Answering the third church planting question (if you don't know what I'm talking about, see here): How can a sending church best serve a church planter?

Me [to my three-year-old]:  "Jack, you disobeyed so you're going to have to be disciplined now."

Jack [with pooched lip]:  "But, but, remembah what you said at Stahbucks?  Jesus took our punishment for us so we could go outside and play!"

Heh.

That's Lee Irons characterizing N.T. Wright's understanding of the cross, at least so far as anyone is really able to untangle it. 

Here's an excerpt from Irons's excellent article:

Wright's book Simply Christian (2006) is supposed to be his presentation of the essence of the Christian faith. Here, if anywhere, you would expect a clear, simple statement of the gospel. But it is not there. The book has many good things to say, but it doesn't explain the basic gospel -- "Christ died for our sins." Forget about imputed righteousness. We'll set that debate aside. He didn't even explain the basic concept that (a) God is holy and hates sin, (b) we are sinners deserving his just wrath, and (c) the only way we can be right with God is through the death of Christ which satisfied God's justice and gives us forgiveness and acceptance before God. Instead, we find statements like this:

God's plan to rescue the world from evil would be put into effect by evil doing its worst to the Servant--that is, to Jesus himself--and thereby exhausting its power (p. 108) ... It was time for the evil which had dogged Jesus's footsteps throughout his career--the shrieking maniacs, the conspiring Herodians, the carping Pharisees, the plotting chief priests, the betrayer among his own disciples, the whispering voices within his own soul--to gather into one great tidal wave of evil that would crash with full force over his head. So he spoke of the  Passover bread as his own body that would be given on behalf of his friends, as he went out to take on himself the weight of evil so that they wouldn't have to bear it themselves (p. 110).

This is all very consistent with his earlier formulations in chapter 12 of Jesus and the Victory of God (1996). You can see how, on Wright's theory, he can say with a clear conscience that Jesus' death was substitutionary, since Jesus let evil do its worst on himself so that it would not have to do so on us. But it is much harder to see how it is penal, i.e., relating to divine punishment. "Evil doing its worst on Jesus" is not the same thing as "Christ Jesus, whom God put him forward as a propitiation by his blood ... so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Rom 3:24-26).

This is precisely the woefully incomplete understanding of the atonement that seems to me to be taking up residence in too many evangelical minds.

Let me commend to you Colin Adams insightful questions for a pastoral candidate to ask a church.  Find them here.

HT: JT

I like your comments, Mike. More than that, I like the fact that you led your church to plant another church. I, perhaps naively, don't tend to think about working with denominations to plant churches. I think of cooperating with other churches to plant churches.

Answering our second church planting question: What role should denominational structures play in the church planting process?  How can they help or hinder the process?   (If you don't know what I'm talking about, see here.)

Andy Naselli has a great interview over at "Between Two Worlds" with Graham Cole, author of the new book God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom. 

Relevant to a point made here earlier, Naselli asks Cole about the centrality of penal substitutionary atonement.  Cole's answer, I think, is dead-on.  When you trace any of the biblical themes of the atonement back to their basic root, what you find is Jesus Christ dying under the just wrath of his Father, in his people's place, for their sin.  Look how Cole does this kind of "tracing back" with the important theme of Christus Victor:

2. How do you address some of the major contemporary controversies on the atonement (e.g., whether penal substitution is central, just one of many facets, or invalid)?

Penal substitution provides a good example. It seems to me that following the biblical plotline, the first note struck is the Christus Victor one (i.e., the defeat of evil) in the protevangelium (first gospel) set out in Genesis 3:15. But how is the evil one defeated? The grounds of accusation need to be removed that stand against us, and the fear of death that is the devil’s tool needs to be addressed as well. The cross of Christ disarms the evil one by removing the grounds of accusation against us (Col 2). Christ died in our place (1 Peter 2)), experienced the righteous divine wrath that we deserve (Rom 5) and so, if we are in Christ, there is no condemnation (Rom 8). Because we stand clothed in Christ’s righteousness we will not face the divine judgment of the great white throne for our sins (Rev 20). Our names are in the Lamb’s book of life. The fear of death, which lies in judgment, is thereby addressed (Heb 2). Evangelicals in my view need to do more justice to the Christus Victor theme and in so doing find that penal substitution is integral or central to it.

