Persistent Prayer

Submitted by Andy Sytsma

This week in my devotions I was reading in Acts 12 about Peter's miraculous escape from prison.  James had just been killed.  Peter seemed to be next.  And it says in verse 5, ...but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.  I was also reading in Luke 18 where Jesus told the parable of the persistent widow with the judge.  Jesus did this it says in verse 1, ...to show them that they should always pray and not give up.

Big challenges.  Persistent prayer.  Sometimes God chooses to do big things through our prayers.  And sometimes we pray and we pray, but don't always see immediate results to our prayers.  That's why Jesus taught us about persistence.  He also asked if he would find faith when he comes.

As I think about our collective prayer with Missional Cafe' -- for God to ignite a missional movement in the CRC and beyond -- I know this is a big challenge.  I also know God is calling us to be persistent in bringing this request before Him.  We may not be able to see everything God does among us, but we live by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).

For myself, I've made this a daily prayer.  I journal my prayers and lift up this request.  I intercede for our planters and pastors in our Houston Cluster and pray for God to transform our city.  And I've even set my phone to vibrate at 4:14 PM so I can stop and pray and be reminded of the words of Ester 4:14 and how I believe we are here for such a time as this.

There are lots of individual things I do, but I've also committed myself to praying together with others.  One of the things we said we would do at our last Missional Cafe' gathering is to pray together in our clusters.  In our Houston Cluster we're just getting off the ground (this month we had our 2nd meeting!) but we've used Rod Hugen's format (see December 14th blog entry) and had a wonderful experience.  We felt energized, focused and drew closer in mission together.

I want to encourage each of you to keep prayer at the center of our mission efforts.  Pray with your cluster.  Pray with others in your city.  Check out different prayer events like the Prayer Summit hosted by the Korean Council and Ministers in the CRC in Los Angeles, April 16-18, 2012.  However you do this, pray like your life (and others' lives) depends on it!

We are facing big challenges in our church and culture.  We may wonder if God is answering our prayers.  But like the believers in Acts 12 and the disciples with Jesus in Luke 18 we need to persevere in prayer and ask God to do the impossible. 

Lord, may you ignite a missional movement in the CRC and beyond!  Amen.

Plant New England: The Message is the Medium

Submitted by Todd Murphy

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Acts 2:42 NIV

Last October I had the opportunity to participate in and attend the first annual Plant New England Conference which was held in Watertown, Massachusetts, part of the greater Boston area.  The theme of the conference was "The Message is the Medium" and on this point, the conference seemed to deliver well.  The conference was sponsored by the Gospel Coalition, the NETS institute for Church planting and Nine Marks.  Keynote speaker was Mark Dever of Capitol Hill Bible Church and Nine Marks.  All the major combined sessions were done by either Dever or Rev. Wes Pastor of NETS.  I have to say, both of these men delivered fantastic challenges to potential church planters here in the North East.  While there was a realistic discussion regarding cultural contextualization, there was no hint of trendy attempts at being "hip" or "relevant."  Both are mature men of the Church, sitting on well established ministries of about 20 years.  Both are making disciples and have internship programs for future Church planters.

Dever himself brought a robust and historical vision for the Church.  This conference was sounding a different tone from many Church planting conferences I have attended.  Many over the last few years seem to have an underlying message that the problem in the church is mere tradition and lack of creativity.  The seeming solution is that if we are creative or "think outside the box" then we can somehow make the Gospel more palatable or "relevant."  I personally think this line of thinking is foolhardy nonsense.  I do not think the genuine Gospel really needs our help.  What these guys brought was profound message.  The problem is a failure to understand and preach the true Gospel and a failure to understand the Church.  Rather than presenting the more common ethos of creativity, Plant New England rather communicated a genuine spirit of "reform."

