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.

Keys to Success and Barriers to Growth (3 of 3)

After a short break for the summer holiday, we return with the third in our series exploring learnings for churches from the Imagine Pilot Project. Here we summarize a number of issues that churches we have worked with have faced that are around the question of process.

We have always sought to be clear with churches that Imagine outlines a process for churches to follow rather than a programme. In other words, this is not a tightly defined, one size fits all approach, but churches can follow a series of steps at their own pace and employing their own creativity.

Briefly outlined there are three phases to the process that we have walked through with churches:

1. Discover a new way of looking at the church – spend time considering the connection between the gathered and the scattered modes of the church. To support this and stimulate imagination we have provided the two Imagine magazines and the Imagine DVD.
2. Engage in active listening – for this we have given churches a survey which allows them to hear the issues their members on the Frontline and begins a dialogue in the congregation around this question.
3. Make a number of simple actions (one degree shifts) that signal a new way of being as a congregation and that seek to honour the Frontline and enhance the connections.

Simple as this process is, in practice the churches we have worked with have encountered a number of natural challenges which means that this process isn’t necessarily as smooth or as easy as it may appear. The most common of these have been:

Losing momentum
Changing too much too quickly is not often a problem for churches! No, the challenge has often been to implement changes clearly, regularly and tangibly enough for people to see the difference that is being made and to ensure that momentum is not lost.

Keys to Success and Barriers to Growth (2 of 3)

In this series we are exploring some of the learnings for churches from the Imagine Pilot Project. In the first post we looked at a number of problems with perspective. Here we explore a second dimension:

Problems with Participation
Addressing the issue of participation we look at a set of issues encountered by churches around who should be involved in the process of becoming a whole-life disciplemaking community. Often this means changing a number of our preconceptions about who should be involved and how to go about it.

1) Thinking we know the solution
Old and established methods will not enable us to resolve the question of how to release people as whole-life disciples. Few leaders have received the appropriate training that leads to the effective release of people into their callings and we must recognise that much of what we have been taught emerges out of a church-centric rather than a mission-centric mindset. Further, we cannot depend upon a pastoral response to the issues people face on the Frontline, as Hendrik Kraemer put it:

…the laity should not be seen primarily as the needy, ignorant and helpless, but as that part of the Church that has to carry the brunt of the burden of encounter with the world in and around themselves, and to voice and incarnate the Church’s or better, Christ’s relevance to the whole range of human life.

So as leaders, we must begin by acknowledging that we don’t have all the answers. We have to begin by respecting the wisdom of the body and recognising that we are not the experts about problems faced on the Frontline. This leads to a redefinition of the role of the leader. As Mark Gibbs and Ralph Morton put it in their book God’s Frozen People:

Keys to Success and Barriers to Growth (1 of 3)

In an earlier series we explored 5 values for a whole-life disciplemaking church. Now, based on our experience with the Imagine Pilot Project, I’d like to give space to exploring some of the keys to success and barriers to growth in becoming a whole-life community. We start by exploring the barriers.

From experience we know the sobering reality:

• In some places whole-life discipleship will flourish
• In many places it will not flourish as much as it could do

This is not easy work. Becoming a church that seeks to equip its members for the whole of life is a slow, long term process. Often it takes a long time of concerted effort to begin to see green shoots of change and churches encounter many challenges and distractions as they make the journey.

So, can we identify the barriers that get in the way?

Work in Progress

At the moment I’m working on a publication that I hope will see the light of day in the autumn this year. It’ll reflect the work I’ve been engaged in with the churches that linked themselves into the Imagine project. This is a short excerpt from the introduction….

For three years we worked with churches up and down the country, getting to know them well, trying to understand their particular challenges and opportunities, encouraging them to become whole-life disciple-making communities. From this experience we have been reminded that there are no silver bullets, no ‘off the peg’ resources that will change everything. Over three years later, we have learnt from our work with these partner churches.

