I thought I would now write a bit about the worship at the Together on a Mission conference. I’ve even included a 12 second video clip for you to get a feel of it:

On the day I was there we had two times of worship led by South African Evan Rogers. Many songs were in an African language (Afrikaans?), and involved a lot of dancing and actions. The antics of those on dancing the platform got increasingly extravagant, culminating in them diving off the stage into the arms of the worshippers below towards the end of the evening! I wonder what Chuck Colson would say about Bambelela?

When Terry Virgo recommended a book on the cross that defends the doctrine of “penal substitution” a stifled ripple of laugher went round the room, presumably because people thought he had accidently said something rude. I noticed a lot of the new songs included lines affirming this view of the atonement, which shows an admirable intent to ensure that our songs are theologically instructive, although in places singing about the wrath of God to such upbeat music did seem somewhat incongruous.

I think that there are three key groups of newfrontiers worship songs at the moment:
1) Church Songs – there are loads of new songs being written about the church as the agent of God’s kingdom purposes. These are serving to remind us that we are a people on a mission, rather than worship focussing entirely on my personal salvation / relationship with God.
2) Modern Hymns – people such as Stuart Townend and Keith Getty are writing some good new hymns with real depth to the lyrics, which I think is a much needed addition to charismatic worship, as most of the older hymns have been long forgotten.
3) Multi-cultural songs – We are learning songs from other cultures, usually with a ‘celebration’ theme. People from all cultures dancing together in worship is a good expression of the unity in Christ.

Adrian Warnock has been ‘live blogging’ from this week’s Newfrontiers Together on a Mission conference. I only got to attend one day (yesterday), and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I hope find time to post a few reports of my own of the talks and seminars I heard. First up was Thursday mornings seminar on Prophetic Untimeliness by Philip Greenslade of CWR

Philip Greenslade is not actually from a newfrontiers church, but has become a regular guest speaker at conferences over recent years. Personality-wise, he comes across as an intellectual – a deep thinker who presents his message humbly and clearly.

Prophetic Untimeliness

In this seminar, he borrows his title from a book by Os Guinness, Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance, which although I haven’t read, seems to have been well received by most reviewers (see Tim Challies, David Wayne, Douglas Groothuis). Guiness’ main thesis is that the church has been so desparate to be ‘relevant’ (i.e. to be seen as having a relevant message by secular society) that it has actually become irrelevant through compromise, and in fact what the world needs to hear and see (i.e. what is truly relevant) is a church faithful to the gospel.

Philip Greenslade chose Jeremiah as an example of a prophet who was ‘untimely’ – his message was what people needed to hear, rather than what they wanted to hear. The false prophets were simply echoing popular culture, speaking “peace, peace” when there is no peace – the right message but at the wrong time.

Emotional Untimeliness

He went on to argue that not just Jeremiah’s message, but his emotions were untimely:

a) He feels God’s grief over his people’s sin. The people were unfeeling and presumptuous (Jer 8:18-22), with no idea they had grieved God. God is looking for those who will join with his grief over sin (Jer 9:10,17)

b) His experience of prophetic ministry was bittersweet. He could not join in with the shallow party crowd and their hollow laughter. His joy was too fierce for an over satiated society to understand, and too intense for those suffering from terminal blandness to appreciate (Jer 15:16). He was emotionally out of sync with the prevailing mood.

c) He felt what the people didn’t – a sense of sin (Jer 17:9). He had a deep realism about the human heart, living in a society where sin had become blatant and public (Jer 17:1,2). As we get to know the heart of God, we will develop a deep humility as we discover the deceitfulness of the human heart.

d) He feels the scorn and hostility against God (Jer 20:7-9). God’s word is invasive – it claims territories in our lives that we don’t want to surrender. This is the cost of discipleship, and yet Jeremiah feels as though the overwhelming force of God has overcome his resistance and set him on fire.

We see two extremes of emotion juxtaposed in Jer 20:13,14 – extravagant praise to self-loathing – Jeremiah was learning to think more of God and less of himself. Bonhoeffer commented on “blessed are those who mourn” saying that “they see that for all the jollity on board, the ship is beginning to sink”. The early church fathers noted that the chief problem of the pagans was insensitivity – no contrition over sin.

Jesus told us that we will weep and mourn while the world rejoices (John 16:20). Our emotions will be out of sync with those around us, because the world knows nothing of our grief or our joy.

God’s Untimely Word

To illustrate the theme of prophetic untimeliness, Philip recounted three Biblical stories:

1) The story of Josiah in 2 Chron 34, rediscovering the law. Amazingly, though the law had been lost, they were working on the temple. There was much economic and even religious activity, but the word of God had been lost. Josiah learned that God must have the first word in everything.

