Tuesday 30 January 2007 at 8:10 pm
I've now listened to at least 85 sermons, lectures or talks by Tim Keller. I have listened to many of them multiple times. Right now I'm listening to this week's sermon on Judas' betrayal of Jesus. Coincidentally I'm working on the same text for my Sunday School class. Actually I don't like using Keller directly when I'm working on a passage so this is a unusual. I'll tend to use my normal exegetical regime but I'll never use Keller. Part of why I don't is because I don't want to start channelling him. With the amount of study I'm doing of him now the danger is to lose my own voice and just become a mimic. That's partly why I don't just listen to him, I read the things he's referring to because I tend to pull different things out of those sources that are helpful and see things in some different ways.
I just heard Keller hit the "religion vs. gospel" theme again in the context of Judas. Sometimes I don't like how quickly Keller uses certain texts to hit his themes or sometimes I feel he strains the text a bit to hit his themes.
This is stretching me in the area of what is a sermon in terms of its purpose in the church for the people. Of course you don't violate a text, but what is the importance of repetition, of repeating themes again and again to get people to see important things. Repetition is vitally important because we have short attention spans and we forget. Plus we are in competition with all of the other messages that are being thrown at us ad nauseam in society.
I think actually repetition is something I'm weak at. I tend to get bored quickly with something and always want to move onto something fresh.
Monday 29 January 2007 at 10:01 pm
You can find an MP3 of the sermon here: http://www.streamload.com/rpcsermons/vision2005/The_Prodigal_Sons_-_09-11-05.mp3
Notes on Keller’s Prodigal Son
• “Jesus is saying here, that every thought the human race has ever had about how to connect to God, whether East or West, whether in the ancient, modern, post-modern era, in every religion, in all secular thought it’s been wrong! Every human idea of how to connect with God is wrong! Jesus is here to shatter all existing human categories.”
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Monday 29 January 2007 at 7:54 pm
This phrase of yours caught my attention:
All good preaching and leading will have the blessed balance of both content and process because the Christian life is both content (Gospel) and process (living the Christian life.
I might not be talking about exactly what you are but this is what struck me.
I think it is precisely the implicit acceptance of this distinction that has led to what you are describing. I don't know that "balance" is the best response. In this case it might be to obliterate the distinction.
Let me muse a bit:
I'd say that preaching has migrated because of an assumption:
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Monday 29 January 2007 at 6:05 pm
When it comes to facing the reality of change you've always got options:
1. Point fingers, grumble and guilt on people for changing.
I don't think this is a gospel approach. I don't think it works. I think it
breeds legalistic thinking.
2. Give in.
3. Think about the situation, get creative, separate form from function,
raise the dead.
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Monday 29 January 2007 at 5:59 pm
If you view the sub-concious cost/benefit analysis done by people in their
"spiritual" economies and time management economies I think this does
indicate a shift in perceived value in many areas plus church staff re-prioritizing resources.
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Monday 29 January 2007 at 5:57 pm
there's a lot of addition and subtraction. If you read the church order your
basic church "program" looks something like this:
1. 2 services on Sunday, HC in the evening
2. Catechism of the youth, often on a weekday afternoon or so
3. Men's society, women's society, maybe a youth society.
Churches came in two flavors: rural immigrant church, urban ghetto immigrant
church.
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Thursday 25 January 2007 at 7:07 pm
I have of course understood the meaning of the term “realized eschatology” for years. Early on you learn about the “now and the not yet”. Like many things theological, however, knowing the definition and feeling it’s weight are two different things.
