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In October of 1988, I was a student in my second year of seminary. I had just returned from spending the summer in North Bay and was enjoying the independence of living alone at the ripe age of 21 on the east side of Toronto.

Our College and Career group at church held a Halloween party. For some reason I didn't have time to get a costume together. Still, I decided to attend.

One of the first people to ball me out for my lack of costume was the clown you see at the center of the back row - a picture I took because I was the only one out of costume. I had no idea who this clown was, but it was strange to be balled out by someone I didn't know. Later on that night, she gave the Bible study. Yes, a clown gave a Bible study at a Halloween party in a church. You figure it out.

I was intrigued and couldn't wait to find out who this person was. I soon saw her in her normal clothes and was still intrigued. I was very interested. Unfortunately, so was one of my housemates. That all sorted itself out, and half a year later we were dating. A year and a half after that we were married. But it all started this night 19 years ago.

I often wonder what it means that I married someone who balled me out the first time I met her. I also wonder what it means that I married a clown. But it's too late to look back, and I really wouldn't want to anyway.

On this day 490 years ago, Martin Luther sent out his 95 Theses to some church leaders. It's also reported that he also posted his proposal at the doors of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, which served as the university bulletin board.

It's not often that a document changes the world like this one did.

Background

You wouldn't expect much from a document written in Latin and intended for academic debate. It wasn't as harsh as a document he had written just a month before. But Luther's 95 Theses sparked something like few other documents ever have.

A sample of what he wrote:

1. When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said "Repent", He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

62. The true treasure of the church is the Holy gospel of the glory and the grace of God.

You can read the 95 Theses online, but here's a summary from a history text:

Repentance is not a single act of penance, but a constant change of heart and mind extending over one's lifetime. The Christian seeks rather than avoids divine discipline. The true treasure of the church is not the superabundant merits of Christ and the saints, subject to papal control, but "the most Holy gospel of the glory and grace of God," freely offered to repentant sinners by faithful preachers.

Luther hadn't anticipated what would happen. The 95 Theses were quickly translated from Latin into German, printed, and widely copied. It was one of the first controversies to spread by the new technology of the printing press. Within two weeks, the Theses had spread throughout Germany; within two months throughout Europe.

On June 15, 1520, the Pope warned Luther that he risked excommunication unless he recanted some of his teachings. On January 3, 1521, Luther was excommunicated. The Reformation had started, and it all began on this day 490 years ago.

The 95 Theses Today

You can go in a lot of directions when you talk about the 95 Theses and today:

• the importance of good theology applied to life
• the role of academics in the service of the church
• technology's influence on the church
• the church's need to be always reforming

Tim Challies is hosting a Reformation Day Symposium, and you can read many articles on the 95 Theses on his site.

What I'm thinking about most today, though, is what lay at the heart of the 95 Theses: a rediscovery of the gospel. The person who has helped me understand why this is so important is Tim Keller, who says:

We never “get beyond the gospel” in our Christian life to something more “advanced.” The gospel is not the first “step” in a “stairway” of truths, rather, it is more like the “hub” in a “wheel” of truth. The gospel is not just the A-B-C’s of Christianity, but it is the A to Z of Christianity. The gospel is not just the minimum required doctrine necessary to enter the kingdom, but the way we make all progress in the kingdom.

We are not justified by the gospel and then sanctified by obedience but the gospel is the way we grow (Gal. 3:1-3) and are renewed (Col 1:6). It is the solution to each problem, the key to each closed door, the power through every barrier (Rom 1:16-17)....

All our problems come from a failure to apply the gospel...

The main problem, then, in the Christian life I that we have not thought out the deep implication of the gospel, we have not “used” the gospel in and on all parts of our life. Richard Lovelace says that most people’s problems are just a failure to be oriented to the gospel—a failure to grasp and believe it through and through. Luther says (on Gal. 2:14), “The truth of the gospel is the principle article of all Christian doctrine… Most necessary is it that we know this article well, teach it to others, and beat it into their heads continually.” The gospel is not easily comprehended. Paul says that the gospel only does its renewing work in us as we understand it in all its truth. All of us, to some degree live around the truth of the gospel but do not “get” it. So the key to continual and deeper spiritual renewal and revival is the continual re-discovery of the gospel. A stage of renewal is always the discovery of a new implication or application of the gospel—seeing more of its truth. This is true for either an individual or a church.

If Keller is right - and I think he is - then the most important thing we can do is to continually come back to the gospel, preaching it to ourselves, and continually finding new implications for our lives. That's exactly what Luther did 490 years ago today. It's what we still need to be doing today.

Last night I spent five (five!) hours in the local Montana's with three Canadian legends: Jordon Cooper, Bill Kinnon, and Brian Mullins. Maybe they're not really legends, but we had fun anyways.

No sign of Pernell or Jared - maybe they were scared by the presence of two Baptists and one ex-Baptist? (Actually, Pernell was busy.)

