This Present Hope- London Day 2

Hope.
Prayer.
Tribe.
Biblical Church.

These are the four topics expounded upon at Dwell London, a powerful gathering for church-planters and potential CP’s throughout the country of England.  After an incredibly intense day of understanding the overall religious culture through immediate immersion, this second day was more focused on the local church and its specific needs in the cultural context of western Europe.

This Present (Hope)

“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Rom. 15:13)

How have you seen hope expressed in the local church? 

Outside of vision casting, the idea of hope from the pulpit is most often related to eternal glory with Christ.  While this is not a bad perspective, it is one which is sadly incomplete.  Because the concept of progressive sanctification is little referenced in the church, the hope of future glory tends to override the beauty of present sanctification.

Steve Timmis, regional director of Acts29 in Europe, began to touch on this by stating, “our perspective of hope has been reduced to spiritual anorexia”.  The question is: why?  The reasoning for this relates to an inaccurate and incomplete view of the overall narrative of scripture among the rising generation of church leaders.

Most evangelicals would ascribe to the Creation (Gen. 1-2), Fall (Gen. 3-11), Redemption (Gen. 12-Rev. 20), and Consummation (Rev. 21-22) narrative of the Bible, but fail to incorporate this into their theology, express this in mission, or teach this through spiritual formation.  As Steve continued to express his perspective, the predominant theme he kept coming back to was Genesis 12:1-3.  It says:

“Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father's house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

The impact of this passage is critical to the Gospel.  After the Fall and the protoevangelium in 3:15, there is no infusion of hope.  God promises, yet for almost 1,000 years there is no solution to the problem of evil.  Biblical scholars say Gen. 4:1 points to Eve anticipating the savior to be Cain, but that went horribly wrong.  And so in between Genesis chapters 4 through 11 all we see is failure after failure over a period spanning more than a millennium.  Cain’s murder of his brother (ch.3), the wickedness of man (ch.6), the Flood (chs.7-9), Noah’s sin (ch.9), and the Tower of Babel (ch.11).

And then God speaks. 

God chooses a wicked idolater who has no concept of the true God, and speaks a promise of blessing over him.  But it was not just localized to Abraham, God does something unbelievable.  He promises a heathen that He will make his nation SO BIG and SO EXPANSIVE that every single tribe in the history of the world will be blessed by his descendants!  This is an unparalleled covenant, unlike any other in scripture!  God makes a universal, global promise of salvation to someone who doesn’t even know Him as the true God!

And so the redemption of humanity began.

Another millennium later, God came down from heaven to fulfill His promise to bless the world through His ultimate Agent of blessing: Jesus—Living…Dying…Resurrecting, Jesus died a substitutionary death so that we could live a sanctified life and experience a glorified eternity.  He solved the problem of sin in Genesis 3, but He also did something else. 

Jesus blessed us.

This concept of blessing in ancient near eastern (ANE) Israel literally means to expand, or grow.  To bless was to speak an expansion of growth and potential over someone.  A curse is the opposite: a limiting of potential and restriction.

Naturally, God’s blessing of Creation was turned into the cursing of the Fall with the invasion of sin and depravity.  We were destined and blessed to fill the earth, subdue it, and reflect an innocent and perfect expression of the holiness and love of God on an undefiled earth.  But sin cannot allow us to do that, and thus we are limited by it constraints and consequences.

So Jesus’ solution to the problem of sin reintroduced blessing back into the world.  We are now capable, in a limited and imperfect way, to reflect the holiness and love of God…because of Jesus…by the Holy Spirit.

And thus the message of the Gospel is the fruition of both the promise of salvation in Genesis 3 and the hope of salvation in Genesis 12.

When we understand and connect with this, it unifies our view of the Gospel with the narrative expositions of the OT.  Every narrative in the OT reflects humanity’s brokenness and inability to be blessed.  And thus the eternal weight of Jesus’ sacrifice becomes much more real when we see it as a fulfillment of Genesis 3 AND Genesis 12!

The marriage of the promise of salvation and the hope of blessing as fulfilled in Jesus Christ is the key to living a sanctified, Gospel-centered life.

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How do you see this perspective of hope and Genesis 12 informing the local church’s view of Gospel-centered mission?

