Moving Beyond Church Growth (Prisms)

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Lessons From Fahrenheit 451 for the Modern Day

By his resurrection Christ Jesus was vindicated by his Father, broke the power of death and defeated Satan who once had power over it, and brought everlasting life to all his people; by his ascension he has been forever exalted as Lord and has prepared a place for us to be with him. We believe that salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved. Because God chose the lowly things of this world, the despised things, the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, no human being can ever boast before him—Christ Jesus has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption.

The Justification of Sinners We believe that Christ, by his obedience and death, fully discharged the debt of all those who are justified. By his perfect obedience he satisfied the just demands of God on our behalf, since by faith alone that perfect obedience is credited to all who trust in Christ alone for their acceptance with God.

Inasmuch as Christ was given by the Father for us, and his obedience and punishment were accepted in place of our own, freely and not for anything in us, this justification is solely of free grace, in order that both the exact justice and the rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners.

We believe that a zeal for personal and public obedience flows from this free justification. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and by his powerful and mysterious work regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith, and in him they are baptized into union with the Lord Jesus, such that they are justified before God by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. The Holy Spirit is himself the down payment of the promised inheritance, and in this age indwells, guides, instructs, equips, revives, and empowers believers for Christ-like living and service.

The Kingdom of God We believe that those who have been saved by the grace of God through union with Christ by faith and through regeneration by the Holy Spirit enter the kingdom of God and delight in the blessings of the new covenant: Good works constitute indispensable evidence of saving grace. Living as salt in a world that is decaying and light in a world that is dark, believers should neither withdraw into seclusion from the world, nor become indistinguishable from it: It therefore inevitably establishes a new community of human life together under God.

The church is the body of Christ, the apple of his eye, graven on his hands, and he has pledged himself to her forever. Crucially, this gospel we cherish has both personal and corporate dimensions, neither of which may properly be overlooked. Christ Jesus is our peace: His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both Jew and Gentile to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.

The former is con- nected with entrance into the new covenant community, the latter with ongoing covenant renewal. The Restoration of All Things We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ with his holy angels, when he will exercise his role as final Judge, and his kingdom will be consummated.

We believe in the bodily resur- rection of both the just and the unjust—the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell, as our Lord himself taught, and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb, in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness.

On that day the church will be presented faultless before God by the obedience, suffering and triumph of Christ, all sin purged and its wretched effects forever banished. God will be all in all and his people will be enthralled by the immediacy of his ineffable holiness, and everything will be to the praise of his glorious grace.

VISION This is not an outline of our doctrinal beliefs see the Confessional Statement , but a statement of how we intend to discharge Christian ministry and interact with our culture in biblical and theological faithfulness. For several hundred years, since the dawning of the Enlightenment, it was widely agreed that truth—expressed in words that substantially correspond to reality—does indeed exist and can be known.

Unaided human reason, it was thought, is able to know truth objectively. More recently, postmodernism has critiqued this set of assumptions, contending that we are not in fact objective in our pursuit of knowledge, but rather interpret information through our personal experiences, self—interests, emotions, cultural prejudices, language limitations, and relational communities. The claim to objectivity is arrogant, postmodernism tells us, and inevitably leads to conflicts between communities with differing opinions as to where the truth lies. Such arrogance, they say explains, in part, many of the injustices and wars of the modern era.

How shall we respond to this cultural crisis of truth? We affirm that truth is correspondence to reality. The Enlightenment belief in thoroughly objective knowledge made an idol out of unaided human reason. But to deny the possibility of purely objective knowledge does not mean the loss of truth that corresponds to objective reality, even if we can never know such truth without an element of subjectivity.

We affirm that truth is conveyed by Scripture. We believe that Scripture is pervasively propositional and that all statements of Scripture are completely true and authoritative. But the truth of Scripture cannot be exhausted in a series of propositions.

We affirm that truth is correspondence of life to God. Truth is not only a theoretical correspondence but also a covenantal relationship. The biblical revelation is not just to be known, but to be lived Deut To eliminate the propositional nature of biblical truth seriously weakens our ability to hold, defend, and explain the gospel. But to speak of truth only as propositions weakens our appreciation of the incarnate Son as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the communicative power of narrative and story, and the importance of truth as living truly in correspondence to God.

