The Thoughtful Pastorate: Resources to Strengthen Ministry and Christian Life, Pt. 3

I've tried to give the evangelical pastor (and interested layperson) some good resources by which to stay up on current trends in theology and culture. Day one covered explicitly Christian resources; day two provided a mix of blogs and magazines; today I offer up another scattered mix of outlets that you might check once in a while to see what's going on.

1. Relevant Magazine email list (click the link and look to the lower right of the page for a sign-up box) has some good links and gives you a little snapshot of what young, hip, "cool" evangelicals are thinking. Some of it will make you scratch your head, but if your goal is staying in touch with what various groups of people are thinking, this email will help.
2. The 9Marks blog provides lots of good thinking on the church. It asks great questions, questions that most people leading the church won't ask, such as "How does the Bible teach us to structure our churches?" Also, check out Mike McKinley's writing--he can be hilarious (he's the cool 9Marks guy).
3. For that matter, let me recommend the 9Marks site. Have you checked it out? I talk about it pretty often on this blog, but if you've never bookmarked, you really should. The site has a ton of good content--interviews, book reviews, and articles, all of which center around the church and its life. The bimonthly newsletter is nothing less than exceptional and will acquaint with current conversations on the church.
4. The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has a great blog called GenderBlog. Because gender issues are so important and contested right now, you should avail yourself of the content on this blog. Some pieces are brief, but you'll be able to stay up with current trends on this hugely important subject. Also, go to GirlTalk for helpful writing on Christian womanhood (and check out Carolyn McCulley's blog on womanhood from a single's perspective--excellent).
5. Once in a while, take a spin through some cutting-edge cultural reference points--sites like The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, People, Conde Nast, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, and so on. You'll want to be careful on some of these sites about what content you view, but if you are, you'll gain a healthy perspective on what people in various pockets of culture are thinking, coveting, and struggling with.

One of the most helpful things you can do as a pastor and a thoughtful Christian person is to acquaint yourself with local media. For example, now that I'm in Chicago, I pick up the free RedEye magazine and read Sheridan Road magazine (also free) when it's sent to me. RedEye keeps me up to date on what hipsters and edgy twentysomethings are thinking, while Sheridan Road lets me know what the ultra-rich of the North Shore are into.

This is one of the most helpful ways you can think culturally as a Christian, and therefore minister more effectively in your setting (like Paul at Mars Hill in Acts 17). Identify the leading thought media of your area and browse it to learn what people are thinking and talking about. I learned to do this from my former boss, Dr. Al Mohler, and also from Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll, each of whom excels at reading, understanding, and speaking to the culture. I followed their example in DC, in Louisville, and I plan to do it wherever I go in order to connect with people better and minister to them.

I hope that this brief series has been helpful to you. There is an avalanche of resources I could recommend and there are many that readers will identify as personally helpful that I have not listed here. However, I'm confident that the fifteen to twenty resources listed here will greatly assist pastors across the nation (and perhaps the world) to stay up to date on both Christian and secular culture. You and I need to know the Word, preeminently, before anything else; but beyond this, it will really help us to know what people are thinking. The world is constantly changing, and we should not fall behind as we engage it.

Ministering as if we're in a vacuum may not prevent us from faithful ministry, but it won't do much to help us. Bookmark some of these links, get in touch with the world, and get passionate to reach all corners of your world for Christ.

Does Politics Have Something to Teach Us About Evangelism?

I found this quote from the New Yorker piece on Obama very interesting from an evangelistic standpoint:

"Gradually, Chicago caught up with the rest of the country and media-driven politics eclipsed machine-driven politics. “It became increasingly difficult to get into homes and apartments to talk about candidates,” Rose said. “High-rises were tough if not impossible to crack, and other parts of the city had become too dangerous to walk around in for hours at a time. And people didn’t want to answer their doors. Thus the increasing dependence on TV, radio, direct mail, phone-banking, robocalls, et cetera—all things that cost a hell of a lot more money than patronage workers, who were themselves in decline, anyway, because of anti-patronage court rulings.” Instead of a large army of ward heelers dragging people to the polls, candidates needed a small army of donors to pay for commercials. Money replaced bodies as the currency of Chicago politics. This new system became known as “pinstripe patronage,” because the key to winning was not rewarding voters with jobs but rewarding donors with government contracts."

I'm not concerned with the broader point of this article. I'm interested in what this brief quotation on the public dynamics of inner-city Chicago might suggest about the currents of American society. People, it seems, don't want to be bothered when at home. They want to be left alone. They don't want strangers coming around, knocking on their doors, interrupting their daily routine (or lack of it). They want to be anonymous.