Good guys, but I realize I don't travel enough. Listening to stories of swimming with sharks and N.T. Wright in the Bahamas, driving up the South African coast, and bungee jumping in Australia made me feel a bit of wanderlust. Fun night in any case.

I've been blogging through the first couple of chapters of Paul Metzger's book Consuming Jesus. So far, Metzger has been raising some familiar concerns. The evangelical church isn't what it should be.

Critiquing evangelicalism is not rare or particularly hard. But Metzger targets something unique: consumerism that fosters race and class divisions. This is an area I haven't seen explored before now.

In any case, Metzger's criticism "is not the angry and cynical attack of an outsider; rather, it is the criticism of one who loves the evangelical church's historical values of piety and holistic outreach and mission, but one who longs for reform."

So what do we do about this? This is where I appreciate Metzger's direction. It's easy to drift to pragmatic or structural solutions to problems that actually run much deeper. Metzger suggests that we look elsewhere for the solution to evangelicalism's problems:

The "magic" of Christ's saving work runs very deep - deeper than any one atonement model can delve. Christ's atoning work cancels out individual sins in addition to defeating the fallen principalities and powers in order to build beloved community. Jesus has provided the necessary condition for living authentically in community. This chapter investigates the deep magic of Christ's atoning work, which serves as the foundation stone for breaking down divisions between God and us and between us and others - including consumer divisions between different races and classes - and making us all one.

According to Colossians 2:15, Christ conquered fallen powers while on the cross. These powers include "angelic beings, institutions, and ideas or systems of thought...When angelic beings, institutions, and ideas become autonomous, they become fallen powers." Examples of fallen powers include "the Roman Empire and its rule of retribution, pharisaical religion and its legalistic distortion of Israel's election, and the American enterprise and its demands for individual self-fulfillment and consumer preference." Jesus has confronted and conquered these powers.

Metzger writes:

Jesus' resurrection reconfigures life and its priorities so that God's people can die to the yuppie dream and live anew to this nobler vision of reality. Although the consumer church is a fallen power, it can be transformed when it is consumed by Jesus so that it may bear witness as a kind of first fruits of Jesus' new world order.

The rest of the book addresses how Christ's atoning work leads to restructuring three areas:

• the Christian life
• the church
• outreach

More to come in each of these three areas.

Not every book on the consumerism and the church includes a chapter on fallen powers. But Paul Metzger's book Consuming Jesus devotes a healthy section to this topic. Metzger writes, "Sinister forces are at work today, and they have an impact on the church and the broader culture to their very core, which sometimes leads us to lose our wits and discernment."

We live within a context of consumerism and free-market enterprise. "In a free market church culture," Metzger writes, "those who cater most to this consumer force thrive best." Many of our models for church within North American are built around catering to consumer forces. We don't even question this approach, yet it's led to class and race divisions, and all kinds of other problems within the church.

Metzger describes how we are blind to a number of diabolical forces that are currently affecting us:

Racialization - We believe that racialization is no longer an issue. "Jim Crow legislation, like slavery, may be a thing of the past," writes Metzger, "but racialization and classism are not; they simply take new forms under the law of consumer preference." As the movie Crash illustrates, we are suspicious and fearful of "the other" - even in the church.

Consumer-Market Forces - We believe that "consumerism and the free market are basically benign, and that catering to people's desires is good if the church wishes to grow and be successful." But the market forces dehumanize us, turning us into "solitary individuals who shop and sell." It commodifies human life, rather than offering the free gift of the gospel. It also leads to race and class divisions based on income.

Success - Churches face the temptation to water down the message in order to be successful. "Prophets in America are not often successful - so they usually get stoned." Metzger asks, "Will the consumer-sensitive church ever be prepared to contend against the incessant consumer impulses that lead people to shop and find the church that gives them the spiritual goods they want...at the least cost to themselves?" In other words, will we keep trying to satisfy the consumer market for churches so that we grow, or will we challenge it even if it costs us?

Metzger reminds us of C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. The senior demon Screwtape advised his nephew Wormwood that "if he cannot keep his patient from attending church, he should coax him into becoming a church shopper."

Social Structures - We are blinded to social structures, because we focus on personal evangelism. We mistakenly think that "if we focus on building personal relationships, social-structural problems such as racialization will eventually take care of themselves."

Metzger says, "We American evangelicals need to move beyond our pragmatic orientation and short-term vision of focusing almost exclusively on building personal relationships with individuals to win them for Christ." We should "guard our strengths" (like personal evangelism) but also "critically engage our weaknesses."

Metzger's conclusion: "We evangelicals have been structured historically and culturally in such a way that we are often blind to the divisive forces arrayed against us." The rest of the book outlines a biblical and theological paradigm to address this situation.

David Hansen's book The Art of Pastoring has a chapter on temptations, based on the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness. There's some really good stuff in there.

