Travis Johnson

Who Do You Follow?

Do you follow Mark Driscoll, Rob Bell, Brian McClaren, Doug Pagitt, or Jesus?

1 Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn't talk to you as I would to mature Christians. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in the Christian life. 2 I had to feed you with milk and not with solid food, because you couldn't handle anything stronger. And you still aren't ready, 3 for you are still controlled by your own sinful desires. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn't that prove you are controlled by your own desires? You are acting like people who don't belong to the Lord. 4 When one of you says, "I am a follower of Paul," and another says, "I prefer Apollos," aren't you acting like those who are not Christians? 

5 Who is Apollos, and who is Paul, that we should be the cause of such quarrels? Why, we're only servants. Through us God caused you to believe. Each of us did the work the Lord gave us. 6 My job was to plant the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God, not we, who made it grow. 
7 The ones who do the planting or watering aren't important, but God is important because he is the one who makes the seed grow. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters work as a team with the same purpose. Yet they will be rewarded individually, according to their own hard work. 9 We work together as partners who belong to God. You are God's field, God's building not ours. 10 Because of God's special favor to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful.

11 For no one can lay any other foundation than the one we already have Jesus Christ.  

1 Corinthians 3:1-11

If Scripture is true and Jesus is who He says He is, I follow Him.  If Scripture is not true, then Jesus cannot be who He says He is and I will not follow Him.  Case closed.  There is no need to discuss social justice, cause, or being missional under the banner of the Church if the One who loves the Church is a fraud.

Just some thoughts in light of some of the discussions I've dragged myself into (or hae been dragged into) recently here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Final Blogumentary on the Driscoll Firestorm

The Sunday Wrap-up is coming.  But, first, I give you my latest soap opera: 

I think that with this post and any ensuing comments, I'm done with the Mark Driscoll , Brian McClaren, Rob Bell, Doug Pagitt Convergent Conference blogstorm on my blog (even though my site meter is broken from excessive traffic).  My comments are being picked up and discussed by Bob Hyatt, Duncan McFadzean, Amy Welborn Dubruiel, Emerging Grace, and a few others.  I welcome that.  But, I don't know what else there is to add.

Ultimately, you just need to listen to the podcast for yourself.  My final commentary (that final piece of opinioneering to add) is that if you deny the core components of the Gospel, you deny the Gospel of Jesus and you should expect to be called out. Maybe I'm too much of a simpleton and don't question the integrity of the Scriptures enough to satisfy liberal theologians (who have largely been overgeneralized as wearing pajamas and living in your mother's basement...do we all laugh at that?!) but, I don't think that's totally the case.  Actually, I have a brain, a decent IQ, a few accomplishments, and some decent failures to draw from.  I do believe the Scriptures are authoritative for our lives.  If I didn't I'd go do something else with my time and stop wasting it on an impotent, lying, cheating, and manipulating god (little "g").  Get a freakin' life.

Augustine said "If you believe what you like in the Gospels, it is not the Gospel that you believe but yourself."  He recognized even then that a lot of "the conversation" was nothing more than a load of self-satisfying babble. 

I would say that denying the virgin birth,a pretty core component to the Gospel is a big deal.  Seeing someone rejecting it or saying that the virgin birth is unnecessary is cause enough for me to agree with Mark Driscoll's direct and timely comments.  Some of the comments on other blogs slam Mark for not following Matthew 18 for confronting a brother.  I have a couple thoughts there. 

First, I ask how is it that someone who denies Scripture as authoritative has the intestinal fortitude (or blatant hypocrisy) to inject a Biblical model for confrontation when they are denying that very Gospel as authoritative when it comes to claims that Jesus was born of a virgin and other pet liberal theologies?