Christus Victor, reconciliation, redemption, and all the rest---when you start honestly asking the questions "Why?" and "How?," what you find at the bottom of them all is Jesus absorbing the wrath of the Father in the place of sinners.

Find the whole interview here.

What is the transcendent posture in leadership, whether in parenting, pastoring, discipling, or evangelizing? It’s standing in a position of representing God’s authoritative Word. What is the immanent posture? It’s standing in a position of representing the person under God’s Word—standing with that person.

We’re called to do each in leading others, because God in Christ has done each. Both ideas are intrinsic to the “imaging” language of Scripture, particularly as the imaging language develops in the direction of a royal priesthood as well as in the direction of sonship. Christians should be interested in God’s transcendent truth, but they should also be interested in his immanent compassion.

Part of the wisdom of pastoring and parenting, I think, is knowing which is called for when. As I suggested in the last post, the more common thing to do when the people you’re leading are hard-hearted and immature is to adopt an empathetic, relational, and immanent posture in order to win trust. And much of the time that may be correct. But sometimes what the immature and hard-hearted need most is a line in the sand and a requirement that’s inflexible. Sometimes God draws us with cords of love; sometimes he breaks us with the sharp rebuke of exile.

The desire to be a good leader, finally, should sends us to our knees, begging him for the wisdom of knowing when to stand near to those we love, and when to stand far off.

Previous posts:

1. T & I in parenting

2. T & I in pastoring

3. T & I in discipleship

4. T & I in evangelism

Basic idea: When you are doing evangelism, you are, by definition, doing something to represent both God’s transcendence and his immanence. You are speaking authoritatively true things about God’s work in Christ (transcendence) to fellow humans and sinners (immanence). You are issuing an authoritative call (“repent and believe”) to people who are just like you.

Biblical basis: In the incarnation itself we see how God’s evangelistic activity presents itself both transcendently and immanently. In all the Scriptural material related to Christ’s work as king (transcendent) and priest (immanent) we see both postures, as well as in the identity of the church as a “royal priesthood.” We see it in the Scriptural idea of the church being in but not of the world. And this list could continue.

Wise evangelism: What’s especially worth observing here is that doing evangelism well requires us to give attention to both postures. There’s a place to say, “Hey, I’m a sinner, too” (immanence). And there’s a place to say, “God calls you to repent and believe” (transcendence). All the talk these days about “contexualization” and “cultural engagement,” as well as perennial questions about Bible translation, stems from the desire to do the immanent posture well. And the talk about making sure we are clear about the unique gospel message, the need for conversion, and the distinct witness of the local church (involving things like church membership and church discipline) stem from the desire to do the transcendent posture well. 

In short, I’d say good evangelism involves both empathy and relatability (immanence) and confrontation (transcendence).

Know thyself: Personalities and cultures incline us toward one posture or another. Socially attuned people are good at the empathetic posture. Truth people are good at the transcendent posture. Likewise, cultures can lean one way or the other. I believe Western culture today leans heavily toward the empathetic and relational posture. We’re afraid to confront. Our philosophies as well our sense of manners tells us that it’s “wrong” and “inappropriate” to confront. Even among evangelicals, “relational evangelism,” several decades ago, occurred as an immanent reaction against the heavy transcendence of “contact evangelism.”  These days, evangelicals don’t even like to talk about “evangelism” and “conversion.” We like to talk about “kingdom building” and “conversation.” This shouldn’t be surprising, though, since we also don’t like talking about God’s transcendence or authority.

