. The Chinese imperial government embraced Confucianism as its “official orthodoxy,” and promoted it through education and officialdom. All other philosophies and

al or lay preachers without the approval of the RAB. Protestant house churches and underground Catholic churches which refuse to accept the above limitations prefer not to join the patriotic organization in order to retain the freedom to conduct evangelism as they are led by the Spirit of God, to plant new churches, and to train their leaders. Such activities are considered illegal, and their gathering and training centers are subject to arrest as “illegal religious activities.” House church groups that are organized, and many of them are, ranging from 5,000 to 5,000,000 members, are labeled as “cults,” and are persecuted accordingly.

The apparatus of control is a concerted effort on the part of the patriotic religious organizations, the Despite consistent state persecution—and maybe partly because of the Religious Affairs Bureau, the United Front Work persecution—the number of believers in China has grown from about one million Department, and the Public Security Bureau (police sysfifty years ago to probably more than eighty million today. tem), and the Ministry of State Security (the counterpart of a combination of FBI religions such as Taoism, Buddhism, Islam, and and CIA) to implement the government’s religious later Catholicism and Christianity, as well as organ- policy. Since 1992, the government has been ized folk religions were considered as “heterodox.” requiring all nonregistered churches to register Today under socialism, Marxism, Leninism, and to join the TSPM. Failure to register makes Maoism, and the Writings of Deng Xiaoping con- them illegal entities, and “offenders” are subject to stitute the government’s “official orthodoxy.” arrest by the local police who have the authority Consequently, Western democratic ideology and to impose fines (one to two years’ annual salary) or the above-mentioned five “world religions” as well send them to “Educational Labor Camps” without as organized folk religions, including the nonregis- due process of law. tered house Christianity, are considered heterodox, Persecution Directed Against Church Planters ideologically speaking. ven among the house churches, the average However, how should they deal with millions of believers do not suffer much persecution, people who embrace religious beliefs? The policy though they still suffer from unequal treatof the state since 1950 has been to organize these world religions under five different “patriotic reli- ment at work and in society in general. The main gious organizations,” such as the Chinese Catholic targets of persecution are church leaders, especialPatriotic Association and the Chinese Protestant ly the itinerant evangelists who conduct pioneer Three-self Patriotic Movement, whose function is evangelism and plant churches outside their hometo help the state to implement its religious policy towns and provinces and the church leaders who and to promote its national political programs oversee the development of their churches and under the leadership of the Chinese Communist who conduct the training of younger church leadParty and the direction of the Religious Affairs ers as evangelists and pastors. When a leadership Bureau (RAB) of the government and the supervi- gathering or training center (usually a farmer’s sion of the United Front Work Department of the home) is discovered, the police send truckloads of Party. Under this kind of arrangement, religious officers to encircle a courtyard-house complex so believers are granted the freedom of belief and the that no one escapes from the gate. After taking the freedom of worship in churches that are registered names of all those present, the officers take them to with the RAB, which also grants preaching licenses the police station, where each person is interrogatto the preachers, approves their appointments, and ed by two to three police officers in isolation for limits their locality and sphere of ministry. several days, sometimes for twenty-four hours Churches under the TSPM do not have the free- straight by three shifts of interrogators. During the dom of evangelism outside of places of worship, nor interrogation, house church leaders are often are they allowed to conduct training of profession- slapped, beaten, kicked, or stricken by 2,000-watt

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electric rods. Then a fine of 2,000 to 5,000 Renminbi (People’s currency) (RMB) is imposed on such an individual. This is equal to one to two years of a farmer’s annual income. Those who fail to pay the fines are sent to Educational Labor camps for eighteen to thirty-six months of hard labor.

Nowadays, many churches prefer to borrow money to redeem their co-workers in order to spare the pain from their family members and to redeem their time for ministry. Waiting for fines by the police can take as long as a month. The “offenders” are kept at the police detention center along with other criminals, such as thieves, robbers, and murderers.

There, Christians are often beaten or humiliated.

Once they are sent to the Educational Correction camps, church leaders as new “inmates” are often beaten and humiliated by the “king of the cells.”

One elder was put next to the urinal and forced to drink his own urine, mixed with detergent and his own excretions. Many other forms of persecution are intended for the believer to give up his faith and ministry. Some of these include solitary confinement in a cubical so small that one cannot even stand up or stretch his legs fully.

Persecution, Christian Suffering, and Church Growth s a kind of theological and missiological reflection, I can think of seven reasons why persecution and Christian suffering help to contribute to church growth in China.

First, persecution deepens a Christian’s spiritual life. Under a circumstance of prolonged persecution of Christians, Chinese believers have come to accept persecution as their lot as followers of Jesus.

They have experienced the words of Jesus: “In the world you will have persecution; the world will hate you, because you do not belong to the world” (John 15:18–19). They have also come to understand that suffering is concomitant to discipleship, as stated by Paul: “It has been granted to you not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake” (Phil. 1:29). In the midst of persecution, Chinese Christians have come to experience identification with Jesus, namely, being identified with him meant suffering for him and in suffering for him they come to experience a closer relationship with him and with the Father through the descent of the “the Spirit of glory,” which rests upon them when they are reproached for the name of Christ (1 Pet. 4:14). Those who have gone through imprisonment testify how they experienced the joy of close communion with the triune God. When they are released, they seldom talk about the tortures that were inflicted upon them. Rather, they talk about how they were drawn closer to the Lord.

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A spirit of meekness, humility, and joy characterize their transformed personalities. When they preach Christ to others, they preach a Christ whom they have come to know experientially, a Christ for whom they suffered, and a Christ who saw them through their darkest hours.

Second, persecution can purge the believer of his inward sins and confirm his faith in Christ.