At one point Dever pointed out that if the Church planter chooses to follow everything being said about how to do church that is rolling off the presses from Zondervan, he is just going to burn out.  It reminds me of a church planter I know who came to be discouraged one time.  He said he had read everything he could get his hands on about ministry and church planting.  Then he remarked, "I have read so many differing opinions I do not know which way is up anymore!"  I would go a bit farther to suggest that our Christian book industry is probably doing more to hurt church planting that help it because of the constant belch of conflicting creative ideas just creates a bewildering onslaught of ideas.

Dever presented a strongly historic Christian vision of a word and sacrament church, a church that is driven by the proclamation of the Gospel and God's ordained means of grace.  He admonished those of us there that whether or not we do the sacraments is not a decision that is up to us (the pastor or church planter).  Jesus commanded us to do them, and therefore it is a nonnegotiable.  I made the similar point in my breakout session on "making Disciples In a Post-Christian/Post-Catholic Context."  In this talk I suggested that where most Evangelicals start by assuming that unchurched Roman Catholics are "lost pagans" is not only wrong, but also arrogant and presumptuous.  We do not know who God is going to choose to save so any person who has some Christian background we should give the benefit of the doubt and just enter into dialogue over the Gospel and scripture with them.  I admonished those who attended my session that whether the person claims to be Christian or not, whether they attend church or not, out job is exactly the same; our job is to nurture them in the process of repentance through a robust proclamation of the Scriptures.

Thus our job is to make disciples.  How do we do this?  We do this through the ordinary means of grace that Christ gave to his church in Acts 2:42.  These are the proclamations of the Apostle's doctrine, the Christian community, the Lord's Supper (Sacraments), and the prayers.  These are the normal breasts which all God's children are nourished at.  At the end of my session a bright, young guy asked me a great question.  I had shared how in my context in Providence, the things that we as Evangelicals often think have become "obsolete" or "irrelevant" such as liturgical prayer and the Lord's table have turned out to be a key point of contextualization of some of our Roman Catholic families.  He asked how we balanced the old and the new to contextualize.  I could see his concern.  Do we contextualize so much that we let people's preferences completely determine what we do?  No, not at all.  There is always some contextualization going on.  We do our service in English, not Latin or French, and for good reason.  But what I admonished him and those who listened is that we need to lead with our principles.  While we are communicating a message, and need to always think about how best to do that, we need to do things because they are right.  I shared how we did not do liturgical prayers and the Lord's supper every week because it was a gimmick, but because they have been ensconced as an essential part of Christian worship for two thousand years.  My point was this: A real Church is always built on Acts 2:42.  If you get these things right, you can kind of do what you want.  Do you want contemporary music?  Fine.  Do you want traditional music?  Fine.  I pointed out how true Gospel ministry is not dependent on style.  Tim Keller has proved this by his robust proclamation of the Gospel with umpteen thousand members who come to sing straight out of a traditional hymnal.

One of the biggest detriments to church planting today is that most of the young guys embarking on this are not first men of the Church.  They do not have the vocabulary and paradigm of historic Christianity.  Because of this, it creates a reactive Christian ministry that is easily tossed to-and-fro upon the waves of every new ministry idea.  Real ministry is rooted in the robust Gospel proclamation of a big Gospel, grand narrative which is then continually applied to the life of the Church through its regular means of grace.  This is the way both to healthy Churches and virulent gospel mission.

Blind Spots

Submitted by Chris Mitchell

Standing in my kitchen, a relatively normal argument turned a sharp corner.

"You need help!" my wife said.

I knew she was right.  I didn't tell her that.  At first I disagreed.  Then, when  I saw what she was saying, I just grunted something stupid and mumbled my way out of the argument.  The rest of the week, especially prepping for my sermon, her words kept burning in my ears.

She was telling me something about myself that she knew better than I did.  She could see something I couldn't see.

Who pastors the Pastor?  Seriously.  Who shows us what we are blind to?  Who tells us what's lurking in our blind spots?

We all know we "can't do it alone."  We all tell ourselves, and other people, that "everyone needs care, guidance."  In younger days we nodded while wiser, experienced pastors told us how important it is to have "support."  For me that meant mentoring, coaching.  I usually sought them out, learning lots and lots about life, ministry, but especially about my blind spots.  Somehow, all that fell away and a year or so into planting a church, I was pretty much solo.

