Deep Creek Anglican Church Blog

It was a fantastic privilege to attend the three day Jesus Culture Conference at Nassau Coliseum, Long Island last week.  There were so many special moments throughout the Conference:

• a profound sense of the Lord’s Presence; consistent focus on the holiness and glory of God (and His call for us to be like Him);
• the sheer delight of being loved by Jesus;
• the overflowing love of God for His world (and hence the call for evangelism in the power of the Holy Spirit as a natural aspect of our daily lifestyle – “we are here to plunder hell and populate heaven”, “we are healing and catalytic agents for transformation of the earth”); and
• on a very personal level, three words of knowledge that built on each other over the course of the Conference delivered by the guy sitting next to me, who the Lord had arranged for him and myself to buy tickets next to one another!!

The praise worship times were outstanding.  So many highlights.  But a particularly moving experience was the singing of ‘Safe in Your arms’:

Jim Liske, CEO of Prison Fellowship Ministries, released the following statement today:

Dear Friends:

It is with a heavy, but hopeful heart that I share with you that it appears our friend, brother, and founder will soon be home with the Lord. Chuck’s condition took a decided turn yesterday, and the doctors advised Patty and the family to gather by his bedside.

As you know, Chuck underwent surgery more than two weeks ago to remove a pool of clotted blood on the surface of his brain. And while we had seen some hopeful signs for Chuck’s recovery—including his ability to talk happily with Patty and the kids—it seems that God may be calling him home.

I cannot tell you how much your prayers, cards, and well-wishes have meant to Patty and the family—and to Chuck. He loves you all deeply, and I know that his greatest desire beyond seeing Jesus is that the work he and all of us have been called to will continue. As Chuck would say, ‘Remain at your posts and do your duty—for the glory of God and His kingdom.’

As soon as we have more information, I will be sure to let you know. And as always, keep praying for Chuck and Patty.

Chuck Colson’s life was transformed by the gospel.  His founding and leadership of Prison Fellowship were inspirational.  Check out this news feature on Colson (from about six years ago) and his own testimony at 2min30sec on video:

Igniter Media has produced a very funny and challenging Christmas video.  We used it last evening at the beginning of our Carols service (fantastic night with auditorium full to overflowing).  The theme for our Christmas services is: “It’s party time!”  At the conclusion of the video I noted to the hundreds gathered on a warm Melbourne night: “It’s not cold.  This is not a North American campus.  But we Aussies can also often miss the real reason for Christmas being Party Time.”

Enjoy the video:

The blogosphere has, especially over the last year, had many helpful interactions on ‘what is the Gospel?’ and the nature of God’s Kingdom.  Over at Euangelion, Joel Witts has been reviewing What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert.  In a recent review post Joel writes:

“The “gospel” is neither what a person believes to be saved nor the story of new creation. While personal salvation and the mechanics of salvation are surely a central element of the gospel and certainly the final restoration of creation is the closing frame of the gospel’s story line, I have believed for a long time now that the “gospel” is in fact the best part of the on-going story of Israel. It is the best part of Israel’s story. It is that scene in the movie that brings the powerful a-ha moment. The gospel is that part in Israel’s story; its the a-ha moment. The gospel is the resolution of Israel’s story, which has universal consequences.

The New Testament’s central claim of the gospel is Jesus is Messiah. Paul states, “Remember Jesus Messiah, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel” (2 Tim 2:8). Jesus is the Messiah of Israel come to fulfill Israel’s story. The gospel story Matthew tells is of Jesus, the Davidic and Abrahamic Son and Son of God. Jesus is the answer to Israel’s unfulfilled potential, her unfaithfulness, her exilic state of being. Through Jesus, as Israel’s Messiah, Israel finally achieves the full potential God intended for her. And Jesus’ death atones for Israel’s sin; it purifies Israel; it saves Israel. What’s more, Jesus as Israel’s Messiah in reaching Israel’s full potential and providing saving redemption for Israel sets in motion the blessings of Abraham into the world on the nations who turn in repentance to the Israel’s Messiah. In this light, Paul is, to use the title of a recent book on Paul, the “Pioneer of Israel’s Messiah” to the nations. I don’t think I can say it better than Scot McKnight has in his recent book. The gospel is “the Story of Israel that comes to completion in the saving Story of Jesus, who is Messiah of Israel, Lord over all, and the Davidic Savior””

Joel is referring to Scot McKnight’s recently released  The King Jesus Gospel.  And of course late last year another book by Scot was released One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow – very readable and challenging.  In chapter 2 of One.Life I love Scot’s word picture:

“Jesus chose one of the most social terms he could find to express what God was now doing.  Jesus didn’t choose “personal relationship with God” but instead he chose the term kingdom.  He did so because his dream was of a kingdom on earth, a society where God’s will flowed like rivers of good wine.”

