The denomination I am currently affiliated with, the Presbyterian Church in America, has been holding its annual General Assembly this week in Nashville. This is always an important time for the denomination, as the leaders of our churches gather together to discuss the future of the denomination and how the churches can continue to remain committed to the shared mission of being "faithful to the Scriptures, true to the Reformed faith, and obedient to the Great Commission."

Due to my schedule, I haven't been able to follow the assembly as closely this year as I was last year, but I tuned in for a little while last night. As they were deliberating on different matters, I was reminded of a something I read in The House Where God Lives, a book on ecclesiology by Canadian theologian, Gary Badcock, published toward the end of last year. What he says here is worth thinking about as meetings like the PCA's General Assembly happen. Consider this:

'I believe in the church.' In this confession of Christian faith there are, ultimately, grounds for hope. The church is what it is not because of some program, system of thought, or pattern of practice. It is what it is, in the final analysis, because God graciously chooses to deal with us as sinful creatures. As a result, the church is more than a hollow shell in which humans think theological thoughts, dream religious and moral dreams, and do good deeds. Hence neither the existence nor the renewal of the church is strictly our task; this is just as well, because on account of our half-formed thinking, our sloth, and our disobedience, the church in itself is bound to be a disappointment. God is able to renew the church, but this is entirely despite the fact of its limitations and sinfulness, despite its wrong-headedness and outright lies at times, rather than because of any inherent holiness or wisdom it possesses. Therefore, the renewal of the church does not even depend on an ecclesiology; in the end, even the theologian who labors to say as much must fall silent, give thanks, and pray.

What is absolutely required here is neither a theology nor a strategy but what [we may call] 'God's lightning,' the free action of God that strikes unexpectedly, in ways that surpass what we can ask and in the end is totally independent of our answers or our imaginings. For the renewal of the church takes place as God reaches out in power, truth, and love by his Word and Spirit, so that God himself comes to us – God, the unutterable one who transcends all our theological systems and stratagems alike, the one who judges all things and who makes all things new. The renewal of the church, though a goal toward which we can surely work and concerning which we can think, is ultimately something for which we must pray and wait. This is what I intend when I speak of the church as 'the house where God lives,' that is, affirming what is sufficient for our needs in this age and in all ages, and affirming what is finally the one great theme of ecclesiology as a question of Christian doctrine (337).

By no means, of course, is this a call for us to sit idly by and wait for God to work. Indeed, the work of meetings such as General Assembly is very important for the life of the church. But what Badcock wants us to realize here is that while our work is important, in the end it is nothing if God is not in it. When we stop and think about it this is perhaps an obvious truth, but in our day to day work it is easy to let something so simple – despite it being so crucial – slip from our minds.

To that end, let us continually be in prayer for the Spirit to be at work in our churches bringing life and renewal as we strive to be faithful to the one who called us, and as we labor in our mission to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. To him be the glory forever.

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One of the most interesting chapters so far in the book I've been reading, Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City, and the People of God, has been the chapter on the role of the city in the Old Testament. In the previous post, I quoted a portion of Harvie Conn and Manuel Ortiz's discussion on the role religion played in the city, where they made the point that like anything else, the life of the city is either lived in service to or in rebellion to God.

In the Ancient Near East and in the Old Testament this was no different. Conn and Ortiz write, "The lifestyle of the city is religion made visible, faith reflected either toward God or against him" (93). Today, if you live in a city that does not honour the God of Scripture, you do not necessarily need to expect that life will be exceedingly difficult, but this was not the case in the cities of the Ancient Near East. Conn and Ortiz note that "in these ancient city-states with their autocratic territorial gods, the ruler or king interpreted the will of the gods. And the people served as slaves of the gods and of their earthly, royal regents" (94). When the ruler was convinced that he was an agent of the gods, then it was total obedience to his rule that became the highest virtue, naturally resulting in tyranny against the people he ruled over.

In this context that Israel was called to be radically different. Already before they took possession of the Promised Land, God instructed them regarding what type of king they should have to reign over them, giving them a portrait of a king that was the polar opposite of the kings of the Ancient Near East (Deut. 17:14-20). And further, it was not just Israel's kings that were to be different, but her entire society and culture. Her cities were to be places where justice and mercy reigned and life was to be found in abundance for all who lived in fidelity to the covenant Lord.