Why am I bothering to work through this? Because it might shed light on how to do evangelism in the current day. I am not one to say that evangelism must be done in a particular way in order to evangelize a particular group of people. While I do acknowledge that wisdom and strategy are a part of witness (see Paul in Mars Hill in Acts 17), I would also say that God's gospel can penetrate human hearts in a variety of ways. People get saved in predictable and unpredictable ways. Street preachers, tracts, door-to-door witnessing, music, friendship--in these and many other ways, the gospel goes out, the Spirit of God moves, and people get saved.

So I would not consign door-to-door evangelism to the woodpile. I think it can be useful and good. However, I think that this quotation instructs we who are the church to reach out in creative ways in a closed-off society. In many places, people don't sit on their front porches (they don't have front porches to sit on), they don't engage with strangers in their homes, they put up signs to discourage solicitors, and they generally want to be left alone when at home. Many of these same people, though, do go to coffee shops and other "third places" to relax in a social environment.

It is my suggestion, then, that we not necessarily jettison door-to-door witnessing, but that we refine our model of evangelism, and try to reach people in natural settings in which they are comfortable being approached by strangers. Joining leagues, playing sports, attending book discussions, going to coffee shops--these are the kinds of things that I think Christians should do, and do evangelistically. Though people like anonymity and privacy at home, they also crave community, particularly because many of them have lost ties to traditional institutions like the church. Men's and women's clubs, mainline denominations, political organizations--all have seen numerical decline in recent decades (see Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone for more on this). And yet as people migrate away from established socializing, they migrate toward unstructured interaction in places like Starbucks. We should see this cultural shift and move into it.

I'm not seeking an evangelistic revolution here (good thing!), but am rather trying to pick up cultural cues for the purpose of effective witness in our age. I wouldn't jettison older methods of evangelism, but I would seek to add newer methods, all for the purpose of glorifying God through the salvation of lost, lonely, isolated, unhappy sinners just like I once was.

The Week-est Link, July 18, 2008

1. You thought your tryouts for your high school teams were tough? Trying living in California and trying out with the sons of Joe Namath, Wayne Gretzky, and Will Smith.

2. Ever wonder how an album gets recorded? Here's a peek into the recording of the "Looked Upon" album I mentioned last week.

3. How was Barack Obama shaped by his time in Chicago? The New Yorker answers the question in no less than fifteen "pages" of online content. I can't believe that they give this stuff away for free.

4. Future historian of note Matthew Hall surveys a number of important works on the history of religion in the South. A rich field of study, for sure.

--Have a great weekend, all.

The Week-est Link, June 20, 2008: New England Pastors

1. I don't know if you saw this from a few days back, but a New England pastor named Josh left a moving comment on my blog about small churches. Here it is in its entirety:

"I am a New England pastor, and I would wholeheartedly agree with your assessment. The pastors in my association are good men who devote a lot of time to their people. Most of us are bi-vocational, because our churches are too small to pay us full-time. Were any of us to go to other parts of the U.S., we would probably see more tangible results because of the myriad differences in culture. However, we are doing what we can up here to fulfill the commissions given to us. To say that results are the measure of success, instead of fidelity to the Gospel, is probably well-meant but really quite wrong. Results cannot be the be-all end-all for churchmen if our ministries are to be cruciform."

An elegant testimony, and a true one. Thank you, Josh (I don't know him to my knowledge) for commenting. Are there any other New Englanders who want to chip in? Or, is there anyone else out there who labors in a small church as a layman or pastor who would like to comment? I'd love to get your thoughts.

2. My buddy Jed Coppenger, a PhD student in Systematic Theology at Southern Seminary, wrote a stirring tribute to his dad about ten days ago. Read it both to enjoy Jed's reflections and to shape a little bit of your vision for your own family and the families in your churches.

3. An interesting piece from a New Yorker blog about how Barack Obama failed to act with chivalry toward Hillary Clinton during their debates.

4. Get Coldplay's "Parachutes" album for a stunning $1.99. Thanks, Vitamin Z, for the link.

5. Are you weary in your faith? Do you need some music to lift you up? Then pick up Sovereign Grace Music's new cd "Come Weary Saints". You will find several tunes that encourage you and direct you to the promises of God. The first song, "Hide Away in the Love of Jesus", is alone worth the price of the album. It is literally one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. Click the link to hear lengthy samples of the songs.

Have a great weekend, all.