I remember my classical sermon critic Rolf Bouma, who had left seminary not too many years before me complaining that my classical sermon gave short shrift to realized eschatology. I had just spent the previous 9 months in the Dominican Republic getting to know poor Haitian pastors and the conditions under which they suffered. It seemed often that their reasons for crying out to the LORD for deliverance outstripped what I had experienced as a college or seminary student. Their issues seemed so much more clearly to concern life and death and “realized eschatology” seemed pretty thin. They awaited and called for deliverance, full and complete. Deliverance hardly ever seemed to come in the ways they sought it. Children would die, hunger would stalk their congregations, political winds would toss their people from one place of chaos to another and the ever present pressure of poverty would continue to grind them down always tempting them to grab the quick fix, the immediate relief. “Realized eschatology” seemed a luxury afforded by European and North American theologians writing their books from endowed chairs. Annoyed would be too strong a word for my reaction to his critique. On the surface I was polite, in my heart I was dismissive.
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Wednesday 24 January 2007 at 6:16 pm
One of the things I like about Snapper's paper on CRC Yearbook numbers is how it highlights the relationship between church as institution and communities. Pastors, in particular, like to see the institutional church as the be-all and end-all in the religious life of the community/es they serve. This is an amazing presumption given the fact that in the NT the church as institution is paper thin. In both the Old and the New Testaments we see a people of God, a community of God living, worshipping, expressing itself, even sinning with institutions developing along the way, often begrudgingly and most often playing catch-up. Part of what Snapper's work illustrates is that the CRC in North America has followed the same journey. Institution follows community. Part of what may stink in the nostrils of some in this paper is the fact that it highlights the presumption of the institution. "We can go forth and plant our flag in the virgin (meaning not Dutch) soil of city or place X and Y and through pietistic, religious or marketing savvy bring forth that which we recognize and desire!"
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Monday 22 January 2007 at 5:17 pm
David Snapper writes about CRC church planting, growth, membership, numbers. Online at the Christian Courier (Canada).
http://www.christiancourier.ca/Yearbook.htm#Part%201
Friday 19 January 2007 at 5:21 pm
The last 20 years or so of North American missiology tended to emphasize the managerial. Tim Keller, in the speech he gave this fall at John Piper's conference (
http://www.desiringgod.org/media/audio/conferences/national2006/04_20060930_keller.mp3) suggested that the challenge today is more serious that it has been. In the past evangelism was essentially about rousing the people, awakening them from apathy, energizing them to apply what to one degree or another they already believed in their hearts. Our challenge seems entirely different. If the task is to rouse the people then a program is needed and the managerial gifts are required. You can work the "Purpose Driven Life" idea of gathering a crowd and chasing them around the bases.
It seems to me that in many places that day has passed. It hasn't passed simply because it doesn't seem to deliver on "the numbers", but also because we recognize that the "product" desired by the program is insufficient.
In previous times the "witnesses" mandated by Acts 1:8 might simply be better behaved commoners who are morally spruced up and whose habits support the institutional church. Those witnesses, although still highly valued and needed, seem also insufficient. The witnesses needed today will need to be drawn from a hotter fire, scarred by the same deep wounds commonly found today. The God they bear witness to will need to be seen as stronger, more passionate, more of a gambler, more extreme, like the God of Jesus' parables.
Wednesday 17 January 2007 at 4:41 pm
I'm just finishing
Simply Christian with my men's group and listening to Wright's speech at the
Calvin January Series. One of Keller's issues is joining the synchronic with the diachronic to rightly read the Bible. Wright makes nearly the same point in this speech that if you take the doctrine and place it upon a different narrative you'll foul it up.
Tuesday 16 January 2007 at 10:11 pm
A couple of you asked me for the recording of the sermon on Sunday. Unfortunately the battery in my mike failed during the sermon so we were unable to get a recording of it. This isn't a transcript from the sermon but rather an approximation of the thought flow of the message. Here's a link to it in PDF for easier printing.
Last week we started into the book of Galatians. We talked about how angry Paul was with some of these churches that he himself had planted. This week in chapter 3 he’s back at them again. Verse one starts out "you foolish Galatians!" Pretty strong language for a pastor don’t you think? Now many of you have been in church a while and you kind of know your way around. What kinds of things get people in trouble in churches? In what kind of occasions do you see pastors getting all worked up?