On ambition: "There is no other possible conclusion: every pastor must choose between ladder-climbing and love. I've tried and tried, but I've never been able to mix ambition and love...I must live in constant repentance for my desire to climb ladders and in constant turning toward the God of love."

On shortcuts: "We pimp shortcuts. Everybody wants them. People will pay good money for them. We love cheap love and hate the costly cross. By giving people shortcuts we are cheating them out of life in Christ, and it destroys us."

On church leadership vs. management:

Most pastors think management is leadership. But the people know the difference. People don't want to be led; they want to be managed...The strategy of management as ministry is to avoid the pitfalls of the corporate life of the church by abstracting the pitfalls and following a program to avoid them. But in the Christian life we are not meant to avoid pitfalls; we are meant to live our lives through the pitfalls as the actual stuff of life in Christ.

On programs:

After many years of trying to sell programs to churches and watching others attempt the same, I am convinced that once the members of the group believe in the program, the process is over. For all intents and purposes, church members are perfectly satisfied...if they can simply come to believe that a program exists which will deliver them from their problems and usher in a new era of fulfilling the mission of the church. I don't think that anyone really wants to follow the programs. People just want to believe in programs. This is why pastors and laypeople love going to seminars and convocations so much. They really have no serious intention of implementing anything they learn. They just want to experience learning about a new program.

Otherwise how can it be that our churches are analyzed over and over, we are presented with program after program, none of which works, and yet we want more and more programs?...We simply want to experience believing that they work, so that we can live our lives together without risking a thing, without repenting of a single sin.

This paragraph nails it:

The soul of the church is being lost to a pandering pastorate. The church needs pastors who lead the church in repentance with love. The church needs pastoral leadership that refuses to take the shortcuts and has the courage to allow the church to suffer so that the whole church can be a parable of Jesus. That is what is lost when pastors deliver shortcuts. When the pastor takes the church off the Way of the Cross, the church stops being the parable of Jesus, the body of Christ.

There are some books that deserve to be read many times over. For the past twelve years or so, I've had such a book sitting on my shelf. It's called The Art of Pastoring: Ministry WIthout All the Answers by David Hansen.

I remember being profoundly grateful for the book when I first read it. Ever since, though, it's been sitting on my shelf, mostly unread but occasionally remembered.

Today I picked up the book again. I'm regretting that I haven't come back to it sooner. Eugene Peterson says, "This is the freshest and most honest book on pastoral work you're ever likely to come upon." The back cover says, "Pastoral ministry is a life, not a technology."

Consider this quote titled "Trend-Driven Ministry:"

My predecessor's library haunted me. When he left his church, he left the ministry and forsook his library. Every single book remained in the office on the shelves, undisturbed; he took not one...

His library told the story of his ministry. The books were ordered in topical fashion...his topics represented most of the trends of Christianity in the 1970s, the decade of his pastoral ministry....

The church growth movement was well represented. He went to some conferences on the subject and bought books. Church minutes from his tenure reveal that church members attended the conferences with him. They also reveal that he tried the methods but with no results. Closets, desk drawers and file cabinets were filled with dittos of church growth teaching materials, church surveys and proposals.

He journeyed as a charismatic....He had learned from books how to organize growth groups and spiritual retreats...From late in his ministry there was a smattering of literature from Reformed theology, psychology, liberal theology and biblical studies.

A few parishioners told me with deep sadness that by the end of his ministry he had lost much of his Christian faith. His faith crisis did his ministry in. The books couldn't deliver him...

Most of the books and articles were written by genuine Christians. What went wrong?

I didn't know what went wrong. His library presented a bleak testimony to me, though. He and I were cut from the same piece of cloth. I believed that following Christian movements amounted to following Christ. I was suckled on trend-driven Christianity. I'd grown up in the thick of consumer religion. It was all I knew. I knew every movement represented in his library. I'd tried them all myself. I didn't know if I could do pastoral ministry without them. But every time I looked up at his library, I knew that I had to try.

I am reading this book again, but I think I'll have to go back and think through some sections more carefully. For pastors who don't need another how-to book, this is one of the most profound and helpful books out there. I highly recommend it.

Tim Keller was at All Souls (home of John Stott) in London a week ago today speaking on "Smashing Idols" from the book of Jonah. You can download the sermons here.

Last week I wrote about three trends in evangelicalism from Paul Metzger's book Consuming Jesus:

• Anti-intellectualism - a fear that "head knowledge" will cancel out "heart knowledge" which has led to an activistic, populist, pragmatic, and utilitarian movement
• Antipathy toward the "social gospel" which has led to antipathy toward social engagement
• A form of pre-millennial eschatology which promotes a pessimistic view of cultural engagement because it anticipates escape from a world that will be destroyed, leading to a focus on saving souls for heaven rather than mending a sinking ship

These trends are a historical backdrop to the gap in the evangelical church's "social conscience and broader cultural awareness." As early as 1947, Carl Henry, "the father of modern fundamentalism," called the church back to "rigorous theological reflection and social engagement." (My next Christian Week column is about what Henry's manifesto, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, has to say to us today, sixty years after he wrote it.)

