The 2016 meeting of the Primates for the Anglican Communion has released a statement upholding their commitment to traditional marriage in response to the Episcopal Church (USA) and its official promulgation of same-sex marriages among members and clergy. See the official statement here.
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I recently attended a Church conference sponsored by the Acts 29 Network and Origin Church of Roseville called, “Simple Effective Church.”
Origin Church hosted the conference at their Roseville campus and described the event as, “uncomplicated systems for thriving disciple making.” A majority of the church leaders in attendance fell into the reformed or evangelical brand of independent churches, although I met a few from baptist and presbyterian denominations. Our collared priest outed our group as from a more liturgical background.
The event had three sessions led by Pastor Brian Howard. Pastor Brian co-founded Sojourn Network, a national church planting network, currently leads Church Multiplication for Pacific Church Network, and serves as Network Director of Acts 29 US West.
His three sessions were entitled, “How to Become a Church Planting Church,” “No One Even Knows Your Church Exists: What you can do about it,” and “Avoiding Elder Blowup: How to do leadership development from day one.”
Howard emphasized that we need to view missions as a three-pronged category that includes “local, domestic, and international” missionary efforts. Noting that while many churches focus on setting aside a percentage for international missions, perhaps we ought to consider adding a local church planting line to our budgets and plans for giving. It is also worth considering his suggestion to “adopt and support an existing church planter” and to, “partner with other churches in supporting a church planter.”
If your church closed today, would anyone in your community notice? For those of us in liturgical churches, it is much easier to focus inwardly on the beauty of our own services. So where do we start? Howard suggests that the basic goal of church outreach is to develop a long term presence in your community. “Church is more than a crowd,” he said. “We all know that numerical growth is not the same thing as spiritual success.”
According to Howard, that long term presence begins with identifying your target area and researching the ways you can serve the community around your church. “We mapped out the neighborhood around my church and my home, and then we pulled up the census data for this region.” This “research” plan is to help church leaders navigate their own culture and what they hope to create. Age, ethnicity, language, religious preference, and income were all considered as relevant data points to help church planters understand what kinds of outreach they might explore. For example, a historically Roman Catholic demographic like latinos might be more primed for a liturgically grounded service, while outreach to an economically challenged community might take the form of a church-based medical clinic or food closet.
“Whatever you do, be seen as a community of love,” said Howard. He then challenged the group of pastors and leaders to each brainstorm twenty new ideas for outreach.
His third talk was important in a post-denomination church planting context. Many are familiar with the rise and fall of Mark Driscoll and a number of other “non-denominational” network-style planters. As I listened to the talk, I considered how much of Howard’s advice was embedded in the historical polity of both the presbyterian and episcopal models. I couldn’t imagine attempting to plant a church on my own and perhaps this is why Acts 29 Network has become so popular.
Brian Howard suggests plants create an “outside advisory team,” where pastors can, “communicate their plans from day one.” While encouraging churches to develop leaders as a priority, he also advised against installing men, “who were formerly elders in other churches.” While I disagree with this sentiment, I can understand where Howard is coming from with elders who move from church to church to gain control.
He concluding remarks suggested plants implement a more involved leadership development structure in the elder process. I’ve been working through Dr. Tony Baron’s work called, “The Cross and the Towel: Leading to a Higher Calling” (amazon) and would highly recommended anything by Dr. Baron on the subject.
This week, Santa Cruz, Calif. church planter Rob Patterson launched a Kickstarter to create a new liturgical music project to serve the Church—particularly church plants like his.
In an interview with Andrea Bailey Willits (The Diocese of Churches for Sake of Others) he explained his the motivation behind the project.
“My journey into Anglicanism, with its liturgies, seasons and rhythms, has given birth to some new worship songs,” Patterson says. “These songs are meant to serve the church, particularly liturgical church plants where big rock worship can feel too big, and where some of the tradition’s older music can feel a bit inaccessible.”
In a folksy acoustic style, Patterson has taken some older texts and set them to singable melodies that embrace both the tradition and modern expression. He has also written some new songs specifically to serve the modern liturgical context.
