The Perpetual Middle-Class
In Counterfeit God’s, Tim Keller writes:
“Why can’t anyone in the grip of greed see it? The counterfeit god of money uses powerful sociological and psychological dynamics. Everyone tends to live in a particular socioeconomic bracket. Once you are able to afford to live in a particular neighborhood, send your children to its schools, and participate in its social life, you will find yourself surrounded by quite a number of people who have more money than you do. You don’t compare yourself to the rest of the world, you compare yourself to those in your bracket. The human heart always wants to justify itself and this is one of the easiest ways… As a result, most Americans think of themselves as middle class…”
Well. This is just profound. I certainly think of myself as middle class, and certainly rail on the “American dream”, even though I (for all intents and purposes) am in fact living the American dream. The snag in the church is when the fear takes over that we might lose our “modest middle-class” lifestyle, and start going to great pains to preserve it.
God, the Gospel, and Glenn Beck (via Russell D. Moore)
A Mormon television star stands in front of the Lincoln Memorial and calls American Christians to revival. He assembles some evangelical celebrities to give testimonies, and then preaches a God and country revivalism that leaves the evangelicals cheering that they’ve heard the gospel, right there in the nation’s capital.The news media pronounces him the new leader of America’s Christian conservative movement, and a flock of America’s Christian conservatives have no problem with that.If you’d told me that ten years ago, I would have assumed it was from the pages of an evangelical apocalyptic novel about the end-times. But it’s not. It’s from this week’s headlines. And it is a scandal.
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This is an important read, not for the political or social implications, but instead for the spiritual implications that is posed to the church.
I would encourage you to read Dr. Moore’s perspective and consider the argument that he is making for the church.
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- A La Carte (8/30) (challies.com)
ok, feed the sheep. but which ones?!?
Image by Reza Vaziri via Flickr
The following is a quote from The Trellis and the Vine: The Ministry Mind-Shift that Changes Everything by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne (pp. 111):
This, it has to be said, is counter-intuitive. It goes against the grain. Our first instinct is to go straight to those who need the most help–and of course, as pastors, there will always be times when we need to leave the 99 to go after the one. There will be pastoral emergencies and problems that we just have to deal with.
But if we pour all our time into caring for those who need help, the stable Christians will stagnate and never be trained to minister to others, the non-Christians will stay unevangelized, and a rule of thumb will quickly emerge within the congregation: if you want the pastor’s time and attention, get yourself a problem. Ministry becomes all about problems and counseling, and not about the gospel and growing in godliness.
And over time, the vine withers.
So, what is the point of what we are doing? Managing bleeting sheep, or investing in the kingdom?
I don’t want to talk about eschatology in the church. But we should.
Webber writes:
One of the trends that I am seeing over and over in the material that I have been reading is the overt nature in which my own apprehension of the eschatological dimension of worship is stunted. I think this is because I am gun shy of the whole topic. Not because it isn’t important; rather, because in many church contexts as soon as the words “eschaton” or “end-times” are uttered people would come out of the wood-work like a comicon convention with their Tim LaHaye books and their Jack Van Impe brand predictions about a dispensational pre-millennial rapture/tribulation/new world order.
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In addition to all of those positions being recent developments in the church, biblically ridiculous, and not to mention a bit convoluted to unpack, the bigger issue is that people get offended (read: angry) when we use the term eschatology to mean something more biblical, more reformed, more in line with the arc of redemptive history that God has created and is taking the whole world to. But people don’t want to hear that. They want to talk about how Obama is the anti-Christ, how the USA will escape a military takeover because of some obscure passage in Daniel, or something else. They don’t want to consider for a moment that a proper view of the eschaton involves God not letting any part of the fall be victorious in this world. The whole world was cursed, humanity included, and the whole world is being redeemed, including the ransomed of humanity.
But it was tiring to even write that; finding the strength to step in the fray and teach that seems like it would be a whole lot of work.
AND YET.
The reading in Webber, Mouw, Meyers, Frame, and others have pointed out that worship is both remembrance (reminder) and rehearsal. It seems like not dealing with eschatology head on is kind of like permitting kudzu to grow. Eventually you are in a losing battle with the weed just trying to keep it from completely eclipsing everything instead of doing the hard work of preventing those seeds from being planted in the first place.
Observe these few quotes from When the Kings Come Marching in: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem
And this one:
If we prepare the church for its place in the New Heavens and New Earth, we must begin to think of the new creation in language that the Bible refers to it. Which means that we must not grow weary in speaking against the salesmen and panic-mongers who try to hijack the entire narrative of eschatology in the church.
Oh yes. One other thing. The world is not going to end on May 21, 2011. We aren’t smarter than Jesus.
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