Next winning or losing a city post soon i promise!

Loving this little distraction: Guess the Google

I can’t get over 375 (equal bottom of the high scores). urrgh.

via:Buzzfeed.com

Having recently suffered a bout of man flu with very little sympathy from the spousal unit I can relate! (It’s bad when your wife tells you to man up, right?!)

Thanks to Mark Carpenter for the link…

[Series index if you need it]

————

I’ve deliberately argued that the local church is a priority for change -it’s where you break the cycle and start heading toward winning the city. But I also want to argue that denominations are of vital importance in the long term/big picture.

My reasons are:

1. (existing) Denominations have already fought the battles about how they believe the church should practice. They have the areas like baptism/liturgy/church governance decided and are therefore free to move forward with things like winning their city.

2. Denominations make sense as a way to co-ordinate resources. Churches can have funds centrally directed to:

• the Bible colleges which train their ministers and lay people
• Churches in areas which don’t generate enough income to pay a minister or run a building
• Care for the poor on a city-wide scale
• Run city-wide campaigns, evangelistic or otherwise

3. Denominations are already usually spread across a city and have property and infrastructure in place

4. Denominations often have historical links into the community and institutions like schools, nursing homes, prisons, hospitals and so on.

Denominations have, for historical reasons, always been a  big feature of Adelaide Christianity. There are big churches in all the major ones and likewise there are good biblical churches in each. But there is one thing that denominations don’t tend to exhibit in Adelaide – none act as a consistent brand.*

Maybe stylistically there are some that are consistent, but theologically and purpose-wise they are pretty divided. If someone asked you ‘where’s a good church to go to?’ you couldn’t say ‘go to a baptist church’ or an anglican church. You’d have to be specific and name the particular church in that suburb that you had confidence in. I reckon that is crazy! You ought to be able to say go to the church of this ‘brand’ and know with some confidence that the brand means something. That you can trust it has this general theology and purpose.

Winning a city takes winning pulpits to start with, but winning them in every part of the city in the end. And ideally across a denomination. Denominations have great value for the reasons numbered above, but also for their power to provide a brand.

If a denomination can’t (even almost) entirely come on board after some time then I’d propose going out side the existing ones for a meta-denomination. Naming a movement where any church who is

• like-minded theologically
• has the purpose of winning the city
• wants to pool resources to achieve the kind of things above
• wants to belong to a brand that engenders confidence and is city wide/ubiquitous

Then they might get  on board. I think that would be a great step toward winning the city.

—

*I don’t know a great deal about pentecostal/aog churches but they may be an exception. Still i’ve said in comments previously I’m really interested in reformed/conservative theology…I think that has the best chance of winning the city.

Interesting summary by CraigS. Raises some questions about the importance of politics, preaching and Bible colleges in winning or losing cities…

[Series index if you need it]

————

last post I said the main game in breaking the cycle/beginning to win a city is getting faithful men to man pulpits. But where from??

My friend Eric Love is a maths/computer ninja. He’s done some great stuff with church stats for Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne and it’s well worth looking at. There are even multi-colour maps showing distributions of Christians /bible belts in each city!

His interest is more toward what factors contribute to distribution of Christians over a city… What I notice though is that there are patches of Christians. Sure, lots of those stats are a kind of false positive in that they’ll be attending churches which are liberal/heterodox. But still, there are patches of Christians. It’s not a matter of starting from scratch.

In this scenario (where there are a few Christians already) a key tactic for Paul in the first century was this:

…entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Timothy 2.2)

Paul knew that in any group of Christians God would give some to be pastors and teachers (Ephesians 3:11-12) so he urge people like Timothy (above) to seek them out.

Beyond praying then, there needs to be a concerted effort toward ‘entrusting to reliable men’. I’m convinced that church leaders should primarily be the ones doing this since they are best placed to see:

• Who is reliable… concerned with faithfulness, holiness, God’s glory…
• Who God uses to teach people
• Who God uses to make people Christians
• Who pursues bible reading and praying with Christians and non-Christians.
• Who would be willing, or might become willing with some help and encouragment

That’s normally how people come to be ministers – by others noticing their reliability and actively seeking to entrust the faith to them as potential future teachers.

So winning a City like Adelaide needs faithful harvesters who see the need and have their sights set on ‘entrusting to reliable men’.

That is how to turn a patch into a paddock… or a bible belt into a bible blob. It’s pretty key to winning a city.

Some ministers already think this way but not enough…which is where para-church organisations like Scripture Union and Uni groups like ES have a temporary or adjunct role to play. But we’ll come to that in a later post…

What I also notice in Eric’s stats is how many patches there are of people who do not worship Jesus and give him glory. In addition to praying and entrusting then I add one more thing: desiring Jesus’ glory. So that the more I come to know his worth and all he deserves… the more I will be dissatisfied with him having anything less. In myself and my neighbours and my city. He deserves to be worshiped by everyone.

Sorry for any frustration caused over the weekend trying to access Reubenland.com…I’ve moved it to a new server. Should be faster and more reliable now… Let me know of any issues you find though.

Next post on winning/losing a city coming soon!

