Robert Clinton and Paul Stanely wrote a very helpful mentoring book called Connecting. The essence of that book, plus a ton of other mentoring material is available for free here
Rodney Stark: The Rise of Christianity
Here is a helpful interview that effectively summarizes the high points of Rodney Stark’s book, The Rise of Christianity. Stark is agnostic and a darn good socio-historian. The article will be worth your time.
Hat-tip: AH
The Church, Spiritual Gifts, and Social Change
There is no doubt, the spirit-uality of the spiritual gifts God gives to his people has been clipped of its power by the Church. As most churches would have it, you take a test to pinpoint your gifts of mercy, wisdom, knowledge, service, evangelism, prophecy, tongues, hope, faith, love, etc. Certainly, the apostle Paul advocates gift knowledge: “now concerning spiritual gifts brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant,” (1 Cor 12.1) but his solution to ignorance was not multiple choice tests. Instead, he taught, wrote, and modelled the unifying power of spiritual gifts diversely expressed.
We have to wonder with all our so-called spiritual gift knowledge, why the American church and culture is in such gross decline. Perhaps one reason is that test-driven methods of resolving gift ignorance are not sufficient? Perhaps finding a “ministry” in which to serve, once we have identified our gift(s), is too impersonal and, as a result, often unspiritual? Perhaps our individual gifts become opportunities for individualistic religiousity. If we are in a big church, we get to choose from the ministry electives how we will serve and how often. We end up ticking off the active religion box, instead of engaging people and their problems on a personal level.
By programming spiritual gift discovery and expression, are we missing the point? It seems that people who deliberately use their spiritual gifts to strength one another spiritually, socially, and emotionally can be a significant force of cultural change. Where is that vibrancy where people live out mercy in a capitalistic, pay for what you get culture? Where are the Christian landlords that lower rent, not raise it, for struggling families? Where are the middle class Christians in lower class loss of daily needs? In 2006, the burgeoning city of Austin had to turn away 100 children from shelters, shut-down electricity for 500 homes, address 4,000 homeless, 40% of which are families with children. These numbers are only greater in most cities. Where is the mercy, knowledge, wisdom, prophecy, and love in the handsomely gifted church?
The unifying power of spiritual gifts expressed diversely in the church and culture is at a low hum. Dynamic expressions of the Spirit of God seem to have left our shores for the southern continents in places like Latin America and Africa, where conversions and declining social corruption go hand in hand. Where does the power of transformation, spiritual and social, come from?
“…there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit…varities of ministries and the same Lord…varities of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons…for the common good.” 1 Cor 12.4-7
Paul’s focus was not on identifying the gifts, ministries, or in comparing their potency but in knowing the source of their unifying power-the triune God. We have drifted from delighting in the transformative community of the Godhead to delineating our gifts, finding our ministries, and checking off our spiritual gift boxes. For those who thrive in gift knowledge and expression, the temptation is to compare effectivity of gifts expressed instead of delightfully acknowledging that it is God who works all things in all persons.
And what of the common good? Paul moves quickly from addressing the unifying power of gifts diversely expressed in a delightful knowledge of the triune God to the greatest gift of all–love (1 Cor 13). Love for one another in the church, love foremost for God in Christ through the Spirit, love that results in order not confusion (1 Cor 1), love borne of the gospel of Christ that renovates spirit and body and calls the church to work, “being steadfast immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” (1 C0r 15). Love that results in financial generousity, courageous faith, and deep fellowship: “let all that you do be done in love” (1 Cor 16.14). Where is the love?
Reviewing The Forgotten Ways, Hirsch
I don’t know what it is with some of the missional books being published these days, but their titles can be so out of touch and ambiguous (cf. Off-Road Disciplines, Creps). The Forgotten Ways: reactivating the missional church (subtitle is much better) is no exception to lousy titles, but the content is certainly thought provoking and generally summative of some missiological thought (McGavran, Walls, Bosch, etc).
In Section one, Hirsch brings the reader into his own missional and not-so-missional story as missionary and church planter. At one point he claims to have planted 6 churches in 7 years, not all of them successful. Hirsch draws on his rich and varied experience as a church planter to critique recent models of church in the West. He concludes that in order to have a truly missional church one must possess Apostolic Genius (AG. another naming failure), which he describes as “something that belongs to the gospel itself and therefore to the whole people who live by it.”
AG is comprised of six components of missional DNA: 1) missional incarnational impulse 2) disciple making 3) communitas 4) organic systems 5) apostolic environment and, at the center 6) Jesus is Lord. The longest and Second section of the book is devoted to defining and describing just what and how this mDNA is and does.
I am currently finished with about a third of the book, so I will offer one critique and one praise before concluding this review in another post.
Praise: Hirsch creatively combines elements which appear to be essential to missional movements, while incorporating the frequently neglected theological center of mission: monotheistic christology (cf. Wright, Bauckham) or as Hirsch puts it christocentric monotheism.
Critique: Despite the incarnational component of his mDNA, Hirsch ends up baptizing the decentralized, “organic” modes of church and incorrectly oversimplifies the connections between the early church and the missional church. On page 64 he includes a chart that reflects his stated simplification, drawing tight parallels to the Apostolic church and the missional church of the past ten years. Two issues arise here: 1) the NT does not concretize any form of church, allowing for diverse expressions of church 2) the missional movement is only ten years old and it remains to be seen how much in common it will have with the early church.