2) The story of Josiah’s son Jehoiakim in Jer 36. Baruch wrote down all of Jeremiah’s prophecies and read them to the people. They were then heard by the king’s “think tank” and finally by the king. Jehoiakim tried to destroy the word, but discovered that God always has the last word. The Jehoiakim church is a church that cuts bits out of the word of God to tame it, and make it culturally acceptable. But is the Josiah church honouring the word? Do we simply assume that people know the “apostle’s teaching” or are we giving space to expository teaching. This is central and vital – so we need to do it, and do it well.

3) The third story is of Jesus being handed the scroll in Luke 4. He pointed out that Jesus himself chose to expound scripture, rather than telling his feelings, vision or his life story. This seemed to me to be a word of mild rebuke to charismatic churches whos sermons are less and less likely to be expository and instead focus on explaining plans and vision for the future, or testimony from recent missions etc. He quoted William Willimon, arguing that we too need to “take up the scroll” and be confronted with the “stories of God”. God’s first and final word is Jesus, and opening the scrolls speeds the momentum of God’s story and provokes a reaction. The Bible is like dynamite (Leonard Sweet), so open the scrolls, let God’s word consume you and affect your emotions.

Greenslade closed urging newfrontiers to “stay faithful to the written word of God as you follow the Spirit wherever he leads”.

My thoughts
It is interesting that Philip was invited to speak on this topic to newfrontiers as the emotion of “mourning” over sin and acknowledging of the depravity of the human heart is not a major emphasis of our group of churches. The worship is increasingly focussing on being extravagantly joyful, and only quietens down to be intimate. Songs of lament, crying for mercy are not to be found in our repertoire. Similarly, sermons strike a consistently truimphant tone, and the Puritan emphasis on the soul’s war against sin is rejected in favour of emphasising the power of the Spirit.

As I have already mentioned, while not overtly critisising newfrontiers, Greenslade seems to be concerned that though a church may believe that it is honouring the Scriptures, in fact they are being neglected, as less and less space is given to “opening the scrolls”. Ian Stackhouse sounds a similar warning in his book “The Gospel Driven Church”. I tend to agree with them on this point – I am concerned at a growing biblical illiteracy as young
people grow up hearing many motivational talks but few biblical expositions. Any reminder of the importance of letting God speak to us through the Scriptures is in my view a timely
one.

Ironically, Greenslade may himself be “prophetically untimely”, as a call to lament and a call to expository preaching are not exactly top of the agenda at the moment in renewal / restorationist circles. Topics such as church planting, increase in signs and wonders, church growth, and leadership are perhaps more in vogue. Greenslade asked “was Jeremiah a melancholic?”, and concluded that perhaps he was, but he still had a message from God that needed to be heard. Is Greenslade himself a melancholic? Perhaps, but again, does he also have a message that we need to hear in these days?

I have though been slowly working through Ian Stackhouse’s “Gospel Driven Church”, which has been quite thought provoking (a review will follow in due course). In this rather long and rambling post I want to take up one of his ideas, which is that in the desire for (numerical) “growth”, new churches (i.e Restorationist / Renewal churches) have adopted a pragmatism which has resulted in the compromise of previously held principles. In other words success is measured by numbers rather than faithfulness to the gospel – a results driven mentality. This is possibly an overly harsh diagnosis, but I feel that he has at least discerned a trend that must not be allowed to develop unchecked.

Defeatism
One of the attitudes that the new churches have been glad see the back of is defeatism. In some evangelical churches, success is almost measured by how small your congregation is. If people are leaving, it consitutes proof that you are being faithful to the gospel. These churches have a “remnant” mentality, like saying with Elijah “I am the only one left” (1 Kings 19:14)

Idealism
This defeatism was replaced with idealism. The new churches saw themselves as “new wineskins” (Mark 2:22), able to throw off legalism and dry rituals and replace it with a vibrant kingdom model of church, with genuine fellowship, dynamic worship, spiritual authority, prophetic direction, apostolic oversight, powerful teaching, impacting the community with the gospel. The expectation was for imminent revival, and the return to a “New Testament model” would be key to success.

Pragmatism
But 20 years down the line, and the wide-spread revival hoped for has not materialised. What’s more, many were left bitter and disillusioned following failures and even abuses in these new churches. Ian Stackhouse suggests that to compensate for the shortcomings, pragmatism became the new modus operandi. What is working elsewhere? Alpha, Cell Church, Seeker Sensitive, Purpose Driven, Spiritual Mapping etc – whatever the mega-churches were doing ought to be copied as it is obviously working (or more commonly put “God is blessing it”). The end result is churches that have diluted their original idealism and settled for being a successful franchise of a mega-church.