“The songs I’ve written for this project are pieces of my journey into Anglicanism, bits of theology and heart set to music, meant to bless the Church and honor the Lord,” he says.
Over the next month, Patterson hopes to raise the money he needs to make this music a reality. He plans to record in Austin, Texas, the Live Music Capital of the World, with a stellar group of musicians, including producer Ramy Antoun.
“I don’t think you can find a cooler guy around. Ramy grew up in Egypt and has a deep love for the Lord,” Patterson says. “I first met Ramy when he played drums on a project I recorded in L.A. some years ago. He went on to play with folks like Black Eyed Peas and Seal. Ramy’s now producing worship records, and I’m super excited to team up with him to make this new project.”
Please consider helping fund this new liturgical music to serve the Church. Make a donation.
Half the world’s population now lives in cities, and that is where the Church must learn to serve. Rev. Richard Bledsoe has spent his life as a pastor to city leaders in Colorado. Over the years, he has become the unofficial “bishop of his city,” a recognized “adviser to the king.” In Metropolitan Manifesto: On Being a Counselor to the King in a Pluralistic Empire, Bledsoe lays out the theology behind his work, explains how to minister to leaders, and shares the lessons of his long experience.
The Metropolitan Manifesto is an essential, inspiring testament to the transformative power of the gospel in today’s world.
You can begin placing orders for your copy of Metropolitan Manifesto: On Being the Counselor to the King in a Pluralistic Empire and they will ship out on Tuesday, August 25, 2015 from Athanasius Press.
Nearly 70 years ago, Rev. Lesslie Newbigin was chosen to lead a new “united” Church in India composed of Anglican, Methodist, and Reformed congregations. This ecumenical endeavor became the Church of South India (CSI) and is now the second largest church in India, serving four million members throughout Southeast Asia. Few modern efforts in the field of missiology compare to Newbigin’s success.
The Local-Missional ChurchAttempting to escape the barriers of his Western distinctives, Newbigin began translating the gospel into a vernacular that non-Christians could grasp. His missionary endeavors literally began with efforts in translating as he learned the Tamil language and recognized that, in the mission field, one first needed to build a common “currency” of communication. Newbigin advocated a type of contextualization of the Christian witness where Churches are immersed in the language and culture of the local people. As Newbigin attempted to retire, he returned home to England, which was now markedly non-Christian. There he continued his work by urging Christians in the west that, to survive, they must adopt a missional view of the Church.
[hr border_width=”1″ ]“It is the church which lives on the frontier that will be ready to advance in strength.” – Lesslie Newbigin
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In Northern California, Reformed Church in America minister turned Anglican priest Fr. Joshua Lickter embraces both Newbigin’s missional worldview and his love for the people of India.
Instead of the rural villages of Tamil Nadu or Madras, however, Fr. Lickter spends his time in Roseville, CA, with skeptics and those disenfranchised from Church. Like Newbigin, Fr. Lickter recognized that his community is largely outside of a Church context or has intentionally left the Church.
“Our goal has always been to be a safe place for people from various spiritual backgrounds and traditions to ask hard questions without fear of being judged,” says Fr. Lickter. “Thirty-nine percent of the total population of the greater Roseville area consider themselves ‘de-churched,’ and this has proven an excellent environment for some of them to work through their spiritual issues.”
In the same way, the nuts and bolts of Newbigin’s model have always been at the local community level, as he said: “It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our Lord left behind Him was not a book, nor a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community. He committed the entire work of salvation to that community.”
Early in 2015, members of Fr. Lickter’s Roseville congregation asked the Church to pray special intentions for the people of India after two Northern Californian Sikhs were arrested during a trip to Punjab, India. The father and son were held as political prisoners and reports surfaced that they were being tortured by the Indian government. Bapu Surat Singh Khalsa had recently begun a hunger-strike and was now being force fed while his son Ravinder languished in squalor at a nearby jail.
Fr. Lickter joined leaders in Northern California’s Sikh community to host a town hall meeting with Congressman Tom McClintock at the Roseville Sikh Gurdwara and discussed the situation. At the meeting he met Bapu’s daughter who came to tears as Lickter told her that his church had been praying for her father. “I knew someone must’ve have praying,” she said. “Keep praying, please. Your prayers are working.”
