Paul Stewart

Amazon Order

I am taking a short break from seminary this semester, so I have some extra time to read what I want to read. While this is liberating, I know that classes start up again next month so I have to I be even more intentional about what I read this month.

Honestly, I always try to be strategic about what I read. I want to read books that make me think in new ways or give me insight into culture or help me understand why I believe what I believe or even why I don't believe what I don't believe.

So, I am highly anticipating the arrival of five new books from Amazon. Here’s what was in my cart and why…

Pop Goes the Church: Should the Church Engage Pop Culture? - Tim Stevens
I have followed Tim’s blog for a few months now and appreciate his perspective on ministry. In this book he explores how the church can remain relevant while communicating the unchanging integrity of God’s truth. He makes the case for leveraging pop culture to reach out to people in the language of their lives. I’m sure I won’t agree with everything in this book, but I am looking forward to examining Tim’s theological reasons for what they do at Granger Community Church.

Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse in Dialogue – Robert B. Stewart
Last year I read The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N.T. Wright in Dialogue also edited by Robert B. Stewart and was very impressed. Each of the contributors presents his or her position in light of the other's, providing readers with a fair and balanced case for both sides and allowing readers to decide for themselves. In this book Stewart brings together two of the leading intellectuals on the subject of intelligent design followed by noted scientists, philosophers and theologians to explore the many facets of this debate.

Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices - Brian McLaren
Finding our Way Again is the first in a series of eight books that will be called The Ancient Practices Series. The books, written by eight expert authors, will tackle the practical application of spiritual disciplines. Brian McLaren kicks off the series by explaining the seven spiritual practices – Constant Prayer, Sabbath, Fasting, Sacred Meal, Sacred Journey, The Liturgical Year, and Tithing - from ancient days to now. McLaren says that we must recover our faith as a way of life, not simply as a system of beliefs.

The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church – Shane Hipps
Shane Hipps recently spoke at the Q conference in New York. This book analyzes the impact of technology and media on the church and invites us to engage these new cultural realities while staying connected to our spiritual heritage. It explores questions such as: Is media/technology value-neutral? How has technology changed the way we think about Scripture, community, and worship? What cultural opportunities has the church missed? How should the church position itself to take advantage of coming cultural trends?

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony – Richard Bauckham
I heard Tim Keller refer to this book at a recent Veritas Forum. This book argues that the four Gospels are closely based on eyewitness testimony of those who knew Jesus. The author challenges the prevailing assumption that the accounts of Jesus circulated as "anonymous community traditions," asserting instead that they were transmitted in the name of the original eyewitnesses.

Surprised by Hope - Evangelism

The final area of the church's mission is evangelism. Of course this word carries a lot more baggage than justice or beauty. The word evangelism sends shivers down the spines of many people. Many have been scared off by frightening, tactless, or embarrassing presentations of the Gospel. However, Wright points out that just because some people do it badly does not mean that nobody should ever do it at all.

The word evangelism literally means announcing the good news and this is central to what it means to be a follower of Christ.

But what is the nature of this announcement?

The power of the gospel lies not in the offer of a new spirituality or religious experience, not in the threat of hellfire, which can be removed only if the hearer checks this box, says this prayer, raises a hand, or whatever, but in the powerful announcement that God is God, that Jesus is Lord, that the powers of evil have been defeated and that God’s new world has begun.

This announcement, stated as a fact about the way the world is rather than as an appeal about the way you might like your life, your emotions, or your bank balance to be, is the foundation of everything else.

How is the church to make this kind of announcement?

If a church is actively involved in seeking justice in the world, both globally and locally, and if it’s cheerfully celebrating God’s good creation and its rescue from corruption in art and music, and if its own internal life gives every sign that new creation is indeed happening, generating a new type of community – then suddenly the announcement makes a lot of sense.

In other words, evangelism will flourish best if the church is already giving itself to works of justice and works of beauty. This is the good news that the church is called upon to live and to speak and to bring into reality.

Surprised by Hope - Beauty

Beauty is the second area of the church’s mission within a theology of new creation. Wright maintains that if the church took new creation seriously it would begin to revitalize aesthetic awareness and creativity among Christians today.

Wright points to Romans 8 as a way of appreciating natural beauty. He compares the beauty of the present world to the beauty of a chalice, beautiful in itself but more hauntingly beautiful in what we know it’s meant to be filled with. We live between creation and new creation, and as Christians we are called to new creativity.

In recent times it was expected that good Christians could not be artists and good artists could not be Christians. But part of being made in God’s image is the ability to bring forth new life, chiefly through having children but in millions of other ways as well. To make sense of and celebrate a beautiful world is a part of the call to be stewards of creation. Genuine art, then, is a response to the beauty of creation, which itself is a pointer to the beauty of God.