Lessons from a bad evangelist: In short, it’s easy to lean too far in one direction or the other, which I know quite well from personal experience. I try to be faithful in evangelism, which I think is the most important thing. But I don’t consider myself a very good evangelist, and one way I can see this is that I often veer too far in one direction or another.

1) We can be too immanent—too empathetic. Sometimes, I have let either fear of man or worldly wisdom impel me toward avoiding sharing the gospel’s command with someone (“God calls you to repent and believe”). I focus too much on “relating” or “being understanding” or “talking in their language” or “giving my testimony” or just not being weird. So I’ll put everything in terms of my personal experience, which has a way of playing into our culture’s happy acceptance of the subjective. It’s a little scarier to put things in terms of authoritative universal truth and to use the second-person pronoun “you.” But we must warn people of the jeopardy they are in! It’s only a demonic blindness which keeps us from seeing this.

I once shared the gospel with a man sitting next to me on an airplane, and he was very interested in what I was saying in part (I think) because I was very forthright about the gospel’s relevance to him. As it turned out, he worked six blocks from where I work. So we agreed to get together for lunch. We did have lunch a couple of times, but then he lost interest. There could be many reasons why he lost interest, but in my own post-game analysis it occurred to me that I began to care about what he thought of me, and I began defaulting toward the purely empathetic. I wanted to seem “normal” and “like him.” But when an evangelist is “all empathy,” there’s no longer any unique message to share! If you’re just like me, why should I listen to you?

2) We can be too transcendent—too confrontational.  Sometimes, I have plowed into an evangelistic encounter motivated only by a sense of duty rather than by love. Christians do have a duty to evangelize, but when we act in duty and not in compassionate love, we tend to be doing it for legalistic, merit-earning reasons (at least I do). When we’re focused only on the transcendent, authoritative truth, we can forget we’re sinners just like them. And we enter the conversation somewhat self-righteously.

I once shared the gospel with a cab driver in the last minute or so of the cab ride. Right before I got out of the car, I told him that one day he would stand before God and give an account, and that he needed to be ready for that day because God would judge his sin. Now, I honestly do think that something like that needs to be said from time to time in evangelism. On that occasion, however, I know my heart was motivated not by love but duty. The Lord may well use those words for good in that driver’s life; but generally speaking I would not encourage people to evangelize by walking up to someone they don’t know and telling them the wrath of God is coming (but Jonah?).

3) Compassionately confront; empathically urge.  My guess is that most evangelicals these days need to be reminded of the confrontational or transcendent aspects of evangelism. I say this in part because it feels like everyone is talking about the relational, contextualizing, and immanent aspects of evangelism. And, sure, good pastoral sense should tell us that there are times to lean more toward one posture or another. The more immature and hard-hearted a person is, the more empathy and immanence is required (sometimes). And our culture is, in many ways, hard-hearted and immature. Still, we must remember to confront and to empathize.

Don’t we all think of the apostle Paul as the exemplar of both? Of course, I’m no Paul. The great news for me is that God can use even donkeys to speak his words.

Jesus tells us to be careful how we hear (Luke 8:18).  Yet many Christians approach the Sunday sermon with little to no game-plan for listening well.

We just finalized the God Exposed schedule.

In my blog post a week ago, I wrote that I thought Andy Crouch’s book had missed the point of the cross and therefore of the gospel.  His is not the first book about which I’ve said that.  Actually, one of my jobs here at 9Marks is to read books (and watch videos) that have become popular among evangelicals, and review them.  For whatever reason, the critique that the cross has been redefined—or even is missing—seems, sadly, to be a common theme in those reviews.