And it showed.  Especially in my kitchen, through my wife's eyes.  

A problem I faced (and have seen so many other pastors deal with) was that I was much more comfortable giving pastoral care, discipleship, ministry, and counseling than I was receiving it.  I didn't trust most other pastors, not enough to ask them for this kind of help.  I trusted my peers, maybe even friends, but not in the "can you really help me?" kind of way.  Actually, I didn't trust anyone that much...not enough to point out blind spots.

I found myself, through a series of inexplicable events, eventually sitting in the visitors' cell of a monastery telling a monk, whom I hardly knew, about that day in the kitchen.  My marriage.  Ministry.  Loneliness.  Anxiety.  Mistrust.  Sin.  Confusion.  Pastoring.  In fact, I pretty much told him everything, not in detail, but in spirit.  Thankfully, when I asked him to help me, not even knowing what kind of help I wanted or needed, he agreed.  

We started a relationship, mostly in the mail, with some personal visits sprinkled in, that helped me understand what my wife had been trying to tell me.  Mostly, it helped me look into a relational mirror of sorts and see what I can't see without someone else's help.

It's been over fourteen years since then.  Looking back I realize that mostly what I needed help with, and still need help with, is allowing someone to know me, to help me, giving me new perspectives on things like anger, self deception, self-centeredness, addiction...sin in all of its many forms.  Sin that I can't see by myself.

It's nothing new this whole idea of a trusted elder walking with and nurturing an apprentice.  In fact, we all know that it's biblical.  We know that.

Or do we?  Maybe that's the first thing we don't really see...

Why Did Jesus Come?

Submitted by Randy Rowland

Why did Jesus come?  Let's take a swing at some ideas...

To save me from my sins?

To make us deeply spiritual and wise and Holy Spirit gifted?

To give a good moral example of how we should live and love?

To make my life happy and fulfilled and meaningful?

To bring an end to the wicked and judge sin?

To make me and you prosperous?

To bridge a gap between God and humanity and restore our broken relationships?

To restore order of the world and bring wholeness to all of creation?

There are a lot of reasons and assumptions out there about Jesus, so why don't we take a look at the source and let Jesus speak for himself.  When he does declare his mission, he declares it as a fulfillment of an ancient promise by the prophet Isaiah made 6 or 7 centuries before Christ to the nation of Israel as it rebuilt from the ruin of being driven twice into exile in foreign lands.  Jesus identifies himself as the hope offered by Isaiah all those years ago.  Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside.  He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.  He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom.  He stoop up to read and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him.  Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."  Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down.  The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him.  He began saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."  All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips.  "Isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked.  (Luke 4:14-22 TNIV)

So, why did Jesus come?

He offers us a comprehensive picture in this Scripture in Luke that is also referenced by Jesus in the other three Gospels.  Most of our misperceptions about Jesus are not that they are wrong, no, the errors we make in understanding Jesus is that we are not comprehensive enough.  We tend to cherry pick what we want Jesus to be based on faulty world views, our cultural context, and our own personal biases toward comfort, safety, and long-held opinions that we refuse to challenge.  Jesus lists a handful of images or spheres in which he has come to establish a new order.  It is an order ruled and fueled by the Holy Spirit.  It is an order of Good News for the poor, freedom for the prisoners, healing for the sick, and freedom from oppression.  In summary, Isaiah says and Jesus quotes, It is the favorable year of the Lord which he comes to bring to all of creation.

