Keller, Kingdom and City

Keller’s kingdom coming through city churches theme is persistent and, from the amount of explaining he seems to have to do about it, controversial.

I was raised on much of this stuff. My father pastored an urban congregation in Paterson New Jersey for 36 years. That was the world I grew up in. He recently wrote a book with his recollections mostly of those years called "Chains of Grace" which can be found at Amazon.com In the Urban Mission Journal put out by Westminster Seminary my parents and I wrote articles on parenting in the city. (Dad and Mom’s, pdf , mine , pdf, ) It’s interesting listening to the further development of this, especially in the light of the "culture war" waged by the Religious Right. My recollection of the urban missions movement was that it tended to be more about mission work rather than cultural transformation. Now 20 years later Keller’s iteration of this is more advanced, deeper and more pervasive.

Keller Sermon Series on Transformation

There is a very good sermon on money:  The Issue of Money between the series on Defeater beliefs and this next series. There's another posting on the website on a money seminar  Money and The Steward Leader , both are good. I like how he approaches the fact that unlike something like adultery greed is far more difficult to get a handle on. Good stuff, well worth listening to. Money in our world is life. It is an amazing invention in terms of its ability to connect disconnected areas of life, quantify them, and turn them into a market. Money is life in our culture and we should examine ourselves in terms of how it holds our heart.

The next series is on Romans 6, 7, 8 and will deal with transformation. It addresses the challenge: "if we are really saved by grace, doesn't that mean that we will take it for granted and live lawlessly?" On another level the series is about how we change. We are not only motivated by gratitude, we are motivated by the destruction that our sinful nature wreaks in our lives. In the first sermon  Perfect Freedom Keller gives an overview.

In the second  Splitness  Keller uses the book Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson to illustrate our sinful fallen nature. He then moves on to illustrate, I think very well, how willfull application of the law can actually makes us more sinful. You can find a text version of Stevenson's book at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/43 .

Letter to a friend struggling with Revelation

Identity: Gen 16 Sarai and barrenness

The more I work through the Keller stuff the more I see the pathways of his theology. For preachers it is incredibly important to figure out how to get from here to there homiletically. One of the pieces I’ve been struggling to get a handle on is the issue of identity. Identity is a hugely important concept in our contemporary understanding of self. Our identity is our experience of our self. Keller works identity themes all the time. He is always exhorting us to address our identity, to put off the identity we currently cling to and receive a new identity in Christ. This is of course very Pauline but I’ve had difficulty articulating those pathways myself.

more on grace and identity

What happens when we are forced to recognize that we have a fault within that will never (in this world) be removed and that this fault will never allow us to be accepted? It sticks a knife in our self-identity, self-image. It makes us hate ourselves and see ourselves as unacceptable by God or others. We cannot live with this burden so we have few options. Mostly what we do is to redefine that which is acceptable so that we can declare ourselves to be righteous and anyone else who doesn't accept our definition of righteousness to be unrighteous. To really pull this off we need a community to do it. We need to find others with the same problem so we can encourage each other in our re-definition. Church can become this. Cities can become this. We get the desired and predictable result: we justify ourselves, accept ourselves, and live in a community that accepts us and embraces us as "good people". It works emotionally and socially. But what is the cost? Because we have now taken on the role of definer of good and evil, a position that is not rightly ours, we are forced by our position to segregate, discriminate, subjugate and malign those who fail to meet our standard. Certain issues become defining issues for all. Pro- gay, anti-gay, pro WICO anti WICO, whatever. We decide who is acceptable based on our redefinition of good and evil (prompted by our redefinition of the world so we fall into the "good" category) so wars must continue, verbal or actual.

What is the way out? What if we are all, in fact, deeply wounded. What if we have to face the fact that we have no basis for acceptance. How can I hate or look down on my neighbor because of their sin or their beliefs if I in fact truly know that I am no better than they are, in fact because I know myself better than I know them I know myself in fact to be worse than I can prove them as being. Who can rescue my identity from such a total collapse? How can I be accepted in spite of the evidence against me? The answer should be clear.

thorn in the flesh

This AM I'm re-listening to Keller's lecture on "Preaching the gospel" http://theresurgence.com/files/audio/r_r_2006_session_07_audio_keller.mp3 and thinking about Edward's common virtue vs. true virtue. This is hard to understand and even harder to live. We all tend to apply tactics of common virtue to address hard places in our heart. We feed our chief idols, fear and pride (among others) to try to conform to God's law or even just societal norms. We address deep, stubborn "natural" disorders by hiding, repressing, lying, however. This is "normal" and "natural" for all of us. When, however the lid gets blown on our cover we feel both shame, disgrace and relief. We are seen to be the moral failures that we all are but we are, perhaps for the first time, know more truly and more deeply than before. It's even better when we are embraced despite our moral failure. That's a powerful experience of grace. It is liberating and exhilarating to be embraced and loved despite who we deeply and shamefully are, all of us.