Those who went through imprisonment (where they suffer humiliation and physical abuse, hard labor, and often starvation) testify that during the first few weeks of their interrogation and confinement they were forced to examine their lives and their ministry as if giving an account of themselves to the Lord as their judge. They went through prolonged and detailed confession before the Lord for their failures and their sins. This cleansing process would yield a clean heart, and the experience a sense of freedom from sin and a freedom to serve God as Peter told his readers: “Therefore, Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God” (1 Pet. 4:1–2). They experience a renewed understanding of God as a God of holiness, a God of righteousness, and a God of mercy. In this process, their faith is renewed and further confirmed. When they come out of prison, they preach the Gospel with greater boldness than ever before. The purifying process also can make them more determined than ever to pursue holiness and to live at peace with God. Third, persecution causes the larger house churches to split into several smaller groups. As the small groups grow in size, they would split again for security reasons. In the countryside, small groups mean thirty to fifty people. In the cities, small means ten to fifteen persons. When these new groups are formed, new leadership emerges or is appointed, and training for them becomes an immediate task. That is why leadership-training sessions are conducted all over China in a clandestine manner. In Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, because the political atmosphere used to be rather tolerant, house churches began to build church buildings that could accommodate 500 to 1,000 people. Since the enforcement of registration began in 1996, several of these church building were blasted down by the government and others were taken over by the TSPM. In the process, house church leaders there adopted a policy of near total withdrawal, both pastoral leaders and the congregations, while losing their sanctuaries.

They organized themselves into dozens of smaller house churches which experienced faster growth

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than when they were together.

Fourth, when a political movement is launched by the government, such as the anticrime campaign in 1996 or the current anti-Falungong campaign that began in August 1999, top house church leaders are the first to be arrested. This forces the younger men and women to come up to take the places of leadership. When the younger men are arrested, the young women rise up in their place. In North China when the top leader was arrested and sentenced for eighteen months, his son and his right-hand man took over the leadership for training and administration of their 300-plus house churches respectively. When he came out, he discovered that his group had over 400 house churches. If growth in leadership is any indicator of church growth, China certainly has her share of an ever-growing army of church leaders.

Fifth, persecution forces the believers to grow

the Church in China into a church of persistent prayer. Persecution in terms of forbidding regular church meetings, pressure for registration, arrest of itinerant evangelists and their training centers, and imprisonment of church leaders put the house churches under impossible situations. Sometimes the only thing they can do is pray; the only help they can expect is from the Lord. This has been the case since the formation of the Three-self Reform Movement in 1950 (the name was later changed to TSPM in 1954). God does answer their prayers with signs and miracles, such as sudden death of their persecutors or the promotion of imprisoned church leaders to become assistant wardens, much like the role Joseph played in the prison of Pharaoh. For the past twenty years that I have been in contact with house church leaders, I have noticed that in all their gatherings they have a custom of getting up at 5:00 a.m. to pray for two hours in the morning. They do this either privately or Deprived of the opportunity to maintain offices and written records, church corporately. In the community prayer, they always pray officers must communicate by word of mouth and, of late, cell phones. They must for those in prison or undergoing suffering. They also be mobile, with much of their energy and money devoted to survival, training, and pray for the expansion of the Gospel throughout China. missionary expansion. They travel light, like sojourners.

In training sessions, they apply spiritual lessons that into a close solidarity and the leaders to develop a they extrapolate from the lectures. It is very true in fluid, tight organizational structure and communi- China that prayer leads to revival, and revival leads cation network. Most of the larger house church to missionary expansion. This is the secret to groups have developed several layers of leadership- church growth in China. oriented and functional organizational structure, Seventh, the testimonies of those who have sufwhich is also accompanied with a multilevel lead- fered long under persecution have become a source ership training system. These levels are usually of inspiration to the growing Church in China. determined by geographical expansions: organiza- Their faithfulness spurs the younger leaders to contional structures, co-workers’ meetings, and train- tinue in their footsteps; their convictions are passed ing sessions are conducted at the village level, on to the subsequent generation of church leaders. township level, country level, provincial level, and The testimonies of Wang Mingtao (1900–1991, national level. Deprived of the opportunity to imprisoned for twenty-three years) and Yuan maintain offices, regular phones, and paperwork, Xiancheng of Beijing (imprisoned for twenty years they have to communicate by word of mouth or and still maintains an independent house meeting cellular phones (more recently), and they have to since 1979), of Xie Moshan of Shanghai (imprismeet frequently for review and planning purposes. oned twenty years), and of Samuel Lam of In this mobile manner most of their energy, time, Guangzhou (imprisoned twenty years) and and money are devoted to survival, training, and Epaphras Chen of Yinchuan (also twenty years) are missionary expansion. In other words, they travel but a few examples. A tradition of faithfulness to light, like sojourners, and like an army on the Christ even unto death has been established among march and doing field battle. They worship in the house churches and a spirit of resistance to state believers’ homes, they hold church business meet- persecution prevails throughout China. Today the ings in believers’ homes, and they carry out train- state’s determination to subjugate the independent ing (ranging from three days to three months) in house churches through registration and managebelievers’ homes, and these venues change accord- ment under the TSPM and the house churches’ ing to the degree of security. determined resistance to that pressure through Sixth, persistent state persecution has turned prayer and enduring suffering is like two armies

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engaged in warfare. One side uses brute force, the other resorts to God’s spiritual power. As a student of Chinese Church studies, I can say that the ongoing expansion of the Church in China has already passed the point of the state’s ability to control it.

There are already more Christians than party members, some of whom are turning to Christ.

Conclusion ltimately Christians endure suffering for the sake of the Gospel and for a testimony to Jesus Christ, just as the Apostle John testified: “I John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the Word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Rev. 1:9). He who testifies to the lordship of Christ cannot escape persecution from those who oppose him. Yet, through enduring suffering, their discipleship is authenticated through their being identified with his suffering, death, and resurrection, and to them Christ gives the power to overcome the world and the Spirit of glory to abide with them.

The Church in China is a sobering success story of church growth. ■

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Jonathan Chao (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is the founder and president of China Ministries International, Inc., headquartered in Taiwan. He is a leading authority on the Church in Socialist China.

SPEAKING OF “It was never our intention to build a big church.

From the very start, our vision was to just ‘be’ the church that God intended us to be.”

