The Next Phase

Thanks to all who participated in our book discussion, and yes, that includes even those of you who read but are for whatever reason shy and predisposed not to comment.

I trust that in wrestling through the issues we have gained a better understanding of who God is, who we are, and why each of us might be here, now, with our unique set of gifts and passions and experiences and relationships and hopes and dreams and fears and all of that. I hope we’re becoming more and more convinced every day that in creating us and placing us where we are at this precise moment in history, God did not make a mistake.

There are some really exciting developments right around the corner for Inside Out People, so please check back soon. If you use a feed reader, you might want to consider adding our feed so you can stay up-to-date with all the latest.

For those of you who are students of the high school variety, or if you hold sway over such people, I’d like to encourage you to check out the Vision Conference, coming up March 15 in Lancaster. It will be a day of challenging and inspiring teaching, passionate worship through song, relevant breakout sessions, and plenty of chances to connect with folks who serve around the world and would be happy to have you join them in some capacity. I will be leading a breakout session on some of the Inside Out People ideas we’ve been throwing around as well.

That’s it for now. Again, stay tuned. But for now… surprise someone with grace today.

Ch. 11 – Our Historic Moment

Sider, writing fifteen years ago, saw the 90s as an historic time to be alive and on mission with God, and while we’re now beyond the 90s and almost into the 10s (!), I think much of the opening of this chapter still holds true and bears repeating:

Christians privileged to live in the last decade before the year 2000 face a historic opportunity. The number of Christians worldwide is growing at unprecedented rates. A shrinking global village and new technology make it easier to get the message of Christ to those who have never heard. Growing agreement on both the urgency of evangelism and the importance of a wholistic approach encourages optimism. And historic political changes have opened more doors to the gospel… Global Christianity is on the move.

And Christianity, once thought to be a North American/European thing, is quickly becoming more and more global. Philip Jenkins and various others have observed the geographic shift in the Church, with dramatic decline in Europe especially, but also to an extent in North America, coupled with remarkable growth in the South and the East – Africa, Asia, and Latin America. You might find The Next Christendom and God’s Continent to be particularly interesting.

At any rate, the face of global Christianity is rapidly changing, and we’d be foolish, I think, to ignore the voices that are emerging in the Church around the world. One Latin American theologian, Rene Padilla, has this to say:

There is no place for statistics on how many souls die without Christ every minute, if they do not take into account how many of those who die, die victims of hunger.

Convictions held by Rene Padilla and other theologians from the majority world (outside first world nations such as the USA and many European nations) cannot be evaluated without considering the conditions in which most of humanity live their daily lives, where three meals each day, a wardrobe full of clothes, a roof overhead, and high-speed Internet are not guarantees. The twenty-first century Church looks to be significantly less wealthy than she was in the twentieth century. Could it be that we have been living rather isolated, comfortable lives and that our theology has some significant blind spots as a result? What might these blind spots be?

Do you share Sider’s assertion that this moment is an historic one? What is unique about this moment in history, and about our particular place in this story that is unfolding? How are we uniquely poised to build up the body of Christ? What would it look like to truly share in the growth of the global Church, not merely as caretakers but as blessed beneficiaries?

Ch. 10 – An Inseparable Partnership

As we further explore the “inseparable partnership” between evangelism and social action, we consider the incarnational way in which Jesus loved, served and taught during his earthly ministry in the first century in the Middle East:

Jesus did not throw words at sinners from afar. He lived among them and modeled how the Good News of the kingdom brings radical transformation of the status quo.

So how do we, as followers of Christ sent out into the world as witnesses of his Kingdom, become incarnational missionaries? What does it look like in our particular context? We can speculate or surmise what it might look like if we were in the Middle East, for example, but what about right here in Lancaster, with our current job, our current friends, our current lifestyle? What would have to change?

Sider discusses the ways in which Christians turning a blind eye to injustice undermines the saving message of Jesus. Likewise,

Social action that creates good jobs in the inner city and gets rid of drug operations will make it easier for new converts to be faithful disciples of Jesus.

Do you agree with this assertion? If so, what might you and I be able to do in our city and community to create a context in which it would be easier for new Christians to become mature disciples of Jesus? If you disagree with Sider’s premise, why?

Ch. 9 – Distinguishing Evangelism From Social Action

If we evangelize by word and deed, does that mean that social action is part of evangelism?

This raises the base question, which we have touched on already in earlier chapters: What is the gospel? Is the gospel primarily a message, a way of life, a person? Or is the gospel a combination of these and more? This answer will determine whether we believe social structures and societies can be evangelized.

Sider believes it is important to distinguish between the two. He notes that evangelism calls for conversion and repentance, something corporations and nations are not in a position to do. He points to different outcomes and different motives involved in evangelism and social action. Finally, he asserts that to protect the integrity of both social action and evangelism, we need to keep them distinct, recognizing all the while that they are interconnected.

