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If “Love Wins” were a Hymn…

January 30, 2012 in Church Ministry, Gospel, Rob Bell, Salvation, Worship Music with 33 Comments

I’m currently attending a wonderful church, connected to my seminary.  I love the way in which they represent the Anabaptist way of following Jesus, not giving into nationalism or violence.  They are a voice of peace, grace, and love.

I noticed this love recently in a hymn that was selected to sing.  I was so impressed that I pulled out my phone and took a picture of the song right out of the hymnal.

If “Love Wins” were a hymn…

Lyrics:

There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy

1. There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
Like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in God’s justice,
Which is more than liberty.

2. There is welcome for the sinner,
And more graces for the good;
There is mercy with the Savior;
There is healing in His blood.

3. But we make God’s love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify its strictness
With a zeal God will not own

4. For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of the mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

5. If our love were but more simple, Continue Reading…

Is Your Gospel the Right Gospel?

January 16, 2012 in Gospel, Guest Contributors with 38 Comments

Via Joe Boyd | Associate Press

*The following is a guest article by Joe Boyd. Find his info at the bottom of the page.

I am reading the book unChristian with about ten of my friends. It’s a book primarily about why people outside of Christianity don’t like Christians much anymore. (I didn’t need a book to learn that one.) A certain paragraph really struck me. It angered me, actually. Here it is:

Most outsiders are familiar with the story of Christianity-that Jesus was God’s Son who came to die to take away our sins if we believe in him. As you will see later in this book, the premise of Christianity is not a mystery because the vast majority of outsiders have been to Christian churches and have heard the message of Christ. -David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters

What stung me was the authors’ unconditional assumption that the story of Christianity (I think we would both call that the “gospel”) is that, “Jesus was God’s Son who came to die and take away our sins if we believe in him.” And, they claim,  that most “outsiders” (cringe) also believe that to be the gospel.

My blink thought was,

“Well, that’s not my gospel. I must be really UnChristian then.”

To be fair, it used to be my gospel. But not so much anymore.

I said this in our group discussion and one of my friends asked earnestly, “What is the gospel?” For some reason I stammered. I mean, I’m a pastor – the Teaching Pastor at a rather large and respected evangelical church. But I stammered over the question, “What is the gospel?”

You’d think that would be a hanging curve over the plate. But is wasn’t.

I spit out something like this: “I think it is the story of Jesus as Israel’s Messiah and his message of the Kingdom, blah, blah, blah.” I was (mis)quoting Scot McKnight, the last author I read on the subject.

Nine months ago I would have quoted N.T. Wright and said something about the promise of Resurrection. Before that I would have regurgitated Dallas Willard or Stanley Hauerwas or whomever. Heck, if you traced my understanding of the gospel back far enough, you would eventually find the exact definition that angered me in the book.

In that moment I decided that what I think the gospel is doesn’t matter.

First, because I know that my definition changes every 6-18 months anyway. Continue Reading…

I’m Mennonite… and Finally Became Anabaptist: Embracing our Mission to Post-Christian America

January 4, 2012 in Anabaptism, Faith Journey, Gospel, Nationalism, Nonviolence with 27 Comments

photo © 2005 Trint Williams , Flickr | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

 

I’m a Mennonite.

Yes, it’s true.  Mennonite even in the “ethnic” sense.  In fact, I often say that I have more of a family wreath than a family tree because both sides of my lineage link to the Mennonite Brethren from Prussia.  I actually broke the wreath by marrying a Russian Molokan turned evangelical – but that’s beside the point.

For most of my life, my Anabaptist Mennonite heritage was more filled with culture than the biblical values that drew this group of radical reformers together in the midst of the Reformation.  Sure, we told stories about our people fleeing peacefully from the persecuting sword in the dark of night, but for most people I interacted with – values like peacemaking, social justice, and empire subversion became the butt of many jokes.  We mostly had become mainstream American Evangelicals, with really good food and stories.  The Anabaptist way seemed outdated.

It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that this seemingly obsolete perspective on the discipleship way of Jesus began to draw me in.  I’m convinced that my Anabaptist roots offer something to a growing segment of culture that is burnt out on religion and suspicious of the so-called power-brokers of the world.  Interestingly enough, the days of the institutional church being the dominant influence in society is quickly fading (often called “Christendom”).[1] Continue Reading…

The Beautiful Victory of the Cross and the Table of Aslan

November 14, 2011 in Atonement, C. S. Lewis, Gospel, Mark D. Baker, Salvation with 34 Comments

'Christus Victor' photo (c) 2007, Randy OHC - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Last week, I wrote about my belief that the cross is too beautiful to fit many popular theologies.  It isn’t beautiful in itself, for a Roman cross represents the power of Empire, a power that is always opposed to the way of Jesus.  Rather, the beauty is in the One who chose to endure unjust suffering, knowing that the grave would not be able to hold God’s Messiah down!  The beauty is in a Jesus who models what it means to love our enemies while humbly reminding us that we all were God’s enemies (Romans 5.10).

One thing that I’m convinced of is that God did not pour out Divine wrath against Jesus on the cross in order to be appeased. This view, as Mark Baker states, “can too easily lead to a situation in which we might conclude that Jesus came to save us from God.”[1] I plan to nuance this statement in future articles, but for now it suffices to say that we need alternative ways to think about the cross.

In fact, part of the problem is that we’ve limited the cross to one primary explanation (God’s wrath being poured out on Jesus as a substitute for sinners to appease God’s bind to the Law).  I want to suggest that the New Testament gives multiple images and metaphors for expressing the multifaceted significance of the cross.  Today, lets explore one of these through the lens of a popular story.  Notice that this is one example of how substitution can still be present in atonement theology without the appeasement of God’s wrath (which, as popularly understood, isn’t in the New Testament). Continue Reading…

Can You Lose Your Salvation? Greg Boyd and Mark Driscoll in Dialogue

October 13, 2011 in (Series) Video to Ponder, Evangelism, Foreknowledge, Gospel, Greg Boyd, Salvation, Theology with 35 Comments

This is the age old question: Can a person lose their salvation? Of course, two broad schools of thought emerge in theological discourse.

On one end of the spectrum are the 5.5 point Calvinists (not really sure what the .5 is all about). This is representative of Mark Driscoll’s perspective (and basically most of the Gospel Coalition folks). This group of thinkers believe that God not only preordains all things (yep, every last event in world history) but that God ordains some to eternal life and some to eternal torment. They would then contend that all people deserve eternal torment and therefore the fact that God chooses some demonstrates his infinite mercy and wisdom.

And no, lets be fair to this perspective: they don’t believe that evangelism is void (as many on the free will end of the spectrum often accuse). Rather, they believe that the truly elect will hear the message (through evangelistic efforts) and will awaken to their right standing before the Father (upon repentance and a belief in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus). Evangelism matters here still because we are the heralds that God uses to summon sinners into their elect-ness. Those who refuse persistently to believe the message must not be elect. Here is what Mark Driscoll has to say about this issue: Continue Reading…

Drive Thru Evangelism – The case of the old bait and switch

October 6, 2011 in (Series) Video to Ponder, Evangelism, Gospel with 33 Comments

I wonder if you have any thoughts on this video?

My thoughts:

1) Tracts, in themselves, are terrible representations of the Gospel and make Christians look silly.

2) Tracts tend to focus on “getting a soul saved” with the assumption that hell, damnation, and rapture are imminent. This is dualist at best, and escapist at worst. Continue Reading…

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