It is easy to become so familiar with terms such as ‘gospel’ and ‘kingdom’ that we miss their real meaning, apply them in a very reductionist manner or simply broaden their meaning to a point where they lose all biblical connection.  In this context, Scot recently provided an excellent corrective on the misuse of the phrase ‘kingdom work’.  He writes:

“My beef today is that too many today have abstracted the ethical ideals from Jesus’ kingdom vision, all but cut Jesus out of the picture, and then called anything that is just, peace, good and loving the “kingdom.” The result is this equation: kingdom means goodness, goodness means kingdom. Regardless of who does it. My contention would be that kingdom goodness is done by kingdom people who live under King Jesus. I applaud goodness at large. This is not a question of either or but whether or not all goodness is kingdom goodness. Some say Yes, I say No…..

“Get out your Bible and find the references to kingdom and you will discover that it refers to a society in which God’s will is done, with Jesus as the King, where the Story of Israel finds its completion in the Story of Jesus and where that same Story of Jesus shapes everyone. Kingdom refers to that Davidic hope for the earthly world where God sets up his rule in the Messiah and where people live under that Messiah as God’s redeemed and liberated and healed and loving and peaceful and just people.

Yes, feeding the poor is good and it is God’s will for this world, whoever does it. But “kingdom” refers to that special society that does good under Jesus, that society that is buried in his death and raised in his resurrection and lives that Story out in our world today.”

In The Cape Town Commitment: A Confession of Faith and a Call to Action (Didasko Files), the 10th commitment focuses on the mission of God.

It is an inspiring document, that holds together evangelism and social action, in biblical balance.

It is well worth prayerfully ‘chewing on’ this articulation of the mission of God:

“10. We love the mission of God

We are committed to world mission, because it is central to our understanding of God, the Bible, the Church, human history and the ultimate future. The whole Bible reveals the mission of God to bring all things in heaven and earth into unity under Christ, reconciling them through the blood of his cross. In fulfilling his mission, God will transform the creation broken by sin and evil into the new creation in which there is no more sin or curse. God will fulfil his promise to Abraham to bless all nations on the earth, through the gospel of Jesus, the Messiah, the seed of Abraham. God will transform the fractured world of nations that are scattered under the judgment of God into the new humanity that will be redeemed by the blood of Christ from every tribe, nation, people and language, and will be gathered to worship our God and Saviour. God will destroy the reign of death, corruption and violence when Christ returns to establish his eternal reign of life, justice and peace. Then God, Immanuel, will dwell with us, and the kingdom of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign for ever and ever.

A. Our participation in God’s mission. God calls his people to share his mission. The Church from all nations stands in continuity through the Messiah Jesus with God’s people in the Old Testament. With them we have been called through Abraham and commissioned to be a blessing and a light to the nations. With them, we are to be shaped and taught through the law and the prophets to be a community of holiness, compassion and justice in a world of sin and suffering. We have been redeemed through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to bear witness to what God has done in Christ. The Church exists to worship and glorify God for all eternity and to participate in the transforming mission of God within history. Our mission is wholly derived from God’s mission, addresses the whole of God’s creation, and is grounded at its centre in the redeeming victory of the cross. This is the people to whom we belong, whose faith we confess and whose mission we share.

B)  The integrity of our mission.The source of all our mission is what God has done in Christ for the redemption of the whole world, as revealed in the Bible. Our evangelistic task is to make that good news known to all nations. The context of all our mission is the world in which we live, the world of sin, suffering, injustice, and creational disorder, into which God sends us to love and serve for Christ’s sake. All our mission must therefore reflect the integration of evangelism and committed engagement in the world, both being ordered and driven by the whole biblical revelation of the gospel of God.

‘Evangelism itself is the proclamation of the historical, biblical Christ as Saviour and Lord, with a view to persuading people to come to him personally and so be reconciled to God…The results of evangelism include obedience to Christ, incorporation into his Church and responsible service in the world… We affirm that evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty. For both are necessary expressions of our doctrines of God and humankind, our love for our neighbour and our obedience to Jesus Christ…The salvation we proclaim should be transforming us in the totality of our personal and social responsibilities. Faith without works is dead.’

‘Integral mission is the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel. It is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are to be done alongside each other. Rather, in integral mission our proclamation has social consequences as we call people to love and repentance in all areas of life. And our social involvement has evangelistic consequences as we bear witness to the transforming grace of Jesus Christ. If we ignore the world, we betray the Word of God which sends us out to serve the world. If we ignore the Word of God, we have nothing to bring to the world.’

We commit ourselves to the integral and dynamic exercise of all dimensions of mission to which God calls his Church. God commands us to make known to all nations the truth of God’s revelation and the gospel of God’s saving grace through Jesus Christ, calling all people to repentance, faith, baptism and obedient discipleship. God commands us to reflect his own character through compassionate care for the needy, and to demonstrate the values and the power of the kingdom of God in striving for justice and peace and in caring for God’s creation.