To again highlight this connection, he writes:

A wealthy, uncaring church that shares only words with the starving will rightly fail because its very life denies its message. As John Stott said in his plenary at Lausanne, “We can evangelize by word of mouth, … by print, picture and screen, by drama … , by good works of love, by a Christ-centered home, by a transformed life.”

There is a quote from the Consultation on the Relationship between Evangelism and Social Responsibility (CRESR) that at first seems very confusing but once you’ve read it a couple of times carefully, I think you’ll see it is very insightful:

Evangelism, even when it does not have a primarily social intention, nevertheless has a social dimension, while social responsibility, even when it does not have a primarily evangelistic intention, nevertheless has an evangelistic dimension.

Sider suggests that perhaps the best word to use in talking about both evangelism and social action is simply the word mission. There are other things God is concerned with, and other things the Church ought to be concerned with, but mission, he says, can be used to discuss “everything the Church is sent into the world to do” (Stott).

So how do we find the balance personally, between evangelism and social action? What would a balanced church look like? That’s something we all need to consider. Here’s Sider’s base conclusion:

If we truly follow Jesus, then Christian congregations and denominations will enthusiastically devote large amounts of resources to both evangelism and social action.

Ch. 8 – Why Do Social Action?

For those who are of the persuasion that social action is a lesser concern for Christians when compared with things such as evangelism, we ought to consider the fact that

The Bible says more about God’s concern for the poor than it does about prayer or the atonement or Jesus’ resurrection.

Sider continues,

The biblical insistence on God’s concern for the poor is first of all a theological statement about the Creator and Sovereign of the universe.

But what role does social action play? Where does it fit in with what it means to be a Christian, and how does it relate to evangelism? Sider says that

social concern need not be pre-evangelism to be legitimate. Our doctrine of creation tells us that it is good for all people to enjoy the bounty of the Creator… Certainly we want them also to know and love our Lord. But if God continues to shower the good gifts of creation on all, regardless of their faith or unbelief, then Christians too should work for physical, social, economic, and political well-being for all. Simply on the basis of creation, those tasks have validity and importance.

Do you agree that “social concern need not be pre-evangelism to be legitimate”? Is social action a means to an end? If so, what is the end? How does this line up with the example of Jesus’ approach to ministry?

How does the following sit with you?

Christ identifies very closely with the poor, the mistreated, and the oppressed. Hence, we meet our Lord when we minister to the needy neighbor… Regeneration links justification by faith alone and involvement in social righteousness. When we help change institutions that oppress the poor, we minister to him who atoned for our sins. Wherever we look we see Christ. Christ forgives us. Christ lives in us. And Christ confronts us in the faces of the oppressed.

Are we regularly coming face to face with the oppressed? If we are, what are we learning about the heart of the God we serve? Is it possible that by surrounding ourselves with only certain kinds of people, we limit our understanding of who God is?

Sider believes that in addition to caring for the poor, Christians also need to consider how their faith will translate into the political sphere, and not just in the trademark evangelical issues of abortion and gay marriage, but in terms of poverty and oppression and other social or institutional evils that we often overlook. For example, it should trouble us that

Most slaveholders were Christians who accepted without much thought the rationalizations of this systemic oppression.

If the idea of being concerned about oppression and other societal evils seems like a peripheral issue for us, perhaps we need to re-read the Old Testament, and especially the Minor Prophets (so named, contrary to popular opinion, not because they are any less important, but because they are short and to the point). So as we consider what this means for us, we need to ask, “Who in our society is being oppressed? What systemic evils am I advancing without even knowing it? What can the Church do about systemic evils that other organizations or institutions are unable (or simply unwilling) to do?”

We say that Jesus Christ is Lord of our lives. Do we mean he is Lord of us as autonomous individuals, or do we mean that he is Lord of us as persons-in-community? And when we speak of Jesus being the light of the world who stepped down into darkness, are we speaking merely of the darkness of individual hearts, or are we speaking also of societal darkness as well? Do we really believe that Jesus has the power (and the desire) to bring his kingdom to our very real lives on this very real earth?

Ch. 7 – Why Evangelize?

Ron Sider says in this chapter that while he is convinced that his niche in God’s kingdom work is to be an evangelical social activist, and he is also convinced there is a biblical mandate for his kind of work, he wishes he had done more evangelism all along, and is committed to doing more of it in the years to come. So, why evangelize?

The most important reason for evangelism is God’s astounding, overflowing love for a lost and broken world. The mission is not primarily ours. It is God’s. It is because God so loved the world that we follow in the divine steps seeking to share that love… In evangelism, we join the loving mission of the triune God who so loves the world that he does not want anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:9).

Why do we evangelize? Why do we not evangelize? What distortions of biblical evangelism have we bought into? What is the core of the message we share? How do we share the gospel? How should we share it?