Paul Metzger says that the effects of Henry's call are still being felt today. "Has the otherworldly hostility toward the social gospel been debunked," he asks, "only to be replaced by the rise of a worldly consumer gospel?" The three trends today have now fed into "individualism and a consumer-oriented, homogeneous-unit-principled, safe-haven church where a family-friendly faith protects Christ's followers from those who think, look, and even sound different than they do."

In 1998, James Montgomery Boice, a Reformed pastor from Philadelphia, commented on Martin Marty's claim that the most worldly people in America at the end of the twentieth century would be evangelicals. Boice said, "We have fulfilled his prophecy, and it is not yet the year 2000." He expressed concern about "pop psychology" replacing sound doctrine, as well as our preoccupation with "success, wonderful marriages and nice children," our fixation on "numerical growth and money," and our neglect of "the great social issues of the day, above all racism and the plight of the poor." Boice also spoke of our "failure to establish strong churches in America's inner cities, where the breakdown of American culture is so obvious and the needs of the people are so great." Evangelicalism has largely become a suburban and rural movement, often focused on living a safe middle-class life.

Metzger writes:

Instead of pointing the finger at the secularists and materialists, we evangelicals need to point it more at ourselves. Jesus did not die to save us from liberals. He died to save us from ourselves...Not only do we need to give ourselves on behalf of the poor, but we also need to be poor in spirit and seek God's forgiveness. Such humility will go a long way as we seek to address the race and class problems plaguing America.

So does the evangelical church need to repent? If what Carl Henry, James Montgomery Boice, Paul Metzger, and Tim Keller say is true, then yes.

Metzger will have more to say later about what to do with all of this, but I almost want to stop here at this point of the book and work out what this repentance could look like. And then to begin working out how to repent.

Bottom line: There's a lot being written on new forms of church and better methodologies and leadership principles. Despite all of these, evangelicalism is still in decline overall. If Metzger and company are right, then what is holding us back goes much deeper, and has little to do with secularism or lack of skill. The problem is us. The problem is that we need to repent.

Opera singer Paul Potts (I mentioned him a while back) is on The Hour on CBC tonight at 11:00 p.m.. It's late but my recorder is set. Enjoy it if you can.

Bill Kinnon and others have written about the controversies between various factions within the church. How do you confront those we think need it? How do we receive correction? Whether you're the one confronting or being confronted, it's hard to respond appropriately.

It's hard and it shows, because few of us are doing it well.

That's why one of Tim Keller's talks at the EMA was so important. From my notes:

Can we go back through every single criticism wrapped in these horrendous doctrinal proposals and catch the core of valid criticism, no matter how poorly motivated and exaggerated?...There is a whole slew of younger leaders out there. They are watching us....We're going to win the younger leaders if we are the most gracious and the most kind and the least self-righteous in controversy toward people on the other side of the boundary.

The next day, Keller referred to John Newton. Newton said that the devil gets you two ways in controversy. The two errors we can fall into are compromise and self-righteousness. Either way, we're in trouble.

Newton wrote to a fellow minister, who was about to write an article criticizing a fellow minister for his lack of orthodoxy:

As to your opponent, I wish that before you set pen to paper against him, and during the whole time you are preparing your answer, you may commend him by earnest prayer to the Lord’s teaching and blessing. This practice will have a direct tendency to conciliate your heart to love and pity him; and such a disposition will have a good influence upon every page you write.

It seems a laudable service to defend the faith once delivered to the saints; we are commanded to contend earnestly for it, and to convince gainsayers. If ever such defenses were seasonable and expedient they appear to be so in our own day, when errors abound on all sides and every truth of the gospel is either directly denied or grossly misrepresented. And yet we find but very few writers of controversy who have not been manifestly hurt by it. Either they grow in a sense of their own importance, or imbibe an angry, contentious spirit, or they insensibly withdraw their attention from those things that are the food and immediate support of the life of faith, and spend their time and strength upon matters that are at most but of a secondary value. This shows, that if the service is honorable, it is dangerous.

Be upon your guard against admitting anything personal into the debate. If you think you have been ill treated, you will have an opportunity of showing that you are a disciple of Jesus, who “when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not.” This is our pattern, thus we are to speak and write for God, and “not rendering railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing; knowing that hereunto we are called.” The wisdom that is from above is not only pure, but also peaceable and gentle; and the want of these qualifications, like the dead fly in the pot of ointment, will spoil the savor and efficacy of our labors. If we act in a wrong spirit, we shall bring little glory to God, do little good to our fellow creatures, and procure neither honor nor comfort to ourselves.

