College done, blogging again...

Now that college is all done (yay!), I can get back to blogging about Keller & the City.


While I gather my thoughts (and prep my sermon for Sunday), enjoy this photo I took of the most beautiful city in the world.

Coming up, an outline and explanation of Keller's priority to the city.

Keller's Missiology - Part 3

So we've done the nature, we've done the goal, now it's time for the method of Keller's mission.

  

In a word, the method of Keller's mission is the gospel. [An the crowd goes wild!] According to Keller,

The gospel is the dynamic for all heart-change, life-change, and social-change. Change won’t happen through ‘trying harder’ but only through encountering [...] the radical grace of God.

 (Redeemer Vision Paper #1: The Gospel: Key To Change)

Keller has totally the right answer, but it is frustratingly right. It is like the Sunday school kid who always answers: God, Jesus, HS, Bible, Prayer... It's the right answer but you were hoping they might go a little deeper, or spell things out a bit more specifically. So how does Keller apply the gospel so that it brings about change? 


To do this, Keller has seven elements of a missional church which are how it applies the gospel to their context. (The seven elements are from a paper called 'The "Missiology" of Redeemer' pages 223-25 of the Redeemer Church Planter Manual, or you can get a re-worked version online here. This one has five points but he has just combined a few.)


1. "Loving the city" by having a positive attitude toward the city, and a willingness to live in the city.
 
2. "Re-telling the gospel in the culture’s story" by having sympathy for a culture’s aspirations and demonstrating how the gospel is the best realisation of those aspirations. (E.g. You want to be loved? no one has loved you more than God as shown by his sending of Jesus.)


3. "Discoursing in the vernacular" through avoiding “tribal” language, “we-they” language, and speaking in a tone appropriate to the culture and anticipating that non-believers will be present. (This is my fav. He finds a complicated way of saying something that is supposed to encourage us to speak in a way that "real" people understand! 'Don't mind me, I'm just discoursing in the vernacular...')


4. Having a "counter-intuitive word-deed ministry" through the combination of zeal for gospel proclamation and social justice, which, according to Keller, are not ordinarily seen together at the same church.


5. "Being a counter-cultural community" through modeling a whole alternative way of being a human society by the way they live in community.


6. Having "lay vocational cultural renewal" by supporting Christians being devoted to their work in secular vocational fields. This involves training them to be Christian in public as they engage in their work, public life and culture of the city. 


7. Having a "global church kingdom consciousness" through showing the watching world unity within the wider Christian community whist still maintaining integrity.


Now, when Keller's missiology is compared to others that seek to bring the gospel to the post-Christian west, his priority to the city sticks out like a sore thumb. Stetzer, Bosch & Newbigin don't have anything like it.


I know I haven't detailed much yet about the priority to the city, but the point here is that in his missiological method, the city priority is what sets him apart from the rest.


Next week I'll outline Keller's city priority.

Keller's Missiology - Part 2

We've seen that Keller believes that the nature of mission is the the mission of God (missio Dei). The church is missional, it participates in God's mission as it exists to present the good news of Jesus to the world. 

So now the goal of mission - What does he hope to achieve?

The goal of Keller's missiology can be seen in the vision statement for his church, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City. 

To spread the gospel, first through ourselves and then through the city by word, deed, and community; to bring about personal changes, social healing, and cultural renewal through a movement of churches and ministries that change New York City and through it, the world. 

(Redeemer Presbyterian Church)

The goal is to spread the gospel and bring about change (personal, social and cultural renewal) in order to change the city and the world.

Now this may not seem too out of the ordinary, and it isn't. But it is quite ambitious, and I think that is a good thing.

But the goal that Keller is pursuing quickly starts pushing him in a particular direction. The goal is one aspect of what drives Keller to prioritise the city. I even thing, the priority to the city is what shapes the vision rather than the other way around but I will explain more later.

You don't see the church in the country, or even the suburbs, aiming to renew culture, change the city and the world. Keller has a big vision and he needs a big city to make it happen.

Next, the method. How's he going to do it?

Keller's Missiology - Part 1

So where to from here? Well, we've worked out some of the reasons why we love Keller. Now we're going to look at his missiology to see how he does what he does. Now missiology is a nerdy word to describe the study of mission, looking at its methods and purposes. Simply, how does Keller go about telling people about Jesus?

Missiology can be broken down into three major concerns.

• The nature of mission - What do you think mission is?
  
• The goal of mission - What do you hope to achieve?
  
• The method of mission - How are you going to do it?

First, we'll look at the nature of mission according to Keller.

What is Redeemer? Redeemer is a very imperfect effort to be a missional church in New York City.
(Tim Keller, 'The "Missiology" of Redeemer', April 2001, in Keller & Thompson, Church Planter Manual, 223)

Here is where we need to read between the lines a bit. When Keller says that the church is missional he is saying that mission is not just something the church does. Mission is what the church is. The idea of the missional church flows from the preceding idea of missio Dei. This is the idea that God is the one on a mission and the church participates in God's mission. The church doesn't send people out to do mission but it, as a whole, is the sent one.