— Bill Hybels Senior Pastor, Willow Creek Community Church

“In their quest to ‘be’ that church, the Willow Creek Community Church (Willow Creek) has seen an explosion of growth since its founding in 1975. They attributed much of their success to the simple concept of knowing your customers and meeting their needs. Before starting the church, the founders asked the following simple question to thousands of people who did not attend church: ‘What are the reasons why you don’t attend church?’ Their responses were very frank. They found that people with no interest in church gave five general reasons for their indifference: 1. Churches were always asking for money (yet nothing perceived as personally significant seemed to be happening with the money).

2. Church services were boring and lifeless.

3. Church services were predictable.

4. Sermons were irrelevant to daily life in the ‘real world.’

5. The pastor made people feel guilty and ignorant, so they leave church feeling worse than when they entered the doors.

With the survey data in hand, the founders of Willow Creek focused their attention on building a service organization that continually attracted new ‘customers’ and empowered regular attenders to bring in more new ‘customers.’ The results bespoke themselves: They were the best-attended church in America with close to 14,000 people flocking to Willow Creek on an average weekend of services and about 5,000 returning during the week for yet another service….”

— Excerpted from Harvard Business School Case Study of Willow Creek, rev. July 10, 1997

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Interview with Bill Hull, Evangelical Free Church in America

How Has the Church Growth Movement Changed in the Last Two Decades, and Where Is It Headed?

MR readily admits that we do not entirely understand the church growth movement; we are suspicious of the possible syncretism involved in borrowing so heavily from marketing methodology. At the same time, we understand that there are differences within the movement—though these variations are often difficult to see from the outside.

As such, we asked a friend with greater acquaintance with this issue to outline some of the shading that he thought we would be prone to overlook. Rev. Bill Hull served for a number of years as the Director of Church Ministries for the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA), and has authored many books on church growth and disciple-making. Now the senior minister of Cypress (California) Evangelical Free Church, Rev. Hull has had an “on-again, off-again” relationship with the church growth movement. We asked him to explain what first attracted him to the movement; what changes he has seen during his involvement; how he thinks about “measurability” today; and where he thinks things are headed. — EDS.

Bill Hull Evangelical Free Church of America

BH: It was a gorgeous summer day in 1979; I was standing on a perfectly manicured hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean. John Wayne’s grave was a few feet behind me as I committed the earthy tent of a wonderful saint to the ground. As I walked to the car a man approached me and said, “Hi, I am Arthur Glasser, I just wanted to thank you for the service.” I wondered if he were Dr. Arthur Glasser from Fuller’s School of World Mission. I asked him and indeed he was. I knew his name because of the recent reading I had done on the church growth movement. We talked for a few minutes about evangelism, assimilation, and the importance of intentionality in leadership. His last words to me have stuck all these years: “Remember to measure everything.” That sounded good to me, I was an exbasketball player and I liked a scoreboard. The problem seemed that what was greatly valued in the church world could not be easily measured. It was easy to measure attendance and offerings, but what about kindness and personal growth? The lay leaders in my church were numbers conscious to a

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degree. They noticed attendance and financial numbers, but when I set numerical growth rate goals for a decade, they resisted. It remains an anomaly that when attendance and giving is down, panic sets in. But there seems to be no panic at all in churches about the lack of numbers in conversion growth.

It was the seventies and church growth was hot.

Any pastor ambitious to lead a growing church was reading the literature. There were debates concerning its validity; John Stott an evangelical heavyweight, had serious questions. Stott spoke for many who were concerned about the pragmatism and “bean counting” personality of the movement. Most pastors are ambitious; I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. God uses ambition—the Bible does speak against selfish ambition1—but God has wired us to desire success.2 This is particularly acute in people 25 to 45 years of age. After all, this is the time so many of us are building our careers, our families, and our identities.

When I graduated seminary the road to success in my small cut of the evangelical world was preach it and they will come. I had a silent confidence that

I would be one of those exceptional leaders who would be exempt from the normal rules. I would be able, like my role models, to preach well enough to bring the people in and hire staff to figure out the rest. But I was and still am, though less so, impatient. I wanted results and I wanted them immediately! Our church grew from 125 to 250 in the first year, then it flattened out and I became frustrated. It was time for a diagnosis followed by a prognosis, and that meant getting my tool kit from the church growth people.

The word I added to my everyday conversation was “empirical.” I worked hard to put together a ten-year plan allowing for a 15 percent net growth rate with the obligatory 70 percent turnover in congregational personnel. The charts and graphs were impressive and I felt better about the church and, more importantly, about myself. It built my confidence to know that I had done something concrete about my situation. Additionally, we placed several measuring devices into our system so as not to lose control of the situation.

Three years later we were at the same size congregation, even though somewhat different personnel. The church had made important progress in conversion growth, but our net growth was at zero. The congregation was impressed with my ability to provide strategic leadership along with an innovative style. It had become apparent to me, however, that my ability to connect with people at a deeper level was weak and that all the record keeping had not attracted anyone. It was time for more ideas.

Just in time a new breed of book made its way into the Christian bookstores, the “How to Break [weekly attendance of] 200, 400, 800, et al.” series.

These short but helpful books gave pastors advice from pastors who had broken the barriers or consultants who had documented the same. There are many cases where this kind of information helps to get a church to the next level of ministry. It also fosters a mentality that can lead to pastors breaking their spirits more than their growth barriers.

Did I mention God? The number-one factor in church growth is God’s blessing and permission.3 The way God is indirectly connected to church growth is the measure of giftedness he has chosen for each leader.4 Some leaders have been given huge doses of charisma; others have megapreaching and teaching gifts. This leads to large churches particularly in metropolitan areas. It is a fact that these greatly gifted ones will always be among us and they are the ones with the bigger ministries. The obvious truth that stands out like mountains on a landscape is you cannot reproduce such giftedness. But like mountains, we grow so accustomed to them, we don’t see them anymore.