John Wesley once wrote to Newton, "You appear to be designed by divine providence for an healer of breaches, a reconciler of honest but prejudiced men, and an uniter (happy work!) of the children of God." That was before Newton's relationship with Wesley ended in 1762 over a doctrinal issue.

We all still have lots to learn about how to do this.

Worth looking into:

Cultivate Gathering is a learning party. What does that mean? Well, basically it's designed to be everything good about a conference without all the rigamarole... and much more fun and interactive.

• Instead of charging in the hundreds of dollars for one ticket, it's only $50 and that includes a terrific lunch.
• Instead of maxing out our capacity we are limiting our numbers to give everyone there the best possible environment for networking.
• Instead of bringing in some big-name, American speakers to tell us what they already wrote in their latest book we are looking to Canadian church planters and leaders to tell their stories.
• Instead of you listening to message after message and being filled with information we want you to be part of a dialogue with people in similar shoes and learn and grow within that relationship.
• Instead of some fancy shmancy hotel, convention centre or big church building, Cultivate Gathering is taking place at a local coffee house: www.frwy.ca

Cultivate Gathering is for anyone who is interested in church planting or creating mission shaped churches [ to coin a phrase of our good friend, Alan Roxburgh of Allelon]. And is happening because of numerous conversations between different people, organizations, networks and churches in Canada that long to see new forms of church thrive and relational networking happen. We are tired of the same old, same old conferences and just simply want to be friends, inspire each other, and swap stories, ideas, and encouragement.

Find out more or register at the Cultivate Gathering website.

The last issue of Christianity Today has a short article on the Gospel Coalition. Because the Coalition's statements reflect "a broadly Reformed perspective and expects that men lead churches and homes, it will not appeal to every evangelical," says the article. However, the ministry statement tackles all the right issues, like contextualized ministry, consumerism, and theological and moral relativism, and works toward a holistic view of the Gospel.

The article describes what effective ministry could look like, but admits that few of us fully model that vision for ministry. "So the Gospel Coalition's first goal might be aligning its own churches with these standards" - no small task.

The last paragraph of the article gets me:

Imagine an evangelical movement lead by churches that grow by multiplying, preach with theological substance and winsome apologetics, encourage holiness among members, engage their communities in areas such as politics and art, and even share economic resources and welcome the poor. Who can argue with these aims? If the Gospel Coalition's churches can pull this off, they will have a much easier time persuading other evangelicals to return to the theological center.

That's worth dreaming about, praying for, and working towards.

In Consuming Jesus, Paul Metzger argues that three historical themes converged to make evangelicalism less than it should be:

• Anti-intellectualism
• Antipathy toward social engagement
• A form of premillennial eschatology which promotes a pessimistic view of cultural engagement

Here's how Metzger describes the influence of premillenialism on how evangelicals engage the world.

Metzger contrasts Jonathan Blanchard, the founding president of Wheaton College, with his son Charles. The senior Blanchard was a postmillenialist and a social reformer who wanted to transform culture. Influenced by Moody, his son Charles was a dispensational premillenialist who moved away from social transformation. Why? Because premillenialists believed that the church would be raptured before the Great Tribulation. Metzger writes:

As Martin Luther would have put it, the elder Blanchard would have planted a tree today if he knew the world was going to end tomorrow. On the other hand, some dispensationalists have figured out they might as well let the world go to hell in a handbasket. Why? Because everything is going to burn in the end anyway. With that perspective, Christians should stick to saving souls for heaven rather than expending our efforts to save a sinking ship. As Dwight Moody would say, "I look upon this world as a wrecked vessel...God has given me a lifeboat and said to me, 'Moody, save all you can.'"

This mindset is present today, even in those who aren't widely known as dispensationalists. For instance, for years megachurch pastor Bill Hybels ignored issues like racism in favor of evangelism. Hybels now admits he was wrong.

Metzger argues that the "world as a sinking ship" mindset is counterproductive. "This sincere - though short-sighted - pragmatic, and reductionist perspective, when taken to an extreme, actually keeps us from reaching people for Christ: it conveys to many that the gospel is only about saving certain souls for eternity, and it has no bearing on addressing some of the world's profound problems."

It's not only counterproductive, it's not biblical. One's view of eschatology "does not exclude the community of God from its responsibility to engage socially." By neglecting social action, we create "a vacuum in which a suspect form of the gospel could flourish."

As Carl Henry wrote in The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism in the 1940s:

Fundamentalism is wondering just how it is that a world-changing message narrowed its scope to the saving of isolated individuals...Whereas once the redemptive gospel was a world-changing message, now it was narrowed to a world-resistant message. Out of twentieth-century Fundamentalism of this sort there could be no contemporary version of Augustine's The City of God.

Early next week, I'll post on Metzger's description of where these trends have left us.