What really surprises me, however, is the response I run into from people who leave comments here or post responses on other blogs.   Time and again, what I see is self-described evangelicals defending authors or video-makers for their shoddy treatment of the atonement---even when those video-makers say things like "The cross was about...." or "This is what the gospel's about..." or they title a section of their book "Gospel."  In other words, it's not that the author isn't talking about the cross because the book isn't about the gospel or the cross; it is in fact about the cross, or at least they mean it to be; they just want to articulate a new understanding of the gospel or the cross.  Moreover, it’s not that the responses I hear point to some section of the book and say, “Look, there.  A clear explanation of penal subsitutionary atonement.  You must have skipped that page.”  No, it’s usually something more like “I’m sure he wouldn’t deny penal substitution if you asked him.  He just doesn’t focus on it here.”  Or “Why should we have to talk about penal substitution anyway?  That’s only one image of the cross, and I think the image of reconciliation communicates better to my generation.”

A few years ago, it seemed to me that people like Brian McLaren might actually manage to reshape evangelical thinking about the gospel.  I was worried about it because I saw so many young men my age being swept up by his way of thinking.  Over the last two or three years, though, I’ve become pretty well convinced that evangelicals have effectively cut the legs out from under “emergent” theology, considered as a system.  First Don Carson’s Becoming Conversant, and then Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck’s Why We’re Not Emergent were the one-two knock-out punches, it seems to me, that finally convinced people that there was no “there” there in emergent theology.

Even so, I think there are a few barbs from emergent theology that have managed to hang on in evangelicalism, some of them more worrisome than others.  I am convinced that one of those—and without a doubt the most dangerous—is the temptation among many young evangelicals to rethink and rearticulate the gospel in a way that makes its center something other than the substitutionary, wrath-enduring death of Jesus in the place of sinners for their sin.   I see that happening in a couple of different ways, depending on what you’re reading—or watching. 

Sometimes that impulse works itself out in authors simply shunting the cross over and (wittingly or unwittingly) making the center of the gospel story something else entirely.  Maybe it’s Jesus’ lordship, or God’s kingdom, or God's purpose to remake the heavens and earth, or His call for us to join him in his work of cultural transformation.  Time after time, in book after book coming off of Christian presses, the highest excitement and joy is being ignited by something other than the sin-bearing work of Christ on the cross, and the most fervent appeals are for people to join God in doing this or that, rather than to repent and believe. In the process, the story of the gospel is made to be (deliberately or not) rather cross-less.  That's one dangerous problem.

Another problem is not so much the shunting of the cross out of the center, as the remaking of it into something other than the substitutionary, wrath-bearing death of the Savior in the place of sinners for their sins.  Thus Jesus’ death is often said to be the result of human evil or greed or power-lust or culture-making or any number of other things coming to their lowest, worst, most concentrated point and killing Jesus, who then conquers that worst-of-all-evils through his resurrection.

Don Carson hit on this in a blog-post some time ago when he wrote that,

“In recent years it has become popular to sketch the Bible's story-line something like this: Ever since the fall, God has been active to reverse the effects of sin. He takes action to limit sin's damage; he calls out a new nation, the Israelites, to mediate his teaching and his grace to others; he promises that one day he will come as the promised Davidic king to overthrow sin and death and all their wretched effects. This is what Jesus does: he conquers death, inaugurates the kingdom of righteousness, and calls his followers to live out that righteousness now in prospect of the consummation still to come.”

Carson calls this presentation of the Bible’s narrative “painfully reductionistic,” and he’s right.  There is no understanding here (explicit understanding, anyway) that sin is an offense against God rather than just an unfortunate circumstance humans have brought on themselves. There’s no sense of Jesus standing in the place of sinners to take the punishment that rightly should fall upon them.  And for that matter, there’s no sense that there’s any punishment involved at all---just consequences.  No divine wrath, just bad results.  In other words, such a presentation of the gospel essentially leaves out of the meaning of the cross exactly what the Bible makes central to it:  A) that Jesus was dying in the place of his people, and B) that on the cross he endured punishment for their sin (not just the results of it—the punishment for it), meted out by God the Father in his righteous wrath.