The Megas By the middle eighties the church growth movement began to lose its impact. Too many pastors and church leaders discovered that setting goals and measuring progress alone was of little help. To be fair, no one really taught this; it is, however, a living by the numbers “hangover.” As a class of people, pastors became cynical for a second time about charts, graphs, and numerical goals.

The first wave of cynicism was the reflex reaction to engineering the church; the second wave was the emotional residue of not seeing much happen.

Another dynamic began to affect church thinking: the birth of the megachurch. The sixties and seventies were dominated by the parachurch.

Organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ and the Navigators provided needed guidance to lethargic local congregations. Additionally, there were a growing number of smaller missional groups that contributed to churches becoming more intentional and fruitful. And finally the church consultant was created from the “dust of the dearth.”

The dearth of effectiveness; I can remember how little attention churches paid to disciple-making in the sixties and seventies. It was as though they had a strange form of amnesia that made them forget the Great Commission.

The church could ignore mavericks like Bill Bright and Dawson Trotman, but they couldn’t turn a deaf ear to the words that cast a spell on their egos: “explosive numerical growth.” There had always been large churches of 500 to 1,000 and occasionally 3,000 or 4,000, but churches over 1,000 were rare in the radical sixties and the polyester seventies. But then came Willow Creek Community Church, a church so different and growing so fast that everyone paid attention. It wasn’t charismatic; it wasn’t a cult; it wasn’t soft on truth; it was meat-and-potatoes Christianity repackaged. Bill Hybels, the founding pastor, asked the community why they didn’t go to church. Based on those answers along with his own personal convictions, he launched the church in the seventies. By 1990 it was a force to contend with, holding seminars and workshops with thousands attending and thousands more on the waiting list. It became a national news story when ABC’s Peter Jennings interviewed Hybels. The highly revered sociologist Peter Drucker referred to the large church as the most important sociological event of the last ten years. Willow Creek reconfigured the idea of church; they held worship services on Wednesday night, while Sunday morning was a special outreach service geared to the seeker. The Willow Creek association of churches now numbers in the thousands who have benefited and have sought to adopt their style. While churches in America over

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1,000 in attendance are still in the top 1 percent, that still accounts for several thousand churches.

If Willow Creek were too corporate-looking, just as many church leaders flocked to Saddleback Church in Southern California—16,000 and growing. The appeal of Willow Creek is the wonderful organizational abilities of Bill Hybels and his staff. He understood the times and tapped into a mammoth “felt need.” That need was to have God presented in a way he could be understood and appreciated. Saddleback’s pastor, Rick Warren, comes across warm and inviting; his language and manner are attractive to many pastors. Many who couldn’t relate to Hybels found Warren an attractive alternative.

Prayer and Experiencing God In 1976, world leaders met in Lusanne, Switzerland, to figure out how to evangelize the world. Church growth was hot, and many a seminar talked about their view and principles. They joined together once more in the early nineties in Manila and again in Korea. From that, each country formed its own version of Lusanne; the United States eventually named their version Mission America.

The most amazing thing about Mission America is its stationery. The list of leaders covers the margin from top to bottom with a Who’s Who of the U.S. Church. What strikes you most is the varied backgrounds and the once divided theological camps that have now joined together. It appears that Jesus’ request has now been largely answered.5 The Church has joined hands to demonstrate love and from that power base, to reach a country.

There is a hunger among leaders that has placed marginal differences into the background. People no longer want to argue rapture, pretrib, postrib, premill, amill, postmill … as one leader stated, “I just want to see God revive his Church and fulfill the Great Commission.” It is interesting that while various traditions have different interpretations of the Bible, they are willing to lay aside those differences for the greater good of the kingdom.

Since the mid-nineties, there have been a growing number of revival streams that are now converging into a potentially mighty river of God’s power.

Prayer summits for pastors, fasting and prayergatherings for church leaders are growing. Local church pastors are gathering to pray, and fellow pastors become comrades, not competitors.

This all comes as a result of unsatisfied appetite for the real thing. The wonderful truth that has made its way into many a church leader’s mind is, church growth isn’t enough to satisfy our hunger for God. This is one of the reasons Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God book has been a best-seller. Men and women alike hunger to

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encounter the living God and see his power. The number-one church growth principle is: when people encounter God, they will come back. People want to be where God is working, where they can see the impact of his power. People can’t stay away from the authentic move of God’s spirit. This must be considered a positive development when the desire for God leads to others being drawn to the Church. This is church growth God’s way.

I am a typical evangelical pastor who desires to see God manifest himself in a powerful way. I have historically been in that comfortable theological place that says, “I am open to all the work of God’s Spirit, I do not seek all of it, but if God wants to, I’m not against it.” This has led to what one writer calls the “Silent Divorce.”6 The evangelical and charismatic churches have lived as though there has been a divorce between the Word and power. The charismatic churches have lived with the Spirit with periodic visits from the Word. The evangelical church has lived with the Word with occasional visitation from the Spirit.

There is a strong move to have a two-parent church where the Word and Spirit dwell together in balance.

The next phase of church growth is upon us. It is the two-parent church where Word and Spirit join together to give us the encounter with God we are so hungry for. There is a great deal of literature and conferences that teach us to exegete our culture and how to target a group, a raft of books on leadership style and just as many on evangelism and discipleship. I have written eight books myself on these subjects. Leaders attempt to develop the right kind of worship experience: we search for ways to attract visitors and keep them. We write sermons that are to be relevant. But all this is cannon fodder compared to an encounter with God during worship. People are drawn to God’s reality and power, especially when his presence is experienced.

The crucial key to our own church growth experience is a deepening of our relationship to God. God has begun to move in special ways in our services. Needs are coming to the surface. It is becoming normal to have a ministry time during our services where people can be prayed for. The pull of God’s power is so strong that it overrides all the wisdom of the literature. People are standing, coming forward, confessing their sins and asking God for help in front of everyone. Then others discover it is okay to have needs and the church is a forgiving and healing community. All this is done without backing off one inch from the clear teachings of God’s Word. I am not sure what will come next, but I am sure that the spiritually thirsty will find the way.

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| Who Do You Say that I Am?