How this vision of truth shapes us. But we also reject a view of truth that sees truth as nothing more than the internally coherent language of a particular faith—community. So we maintain, with what we hope is appropriate humility, the principle of sola Scriptura. Though truth is propositional, it is not only something to be believed, but also to be received in worship and practiced in wisdom.

Prism Church

This balance shapes our understanding of discipleship and preaching. We want to encourage a passion for sound doctrine, but we know that Christian growth is not simply cognitive information transfer. It is through the power of the Holy Spirit that we receive the words of the gospel in full assurance and conviction 1 Thess 1: In this perspective, the gospel appears as creation, fall, redemption, restoration.

It brings out the purpose of salvation, namely, a renewed creation. As we confess in CS— 1 , [God] providentially brings about his eternal good purposes to redeem a people for himself and restore his fallen creation, to the praise of his glorious grace. To read across the whole Bible is to collect its declarations, summons, promises, and truth—claims into categories of thought e. In this perspective, the gospel appears as God, sin, Christ, faith. It brings out the means of salvation, namely the substitutionary work of Christ and our responsibility to embrace it by faith.

As we confess in CS— 7 , Jesus Christ acted as our representative and substitute, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Many today but not all who major in the first of these two ways of reading the Bible—that is, reading along the whole Bible—dwell on the more corporate aspects of sin and salvation. The cross is seen mainly as an example of sacrificial service and a defeat of worldly powers rather than substitution and propitiation for our sins. Ironically, this approach can be very legalistic. Instead of calling people to individual conversion through a message of grace, people are called to join the Christian community and kingdom program of what God is doing to liberate the world.

The emphasis is on Christianity as a way of life to the loss of a blood—bought status in Christ received through personal faith. On the other hand, the older evangelicalism though not all of it tended to read across the Bible. As a result it was more individualistic, centering almost completely on personal conversion and safe passage to heaven. Also, its preaching, though expository, was sometimes moralistic and did not emphasize how all biblical themes climax in Christ and his work.

In this imbalance there is little or no emphasis on the importance of the work of justice and mercy for the poor and the oppressed, and on cultural production that glorifies God in the arts, business, etc. We do not believe that in best practice these two ways of reading the Bible are at all contradictory, even though today, many pit them against each other. We believe that on the contrary the two, at their best, are integral for grasping the meaning of the biblical gospel. The gospel is the declaration that through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has come to reconcile individuals by his grace and renew the whole world by and for his glory.

By being a counter—culture. We want to be a church that not only gives support to individual Christians in their personal walks with God, but one that also shapes them into the alternative human society God creates by his Word and Spirit. See below, point 5c.

Lisää kirjoja samalta kirjailijalta

For the common good. It is not enough that the church should counter the values of the dominant culture. We must be a counter—culture for the common good. We want to be radically distinct from the culture around us and yet, out of that distinct identity, we should sacrificially serve neighbors and even enemies, working for the flourishing of people, both here and now, and in eternity. We therefore do not see our corporate worship services as the primary connecting point with those outside. Rather, we expect to meet our neighbors as we work for their peace, security, and well—being, loving them in word and deed.

As the Jewish exiles were called to love and work for the shalom of Babylon Jer We are neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic about our cultural influence, for we know that, as we walk in the steps of the One who laid down his life for his opponents, we will receive persecution even while having social impact 1 Peter 2: We believe that every expression of Christianity is necessarily and rightly contextualized, to some degree, to particular human culture; there is no such thing as a universal a—historical expression of Christianity.

Johannes Climacus or

But we never want to be so affected by our culture that we compromise gospel truths. How then do we keep our balance?

If we seek service rather than power, we may have significant cultural impact. But if we seek direct power and social control, we will, ironically, be assimilated into the very idolatries of wealth, status, and power we seek to change. The gospel itself holds the key to appropriate contextualization. If we over—contextualize, it suggests that we want too much the approval of the receiving culture. This betrays a lack of confidence in the gospel.

