Category Archives: Leadership

Jan 08 2010
7 Comments
Evangelism, Leadership, Missional Living, Personal Growth, Popular Culture, Teaching, Theology

On Boycotting People Into Heaven

I’ve been reading Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends for a class I’m in. The main thrust of the book is this: Christians shouldn’t limit exegesis to the biblical text – we should also be proficient in exegeting culture.

Let me put it another way. If I am to love my wife, I must first have some level of understanding of her. If I have no understanding of her at all, how can I express my love to her in a way she’ll understand?

I heard of a missionary overseas once bringing a stork figurine to a native couple who had just delivered their first baby as a gift for the newborn. The missionary was surprised when the native family took great offense at the gift. What was a symbol of new birth to the missionary in the stork was a symbol of death to the natives. The missionary had said without uttering a word, “I hope your new baby dies.” The missionary didn’t understand the culture, and, as a result, his act of love was interpretted as an act of malice by the natives.

The point is this: understanding culture is integral to meaningfully showing love to our neighbors.

In addition to keeping the proverbial foot out of one’s mouth, an understanding of culture will also give you a glimpse into a people’s worldview. If a missionary understands a culture’s worldview, they’ll be better equipped to share the gospel with them in a way they’ll understand.

In the Bible, John’s use of the concept of “the word” or “logos” is a great example of this. The Gospel of John was written to a Greek audience, so John used a concept from Greek philosophy to communicate the message of Jesus to them. John understood the Greeks, and was able to more effectively minister to them as a result.

Paul’s work in Athens recorded in Acts 17 is another great example of a missionary understanding a culture and using that to the Gospel’s advantage. Paul observed the culture of the Athenians, found a way to use it to communicate the Gospel message (ironically, through an idol dedicated to “An Unknown God”), and did so with great effectiveness.

Both John and Paul’s worldview was vastly different from that of their Greek audience, but both understood enough about Greek culture that they could communicate their own worldview in a way the Greeks would understand.

For John and Paul, a good understanding of culture led to effective communication.

John and Paul’s attitude toward the Christian mission are quite a bit different from what my own was in the past. Instead of having a “let me examine your beliefs so I can understand them and better understand you” attitude, I had a “I’m not going to listen to you at all if your beliefs slightly offend me” attitude.

I remember several years ago when Rolling Stone featured a picture of Kanye West with a crown of thorns on his head on the cover of their magazine. The caption read “The Passion of Kanye West.” I saw that and it didn’t take me five minutes to email everyone I knew telling them they should boycott Rolling Stone. Now, did I even read the article? No. But I called Rolling Stone’s customer service department to inform them I wouldn’t be reading their magazine anymore.  Was I a subscriber to Rolling Stone? No. Was I even a casual reader of Rolling Stone? No – never have been. Even when I was working in radio I didn’t read Rolling Stone – I always preferred Spin. But I went out of my way to inform them I wouldn’t be reading their magazine, and I made sure to let them know why too – because I was a Christian! Kind of funny now (and sad).

Anyway, here’s the point: I saw something offensive, and instead of listening I reacted with a call to boycott even going out of my way to express my displeasure to a nice lady in their customer service department. I’m not saying I necessarily embrace the depiction of Kanye West in a crown of thorns or of his “suffering” in the music industry having any relation to Jesus’ suffering on the cross, but my first reaction shouldn’t have been what it was. My attitude and actions were counterproductive to the Christian mission, and I imagine John and Paul would have rolled their eyes at me. I’ll bet the customer service lady I talked to on the phone did.

I know the Greeks’ outlook on life and living was offensive to John and Paul’s Christian worldview. I can only imagine how Paul felt as he walked through Athens in the midst of all those idols – in fact, the Bible says he was greatly distressed because of what he saw. But Paul didn’t call all his Christian friends together and tell them to boycott Athens. He observed and listened, then he reached out respectfully and in love.

Fast forward to the present: I’m in San Francisco – one of the most liberal cities in the world. What should Christians do when they encounter something offensive to their worldview here (which happens, like, everyday)? Boycott? Protest? Scream? Picket the steps of City Hall? Or should we observe, listen, and then reach out respectfully and in love?

I vote for the latter.

If anything needs to be boycotted today, it’s the attitude that leads to boycotting being your first move. Please, boycott that immediately and email all your friends encouraging them to do the same.

Less boycotting, more listening and observing. From listening and observing comes the ability to show love meaningfully and communicate effectively – two things integral to the Christian mission.