We can see this again as Keller says,

We want absolutely everything we do to be missional--engaged in showing the beauty of the gospel to the world around us.
(Tim Keller, 'The "Missiology" of Redeemer', April 2001, 223)

In sum, Keller believes that the nature of mission is the the mission of God (missio Dei) in which the church participates as it exists to present the good news of Jesus to the world.

Now I think that this is great. Keller and his church seek to 'show the beauty of the gospel' to the city through their words and their actions.

Another Cheeky Reason why We Love Keller

There is a lot about America that Australians just can't seem to stomach, and it isn't just the now bankrupt Krispy Kreme. Not everything, not always, but there are things.

One thing Aussies don't love about Americans is a perceived lack of humility. Before you get grumpy, I am speaking in gross generalisations. When we an Australian sees something like this:


we rush to the toilet ('bathroom' for my American friends) and vomit. Why the massive cheesy photo of the pastor and his wife? To an Aussie, it makes no sense.

But Keller is not like that. He is much subtle and I think that appeals to Aussies in particular. Go to his page, his name in listed in the staff directory like everyone else. No massive airbrushed photos of Tim and Kathy with perfect hair and ridiculously white teeth.

See, you can be a fan of Keller without feeling like you are worshiping some form of Christian demigod. As Australians, we like that.

I am trying to not do more than one post a day, that is why this is a cheeky one.

Why we love Keller - Part 2

Ok, so why do we love Keller? Reason two: he can walk and chew gum at the same time. What am I talking about? He can boldly tell people about Jesus AND do genuine social justice simultaneously. Good gosh!

Now, you might think that this ain't such a big deal, and really it shouldn't be. Christians used to have no problem integrating both of these important imperatives. Sadly, at some point in the last few hundred years, evangelicals in particular lost their way and struggled to keep both balls in the air.

Luther could do two things at once - Brew beer and bring on the Reformation.

I reckon (and some smarter people seem to agree) that this dilemma started with the rise of liberal Christianity. When you take away the uniqueness of the gospel, the reality of the resurrection, the prospect of either heaven or hell, and with them all the authority of scripture, the only thing you have to save people from is injustice and suffering in this life. What's the point of doing anything else?

Given the liberals rushed to make social justice their own, evangelicals distanced themselves a bit as a counter-balance. It was important, after all, to stand up for the importance and priority of gospel preaching.

Gradually, however, a subtle shift towards the primacy of the “evangelistic mandate” was discernable [as a] growing protest against the this-worldliness of the Social Gospel.
(Bosch, Transforming Missions, 403)

Even the greats, like Billy Graham, advocated that simply preaching the gospel would cause social justice to naturally follow.

But, even though we might debate if one should be a priority over the other, or if they both are equal, evangelicals have begun again to realise that both need to be part of authentic gospel proclamation - both word and deed. Many evangelicals looking for a way to integrate both have found a leader in Keller.

Keller seems to have a unique ability to think, speak and act positively to the world around him whist still maintaining his evangelical convictions. I think this is the real reason why we love him so much. Keller has helped us look at the world and appreciate what is good, he has helped us find the words to speak about what is good. And we like that.

We don't like being the one to always be saying, 'Turn or burn!' We want to get along side our non-Christian neighbour and appreciate the created world with them as we point them to the creator who stands behind it and entered into it. Keller gives us a way to do this. We want to show people that loving the poor, the weak and the vulnerable is consistent with telling people about Jesus. Keller appears to be doing this.

Fifty years from now, if evangelical Christians are widely known for their love of cities, their commitment to mercy and justice, and their love of their neighbours, Tim Keller will be remembered as a pioneer of the new urban Christians.
(Christianity Today, May 2006)

That is the second reason why we love Keller, he helps us love the world while still loving to tell people about Jesus. Feel free to add some other reasons!

Why we love Keller - Part 1

Ok, so why do we love Keller? I have two main reasons, but like I said, there are probably heaps more.

The first reason why I think we love him is because he knows how to tell people about Jesus. Seems pretty simple but it ain't as simple as we'd like to think, that's why we like him.

The scientists tell me that climate change is real and it's happening, in the Christian world, climate change happened a while ago. Hauerwas reckon that change occurred on a Sunday night in 1963 when a local picture theatre dared to open on a Sunday night. Whether it was then or sometime about then, Christianity was getting voted off the island.


Until then, Christianity had lived the good life for many years. Almost everyone was a Christian of some sort or other. Clergy were respected the church was a powerful social force in society. Being a Christian meant that your opinion mattered, rather than being automatically irrelevant. All of this was changing. It was the beginning of the end of Christendom. Christianity had lost its pride place at the table of Western culture.

'The world can no longer be divided into “Christian” and “non-Christian” territories separated by oceans.' (Bosch, Transforming Missions, 3)

Like a frog in slowly boiling water, Christians were slow (and some still haven't) to realise the danger.

Keller is a guy who seems to have got it. He's a guy who seems to have seen the shift and has worked out how to do church in a post-Christian world. Keller knows how to tell post-Christian and post-Modern people about Jesus. And that is one reason why we like him.

You can hear it in his preaching. You can see it in his church planting. He seems to be on to something, and we all (for very good reason) want a piece of the action.

Why do we love Keller? He knows how to tell people about Jesus.

__________

Picture from Fox Theatre St Louis.