Sider says it is important not to lose sight of the warnings in Scripture directed at those who reject Jesus Christ. But regarding those who die without ever being introduced to the gospel, he says it is a mystery he leaves up to the goodness and the justice of God. Regarding this controversial issue, but also applicable to all areas of our theology, he says:

That may seem like a timid cop-out. I would argue, on the other hand, that it represents proper theological modesty rather than timidity. Again and again throughout church history, confusion has arisen and heresies have threatened precisely because people went beyond the clear teaching of Scripture. The Bible leaves many intriguing and important questions unanswered. Cautious speculation is certainly legitimate, but we dare not teach what is not clearly biblical. What the Scriptures do tell us is more than sufficient to live as faithful people now. We should concentrate on that, get on with the tasks of teachings that are clear, and be humble enough to remain uncertain where Scripture has not clearly spoken.

What teachings have we added to Scripture in order to support our particular biases, priorities, and preferences? On the other hand, what have we left out? Are we humble and moldable enough to allow the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of our hearts to blind spots, or are we more concerned with making Scripture support our own interests?

Ch. 6 – Conversion That Transforms

Sider writes,

Right relationship with God inevitably also involves more just, loving relationships with sisters and brothers in the church and the larger human family.

Is this inevitably true, as Sider says? Consider the Crusades, the Inquisition, slavery, the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and various other manifestations of evil that Christians as a whole did not immediately confront, though they were at least present, if not directly involved in perpetuating these evils. Were these Christians all out of right relationship with God? Is it possible we have blind spots as well? How do we become aware of these sins – personal and social – that go under our radar?

Sider suggests that particularly in the megachurch movement, we tend to want a “seeker’s sense of need to define what they seek from Jesus.” If their sense of need defines sin, however, and they are never challenged beyond that, big blind spots will be left unexposed. We have to insist, as Sider does, that “the Scriptures play the decisive role in defining the sin from which converts must repent.” After all,

Rather than making it easy to join his circle of disciples, Jesus made it exceedingly costly… telling potential converts that there are major areas where accepting Christ will demand fundamental change will produce a church that could change the world.

I know it is always a pain in the butt to be convicted, but consider these hard-hitting words for a moment:

In Western countries, at least, the greater danger today is cheap grace, not exhorbitant grace. Our churches are full of people who somehow made a decision for Christ, or joined the church without any clear understanding or commitment to submit their total life to Jesus as Lord. The result is a materialistic, sexually disobedient church that is so culturally conformed to the dominant values of Hollywood and Wall Street that one can hardly tell the difference between the church and the world. Surely our desperate need in this kind of society is for Jesus’ blunt, convicting word to the rich young inquirer.

Is this an exaggeration? To what extent is it true? What can be done to turn this situation around? Do we really want it turned around?

Incidentally, Sider wrote another book called The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, in which he asks why Christians are living just like the rest of the world. So if you are not thoroughly convicted already, you might want to pick it up.

Ch. 5 – Embracing the Fullness of God’s Salvation

Last time we considered the way we define the gospel. Now, let’s consider what we mean when we talk about salvation, in reference to people being saved by Jesus Christ.

Sider says,

In the Old Testament, salvation is clearly social and corporate and includes every aspect of life… But the Old Testament does not speak of God’s salvation as present apart from his covenant with his chosen people where he is consciously confessed as Lord… [In the gospels,] receiving salvation and entering the kingdom are virtually identical… Experiencing the salvation of the kingdom that Jesus announced meant a total transformation of values, actions, and relationships… Salvation is what happens when people respond in faith to Jesus’ preaching, and this preaching is nothing other than the proclamation of a person, Jesus the Messiah, and the announcement of his dawning kingdom.

Does salvation, properly understood, refer only to an individual person’s eternal destiny? Or does it also have a corporate, social, present dimension? In the OT, the concept of an afterlife is almost completely absent, and yet the word salvation is used time and again. What do we do with these passages today, living in light of Jesus and the New Testament?

These days there is a lot of talk among theologians and church folks as to how we are to understand the atonement and God’s saving work. Three prominent views, which Sider briefly explains, are the moral model, the substitutionary model, and the classic model.

Moral model. Jesus is primarily teacher because our main problem as people is ignorance.

Substitutionary model. Jesus is primarily a substitute because our main problem is that we are sinners.

Classic model. Jesus is primarily a conqueror of evil because our main problem is the power of evil in our world.

Sider holds to what he calls a “messianic” model, which “emphasizes Jesus’ interrelated roles as teacher, victor, and substitute.” He says we err when we take one of the three views of the atonement and hold to it to the exclusion of the others. Do you think that, in light of the whole Bible, any one of these views of the atonement is complete in and of itself? Or is Sider correct in saying we need to hold all three in biblical tension?