Realism
But if pragmatism is not the answer, what is? Surely we don’t want to retreat back to a defeatist mentality? But neither can we return to the naïve optimism of those early days. Ian Stackhouse has his own proposals, which I will discuss when I review his book, but I want to make a humble suggestion of my own. We can return to idealism so long as it tempered with realism. In other words, getting back to the original vision of a glorious church, but honestly acknowledging that we’re not there yet, and that we’ve got lessons to learn from the church of ages past. After all, even the “old wineskin” denominations were once the latest thing themselves.

A Case Study
There are lots of ways this could be expanded on, but I’ll briefly mention the “Ephesians 4 ministries” by way of example, as it was a key part of the original Restorationist vision. It is possible for a church that has succumbed to pragmatism to pay lip-service to these ministries without actually fully embracing them. I was interested to note that Dan also has the Eph 4 ministries on his mind at the moment, as he draws attention to Terry Virgo’s excellent comments on apostles and integrity of doctrine.

Apostles – The pragmatic church gets all the training pamphlets and DVDs it needs from the model mega-church, and fulfils its part in global mission by sending some spare money to parachurch organisations. Apostles are therefore redundant, and simply function as conference speakers.

Prophets – The pragmatic church sidelines the prophetic from meetings as its not “seeker sensitive”. They don’t need direction as their manuals tell them all they need to know about how to step up to the next level of growth.

Teachers – The pragmatic church makes sure it doesn’t scare new people away with Biblical exposition. A humorous short talk or a slick multimedia presentation is the order of the day. The church may claim to be “Bible-believing”, but it will have an increasingly “Bible-illiterate” membership.

Pastors – The pragmatic church does merely what is necessary to keep people attending and tithing. The emphasis is on keeping people happy rather than helping them to grow in holiness. The pastor’s job is to maintain the membership database rather than to run the discipleship program.

Evangelists – Despite the emphasis on growth, the pragmatic church would rather find a method that can be easily scaled than looking to find those who will create fresh ways of confronting the lost with the gospel. Who needs evangelists when you can show DVDs of Nicky Gumbel?

The Way Forward
So has the original idealistic vision been swallowed up into a purely pragmatic outlook? I don’t think so, at least not in the circles I am in. However, we should beware as the transition can be gradual. Church planting is perhaps going to be key to making sure we avoid this trap. With every new church, there is a fresh return to the original vision, an idealism mixed with faith, and people who are willing to make personal sacrifices to see the kingdom advance. Existing churches will also be reminded that they don’t just exist for their own benefit as they release people to be part of a wider global mission, and new people are raised up to serve in their place. This will result in growth that is not just numerical, but spiritual, or as Ian Stackhouse puts it, growth that is intrinsic to the gospel, not extrinsic.

Anyway, that’s enough for today… I’ve got loads of thoughts running round my head on this topic at the moment, so perhaps some more posts will follow later this week.

It’s been a while long since I posted anything here on my blog, mainly due to the World Cup and a generally hectic schedule. Expect some reflections on church very soon, but for now, here’s some things around the web that have caught my attention this month.

– Eerdmans’ have new forthcoming releases catalogue. This includes a number of new commentaries. For me, the most anticipated is the new Pillar Commentary on 2 Peter and Jude by Peter Davids.

– Mark Roberts has been blogging on what could be the “end of the Presbyterian Church USA”. As usual his posts are thorough, Biblically informed and well thought out.

– There have been a few helpful parenting posts recently. Rob Wilkerson writes about blame-shifting. Tim Challies is one of a number to recommend a new booklet on Family Worship. Also Justin Taylor recommends a catechism for kids.

– Castle Sands is a new blog to me, but one that I have been enjoying as it comes from a fellow reformed charismatic from Newfrontiers. He has a great post on faith, arguing that “faith is not about achieving certain outcomes, but a trusting in the character and promises of God”.

– I stayed out of the last debate on tithing, but Justin Taylor summarises some articles by Andreas Kostenberger and David Croteau. (Part 1, Part 2). I think there can be some muddled thinking about tithing, which churches can teach in a legalistic manner, even when their approach to the similar issue of Sabbath observance takes the exact opposite approach. What we need is to teach the principles of giving, that should result in people gladly giving more than a tenth, rather than begrudgingly doing their duty.

– Sovereign Grace continue to churn out some great new music with real depth to the lyrics. The latest project, “Valley of Vision” draws on prayers from the Puritans.