It is, however, important for Christians to remember that we don’t live in the Garden of Eden, and art that attempts to do so quickly becomes uninspiring and trivial. (This is why I cannot stand listening to Christian radio or shopping in Christian bookstores). My favorite quote of this chapter: “The church doesn’t have a monopoly on kitsch and sentimentalism, but if you want to find it, the church may well be the easiest place on earth!”

On the other hand, a lot of modern art swings the other way and responds to the ugliness of this fallen world with more ugliness.

This presents a wonderful opportunity for Christians, with a theology of both creation and new creation, to find a way forward. We can begin to describe the world not just as it should be, not just as it is, but as one day it will be! Wright says, “when art comes to terms with both the wounds of the world and the promise of resurrection and learns how to express and respond to both at once, we will be on the way to a fresh vision, a fresh mission.”

Art is at its best when it draws attention not only to the way things are but also to the way things will be. These are not easy things to communicate, but perhaps it will be Christian songwriters, painters, and film directors who can best convey this hope.

Ron McManus

Ron McManus spoke last night to a group of pastors from the Iowa Ministry Network. He is the president of the Center for Church Leadership and MinistryDirect.com. Ron had some good thoughts on church leadership in the 21st century. Here are a few of the highlights…

- No church has ever grown past its leader.

- The Good News: As you continue to learn and grow the possibilities for you and your church are endless

- None of us have achieved our full leadership potential.

- God is leading the church into a new day.

- Unless we are willing to shift and adapt we will miss it.

- A lot of the “flagship” churches 30 years ago are struggling to survive today.

- No church has a future unless its dreams are bigger than its memories.

Surprised by Hope - Justice

The first element of the church's mission has to do with justice. Wright uses this word as shorthand for the intention of God, expressed from Genesis to Revelation, to set the whole world right. This plan was gloriously fulfilled in Jesus Christ (especially in his resurrection following his victory over the powers of evil and death on the cross) and now to be implemented in the world.

The God of the Bible is both a God of justification (declaring us right with God) and justice (putting the world to rights).

As followers of Christ we are called to do justice. This is simply a commitment to improve the conditions for human beings in this world, particularly for those most marginalized by society. We can not get off the hook, as many Christians try to do, by declaring that the world is currently in such a mess and there’s nothing that can be done about it until the Lord returns.

This, however, does not mean the return of the old social gospel. It is rather to live consciously between the resurrection of Jesus in the past and the making of God’s new world in the future.

This means we have to avoid the arrogance of imagining that we can build the kingdom by our own efforts without the need for a further divine act of new creation. But we must agree that doing justice in the world is a feature of God’s kingdom and therefore an essential part of the Christian task. Because Jesus rose from the dead, God’s new world has already broken in to the present and Christian work for justice is anticipating the eventual time when God will be all in all, even though we all agree things won’t be complete until then.

I think that Wright sums up this argument best in a lecture at the 10th Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference:

For generations the church has been polarized between those who see the main task being the saving of souls for heaven and the nurturing of those souls through the valley of this dark world, on the one hand, and on the other hand those who see the task of improving the lot of human beings and the world, rescuing the poor from their misery. The longer I've gone on as a New Testament scholar and wrestled with what the early Christians were originally talking about, the more it's borne in on me that distinction is one that we modern Westerners bring to the text rather than finding it in the text. Because the great emphasis in the New Testament is that the gospel is not how to escape the world; the gospel is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. And that his death and Resurrection transformed the world, and that transformation can happen to you. You, in turn, can be part of the transforming work. That draws together what we traditionally call evangelism, bringing people to the point where they come to know God and Christ for themselves, with working for God's Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. That has always been at the heart of the Lord's Prayer, and how we've managed for years to say the Lord's Prayer without realizing that Jesus really meant it is very curious. Our Western culture since the 18th century has made a virtue of separating our religion from real life, or faith from politics. When I lecture about this, people will pop up and say, "Surely Jesus said my kingdom is not of this world." And the answer is no, what Jesus said in John 18 is, "My kingdom is not from this world." That's ek tou kosmoutoutou. It is quite clear in the text that Jesus' kingdom doesn't start with this world. It isn't a worldly kingdom, but it is for this world. It is from somewhere else, but it is for this world.

Surprised by Hope - The Mission of the Church

I just finished reading Surprised by Hope by New Testament scholar N.T. Wright. This was truly an incredible book and is one that I will surely re-read in the future. Every chapter is full of new insights and I could spend months discussing it. Instead of summarizing the whole book, I would like to spend the next few days looking at Chapter 13 – Building for the Kingdom. In this chapter Wright posits that the mission of the church must reflect, and be shaped by, the future hope as the New Testament presents it.

One of Wright’s central arguments in the book is that the hope of the church is not that we all “get to go to heaven someday” but rather in the final coming together of heaven and earth, or the New Heavens and New Earth (Revelation 21 & 22).

This will be God’s supreme act of new creation and of course it would be ridiculous for us to think that we could assist in that great work. But what we can and must do in the present, if we are obedient to the gospel, if we are following Jesus and energized by the Spirit is to build for the kingdom.