What we have found is that there is a clear process that can be used by any church, regardless of their denominational stream, their age profile or their geographical location. Of course, what they end up doing will be unique to them in each situation. Each church is local and unique, and God has a way of dealing with each of them according to his plans and purposes.

But the simple process can be summarised in three points:

Talk: Whole Loaf & Whole-Life Disciples (MP3)

Neil Hudson, the Imagine Project Director, recently introduced the ideas behind the Imagine project to a group from Crofton Parish Church, Stubbington. The talk was recorded and has been made available on their website. For those interested in hearing more about whole-life discipleship this talk may provide a useful way in.

To hear or download Neil's talk click here...

The Power of Story

One of the central emphases of the Imagine Project has been in helping churches rediscover the power of stories and testimonies. Testimonies are of course an old, old idea…but at the same time they remain powerful. Although many churches still use testimonies we have tried to help them reflect on their function and content. In addition, we try to underline the significance of a number of elements to testimony that have often been missed or ignored and emphasise the power of stories from the Frontline. Here we identify a number of key elements...

Stories reveal significance
Take a moment to think about the life stories that you hear at a church service on a typical Sunday. What are they about? Who are they about? Who shares those stories? In which settings do the stories take place? What do they concern - are they primarily about church activities or the activities of people’s lives? Finally, what was the conclusion and explanation of the story?

5 Values: 5 - We Commit To Growth As Whole-life Disciples

This is the last in a series of posts on 5 Values for a Whole-life Disciplemaking Church. Read the inroduction to the series.

As our lives develop, we are faced with the challenges of new transitional moments, situations that are new to us, challenges and opportunities that we couldn’t have imagined. And in each situation we are given the chance to grow or to retreat to familiar practices.

This commitment to ongoing learning on everyone’s part, can make some feel vulnerable. We have been happier when we have felt that we have known everything and can teach everyone else. This has been a false confidence.

Connecting Sunday With Monday

Dave Gooderidge, minister at Lymington Baptist for the past 10 years, has been seeking to create a whole-life disciplemaking culture in his church. Here he shares something of their experiences...

The conviction that God is interested in the whole of life was rooted into me primarily as a student under Mark Greene at London School of Theology. So as a minister, the Sunday has always connected with Monday. I didn’t know anything different!

I think this is crucial to our understanding of the church. There is a big thing in the Baptist understanding of church about ‘walking together in ways known and ways to be made known; watching over and being watched over,’ what that means is, if we are going to grow as whole-life disciples we need to band together. We need to watch over and look out for one another and ask questions, about how you are getting on with your boss, for example, creating mutual care and accountability.

5 Values: 4 - We Are Active Listeners

This is part of a series of posts on 5 Values for a Whole-life Disciplemaking Church. Read the introduction to the series.

‘Our task is the opposite of distraction. It's to help people concentrate on the real, but often hidden, event of God's active presence in our lives.’ Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart

Clearly, Christians need to learn to listen to one another, to understand the pressures that they face and the opportunities that are available. But listening goes further than this. We need to be able to discern the forces that are work in our culture which may be a challenge to our discipleship, or may encourage us to think more deeply about our relationship with God. We need to hear the cries of the world to know how best to begin the dialogue that might enable us to offer the good news to people. We need to develop attentive hearing to the promptings of God, who we believe is at work in his world, bringing new creation out of the spaces where previously there were only signs of despair. And we need to encourage people to be able to understand what is happening in their own lives so that they can grow in self-awareness, moving away from the temptation of self-deception towards the liberation of authentic honesty.

One Degree Shift Ideas

Small changes are helpful in a culture shift programme, because they are visible, create little sense of anxiety, operate as powerful symbols for the overall change that is hoped for, can easily be reversed or adapted if they are not working well, do not have to be defended to the death.

We have already put together a list of one degree shift ideas on the Imagine website.

However, we recently came across a list of 23 ideas from Nelvin Vos and Melvin George for Equipping and Encouraging the Laity on the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America website that you may be interested to explore as well.

We'd love to hear any ideas you've tried. What has worked? What didn't?

