“Christianity is not about a new moral teaching – as though we were morally clueless and in need of some fresh or clearer guidelines…Christianity isn’t about Jesus offering a wonderful moral example, as though our principal need was to see what a life of utter love and devotion to God and to other people would look like, so that we could try to copy it…Nor is Christianity about Jesus offering, demonstrating, or even accomplishing a new route by which people can ‘go to heaven when they die.’…Christianity isn’t about giving the world fresh teaching about God himself…Christianity is all about the belief that the living God, in fulfillment of his promises and as the climax of the story of Israel, has accomplished all this – the finding, the saving, the giving of new life – in Jesus.  He has done it.  With Jesus, God’s rescue operation has been put into effect once and for all.” (N.T. Wright Simply Christian)

That is the story of the whole of scripture…God’s Epic Rescue of his creation, heaven and earth colliding and the power of grace and mercy triumphing over the power of the law.  We are to daily experience the rescue of God in our lives and be the rescue of God in others’ lives!  David Crowder’s song Remedy constantly pours through my head…

Oh, I can’t comprehend
I can’t take it all in
Never understand
Such perfect love come
For the broken and beat
For the wounded and weak
Oh, come fall at His feet
He’s the remedy
He’s the remedy

He is the one who has saved us
He is the one who forgave us
He is the one who has come
and is coming again

We are currently teaching an 8 week series through the story of all of scripture and making sure we don’t lose or cut up our scriptures into unrelated parts, resulting in just a collection of stories and truths.  I am rediscovering how by keeping the whole in perspective, it brings out the richness of the details and specifics of scripture AND how my life is still part of this great rescue story.  This isn’t something that has merely taken place thousands of years ago, but a new-life story that is played out over and over through the days that you and I live!

If you are interested, I am posting the audio recordings of each week in my podcast media tab of this site.
(We have had some problems with some of the recordings that we hope to have worked out in the future.)

I just read a great article from Willow Creek Association about 5 shifts that need to take place in Student Ministry because of the greatly different culture that students are growing up in from when youth ministry began to be common. Like the term or not, I believe that these changes are necessary because of the postmodern ethos that surrounds us. Postmodernity is not simply a cool trendy term to throw around in philosophy or theology circles, it is transitioning to be the prevailing world view to and in which we must minister.

So Willow Creek is using the term “Youth Ministry 2.0″ signifying that the program needs an update. Here are their 5 areas in brief:

From PASSIVE to INTERACTIVE

The quintessence of Youth Ministry 2.0 is user-generated content. Thanks to YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and Wikipedia, students are no longer content to just consume … they now want to participate. We have moved from simply presenting the “answers” to students, to allowing them to co-create the content. We recently featured three short films in our youth service that were written, edited and produced by students. We also launched a brand new Web site to be the central information source of our community. Students can interact and create content with polls,blogs, photos, and videos…

From RESOLVED to UNRESOLVED

We recently taught a four-week series called “Hot Topics.” We covered homosexuality, war, MySpace and drugs and alcohol. Instead of offering simple, trite answers to these weighty subjects, we created environments to wrestle with these issues together. With leaders helping to guide them, students were encouraged to search the Scriptures to learn what the Bible says about these topics.

From IMITATION to IMAGINATION

We have been encouraging our students to imagine new ways of expressing their faith. Students have been living out their faith on their school campuses in extraordinary ways. Recently a group of students decided to raise awareness and money for children in Uganda. They held a huge event at their school and promoted it by wearing white ripped T-shirts with black writing across them. They had hundreds of students show up to this event. It was all planned, organized, and implemented by students.

From INFORMATIONAL to EXPERIENTIAL

We continue to try and think of new ways to engage the senses. We want to include visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. We recently cooked a steak on stage to teach about the aroma of Christ. We gave out 3-D glasses and taught about the power of vision coming to life. Because the overwhelming majority of teenagers now own a cell phone, we use mass text messaging as a primary means of communication for our ministry.

From CONFESSION to COMPASSION

We have discovered that students are no longer satisfied with just confessing what they believe — they want to live it out. With James 1:27 as our inspiration (Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you). Our student ministry has now partnered with a high school in Zambia, Africa, to serve HIV/AIDS orphans and has established a partnership with a local transitional housing ministry for homeless single moms.

It seems that in the DRINK AND FLOW ministry at Calvary Church we have made some of these shifts, but I see areas of growth still needed. Leave a comment on how you think we can successfully make these shifts to call more worshipers to know God through Jesus Christ and make an impact in this world!

Big thanks to Steve Kilgore for a heads up on the article!

I would like to begin a new blogging series here…dedicated to considering how Christian theology works out in our lives and culture.
This is one of the things that I like to do…theology. I firmly believe, as do many, that theology isn’t theology if it is simply in the academic world. In fact, I think something that is very pastoral and life-on-life has been pushed off to those who read about it, have well sounding theories, or a systemitized box to hold it all in. It’s kinda like asking the former football player, turned commentator, about the game of football. He will have a lot of good information and necessary angles to look at things, but can he get out there and run the play or teach the team how to run it…will he see the struggles or simply demand that his ideas get done??