Since then, Congressman McClintock joined with five other Californian congressional representatives to demand “the Indian government abide by its international human rights commitments… and ensure that these rights are safeguarded for political prisoners and all citizens in India.” His son was released and Bapu Surat Singh Khalsa was released from force-feeding at the government hospital.
“I am often asked by people, why would you, as a Christian congregation, regularly pray for a Sikh man and his plight in India.” Fr. Lickter explains, “The image of God, in many people, is being oppressed in India. It doesn’t matter if they’re Sikh, or if they’re Christian, or if they’re Muslim, or if they’re Buddhist. It doesn’t matter what their background is — they are being oppressed because they believe differently.”
Responding to reports that hunger-striking Khalsa is in failing health and once again detained by Indian authorities (who want to end his political protest), the Anglican priest took his prayers, with the help of US-based human rights group Organization for Minorities of India, from inside his church to social media through videos on Youtube and Facebook. Khalsa, who lives in Lathrop, CA, is on a hunger-strike to protest for political prisoners in India who have completed their sentences but are not being released.
“We believe that what affects one community in India affects us all,” says Fr. Lickter, priest at Incarnation Anglican Church. “All of humanity shares the image of God and Christians need to take it seriously when individuals bearing his image are oppressed anywhere.” In prayers for the 83-year-old American Sikh, he asked that God’s “hand would be upon him as he stands against the oppression that he sees in India right now.”
Fr. Lickter sees similarities between the plights of Indian Christians and Sikh political prisoners. He believes both often face the same caste discrimination and political persecution by the predominantly Hindu government. Last month, at a conference in Stockton, CA, he warned that minorities in India are “oppressed because the Indian government embraces a belief system that dehumanizes entire people groups.”
Home to nearly 60 million Christians, India’s religious nationalism is considered by various religious liberty advocates as the leading source of Christian persecution. Although anti-conversion laws criminalizing freedom of conversion encourage violence against religious minorities like Sikhs and Christians, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to nationally implement such legislation. Meanwhile, minorities are seeing their places of worship vandalized as their already impoverished communities are discriminatorily denied essential services like government food subsidies.
Standing behind his church’s altar, Fr. Lickter prayed: “Lord, we ask that you would be with Bapu, that you would strengthen him, as he hungers, as he allows his body to hunger because so many other people right now are hungering for justice.”
The witness of the Church of South India is strengthened as they strive to live Newbigin’s vision. The Church continues to grow, despite harsh persecution, because Christians there have embraced our Lord’s prayer for unity. Christ calls for his people to be one, just as He and the Father are one. (John 17:21) This picture of unity is nowhere more clear than in the work of Christians serving their communities as they recognize their oneness with others made in the image of God.
Father Joshua Lickter pastors Incarnation Anglican Church in Roseville and is part of the Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others in the Anglican Church in North America.
The Independent Institute has released a very timely, bold, new satirical video series on liberty—Love Gov: From First Date to Mandate.
Premiering on YouTube, Love Gov personifies the increasing folly, cost, and intrusiveness of government in the lives of everyone, especially the young.
The 5-part video series depicts the federal government as an overbearing boyfriend—Scott “Gov” Govinsky—who foists his “good intentions” on a hapless, idealistic college student, Alexis. Each episode follows Alexis’s relationship with “Gov” as his intrusions wreak comic havoc on her life, professionally, financially, and socially. Alexis’s loyal friend Libby tries to help her see “Gov” for what he really is—a menace. But will Alexis come to her senses in time? Tune in to find out!
Love Gov is a funny and compelling way to help anyone understand the federal government’s expanding reach into our lives. It’s a lighthearted approach to reach audiences on a personal level and inspire them to learn more and take action.
Watch the trailer here.
The works of Virgil are often associated with painful assigned readings and Latin lessons, but a careful reading of this Roman poetry can help the modern Christian understand the first century context of the Christian Church. The poetry of Virgil’s Eclogues, Georgics, and the Aeneid represents a new shift in classical literature, away from tragedy in the Greek sense and toward the expectation of a new golden age.
