A lot of people ask me, "Who do you follow?" Who is influencing you?" "Who are you reading?" Well the answer is, a lot of people. Dallas Willard, NT Wright, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Stanley Grenz, Christopher Wright, Greg Boyd, Clark Pinnock, Leslie Newbigin, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Stanley Hauerwas, Rob Bell, Jim Collins, Seth Godin and countless others have had an impact on who I am and how I think about theology, faith, culture, church and mission.
But in recent years, and specifically as I developed the vision and values of The Gateway Church, no one has been more influential than Tim Keller. Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City, a brilliant writer, a tremendously gifted preacher, and a great church-planting mind.
He recently compiled a list of the Big Issues Facing the Western Church followed by How Churches and Leaders Should Be Preparing to Address Them. There are few church leaders who have the guts or the credibility to assemble a list like this, so you better believe I am paying attention. Here are the highlights:
1. The opportunity for extensive culture-making in the U.S.
In the U.S. evangelicals are shifting from being largely a blue-collar constituency to becoming a college educated population. Christians going into the arts, business, government, the media, and film have the opportunity to be tremendous force for good. Unfortunately, at the practical level, even the churches that give lip-service to the importance of integrating faith and work do very little to actually equip people to do so. The local church has to do more to support culture-making, teaching people how to integrate their faith with film-making, journalism, corporate finance, etc.
2. The rise of Islam.
How do Christians relate to Muslims when we live side by side in the same society? How can Christians be at the very same time a) good neighbors, seeking their good whether they convert or not, and still b) attractively and effectively invite Muslims to consider the gospel?
The answer, according to Keller, is that we need a renewal in apologetics in order to communicate the gospel to Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. as well as the younger, socially conscious atheists and agnostics. We need to think of new ways to engage, asking people how they can justify their concerns for human rights and social justice.
3. The new non-western Global Christianity.
The demographic center of Christian gravity has already shifted from the west to Asia, Latin America, and Africa. There is a tremendous variety of 'never-churched-non-Christians'. There are Arabs in Detroit, Hmongs in Chicago, Chinese and Jews in New York City, Anglos in the Northwest and Northeast that were raised by secular parents--some are artists and creative types, some work in business. All of these are growing groups of never-churched, but they are very different from one another. No single model of church can connect to them all-- every model can connect to some. Our cultural situation is too complex for just one kind of church. We need to a great variety of church models.
4. The growing cultural remoteness of the gospel.
The basic concepts of the gospel -- sin, guilt and accountability before God, the sacrifice of the cross, human nature, afterlife -- are becoming culturally strange in the west for the first time in 1500 years. How do we make the gospel culturally accessible without compromising it? How can we communicate it and live it in a way that is comprehensible to people who lack the basic 'mental furniture' to even understand the essential truths of the Bible?
His answer, which should not surprise anyone who follows Keller, is that we need a critical mass of churches in the biggest cities of the world. If there were vital, fast-growing movements of churches -- orthodox in theology, wholistic in ministry, and committed to culture-making -- in the great global cities, so that 5-10% of the residents of the 50 most influential cities were gospel-believers, a) it would have a great impact on culture-making, b) it would help the church learn new ways of reaching the never-churched (since they concentrate in cities), c) it would connect western churches more readily to the new churches in the non-western world, d) it would unite churches across traditions and models.
5. The end of prosperity?
With the economic meltdown, the question is -- will housing values, endowments, profits, salaries, and investments go back to growing at the same rates as they have for the last twenty-five years, or will growth be relatively flat for many years to come? If so, how does the western church, which has become habituated to giving out of fast-increasing assets, adjust in the way it carries out ministry?
We need to develop a far better theology of suffering. There are a great number of books on 'why does God allow evil?' but they mainly are aimed at getting God off the hook with impatient western people who believe God's job is to give them a safe life. The church in the west must mount a great new project--of producing a people who are prepared to endure in the face of suffering and persecution.
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