It’s amazing to me how willing many evangelicals are to excuse both those moves—the move to de-center the cross and the move to make it something other than penal and substitutionary.  It's just a thought, but I wonder if the impulse to do (and to excuse) those things might come from the bare fact that the world just doesn’t like the cross as it’s presented in Scripture.  At best they think it’s a ridiculous fairy tale, and at worst a monstrous lie.  Add to that the fact that we really want the world to be attracted to Jesus, and you can see where the enormous pressure comes from to find a way not to have to talk about “bloody cross religion” quite so much.  So we shade toward a gospel that centers on world-renewal rather than the cross, or at least toward a cross that has nothing to do with Jesus taking God's wrath and punishment for another's sin, all in the hope that the world will perhaps think us a little less crazy.

I’m not going to make a sustained case for penal substitutionary atonement here.  I and others have done that elsewhere, over and over and over again.  I will, however, assert (again) that penal substitution is not just one more image of the cross among many, from which buffet we may pick and choose depending on what we think will communicate best at any given moment.  It is, rather, the underlying reality upon which all the other images depend and are built.  So, you say you prefer to talk about the cross in terms of reconciliation instead of penal substitution?  Great.  All I ask is that you be honest about it and trace that image all the way down. Why, for starters, is reconciliation needed in the first place? Don't tell me you can avoid talking about anger by talking about reconciliation---reconciliation presupposes that somebody is mad at somebody else.  So then, is reconciliation needed because we are angry at God, or is it because God is angry at us?  And exactly how is reconciliation with an angry God effected at the cross?  Is it by something other than Jesus taking the wrath that was owed to us, becoming a curse for us, the just dying for the unjust?  You see?  You can talk about “the Bible looking at the cross from a multiplicity of perspectives” all you want, but all those perspectives, when you trace them down, come right back to Jesus taking the punishment his people deserved—that is, to penal substitution.  And if you argue for something short of that, you are missing the point of the cross, and therefore of the gospel, entirely.  (Of course you can—and people have—simply made up a few perspectives that don’t trace back down to penal substitution.  But that’s beside the point.  We’re talking about biblical images here.) 

At the end of the day, and really in the face of all the comments to the contrary, Scripture makes it clear that the cross—that is, the death of Jesus in the place of sinners, taking the punishment they deserved—must remain at the center of the gospel.  We cannot move it to the side, we cannot replace it with any other truth, and we cannot reimagine it as something less offensive than it really is.  Otherwise, we present the world with something that is not saving, and that is therefore not good news at all.

Think about what Paul said about all this in 1 Corinthians.  He knew the message of the cross sounded, at best, insane to those around him.  He knew that by proclaiming the message that “Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor 15), he would incur the world’s ridicule.  But even in the face of that sure rejection, still he said, “I preach Christ crucified.”  In fact, he resolved to “know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

That’s because, as he put it at the end of the book, the message that “Christ died for our sins” was not just important, not even just very important. 

It was “of first importance.”

There are quite a few evangelicals out there who could stand to give that some serious thought.

Basic Idea: Discipling other Christians involves us in imaging God’s transcendent posture and his immanent posture toward his people. On the one hand, discipling typically occurs in the context of friendship—two individuals who have affectionately drawn near to one another for the purposes of enjoyment and care. This is the immanent posture. On the other hand, discipling is a friendship with a Christward direction. The goal of the enjoyment and care is to help the other person look more like Jesus. This is the transcendent posture.

Friendship: Think about what friendship involves. Our friends are the ones we imitate and follow. We adopt their language and life patterns. We tend to spend money where they spend money. We value what they value. We raise our children like they raise their children. We pray like they pray. We trust their counsel and heed their rebukes more easily than someone who is not a friend. There’s a reason that Paul says, “Bad company ruins good morals” (1 Cor. 15:33; cf. Deut. 13:6). It’s because our friends play a large role in forming who we become as we imitate one another (see James 4:4).