Some key words from Jesus' Mission Statement:

1. Alignment with the Spirit of God: The Spirit of God, the living Spirit who created the world is upon Jesus, filling him and giving him both words and deeds to accomplish his integrated mission as Savior and Lord, now and forever.  God is in the world and is moving in the Spirit.  Jesus came to model the power of the Spirit and also to fill us, His followers, with His Spirit.
2. Proclaim the Good News: There is a proclamation part of the mission of Jesus.  His story is our story and his mission is our mission.  Jesus is the good news and he is central to all we say and do.  At the same time, while this good news is for all, Jesus, quoting from Isaiah, proclaims it first to the poor.  There is an inherent promise of something better, something with more dignity than abject poverty.  Jesus is ushering in a new order that includes and elevates the poor.
3. Proclaim Freedom to Those in Bondage: Clearly Jesus, who died side by side with prisoners, has a deep heart for all those who are held in bondage, by their sin which is being punished institutionally and in solidarity with those wrongly imprisoned and/or punished.
4. Healing of All Manner of Maladies: It is important for Jesus to see lives healed, healed from sickness, disease, disaster, and things that trouble and damage the psyche.
5. Eradication of Oppression: Jesus' action of setting the oppressed free is a recognition that this world is full of flat-out, evil, demonic oppression.  And such oppression must be broken and eradicated, all forms of oppression: socio-political, economic, psychological.
6. The Year of the Lord's Favor: The year of the Lord's favor is rooted in the Jewish principle of Jubilee.  Every 50 years in the Old Testament is a year of the Lord's favor - loans are forgiven, land is redistributed, prisoners are released, slaves are freed...do you see this picture?  The favorable year of the Lord: God is not mad.  His action is an outpouring and overflow of His massive love toward us.  Justice flows like a river.  Result = God and humans are reconciled.  The playing field gets leveled for everyone to have freedom, access, opportunity, security, and dignity.

Our tendency to narrow the scope of Jesus' mission results in a distorted view in which we participate in and create a world that is not right, is not ordered, is not fair: a world that is not whole!  We don't mean to do these things; they just happen.  But our faulty views allow for the damage.

It is sort of like when you are walking somewhere holding a book, a sandwich, and a 16 oz Starbucks Latte.  You pay attention to the sandwich to take a bite and when you tip the the sandwich to you and aren't paying attention to the level of your coffee, you pour about three ounces of piping hot coffee over your hand, your wristwatch, and up your arm.  It's hard to pay attention to everything at one time, but if you don't you will not do justice to your watch, your coffee, your arm, your sandwich, or the person on the sidewalk you mowed down while screaming expletives about your predicament and pain.

Jesus came to bring the favorable year of the Lord and restore all of creation to a justice order.  Jesus embraces justice in his inaugural announcement about his mission.  Justice is the beginning and end of what he does.  Justice is the process by which Jesus' mission is fulfilled in lives, communities, nations, and our world.

Some important vocabulary:

     1. Old Testament Hebrew Words:   

          a.  Tzedakah: justice, righteousness

          b.  Shalom: peace (rightly ordered/whole)

     2.  New Testament Greek Word:

          a.  Dikaisune: just, proper duty (service)

     3.  English Modern Equivalences:

          a.  Fairness: equality, access, distribution

          b.  Freedom: human choice, participation, opportunities

So, let's go ahead and put our arms around some good news and bad news about the Good News.  

Good News - Jesus announces the ultimate reality and it will happen.  All will be well.  The whole gospel or full-orbed gospel will manifest itself fully.  A new Gospel Eco-System will prevail in which shalom is the normative state.  Shalom is the Hebrew word that best describes in any language why Jesus came.  Shalom means everything whole and rightly ordered.  Peace is not static; it's meaningful tension.  Think of the sails on a sailboat.  Are they at peace in a sail locker?  No!  Fully deployed and trimmed to the wind is the way they are supposed to be.

Bad News - The Gospel is not fully evident yet.  Shalom lies far in the distance, too far.  We are enmeshed in brokenness.  Broken spiritual relationships with God.  Broken relationships with ourselves.  Broken relationships with others.  Broken systems.  A broken creation.  

But the Good News is greater news than the Bad News and in Jesus we are learning to embrace justice.  

So...why did Jesus come?

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

This is the Gospel; thanks be to God!