In dramatic contrast to all this, Yahweh called his people to a new model for urban life. Israel was to be the exhibition place for God's redemptive grace in the city and the empires that formed around God's people in history. At the heart of the model was a new theological vision, a covenant relationship between the suzerain God and his servant community. At the core of that vision was a concept of divine kingship new to the ancient world, and to demonstrate it, a new sociopolitical organization (95).

It is not insignificant that the Promised Land God gave to the Israelites was at the very heart of the Ancient Near Eastern world. He called Israel to be examples to the nations surrounding her of justice and righteouness. "Israel's social and political identity as a people of righteousness was to mirror the righteousness of God" (97). And what's more, their covenantal commitment to God meant that they would reject loyalty to the gods of the surrounding city-states, and would also reject how those societies were ordered. "Out of the covenant notion that Yahweh is king and Israel is Yahweh's kingdom (Is. 43:15) was to come a new social and political order of rule" (97).

Over against an urban world where justice and righteousness could mean oppression and disregard for the weak and the poor, hesed (compassionate, merciful) love forbade taking advantage of others in the name of law (Matt. 23:23). In God's new social order it was not simply justic that must be maintained; it was love and justice (Hos. 12:6). Yahweh's delight was 'kindness, justice and righteousness on earth' (Jer. 9:24; Is. 16:5)...Israel's identity was established by the doing of justice, righteousness and love to the cosmic God and to the Israelites' neighbors.

The Torah pointed to the social reflection of that calling. Israel was to be a benevolent and just society embodying the exclusive kingship of Yahweh, its benevolent and just Lord. As a people, Israel was to be the image of God, exhibiting the glory of God in love toward God and human beings. (98-99)

Living according to God's law would mean that Israel lived in a way that was diametrically opposed to the surrounding nations. In her cities she would show concern for the weak and the poor and would make no economic or class distinctions. Justice and compassion would transcend not just these barriers, but even the divisions of ethnicity. The alien and stranger would be invited into the community that worshiped Yahweh as the sovereign Lord. Under the covenant law, all were equal. Kings too were subject to keeping the law. The people did not serve the kings, but all of Israel served the high King of heaven. The majestic temple of her capital city, Jerusalem, would demonstrate this in a very real and tangible way.

The parallel with us as the new Israel is clear, I hope. Just as God placed his people in the middle of the world, as it were, so he places his church in the midst of the world as well. As his covenant people, called to live according to his rule, we are to demonstrate through our words and our actions that the Kingdom of God has arrived. We are to invite those around us, in our cities, towns and villages, into the beauty of this life lived in service to the sovereign Lord, for it is here that a new societal order is found. It is here that life is found in abundance, life that is richer and fuller than anything that the world can offer. It is a life of true freedom and blessing, where true justice and righteousness are found. And it is our task to work to bring this peace and this prosperity to our cities.

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Lesslie Newbigin, the renowned missionary theologian, writes the following in his 1989 book, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society:

The logic of mission is this: the true meaning of the human story has been disclosed. Because it is the truth, it must be shared universally. It cannot be private opinion. When we share it with all peoples, we give them the opportunity to know the truth about themselves, to know who they are because they can know the true story of which their lives are a part. Wherever the gospel is preached the question of the meaning of the human story—the universal and the personal story of each human being—is posed. Thereafter the situation can never be the same. It can never revert to the old harmonies, the old securities, the old static or cyclical patterns of the past. Now decisions have to be made for or against Christ, for Christ as the clue to history or for some other clue. There will always be the temptation, even for those within the Christian community, to find the clue in the success of some project of our own, to see our program (whether of church growth or of human development) as the success story which is going to give meaning to our lives. The gospel calls us back again and again to the real clue, the crucified and risen Jesus, so that we learn that the meaning of history is not immanent in history itself, that history cannot find its meaning at the end of a process of development, but that history is given its meaning by what God has done in Jesus Christ and by what he has promised to do; and that the true horizon is not at the successful end of our projects but in his coming to reign…

We believe that the truth about the human story has been disclosed in the events which form the substance of the gospel. We believe, therefore, that these events are the real clue to the story of every person, for every human life is part of the whole human story and cannot be understood apart from that story. It follows then that the test of our real belief is our readiness to share it with all peoples (125-126).