Writing in the period following the death of Julius Caesar (44 BC) and during a time of unrest and civil war, Virgil’s initial poetry longs again for peace. Recognizing that the power of the Caesar was not enough to provide a stable future, the poetry focuses on a greater motif of the goodness of creation and nature. Virgil’s agriculture poetry serves two purposes in that it remains relatable to their common life and points to the perfection of the original creation. In relating to his fellow Romans, Virgil’s pastorally lines about husbandry and agriculture remind us of those used a few decades later by the triumphalist born of a virgin who hailed from the town of Nazareth.
The parables of Virgil and Jesus offer accessible wisdom for a generation caught amidst uncertainty and turmoil – hope for people crushed by the weight of the Roman Empire. The use of pastoral parables by Virgil and Jesus are also aimed at the same goal of bringing forth the image of creation. Both the Yahweh of the Jews and the Jupiter of Olympus offer a perfect garden-city where man ought to return. Restoring paradise or returning to Eden is the cultural lens of these pacific scenes of simple farming life. With a clear common cultural context on this issue, it is no surprise that Western culture has kept Virgil in the realm of their own hagiography.
Virgil’s Eclogues represent the first and prophetic part of the poet’s commentary on the political future of Rome. It is here again that Western thinkers picked up on the more messianic triumphalism of Virgil’s writing. The golden age of Rome, according to Virgil’s fourth Eclogue, was to be brought about by the birth of a savior. The following lines represent a messianic view of the man to come:
Yet do thou at that boy’s birth,
in whom the iron race shall begin to cease,
and the golden to arise over all the world,
holy Lucina, be gracious; now thine own Apollo reigns. (2. 8-11.)
It has been speculated whether Virgil may have been influenced by Jewish or Eastern thinkers in putting forward a prophecy similar to those made by Isaiah. Although there is not evidence to suggest that Virgil interacted with the Hebrew writings or even that the later Gospel writers interacted with Virgil’s poetry. Virgil’s messianic verses have caused Christian thinkers throughout the centuries to consider the poet a type of prophet for Christ. The timing of this prophecy is perhaps one of the reasons Dante Alighieri employs Virgil as a “guide” in his own poetry in the Divine Comedy.
Virgil, Dante and the boatman, Phlegyas
While the prophecy of Isaiah would predict the coming of a Messiah whose, “Kingdom would have no end” (Isaiah 9:7), Virgil’s later work would reveal Jupiter putting forth Rome as the “imperium sine fine” or the endless empire. The hope of Virgil’s triumphalism is the imminent realization of this savior to usher in the new world, albeit through Virgil’s personal identification with Roman patriotism, morality, and heroism.
Expecting that the Golden Age of Rome is at hand, Virgil is called to write his great epic The Aeneid. The story is again a garden story. The story of noble and perfect beginnings that Rome now longs for under their current emperor. In a triumphalist sense, Aeneas is to Adam what Octavius is to Jesus. The Rome that was once Eden is to be restored to wealth, virtue, and peace under the rule of the endless empire. There is in this climax a certain parallel between the Pax Augustus and Pax Christi.
Their parallels ultimately converge as St. John the Baptist announces the coming of Christ’s Kingdom. Christ’s role as the “Son of God” serves as a direct challenge to the narrative of Virgil with the Roman Emperor as “son of God.” This doctrine coupled with the Christians’ commitment to only worship the true emperor, is the source of the conflict between Rome and the Christian Church. Christ’s imperial reign begins at the edict of Pilate as this title was hung above his dying body: “Jesus Of Nazareth The King Of The Jews.” The Roman world hungry and ready for the Kingdom of the “Son of God” then follows the Roman Centurion, who at the foot of the cross transferred that title from Rome to Jesus.
Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, and subsequent Roman emperors were regularly referred to as “son of God” (divi filius)
Reading Virgil allows us to see how the Romans of the first century would have received Christ’s ministry and understood the reality of his kingdom. A hearty reminder that the sentimental and personalized Jesus born out of our modern age would make little sense to the ancient reader of the Gospels. Christ’s ascension was a clear picture of his enthronement and his reign from the right hand of the Father. The Kingdom really is now. The hope and longing of all of history is realized in the present reality of the reigning King who has and is making all things new.
by JD Reed
by AT Reyes
At Kuyperian Commentary we begin with the Trinity as the starting point for understanding our relationship to God and to one another. In this perspective, our understanding of the Trinity, informs our understanding of salvation (as against the Arian heresy) and our relationships with each other. Kuyperian Commentary’s founder Pastor Uri Brito explored these implication for the family in his book The Trinitarian Father.
Creedal Christianity has traditionally emphasized the equality of the persons of the Trinity through phrases like, “of one Being with the Father” (Nicene Creed) and “And in this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another.” (Athanasian Creed) In attempting to understand the marriage relationship from a Trinitarian perspective, some scholars have suggested that similar language should be employed in the relationship between husband and wife. The result is a flattened view of the Trinity to emphasize an egalitarian view of marriage.
Recently Peter Leithart (Theopolis Institute) addressed this trend on First Things, identifying what he called, “Gender Arianism.” Leithart explains that:
“Feminists reject the Genesis account of creation as misogynist, but they do so only because they have assumed that to be second is to be subordinate. Whereas Trinitarian theology denies the premise. Eve comes second, not as lesser but as the glory of Adam; Eve is the woman without whom the man is ‘not good.’” (Gender Arianism, FirstThings.com)
RC Sproul Jr. also picked up on this theme on his podcast Jesus Changes Everything. In a short segment on Feminism, RC Jr. explains how the Godhead is understood in both its oneness and diversity, as is true for marriage.
“Now it is true that in the garden Adam and Eve are both made in the image of God; they both are equal in dignity, in value, and importance. But they take different roles. Husbands are called to lead their wives, wives are called to follow their husbands. This does not make husbands more valuable than wives nor wives less valuable than husbands anymore than the fact that God the Son submits to God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit submit to God the Father.
This is no more a denial of the equality of value than the reality that the Father is the authority over the Son and the Spirit. They submit to Him, they proceed from Him, they are equal in power and dignity though they fill different roles. And that is really at the end of the day where we need to come down. We need to recognize the absolute, complete, equal dignity of women. We need to embrace it, we need to celebrate it, and we do need to recognize that men and women are different for God’s glory.” (Feminism, Jesus Changes Everything)
Is marriage modeled after the Trinity egalitarian? As image bearers, our marriages express our view of the Triune God and His faithfulness. In this sense, our marriages are a picture of the Godhead. Husbands who refuse to lead, cherish, and honor their wives create a caricature of the Trinity with their marriages.
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, we’ve collected the best articles about the Apostle to Ireland from around the web…Erin go braugh!
Patrick: Missionary to Ireland by George Grant
Link: http://grantian.blogspot.com/2015/03/patrick-missionary-to-ireland.html
If we missed a good one, post it below in the comments.
Then they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gadarenes. And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no one could bind him not even with chains, because he had often been bound with shackles and chains. And the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces; neither could anyone tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones.
When he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped Him. And he cried out with a loud voice and said, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me.”
For He said to him, “Come out of the man, unclean spirit!” Then He asked him, “What is your name?”
– Gospel of St. Mark 5:1-9
We are given an account of a man who is thought to be mad. The Scriptures describe him as a man with “an unclean spirit” and that he was amongst the tombs, crying out, and cutting himself. Rev. Richard Bledsoe, a Presbyterian Minister from Boulder, Colorado, takes this account of Jesus to speak to the representative nature of our sin. “All of life is representative, we all represent other people. A father represents his family, a king represents his Kingdom, we even call one of our branches of government, ‘The House of Representatives.’ All of life is representative.”
