NPR Top 50 Albums of 2010

Posted on July 5, 2010

NPR has taken a poll to get a bead on the top 50 albums so far. Gorillaz’s new album, Plastic Beach, won by a strong margin (I’m a little disappointed but not surprised), followed by a host of good bands. See if you’re favorite is listed or if there are any missing! Here are the top 10.

  1. Gorillaz:  Plastic Beach
  2. The National:  High Violet
  3. The Black Keys:  Brothers
  4. Broken Bells:  Broken Bells
  5. LCD Soundsystem:  This Is Happening
  6. Vampire Weekend:  Contra
  7. Beach House:  Teen Dream
  8. Mumford and Sons:  Sigh No More
  9. Spoon:  Transference
  10. Sleigh Bells:  Treats

What Makes Community Stick?

Posted on July 5, 2010

There have been a lot of attempts to cultivate community in the local church–small groups, accountability groups, cell groups, missional communities, gospel communities. The problem with a lot of these structures is that they make the wrong the central. The glue is all wrong. Small groups make community the glue. Accountability groups make holiness the glue. Cell groups make evangelism the glue. Missional communities make mission the glue. All of these get stuck on the wrong things.

Read the rest of “Community is a Command; Friendship Isn’t” at GospelCenteredDiscipleship.com

Culture & the American Evangelical (Pt 1)

Posted on July 2, 2010

I’ll never forget the day when one of my esteemed pastors walked up to me and disapprovingly commented: “Is that a rock star haircut? Interesting.” Although I jokingly blew off his attack on my hairstyle choice, I knew from his response this was no laughing matter. I had clearly gone the way of the world. His comment made a somewhat spiritually mature twenty-seven year old feel like a spiritual infant. Should a simple hairstyle call into question my personal piety? Was I too hip to be holy?

Too Holy to be Hip

Peddle back with me to my first church in the 80s, known by its insiders as “The Mission.” I was the oldest kid in church, a single teen among adults and kids. I always wondered why there weren’t any other teenagers. As I matured, the reason became apparent. Not only were there no teenagers, there were rarely any newcomers. The Mission firmly believed its role in the kingdom of God was to pray for revival; that’s it. No evangelism, no cultural engagement, no social justice, and for many, no secular music, no television. On top of that, or should I say inside of it, there were the prophetic power brokers, whose super-spiritual connections led them to condemn certain people they deemed too “worldly”. The Mission was hardly missional, too hollowed with churchly holiness to engage the “unholy culture”. Their problem was the reverse—too holy to be hip.

The Church & Culture Pendulum

Noted historian Mark Noll has documented the 20th century pendulum of American evangelical postures regarding church and culture. In an article entitled “Where We Are and How We Got Here?”, he demonstrates the absence of significant evangelical thought and action in the first half of the 20th century.[1] White American evangelicals abandoned serious engagement with academia, popular culture, and politics. The in-house fundamentalist-modernist controversy left fundamentalist Christians disconnected and quarantined from the ideas of the universities, the burgeoning impact of television, and civil rights legislature.

However, the second half of the 20th century presented a new evangelical—concerned, engaged, and actively influencing culture. Noll notes two key developments that contributed to a shift in evangelical posture towards culture. First, immigration reform led to an influx of de-Europeanized Christians, bolstering evangelical numbers. Second, the civil rights movement was launched from the southern African American evangelical church. As a result, American evangelicalism grew in number and influence. Subsequently, three culturally reforming movements followed—volunteer organizations (Young Life, Campus Crusade, Fuller Seminary), charismatic movements, and the Jesus People (Calvary Chapel).

Is Culture our Friend or our Foe?

The Jesus People rode the church and culture pendulum from quarantine to contextualization. Without quarantining themselves from hip-py fads and music all together, the Jesus People found a way to live out a contextualized 70’s gospel. They didn’t view culture as the enemy, but as a friend. Noll comments: “From the 1920s to the 1950s, American evangelicals had tended to view popular culture as an enemy—to keep the gospel it was necessary to flee the world. In the late 1960s, the Jesus People treated popular culture as a potential friend—to spread the gospel it was necessary to use what the world offered.” Friend or foe, hip or holy, quarantined or contextualized—do we have to choose?

[1] Mark Noll, “Where We Are and How We Got Here?” Sept 29, 2006, Christianity Today. See also George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991).

Struggling to Preach the Gospel

Posted on July 1, 2010

Preaching can be hard. It’s a challenge to interpret an ancient text faithfully, apply it practically, contextualize it culturally, and most important of all, preach and savor Christ. And after you do it once, you have to turn around and do it again six days later.

Preaching is Hard

Let me revise. Preaching is hard. In addition to all the work that goes into preaching a biblically faithful and culturally relevant sermon, there’s the challenge of crafting your message. How should you arrange the material? Where should you illustrate? What material should you leave out? What kind of blend of history, theology, practice, and culture should you go for? Then there’s the rhetorical challenge. Pitch, pace, pause, gesture. I’ll never forget the first preaching class I took that talked about delivery. It’s scary how much people think about that stuff, but it is a legitimate part of preaching the gospel.

“Maybe you need to listen to your sermon first.”

Ever hit the wall the night before your sermon? I have. One week I was experimenting by preaching a different type of sermon. I was trying to “improve.” I typically work through three documents. One on notes, one full length outline, and one manuscript, and then one rehearsal in my office. The final manuscript was almost finished as I hit the wall. I came to my poor wife to share my frustration. She came back with some rich counsel: “Maybe you need to listen to your sermon first.” The message was on Gospel Identity, not confusing your various life roles with your identity in Christ. And there I was, finicky over whether or not people would like it. If the new format would “come off.” My wife basically told me to be myself. She was right in more ways than one.

Identity Confusion in the Pulpit

All too often young preachers imitate or innovate to an extreme. They try to preach beyond their gifting and personality. The best thing we can do is be ourselves, in two ways. First, don’t try to be a John Piper, Tim Keller, or Matt Chandler because you’re not. Be yourself for Jesus. Don’t over analyze your sermons or style; it’s narcissistic. Instead, analyze the text. Soak in the Gospel. Pray for your people. I think it was Moltmann who said, “We prepare a preacher, not a sermon.” Prepare your heart as well as your sermon. Preach in Christ and for Christ. Make it your aim to clarify and delight in Him. Be yourself and preach Christ.

“We prepare a preacher, not a sermon.”

Second, be yourself in Jesus. Remember, your worth is not in your sermon. Your worth is in Christ. Your value isn’t determined by your delivery. Your identity is disciple, your role is pastor. Your identity is sheep, your role is a shepherd. Your identity is a sinner redeemed by grace, your role is to pastor and preach by grace. All too often we swap our roles for our identity. We build our identity as preachers, pastors, teachers when those are simply our roles. There will be no pastors in heaven. There will be a multitude of sons and daughters. Our identity is adopted son, redeemed disciple, Spirit-indwelt Christian. We ought to find our worth, not in what we do, but in who we are–Son, Disciple, Christian!

And if you’re not a preacher, pray for your pastors. Pray that the Spirit would preach the gospel to their hearts, that he would strengthen them in the difficult task of preaching, that they would stay close to the text and their context, that they would sense the urgency of the Word in preparation, that they would have tremendous insight and creativity, and that, by God’s grace, they could give their people both a well-prepared preacher and a well-prepared sermon.