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Emil Brunner once made this incisive statement: "The church exists for mission as a fire exists in burning."

The doctrine of the church is intimately connected with the notion that Christianity is a missionary religion. The two cannot be separated. Gary Badcock makes some significant observations regarding the mission of the church in his book, The House Where God Lives (some of which I noted earlier), and in the following paragraph, calls us to remember that mission is absolutely central to the church's identity, reflective of the insights of missiologists such as Lesslie Newbigin and David Bosch. This will be the last portion I take from his book for now, and so I leave the final word to him:

Much of this biblical insight [on the church's mission] is also present in the doctrine of the Trinity, according to which, through the sending of the Son into the world, and through the gift of the Spirit, the Father shows himself to be open to the creation, inviting it into his life. The work of the Son and the Spirit, the 'two hands of the Father' (Irenaeus), reveals that God takes a 'hands-on' approach to the world, an approach that is directed to our becoming 'participants of the divine nature' (2 Pet. 1:4). This theme has had an impact on recent missiological thought: it appears in the concept of the missio Dei movement, which was developed in the context of the ecumenical work of the International Missionary Council in the mid-twentieth century...According to one of the documents issued in connection with its 1952 conference in Willingen, Germany:

The mission is not only obedience to a word of the Lord, it is not only the commitment to the gathering of the congregation; it is participation in the sending of the Son, in the missio Dei, with the inclusive aim of establishing the lordship of Christ over the whole redeemed creation. The missionary movement of which we are a part has its source in the Triune God Himself.

According to this...view, mission is not simply something the church does, as it were, among its several other tasks and duties. Nor would it be strictly accurate as a matter of theological principle to say that the task of mission belongs to the church. Rather, since the mission is fundamentally God's, and since the church merely participates in it, the church belongs to the missio Dei rather than the missio to the church. Therefore, mission precedes the church and is utterly fundamental: it is effectively the womb from which the church is called into being. Or, to put it another way, it is only by virtue of the church's participation in the divine mission that it actually comes into existence. In this strictly theological sense, then, mission is nothing less than the source and content of all ecclesiology.

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Rob Moll wrote an article for Christianity Today last year called "Scrooge Lives!", a rightly judgmental and provocative piece demonstrating that Christians don't just hold on tight to their purse strings—they lock them away in impenetrable safes. Because of this, the Church's mission is seriously hindered.

That American Christians don't give is nothing new, but some of the statistics he presented were staggering and downright depressing. Be sure to read the article for yourself. Below, I've posted some of the most mind-blowing figures.

• American Christians—[defined as] those who say their faith is very important to them and those who attend church at least twice a month—earn more than $2.5 trillion dollars every year.
• If these Christians gave away 10 percent of their after-tax earnings, they would add another $46 billion to ministry around the world.
• American Christians could realistically increase their giving by $85.5 billion each year.
• The median annual giving for an American Christian is actually $200, just over half a percent of after-tax income.
• In absolute terms, the poorest Christians give away more dollars than all but the wealthiest Christians.
• $10 billion would sponsor 20 million children for a year, and just $330 million would sponsor 150,000 indigenous missionaries in countries closed to religious workers.
• $2.2 billion would triple the current funding of Bible translation, printing, and distribution. $600 million would be enough to start eight Christian colleges in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.

So, dear Christian who just spent $80,000 on a new Cadillac Escalade (justifying your purchase by sticking a Jesus fish to the back door so that you can "witness" as you drive around), did you know that that same $80,000 would put 36 indigenous missionaries in countries closed to religious workers? Should we even mention what could have been done with the money spent on that 5,000 sq. ft. house in the suburbs? Of course, Paul said not to muzzle our individual rights (1 Cor. 9:3-12)...didn't he? And that it doesn't matter what we give so long as our conscience is satisfied (2 Cor. 9:6-15)? What about James, who said we should look after ourselves (James 1:27)? Or Jesus, who said we can carry on as before and follow him (Matt. 16:24-28)?

The Reformer, Martin Luther, said, "There are three conversions necessary—the conversion of the heart, of the mind, and of the purse." It seems that last one might just be the hardest.

Let's take a cue from Tim Keller and be honest here. We're talking about nothing less than idolatry.

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