Turning Another Page: London Religion 101

“The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page” - St. Augustine

It is a strange thing to wake up in one continent and sleep in another.  It’s even stranger to do so without delays, troubles, or stressful circumstances.  I am pleased to say that today offered me both of these luxuries!

In case you did not know, I have the opportunity to travel to London with a team of pastors and church leaders on a 10 day exposure trip to post-Christian culture in western Europe.  The organization is called The Upstream Collective, and the feature leaders of the trip are Dr. Ed Stetzer and Daniel Montgomery.  I have been fundraising, stressing, praying…and finally God has allowed me to come to Europe again without any troubles at all!

Immediately after a brief, five-minute meeting upon arriving in London, we set out for an Muslim mosque.  The missionary we connected with has developed a relationship of mutual respect and love with the local Imam for over five years, just living out the Gospel.  They have actually become very close friends, and the Imam shared with us some of what he believes as it relates to God and faith and also gave us a quick overview of the Islamic religious culture.  As our team saw the local missionary interact with the Imam, there was such a sense of love and brotherhood between them that it could not have been a better reflection of the love Christ has for the lost!  This missionary in London is a joy to be around, and his love for the Muslim community and his Imam friend in particular was worth flying 1500 miles to see.

We continued our tour to include a Hindu temple, Sikh temple, and a Church of England location.  And, if the religious exposure wasn’t enough, we finished off the evening with a full-blown Afghani dinner. 

AND, all of this was in the first four hours of our time in London!  The intensity was vibrant and the experience more than beneficial to begin understanding the religious culture of Western Europe.

The cultural diversity of London far surpasses anything found in the States, including New York City.  This gives rise to subcultures so deep and influential that people from the home countries of these religions want to live in London because it is quickly becoming the hub of religious activity for Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim religions.  And with this heavily charged atmosphere, the depth of spiritual oppression and depravity is like an insurmountable weight upon my heart.  Yet God has provided some faithful people to devote their lives to leading these colorful, beautiful, diverse, yet lost people to Jesus.

There are a few things I would like to note from our debriefing time after visiting these places:

1.  The people in Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh religions FAR surpass even the most devout Christians in terms of intensity and dedication (Muslims wake up every single morning at four am for prayer, no matter what circumstance)

2.  The worship services for these other religions are more integrated than in America.  The children kneel before their false goddess Vishnu alongside of their parents.  There is no separation of children from the joint worship service.  They observe and repeat whatever their parents do.  This leads to a high level of assimilation from children into their parents faith.

3.  In America, our faith is mostly seen as a compartmentalized hobby to entertain us, but with these religions in London they are a way of life and dictate every, single facet of their existence.

4.  These false religions do not osculate with models of ministry, they have a specific worldviews and perspectives to which they approach every dimension of their life, without compromise.  Their methods are driven by the needs of their ‘followers’, but the message and almost all basic principles are the same as they have been for thousands of years.

These four notes lead me to four interpretations and four questions to ponder this weekend:

1.  In all of these false religions, the person has to work to earn their favor with God.  Christians have a freedom because Jesus earns favor FOR us with God through His death on the cross. Unfortunately, we forget that Jesus saves us to run a race…not to descend into spiritual atrophy.

How can we translate this freedom of grace into a call to serve?

2.  American, evangelical parents most-often shoo their children away on Sunday to their own service, denying basic discipleship to them yet passing on the blame to the local church when things go wrong with their youth. 

How can pastors train parents to disciple their children in worshipping Jesus from infancy to maturity?

3.  The incredible amount of dedication and religious fervor is unspeakable.  For example, the Imam memorized the entire Koran, reciting the entire book throughout the month of Ramadan from memory.  As a Christian society, there are very few, if any points throughout all of church history where this dedication has been recorded on a consistent or community basis.

How can pastors lead their congregation back to the “joy of their salvation” so they can do ministry out of a joy within them instead of an obligation coming from outside of them.

4.  In popular Christian culture, there is a look to and dependence on models and methods to drive church ministry.  These most often have damaging effects on a church’s theology.  Yet in these false religions the theology has remained virtually untouched for hundreds if not thousands of years. 

How do churches break out of the model-seeking mode and develop a core biblical theology which will stand the test of culturally driven methodology?

And so tonight in London I turn another page in the narrative of my life and my ministry, enjoying the story God is penning in my life.

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What are your reactions?  What are you distressed about when you read this account?