Paul Beasley-Murray on Salty Christians

Paul Beasley-Murray, ‘Salty Christians’, Ministry Today 3 (1995).

Okay, I think the title might make a bit too much of the reference in Matthew 5:13, but this is a terrific article (from a paper first presented to a Baptist Assembly Seminar at Bridlington, on 27 April 1994) which resonates with many of our concerns here at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Beasley-Murray lists some of the ways we keep the salt in the salt cellar, essentially keeping people in the religious ghetto of the church – by our preaching, our teaching on stewarship, the activities we lay on and expect people to attend, our concept of mission, and because the ‘close identification of many a ministerial ego with many a church has created a psychological need to emphasise the church over the kingdom’.

Then, more positively, he writes about ‘mobilising salty Christians’ – through preaching and teaching, in the leading of public worship, in decision-making meetings, in Bible studies, in support groups for particular occupational groups, in running a stewardship campaign with a difference, in running church membership classes differently, and in giving people time to live in the real world.

Lots and lots of practical wisdom, much of which still bears repeating.

Mission Frontiers

Mission Frontiers is billed as ‘the news and issues journal from the U.S. Center for World Mission’. Themed issues are published and available online very two months, with the following being among the more-recent ones:

July-August 2011 – Overcoming Poverty

May-June 2011 – Jesus Movements

March-April 2011 – Church Planting Movements

January-February 2011 – Discipleship Revolution

November-December 2010 – Going Radical

Matt Chandler, Michael Horton, and Tim Keller on the Church in Culture

For those who are following, or even vaguely aware of, the ongoing debates about the role of the church in culture – especially the lines being drawn in the sand between so-called ‘Two Kingdoms’ advocates on one side and so-called ‘Cultural Transformationists’ on the other side – this is a really useful 10-minute trialogue between Matt Chandler, Michael Horton, and Tim Keller.

Keller begins by asking: ‘What’s the church’s role in culture?’

To make it more granular, he asks: ‘What is the church’s job in equipping its members to carry out their callings in the world?’

In line with his recent published work on the gospel and the great commission, Horton speaks about culture (in this context) being about the ‘myriad callings’ we have as husbands, fathers, plumbers, teachers, etc., rooted in creation. But, he says, we have another calling in the great commission. Here, he deploys a distinction influenced by Kuyper between the church as an ‘organisation’ and the church as an ‘organism’. As an organisation or an institution, the church (for Horton) doesn’t have any calling to transform culture; but in terms of being an organism, the church as a people is scattered into the world to pursue their callings.

Chandler speaks about the mission of the church being ‘to proclaim the good news and make disciples’. But part of that process, he says, is training and releasing Christians to be faithful in their domains of society, to empower them to see themselves in their neighbourhood, hobby, workplace, etc. – the ‘units they do life in’ – as being a faithful presence and witness in those areas. Disciplemaking needs to go beyond emparting knowledge.

Keller judges that there is probably not much difference between the practice of Horton and Chandler. He says he hears them saying the same thing but not wanting to say it the same way. It’s not the church’s role, as the church, to change the social structures, but to equip the people to make a difference. Keller muses that it’s not the job of the pastor to lead a church to change a culture but to create a culture-changing people.

10 minutes well spent.

Derek Christensen on Equipping the Lay Mission Force

Here’s a short but powerful essay which echoes a lot of our concerns here at Imagine...

Derek Christensen, ‘Equipping the Lay Mission Force’, Momentum 2, 2 (2007), 129-34.

He begins with the ‘scattering‘ of the missionary church in Acts 8:1-4 and 11:19-24, pointing out the vital role that ‘lay’ people have continued to exercise in the history of the church, right up to recent times. Even so, as he says, while there has been ‘a great deal of writing on lay involvement... the truth is, it’s not happening’.

The bulk of the article is then taken up with an expansion of five reasons for a lack of lay involvement and five possible courses of action to take, as follows:

Five reasons for a lack of lay involvement:

1. The dominance of a professional leadership model of church life.

2. Continued focus on ‘come’ instead of ‘go’ strategies.

3. Related to this is the fact we leave most of our people with a gaping chasm between Sunday and Monday.

4. Failure to achieve a theology of culture that handles the dialogue between church and culture in ways that resonate with both people of the culture and people within the church.

5. Failure to fully resolve the church-academy divide.

Five possible courses of action for renewal in lay education:

1. Change our expectations of the role of the lay person.

2. Establish a seamless range of training opportunities for the whole people of God.

3. This implies a greater emphasis on the reflective practitioner.

4. Have as watchwords for our training three words: appropriateness, assessment and access.

5. Learn to see training of the lay mission force as a long term, lifelong task instead of short term and detached experiences.