Bledsoe posits that this man has become representative of his village. “He has taken everything that is dark and horrible about that village, and it has all been placed on him. The reason he is naked is because everyone since the fall is naked and ashamed, and all of our attempts to clothe ourselves are nothing but fig leaves. We live with nakedness and shame, and the Gadarene madman has taken the nakedness and the shame from the entire community upon himself. Jesus was crucified naked, he didn’t have a nice robe around his private parts, he was naked. Because he bore the shame of the whole world. We are told he lives among the tombs. Life isn’t just symbolic or literal, it is both at once. He is literally living amongst the tombs, but the actual meaning of it is, that he is already dead. He has suffered death for everyone else in the community.”
“Finally we are told that he cut himself with stones. Today, cutting is a big deal in the adolescent world. Why do we cut? The Greek word is autolapsis – what that translates to is that he, “stones himself.” He is actually executing himself. The whole of the pagan world was taken up with ritual executions. You throw someone off a cliff, you would stone them, etc. This man ritually executes himself, day and night he cuts himself with stones. That is what cutting is: a ritual form of self-execution, at least at some level.”
#DONE! is a micro film written by Rebecca Withey for Project Semicolon, a faith-based movement dedicated to presenting hope and love to those who struggle with depression, self-injury, and suicide. In the microfilm, Withey reintroduces this gospel narrative in a modern context.
Watch it here:
Bledsoe describes our connection to self-harm as a struggle against change. “Our lives may be miserable and wretched, but at least it’s my life and I am familiar with it. I really don’t want anything to change. Even if it is a thousand demons inside of us.”
“Jesus turns to the man, this man is a thing to the community – he is an object, not a person. He has been entirely depersonalized. This may be the first personal act that has happened in this man’s life in 25 years. Jesus turns to the man and says, ‘What is your name?’
“You can imagine the piercing eyes of Jesus looking in. The man answers, ‘My name is legion for we are many’ and then he begs Jesus, ‘Don’t send them out of the country.’ To the man, at least they are my demons, they are my companions, however horrible they are, they are my friends. He is actually begging Jesus to not change anything.”
“But Jesus, in his mercy, ignores the request, Jesus mercifully doesn’t answer a lot of our prayers, because they are not good prayers.”
A thousand demons hurt, cutting hurts, but with them – things stay can the same. Jesus comes and changes everything, but he starts with changing you. Cutting says, “I am not important.” Jesus asks, “What is your name?” Jesus, the King and creator of the universe, takes an interest in our identity. As Jesus looks into the face of the cutter, he sees his own image. Through cutting we make this image unrecognizable, yet Jesus comes down to us and is ready to remake us in His own image by giving us His own name.
“Jesus sends the demons into the pigs and the pigs will become the mirror image of the village. They represent the people. The pigs are driven mad by the presence of the demons, they rush at once off this cliff. They fall off and into the abyss as they have been sent back to hell.”
“It is only Jesus Christ who can not just displace a demon with another or manipulate them, but actually banish them with great authority. And this is what transpires at this point, they are drowned into the sea… Many now go back to the community and they tell them what happened and they are awestruck. They come out and they see the man. The next statement is the most astonishing.”
“They were afraid and they began to plead with him to depart from their region. They want Jesus to leave. Jesus has not just wrecked a portion of the economy, he has also wrecked the whole social structure of this community. The demon possessed man has been holding this community together by taking all of their demons on to him. He was the one who actually gave cohesion and stability to the community. What if he is gone, How on earth are we going to go on? The community cannot cohere without him. The whole community collapses and falls apart.”
“Finally, you see – this now demon-free man comes to Jesus, ‘Can I go with you?’
“But Jesus says no. He tells him to go back and to tell his story and that this is actually part of his reintegration into society.”
“The whole of the western world is very much in the position of this community. Jesus has annihilated the cohesion and stability and the ability to relate in the whole western world. The presence of Jesus has undone all of the ancient world’s ways of relating. It is the Gospel that undid this.”
“We are neurotic, isolated, alone, we do not know how to do marriage, how to have family life, or how to have community because of Jesus Christ.”
“Take two people and what holds them together? They gossip about a third person. Take the third person away, and they don’t know how to relate. That is a small picture of what has happened in the western world.”
Jesus has a plan for this generation of hurting and isolated people. His solution is a new identity based on his death and not on our situation. He asks, “What is your name?” and our story, our identity, begins anew in Him.
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