TheDeSocios.com

“When belonging in the social hierarchy of the local church becomes a greater desire than becoming Christ to our neighbors outside the church we have returned to the glum decor of the castle walls. Hiding in fear of losing a kingdom we never had or were called to build…”

Great post over at setnservice.

I subscribe to the Church Marketing Lab flickr pool.
Yesterday one of the contributors posted this info on a forum:
“Target demographic of our church: people who have never been to church, or those burned out on church and haven’t been in a long time.
Ages: 20s & 30 somethings”
Then today another said his church was “pursuing the un- or de-churched.”

I got to thinking about this and realized that I havent heard of a church seeking to minister to the “60-70 year olds who always loved church” market.
It seems like a few things need to noted. One a church should be seeking to engage its community, if you live in an town where only 20% of the population is 20-30 then I wonder if you are not being faithful to the call to engage your surrounding. Two, of course most people know the stat that says that most people become Christians when they are in their teens and twenties, but when we go after this group only, are we sending a message that says that we are willing to sacrifice today for tomorrow, that we think some how the Holy Spirit has a window of opportunity.

On the opposite side though in my mind it seems kind of like a given that a church is going to put effort into reaching those outside the kingdom. One might make a valid case that if a church is not trying to reach the world with the message of Christ, they have not received that message themselves.

In looking back on the long(tongue-in-cheek) time I have spent as a seminary student, I realize that there are a number of books that I wish I had been encouraged to read while at seminary, a few of these books were given as class texts, but most of them were simply recommendations from wiser men. So here is my attempt at a list of books that I think every person wanting to be a pastor(intern, seminarian, or whatever else they are called) should read. Books that classes might not required but that should be on your reading list anyways.

Here is my thinking behind these books, In Acts 6 we see that “prayer and to the ministry of the word” are central to shepherding God’s flock. We see other duties of a pastor in the rest of the NT(1 Peter 4, 1 Timothy, etc.), and what we develop is the idea that a pastor, is an under shepherd, to use Peter’s language. Therefore the books on this list are not necessarily about being an irresistible revolutionary, or how to find literary structures in the Old testament, but rather books that shape what we understood about God, our duty, and His flock.

If you can think of any books that should be on this list, drop me a comment.

1. A Faith Worth Sharing

   Our generation has guys like Keller and Piper to look up to. Their generation had men like Schaeffer and the lesser know Jack Miller. Dr Miller’s book a faith worth sharing is not a hard read but one that reveals hows a mature man of God can look back on his life, and evaluate what he did in his ministry. The book is an account of his personal walk with God from months after his conversion, to years later when he was teaching at Westminster and Planting New Life Presbyterian Church in Philly. If you appreciated the autobiographical way that Driscoll wrote Confessions of a Reformission Rev you will be strengthened by this book.

2. Biblical Preaching

   If preaching, and teaching is one of the key aspects of preparing to be a pastor, then this book is a must. This one was required in school and I am very grateful that it was.

3. Manual of Christian Doctrine
   

   I know that if you are planning on being a pastor you will own at least one type of systematic theology book. As long as you are evangelical you will appreciate Louis Berkof’s Manual of Christian Doctrine. I know the title sounds like the book is going to be 3000 pages worth of nap time, but this book is actually a trimmed down version of his Systematic Theology, which some call the other big blue sleeping pill.

4. Missionary Methods: Paul’s or Ours

   Roland Allen was a missionary in the lineage of men like Hudson Taylor. He was a missionary to China, with the Anglican Church, and while there he started asking tougher questions about the way a church in a non Christian society worked. He came down saying local churches needed to be “self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing”. In this work he traces the Paul’s missionary efforts, and asks the question: Are we following Paul’s pattern or are we making it up as we go along.

5. 2000 Years of Christ Power
   

   This three volume history text, makes reading about church history interesting and enjoyable. Needham’s writing style makes you think that maybe there could be some reason to read about the men that stood before us(again tongue-inc-cheek).

6. Biblical Hermeneutics

   So this is not the most exciting of reads but if you want to be a pastor than you need to care about the Bible.

7. Blue Like Jazz

   Now I know that some of you are scratching your heads on this one but guess what like it or hate it Blue Like Jazz has sold over 550,000 copies world wide.Which means that we are going to run into a lot off people who really really like this book. I can think of one guy in the church where I work, who said that he would give this book to struggling friend. If Paul could read greek poets we can read don Miller(do I have to say tongue-in-cheek).

8. Powerful Evangelism for the Powerless
   

   Yup a second Jack Miller book. I’m actually reading this book not and and very upset at the fact that it was not required reading at seminary. So many men could really benefit from what Dr. Miller has to say on this topic. If you think your evangelism can improve then get this book.