– The “Emergent/Emerging” church has generated a lot of controversy, and though I have some sympathies with their ideas, I think Rob Wilkerson’s insightful discussion of emergent humility highlights an important reason why I don’t feel able to identify with the movement as a whole.

– Dave Bish has already read his copy of Sam Storm’s new book Convergence and liked it.

– The Americans just don’t get the beautiful game… I set Justin Taylor right in the comments though.

– Final news. In the latest newfrontiers magazine we are promised that the papers from the newfrontiers theological forum are going to be made available online. I can’t wait! I wonder if Dan’s lament that there were only 12 people on the comittee has anything to do with this. (check out the comments there for James Farrer’s response – someone who seems to be in the know)

The latest edition of the newfrontiers magazine came out recently, and it touches on what could prove a very controversial subject. Basically it sets out to criticise the existance of parachurch organisations, arguing that they fulfill ministries better provided by local churches. I’ve collected together a few of my disorganised thoughts on this subject below. I’ll start with what I thought was good, and then offer a few criticisms…

Points of agreement

Training in the context of the local church

Why is it that when someone wants the practical and theological training for (usually full-time) ministry do they find that their local church has almost nothing to offer? So they are sent off to Bible college, which may be a good environment for academic learning, but is likely to lack the “on-the-job” training aspect that a local church can offer. For example, spending time working with and caring for the elderly would be better than writing a 10,000 word essay on “The Issues and Challenges that the Over-Sixties Present To Churches in a Post-Modern Context”.

Overseas minded people handed over to other organisations

Why is it that when someone declares that they have a heart to preach the gospel and demonstrate practical Christian love overseas, do we give them the phone number of a missionary society? It makes for an all to convinient detachment for the local church. We send some money, they send prayer letters which make us have a warm feeling that we are “doing our bit” for world evangelisation.

There are exceptions acknowledged…

The magazine does seem to be awareness of at least one criticism. What about specialist organisations? Mission Aviation Fellowship and Wycliffe Bible Translators are listed as examples. It is unlikely that an individual local church would have the expertise and specialised resources to provide the services that these organisations do.

Problems

…but not enough exceptions?

But could that not be said to a lesser extent for almost all parachurch organisations? For example, a local church may well be able to provide many of the services that an organization like UCCF do. Getting involved in a church cell may indeed be preferable to simply fellowshipping with students. But though a Christian Union can and should never replace a church, does that mean it is not necessary? CU’s do a work of discipling and evangelising students on a scale that even the most well resourced local churches are not likely to be able to match.

Is the divide that great?

And how true is it that parachurch organisations are doing the work that local churches should? Many missionary societies, bible colleges, student movements etc are making great efforts to ensure that they work in partnership with local churches, offering themselves to provide specialised training, and ensuring that those in their organisation are fully active in local church life.

The church universal

Are we guilty of creating too great a distinction between the church local and the church universal? If people from a load of different churches get together and work together, does that make it any less “the church”? After all, newfrontiers very own “New Day” event will gather thousands of young people from different churches, and pool the resources for an evangelistic effort. It is hard to see how this is substantially different to UCCF mobilising students from many churches for a combined mission.

How are parachurch organisations formed?

Doubtless there are different ways that these organisations come about, but I suspect that many are borne out of a local church ministry that grew big. Whether this be a local evangelist who goes itinerant, or a small ministry to the poor that acquired property and a charitable status, or even a training program that started attracting attendees from further afield. If newfrontiers continues to grow, who is to say that in 20 years time there won’t be more parachurch organisations springing up from those within the local church who have a passion for a unique ministry and joining people in other local churches who have the same burden.

Are we ready to take over?

Finally, what would happen if the directors of Bible colleges and missionary societies read this magazine and decided to close down their organisations? Would missionaries be served and supported as well solely by the members of their sending church? Would those wanting training find anything that really equips them for ministry? At the moment, I doubt it.

Church plants

Newfrontiers is big on church planting, something I wholeheartedly am behind. But this means many churches with small memberships. There is no way that they can sustain a fully comprehensive set of ministries. This means that inevitably, they will need to look to other churches or parachurch organisations for help in some areas. Newfrontiers already do much Bible, worship, and children’s work training at certain large well-resourced churches.

Conclusion

I agree that the existence of so many parachurch organisations is indicative of at least some failure on the part of the local church to support the diversity of ministries needed by its membership. We need to step up to the challenge of meeting these needs ourselves, and being humble enough to learn from the expertise of these parachurch organisations. Personally, I think that we will never be without the need for groups of Christians working together with common goals across local church boundaries, and because of this, there will always be organisations that in some sense will be “parachurch”.