Ted Haggard, nous, and sin vs. sins

A really nice piece on Haggard, Christianity, "renewal of the mind/nous" and that our problem isn't so much infraction but infection.

http://www.frederica.com/writings/ted-haggard-and-suffering.html

natural religion

I've been using Keller's distinction between gospel and religion but predictably getting pushback or at least static (mostly from conservatives) on this use of the word "religion". On one hand I think "there's a reason you want to defend this word" but on the other I see their point. Harry Der Nederlanden in responding to one of my posts used "natural religion" as "Keller's sense of religion" and I think that's better. "Natural religion" both honors Luther's sense in which religion is the default mode of the human heart and also keeps it broad enough to recognize that this isn't just a Christian problem.

Revelation and deliberation

This was part of a threaded discussion on CRC Voices that I wrote:

Claiming third-wavish revelation in the context of a church discussion, conflict, leadership debate is like pulling a trump card. If you're playing Rook, (a nicely CRC game) let's imagine "the bird" is the move of claiming that God has furnished some individual, particular, private revelation, that says that their side is right. The other side cries "foul" because they have introduced things that not everyone can look at publicly. It's a violation of "the rules" of deliberation. It isn't wholly different from non-third-wavish people claiming that their interpretation of the public, authorized revelation (the Bible) is correct and the other side is wrong of course. Deliberation involves both sides entering into a discussion affirming to a certain degree that they might be wrong or at least they will be willing to go along with whatever the group (by majority or consensus) decides. For those who seek unity unless everyone around the table is willing to submit to the group and hold a bit loosely some of their convictions or their position the process doesn't work. The same is true for matters of public policy. Does revelation from God, public (the Bible) or private (prophecy, word of knowledge, etc.) kill deliberation, debate, and democratic (people deciding) procedure? You hear Islamic voices claiming they don't want democracy and people in the west say "huh?" Why? What is there for people to decide when you have the Koran, Islamic law, and Islamic clerics who will furnish revelation and authorized interpretation. Democracy in that scheme of things is just another word for rebellious mob rule.

It is very important that Christians and any other religious group that espouses a revelation AND that wants to be a part of public deliberation be sensitive to. The Bible itself on first look is not necessarily consistent in this regard, even just by Peter. In Acts Peter tells the council "Who are we to obey, God or men". That's playing the God trump card. Yet in his Epistle he exhorts his believers to "submit to governing authorities..." There this leave us is "there's a time to compromise and a time to not compromise". OK, but when?

Keller Sermon Series Fall 06

The series is entitled The Trouble with Christianity: Why it's so Hard to Believe it . These sermons are available at the Redeemer Store at http://www.redeemer3.com/store . They are all copyrighted material available for $2.50 an mp3.

Keller has a very good paper on Defeater Beliefs. These are ideas and assumptions within our contemporary culture that make it difficult or impossible for people to embrace Christianity. This series deals with some of these directly. The titles link you to the Redeemer website where you may purchase a recording of the sermon. The Bible reference link sends you to Bible gateway. "My Notes" sends you to my notes on the sermon as gleened from the audio recording.

Tim Keller Page

I've found Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan to be very helpful for me on a number of levels. In a couple of lectures recently he stated that part of the contribution he wants to make to the broader church is to create a body of work. Most of his work accessible beyond his local congregation, at least to date, has been through his preaching and lecturing. Some of this is available on the Internet for free and many of his sermons are available at the Redeemer Store. MP3s of sermons cost $2.50. There are already a few good independent webpages devoted to helping people access Keller's stuff. I'll link to them here. They most access the free resources available which I've found to be very helpful. I won't try to duplicate their efforts.

I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

The great Calvinist commercial. I've used the phrase for years in sermons and now I found the commercial on the web:

http://www.retrojunk.com/details_commercial/1087/

Wikipedia entry with links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27ve_fallen_and_I_can%27t_get_up

Help is on the way for Mrs. Fletcher...