Worldwide Anglicanism and Theology Renewal? denomination of Anglican Christians find themselves at the start of the New founding decades as “putting down its anchors in the outer roads of the broad Millennium. This review surveys the ideas governing harbor of the Calvinist or (better) Reformed Tradition.”1 I hope it is possible to the book and the unifiedfield theory that unites all of say that Anglicanism floats its ship even the essays. It then ponders the implications of the closer to the center of the somewhat book for Anglican Christianity as a whole. wider harbor of Reformation or Who Do You Say that I Am? opens with almost its Protestant orthodoxy. best entry. This is the stirring introduction by A new book on Christology in the Donald Armstrong. He sees the book’s purpose to be Anglican communion confirms this an “articulate and credible antidote” to the impression, although it does not represent “devastating, despairing, and inaccurate picture of what many contemporary Anglicans or God” represented by the weak “Christologies of Episcopalians, especially clergy, think they many who are “charged with the protection and believe.

Many North American proclamation of the apostolic truth” (p. xiv). Mr. Anglicans would not agree with the Armstrong is tilting against the North American driving theses of this book. Many would Episcopal bishops who are uncomfortable with the find the essays too conservative, too authority of the Bible, and hence with the strong dependent on its Bible, too evangelical. Christology of the New Testament. This discomfort Most Third-World Anglicans, however, with the Bible on its own terms is no new thing in Anglicanism. Then, again, it is no new thing in will drink it in by the jot and tittle.

The book is called Who Do You Say that I Am? Protestantism in general, or, for that matter, in Who Do You Say Christology and the Church and is edited by Donald modern Roman Catholicism. Armstrong quotes H. that I Am: Armstrong, the Rector of Grace Church, Colorado Richard Niebuhr’s famous prediction that Christology and Springs. It is a written report, beautifully presented “mainstream” American Christians would one day the Church

by Eerdmans, of a conference held in the autumn embrace “a God without wrath bringing men without of 1998 in Paris and sponsored by the Anglican sin into a kingdom without judgment through the Institute. edited by ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

The essays offered are almost all worthwhile in Donald Armstrong Christopher Hancock’s essay on “The themselves as thoughtful orthodox explorations of Christological Problem” presents the many Eerdmans Publishing, 1999.

Christ’s Christness. In addition to their intrinsic introspective and theological issues that orbit $20.00, 141 pages importance, as positive statements of creedal around the affirmation that Jesus of Nazareth was Christianity in the contemporary context, they both Christ and God. The essay is a little diffuse. also say quite a bit about where the majority, if not It contains at least one sentence that will cause the governing majority, in the worldwide many readers of MR to stop and wonder. Dr.

T

he English historian Patrick Collinson describes the Church of England in its

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Hancock refers on p. 13 to “a classical Anglican biblical hermeneutic, which is both christocentric and coherent.” What is this “classical Anglican biblical hermeneutic”? Is it different from the Reformation’s doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture, the idea that the Bible is generally selfinterpreting? The writer doesn’t tell.

Often the phrase “Anglican” is used in popular and also scholarly parlance to denote something apparently substantial. Does “Anglican” mean incarnational in emphasis? Does it mean sacramental in emphasis? Does it mean an interpretive “back bench” of tradition and experience for understanding Scripture, in that order; or experience and tradition, in that order? Is “Anglicanism” Richard Hooker, or is it Thomas Cranmer, or is it John Keble, or is it Charles Gore? Is it “liberal Protestantism”? Is it “liberal Catholicism”? This reviewer has never been able to locate an “Anglicanism” that is not either a forum of historic Protestantism or a form of historic Catholicism.

What history shows is that Anglicanism is an accident of history by which a national Church of England sheltered under its covers a generally Protestant theology with permission given to certain Catholic sensibilities to remain, albeit dormant. These dormant Catholic sensibilities, especially in their secondary forms of fascination with liturgy and aesthetics, not to mention a certain “Englishness” or cultural moderation in spirit, have given to Anglicanism the tension that makes such a book as Who Do You Say that I Am? necessary.

Dr. Hancock makes one point that is characteristic of current Anglican theologies. He says that the “christological problem” remains an ecclesiological problem. This is because the Church has to state the parameters of proper versus improper Christology. Yes and no. In a tradition of free theological inquiry, which is an enduring feature of Protestantism, there has to be some touchstone or canon of authority. But the Anglican church is so weak and dispersed in terms of its ability to make authoritative statements about anything, that it will probably never be able to establish lasting parameters. The christological problem is not an ecclesiological problem at root. It is a Bible problem: How do we weigh the role of the Bible in establishing healthy versus unhealthy doctrine?

The outstanding contribution in this set of Anglican essays on Christology is called “The Necessity of a Biblical Christology.” It is by the retired dean of Virginia Theological Seminary, Richard Reid. The essay is easy to follow and also logically argued. It is also convincing. Dean Reid believes the biblical accounts of Jesus are essentially true (i.e., that the Gospels provide us

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with a reliable picture of Jesus; see p. 37), that sin is the basic human problem, and that the Christology of the New Testament unites the great plan of God with the great problem of human existence. Reid speaks of the Atonement and its necessity, although he states the Atonement’s necessity in a relatively mild and modest way.2 Here, in his understated acceptance of the Atonement of Christ’s Cross, Dean Reid is in fact being characteristically Anglican. Anglicanism has inherited a culturally English discomfort with strong or disjunctive (either/or) statements. Reid’s essay concludes with a sentence that the readers of MR will welcome: “Any Christology which is not rooted in the Bible … will always be inadequate, or worse, just plain wrong” (p. 45).

The famous N. T. Wright, former Dean of Lichfield and now Canon of Westminster Abby, presents an important essay entitled “The Biblical Formation of a Doctrine of Christ.” Wright puts together a view of Christ and earliest Christianity that is strongly influenced by the “new perspective on Paul” and by “post-Holocaust” approaches to the New Testament. Canon Wright so strongly stresses the Jewishness of Jesus, and the Jewish roots of Christianity, that he almost loses hold of the discontinuity of Christ. Wright’s conclusions about the divinity of Christ, or more accurately the Christness of God, are, like everything in this book, thoughtfully orthodox. But the way he arrives at them is questionable. Too little New Covenant!