Those of you who have been around church long enough know that there is a list someplace of sins that will get you into trouble while other sins won’t. Certainly there must be some sexual sin that Paul is angry about amongst the Galatians. Perhaps they are dabbling in other religions found in their cities or maybe they are making sacrifices to idols or something. Surely it must be something like this to get Paul so angry with them to draw this kind of language from them.
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Thursday 11 January 2007 at 4:57 pm
From the Round Table on "This Week with George Stephanopoulis, Sunday Dec 31, 2006
George Stephenopoulis: "Get a sense from all of you from the stories that were under reported or was something really remarkable for the year and therefore should be something we should be paying attention to."
George Will: "I think I’d start with religion. This was the year when Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad got people killed around the world. If there was anything, George, a century ago that social scientists were agreed upon was that as scientifically based, market organized rational societies advanced religion would recede. Now at the end of this year the big argument in our politics is whether a Mormon can be President! When Mit Romney’s father thought of running for President no one gave a hoot in hell that he was a Mormon. A Mormon ran very well in the 1976 Democratic primary, Moe Udall and no one knew he was Mormon because no one cared. Thirty years later we are deeply pious."
George Stephanopoulis: "and fighting an awful lot of wars over religion."
Thursday 11 January 2007 at 4:38 pm
Outline of Tim Keller’s "Being the Church in our Culture" from Resurgence Conference
http://theresurgence.com/files/audio/r_r_2006_session_06_audio_keller.mp3
Framework: More Christians living long term in cities with a deeper grasp of the gospel who are creating dynamic counter-cultures inside the city, integrating faith with work, pouring themselves out sacrificially for the common good of the whole city.
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Friday 05 January 2007 at 2:46 pm
I'm reading FF Bruce's biography of Paul. In it I noticed something I had never seen before. After Pentecost the church has what I call its "summer of love". Everyone's happy, giving, loving, etc. Pharisees are joining the church. It seems that they had trouble with Jesus, but his Jewish disciples in Jerusalem who visit the temple regularly aren't so bad. The church is a success! What follows: Ananias and Sapphira. Hmmm. ouch. The Sadducees and the chief priests (unlike the Pharisees) don't like what they're seeing. This resurrection talk is catching on and the disciples are growing in power. They, in league with Pharisees threaten the status quo. Persecution starts. Gamaliel, a strong Pharisee, appeals for tolerance and patience. What trouble comes next? "Greek" widows are grousing about the handouts. This is the tip of an iceberg. The apostles don't want to be distracted "waiting on tables" and so deacons are named. These deacons it seems, however, don't stick to their job description either, they start acting like apostles. Stephen begins to emerge and it is unsettling, probably not just for the chief priests, possibly also (no Biblical warrant for this mind you) for the Hebrew believers. What can they nail Stephen for? Preaching against the temple. Where did he get that from? Jesus. Stephen (a "Greek" jew) is more offensive than Peter and his bunch because Stephen has picked up what Jesus was saying about the temple. (For some good background on this check out NT Wright's treatment of "Palm Sunday". in "Jesus and the Victory of God".) According to FF Bruce the chief priest doesn't need to run to Pilate this time because they can nail Stephen for his offence against the temple which falls into their jurisdiction. This of course brings Saul/Paul to the stage...
