Category: Missional Church

Praying with Muller for the Demonstration of God

Posted on June 11, 2008

God is disposed to give himself to us, if we will only press into him. How can we receive of the bounty of God’s infinite goodness unless we pray? We have not because we ask not.

We become lifeless in ministry apart from him, as reminded by a friend this morning, the branch withers apart from the sap-flowing, life-sustaining vine. He is the Vine! And he ultimately calls us to come to him, not for the fruit of conversion or for the anointing in sermons or wisdom in counsel, but rather ,he is calling us to come to him for Him.

How do we come to him? We come to him in prayer, in the secret closet of communion with the holy Trinity.George Mueller has rightly been recognized as a man of prayer, a man who faithfully prayed and steadily restrained himself from asking others for money, financial support, to build five orphanages on Ashley Down and fill them with hundreds of abused, neglected, and abandoned children. He had the faith of ten thousand church planters, but beneath his great faith and prayer for God’s provision was a goal even more noble that housing and caring for orphans, a goal greater than ministry or church planting. Why did he not fundraise but “merely” pray for orphan provision? He writes:

I have refrained, because one of the primary objects of this Institution is, to bring before the world and the Church a tangible proof, how much even in this Nineteenth Century can be accomplished simply through the instrumentality of prayer and faith; and to give a clear demonstration, that God is now as much the Living God as He was Four Thousand years ago.

Brothers, we are in need of such a clear demonstration in the 21st century, not so much a demonstration of good works and godly provision, but a demonstration of the Living God. Mueller’s aim was ultimately the display of God’s living and abiding glory in a world that was prone to neglect and dismiss him. And should our aim as church planters, as pastors, as disciples of Jesus be any different? Should we not join Mueller on our knees, not supremely for his providential care or provision, but for Him, for a first-hand experience and demonstration of his sublime excellency and animated glory? To this end, may we pray, may we seek, and may we find him.

Are We Approaching Conversion Incorrectly?

Posted on June 10, 2008

According to Andrew Walls, the word “conversion” has been used in two main ways throughout Christian history.[1] One way denotes “an external act of religious change” that is a movement to Christian faith, individually or collectively. The other way refers to “critical internal religious change” within the Christian community. I am concerned with the latter. Walls notes that Western missionaries exported their understanding of conversion and made it the norm among non-Western peoples. For many, this included moving from “nominal” to “real” Christianity, “issuing in a holy life typically marked by a period of deep consciousness of personal sin followed by a sense of joyous liberation dawning with the realization of personal forgiveness through Christ.” Missionaries expected a similar pattern from those they evangelized.

What missionaries encountered “on the field” then is beginning to occur on our turf, now. Many church planters have a pre-Christian past that is quite Christian, and quite pietistic, informed by mid to late 20th century evangelicalism. Similar to the missionaries of the 18th and 19th centuries, our conversions relied heavily upon a prevailing Christianized culture, upon a certain basic knowledge of the faith.

However, in regions such as the Pacific Northwest and New England and in spiritually similar cities of the U.S we are now encountering a very dissimilar cultural climate. No longer can we assume a basic level of evangelical capital upon which the Spirit of God may act. Instead, we are engaging un-churched and resistant peoples who have either forgotten more than they know or have, in fact, never known Christianity. As a result, the conditions of conversion have changed, and like former missionaries we must reconfigure our understanding and expectation of how people convert, how disciples are made. Our goal is not to make converts and disciples of our 20th century Christianity, but rather, to allow for new conversions—new creations—born by the Spirit in a 21st century, post-Christian context. We must heed the failures of the past and call people, not to our experience of conversion, but to the experience of the Spirit’s converting, whatever that process may entail.

[1] Quotations taken from Andrew Walls, “Converts or Proselytes? The Crisis over Conversion in the Early Church,” IBMR, Vol. 28, No.1.

Feedback on ACL website

Posted on June 6, 2008

If you have some time, I’d appreciate your feedback on our new website. We are still adding content and working out some things, but we need to know if it is navigable, engaging, informative, clear, etc. We are working on getting the podcast page to be more simple. Let me know what you think and how we can improve!