The New Testament teaches that one day Jesus will come again and he reign on earth as he does in heaven. And on that day, God will finally “put the world to rights.” No more poverty or disease; no more war or famine.

Wright calls the church to undertake an “inaugurated eschatology” – in other words to recognize that upon the resurrection of Christ, God’s kingdom has already begun to advance in our world and as his followers we can join in and be a part of this recreation. He writes masterfully…

Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read and walk, every act of care and nurture for one’s fellow human beings… and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church,… and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world – all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make.

Many Christians mistakenly point out that the world will not ever be completely just and right until the New Creation and therefore wrongly deduce that there is no point in trying to bring justice or beauty to this depraved world.

Wright appropriately compares this kind of thinking to personal holiness. While it is true that we will never reach the state of complete holiness, until new creation, this does not mean that we should not try to live a holy life until that time. We believe, correctly, that this new life of the Spirit, living in obedience to the lordship of Jesus Christ, should produce radical transformation of behavior in our present life… even as we anticipate the life to come.

The church is called to a mission of implementing Jesus’ resurrection and thereby anticipating the final new creation. What might that look like? Wright lays out three major categories that I will cover over the next few days – Justice, Beauty, and Evangelism.

My "Blogroll"

Here is a list of blogs that I regularly follow. In order to keep track of them all I subscribe to Google Reader. This is basically an “inbox” for my internet. It monitors all of the blogs I subscribe to and every time something new is posted it shows up in my "Reader" almost like an email.

I can read all of the blogs directly from the Google Reader page, so I don’t waste time going from site to site -- the only downside is that I can’t read comments or any other content may be on the blog without actually going to their site.

Burnside Writers

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about Rev. Jeremiah Wright called “The Heart of Black Preaching” on this blog. I also submitted it to the Burnside Writers Collective - an online magazine that Donald Miller started a couple of years ago. Anyway, they decided to publish my article in this week's issue. You can go HERE to read it.

Questions

Yesterday I wrote about the necessity of asking questions.

Today I read this article about the REVEAL study they conducted at Willow Creek a few years ago. Of course many Christians have used this research as an excuse to throw out everything they have accomplished over the years. On the other hand, it is amazing to hear the type of changes they are making!

No more “New Community!”... Instead they’ll offer discipleship classes.
No more “Seeker Services!”... Now their services are loaded with worship music, prayer, scripture readings, and more challenging teaching from the bible.

So, here is what I am wrestling with - Does the church exist to reach the lost or build up believers?

It seems to me if we place too much focus on reaching the lost, we won’t effectively build up believers to the point where they can (and do) share their faith themselves. The most we can hope for is that they will “invite their friends.”

Yet if we focus only on building up believers, we can become inward-focused and begin to develop programs for every possible need believers may struggle with. This is especially true in our consumer culture.

In either case, the major problem is that the church loses its sense of mission. Either the mission is diminished to an invitation to a congregational event or it is lost in a laundry list of activities for Christians.

Dan Kimball describes the “missional church” as a body of people sent on a mission who gather in community for worship, encouragement, and teaching from the Word that supplements what they are feeding themselves throughout the week. A place where we encourage people to live in "the way of Jesus" -- sacrificially living for him and others and adopting a missionary stance in relation to our culture.

In other words, a missional church will see themselves as a community or family on a mission together.

So I am trying to figure out what that look like in Des Moines? What should the Sunday services look like? How does discipleship work? What does the children/youth ministry look like?

How do we equip believers for mission?

Recklessness or Paralysis

When you are in your twenties it is your duty to question everything. Why are we doing this? What is the purpose? What is the meaning? Is it still effective?

We have to be critical, even skeptical. That’s our role in society.

We see things from a new perspective, a new cultural lens, than our parents and grandparents. We grew up living with the consequences of their choices and now it’s our job to point those out. The last thing we want to do is perpetuate systems and programs simply because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

But we have to balance this maverick inquisitiveness with grace and humility.

Many of our strongest criticisms come directly from our deepest wounds. We’ve been hurt by the institutions of the past and we see it as our mission to dismantle them. This will often lead to either recklessness or paralysis.

This is why grace is so vital. We need to let God mend our wounds and help us to forgive those people and programs that have let us down. This will guard us from making reckless and impulsive decisions that often cause needless division within the church. It will also give us the strength we need to continue on, even in the midst of our pain.

We also need the humility necessary to learn from the wisdom of our elders. While we do understand the consequences of their choices, we do not always know the reasons behind them. Many of the programs and institutions that we despise were born out of the same passion and enthusiasm that we now possess.

The questions and concerns of our generation are crucial to the advancement of the church. They are not born out of rebellion or malice, but a genuine desire for improvement. Let’s continue to ask questions boldly and listen with grace and humility.

Yes We Can! (sorry, I got a little caught up the moment)