Jesus Beyond the Gospels

As we near the end of our studying and preaching "The Real Jesus" at Redeemer I am beginning to look ahead. The past four and a half years going through the Gospels verse by verse has been invaluable to me. I am sad that the seemingly never ending sermon series is about to actually come to a close but I am also excited to read the rest of the New Testament through the lens of "The Real Jesus".

Today, I am reading an excerpt of Henry Wansbrough's work "The Acts of the Apostles". The portion I am studying is about the Christology throughout The Acts of the Apostles. Wansbrough was the General Editor of "The New Jerusalem Bible". 

Holly Benner's debut album is now available for purchase here through iTunes.

A Little Advice

As I enjoyed Dilbert yesterday I thought about a phrase (or a slight variation of) I have heard Pastor John say several hundreds of times over the years, "Unasked-for advice almost always sounds like criticism." I am thankful I have heard it repeatedly. I am just now beginning to, as Jim Hunter would say, "Get it into my game." PJ wrote a piece on his blog about this subject earlier this year. I've stolen it in it's entirety and posted it directly below.

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Unasked-for advice is usually received as criticism. Imagine that I come up to you and say, "Did you know that there are some really nice clothes on sale at Macy's today?" The thought comes to you: "He doesn't like my clothes."

Mostly (but not entirely) people give unasked-for advice to others to try to change them. If you want to give a piece of advice to someone because you see they are having a problem and you've got the answer, try asking their permission: "May I suggest something?" That's cool. But a whole lot of advice-giving is about control and manipulation. It produces anger and bitterness, because who likes controlling people who are out to change them?

On changing other people: you cannot do it. Period. You can force people to do something, threaten them, imprison them, and guilt-manipulate them. But the human heart, the human spirit, cannot be changed by other people. The human heart is, however, influenced by other people. In my life there are a handful of people who have significantly influenced me. One of them now comes to mind. In the decade of the 1980s he was in my church in East Lansing. I was privileged to be in a small group with him and his wife that met weekly. He was a great scholar, which I admired. He spoke when asked, and never advised when not asked. I found this intriguing because he was a psychologist, and psychologists (so I thought) were there to give advice. His character and demeanor and humility and Christ-in-him were compelling. So much so that, eventually, I sought him out to advise me about some things. Which he did, with wisdom and love.

I think I am to focus my life on connecting with Jesus, and allow Jesus to work on the stuff inside of me that He knows about and is able to change. I need to be continually saved from my own self. You, "the other," cannot do this. You are not my Savior. But if you also remain connected to Jesus and allow Him to change your heart about things, the chances increase that God will use you to effect real heart-change in me. The initial life goal is to know Christ, not advise other people.  The break-up that God does in you will bring breakthrough in the lives around you.

Today seek to live your life in Christ.

Holographic Pastors & Inflatable Churches (yes, seriously)

 Ben Witherington has a post on the value of simulation technology in churches. I am reposting it in full below.


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Sometime back I told you the story of an inflatable Catholic Church a priest was using on a beach to get Catholic beachcombers to come to Mass and take the sacrament, apparently with some success.  Below is a picture of said 'church'----

Now, alert reader Craig Beard has sent me a CNN article about the Holographic preacher.  The article by John Blake begins as follows----
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The Sunday morning service at Fellowship Church in Dallas, Texas, was humming along with hymns and prayers when something unusual happened.

The lights in the sanctuary suddenly dimmed, and members of the church hushed as they peered at a pulpit shrouded in darkness.  The parishioners then erupted in cheers and whistles as Ed Young Sr., the church's senior pastor, emerged from the darkness with a microphone in hand.

"Please be seated, be seated," Young said as he grabbed the Bible.  "How are you guys doing today?  Doing well?"

Young delivered his sermon, but he couldn't hear or see his congregation respond: He wasn't physically there.

Young's parishioners were instead looking at a high-def video image of their pastor beamed into their sanctuary from a "mother" church in Grapevine, Texas.

Young is part of a new generation of pastors who can be in two places at one time.  They are using technology -- high-def videos, and even holograms -- to beam their Sunday morning sermons to remote "satellite" churches that belong to their congregation.
(more on the CNN website).
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My focus in this blog post is to ask and answer the question---- Is this a good thing, and what are the potential problems with this model of ministry?

Let's consider the promise rather than the problem side of this model.  On the positive side, if one really does have the gift of preaching, I would far rather hear a good sermon from a remote pastor, than a not remotely good sermon from a present one. Holographic images make this possible, and some churches are investing $50,000 to 2 million dollars to go hi tech in this way.  There is furthermore the point that, like or not, we live in the visual learner plasma screen generation.  I once had the humbling experience of taping a class live in the TV studio and had a remote group of students watching on a screen in a classroom as well as students in the studio with me.  My assumption was---- all would have preferred to be in the studio with me.   Boy was a wrong.  Various of the students in the remote classroom said "I like virtual Ben better than real Ben".  He's bigger, and easier to watch and follow.  After swallowing my humility I began to rethink deliver modes when it comes to good teaching and preaching.  For sure, more people can be reached simultaneously using the holographic transmission model from a live (or taped) original. 

