Them: Hey, you're into theology, right?
What's more important, justice or evangelism?
Me: Hey, you're into walking, right?
What's more important, your right leg or your left?
Herman Bavinck with some dry wit.
"the Catholic righteousness by good works is vastly preferable to a Protestant righteousness by good doctrine. At least righteousness by good works benefits one’s neighbor..."
Mars Hill Church emerged in the Pacific Northwest.
It's not an accident. The podcast might consider the unique spiritual traits of Pacific Northwest culture that made Mark Driscoll possible.
Here are 10 to consider....
Jubilee was the ancient Israelite practice of forgiving debts.
Evangelical Question: Was Jubilee an action of social justice OR spiritual worship?
Israelite Answer: "Yes."
Christian writers who parrot the political and moral imagination of FoxNews and MSNBC are extremely boring to read.
I wonder if that is why the New York Times selected
@esaumccaulley
@Tish_H_Warren
@KSPrior
@ebruenig
Orthodoxy sticks out. It's strange.
And well, interesting
I was an intern in Tim Keller's church in New York while I was in seminary.
Tim's understanding of the church's calling within a secular city left an indelible mark on my theology, ethics, and understanding of mission. I will be forever grateful. Rest in peace, brother.
Theology nerds! 🤓🤓🤓
It's a Reformation Day giveaway. Win free copies of *Reformed Public Theology.* Retweet/like to enter. Deadline 11/2. Support global Reformed voices.
If poverty is complex, our response must be as well.
It requires:
- markets AND states
- individuals AND institutions
- souls AND structures
- the poor AND the rich
The future of Calvinism is neither European nor American. Its creative future will largely come from the global south and east.
I'm attending a conference on philosophy in the Reformed tradition, here is the global breakdown...
Consider the *nakedness* of the cross:
1) The first thing God does to a sinful humanity? He clothes them.
2) The last thing humanity does to a sinless God? They strip him bare.
3) And yet, grace on grace, God clothes them, yet again...
This time with himself.
#HolyWeek
Diversity in a seminary curriculum is not simply “a justice issue”... it is a THEOLOGICAL issue.
The complex mission and will of the almighty God can not be fully explored in a mono-cultural curriculum.
Theology suffers without the nations.
#SeminaryWhileBlack
"Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness”; along with consumerism, it’s the new opium of the people. - Miroslav Volf
A very common worship leader mistake...
"Good morning, welcome to worship everyone. I know you've all had a busy week filled with work and kids, schedules, projects and worries... but for the next hour we're going to forget about all those things and focus on God."
🧵 1/5
We can finally share the news.
@shadihamid
and I have received a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust to write a new book on Muslim and Christian political theology amidst deep difference.
Stay tuned for more...
This is Asma Uddin.
A Muslim lawyer who defends the religious freedom of **all faiths.**
It's possible that Asma will be the first Muslim woman to ever address the Evangelical Theological Society next week. That feels significant. I'm honored to be her dialogue partner at ETS.
#1
Pacific Northwest culture is marked by a deep and profound individualism that is *ironically* vulnerable to charismatic leadership and groupthink.
Lacking thick and diverse relationships/communities, its citizens are historically more vulnerable to cultish leaders and groups.
I was with 100 Muslims yesterday and I (the Evangelical) had to answer the following questions...
-Why do Evangelicals hate us?
-Why do Evangeliclas support the Muslim ban?
-What is it about Christianity that makes you support Islamophobes like Donald Trump?
I dunno man
Do Religious Right politics significantly hurt Evangelical outreach? Maybe but I'm skeptical. Religious Left politics didn't directly implode Mainline Protestantism. Churches rise/fall based on congregational evangelism not national political imagery.
Launch Day!
Celebrating an increasingly global and public tradition of Reformed theology.
A three-year project of listening and writing alongside twenty-seven incredible Reformed scholars from Asia, Africa, Europe, North, and South America.
Finished!
Dear Christian Twitter...
"The early church didn’t say, ‘Look what the world is coming to!’ They said, ‘Look what has come into the world’!"
- Carl F Henry (ht
@Fikkert
)
When it comes to vaccines, many parents don’t want to subject their children to a massive social experiment when they don’t know the long term consequences.
I wish they felt this way about cell phones.
A happy little announcement.
Inexplicably, Nicholas Wolterstorff, one of the most influential Christian philosophers of the last century, decided to write the foreword for our new book on
#WorkAndWorship
A truly generous act from a senior scholar.
While I've described PNW spirituality as "unique," a number of sociologists remark that the region is a leading indicator of the future individualistic spirituality in the West.
Pastors in the "Bible Belt" should pay more attention to PNW spirituality... it's coming their way
A Republican who protects the poor, women, the environment, and the marginalized.
A Democrat who protects religious communities, the unborn, and local decision-making.
The two party system stinks.
The Ravi Zacharias scandal has a lot of people wrestling today with the complex, pervasive, and viral nature of human sin.
If ever there was one, this is a delightful little book on depravity.