I am taking a theology class in seminary right now and our staff is reading a book about 5 emerging church leaders, so there is more than usual thoughts on my mind in this area. Let me share my professor, John Franke’s, definition of theology first (I did it from memory on the mid-term, but I’ll consult the notes just to make sure I get it):

“Theology is an ongoing, second-order, contextual discipline that engages in the task of critical and constructive reflection on the beliefs and practices of the Christian church for the purpose of assisting the community of Christ followers in their missional vocation to live as the people of God in the particular social-historical context in which they are situated.” (you can also find this in his book The Character of Theology)

With that as an introduction, my first theological post is going to be on something that has received much attention to date and will continue to receive more… The Emergent Church, Emerging Church, Emerging Conversation, Emergent Village, etc.

Wikipedia actually has a pretty good description, here is the beginning:

“…is a controversial 21st-century Protestant Christian movement whose participants seek to engage postmodern people, especially the unchurched and post-churched. To accomplish this, “emerging Christians” (also known as “emergents”) deconstruct and reconstruct Christian beliefs, standards, and methods to accommodate postmodern culture.” (you can read the rest here)

I have been following some of these discussions of “deconstructing and reconstructing” for at least 4 years here and like much of what I see! Surely there are some caution flags as with anything that we go into, but I believe that we in the North American Churches are going to need to be more like the missionaries that we send out to other countries… studying the culture, understanding how the truth of the gospel impacts that culture and communicating the good news in relevant 21st century ways!

Well, the definition said it was “controversial” and IT IS! Wow, is it ever, which is good to help process theology! But I do hope that we can be more characterized by what we stand for and support rather than what we are against. I came across some well done anti-emergent posters, themed like the traditional motivational posters, but jabbing fun at some of the perceived or real weaknesses or differences with those who are emergent minded. Below is one I enjoyed and a link to a whole lot more!

by Phil Johnson and the PyroManiacs

I’ll probably be using some more of these as I bring up other topics in Theology Thursdays!

…Good old Golden Rule Days!

Life has been very crazy here in the Moore family…but sometimes crazy is good. I have described it to several friends as the “perfect storm” of life coming together all at once…nothing of a tragic nature though, so we can be thankful for that!
One of the exciting things is that Addie returned to school to 2nd grade and Emma went to school for the first time in Kindergarten! It has been a great transition back to school schedule and seeing the excitement of the girls. Addie is well adjusted to a full day of school after making that step last year to 1st grade. Part of the excitement is that Emma gets to ride the bus home with Addie. Also, Emma is taking off in reading skills already.

Isabelle is not without her new things as she is back in pre-school twice a week and now is doing her speech therapy once a week and learning very quickly. She is saying many more words, and beginning to use some without being asked. Someone passed her in church on Sunday and said “Hi Isabelle” and she responded back “Hi” with a little wave! That hasn’t really happened before like that. A big help in our communication with her is that she is using “yes” and “no” very well. Sometimes she may be confused by the question and the default response is “yes”. One day when she wasn’t obeying in something continually, I asked her “do you need to have a spanking?” and she looked at me with bright eyes and said “yes”! I just laughed with her! She says “eease” more (which is Please) and other new words.
Below is a picture of her friend Sawyer taking her on another car date! Last year Sawyer had trouble getting her in the car, this time it appears that he’s having a tough time with the conversation! Click here for her last date last year.

And lastly, I have started another round of classes at Biblical Seminary. This trimester I have decided to try two classes. I am taking Missional Theology on campus and Greek 1 online. I commute once a week to the Philadelphia area and am able to carpool with another student from our area. I chose to do the online greek because I have taken 2 years of greek in my undergraduate work and have a familiarity with the material. Even with that familiarity it is a lot of work!
Despite the craziness and the loads of work, I am really enjoying the challenge of studies at Biblical Seminary. I chose this seminary because of their unique pursuit of training ministry leaders very practically to minister in the culture in which we live. In fact their mission is:

“To prepare missional leaders who incarnate the story of Jesus with humility and authenticity and who communicate the story with fidelity to Scripture, appreciation of the Christian tradition, and sensitivity to the needs and aspirations of postmodern culture.”

The school is taking much criticism these days from some alumni and others that have been afraid of the direction of the emerging church movement that the seminary is involved with. I find it very stimulating to study there even when things are said that I am uncomfortable with, it causes me to think more deeply about what I think and believe and why. The professor of my Missional Theology class, John Franke, has been one of the people that the critics are most critical of…all I know right now is that I have a lot of reading to get done before I see him in class today at 1:30!!! Better GO!

I just found out that The Simple Way, in Philadelphia, with Shane Claiborne lost their house and community center to a 7 alarm fire on June 20th. This is a ministry in the Kensington area, a few blocks away from where we do our Philly outreach trip. Watch this video and consider how you can help by visiting their website and getting involved.