After a trip to South Africa, megachurch pastor Rick Warren began to re-examine Scripture with new eyes. What he found surprised him. "I found those 2,000 verses on the poor. How did I miss that? I went to Bible college, two seminaries, and I got a doctorate. How did I miss God's compassion for the poor?" Warren is not alone.

In his upcoming book Consuming Jesus, Paul Metzger argues that historical influences have led evangelicals to an antipathy toward social engagement. Once again, he uses D.L. Moody as an example of someone who has influenced evangelicalism.

Moody saw social activism just as he saw theological debate: as a distraction from evangelism. Moody cared for the poor early in his ministry. Later on, he grew frustrated that people seemed more interested in having their physical needs met. "If I had a Bible in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other," the wrote, "the people always looked first at the loaf; and that was just the contrary of the order laid down in the Gospel."

Moody still cared for the poor, but he believed that evangelism was the most effective way to address social concerns. Metzger calls this "trickle-down social ethics" - that "by changing hearts we will eventually be able to change the world." Metzger calls this view well-intentioned but "shortsighted and problematical."

While we should not discount the necessary role evangelism and regeneration play in the transformation of lives and societies, Moody's emphasis - especially when combined with hypermoralism (the "don't drink, don't chew, don't date girls who do" kind of thinking) - fails to engage social inequities adequately. Contemporary evangelicalism's nearly solitary emphasis in many quarters on the "miracle motif" (evangelism and conversion) betrays a fundamental blindness to the immoral structural realities that oppress the poor and keep them poor...[Moody's] views on social engagement may owe as much to American culture's influence on his thinking as they do to his reading of the Bible and his regard for "Christian" values. The same may be said about many evangelicals in present-day American culture.

Metzger identifies another factor that has led to evangelical antipathy toward social engagement: fear of falling victim to "guilt by association." In other words, "one could easily be charged with going down the path of liberalism by showing signs of a social consciousness and conscience" via the slippery-slope claim that "social action leads to liberalism." Metzger concludes:

The fundamentalist reaction to the social gospel movement overshadowed and overwhelmed the classic evangelical understanding of the gospel, which involved spiritual renewal and social reform. Although "social gospels" that reduce Christian faith to social action by making faith a predicate of activism are clearly problematical, so are those versions of the Christian faith that fail to see the gospel as social. The good news of Jesus Christ orders and reorders the whole of life.

I find the same concerns expressed, by the way, in Carl Henry's 1947 book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. "Fundamentalism [at the time the same as evangelicalism] is wondering," he wrote, "just how it is that a world-changing message narrowed its scope to the changing of isolated individuals."

I've often wondered why evangelicals have often been wary of social engagement. This is still going on today, except the "slippery slope" that evangelicals talk about is now probably toward the emerging church, not liberalism. But as Carl Henry wrote 60 years ago, "The redemptive message has implications for all of life; a truncated life results from a truncated message...The cries of suffering humanity today are many. No evangelicalism which ignores the totality of man's condition dares respond in the name of Christianity."

Paul Metzger's soon-to-be released book Consuming Jesus traces how evangelicalism became what it is today. One of three historical influences he mentions is anti-intellectualism.

Metzger offers D.L. Moody as an example of someone who influenced evangelicalism in its early stages. Moody was theologically orthodox, but his theology "was ambiguous to the point of seeming not to be theology at all." He demonstrated an irenic and ecumenical spirit in controversy, and didn't want theological debate to get in the way of effective Gospel preaching. Metzger praises this spirit, but says that this downplaying of theology may have led to a lack of theological depth in his followers.

Metzger also argues that evangelicals reacted against theological liberalism by retreating to independent Bible churches and institutes, thereby abandoning modern education and culture.

This has lead to what Mark Noll describes in his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: "The evangelical ethos is activistic, populist, pragmatic, and utilitarian. It allows little space for broader or deeper intellectual effort because it is dominated by the urgencies of the moment."

Elsewhere, John Stott quotes the Canadian Mordecai Richler, who says: "What scares me about this generation is the extent to which ignorance is their armor. If know-nothingness goes on much longer, somebody will yet emerge from a commune having discovered...the wheel." Stott says, "The same scepter of anti-intellectualism rises regularly to haunt the Christian church. It regards theology with distaste and distrust."

Later in his little book Your Mind Matters, Stott writes a profound prayer that captures what the alternative could look like:

I pray earnestly that God will raise up today a new generation of Christian apologists or Christian communicators, who will combine an absolute loyalty to the biblical gospel and an unwavering confidence in the power of the Spirit with a deep and sensitive understanding of the contemporary alternatives to the gospel; who will relate the one to the other with freshness, authority, and relevance; and who will use their minds to reach other minds for Christ.

I can think of a few people who fit that bill, and people can't get enough of their teaching.

Another good book on this topic, by the way, is Habits of the Mind by James Sire.