If we under—contextualize, it suggests that we want the trappings of our own sub—culture too much. This betrays a lack of gospel humility and a lack of love for our neighbor. This gospel fills Christians with humility and hope, meekness and boldness, in a unique way. The biblical gospel differs markedly from traditional religions as well as from secularism.

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Religions operate on the principle: The gospel, however, humbles and affirms us at the same time, since, in Christ, each of us is simultaneously just, and a sinner still. At the same time, we are more flawed and sinful than we ever dared believe, yet we are more loved and accepted than we ever dared hope. Secularism tends to make people selfish and individualistic.

Religion and morality in general tend to make people tribal and self—righteous toward other groups since their salvation has, they think, been earned by their achievement. But the gospel of grace, centered on a man dying for us while we were his enemies, removes self—righteousness and selfishness and turns its members to serve others both for the temporal flourishing of all people, especially the poor, and for their salvation. It moves us to serve others irrespective of their merits, just as Christ served us Mark Secularism and religion conform people to behavioral norms through fear of consequences and pride a desire for self—aggrandizement.

The gospel moves people to holiness and service out of grateful joy for grace, and out of love of the glory of God for who he is in himself. The gospel changes our relationship with God from one of hostility or slavish compliance to one of intimacy and joy. The core dynamic of gospel—centered ministry is therefore worship and fervent prayer. At the heart of corporate worship is the ministry of the Word.

Preaching should be expository explaining the text of Scripture and Christ—centered expounding all biblical themes as climaxing in Christ and his work of salvation. Its ultimate goal, however, is not simply to teach but to lead the hearers to worship, individual and corporate, that strengthens their inner being to do the will of God. We have a vision for a church that sees conversions of rich and poor, highly educated and less educated, men and women, old and young, married and single, and all races.

We hope to draw highly secular and postmodern people, as well as reaching religious and traditional people.

Because of the attractiveness of its community and the humility of its people, a gospel—centered church should find people in its midst who are exploring and trying to understand Christianity. It must welcome them in hundreds of ways. In addition to all this, gospel—centered churches will have a bias toward church planting as one of the most effective means of evangelism there is. Because the gospel removes both fear and pride, people should get along inside the church who could never get along outside. Because it points us to a man who died for his enemies, the gospel creates relationships of service rather than of selfishness.

Because the gospel calls us to holiness, the people of God live in loving bonds of mutual accountability and discipline. Thus the gospel creates a human community radically different from any society around it. It is a community which so loves and cares practically for its members that biblical chastity makes sense. It teaches its members to conform their bodily being to the shape of the gospel—abstinence outside of heterosexual marriage and fidelity and joy within.

Regarding the family, the church should affirm the goodness of marriage between a man and a woman, calling them to serve God by reflecting his covenant love in life—long loyalty, and by teaching his ways to their children. Soliloquies—Joy by Makoto Fujimura Behold, i am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? Although this group shares many similarities with the rest of us, their culture and language differ significantly from ours.

Although natural-born citizens, Americans who are deaf enjoy little access […]. It is the church, the body of Christ. I have hope first of all because of, well, Jesus. Everything always comes back to him, because I believe in the redemptive movement […]. Against enormous odds, an activist fights fracking in his hometown by Aaron Foltz In many ways Williamsport, Pa.

The local high school team is called the Millionaires, harkening back to the days when Williamsport boasted […].

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Each week since , Palestinian, international, and Israeli activists have attempted to march from Al-Masara to agricultural lands […]. New York City has five boroughs, where more than 8 million people speak […]. Please go to EvangelicalsforSocialAction. While we are no longer producing PRISM magazine, we're still producing fresh, probing, and provocative content, so go to the ESA website and you won't miss a thing. Gun Control Advocate A Tribute by Dan Gross Jim never gave up fighting and never lost his trademark wit, despite suffering a traumatic brain injury after being shot in by a mentally unstable young man attempting to assassinate President Ronald Reagan.

Since then, he and his wife, Sarah, have worked tirelessly to pass legislation […]. My friend bought me a ticket so I can join her at a retreat she created for Christian women ministering in various capacities.

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