The Week-est Link, April 4, 2008: The Lord's Prayer, Rhapsody in August, and the Explanatory Power of Credobaptism

1. My wife showed me this video of a tiny little girl singing the Lord's prayer. It's precious. Out of the mouth of babes...

2. If you have not seen have August Rush, then you have not heard "August's Rhapsody". Therefore, you are impoverished. Listen to this little girl sing--it is nothing short of rapturous! Click the link, listen to the song, and then watch the movie. As I recently wrote, it's not a perfect movie, but it's inspiring and at times quite beautiful.

3. Future Southern Baptist theologian Robbie Sagers publishes a review of an excellent new book on the doctrine of believer's baptism. It's well-written and has a great section on how to approach the doctrine from a christocentric, kingdom-focused perspective. I found that part illuminating, and I think you will, too. (HT: Henry Institute)

4. Is the American newspaper soon to be extinct? Read this exhaustive piece in the New Yorker, and then get back to me. Things don't look good. What does that mean for our society?

5. The scariest photo I think I've ever seen. Dever + Mahaney + theological cooperation=T4G (very good, on the whole). Dever + Mahaney + physical merger=some sort of alien conqueror. (HT: Justin Taylor)

6. Blog gem: Standing on Shoulders. This is a group blog done by several SBTS students, all of whom are sharp, godly guys and friends of mine. Their blog is young but is already quite good, with lots of dense, helpful material on church history and theology. (Not every "Blog Gem" will be a church history blog, I promise). Check out their blog, and prepare for edification.

Have a great weekend, all. Christ is risen!

The Strange and Consuming Spectacle That Is "Extreme Home Makeover" and "Oprah's Big Give"

I confess that until recently I had not watched a minute of the ABC show "Extreme Home Makeover." Then, randomly, I watched a few moments several weeks ago, my snobbery at mainstream American entertainment (temporarily) overcome. I came away touched by the show's heart, even as I found aspects of it quite interesting.

There's another show remarkably similar to this one, called "Oprah's Big Give" or something like that. The thing I find most interesting, and potentially troubling, about both of these shows is that they marry "consumerism and altruism", as a recent New Yorker piece by Nancy Franklin put it. Both shows involve lots of money and product being spent and given to help people. Now, let me say that I am not certainly not against money and materials being given to people. However, we should note that this is perhaps a uniquely modern way of philanthropy. Forget the monks of centuries past who would renounce all in order to live with and serve the poor. Now, we enlist corporate America, build the needy a McMansion, and adjust the television cameras to just the right angle to get that killer close-up. Does all this negate the positive effects of the so-called "consumerist charity" entertainment fare mentioned above? I'm not sure that it does. But then again, I'm not really sure what exactly to think of this brand of entertainment. It is quite clearly a mix of positive and concerning traits.

With my concerns quickly registered, I will say that I think that Christians should watch at least one episode of "Extreme Home Makeover". The show's host, Ty Pennington, seems to have a heart for people. He's a little wired and a little youngish for me, but he does seem to care for the needy, and he has, in his own way, helped many. Of course, his deeds don't seem to be done out of a redeemed heart (though I don't know what he claims religiously), and thus they aren't ultimately worthy, but in an earthly sense, it is convicting and encouraging to see a person working for the betterment of other people. All of the above qualification applies, but at the end of the day, I watch the show, and I think to myself, wow, this guy is doing stuff. What am I doing? How much do I do to advance the gospel and heal the broken everywhere around me? Do I even think of such people and such needs? Or do I think far, far more about me and my interests and my concerns and my own little atomized life?

For just a little while, this show makes me want to live for others, makes me want to reorganize my priorities so that my life is one long stream of blessing pouring into the lives of others. I can make a biblical and theological case for relaxation and enjoying God's good gifts and the importance of free time, as many can, but at the end of the day, I have to ask myself, where does the balance lie? It's easy to cast aside shows like "Extreme Home Makeover", to sniff at them, to deride them as thoughtless, silly, done out of wrong motives, culturally lowbrow, and so on. Some of those critiques would be true. But none of this does anything to change the fact that this show actually does reflect, however imperfectly, one of the fundamental tenets of biblical Christianity, namely, that we should live for others and not for ourselves. We who are redeemed are called to share and live out the gospel in our world, and this means sharing the faith verbally and then putting it into practice in tangible ways to heal, mend, and bless.

