For What it’s Worth…

If you’re interested in church planting, you’re quite possibly aware that the Church Planting Center at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York has launched a blog.

The RCPC Blog, currently labelled as “beta,” is home to reflections from Tim Keller, Scott Sauls and others from the Redeemer staff team as well as members of their church planting network.

In one of Keller’s first blog posts, maybe even his first, he brings John Frame’s tri-perspectivalism to bear as a tool for analysing the phenomenon that is Willow Creek Church.  (Incidentally, I have Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, sitting on my desk which I’ve started reading about 5 times and never managed to quite get through it!)  It’s an interesting read, although I think that viewing tri-perspectivalism as the silver bullet with which to harmonise the various threads of broad evangelicalism  is probably misguided.  That said, I don’t think Keller is saying it is the silver bullet, but others around the blogosphere seem to.

Once upon a time I subscribed to the New York Times.  I don’t any more.  I decided I couldn’t justify the getting the Paper of Record posted to me every day!  I still use the website a lot and noticed that Ross Douthat has now joined the NY Times team as a contributor.  Douthat is the film critic for the National Review and joined The Gray Lady only last month.

It will be interesting to see how his view on American Life is received by the Times’ readership. Douthat’s latest opinion piece Dan Brown’s America pokes some holes in the current fascination with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons (along with the slew of copy cat pseudo-historical-religious-conspiracy-revisionist-thrillers those works have inspired).

His sharp assessment of Dan Brown’s approach to novel writing is clear:

My copy of Ancient-Future Time was given to me by Lyndon Sulzberger, Rector of Christ Church, North Adelaide.  I think  Lyndon was politely trying to suggest my education in matters such as the ecclesiastical calendar is somewhat lacking!

Robert E. Webber (who died in 2007) was Emeritus Professor of Theology at Wheaton College and seems to have been motivated in his writing by the conviction that contemporary Evangelicalism is impoverished due to its insufficient rooting in early Christian traditions.  Indeed, it was this conviction that led him to take part in issuing “The Chicago Call” in 1977 stating that evangelicals had lost touch with church’s liturgical roots.  Here he seeks to take Christian spirituality back to its origins in Jewish spirituality which he feels will enrich the life of the modern Christian; “For the Jew to commemorate the past is not merely to recall it as a past event but to commemorate it in such a way that it gives the present new meaning.”  The book is therefore a call to what Webber calls “Christian-year” spirituality, where God’s saving action is presented to us time and time again through the practices of the Christian year celebrated by the church in its first centuries; in Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Pentecost.  The discussion of each of these historical events concludes with a prayer from one of the Church Fathers or the Book of Common Prayer.

If we are actually speaking truth … why isn’t anyone listening?

I’ve been reading Branding Faith by Phil Cooke.  To some in the church, the idea of branding is anathema,  but I suspect this is mostly due to misunderstanding the concept.  Branding is part of the reality within the church exists.  Cooke quotes a study which found that one in four babies, speaks a brand name as their first word!  This study, by British Market Research Bureau  is also quoted in a slightly alarming 2003 article in the SMH.

At the heart of the challenge laid out in the book is Cooke’s distillation of the definition of marketing: The art of surrounding a product, organisation or person with a powerful and compelling story.  The gospel of Jesus Christ is a powerful and compelling story, we don’t need to find it, or create it, just tell it!  The task seems to me to be local churches finding answers to the question, “how do we tell the powerful and compelling story of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our communities?”

Pastor and author Kent Hughes tells the following story: A number of years ago, a church in Dallas, Texas suffered a terrible split. Each of the two factions into which the members had drawn filed a lawsuit to claim the church property. A church court assembled to hear the case.
During the hearing, it was revealed that the conflict had begun at a church dinner when one of the church elders had received a smaller slice of ham than a child seated next to him. Sadly, this slight was reported in the city’s newspapers. Imagine how all the people of Dallas laughed about that situation! Such a display of disunity brought great discredit not only to what was left of that church, but also to Jesus Christ.