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough now. I would be interested to know what others think on this issue. Would we be better off without parachurch organisations?

On my ridiculously long “books I want to read” list, there are a growing number on the subject of the church.

Obviously, as a good member of a New Frontiers church, I hope to read Christ’s Radiant Church by John Hosier, and What on Earth is the Church For, by David Devenish. On top of that, I’ve heard recommendations of books such as Stop Dating the Church by Joshua Harris and The Gospel Driven Church by Ian Stackhouse.

Then there’s 9 Marks of a Healthy Church by Mark Dever, a book title that grabbed my attention, because by my calculations there are eight people called Mark in the church I belong to, so just one more needed for us to be healthy. And there’s Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church (glad I didn’t sign the pledge to do his 40 days of purpose – I only got to day 2). Snyder’s Community of the King and Clowney’s The Church also look like they might be worth a read.

And then I have a feeling that I could do with reading something about this whole emerging church business. Do I read Carson’s Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church to get a critique of it from someone I respect, or MacLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy to hear it direct from the horse’s mouth? Would Kimball’s The Emerging Church be a better choice? Perhaps I would be better off reading someone who seems to be both emerging and reformed evangelical friendly – Mark Driscoll’s book Radical Reformission.

So my dear blog readers, what’s the best book you’ve read on the church? Which of the above are worth my while, and which are a waste of time? Answers in the comments below please…

I had the chance to watch the National Geographic’s Gospel of Judas documentary this evening, thanks to a friend recording it for me. It was interesting, and as could have been predicted, frustrating at the same time as it was used as a platform for knocking the historicity of the biblical gospels at every point, while presenting the Gospel of Judas as a much more worthy candidate for our belief.

The beginning part in particular built on the idea that the church had suppressed the truth and now the Gospel of Judas would save the day and set the record straight. You can read the gospel of Judas if you like for yourself on the National Geographic’s Lost Gospel site. It’s worth a read, just so you can get a feel for quite how different it is to the New Testament gospels.

I’ll mention just a few things that irritated me about their presentation.

First, the assertion that in the gospel of John, the latest gospel, Judas is portrayed as an evil monster, while in the gospel of Mark, the earliest gospel, Judas is positively saintly by comparison, and not even mentioned as the traiter in the last supper scene. Judas therefore is said to have been progressively vilified over the years. And the tired old assertion that the gospels are thoroughly anti-Semitic was trotted out again.

It sounds impressive enough until you actually read the gospels for yourself. To be sure Mark doesn’t mention Judas much, but he’s a baddie on every occasion, and is identified as the betrayer immediately before the Last Supper scene (Mark 14:10,11), making it painfully obvious who Jesus is talking about when he says “one of you will betray me” (Mark 14:18). John does mention him a bit more, telling us that Judas was the treasurer and was embezelling funds. He also says that it was Satan who inspired Judas to do what he did, but this is balanced with the fact that John emphasises the sovereign plan of God behind the betrayal as well.

Second, the presentation of Irenaeus’ rejection of the gospel of Judas as heresy was odd. You can easily read the reasons he gives for rejecting it online, but the ones the program gave were quite different. They said that he had arbitrarily decided that there should be four gospels simply because there were four corners of the earth, and also that he didn’t like the idea of Judas being a goodie. They made out that the gnostics were these wonderful ‘enlightened’ people, and the church was just angry that they couldn’t control them, so announced that they were heretical.

Third, they made it sound as though the fact that other gospels existed apart from the four biblical ones, was a major revelation, a fact previously hushed up by the church. And also that the church had desparately tried to cover up the contents of these gospels. In fact, the opening of Luke’s gospel readily admits to the existance of many other gospel records, and both New Testament books and early church fathers not only acknowledge the existance of heretical teachings, but show remarkable willingness to give a synopsis of what those teachings were.

Finally, when they eventually let Craig Evans say that he felt the gospel didn’t shed any light on the historical Jesus or Judas, they then cut straight to Elaine Pagels refuting him with the argument “but how does he know?”. Of course, we never got to hear his response to that. If you’re interested in what that response would have been, people such as Scot McKnight, Mark Roberts, and Ben Witherington can explain it far better than I could.

I could add more, but that’s enough for now. Suffice to say that National Geographic probably payed a decent price to have the rights to the Gospel of Judas, and they needed to make it’s contents sound as epoch-making as possible, to help them recoup their outlay in book, DVD and t-shirt sales. Expect Judas the Hero movie to come to your screens soon.