Two other fine pieces close out this volume on Christology.

They are Alister McGrath’s “Christology: On Learning from History” and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s extremely substantial piece entitled “Christ and His Church: The Implications of Christology for the Mission of the Church Today.” Principal McGrath’s essay will please all those who love orthodox historical theology. McGrath also loves the Reformation.

Dr. Carey’s piece seeks to tie the affirmations about Jesus Christ in the Bible to the orthodox essence of the Christian church.

The Archbishop’s Christology is magnificent. It is rare that senior figures, such as he, in the Church of England are so courageous and decisive in underlining the sine qua non of the centrality of the Biblical Christ. Dr. Cary is particularly committed to the unity and also the truth of the Church. Here both themes shine through. If Dr. Carey’s ecclesiology is a little higher than we all might accept, he is allowed! Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.

Christology in that section of worldwide Reformation-rooted Protestantism that is represented by the Anglican Communion is safe with the authors and editor of this marvelous book. But the fact that

writers such as Dean Reid, Principal McGrath, with Dr. Carey, not to mention the eloquent layman Alan Crippen, are not in the driver’s seat everywhere, and certainly not in the U.S.A., is important to note.

Christological confusion is pervasive in many sections of the Church. Even the popular Episcopal novelist Jan Karon said recently that she does not care “a whit for (the Episcopal church’s) slovenly theology.” Too true.

But the fact remains: Earnest, thoughtful, clear heads, prayerful men and women, are working towards the renewal of Anglicanism along Christological lines. That goes even for Lambeth Palace. The Word goeth forth not in vain.

Dr. Paul Zahl Dean of the Cathedral Church of the Advent (Episcopal), Birmingham, Alabama

BOOK R E V IEW Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision

by David F. Wells Eerdmans Publishing, 1998. $20.00, 228 pages.

Exegeting Our Self-Worshiping Culture The massacre in Littleton, Colorado, is branded vividly on our collective consciousness, as are the senseless killings in Jonesborough, Arkansas; Paducah, Kentucky; and Oklahoma City. I began this review as reports flashed across television screens that stock trader Mark Barton had murdered his family of three before going on a murderous rampage through Atlanta’s day-trading community. Before I finished, Buford Furrow, impassioned by neo-Nazi convictions, sprayed bullets at Jewish toddlers in Los Angeles. What has gone wrong in our country? Is America on the verge of moral meltdown?

In this maelstrom of moral decline, David Wells’s latest book, Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision, could not be more appropriate. This is the third in a series of books exploring the cultural context of the American evangelical church. His first book, No Place for Truth, functioned as his cultural prolegomenon. It was followed by a second, God in the Wasteland, in which he analyzed the contemporary understanding of God, and now, in this third volume, he turns his

attention to a cultural analysis of theological anthropology. Wells justifies his foray into sociology by arguing that the theologian’s task is not only to articulate doctrinal truths (as important as that is) but also to interpret the culture in order to determine how it affects the Church.

In a nutshell, Wells’s book is about the decline and fall of modern American culture and what this means for the evangelical church. He brings forward a plethora of sociological studies, both sacred and secular, which make the case that our modern society has abandoned all for one single absolute—the individual self. Although most are aware of such statistics, it is nevertheless startling to read that “67 percent of Americans do not believe in the existence of moral absolutes.” With such moral bankruptcy in view, Wells argues that Americans have exchanged a right understanding of the self as a moral being created in the image of God for a selfabsorption that has lost its connectedness to God and, thus, to any moral absolute. Sin, he believes, has been “domesticated to accommodate secular theories of the self.” The results would be comical if they were not so sad. In the place of the Redeemer, modern culture has sought its salvation in therapy, materialism, consumption, fashion, and cosmetic surgery. Our narcissistic culture, says Wells, is therefore traveling blindly with no moral compass.

One of the consequences of the cultural shift in moral terrain has been the way in which guilt has been exchanged for shame. For Wells, our sense of guilt, which alerts us to our sin, has been replaced by an amoral and amorphous feeling of shame. If guilt calls for forgiveness, shame seeks selfacceptance. This shift from guilt to shame creates a worldview in which the self becomes the fulcrum and good or bad is determined by whether or not the self is served. When guilt morphs into shame, our orientation fixes on how we are being viewed by others, rather than by God. This cultural reorientation creates enormous internal contradictions between our creation in the image of God and the wreckage of that image by sin. No matter how much one may repress his or her moral sense, Wells argues, the image of God ensures that tension will result. In the final analysis, creatures made in the image of God cannot live as if there were no moral absolutes without spiritualpsychological dissonance.

Wells does not exegete the decline of contemporary culture for its own sake, but for its significance for the Church. Indeed, the Church rather than the culture is his main interest. On the one hand, he sees the rotting of modern morality as an “opportunity” for the Church to address the moral decay in our culture. “As evening descends

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upon America,” he writes, “the prospects for Christian faith, I believe, could be bright.” But on the other hand, this opportunity could slip through evangelical fingers if it does not recapture its moral authenticity. Wells worries that the evangelical church is ill-equipped to address the real issues. He observes in the Church the “erosion of its theological character, its unwitting worldliness and its inability to think clearly and incisively about the culture and the growing barbarism of that culture.”

He argues that in our modern evangelical churches “God is now so much more mellow than he used to be and the focus of our interest in him centers in the relief he can provide for our frayed private lives.”

Putting it rather bluntly, he concludes that the evangelical American church is a “moral pygmy,” and he issues this sober warning: “Unless it recovers some spiritual gravity, some seriousness, some authenticity, indeed unless it recovers the substance of classical spirituality, the evangelical church will rapidly become an irrelevance in the modern world.”