5 Values: 3 - We Connect The 10 To The 110

This is part of a series of posts on 5 Values for a Whole-life Disciplemaking Church. Read the introduction to the series here...

‘We are gathered into communion so as to be sent our again. We are sent so as to come back. This…is the breathing of the Church ... this rhythm of gathering the community around the altar and then sending it away belongs to the oxygenation of the Church's life blood. Without it, the Church would stop breathing and die.’ Timothy Radcliffe, Why Go to Church?

There are 168 hours in the week.
Take away 48 hours for sleep and 120 remain.
Of those 120 even the most committed member of the church will probably only spend 10 hours in church activities.
That leaves 110 hours.

Changing the Culture

In this article, Alasdair Macleod, shares his thoughts on disciplemaking and his involvement with the Imagine Project. Alasdair is now the Senior Minister at Billericay Baptist Church, however, until a few months ago he was leader of Bushey Baptist Church which was part of the first Imagine pilot project. This article was previously published in the Baptist Times 'Crossing Places' Special Edition published 30th April 2010.

We are all longing to see the church in the UK grow. All too often we place the emphasis on adding converts to our churches without adding depth. Yet for growth to be sustained we must equip believers to live well for Christ in their frontlines of mission. This vision has been recognised by the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity (LICC) in their Imagine report, “The UK will never be reached until we create open, authentic, learning and praying communities that are focussed on making whole-life disciples who live and share the Gospel wherever they relate to people in their daily lives.”

5 Values: 2 - We Value Everyone's Frontlines

This is part of a series of posts on 5 Values for a Whole-life Disciplemaking Church. Read the introduction to the series here...

‘For Christian faith not to be idle in the world, the work of doctors and garbage collectors, business executives and artists, stay-at-home moms or dads and scientists needs to be inserted into God's story with the world. That story needs to provide the most basic rules by which the game in all these spheres is played. And that story needs to shape the character of the players.’ Miroslav Volf

Over the past twenty years, the church has become better at recognising the significance of many people’s vocations. Years ago, many evangelicals assumed that the top job for a Christian to have in God’s eyes was to be an overseas missionary living by faith. This was clearly sacrificial, often challenging and occasionally there would be no awareness of the fruitfulness of the work for many years, if ever. Below this in the assumed godly career ladder were ministers and church workers. If you weren’t able to be employed directly in these tasks, there was always your voluntary time that could be used for the important work.

5 Values: 1 - We Submit To The Lordship Of Christ In All Things

This is part of a series of posts on 5 values for a Whole-life Disciplemaking Church. Read the introduction to the series here.

Here is a conversation Neil had not so long ago with a group of students at a university Christian Union:

Neil: ‘Who is the Lord of all things?’
Students (Without missing a beat): ‘Jesus’
Neil: ‘Who is the Lord of the University?’
Students (Again in unison): ‘The Chancellor.’
Neil (Becoming somewhat more emphatic): ‘Ok, one more time. Who is the Lord of all things?’
Students: ‘Jesus’
Neil: ‘Right, so who is the Lord of the University?’
Students: ‘The Chancellor’

At which point we leave Neil to reflect on the current state of university education and his own teaching techniques…

5 Values For A Whole-life Disciplemaking Church: Intro

How do you tell a whole-life disciplemaking church when you’ve got one? What should you look for? If you are a church leader, how do you tell when your work in shifting the culture is making a positive difference?

These are questions we frequently ask ourselves as a team. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to tell when a culture shift has begun to gain traction in the life of the church and to articulate what differences it is making. However, as our work in the church pilot project progressed it became increasingly clear that there are 5 core values that are central to a whole-life disciplemaking church that we believe provide a good guide to when a culture shift has begun:

Value 1: We submit to the Lordship of Christ in all things
Christ is Lord of All is a fundamental scriptural tenet (Col 1:16-17; Eph 1:22). As a community we are committed to exploring what ‘all things’ mean, recognising that no area of existence is excluded from God’s interest, purpose and redemptive power.