I think Metzger is right in saying that evangelicals tend to be anti-intellectual, but I'm open to arguments. Maybe we haven't seen enough of the type of people that Stott prays for, so we don't even know what to look for. I pray we'll see more.

From The Toronto Star:

Rock bottom, and with Halloween still three weeks away....

Losing 7-1 in humiliating fashion to the Hurricanes in the third home game of the season was a stunning pratfall for the Leafs, a group of athletes who once again had a lot of promises going into the season. Just more talk. Barely a bodycheck thrown last night, folks.

Glad I went to Saturday's game instead of last night's.

In Consuming Jesus, Paul Metzger argues that the evangelical movement needs reform.

How did we get to the current situation in the evangelical church? Metzger argues that three historical themes converged to make us who we are:

• Anti-intellectualism - a fear that "head knowledge" will cancel out "heart knowledge" which has led to an activistic, populist, pragmatic, and utilitarian movement
• Antipathy toward the "social gospel" which has led to antipathy toward social engagement
• A form of pre-millennial eschatology which promotes a pessimistic view of cultural engagement because it anticipates escape from a world that will be destroyed, leading to a focus on saving souls for heaven rather than mending a sinking ship

Each of these is worth exploring. Some of this overlaps with what Keller said in the talk that I mentioned last week.

Via Justin Taylor, a profound and moving six-minute video called 99 Balloons:

Eliot was born with an undeveloped lung, a heart with a hole in it and DNA that placed faulty information into each and every cell of his body. However, that could not stop the living God from proclaiming Himself through this boy who never uttered a word.

In the midst of heartbreaking tragedy, the Mooney family found the presence of God strengthening, comforting, and guiding them. Their story reminds us to seek God and endure our struggles rather than blame Him for our hardships.

You can watch the video here.

I think that almost every preacher can relate to this post:

I have a recurring dream that I am sure many preachers have. I am up front, talking, and people are leaving. Not in masse, but in groups or one at a time. They have somewhere else to be, something more important to do. I continue talking, and the room gets emptier and emptier and emptier. You want to make it stop, but you can’t. The most frightening moment of all comes as you realize what is happening, and that everyone wants to leave. You are faced with a terrible choice: Stop and acknowledge what is happening, and thereby admit failure. Or ignore it, somehow, and keep talking, fighting off the onslaught of truth that is right in front of you...

Read the whole post if you relate.

Reminds me from a section in the excellent novel Gilead as the Rev. John Ames writes to his son about his preaching.

I think every day about going through those old sermons of mine to see if there are one or two I might want you to read sometime, but there are so many, and I'm afraid, first of all, that most of them might seem foolish or dull to me.

There is not a word in any of those sermons I didn't mean when I wrote it. If I had the time, I could read my way through fifty years of my innermost life. What a terrible thought...

Well, perhaps I can get a box of them down here somehow and do a little sorting. It would put my mind at ease to feel I was leaving a better impression. So often I have known, right here in the pulpit, even as I read these words, how far they fell short of any hopes I had for them. And they were the major work of my life, from a certain point of view. I have to wonder how I have lived with that.

I don't know anything that can humble you quite as much as preaching.

Paul Metzger has a new book coming out next month called Consuming Jesus. Metzger is concerned that, without knowing it, evangelicals have become insensitive to issues of race and class divisions within the church. Metzger's book is about consumerism and how it affects the church in reinforcing the race and class divisions of society, and how it distorts our view of Jesus and his call on our lives.

How have we reinforced class divisions?

Whether we evangelicals mean to or not, we appear mean-spirited and interested only in a privileged few - upwardly mobile, white, Anglo-Sasxon, Protestant, heterosexual males and their families (and, oh yes, perhaps those minority counterparts who make it to our economic and social level) - and in keeping others out.

This, Metzger writes, reflects an absence of "practical love."

As for our view of Jesus, we have removed the altar or table at the front of many of our churches, and replaced it with a coffee bar at the back.

I like a latte as much as the next person does. Coffee bars have their place - but not at the back of the sanctuary, especially when there is no Lord's table in front. That's because the coffee bar and the Lord's table are symbolic: both are symbols that communicate powerfully their use of "sacred" space. The coffee bar denotes pleasure and leisure (good things in their own right), whereas the Lord's table always connotes joy through suffering: the bloody grapes of wrath have become a river of life. Like coffee bars with their sweetly flavored lattes, many churches (subliminally) suggest that the church will provide those who attend with the very things the world does - everything involved in self-fulfillment. Christ, on the other hand, drank from a very different cup, one that was bittersweet, in order to bring meaning, purpose, and life.

Sound harsh? Metzger writes from within the movement, motivated by love:

My criticism of the evangelical church is not the angry and cynical attack of an outsider; rather, it is the criticism of one who loves the evangelical church's historic values of piety and holistic outreach and mission, but one who longs for reform...I love the evangelical movement, especially when we are consumed by Christ and not by consumer religion. But we do need a nobler, all-consuming vision of evangelical Christian faith.