"Extreme Home Makeover" is not perfect. But perhaps it is a little gift of God in the form of a prodding--if overcaffeinated--reminder to we who are redeemed that our faith should not be passive but active. If the lost around us outdo us in caring for others, what does this say of our faith? More to the point, what does it say of our hearts? One wonders what Ty Pennington and his crew are like when the cameras are off. But for us, there is no need to wonder. Most of us do not have and will never have cameras on us. What people see is what we are. What do they see? Is our faith alive? Is it working? Or is it self-consumed, self-serving, or more scarily, dead?

Training a "Gospel Girl" When Every Daughter Wants to Be a "Gossip Girl"

The New Yorker has a good story on a series of books that you may or may not have heard about. They're called the "Gossip Girl" books and they deal with a pack of tony New York prep school kids who act like, well, tony New York prep school kids. I can write that line with credibility--I went to college with a bunch of this type. They were fascinating to a small-town Maine boy, much like a rare species of African bird. I have not read the books that touch on this demographic and will not be reading them at this time. I can, however, say that Christians should be aware of these books and the worldview they represent. If you have kids, or if you are involved in ministry to teens, or if you are remotely interested in how the culture is thinking, you will want to be aware of this series and the tv show it has spawned.

Janet Malcolm, the author of the piece, summarizes the key characters of the show in this fashion:

"As the first book opens, Blair Waldorf—who is almost seventeen and lives in a penthouse at Fifth Avenue and Seventy-second Street, with her divorcée mother, Eleanor, her younger brother, Tyler, and her cat, Kitty Minky—is sulking in her room. Blair, in the description of a classmate, is...an antiheroine of the first rank: bad-tempered, mean-spirited, bulimic, acquisitive, endlessly scheming, and, of course, dark-haired. The blond heroine, Serena van der Woodsen (who lives at an even better Fifth Avenue address, right across from the Metropolitan Museum), is incandescently beautiful, exceptionally kind, and, in the end, it has to be said, somewhat boring. The series belongs to awful Blair, who inspires von Ziegesar’s highest flights of comic fancy."

Apparently, Blair attempts to accomplish two goals throughout the series: sleeping with a boy she likes and getting into Yale. Serena apparently is nicer and morally purer than Blair. The series involves a series of exchanges between the two and various boys, with a good deal of commentary thrown in on modern rich parents. The parents of these girls and their classmates seem to do very little to regulate, constrain, or direct the behavior of their progeny, though they wish ardently for their children to attain the trappings of a "good life": an excellent education, wealth, an attractive spouse/partner. The show, which I have not watched but am familiar with, seems to follow roughly the same lines as the book series, though with larger roles for the parents.

So what's the big deal, one might ask? Well, it's my humble opinion that though we Christians may not watch this show (and shows like it), and though we may very well steer our children from such fare, we will nonetheless benefit from knowing that it exists and from studying its worldview to anticipate how the secular world will be influenced and, in turn, will seek to influence our children. Books and shows like "Gossip Girl" have a serious trickle-down effect in the broader culture. There's a reason that they're set in New York, one of the cultural capitals of the world, and they influence the way that children all across the world think and view themselves and others. These particular works seem to encourage the reader to think that parents (and adults more broadly) are stupid, irresponsible, and not worthy of the authority they possess; that it is good and right for children (teens) to pursue sex, intrigue, and materialism of the most excessive sort; that beauty and social standing set one's course in life. Of course, the author of this series mocks these views, but it seems clear that her mockery is set in a worldview that simultaneously enjoys and even celebrates them. If beauty and materialism really aren't important, why write a series of novels that, however ironically, celebrates them?

We need to know about cultural influencers like Gossip Girl. In a culture that prizes wealth, beauty, and social standing to an extreme degree, we must make sure that we prize spiritual wealth, spiritual beauty, and kingdom standing. We must take care to train our children, whether in our families or our churches, to reject the culture's ideals and principles and to embrace God's. I can only think of what series like this will do to a young girl, culturally plugged-in, who does not have a strong Christian family to train her to think rightly about Gossip Girl. It is only natural to assume that she will measure herself by its standards, prize its worldview, and slowly, quietly turn away from the true beauty and riches of the Christian faith. The things of this world do not appear to the natural man as hideous, remember, but as beautiful.

Gossip Girl is a polished bauble in the eyes of many girls today and is a part of a culture that creates great animosity for things of God. Let us work, then, to create families where biblical womanhood (and manhood) is celebrated, where beauty is seen primarily in spiritual terms, where wealth in Christ is far more precious than the designer labels that call out for our consumption. Gossip Girl may tempt young women, but when it is placed alongside a joyful, God-centered, well-led Christian family and church, its luster will fade, and our girls will not want to be women of gossip and intrigue, but women of the gospel.