In response to God’s boundless love for us in Christ, and out of our overflowing love for him, we rededicate ourselves, with the help of the Holy Spirit, fully to obey all that God commands, with self-denying humility, joy and courage. We renew this covenant with the Lord – the Lord we love because he first loved us.”

The Pew Forum conducted a survey of the delegates to the Third Lausanne Congress last year.  There were nearly 2,200 respondents from the Global North and the Global South.

The survey covers a wide range of topics.  The results provide a most interesting insight into the views of current evangelical leaders and highlights some significant differences between the North and the South.

It’s a big Report but well worth the time taken in reading.

In 1996, Christianity Today’s Cover Story featured John Stott.  He was asked about whether there was tension between evangelism and social concerns:

“As I read and studied and meditated, my vision of God grew and I came to see the obvious things: that God is not just interested in religion but in the whole of life—in justice as well as justification.

I don’t see any dichotomy between the “pietistic” and social realms. To me, they’re two aspects of the same thing: a pursuit of the will of God. I have always been moved by the phrase “to hunger and thirst after righteousness”; righteousness covers both personal holiness and social justice….

I remain committed to evangelism. I have had the privilege of leading more than 50 university missions all over the world, and they spanned a period of 25 years until I felt I was a little out of touch with the student generation and too old.

I can honestly say that my social concerns have not diminished my zeal for evangelism. If anything, it’s the other way round. What people could say is that I talk a lot about social action but don’t do much about it. And that is true, because my calling is to be a pastor. Although I disagree with polarization between these two, I’ve often said I do believe in specialization.

Acts 6 is the obvious biblical basis for this specialization of roles: the apostles were not willing to be distracted from the ministry of the Word and prayer. In fact, the seven were appointed to handle the care of the widows. Both those works are called diakonia, “ministry”; both required Spirit-filled people to exercise them. Both were necessary, but one was social, the other pastoral….

God is interested in and concerned about more than religion: God is the Lord of creation and the covenant. God is the lover of justice, one who protects and champions the oppressed: this is God’s nature. If this is the kind of God we have, then clearly God’s people have got to be the same.

Second, there is the doctrine of human beings, of male and female made in the image of God—the unique dignity and worth of human beings. William Temple said, “My worth is what I am worth to God, and that is a marvelous great deal, because Christ died for me.” And I would say that the ministry of Jesus in life and death exhibits the enormous value of human beings.

Then, I would want to back up this biblical theme with examples from history. Take Mother Teresa, for example, who sees a woman on the pavement of Calcutta with awful sores infested by live maggots. Mother Teresa kisses this woman and picks her up. She sees an intrinsic value in her.

That, surely, is what has motivated people. That is why the word humanization, which was first adopted in the World Council of Churches, is something we evangelicals ought to have taken up. Anything that dehumanizes human beings should be an outrage to us, because God has made them in his image. The whole concept of the rehumanization of human beings, and the deliverance of human beings from anything that dehumanizes, ought to inspire people, and has inspired people.”

Again, in 2006 he was asked about the trajectory that evangelicals need to be on:

“My immediate answer is that we need to go beyond evangelism. Evangelism is supposed to be evangelicals’ specialty. Now, I am totally committed to world evangelization. But we must look beyond evangelism to the transforming power of the gospel, both in individuals and in society.

With regard to individuals, I’m noting in different expressions of the evangelical faith an absence of that quest for holiness that marked our forebears, who founded the Keswick movement, for example, and the quest for what they sometimes called scriptural holiness or practical holiness. Somehow holiness has a rather sanctimonious feel to it. People don’t like to be described as holy. But the holiness of the New Testament is Christlikeness. I wish that the whole evangelical movement could consciously set before us the desire to grow in Christlikeness such as is described in Galations 5:22-23.

Regarding social transformation, I’ve reflected a great deal on the salt and light metaphors, the models that Jesus himself chose in Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mount. “You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world.” It seems to me that those models must be said to contain at least three things.

First, that Christians are radically different from non-Christians, or if they are not, they ought to be. Jesus sets over against each other two communities. On the one hand there is the world, and on the other hand there is you, who are the dark world’s light. Jesus implied that we are as different as light from darkness and salt from decay.

Second, Christians must permeate non-Christian society. Salt does no good if it stays in the saltshaker. Light does no good if you hide it under a bed or bucket. It has to permeate the darkness. So both metaphors call us not just to be different, but to permeate society.

The third, the more controversial implication, is that the salt and light metaphors indicate that Christians can change non-Christian society. The models must mean that, because both salt and light are effective commodities. They change the environments in which they are placed. Salt hinders bacterial decay. Light dispels darkness. This is not to resurrect the social gospel. We cannot perfect society. But we can improve it.