Teetotalers criticized Abraham Kuyper for serving alcohol at the founding celebration of his Christian university.
His reply...
The Reformed are not the sort to water down their wine, a new generation of bold Calvinists will never emerge from a kettle of hot chocolate.
John Calvin on exploiting workers
"When a robber kills a man, his object is the spoil; but he who extorts labor from a poor man and sucks, so to speak, his blood… this is more atrocious than if he violently killed a stranger.”
#2
PNW culture is marked by anti-institutionalism. A lack of trust in nation-wide institutions (political, economic, religious, and cultural).
As a result, churches and church leaders are more independent/rogue/resistant towards the control of national denominational structures.
🔥Reformed Public Theology🔥
Coming in August..... Reformed leaders from Africa, Asia, Europe, and both the Americas came together to produce a groundbreaking new work in global public theology.
Just look at the table of contents....
@BakerAcademic
We have a cover!
**Three Years** of research exploring the connection between work and worship, labor and liturgy will finally release on 11.3.2020. God is good!
#WorkAndWorship
Worship leaders:
Don't tell us to forget about our week and focus on God....
Invite us to carry our week into worship.
Invite us to carry our work and kids, schedules and agendas into the sanctuary.
Invite us to lay them all down before the Lord.
3/5
"I did not get anything out of worship"
Well, bring something... anything...
Don't go empty-handed. Bring tears, questions, confessions, praises, offerings, relationships, protests. Bring your whole week, your whole self. Lay it down. Lift it up. Bring it.
Worship is NOT a time of spiritual escape in which we try hard not to think about our real lives.
Worship is time of spiritual submission in which we offer our real lives to God.
((That includes our work and kids, schedules and agenda, projects and worries.))
2/5
#3
PNW culture loves innovation, entrpreneurship, and historically believes it is on the cutting edge of human culture.
It is drawn to the "new thing." It historically has been home to "spiritual entrepreneurs" who believe they have found "the key" to the future.
#5
PNW spirituality is marked by a deep sense of mobility and homelessness.
Pioneers from the east leaving the ties of family, work, and culture this culture of leaving/homelessness can sometimes lead people to look for a home and father figure that is totalizing.
“It is like tearing skin from skin”
My grandmother mourning my grandfather after 65 years of marriage.
I’m unsure of anything more simultaneously horrifying or beautiful .
Honored (and a little surprised).
Big thanks to Christianity Today for naming my book on Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration one of the best of the year. Very Kind.
Worship "is not an escape from the world, rather it is the arrival at a vantage point from which we can see more deeply into the reality of the world." - Alexander Schmeman
A mainline pastor once confessed to me
"If I preach the exact same thing that NPR does on a Sunday morning, why don't we all just go to brunch instead?"
Well, it finally happened.
The mainline dropped below 10% of the sample in 2022.
In the 1950s, historians have said that mainliners were more than 50% of the population.
They were 31% of America in 1976.
19% in 1988.
14% in 2004.
10% in 2016.
And now, 9%.
#9
The PNW loves the odd and strange spectacle. Driscoll said to one of my pastor friends in Seattle. "You'll never make it here. You're not weird enough."
The individual expressivism of the PNW loves the spiritual punk, the pioneer... the one who "dares" to stand out.
John Calvin on exploiting workers
"When a robber kills a man, his object is the spoil; but he who extorts labor from a poor man and sucks, so to speak, his blood… this is more atrocious than if he violently killed a stranger.”
Pastors, 6.6 million unemployed.
In *one* week.
Your prayers this Sunday can't ignore this fact. If you need congregational prayer ideas, a thread.
#WorkAndWorship
#10
The moral relativism, deep pluralism, and cultural instability of the PNW can lead individuals to seek a leader who will give them clear direction, rules, and identity.
In a PNW culture where everything feels gray, Mark Driscoll was willing to provide black and white
#7
PNW culture is very progressive/liberal/secular. It can be antagonistic towards more conservative forms of religion.
This antagonism can encourage a "fight or flight" mentality in small conservative communities. Mark Driscoll opted for the former.
I'm an amateur woodworker and a professional theologian... And yet, my theological writings never get this much attention on Twitter.
Vocational crisis? Did I make the wrong choice?
100 year old barn beams are tough to work into a theological essay...
Christians should defend other religions "not out of indifference to God’s truth, but precisely out of the firm conviction that the truth of God demands it." - Abraham Kuyper
#8
PNW opts for revolution over reformation. It is much more drawn to grassroots leaders and movements who promise a radical/revolutionary break from the past.
Mark Driscoll tapped into this cultural distaste for the slow, the humble, the institutional, the moderate.
#6
PNW culture is vulnerable to technophilia.
Having left traditional religious identity behind, technological innovation provides the PNW with more than wealth and jobs, tech provides purpose and identity.
Mars Hill represented a tech savvy church that tapped into this...
#4
PNW spirituality is uniquely drawn to the experiential, aesthetic, and environmental aspects of religion (as opposed to intellectual or institutional).
Individuals are drawn to immersive worship environments and communal experiences that surround them in an alternative world