It has not been that long ago since the online editor was praising her nightly ritual of watching sitcoms and going to bed with Jay and Dave in her editorial section at the start of the weekly Christianity Today updates. I wrote a nice email asking if she was serious or just being hyperbolous for effect. I am still waiting on a reply.
Here’s an update on the Sex and the City and Christianity Today movie review ordeal…
Sex and the City was an HBO television series (1998-2004) that won 7 Emmy Awards.
The SATC movie (rated R) was released on May 30 with more of the same, what the Chicago Tribune labels “outré fashion, casual sex and dubious cocktails” and “plenty of eye candy for the ladies (think naked men and haute couture).” Not your typical Christian movie.
People criticized CT for positively reviewing a “pornographic movie.”
Carolyn McCulley (a CT contributor herself) writes an exceptional response to the CT review: “the pot with the proverbial frog has boiled over. The changes that have come about with the introduction of ’sex positive’ or ‘porn positive’ third-wave feminism, beginning in the early 1990s, have now so thoroughly permeated our culture that even evangelicals fail to see the trend or the danger.”
Then yesterday Ted Slater of Boundless called CT to *repent* over the review (and the defense of the review) in an article simply titled “Christianity Today Relishes Sexual Perversion.”
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How many times have you been in your church’s foyer when a member of your congregation said something so unbiblical that you literally cringed? Or maybe it was in a Sunday school class when that one person (you know who I’m talking about) raises his/her hand and waxes eloquent in an assertion that is so jacked-up theologically that you don’t even know how to begin to respond.
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Show me a grown man with a goatee and I’ll show you a major league baseball player. Show me a grown man with a goatee wearing sandals and I’ll show you a youth pastor.
Show me a grown man with a goatee and I’ll show you a major league baseball player. Show me a grown man with a goatee wearing sandals and I’ll show you a youth pastor.
When I was a kid, I remember that the youth pastor at our church was totally different than any other pastor I’d ever seen. He quoted rock bands and wore blue jeans to church. He was cool in a way that the other adults in my life were not. I was proud to invite my friends to church and see their negative stereotypes of Christians get blown up. The youth group thrived and “unchurched” kids were reached. The one thing that distinguished our group from others was that our pastor was cool.
As the youth pastors and youth of the 1990s become the head pastors and congregants of the 2000s, it seems like the phenomenon has only grown. It is now an unexamined assumption in many quarters: the best way to reach people is to be like them. In order to reach our culture, we must embody what the culture defines as acceptable and valuable. We must be as “cool” as we can possibly be while still retaining the gospel. That way, people will see us and not be turned off by us. Maybe they’ll even want to be us.
This shows up in both the private lives of pastors (you missional guys, I’m talking about you and your emo eyeglasses) and in the church’s corporate worship, where we seek to remove everything that might seem foreign to the unchurched visitor.
In some ways, I think being connected to the culture around us is helpful. But there are ways in which a commitment to being cool can ultimately conflict with the call of a pastor. As the resident cool guy on the 9Marks docket (which is roughly like being the ladies’ man at a Star Trek convention—damning with faint praise), here are a few thoughts:
Contextual Preaching: The Key to Preaching So Your Audience Can Hear by Ed Stetzer
At the heart of effective preaching is a solid missiological perspective. Are you communicating in such a way that your words actually convey biblical truth to your audience? Or does your preaching float right past your hearers because it’s not delivered “on a frequency” that they listen to? In this respect, we can probably learn as much about good preaching from Hudson Taylor as we can from Haddon Robinson.
Indigenization
Jesus left his comfortable dwelling in heaven and took on the appearance of those he sought to reach. He wore their clothes, ate their food, spoke their language, and understood their culture at its deepest level. He fully identified with his hearers.
The idea behind indigenization for us today is that a church should spring forth out of the soil in which it is planted. It is indigenous in that its leadership, expressions, forms, and functions reflect a biblical expression in a certain context.
What we have found is that when the pastoral leadership, core of the church, and community all line up, the potential for the church to take on an indigenous or contextual form is significant. This combination seems to provide a greenhouse for explosive growth. Preaching is a central part of that process.
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The Most Potent Tool In Your Preaching Arsenal: Prayer
Alex McFarland www.AlexMcfarland.com
The pastorate (or any form of Christian work) comes with a level of busy-ness that can cause even the most dedicated leader to neglect time in prayer. But prayer is absolutely essential to effective ministry, especially as it relates to preaching. Charles Spurgeon’s reliance on prayer was legendary. It is said that as he was preaching in the Metropolitan Tabernacle, a team of intercessors would be praying in a room underneath the pulpit area. Spurgeon called this “the powerhouse of the church.”
Preparation, preaching, and prayer
Prayer may not immediately come to mind as a homiletical resource, but it is certainly the most valuable tool in preaching. The responsibility of preaching must be wed to the discipline of preparation - which should include prayer. Prayer should be as much a resource in sermon preparation as are lexicons and commentaries. From conception through gestation and delivery, personal and corporate prayer enable a sermon to take on a life of its own. Without doubt, prayer (or lack of it) will determine the end results of our preparation and presentation.
One of the most divisive issues in the evangelical church over the past few decades has been the discussion surrounding the role of women and men in the church and the home. This debate pits “complementarians,” who believe that men and women have distinct God-given roles in the church and the home, against “egalitarians,” who believe that the new age of salvation in Christ means full equality of gifts, calling and church office. Complementarians point especially to 1 Timothy 2:11-15, where Paul tells Timothy that he does not allow women to teach or exercise authority over men. Egalitarians point to Galatians 3:28, where Paul says that former divisions based on ethnicity (Jew and Gentile), social status (slave and free), and gender (male and female) have been overcome “in Christ.”
This brief essay is not an attempt to solve the issue. Not even close. If you are interested in pursuing it, there are many excellent books that argue convincingly for one side or the other. See especially the “manifestos” for both positions: Discovering Biblical Equality(eds. Pierce and Groothuis; egalitarian) and Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood(eds. Piper and Grudem; complementarian). If you can’t afford these, get both views in one handy volume with the excellent Two Views on Women in Ministry(eds. Beck and Blomberg).
Let me share a great exercise for preachers. I recently stumbled across it while preparing a five-year ministry plan for the church I serve.
The exercise is to prepare a one-paragraph philosophy of preaching statement. I did this recently as part of writing a larger ‘philosophy of ministry’ statement. Our church needed a statement like this to clarify our identity and our approach to doing ministry. When I prepared the paragraph on preaching, it forced me to revisit basic questions about the ministry of the Word. Why do I preach? How do I preach? What do I preach? Yes, I’ve wrestled with those questions before, and I’ve settled on the answers. But thinking through them again renewed my focus and my passion for preaching Scripture.
Here’s an update on the Sex and the City and Christianity Today movie review ordeal…