The intimacy and trust afforded by friendship (immanence) makes it a perfect vehicle for instruction and teaching (transcendence).

This is why there is no better friendship a person could have then the friendship of the Lord, a friendship which is given to those who keep his covenant and do his commands (Ps. 25:14; John 15:14). To say he is our friend is to say that we imitate him. To be a friend, on the other hand, is to give, just as God gives. God gives to those whom he befriends, just as Christ has befriended us through his sacrifice (John 15:13, 15). Likewise, we should befriend the members of our church by giving ourselves to them.

Discipleship: What is discipleship? Again, it’s friendship with a Christward direction or purpose—the purpose of seeing another conformed increasingly to the image of Christ as one or both give in order for the other to receive. Indeed, Christian friendships take humility, because it requires humility to both give and receive. 

Church: As God gives humility to churches, those churches should be increasingly characterized by such discipleship friendships: young men befriending other young men for the sake of encouraging one another in the faith; young women doing the same with other young women; older men befriending one another and younger men; and so forth.

Christian friends are surely valuable inside or outside the same local church. But friends within a local church will be formed by the same ministry of the Word, giving them the opportunity to extend that ministry more carefully into one another’s lives throughout the week. Friendships are a God given vehicle through which the church’s ministry of the Word travels.

Practical take aways:

1. Pastors have busy schedules, and frankly they cannot afford to become good friends with everyone whom they disciple. Still, we can generally expect that the discipling relationships which occur in the context of a friendship will have the highest impact. In other words, the amount of time I spend drawing near to a brother (immanence) will directly affect how far I can draw that brother toward Christ (transcendence)—all things being equal.

2. Drawing near to a younger brother in the faith doesn’t mean telling him everything about my life. Questions of his maturity and trustworthiness will help to answer how much I can wisely tell him about my life to assist him in the path of discipleship.

3. At the same time, I need to make sure it’s not my own pharisaical aspirations of looking impressive to the younger man which keep me from drawing near and being transparent.

4. After all, at the heart of what we want to teach younger Christians is the glory of the gospel and the pattern of a gospel life. If the younger Christians around me never see me demonstrate confession, contrition, and repentance, how can I expect them to learn it? 

(Paragraphs 2, 4, and 5 to 8 have been adapted from The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline—coming from Crossway Jan 2010).

Basic idea: I suspect there’s a temptation for pastors to lean either too far toward imaging God’s transcendence (all they want to do is teach from on high) or too far toward imaging his immanence (all they want to do is visit and hand hold). But good pastors, like good parents, do both.

Example of Jesus: Jesus, the exemplar shepherd, demonstrates this best.

·        On the one hand, he taught with authority and cast out demons.

·        On the other hand, he knows his sheep, and they know his voice. He dwelt among them.

·        The very phrase “God-man” captures the simultaneous transcendence and immanence we see in the person of Jesus Christ.

Example of Paul:  Paul, as apostle, also demonstrate both the transcendent posture of authority and the immanent posture of empathy. Consider his charge to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. The immanent posture is clear.

·        Verse 18: You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time. Verse 19: he served with humility; he didn’t Lord it over them. He says he served with tears.

·        Even in his teaching, he didn’t just do it publicly. Verse 20 says he taught them privately going from house to house.

·        Verses 36-38: They all pray together, weep together, embrace, and kiss; and they escort him to the ship.

Yet the bringing-God’s-Word-authoritative posture of transcendence is evident as well:

·        Verse 20: I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that that was profitable.

·        Verse 21: testifying of repentance toward God and of faith in Christ.

·        Verse 24: testifying to the gospel of grace

·        Verse 25: proclaiming the kingdom.

·        Verses 26 and 27: he’s innocent of any man’s blood, because he has declared the whole counsel of God, like Ezekiel’s watchman.