What is interesting for me from this is how God used conflict, and the unique history of the Greek speaking Jewish believers to force some issues that it seems the "Hebrew" Jews might have had some issues in terms of being comfortable with temple and didn't necessarily want to hear clearly the ramifications of what Jesus said and did. It would take these "Greek" Christians then to really uncomfortably push some issues (read Galatians) and begin to realize what Jesus was actually teaching and what it would mean. It is audacious that Paul, this persecuter of the church would challenge Peter (the rock) and even James, the brother of Jesus. God used Stephen to do something that Peter couldn't/wouldn't do. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
Thursday 04 January 2007 at 2:19 pm
I thought this a good piece. If is found in Simply Christian on page 186
That is why the Bible's "authority" works in an altogether different way from the "authority" of, say, the rules of a golf club. The Bible does indeed contain lists of rules (the Ten Commandments, for instance, in Exodus 20), but as it stands, as a whole, it doesn't consist of a list of dos and don'ts. It's a story, a grand, epic narrative that runs from the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve look after the animals, to the city which is the Bride of the Lamb, out of which the water of life flows to refresh the world. It is, after all, a love story, albeit with a difference. And the authority of the Bible is the authority of a love story in which we are invited to take part. It is, in that sense, more like the "authority" of a dance in which we are invited to join; or of a novel in which, though the scene is set, the plot well developed, and the ending planned and in sight, there is still some way to go, and we are invited to become living, participating, intelligent, and decision-making characters within the story as it moves toward its destination.
This model of "authority" helps us to understand how to read the Bible as Christian scripture. The "authority" of the Old Testament is precisely the "authority" possessed by an earlier scene in the novel—when we are now living in a later scene. It matters that the earlier scene was what it was. But it has done its job and taken us to the later scene, where some things have changed quite radically. The plot has moved forward. Even in the most postmodern of novels, characters in the final chapters don't normally repeat what they said and did near the beginning. This doesn't mean that we are left in a free-for-all situation where it's open to anyone to say, "Well, we're now at a new moment in God's plan, so we can throw away anything we don't like in the old moments." It is still the same story; and that story was, and is, the story of how the creator God is rescuing the creation from its rebellion, brokenness, corruption, and death. He has accomplished this through the death and resurrection ofJesus the Messiah, in fulfillment of the promises to, and the story of, Israel. All that is non-negotiable. Anything that contradicts or undermines that doesn't take the novel forward to its intended conclusion. Paul argues like this again and again throughout his letters, and we must be prepared to do the same.
Wednesday 03 January 2007 at 09:54 am
Thanks for the responses (they were on CRC-Voices where I posted this too). A few comments:
1. Why I've found Keller so helpful lately: Keller opens up with a critique of where from his vantage point he sees "we" are at in our culture. In one piece on the net at the Harvard Veritas forum he's engaging a modernist on the subject of religion in the public square. The modernist came to the forum (not having done his homework on his "opponent") expecting a religious traditionalist and at one point notes "I was unprepared for how post-modern Dr. Keller is..." It's a rather funny moment. Why does he call Keller "postmodern"? One of Keller's base positions revolves around dealing with the dilemma of making exclusive truth claims in society. (There is a pay-for sermon that deals with this most succinctly but he deals with it also in many of the free mp3s out there.) Essentially it goes like this. Contra the "elephant" illustration, all people make exclusivist truth claims. Everyone has a view of the world that is imperialistic because his/her claims exclude and demote others. To claim that you don't is really to fail to be honest. Since all make such claims and anyone is free to chose any such system they want (his existentialism and post-modernism shows through here) then why chose Christianity? Because only a rigorous grace-based Christianity can really deliver on "peace on earth". (Someone might retort that "peace on earth too is a value judgment that doesn't necessarily "deserve" privileged status over other values and that of course is correct and if you decide for something other than "peace on earth" or "shalom" go see Nietzsche for company.)
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Tuesday 02 January 2007 at 12:49 pm
I’ve been doing a lot of work with this stuff since September much of it through the work of Tim Keller. I’ve found all of this to be life giving, refreshing, opening up new angles, new avenues, new energy for ministry and life. None of this stuff was necessarily new to me but now I’ve found it newly helpful and invigorating. We all have seasons in life and sometimes some seasons quicken things that have been sitting on the shelf.
Working through Keller has brought much good fruit so far, yet a couple of shadows still seem to haunt. As I continue to work through "gospel vs. religion" two ideas continue to nag, two great difficulties of grace: fairness in divine election and whether the language of "gospel preaching" is really honest about what it is and isn’t saying.
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