Ch. 4 – A Disturbing Kingdom Community (part two)

In church circles we talk a lot about “the gospel” and about sharing it with others. But what do we mean by “the gospel”? How do we define it?

I see a few possibilities. You could define it as a set of core biblical teachings we believe to be true – particularly about God, Jesus, humanity, sin, heaven, hell, etc. Some would sum it up with John 3:16 or what is called the Romans Road. But is the gospel primarily a set of ideas that we are to intellectually assent to? Or is the gospel the person of Jesus? If so, when we share the gospel, we are sharing a living, loving person – God and Man, Lord and Savior. Or is the gospel the Good News that in Jesus the Kingdom has broken into our world, and that a new way of life has been established? Perhaps there are other possibilities in addition to these. But how we define the gospel is going to be pretty foundational to how we talk about the gospel and how we seek to live it out.

Often times, the gospel is equated with evangelism. Evangel basically means gospel, so to evangelize is really to gospel-ize. Sider asks the question of whether or not individual people are the only ones we can evangelize. Or, as seems to be the case in many parts of the world, can we evangelize persons-in-community? And further, can we evangelize social structures? Again, the answer will depend on how you define the gospel. If the gospel is a set of ideas which are intended to lead an individual person to saving faith in Jesus Christ, then no, of course you cannot evangelize social structures. The legal system of the United States, for instance, cannot accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. But a bunch of Christian citizens, who have done just that, who have been saved and are being changed, could effectively influence the legal system in ways that promote justice for all, and especially for those who society tends to crush and hold back. If one’s definition of the gospel is the announcement of the Kingdom and a new way of doing things in the world, then yes, you could evangelize social structures.

So what about you? How have you traditionally defined the gospel? How is the gospel understood in the sermons we hear, in the books we read, and in conversations in MPACT groups? Is it possible that our definition has been incomplete, or maybe even wrong?

Christians ought to define Jesus’ central teaching the way Jesus did.

What was and is Jesus’ central teaching?

Guided by the vision of the dawning kingdom and empowered by the Holy Spirit, the faithful church will always be a loving critic, a countercultural community. They will treasure what is good in their society and challenge what is broken, precisely because they know the Creator of all is also the Redeemer who desires that Satan’s inroads into this good creation be rolled back.

What should be our posture towards culture? Is it possible that all too often the Church tends to either criticize or consume (or a nasty combination of the two), instead of cultivating and creating culture? Andy Crouch has a lot to say about this on his website, Culture Makers, and further explores the idea with the Christian Vision Project, of which he is the editor.

Should Christians be concerned with creating and cultivating culture? How far should this extend?

Some day Jesus will come back and the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord. Therefore we work now to nudge society in the direction of that coming wholeness, justice, and reconciliation because we know it will come fully at Christ’s return.

How can we, as individuals-in-community, nudge society in the direction of the already-but-not-yet Kingdom of God?

Ch. 4 – A Disturbing Kingdom Community (part one)

We have seen, I think, how traditionally one group of Christians, in paying attention to private sins have neglected to notice social sins, and the other groups has done just the opposite, paying a lot of attention to social sins while not caring much about the private variety.

Jesus was different.

Jesus and his new community of disciples challenged evil wherever they found it… Precisely because Jesus knew how good the Creator intends culture and civilization to be, he challenged surrounding society wherever sin had introduced brokenness.

How do we view our own sin? Do we focus a lot of attention on the really nasty kinds in our lives while neglecting pride or gluttony or others that more easily go unchecked? And what about ways we contribute to societal evils? What might those evils be? How might we repent of those sins (change our way of thinking and acting)?

As followers of Jesus Christ who are part of a local congregation in a relatively wealthy suburb, I believe we need to give some deep thought and prayer to matters of wealth and poverty and what God might have possibly been thinking when he blessed us so extravagantly in material ways.

A proper concern for and relationship to the poor is not the (i.e., the only decisive) measure of faithful discipleship and faithful communication of the gospel of the kingdom.

However,

The heretical neglect of the poor by many affluent Christians is a flat rejection of the Lord of the church.

What do you think about that statement? Does it hold up to scripture?

Sider mentions that Jesus’s band of followers was as heterogenous as you can imagine:

Jesus led an incredibly diverse community of prostitutes who had repented, tax collectors who had renounced oppression, disabled who had been healed, women who were no longer ostracized, poor who were no longer hungry, and revolutionaries who had forsaken violence.

How diverse are we as a local community of faith? Do we regularly see prostitutes, tax collectors, and other “notorious sinners” become a part of our church? What about people who are disabled marginalized, poor, or violent? Do we see real life change taking place in the lives of those in our ministry? Do we see walls coming down between types of people we’d never imagine getting along with each other? If not, why? If we are a community of Christ-followers, why are we not surrounded by the types of people he was?