In short, we need to "eat crow - humble pie!" In other words, we need to eat at the table of repentance and reconciliation. There we will find "forgiveness and love, hope and strength to carry on." There at the head of the table is Christ, "interceding for us and providing for our needs."

I began reading this book yesterday. Despite the harsh and often accurate criticisms, you get the overwhelming sense that Metzger isn't out to bash the church. He loves it and wants it to live up to its calling and its heritage. His writing is theological, practical, and insightful. I'm looking forward to reading more.

Tomorrow I'll look at his first chapter, which outlines some of the historic trends that have fostered race and class divisions in the church. It answers some questions I've had for a long time. More to come tomorrow.

We were given tickets to see the Leafs on Saturday night. Not just any tickets - Platinum tickets, just 9 rows up from the ice, right near the tunnel that the Leafs use to go in and out of their dressing room. You can see where we were sitting by the arrow below:

The Leafs were playing the Habs. We were surrounded by Habs fans and for a while things weren't looking good. The Leafs pulled one out near the end of overtime and we left the ACC very satisfied.

Man, does the game look different that close!

We may never get seats like this again in our lives, but we enjoyed every minute - even when the Montreal fans around us thought they had the game in the bag.

I overheard this exchange the other day between my 8-year-old son, Josiah, and the haircutter at a chain near us:

Haircutter: It's Thanksgiving this weekend. I love Thanksgiving! All I can think about is turkey.

Josiah (deadpan face): Maybe right now you should be thinking about cutting my hair.

Classic Josiah.

Received this email last week:

My name is Barb Orlowski. I am on the Doctor of Ministry program at A.C.T.S. Seminaries in Langley, B.C., Canada. In order to conduct the research necessary to complete my dissertation, I could use your help. I am conducting a survey among Christians who have experienced emotional and spiritual distress under authoritarian and controlling church leaders and have recovered from this experience.

If you think this applies to you, drop me a line and I'll send you the rest of the information.

Some great reaction at Naked Church to my summary of Tim Keller's EMA talk:

The way of repentance and humility is the only way back. We can substitute best practices and methodologies that may enable us to build flashy, impressive megachurches, but all we'll be doing is attracting church-hopping consumers. Please don't misunderstand me as saying that organization and methodology are without value - they are vital components in church planting and revitalization of existing churches. But they are only useful as tools in the hands of a church that is made up of repentant sinners transformed and empowered by the spirit of Christ manifesting compassion and humility.

Every Monday or Tuesday I download the latest sermon from Redeemer Presbyterian in New York. In June, Tim Keller began a two-month break. The other preachers at Redeemer are also excellent, but when I heard that Keller was speaking at the EMA Conference in London, England, I had to get my fix. So, I ordered the CD.

Keller spoke in a number of sessions:

• What is an evangelical ministry?
• What are the risks for evangelicals?
• What is an evangelical ministry?
• Ministry in the city

In this talk, "What are the risks for evangelicals?" Keller talks about what's happening within the evangelical movement right now. There's a new hostility toward evangelicals in culture, and post-evangelicals (the emerging church) are also expressing criticisms. How should evangelicals respond?

I've listened to this a couple of times now, and I think Keller says some really helpful things. Here are some highlights, along with my notes from the entire talk.

Highlights

• Evangelicalism used to occupy the middle ground between fundamentalism and liberalism. It was orthodox, pro-scholarship, and facing the world. Recently, evangelicalism has become more hostile and condemning of culture. A younger generation has given up on evangelicalism as a middle ground and are looking for a new consensus. This group goes by a number of names, such as post-evangelicals or the emerging church.


• A new gospel is being preached about the Kingdom of God and Jesus Christ overcoming the evil powers forces of injustice in the world. [Update: This version of the gospel rarely talks about personal sin and God's wrath.] The pendulum has swung the other way.


• To respond, evangelicals must understand and practice biblical repentance as a result of believing the gospel. This will allow evangelicals to admit their sins, even if they disagree with 80% of the criticisms from the post-evangelicals, and even if the remaining 20% is expressed poorly. To the degree that we understand the gospel, we will be able to freely admit our shortcomings as an evangelical movement.


• Don't ever think that we can respond to legitimate criticisms of our practice by defending our doctrine. In defending our doctrines, we have not responded to the criticisms of our practices. Orthopraxy is part of orthodoxy.


• It is necessary to draw boundaries. What really matters is how we treat the people on the other side of those boundaries. People are watching. We're going to win the younger leaders if we are the most gracious, kind, and the least self-righteous in controversy. The truth will ultimately lose if we hold the right doctrines, but do so with nasty attitudes and a lack of love.


• We need to approach the controversies with a repentant heart corporately and say, "Despite all the bad things that are being said here, there's a core of truth here and we need to deal with it."