Jodie and I love dumplings. We’ve tried a few places around Sydney now and our faves are

• Dumpling King, King st/Newtown (Northern style vegetarian are sensational!) and
• Shanghai Night Liverpool rd/ashfield (Pork + Coriander are top pick there I reckon)

Anywhere else we should try?

[Series index if you need it]

————

This time I’m asking ‘what’s with the church?’ in terms of winning a city.

In pt. 3 I said that I don’t think that taking over the denominational body or restarting/reforming the bible colleges is the way to do an about turn and head toward winning a city. This is because I think the problem is at heart theological, not structural. There is a lack of adherence to creedal/reformed christian faith in local churches. This locks you into a cycle of liberalism/heterodoxy from the ground up – The structures just happen to compound and perpetuate it.

So how could you ‘break the cycle’?

The key is the local churches and specifically the leaders of those Churches. Unlike the denom. body or the bible college this is the week by week point of contact for the christian person. What the local leader believes and teaches will be what shapes the belief and practice of parishioners. The other two can only really do this in a secondary way. This appears to be how liberalism took hold in Adelaide – parishioners didn’t just turn liberal one day, their leaders were liberal and the people followed. (and it only took one generation!)

(Protestant) Churches differ from franchises in this way then: Head office is not the denominational body (though it might want to be). Head office is the local pulpit.

So the first part of the solution is to get Christian men running ‘head office’ (just how, I’ll come back to later, but that’s the main game and is what we’re praying towards). win the pulpit, win the people (…then the city, then the world…

Now I know you will say – but the leaders originally were turned liberal at the Bible college. True. And what orthodox Christian is going to want to go through a liberal Bible college? I guess that’s the second part of the solution. Once you have the willing Christian men you need somewhere to train them. But since we’re not talking completely hypothetically here we can say this is no big deal. Thankfully there is already a good local college (BCSA) and interstate options are in pretty easy reach.

Which points us back again to getting men to man the pulpits…

(And incidentally to the fact that you can make a pretty good go of things with only two parts of ‘the trinity’)

[Series index if you need it]

————

I’m taking a step back from church to the bigger picture and asking ‘what is it with ‘the city‘?’ how is ‘the city’ treated as a concept in scripture?

I’ve been enjoying thinking about this with Jacques Ellul in his book ‘the meaning of the city‘

His argument is that the city as a concept has its roots in opposition to God. Man defining his own destiny and providing for his own security.

Cain of course is the first city builder you meet in the Bible (Genesis 4). He murders his brother and God declares he will be a restless wanderer in the land of Nod (=wandering) albeit under God’s protection from those who would try to kill him. The surprise is in Genesis 4:17: Cain was doing anything but wandering. instead he ”was then building a city’. This appears to be an expression of distrust in God’s word. He prefers the protection offered by stone walls rather than a promise from his maker. He prefers to define his own destiny rather than accept that that which God gives to him.

Cain in biblical thinking is the father of all city builders. His descendants later build the city par excellence (in the God-defying sense) – Babylon.

[Interestingly the Hebrews aren't associated with city building in their early history, except while they live in Egypt...kept in slavery making mud bricks for Pharaoh. Even the 'holy city' Jerusalem was taken from the pagan Jebusites by King David.]

It appears that ‘the city’ as a biblical/theological category starts as man’s attempt to defy God and takes on an existence all of its own. It’s the place where people can build for themselves a destiny and security such that it’s almost believable when they say to each other ‘God is dead’…

Can such an entity ever be ‘won’? I really cant see how. Sure God adopts a city- Jerusalem – the holy city but only for a time. Sure the end of time will be lived in a city – the new Jerusalem – but that will be fashioned and built by God. it ‘comes down from heaven’ (Revelation 21). Not even Jesus ‘wins’ a city. The light came into the world, but the world did not receive him (John 1:9-11 R(euben)SV). That’s a healthy check on unfounded optimism.

The city can’t be won…not as a city. It’s very nature and purpose is to oppose God and seduce its inhabitants to do the same. (I’m saying I don’t think the city can be redeemed as the city)

Still people, even crowds like Jesus prayed for, can be won. God by his gospel creates in every city communities who live in repentance and faith. They know that like every other thing which opposes God the city will not last. But they obey God’s strange call to keep on living in the city, praying for it and working for its good… all the while calling others to repentance and faith and the new Jerusalem with them.

I don’t know if you’ve been reading and/or enjoying these, but I hope you’ll humour me for a while longer! I’ve been finding it helpful to get my thoughts into words and to invite conversation.

I also have a confession to make: I’m a closet megalomaniac. (though perhaps not so closet-bound now!) I have sizeable hopes for the Christian church in Adelaide. I would love for Adelaide to be called ‘the city of churches’ without people having to ask ‘why?’ I believe that this would delight God and bring him glory – so that’s what I’m going to do. Perhaps you want to get on board and join me. or just look on, or offer advice or criticism…I’ll take any or all.

So this series is an attempt to put  my thoughts out there on what it looks like to win a city and how I’d do it in Adelaide.

Here’s a roadmap (and will be the table of contents from now on):

• Winning a city – Sydney
• Losing a city – Adelaide
• Praying for the city (esp. ‘harvesters’)
• What is it with the city? (‘the City’ as the Bible sees it)
• What is it with the church? (theological, not structural problems)
• Fancy statistics
• Denominations
• Para-church
• This generation
• …?