Secondly, how is it they say Matthew 18 applies?  I see no one sinning against Mark.  I see sin against the Gospel of Jesus, a twisting of the truths of the Church of Jesus Christ, and a marginalizing of God-breathed Scriptures.  I would rather direct you to Titus 1:10-14:

“10 For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, 11who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of sordid gain. 12One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons." 13This testimony is true. For this reason reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith, 14not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth.” (Titus 1:10-14; NASB)

We should be gentle with those who are victims of false teaching and denounce strongly those who freely teach doctrines that disassemble the Gospel principles.  Some of you need to be yanked up by your goatees and lovingly shaken.

Regardless of how good a minister communicates or how likable he is, how can we do nothing other than denounce that person or people as a false teacher(s)?  I see no other way if we are truly a Gospel-centered people regardless of what/who we like or dislike or what camp we come from.

I thank God for the good that is taking place at the hands of Scripturally unfaithful people.  But,  we are not in the business of solely doing good works and gathering like-minded people together.  We do good works as an outflow of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives.  Getting the Gospel right in the essentials is key to the eternal value of our good works. 

Favorite George Eliot quotes

It has been a while since I read a good fiction.  I've read Silas Marner before.  It was in the ship library and I couldn't pass it up.  "George Eliot" shares some super insightful words, as applicable today as ever before. Consider these excerpts:

"...the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories."

Silas is relieved when Dolly leaves: "her simple view of life and its comforts, by which she had tried to cheer him, was only like a report of unknown objects, which his imagination could not fashion."

"As the child’s mind was growing into knowledge, his mind was growing into memory: as her life unfolded, his soul, long stupefied in a cold narrow prison, was unfolding too, and trembling gradually into full consciousness."

"Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?"

"A man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he should apprehend no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink..."

Technorati Tags: George Eliot - Silas Marner - quotes - emerging church

A Call to the new Hudson Taylors

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Matthew 28:19

In "Breaking the Missional Code", Ed Stetzer points out the growing diversity of American communities where we are challenged by Christ to make disciples.  In looking at the above passage, we see that in the Greek, the phrase "all nations" is panta te ethnê.

Since nation-states are a modern development, the meaning of this passage is actually people groups.  We should understand that to also mean population segments and cultural environments.  That may not be rocket science but, it is a fresh challenge to exegete our communities, pray over our harvest, and reinvent ourselves much like Terry Hull points out in a discussion about contextualization and the Emergent Church that Hudson Taylor did as "he wore Chinese clothes to relate to the Chinese people."

John Hendryx at Reformation Theology shows that the result of contextualized ministry to the specific panta te ethnê near Hudson Taylor's Inland Chinese Mission, was that the seeds planted by Taylor have turned into estimates of up to 90 million Chinese Christians in what is undoubtedly the greatest revival event in one of the most inhospitable environments to Christianity on the planet.

The new challenge is not to contextualize for nations and population segments.  The challenge is reaching cultural environments.  For instance, within our fellowship at Life Pointe, you will find close to two dozen nationalities with room to continue to look more like our community in the future.  Within those nationalities are multiple sub-cultures, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation Americans, age differences, and socio-economic diversity.  The new challenge is creating environments and establishing relationships that speak love and a singular Gospel across multiple contexts.

I do not think it is possible to meet all expectations or satisfy all stylistic wants.  But, in our budding community, there is a great desire for authentic expression of Christ across cultural borders.  The style has to be love, connection, beauty, honesty, doctrinal integrity, and hospitality.

Technoratis Tags: missiology - Ed Stetzer - Breaking the Missional Code - emerging church - Hudson Taylor - Great Commission

Videos: Missional, Emergent, Postmodernity

Below is a great peek into what appears to be a fantastic conference, especially for churches and pastors in the population centers of unchurched America.  I could listen to Tim Keller and Mark Driscoll all day.  I actually read Driscoll's "Confessions of A Reformation Rev" faster than any other book I've read.  It was honest to say the least.  Check out these must wach videos:

Mark Driscoll on Style in Ministry.
Tim Keller on the Character of a Missional Church.
David Wells on Emergent vs. Traditional and Seeker Church.
John Piper on the Nature of Postmodernism.

The rest of the videos promoting the Above All Earthly Powers Conference.