Over the last few months I’ve been challenged in my thinking about loving others. In particular I’ve been rethinking my understanding of loving those who are outside the church. I’m still working through this so my thoughts are not well developed and I still seem to mostly be asking questions of myself and my church background.

I think that in the past I’ve made a distinction between loving those inside the church and those outside the church that amounts to the following:

1. It’s good and right to love those inside the church for no other reasons than the fact that I’ve been transformed by God’s grace and love is a natural outflow of that change of heart plus God commands me to love those in the family of faith.
2. I should love those outside the church because I will be able to share the Gospel with them if I do so.

Now at first glance there may not seem to be anything wrong with those statements. On further thought though I’m questioning my motivation for loving those outside the church. Of course wanting to share the Gospel with someone is a very loving desire. I’m not saying that is wrong. But I wonder if I (and many other Christians) would see much value in loving someone if I knew there was no chance of ever sharing the Gospel with that person and that the individual would never visit my church. I suppose my question is this: “Is doing good to someone valuable, good, and glorifying to God in itself?” The answer, I’m sure you would agree, is an emphatic “YES”. However, I think the way we approach those on the outside indicates that we don’t really believe it (as in this way of thinking and belief changes the way I live). It seems to me that the question often lurking in the back of our minds when considering our interaction with those outside our group is “Will this give me an audience for sharing the Gospel?”. Yet, wouldn’t an attitude produced by the Gospel say that loving others (meeting needs, offering help, doing good, etc) is itself the right thing to do whether you get an audience or the people think any differently about you? Isn’t love a witness not just a means to being a witness to the Gospel?

Shouldn’t we love others because love naturally flows out of a heart transformed by God’s grace not merely because of the results that love may produce. Maybe you already think like this and you’re wondering how I’ve been so lost all this time. I suspect though that you may recognize the pragmatic motivation for loving unbelievers in your own heart too. It seems as though that type of thinking about love is the norm within many of our churches. I pray that my own heart and thinking would be radically changed so that I may love those on the outside as God loved me when I was outside of His family.

[tags]love, mission, church, Christian living, loving others[/tags]

Well, technically this post should be titled “What I’m About to Read”. Last week I received The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church by Shane Hipps. I plan to begin reading it tomorrow. At approximately 160 pages it should be a quick read. I will post some of my thoughts on it after I finish (or maybe along the way if it takes me longer to finish than I anticipate).

From the back cover:

It has been said, “the future is now.” From cell phones to mp3 players to the Internet, no previous age has seen such profound change manifested so quickly. But these thrilling, dizzying transformations are forcing the church to decide where it fits in all this progress. Shane Hipps presents the promise and peril of the emerging culture and its relationship to the emerging church. Looking beyond the details of what’s happening in communities of faith, Hipps analyzes the broader impact of technology and media on the church while engaging readers with questions such as:
• Is media/technology value-neutral?
• How has technology changed the way we think about Scripture, community, and worship?
• What cultural opportunities has the church missed?
• How should the church position itself to take advantage of coming cultural trends?

More information about the author can be found at www.shanehipps.com.

[tags]books, reading, culture, media, technology, faith, Gospel, church, Shane Hipps[/tags]

As I understand it one aspect of being a “missional” Christian or “missional” church is seeking to be a blessing to the world. That is, missional Christians take seriously the call to love our neighbor.

Mark Lauterbach is reflecting on The Nature of True Virtue by Jonathan Edwards and included the following quote from Edwards in a recent post.

True virtue most essentially consists in benevolence to being in general. Or perhaps to speak more accurately, it is that consent, propensity and union of heart to being in general, that is immediately exercised in a general good will.

Mark interprets for us,

What he means by this is this (simply put): true virtue desires the highest good to all beings. It does not rejoice in evil, but rejoices in good. Being established upon the glory of God as the highest good, it desires all to enter into the enjoyment of God.

What he goes on to assert is that the test of all true benevolence is its root — is it established upon a desire to see all blessed! God is to be delighted in above all — and true benevolence would desire others to enjoy Him as well.

Mark also comments,

Edwards makes some painful statements regarding the trend of some Christians to be parochial. By parochial I mean the pursuit of the good of my particular family or church or society to the exclusion of all others. It is, in essence, a form of “As for me and my house — we will serve the Lord — and if we are well, let the rest of the world be hanged.” Private love with no interest in the public good is not love at all.

The conclusion? Edwards sounds missional in the material Mark is quoting from.

[tags]missional, mission, love, loving your neighbor, Jonathan Edwards[/tags]

The other day I came across a very fascinating NPR piece, entitled “Heretics”, on Reverend Carlton Pearson, a pastor in Tulsa. Pearson built a successful megachurch (Higher Dimensions), but after abandoning the doctrine of hell as a result of a voice he heard the church dwindled in size. Eventually Pearson was officially declared a heretic by the Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops.

The NPR piece includes Pearson telling his story and interviews with former members and assistant pastors as well as current members.

What I found especially interesting is the reason Pearson gives for abandoning the doctrine of hell (a voice he claims was God speaking to him). He goes to great lengths to cast doubt upon the reliability of the Bible we have today in order to get around criticism that his “Gospel of Inclusivism” is contradicted by the teaching of Scripture. Oddly enough he still attempts to make a case for his position from Scripture (see the section on “Inclusivism” at his church’s website).

To listen to the program follow this link to the 2005 archives of “This American Life” and scroll down to the show from 12/16 (Episode 304).

[tags]Carlton Pearson, inclusivism, hell, doctrine of hell, heresy, heretic[/tags]

Last year I began to read A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren. I made it through part 1 and skimmed other chapters in part 2, but then put it down.

I’ve picked it back up again to try to understand what he’s getting at in the book. Today I came across a sentence that, in many ways, seems to summarize much of the book.

Similarly I have become convinced that a generous orthodoxy appropriate for our postmodern world will have to grow out of the experience of the post-Christian, post-secular, people of the cities of the twenty-first century (p. 92).

In this sentence are many elements that the rest of the book addresses.

• postmodern culture
• experience informing belief
• categories prefixed with “post”
• urban life

[tags]Brian McLaren, emerging church, emergent, postmodernism, generous orthodoxy[/tags]