A Philosophy Of Where To Live
by Sam
Tags: Apology, Community, Contextualization, Culture, Messy Christianity, Pittsburgh
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Over the last month, my wife and I have been traveling between NY, West Virginia, and Indiana. Over these weeks we have been able to examine why people choose to live where they live.
As many of you know I am firmly committed to living in the city of Pittsburgh, and am always encouraging others to love the robo-city. As I have had to be away from the place I love I have had to ask myself why do I care so much about living in Pittsburgh? Why do I live in Pittsburgh, and why do people live anywhere?
At one point the idea of living in the city was seen by most people as a foolish thing to do. After all cities are dangerous, they are polluted and its harder to be a Christian. In recent years, this has begun to change. Gentrification has made it socially acceptable to dwell in cities. While men like Tim Keller, and others, have also encouraged Christians to see the strategic importance of Christians living in and loving cities.
To those who live in the suburbs this might come as a shock, but I have to admit when Christians who live in cities get together, they tend to bad mouth anyone who doesn’t share their passion of the urban context. There is perceived mutual enlightenment among those who live in the city. After all, we have the culture and the community that others wish they had, or should wish they had if they knew what was good for them. Folks in the suburbs might hear this and chuckle, while folks from the country might laugh at both groups and offer up their simple, one with nature life style, as a rebuttal.
Though I think Dr. Keller has many good reasons, why Christians should live in the city, I think the question that all Christians need to be asking themselves is why should I live anywhere? If you have realized your brokenness and sought redemption and reconciliation with God, than you will respond. All Christians are called to live differently, their are called to see their lives as more than simply the pursuit of comfort or safety. More than simply the accumulation of family and happiness. Too often Christians do not examine their own lifestyle choices. It is not enough to send money to missionaries who have been called to a far of place. Though not all people are called to live in some far off place, God calls all Christians to become missionaries, in a broader sense of the word.
All Christians must ask themselves where is God calling me to live?
Is God calling you to live near work so you can be home more often? Is he calling you to live in a smaller home rather than a larger one? Is he calling you to an at-risk neighborhood? Or to one of great affluence?
Let me offer up some simple principles that I have come to accept:
God wants you to love people. Pick a place where you can get to know people. Or find local ways to interact with people that you would not meet otherwise.
You should care more about God and people than about your house. Jack Miller rightly points out that most of us are too worried about scuffed furniture and wear and tear, and not worried enough about caring for people who live around them.
Your trust should be in God not in your choice of neighborhood. Christians need to go beyond buying the smallest house in the best neighborhood. People need to realize that every place is safe when you trust that Christ is on his throne, just consider the Chinese church. If you are worried about living in an “unsafe” place I would challenge you to consider how much you are truly trusting God.
Figure out how to live where God is calling you to live. People need to be loved and they need to learn of the love that died for their sake. People need this in places that are very expensive and, they need this in places that are very poor. This means that folks should choose to live in high priced neighborhoods, and others should chose to live in lower cost neighborhoods. Each brings risks and rewards.
Live where God is calling you not necessarily where you want to live. “Not my will but your will” ring a bell?
Some might look at where Jo and I live and say: you are less safe, or making less money on your investment. You could get more home for your money, in different area. Our answer is that as far as we can tell God has called us to live in Lawrenceville, and we plan to be their for better or worse until he calls us to move somewhere else.
I hope that all Christians will continue to ask themselves why did we move here? or where is God calling us to live?
What’s Your Motive?
In community group on Friday, I asked a question to the group that has been mulling around in my mind for a while: If you could change the world, but no one would know it was you, would you still do it?
What drives your life? Why are you doing what you are doing? What’s your motive?
So often we are obsessed with being the best, knowing the most, being recognized for our accomplishments. Bu to be the best means that not everyone can share that title. Some people try to make themselves appear better than they are, and most of those people just look like jerks.
In Acts 5 there is this odd little sentence where a group of people say we are not going to try and please people. We are not going to be motivated by public opinion polls, or even threats. We are going to be motivated by God and do the things that please him, even when those things are hard and they cause us to be scorned. If we have to choose between pleasing people or pleasing God we are going to please God.
Who are you seeking to please? Are you seeking to please yourself? Are you seeking to please other people, maybe a parent, or a friend? The real question is why are you seeking their approval?
At the heart of Christianity is the idea, that we are unable earn God’s approval. Instead Christ does everything for us, so that when God looks upon his people he sees the perfect work of Christ.