Both are necessary for pastoring: It’s striking to me how much the imminent posture (being with your people) works together with the transcendent posture (teaching them God’s Word), which I think is captured together in Paul’s famous charge to elders in verse 28: “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock.” How does he pay careful attention? Well, the following verses tell us that wolves will come and speak twisted things. In other words, paying careful attention seems to be about… teaching in a way that’s informed of the false voices speaking into the heads of the flock. Again, you must know the flock to teach them well.

Homework: Pastor/elder, spend some time considering what direction—transcendent or immanent—you more naturally lean in? Ask those you trust. Consider several practical steps you might take to compensate for your weaker area.

Next post: Transcendence and Immanence in Discipling

Answering the first church planting question (if you don't know what I'm talking about, see here).

The topic of parenting isn't something I choose to think about. It's something that's thrust upon me day by day, even minute by minute. Praise God for my 3 young girls. What a gift!

Lots of good Reformed literature on parenting has been teaching me about training my children. But here's something which some of the literature can miss, which my wonderful wife has taught me so well: I need to get down on my girls' level and be with my children...at their level...talking their language. 

Now, some of you dads are thinking, "Duh! Isn't that obvious?" Well, I suppose, but I confess it doesn't come naturally to me. I'm dumb. And I envy you. It's easy for me to teach. It's not easy for me to talk at my children's level.

Example: I take my two year old on an errand with me in the car to the store. My temptation: listen to music or some interview I have downloaded. But here's what my wife is teaching me to do: "Hannah, what do you see? What color is the light? Are those trees? Look at the truck. Yeah!"

Generalization 1: Reformed and Fundamentalist approaches to parenting emphasize training and God's transcendent posture: "Johnny, you need to obey me all the way, right away, with a happy heart."

Generalization 2: Mainstream evangelical approaches to parenting emphasize God's immanent posture: "So what do you want to talk about?"

My working thesis (as a parent of three young girls still trying to figure this parenting thing out): Good parenting requires us to image both God's immanent and transcendent postures. That is, we need to train and require obedience. But we also need to get down at their levels and patiently and tenderly relate to them. Doesn't God so draw us to obedience with cords of kindness and love (Hos. 11:4)?

Two assumptions: I assume that most parents naturally do one or the other better, and we should learn to compensate for our weaknesses. I also assume whole cultures can lean toward one posture or the other. Our culture, I believe, propels most parents toward the immanent posture, which makes the transcendent-emphasizing Reformed literature on parenting a helpful corrective. But we must not forget to pursue both.

Your homework (for Reformed dad's who lean toward the transcendent posture like me): Do what my friend and fellow elder Andrew does and lie down in your kids' bed tonight, last thing, and ask them this question: "So what do you want to talk about?"

Next post: Transcendence and Immanence in Pastoring

I just finished reading through Andy Crouch's book, Culture Making.  It really is worthy of a longer review than this is going to be, so maybe the good editors at 9Marks could make that happen.  For now, though, I just want to give a quick summary of my thoughts about the book, and ask one question.

Think about it.  The first living things in the world are plants.  Adam and Eve are placed in a garden (full, one assumes, of plants) and their sin is fundamentally about the misuse of plants (right?).  Not only so, but it is a plant, the fig, to which they turn when they want to try to cover up their sin.  The tabernacle was made out of wood, which at least started out as a plant, and plant products were central to the rituals of the sacrificial system.  Noah's ark was made out of plants, as was that other ark, and Jesus himself for the first thirty years of his life (10/11ths!) was a plant-products-craftsman.  And then, lo and behold, on what does Jesus die?  Yep, a plant---or at least what used to be a plant, a tree.  The apostles travel on boats made of plant products.  And for that matter, what do the women mistake the risen Christ of being?  A gardener! (Plants again.)  And then, what is the climax of the New Testament?  The river of life, flanked on either side by---you guessed it!---large plants!!