He offers this remedy to a prosperous but aimless evangelical church: Return to classical Christian theology and recover the high morality and intellectual vigor of the sixteenth and seventeenth century church. Then, and only then, will the Church be able to address the moral malaise that threatens to topple American culture. That, he argues, is the only possible hope for a culture in moral free fall. Like the fall of the Roman Empire, American culture is teetering on the verge of moral collapse. The evangelical church is the only hope for a culture in moral decline. But if the Church is lost in the fog of postmodernism, if it has no firm theology to offer this collapsing empire, then the Church can do nothing to prevent this downward spiral. Wells is convinced that Christianity does indeed have a solid answer to the moral collapse of America—it is classical Reformed theology. The message of his book is that a church without a solid theology has nothing to say to a culture in moral decline.

In this book, as in the previous two, Wells writes as a modern-day prophet crying in the wilderness for the evangelical church to return to theological faithfulness. Wells is torn between his ecclesiology (with St. Matthew’s ringing affirmation that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church) and his Augustinian anthropology. On the one hand, his Reformed outlook compels him to see the Church as the only hope for a self-worshiping culture. But on the other hand, alarmed by foreboding statistics and the stark reality of an anemic and sometimes pathetic Church, his powerful pessimism parades between every line of the book. In a sense, Wells’s melancholy reminds us that we are living in the already–not yet tension of

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this age. I suspect many of us (whether we care to admit it or not) live our lives in a kind of purgatory between hope and despair, where we are frustrated with the rank Pelagianism of the TV preachers, yet at other times are encouraged by the thoughtful and penetrating cultural analysis of theologians such as David Wells. One may grow weary of the relentless pessimism, but we need to take this book seriously if we are rightly to understand modern America and seek the only remedy for what ails her.

The underlying question which haunts every sentence in this book is this: Does the evangelical church have the theological depth to speak to the important issues of the day? Wells’s answer is unsettling, for he fears that the evangelical church itself has succumbed to the moral relativism in this postmodern age and thus is morally adrift and at a loss to provide leadership.

Despite his discouragement about the Church, Wells holds out a glimmer of hope. “Could it be that the evangelical faith, once again made serious, once again possessed of biblical truth and moral fiber, could serve America today as it did England in the eighteenth century, when slavery was abolished and that nation was turned back from its barbarism?”

Wells is right. The Church has the answer to the barbarism of Littleton, Colorado, the pervasive moral indifference and the rampant dysfunctionalism of our culture; it is nothing other than the life-transforming, intellectually stimulating, historic Gospel. That, as Luther might say, “is to grab the goose by the neck.”

Dr. Frank A. James III Professor of Historical Theology Reformed Theological Seminary Orlando, Florida

SHORT N OTIC E S The Heart of the Cross

by James M. Boice and Philip G. Ryken.

Crossway Books, 1999.

183 pp., $14.99.

For obvious reasons, last words carry a profundity not found in more common speech.

Their impact lies in the fact that they give cause for the summation of life, and so when they are captured they are often weighty. This is especially true of Christ’s last words. The Heart of the Cross attempts once again to bring to light the deeper meaning behind Christ’s final words as he died upon the cross—words that capture all the great truth of his life and the salvation he brings.

Boice and Ryken have done their readers a great service in their analysis of Christ’s concluding comments to his followers. They successfully combine the historic context, the mood of post-crucifixion despair, and the joy of witnessing a risen Lord. Chapter 8 (A Word for the Seeker) and Chapter 12 (A Word for the Troubled) are especially helpful in introducing readers to infrequently considered biblical characters and their perspectives on Christ.

The book functions as an historical guide, a theological treatise, and a contemporary devotional. It reminds seasoned Christians of the price of their salvation and the impact of Christ’s words and works on the world. At the same time, it introduces the novice to the world of theology and its application to daily life, since the authors give us a detailed account of the significance and application of the salvific work of Christ. This theological journey is worth the effort, because we cannot be adequately grateful for what Christ has done without first grasping the magnitude of it.

Although these will not be the “last words” revealing Christ’s impact on all humanity, they certainly contribute to our appreciation of how richly and practically the final words of Christ influenced his first followers and how much they still ought to influence us, his contemporary followers, now. It is well worth reading, and ideal as an Easter devotional.

God as a Hermeneutic of the Gospel,” in Confident Witness, Changing World, ed. Craig Van Gelder (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999), p. 311. 3See George Hunsberger, “Sizing Up the Shape of the Church,” The Church between Gospel and Culture; The Emerging Mission in North America, ed. George R. Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996), pp. 333-46.

See George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age

4

(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984). Page references to this book in the following paragraphs are given parenthetically in the text. See also Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm, eds., The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals and Postliberals in Conversation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996). 5Ibid., 127, emphases mine. 6Ibid., 39. 7Ibid., 125. 8Ibid., 126. 9Ibid., 118. 10Ibid., 128. 11Ibid., 132. 12Bruce Shelly and Marshall Shelly make somewhat the same point in Consumer Church: “Can Evangelicals Win the World without Losing Their Souls?” (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992). 13This section contains a small portion of my keynote address, “Culture: Around, Against, In the Church’s Worship,” given in April, 1997, at the Institute of Liturgical Studies, held at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. That address will also appear in a compendium of proceedings from the Institute’s three-year program on “Worship, Culture, and Catholicity,” 1997-99. My thanks to director Dr. David Truemper for permission to use this adapted version here. 14Bernice Johnson Reagon, interview with Sharon Anderson, The Other Side’ s Faces of Faith: A Collection of Our Favorite Interviews, p. 9. Page references to this article in the following paragraphs are given parenthetically in the text.

Ibid., 11.

15

Ibid., 10.

16

Wendell Berry,

17

“Conservation Is Good Work,” in Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community: Eight Essays (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), p. 28. 18Ferenc Maté, A Reasonable Life: Toward a Simpler, Secure, More Humane Existence (New York: Albatross Publishing House, 1993),

Rev. Jody McGuire Salem Church of God Clayton, Ohio

pp. 77-85. 19For excellent materials on the “missional church,” see the following resources from the Gospel and Our Culture Network: Hunsberger and Van Gelder, eds., The Church between Gospel and Culture (cited in note 3 above); Darell L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998); Van Gelder, ed., Confident Witness, Changing World (cited in note 2 above). For information on the Network itself, contact Judy Bos, Administrator, or Dr. George R. Hunsberger, Coordinator, The Gospel and Our

E N D N O T E S

Culture Nework, 101 E. 13th St., Holland, MI 49423-3622.