9. Eternal Word and Changing Worlds

   I feel confident in saying that many people under the age of 60 will say that this is a classic. It actually took me a couple of times before I could really start to understand and appreciate this book. As one WTS professor has suggested, you could probably start at section three and find the book more understandable and easier to read, and then go back to the other sections.

10. Confessions of a Reformission Rev.

    I was hesitant to put this on the list because its one of those books thats hip-to-own. I decided to put it on here because I am guessing that most seminary guys dont read this book, maybe Im wrong and its required for Emerging Missiology 101. I’ve read this book three times now, and I still enjoy the way that Driscoll, seeks to be biblical and yet is very honest and sometimes cutting about certain practices (ie. “As I studied the Bible, I found more warrant for a church led by unicorns than by majority vote” p.103). Driscoll examines why we do what we do.

If you are like me you have a number of sites that you hope around to every once in a while. Being someone who was a visual communications major in college I see what the guys over at churchmarketingsucks (CMS) has to say. Most of the time I just get annoyed by the fact that no one is doing things because God said it works, but because some slick pr guy said it would.

Anyways I was over at CMS and saw a post about lifechurch.tv (thats their name and their web adress.) So I wanted to read this blog post over at lifechurch, but i couldnt find it, but I did find this post about how they are starting a secondlife service.

“Casey Davis here (aka ‘Casey Davidson’ in Second Life). This is the first in a series of regular blog posts for LifeChurch.tv’s Second Life Campus. If you weren’t around we had quite the weekend at our two experiences (8 & 9:30AM PDT).

The first experience kicked off with everyone coming in their latest movie character avatars. We even had a life-sized realistic Bumblebee Autobot (from the latest Transformers movie). Luckily, he sat in the back row!”

Does this sound crazy to anyone other than me?
Is there a line that is being crossed where u say “I don’t know what you call that, but it aint the church”?

Last week Art Boulet wrote a post called “conform to church and convert to christ” the post was interesting and it got several comments, including this one from me:

Here is the problem, if you are ministering in an area over like say 10k people, you are limiting who you are reaching by embracing one culture over the other, and many people would rather have everyone feel a bit uncomfortable and a bit relaxed, than have a certain group love it and a certain group hate it. So they figure its better to also be a different culture rather than alienate some group.

On this side of contextualization I can really relate. Im not sure how Barnabus and Paul contextualized at Antioch, but when we get to Acts 13 and read of the leaders in the church we see this amazing multicultural church. I feel like the question is how do you speak to many cultures, both on their own and together.

Do parts of the world have a meta-culture?

Art responded to many including mine in a post that he put up a few days ago:
I don’t believe that there is something as a “meta-culture.” I think there are similarities in cultures that we can all embrace, but I think a search for a meta-culture is as empty as the modernist’s search for a “metalanguage.”

I wanted to clarify what I was thinking, and so I started to write a response to Art in his new post, but when I saw that the comment was very long I thought it might be better to publish my understanding here and simply say thanks Art for getting me to write down my thoughts on this subject, and wrestle with my opinion.

Below you will find the “comment” that I was going to send to Art:

Well let me better define what I mean by meta-culture. In biological examination we see classifications that show how close one animal is to another, so there is a species of fruit fly that is unique, but as we examine the biological classifications We see that fruit flies fit into a larger group called animalia which includes every type of animal on the planet.

Similarly, in sociology we see that one ethnic group might be made up of numerous smaller tribes, which might have a rich and distinct culture,yet they all share common aspects that can been seen throughout.

In examining cultures isn’t it possible to find threads that run through many if not all cultures. Things that are part of the human soul, that find their expression in slightly different ways, yet share a common goal. Like emotions such as a desire to belong, which created numerous shame based cultures, but reveals itself in much of America not through shame but through a perpetual desire to be better than everyone else, through consumerism.

Watch cribs, or home and Garden TV, or walk the streets of the poorest part of the city, and from most groups, there is a high value put on technology.

I guess that is what I was taking a shot at explaining.

The ministry challenges seems to come in deciding whether your goal is to reach the social species, or the social genus, or even the social family of cultures.

I don’t think you can argue that contextualization is a biblical pattern, so to me the great question is how broad of a group do we contextualize for? Of course no church can reach every group of people, but I’m not convinced that it is impossible for one church to speak to many different groups.
Are we to seeking to a be a church contextualized for all of upstate New York(an illustration Art used), or are we going to contextualize our church to “rental car agency shuttle bus drivers”
These are of course the two ends of the spectrum, millions of people over hundreds of miles, or a few hundred people in a few locations. But where did Paul fall in this spectrum? As I mentioned before Antioch could be seen as a social-genus type of church, but is that the pattern which Paul lays down for us?