What are the problems with this model, and do they outweigh the promise?   First of all,  I was very unimpressed with the rationale given by Pastor Young for doing things this way. He argued that Paul used letters to congregations he couldn't be with to communicate with them from a remote location. This is a very lame argument since those letters were orally presented by various Pauline co-workers (Timothy and Titus and Phoebe for example) in rhetorically effect ways  in person.  The pastor seems to have overlooked this minor detail.  There was always an embodied real live person delivering the message in Paul's day, whether it was Paul or one of his co-workers.  This practice provides no precedent for what Pastor Young is doing.  Were he to follow the Pauline precedent, he would send a real person to his other umpteen churches to deliver the same message.  The second major problem with this model is of course the disconnecting of preaching from pastoral care and getting to know one's people.  Again, a rationalization is given in the Blake article that goes like this-- "I actually have more time for pastoral care with people by not having to go to multiple locations to preach the same Word'.   This is a weak rationale, because the 'more time for pastoral care' only applies to congregation members in the mother church, apparently.  And this brings up a further point.  The holographic pastor, unlike the Pastor Paul, is not available for personal interaction, for questions or counseling after the message is delivered.  This is simply left to the 'staff'. In other words, this just further promotes the preacher superstar model with less accountability, and less weekly contact and accessibility with the full scope of one's congregation.  

But this brings up another point----are multiple churches in multiple locations without a local preacher really all part of one body of Christ?    Here is where the real rub comes.  The answer is no.   Above all else, the body of Christ is local, and locally expressed in the NT model--- the church in Corinth, the church in Ephesus, and so on. In Pastor Young's situation we are dealing with multiple bodies of Christ for sure, in very different locales, sometimes not even in the same town. This is not what the NT generally means by 'body of Christ in....'. 
A body of Christ, including its leadership structure must be locally accountable, whatever other bodies and groups it is accountable to.  In this holographic model the preacher is not accountable to the remote congregations, nor is he regularly fellow-shipping with them apparently. 

Go back and read Act 2 and 4--- and underline the bit about 'and they were altogether in one place' and then the bit about and they were all in one accord.  Those two things are connected. You can't have embodied fellowship and embodied worship with a body of believers unless you are present with them.    I could say more but here I will just conclude---  while this technology may be very useful for evangelism or exigent circumstances, it does not, on the whole, seem to comport with Biblical models as to how the body of Christ is supposed to work, and my big fear would be that it would make it all that much easier to allow proclaimers to operate without accountability to his whole people, as well as to God.

Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/bibleandculture/2010/07/of-inflatable-churches-and-holographic-pastors.html#ixzz0u9yB30Fh

Repentance

This morning as I was reading Matthew 11 I found myself focusing on the word "repent" again. I stopped reading in Matthew and began a quick word study. One of the resources I used was "The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament" by Spiro Zodhiates. A portion of that is included below.

There are two words in the NT which convey the idea of repentance, metanoéō and epistréphō (1994), to come back, convert, turn about. These words derive their moral content not from Greek, but from Jewish and Christian thought, since nothing analogous to the biblical concept of repentance and conversion was known to the Greeks. Metanoéō presents repentance in its negative aspect as a change of mind or turning from sin while epistréphō presents it in its positive aspect as turning to God. Both, however, have much the same content of meaning. Christ’s call to repentance (Matt. 4:17) has as its motive the nearness of the kingdom, participation in which is conditioned upon the new disposition (Matt. 18:3). It is addressed, not as in the OT to the nation, but to the individual; and not merely to flagrant sin, but to all sin (Luke 13:3), both great and small. The inner and radical character of the change required is illustrated by the figure of the tree and its fruits. The first four Beatitudes may be taken as descriptive of elements of true repentance. Poverty of spirit (the confession of one’s spiritual helplessness–see ptōchós [4434], poor), sorrow for sin, meekness, and hunger and thirst for righteousness are all characteristics of the soul that is turning to God from sin. In the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus draws a picture of the true penitent person. Such is assured of the forgiveness of the Father whose love has anticipated his return and gone out to seek and save (Luke 15:4). Of fastings and other external accompaniments Christ says little, as indicated in the parable of the publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18:10–14). No external acts can take the place of an internal sorrow for one’s sins.

Zodhiates, S. (2000). The complete word study dictionary : New Testament (electronic ed.). Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers.

God's Dwelling Place

 This morning I am thinking about Colossians 2:9:
 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,

Douglas Moo says, "God in his fullness has not taken up residence in and therefore revealed himself in a building but in a body. Characteristic of the new covenant administration is the replacement of the Temple with Christ as the focus for God’s presence and as the nucleus of God’s people."*

*Moo, D. J. (2008). The letters to the Colossians and to Philemon. The Pillar New Testament commentary (193–194). Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.

Tonight @ Newport Beach Cafe

Everyone is Invited at 9pm

 
Val Fowler is Preaching


Luke Jaskowiak is Leading Worship