Amazing, isn't it, how central plants are to the Bible's story.  Obviously God loves plants, and therefore obviously he wants his people to be careful, attentive, passionate plant-growers.  That's our calling.

Right?

This new site, built on Matthew Henry's A Method for Prayer, looks like it's going to be a wonderful resource for personal and public prayer.  Our friend Ligon Duncan and William McMillan are to thank for revising and editing Henry's work.

The work and the site offer insight in various forms of prayer, including: adoration, confession, petition, thanksgiving and intercession.  Take a look.  Great stuff.

I just want to make sure that if someone Googles "nazi Irish dwarf whip 9 Marks", something pops up.

I just got back from talking to Spanish speakers in Herndon, the next town over from ours.  Herndon has been a hotbed of ethnic tensions in Northern Virginia, and it's the site of our second church plant for Spanish speakers.

The Bible says quite alot about fellow members of a church living together in peace.  "Make every effort to do what leads to peace," Paul says.  And in another place, "Make every effort to to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace."  There are more, of course.

50 Crucial Questions John Piper & Wayne Grudem 67 pages

Countering the Claims of Evangelical Feminism Wayne Grudem 284 pages

Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood John Piper & Wayne Grudem, Ed. 575 pages

Well, August is vacation time for many pastors.  Our family will be heading out to Ocean City, NJ (site of this conference) at the end of the month.  I am reminded of this excellent article by CJ Mahaney on what it means to be a leader on your family's vacation.  It's got seven lessons to remember while on vacation:

Dee,

A little while back you offered a post asking about the use of manuscripts.  One day I'm going to mature and speak from a "manuline" like McKinley.  But the other day I read this from Murray's biography of Lloyd-Jones:

Initially at Aberavon he attempted to write both sermons for Sunday in full--an average of nine, ten or more pages, closely written on both sides.  The reason for the full manuscript was not a concern for a literary form, still less for something to read in the pulpit, it was rather to be sure that he was clear in the substance of his message.  He believed that a preacher should know what he was going to say from the beginning to the end.  Within in weeks, however, he found it impossible to write two sermons in full and this his settled habit for many years became to write one sermon fully, and the other--though he thought it out in detail--only to record in outline.  At first the full sermon manuscript went with him into the pulpit, but he soon found that practice inhibiting, and his custom became to read the fully-written sermon through some three times, and then to have no more than an outline of it with him when he was preaching.  In his judgment, the evening sermons (which were more specifically intended for non-Christians) were the hardest to prepare; it was therefore generally these which were written in full.  Once or twice when, relying on his 'feeling' for a text, he preached with an inadequately thought-out plan, and failed miserably.  Generally his experience concurred with that of Henry Rees, one of the Methodist fathers who, when asked which of his sermons had been most honoured of God, replied, 'The ones I prepared most carefully'. (p. 154)

There you see a man adapting and changing but also maintaining a relentless focus on preparation. 

While reading the Murray biography, I was stunned to read that the common practice in Wales when Lloyd-Jones began his preaching ministry was to grant 13 Sundays away for the minister.  Essentially three months could be used by the pastor to labor or minister elsewhere or to entertain guest preachers when they came.  I'm not sure how they arrived at 13 Sundays, but that was a bit surprising.  But even so, in his first twelve months in the pastorate at Wales, Lloyd-Jones preached at 54 different places in Wales!  That's 54 places/locations, not even 54 sermons of which there could have been more.  Murray comments: "Such was the additional work of his first year in the ministry, and thereafter, for half-a-century, no year was to be so quiet!" (p. 183)

So, here's my two-fold question, especially for Matt who talks these things through with churches all the time:

1.  Any counsel as to how a church should arrive at how often/little their main preaching pastor should be out of the pulpit?  I assume you'll say, "It depends."  And it does.  But depends on what factors?

2.  How would you have counseled Lloyd-Jones about accepting/declining speaking invitations that take him away from his new charge?