Growth Mentality That Is Biblical Excerpted from addresses given on the topic "Revitalizing Churches" given at the

The Ethnocentricity of the American Church Growth Movement

1

by Michael Horton

Philadelphia Conference on Reformation Theology, Spring 2000.

Bill Hull, “Is the Church Growth Movement Really Working?” in Power Religion, ed.

1

Michael Horton (Chicago: Moody Press, 1992), 139–59.

Review See his “England and International Calvinism 1558–1640” in International Calvinism,

1

1541–1715. Edited by Menna Prestwich (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp.

Who Do the Mega-Churches Say They Are? Cited in Charles Trueheart, “Welcome to the Next Church,” Atlantic Monthly, August

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1996, 40. Ibid., 47. Ibid., 53. Ibid., 50. Ibid., 52. Ibid., 52. Ibid., 57. Ibid., 58.

2

Ibid., 43–44.

9

3

Ibid., 43.

10

4

5

6

7

8

Richard Todd, “Not Your Father’s Church,” Civilization,

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April/May 1999, 46.

215–16. 2A confirmation of Anglican “mildness” or even lite-ness of expression concerning the Atonement is found in the book of essays by Church of England scholars entitled Atonement Today, edited by John Goldingay (London: SPCK, 1995). These essays, almost all composed by evangelical Anglicans, are remarkable for their circumspection, even their worry concerning “overstatement” of the Atonement-idea.

The Techniques of Church Growth by D. G. Hart

None of these essays is unorthodox, but only one, Christina Baxter’s “A

1

Lyle Schaller, “You Can’t Believe Everything You Hear About Church Growth,” Leadership

Reconsideration of Penal Substitution,” is forceful. Anglican reserve is a blessing, but

Vol. 18 (Winter 1997), 49. 2Ibid., 50. 3Philip D. Kenneson and James L. Street, Selling Out

it can also be a curse. We are too wary of strong expressions in theology.

the Church (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997), 125. 4Ibid., 125. 5Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996), 7-8.

Free Space James 3:14. 2Joshua 1:8. 31 Corinthians 3:5–9. 4Romans 12: 3–8. 5John 17:21. 6Jack

1

How Christian Worship Forms a Missional Community by Marva J. Dawn

Deere uses this term in Surprised by the Power of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,

See chapter 2, “Two Kinds of Body Offerings,” in Marva J. Dawn, Truly the Community:

1996).

1

Romans 12 and How to be the Church (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1992; reissued 1997), pp. 11-18. 2For the exact quotation, see Mary Jo Leddy, “The People of M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 0 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 5 1

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James Montgomery Boice

Factoids

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e live in a rapidly changing world, and one of the indicators of the

JAMES MONTGOMERY BOICE Senior Minister, Tenth Presbyterian Church

differently that we do not live differently. Thoughts give turbulence is that we are constantly inventing new words to describe what birth to actions.

There is something else is happening. One of the new words that I have noticed recently is “factoid.” about “facts” in a “factoid” age.

Have you noticed that facts It appears regularly on CNN news programs to mark have become mere opinions, and opinions have a break between segments. It introduces a short “fact” become facts? This is why we are offered the results of that is unrelated to anything else either on the news so many public opinion polls while facts are ignored. program or in the viewer’s mind. It doesn’t signify A factual statement is treated merely as someone’s anything. It is just … well, a fact. opinion, something an “expert” is expected to refute, But a short one, hence, a “factoid.” while what the majority of the people think about It strikes me that this is an apt word to describe some subject is treated as important, whether the much of what passes for learning in our shallow, people have any grounds for forming a sound disconnected age. It is a small capsule of what was judgment about the subject or not. We hear things troubling cultural critic Neil Postman when he like, “Thirty-seven percent of those polled today think described TV news as entertainment. He wrote, the president is guilty” or “Thirty-seven percent think “We are presented not only with fragmented news he is not guilty.” But that means nothing unless the but news without context, without consequences, president is running for reelection next month, which without value, and therefore without essential is a different issue. The only meaningful question is: “Is seriousness; that is to say, news as pure he guilty or not?” And that is determined by hard entertainment” (Amusing Ourselves to Death. p. 100). evidence, not by people’s passing whims.

I think many Christians have fallen into this Since the average news segment on network television is only forty-five seconds long, all TV contemporary mindless mind-set, which they show whenever they speak of the Gospel chiefly as “what news is quickly dwindling to “factoid” dimensions.

Here is an interesting question: What does one it means to me” or “what it has done for me.” True, do with “factoids” in an entertainment-focused age? we need to believe the Gospel and follow Christ, That answer is: Turn them into a game, which is but what I believe or feel is not the important why we have Trivial Pursuit. Trivial Pursuit is a game thing. What matters are the facts. Who is Jesus? of myriad facts about all sorts of things, but none of What did he do? Why did he do it? And what the facts have significance. They serve only to does that require of me as his disciple? amuse us for a moment.

Unless we begin to think in terms of a factMuch of what goes on in many churches is like supported Christian world-and-life view, I fear that this. I would not say that nothing is ever Christianity will become merely another trivial pursuit communicated in such churches, but what is in a world of trivial pursuits, and be treated accordingly. communicated does not seem to have bearing on how It will be treated as amusement for those who “like that we live or on what is usually called a world-and-life sort of thing.” It will be just another religious game. But view. We go to church, listen to the preaching—we Christianity is not a game. It is a matter of eternal life may even remember some of what we have heard— or eternal death. And that’s no factoid. but we emerge unscathed. We do not live differently James Montgomery Boice (D.Theol., University of Basel) is the and, what is even more tragic, we do not think president of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and senior differently. Of course, it is because we do not think minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia.

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