{"id":1665,"date":"2014-09-30T11:57:16","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T15:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/inklingations\/?p=1665"},"modified":"2014-09-30T12:00:22","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T16:00:22","slug":"rethinking-radical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/inklingations\/2014\/09\/30\/rethinking-radical\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking ‘Radical’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Michael Horton has an upcoming book entitled Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World<\/em><\/a>. Based on the excerpts and previews that I\u2019ve seen, this book deserves a great deal of attention and anticipation. Yesterday Tim Challies featured a passage from the book <\/a>as a blog post, and\u00a0I nearly came out of my chair in \"\"agreement\u00a0at this:<\/p>\n

In many ways, it\u2019s more fun to be part of movements than churches. We can express our own individuality, pick our favorite leaders, and be swept off our feet at conferences. We can be anonymous. Yet this movement mentality keeps us restless and makes ordinary life in and submission to an actual church seem intolerably confining.<\/p>\n

And terribly ordinary.<\/p>\n

We need to recover not only sound doctrine, but sounder practices that serve to deepen us\u2014and succeeding generations\u2014in the new creation that God has called into being. We need to question not only false teaching, but false values, expectations, and habits that we have absorbed, taken for granted, and even adopted with a veneer of piety.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ordinary<\/em> seems to be a gentle pushback against one of the predominant evangelical trends of the last few years: The drive to be \u201cradical\u201d Christians who are all about their \u201cwar-time lifestyle.\u201d Those two concepts\u00a0become\u00a0evangelical canon\u00a0in the wake of\u00a0David Platt\u2019s Radical<\/em> and John Piper\u2019s Don\u2019t Waste Your Life<\/em>, respectively. Piper\u2019s book released in 2003 and had a massive impact on evangelical conversation. Rapper Lecrae, whose newest album debuted #1 on the Billboard Top 200 a few weeks ago, wrote a song named after the book that has nearly 8 million views on YouTube.<\/p>\n

Radical<\/em> could be described as a practical response to the theology of Don\u2019t Waste Your Life<\/em>. If Piper\u2019s book had a massive impact, David Platt\u2019s book hit like a falling comet. Four years after its publication, Radical is still one of the top selling<\/a> Christian books on the market. It\u2019s subtitle, \u201cTaking Back Your Faith From the American Dream,\u201d has become an almost anthemic motif within many evangelical churches.<\/p>\n

Yet some are wondering if the emphasis on \u201cradical\u201d and \u201cwar-time\u201d Christian living is really the vision of following Christ that the Bible presents. Anthony Bradley has written <\/a>of his concern about this \u201cmissional\u201d movement, wondering if the thinking is well-intentioned but leads to an unbiblical loathing of a simple, God-honoring life:<\/p>\n

What if youth and young adults were simply encouraged live in pursuit of wisdom, knowledge, understanding, education, wonder, beauty, glory, creativity, and worship in a world marred by sin\u2026 No shame, no pressure to be awesome, no expectations of fame but simply following the call to be men and women of virtue and inviting their friends and neighbors to do the same in every area of life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Being a pastor\u2019s kid, I\u2019ve\u00a0seen the\u00a0(always unintentional) effects that a \u201cdo more, be more\u201d\u00a0theology can have on a church. \u00a0I\u2019ve watched as ministers and godly laypeople have anguished in self-loathing because their missional event or evangelism emphasis week was not as radical as they believed Jesus wanted. I\u2019ve seen teens and twentysomethings slip through the cracks of church ministry, because their definition of living for God was going and being something, somewhere, that was impossible. In every case, Gospel spirituality was made synonymous with a certain lifestyle that seemed to run counter to American culture, but\u2013as I suspect\u2013might merely imitate American counter-culture.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I want to applaud Michael Horton for this worthy conversation. I hope to say more about this after I\u2019ve read his book, so stay tuned.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Horton has an upcoming book entitled Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World. Based on the excerpts and previews that I\u2019ve seen, this book deserves a great deal of attention and anticipation. 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