(Image from The path less travelled)
The Battery Life of Christian Cultural Influence Cont.
by Sam
Tags: Contextualization, Culture, Messy Christianity, The Bible
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After about a month of not finishing this article I finally took some time to sit down and complete my thoughts on this issue.
The percentage of “churched” Americans has continued to rise over the last 100 years. Yet at the same time there is a sense that especially since the 1960′s there has been a dramatic change in the cultural influence the church has in American society. How are we to take these two seemingly contradictory notions.
Here is what I think might be happening in the last 50 or more years.
the evangelical church in general came into existence of of the fighting over modernism vs fundamentalism. The American Evangelical church can be seen as a fighting church, it fought to maintain the infallibility of Scripture, what some would call the battle for the Bible. Christians no matter what their denomination, theology, or church practices, were in agreement when it came to defending the authority of the Scripture. In reality, American Evangelicals, had won the biggest fight in their time, they had defended the reliability of the Bible. Once that battle had been fought, the church maintain a mentality of fighting. I think it is fair to say that the church lost its focus. This proper ecumenicism among different branches of the vine began to fade.
Many churches turned their focus from defending the core of their faith, to lamenting the changing face of American Spirituality. Rather than prophetically speaking into a culture that was rejecting even the notion of a knowable God, many churches decided circled the wagons and began to attack certain cultural trends that bothered their established membership. So the church lamented–over Longer hair and beards, guitars in worship, the lost of Hymns for choruses, the use of technology, and many other issues that should not have taken up their focus. Churches that forbid their members from dancing, were more faithful than those who didn’t. Churches that introduced guitars were more obedient to the great commission than those who still used the piano. The churches that I grew up observing were divided along style choices, that claimed to be based on major doctrinal significance. We have splintered, we have spent our energy fighting each other and fighting against every minor cultural taste.
The church has spent much of its resources on peripheral issues. We now find ourselves running on the cultural fumes of yester-year. Put another way, we have been yelling about secondary issues for so long, that we are finding it difficult to speak to more crucial issues because our prophetic voice has become hoarse.
Christians need to reorient their ways of thinking. We must repent of any, and all cultural corruptions, either from the modern or post-modern, the right or the left, the red or the blue. We must shake off all the cultural baggage that has hindered our fulfillment of the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Most Christians have accepted that their flavor of Christianity is the one true faithful flavor left, and we must call on the Spirit to remove out pride.
We must use the resources that the Lord has entrusted to us with, to Love the Lord Our God with all our heart soul mind and strength, to Love our neighbor as ourselves, and to help every other brother and sister do the same. All with confidence that Grace will extend to more and more people, with the result being more thanksgiving all to the Glory God.
The Stupidity of the Cross
Here is the audio from my latest sermon at RPTS, the text I preached from was 1 Corinthians 1:18-19, the Sermon was entitled The Stupidity of the Cross.
My Jesus is weak.
I must repent, I have a defective view of who Jesus is. My defect is not that I put too much into my view of Jesus, but too little. I know in my head that he is my propitiation, but his propitiation is too weak. I know the doctrinal truths of the historic creeds, but nothing of the passions which necessitated them.
Maybe I am not the only one guilty, but I am guilty. I am supremely guilt of seeking to be like the Apostolic Church in some respects but not others. I with, all my heart, pray that I will find “favor with all the people”, yet my prayers reveal that I do not care enough about speaking “the word of God with boldness” I have foolishly pitted God’s word against itself.
I have placed favor with the people over and against speaking the word of God boldly.
I am not interested in people, because I do not think that I can really bring these people anything that is really powerful. I think that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is weak, and therefore it is not important enough to mess up the status quo, of my life. I doubt what the Ghost can really do.
How does this fall out in my life, I sit in the coffee shop I smile and am polite to people, but I am afraid of messing up the status quo, I have friendly conversations, but I have no confidence in what Jesus can do.
When I have no confidence in what he can do, I, in effect, have no confidence in who he really is.
Jesus is the king yet I think of him as middle management. He is the Truth yet I think he is just a good idea.
Please help me, pray that Jesus would forgive my ignorance about him, and that I might have confidence in who Christ is and what he can do.
Messy Christianity
One of the things that I mosted notices when I came to City Reformed was that it was really messy work. One of the biggest sins Christians fall into is thinking that people need to “clean up” their lives before they start coming to church, this tends to create very tidy very safe spaces, where people can come once they have fixed some of their bigger problems.
Driscoll has a great video talking about the messy nature of the church. This is Driscoll humbly saying why they do what they do – check it out.
This was done for the Desiring God conference in 2006.
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