My hope is that in the future, evangelical leaders will ensure that their social agenda includes such vital but controversial topics as halting climate change, eradicating poverty, abolishing armories of mass destruction, responding adequately to the AIDS pandemic, and asserting the human rights of women and children in all cultures. I hope our agenda does not remain too narrow.”

John Stott, at age 90, has passed into the presence of his Lord and Saviour.  What a great Christian, pastor, scholar and equipper of men and women for Kingdom ministry.

His writings had a profound influence in my early years of following Christ.  And to this day, when preparing a message from a passage of Scripture, I will nearly always check whether John has written a commentary on that book.  And if he has, his writings are always succinct, clear, and honouring of His great God.  Perhaps my favourite book by John Stott is The Cross of Christ.  One passage in this book has greatly shaped my theology of the Cross:

“We must not, then, speak of God punishing Jesus or of Jesus persuading God, for to do so is to set them over against each other as if they acted independently of each other or were even in conflict with each other.  We must never make Christ the object of God’s punishment or God the object of Christ’s persuasion, for both God and Christ were subjects not objects, taking the initiative together to save sinners.

Whatever happened on the cross in terms of ‘God-forsakenness’ was voluntarily accepted by both in the same holy love which made atonement necessary.  It was’God in our nature forsaken of God.’  If the Father ‘gave the Son,’ the Son ‘gave himself.’  If the Gethsemane ‘cup’ symbolised the wrath of God, it was nevertheless ‘given’ by the Father (Jn 18:11) and voluntarily ‘taken’ by the Son.  If the Father ‘sent’ the Son, the Son ‘came’ himself.  The Father did not lay on the Son an ordeal he was reluctant to bear, nor did the Son extract from the Father a salvaiton he was reluctant to bestow.

There is no suspicion anywhere in the New Testament of discord between the Father and the Son, ‘whether by the Son wrestling forgiveness from an unwilling Father or by the Father demanding a sacrifice from an unwilling Son.’”

Along with such classics as Basic Christianity, Stott wrote on the interface of the Christian and the Church with the world around.  As Rector Emeritus of All Souls Church, John Stott was given the charge to speak and teach internationally. During many international trips, he heard church leaders say their greatest need was help for “our pastors to teach and preach effectively” and so the strategic ministry programs of the Langham Partnership were born.

In 2010, The Radical Disciple was published, with the following words on the back cover:

“So many of us avoid discipleship by being selective, choosing rather those areas in which commitment is appealing, and steering well clear of areas where it will be costly.

But because Jesus is Lord, we have no liberty to pick and choose.”

I think that wonderfully sums up the life of John Stott.  No…actually one word sums up John’s life…’humility.’

Ed Stetzer of LifeWay Christian Research has penned a thought provoking cover story for Christianity Today: Proselytizing in a Multi-Faith World.

He describes ‘multi-fath’ as: “When people of different faiths are found together, in a conference, neighborhood, or nation, they are best described as multi-faith, representing different faiths.”

And ‘inter-faith’ as: “The central assumption of many in the interfaith dialogue business has been that at their core, all religious people—Hindus and Buddhists, Muslims and Jews, Christians and Animists—are striving for the same thing, and are just using different words and concepts to get there. We should therefore be able to cooperate around common beliefs to improve society, the reasoning goes.”

He then explores that assumption, surveying the core beliefs of the world’s four major religions.  He concludes:

“So according to the four largest world religions, God is one with creation and takes on millions of forms, God may or may not exist, God is one and absolute, and God is one but exists in three persons.

If we cannot agree on even the basic definition of God or his character, how can we say that all the major religions are on the same path toward the truth about God?

Pretending that we all believe the same thing does not foster dialogue but in fact prohibits it.”

So, very different beliefs.  BUT…we must be willing to live together with those of different beliefs.  Ed then explores how religions that are mutually exclusive can peacefully exist side by side.   He proposes (and fleshes out) four foundational commitments that the followers of the world’s religions could agree to make:

• Let each religion speak for itself.
• Talk with and about individuals, not generic “faiths.”
• Respect the sincerely held beliefs of people of other religions.
• Grant each person the freedom to make his or her faith decisions.

What might that look like?  Ed states:

“Muslims should be free to build a masjid where they live, and Christians should defend their religious freedom to do so. At the same time, Christians should be free to plant churches in places like Bhutan, the Maldives, Brunei, and Saudi Arabia. No matter where we live or what religion we follow, we should not demand for ourselves that which we are unwilling to grant others—freedom from compulsion, freedom from discrimination on the basis of creed, and freedom of conscience.”

He concludes the article with a comment on ‘tolerance’: it is not keeping silent – rather it should allow all people to “explore and respond to the Truth.”

The article is well worth reading, pondering and then identifying practical ways for the Australian multi-faith society to live in peace.