Pastors Circle - Steve Blakemore

Dr. Steve Blakemore, Executive Director of Third Millennium Faith and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wesley Biblical Seminary, joined the Matt Friedeman Show today to talk about Evangelism.

Describe to me what a sacrament is.

Historically in the life of the church...for protestants we've usually meant baptism...and communion.

A sacrament is a means of grace...in which we discover God is present with us in powerful ways. And we engage in these practices because we understand and believe that God has promised to meet us in these sacraments.

Can we start understanding evangelism as a sacrament?

I think about two scriptures. Of course there's the Great Commission. Jesus said Go...baptizing them and teaching them. He said that clearly as a commandment.

The other is I think about Paul's commandment...faith comes by hearing.

God is not telling us to pass on information. He's challenging us to bring people to Him.

I think that's the way we really ought to see it.

What are the key ways to evangelize?

I think first of all, the most effective evangelist layperson that I've encountered...were people that saw evangelism not just as their own private enterprise. They saw it as a community of faith that they were a part of.

They weren't just trying to pick people off one by one....instead they viewed their calling as inviting people into the church.

Those people also realized that we're not first and foremost called to speak the gospel. But we're called to live it out in our lives.

How do we balance evangelism and compassion?

If a person actually deeply cares about the welfare of another human being, we're of course going to care about whether they have enough to eat. But also about whether or not they have the bread of life.

We're going to be concerned about whether they have clothes to wear. But also whether they are clothed in righteousness.

If you have the love spread in your heart, you care about the unborn baby.

I think it begins with whether we have the love of God spread about in our hearts.

If we have a discerning heart, if someone's hungry, we're going to figure out how to address that.

Do we contextualize evangelism - do it differently depending on location?

In the small town evangelism, there is an awareness of people's lives that you don't have in the anonymity of New York City.

It seems more of this relational, going out with your neighbors, caring for your neighbors to be ready to give a reason for why you help the poor.

In New York City, I would think that just stopping to care for people in the anonymous morass of the city.

The Missing Link of Discipleship

Here is my latest in the AFA Journal: 

Years ago in the Wall Street Journal, Martin Marty wrote an article on evangelicalism. These were the headlines:

         - An Evangelical Revival is Sweeping the Country, But with Little Effect

         - Shunning the Sinful World

         - Effect Has Been Small

         - Shying From Involvement

    Ouch. I tell my students at the seminary where I teach that “If you make disciples by sitting around and talking, don’t be surprised if your disciples sit around and talk.”

    The truth of the matter is that active service is part and parcel of the discipleship strategy of Jesus and the greatest missing element of modern discipleship.

    We prefer to make disciples in small groups, hunkered over our Bibles and our lattes, asking each other provocative questions about the biblical text. A really good study leader might encourage us to go and apply the truths in our lives this week. But one thing we don’t do – we don’t serve together regularly.

    Do you suppose Jesus, after demonstrating for us His discipleship model, might wonder Why not?

    The gospel of Matthew, the most “rabbinic” of the accounts of Jesus, tells us that Jesus began to call his disciples to Himself (4:18-22). In chapters five through seven comes the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus adds fresh perspective to everything the disciples probably already thought they knew.

    But here’s the problem – in Scripture, the Sermon is not what comes directly after the disciples’ call. This is what follows:

    Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. … people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them (4:23-25).

 This sort of thing happens throughout the Gospels. Jesus calls His disciples together and He teaches them, to be sure. But He does it in the context of touching the untouchables of their culture and asking His disciples to do the same. He teaches them in “Bible study” moments, but He is downloading kingdom content amidst service to the desperate in His community.

    This is so basic a truth, it is astonishing that Sunday school classes, small group Bible studies, families and whole churches miss it. If Jesus made disciples with service, for service, then how can we possibly emulate His method with biblical content minus activity together?

    The problem is particularly acute, I suspect, with our families. God has called us to make disciples – primarily, I feel, with our own children. Two different experts in youth ministry recently interviewed on my radio show cited research indicating that if you want to keep your kids interested in church long after they have left your home, it is essential to serve with them, and not just now and then. “Go do something regularly heroic,” said one researcher, “and bring your kids along.”

    Teaching your children a biblical worldview is important, as so many Christian ministries remind us today. But inculcate that world-view without some kind of concomitant world-do and you might have inadvertently conveyed how irrelevant the Bible and church can be to the prevailing culture.

    One can almost sense the disdain that pours forth from the pen of Luke as he writes of those ready to dismiss the message of Paul: “All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas” (Acts 17:21).

    Not choosing. Not doing. But talking. And listening. A sure recipe for discipleship disaster if it ends with an application of mouth and ears but not hands and feet.  Read the rest...

Rigorous theology

David Brooks saw a Broadway production called The Book of Mormon.  The conclusion of his column is long, but well worth reading. 

The religions that thrive have exactly what “The Book of Mormon” ridicules: communal theologies, doctrines and codes of conduct rooted in claims of absolute truth.

Rigorous theology provides believers with a map of reality. These maps may seem dry and schematic — most maps do compared with reality — but they contain the accumulated wisdom of thousands of co-believers who through the centuries have faced similar journeys and trials.

Rigorous theology allows believers to examine the world intellectually as well as emotionally. Many people want to understand the eternal logic of the universe, using reason and logic to wrestle with concrete assertions and teachings.

Rigorous theology helps people avoid mindless conformity. Without timeless rules, we all have a tendency to be swept up in the temper of the moment. But tough-minded theologies are countercultural. They insist on principles and practices that provide an antidote to mere fashion.

Rigorous theology delves into mysteries in ways that are beyond most of us. For example, in her essay, “Creed or Chaos,” Dorothy Sayers argues that Christianity’s advantage is that it gives value to evil and suffering. Christianity asserts that “perfection is attained through the active and positive effort to wrench real good out of a real evil.” This is a complicated thought most of us could not come up with (let alone unpack) outside of a rigorous theological tradition.

Rigorous codes of conduct allow people to build their character. Changes in behavior change the mind, so small acts of ritual reinforce networks in the brain. A Mormon denying herself coffee may seem like a silly thing, but regular acts of discipline can lay the foundation for extraordinary acts of self-control when it counts the most.

“The Book of Mormon” is not anti-religious. It just endorses a no-sharp-edges view of religion that is all creative metaphors and no harsh judgments. The Africans in the play embrace this kind of religion. And in the context of a hilarious musical, that’s fine.

But it’s worth remembering that the religions that thrive in real-life Africa are not as nice and naïve as the religion in the play. The religions thriving in real-life Africa are often so doctrinaire and so socially conservative that they would make Pat Robertson’s hair stand on end.

I was once in an AIDS-ravaged village in southern Africa. The vague humanism of the outside do-gooders didn’t do much to get people to alter their risky behavior. The blunt theological talk of the church ladies — right and wrong, salvation and damnation — seemed to have a better effect.

Dean Kelly once wrote a book called Why Conservative Churches Are Growing.   Many thought theologically conservative churches were hopelessly ill-equipped to serve the modern world, yet it was the theologically liberal churches who did everything they could to position themselves to serve contemporary society that floundered.  Why?  One of the main thoughts seem to be simple - conservative churches demand something from their adherents.  Rigorous theology...