Contextual Ministry and Reaching Courtney

Courtney is 28, single, educated, attractive, slim, and has never attended church, though she has several questions about church that make me squirm. She transferred to our area nine months ago from Roanoke and received a sizeable salary increase.

She is buying a condo and leasing a yellow ’06 Porsche Boxter. (She had a Mazda Miata but it got hit in the side.) Oh, and she also has a cat. (I don’t know what kind. I don’t really care for cats.)

Courtney has never been to an SBC church, has never heard of Lottie Moon, the BF&M, or Morris Chapman. She thinks that Baptists do something with snakes, but is not sure what (or why).

She had an abortion in 2001. Last Sunday at Kroger she saw a woman with a really young infant. It made her feel strange – maybe some guilt there. (She doesn’t talk about it.) Her parents are divorced and her dad has never known about the abortion.

Courtney likes reggae, genuine relationships/sharing, “meaning” in life, and she wishes that she could do something about poverty, hunger and/or AIDS. (She once sent $50 to one of the organizations that pledges to help hungry children. She wonders if the money really got to them.)

There are 1000’s of people like Courtney in our area. (Forty-six percent of Boone Countians were born outside of KY.) Perhaps they didn’t all transfer from Roanoke, but most would not feel “right” in a lot of our churches.

Associations who help their churches learn to relate to the Courtneys of the world have a promising future.

Associations who cannot or choose not to address these challenges will increasingly talk about how great the 60’s were and will become less and less effective.

Rick Robbins, DoM
Northern Kentucky Baptist Association

Our Changing World

The church of twenty-first century America faces an exciting new challenge: namely, how to present a timeless message to a culture that often feels the church is irrelevant? You do not have to look far to discover that the cultural landscape of America is drastically changing. Companies such as Sears, Chevron, and Goodyear have been removed from the Dow Jones Index and replaced with high-tech companies such as Microsoft, Intel, and SBC Communications. Maps are being exchanged for GPS, mail for email, calling for texting. VHS for DVD, CD’s for iPods, and books for Google. As technology has increased, the rapidity with which cultural renovation can occur has become staggering. In some ways it’s a missiologist’s dream.

My experience has been that the North American church is keenly aware of its new cultural challenge; we know the world is changing. The problem has been what are we supposed to do about it? If you listen carefully, at this point in my article, you may hear the crashing sounds off your grandmother’s high-heels and hymnal colliding with your son’s flip-flops and guitar! Because, frequently, in our efforts to respond to changing culture, North American churches have crashed and clashed into and over 1 of 2 extremes.

1. We retreat into our stained glass monastery by turning the Great Commission inward, as we indolently rest in arms of truth and purity.
2. We charge the fringes of our culture recklessly exchanging evangelism for compassion, holiness for relevance, and theology for philosophy.

I believe the answer to the problem of culture screams out at the church from the starlit stable in the dusty town of Bethlehem. It’s called The Incarnation! The Word became flesh and He dwelt among the people. The incarnation brings life to the crippled, while reminding the healed to “go and sin no more.” The Incarnation rises with the sun in prayer anchoring His soul in truth before challenging the shackles of legalism. God’s calling is not a call to hopeless defeatism that bleakly seeks to endure until His coming. The good news by its very nature lives among people and discovers life eternal in the midst of death. It is an extraordinary mix between one’s vertical relationship with God and horizontal relationship with others. It’s a call to the truth of the gospel balanced by the love of the gospel, holiness and love, grace and justice, creativity and tradition, passion and purity, zeal and wisdom. The incarnation is seen in Matthew the Tax Collector, Simon the Zealot, Peter the Leader, Paul the Planner, Martha the Servant, Mary the Worshiper, and John the Thinker. The call of the first century is the call of the twenty-first century church: a faith-filled call to authentically live in the skin God gave us while experiencing the adventure of sharing and living the good news of truth.

Posted by
Lash Banks, Director of Missions
Grayson Baptist Association

Are There Dangers in the Emergent Church Movement?

There appears to be great confusion among American religious leaders between what is really happening among some of the younger generation’s expressions of their faith. Is there a difference between “Emerging Church” and “Emergent Church” groups? If so, what is the difference and what is the impact on local expressions of faith through the church and cooperative associational ministry?

Read the following news summary and then let’s ask a few more questions about this movement.

• Emerging Church Dangers Go Far beyond 'Style Issues'
  OneNewsNow.com reports that John MacArthur believes most Christians are not aware of the dangers posed by the "emergent church" movement, which he says is counter to scripture in its underlying theology. MacArthur's new book The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception, says while the emergent church talks of reaching people by appealing to the culture, emergent church leaders do not have a high regard for the unchanging truth of God's Word. And too many Christians aren't aware of the problems associated with that. (SOURCE: Crosswalk.com, Religion Today Summaries - June 21, 2007)

Do you have “Emergent Church” or “Emerging Church” leaders in your ministry area? Is there a difference? Are they deceived? Do they value the truth of scripture? Maybe they are on target trying to reach their culture and McArthur is off base? Which is it? Can it be both?

What must we do as associations to effectively minister to these young leaders? Do we defend them before other older church leaders in our area who do not understand this movement?

What should our position be in this movement?

bobby gilstrap, DoM
Huron & Southeastern Associations
Michigan