TheDeSocios.com

Unlike my Westminster brothers I got an extra week of reprieve before finals. I have a 10 page analysis of A Christian Manifesto due Tuesday, and a few finals, but after that I’m in the clear. No finals that I’m really worried about, just two Gamble carpal-tunnel-makers(100 minutes 100 points 100 sentences), and one from Kinneer.

After reading Carl Trueman’s examination of the idea of Creedal revisions I got to thinking about the idea of church-speak in general.
Trueman notes that one of the reasons for the revision of creeds is “when their language no longer has the same field of meaning as it once had.”
Currently our seminary is offering a class on preaching through the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and the problem that many of the guys seem to be running into is stumbling through or failing to explain some of the more archaic language, ie. Question 18:

“Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell?”

A: The sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called Original Sin; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.

As I was listening to the sermon on this question I thought, I could imagine someone saying: “Wait. Its a sin to want righteousness?”

Is this possible misconception enough to say that the language no longer has the same “field of meaning” and should be changed?

Does our protection of the original language of the creeds, end up harming new brother’s and sister’s understanding of what we believe. Should we still say the “quick and the dead?”
Many people would say that we should keep the language the same, and that it is the job of ministers to correct the believers contemporary understanding as to the apparent meaning of the creeds and inform him/her of the historic meaning.
This same thinking would argue that we stick to saying “The Quick and the Dead” and let the pastor latter note “the statement about the quick and the dead, has nothing to do with the 1995 film staring Sharon Stone, and is simply an archaic way of say the living and the dead.”
This to me does not follow the Reformed understanding of making the discipleship of believers a process that happens in vernacular. One of the things that so shaped the reformation was the reformers dedication to communicating in a way that was easily accessible to the people. Should we not follow their pattern and make sure that instruction which is put into the hands of believers is in easily accessible language.

Trueman concludes by saying that “The modern situation presents us with a very different ecclesiastical scene to that of the era of great creeds and confessions.” I would venture to guess that you could not even get NAPARC to agree on an official revision to the Westminster confession of Faith, let alone bring the churches together to work on more universal creedal statements.

In trying to guard the creeds from corruptions, do we setup barriers to them being understood?

Come Soon King Jesus

So things at Seminary have been getting more hectic and this quarter I have some pretty beefy papers due. But beyond just lots of seminary work, when I survey my life I feel like so much of it is wasted and useless. I am not living in the pattern of the Apostles in devoting myself to prayer and the ministry of the word. So where does my time go? Well I bet its a lot like a tire with a slow leak, a little time here and a little time there and soon all your air is gone and you are driving on you rim. Well thats how I feel. I have little time for the more important things, while it seems like hours of my week are spent on meaningless endeavors.
My problem is that I hate schedules, I heard a pastor, maybe it was Keller, talk about biblical time and I thought it was very deep. He said that in the Bible the event set the length of time needed for completion, where now the time sets the amount of work put into an event. So we say we will have a half our devotional, rather than say that we need to commune with God and make that of first importance.
But with certain things I have to just schedule some time. Things like Hebrew, I need to set an hour a day and just work at it, so I can do better in class.

So I just read “Emergence Theory and the Spontaneous Expansion of the Church” written by Tim Keller Senior Pastor of Redeemer PCA in NYC. Its a great article, I explained it to Joanna as being a paradigm shift for planting in reformed and presbyterian circles. I really like the fact that Keller cites Allen, who in my opinion deserves as much admiration as Hudson Taylor.

In the paper Keller examines how the PCA’s dedication to protecting doctrines has led to a hesitancy for the church to allow its non-ordained members to participate in the advance of the kingdom.

Keller emphasizes that three principles are needed to have what he calls “Spontaneous Expansion”: 1 Indigenous Leaders, 2 entrusted with the proclaiming the gospel, and 3 creating missional communities.

One of the most interesting ideas which keller puts fowards is the idea of the importance of Feedback in entrusting indigenous leaders.

“In our desire to “control our doctrine” we have failed to create “ministry teams” and
networks of ministry teams that share a common theological DNA, and work together to
proclaim in depth the gospel of God. We have failed to find ways to coach these
emerging leaders in their depth proclamation of the gospel. We have failed to “entrust”
the glorious gospel of God to emerging church leaders and congregations and to give
appropriate feedback. In our high concern to control doctrine we have kept our doctrine
to ourselves!”

Though nothing that Keller says is a brand new concept it seems like what he has done in this article is pull together the best ideas stirring about missions and ties it together in a way that is very cohesive, and logical. The thing that is most significant to me is Keller’s boldness is examining ideas that many people in the reformed community would consider out of bounds because of their popularity among the group commonly called “emergent”
Ive read the shape of things to come and the idea of bound-set and center-set churches did not sit well with me. I did not see what the church could do in a center-set community in terms of calling people out of sinful lifestyles, but Keller examination of center-set communities reveals how they can be done in a way that is faithful to the cloud of witnesses which came before us.

The Article can be downloaded here.

Another review can be found at goodmanson.com