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Dec 19 2009
1 Comment
Discipling, Evangelism, Leadership, Missional Living, Outreach, Urban Ministry

123 Baptisms, 158 Restorations at River City Ministry in 2009

I just received the year end report from Anthony Wood – the evangelist for River City Ministry.

I’ve written about River City several times before having spent a good part of my growing up years being influenced by this ministry. My dad, Jim Woodell, currently serves as the Executive Director there, and my brother-in-law filled that position before him.

River City Ministry is a mission to North Little Rock, AR’s, poor and homeless population with facilities located in a pretty rough part of town.

Free groceries, shelter, clothing, showers, toiletries, medical services, prescriptions, eye and dental care, daily meals, and a host of other services are provided by the good people at River City.

But there’s one more thing: they also have a full-time evangelist on staff whose sole purpose is to share Jesus with those coming there for other services.

River City is a great example of a ministry concerned with social justice that is making an eternal impact on the individuals being served – not simply providing them with temporal care. Other ministries like this that aren’t experiencing these types of results might think about studying River City to see what you could do differently.

From Anthony’s email:

Friends I wanted to send you this list, as I have on occasion of those immersed and restored. As 2009 comes to an end, we all rejoice that because Jesus was lifted up daily by all who serve with River City Ministry, 120 were immersed into Christ and 158 were restored back to their first love.
 
I am so thankful to serve with a team of dedicated servants who glorify God in every way as they serve those whom society seems to forget. Please take a few minutes to pray each by name that the faithfulness, security, hope and love of God will richly indwell them.
 
Here’s hoping you all have a wonderful, rich, and restful holiday season.
 
Blessings,
Anthony Wood, Evangelist
River City Ministry
North Little Rock AR

2009 River City Ministry Baptisms

1/12 Alfred T.
1/14 Randy T.
1/15 Pamela M.
1/20 Ray T.
1/20 Teraz H.
2/9 Tony M.
2/10 Ricky B.
2/12 Clara H.
2/17 Gracie H.
2/24 Alonzo P.
2/26 Oliver S.
3/2 Lee B.
3/2 Loretta D.
3/10 Krystal W.
3/10 Darren B.
3/11 Bill K.
3/12 Ronnie T.
3/18 Vicki B.
3/24 Frederick F.
3/30 Tawana H.
4/1  Claude A.
4/6  Tim S.
4/6  Jackie G.
4/6  LaVonne T.
4/8 Tony B.
4/9 Freddie W.
4/14 John G.
4/15 Rachel M.
4/15 Buford B.
4/22 Ken P.
4/23 Frieda R.
4/27 Norman S.
4/28 Quartez S.
4/29 Chris H.
4/29 Bryan S.
5/6 Christy C.
5/7 Shawn C.
5/12 Mary B.
5/13 Cleophus B.
5/18 Brian T.
5/21 Mike R.
5/27 Adam M.
5/28 Helen D.
6/1 Kristopher S.
6/8 George B.
6/8 James T.
6/9 Richard S.
6/11 Mike S.
6/12 Roger G.
6/14 Archie J.
6/15 John K.
6/22 James J.
6/23 Willie M.
6/23 John H.
6/28 Frances N.
6/30 Robert G.
6/30 Troy H.
6/30 Don J.
7/1 Andre-a W.
7/6 Edgar B.
7/8 Charles F.
7/9 Greg P.
7/13 Antonio “Shorty” T.
7/13 Amy T.
7/14 Andre’ C.
7/20 Christy S.
7/20 Joe S.
7/21 William H.
7/22 Jason M.
7/23 Eddie D.
7/24 Jean S.
7/27 Robert C.
7/28 Brian-Paul W. H.
7/28 Rodney C.
8/2 Cleophus B.
8/4 Lamareo C.
8/5 Dean D.
8/5 Wes S.
8/6 Don K.
8/10 Nicky L.
8/11 Dairon B.
8/26 Ronnie R.
8/26 Ashante S.
8/26 Kenneth W.
9/3 Donneal M.
9/10 Larry W.
9/15 Tim R.
9/22 David W.
9/22 Anna B.
9/22 Sylvia A.
9/22 Carlester Y.
9/23 Torence N.
9/24 Emma S.
9/28 Craig W.
9/29 James S.
9/30 David F.
10/1 John H.
10/4 Shirley J.
10/6 Robert C.
10/7 Phillip “Billy” J.
10/7 John B.
10/13 Daniel S.
10/14 Jamie O.
10/14 Ulysses H.
10/15 Ralph R.
10/19 Gastivus H.
10/20 Marcus M.
10/26 Vernon F.
10/27 Glen W.
11/11 Teresa M.
11/12 Dennis C.
11/16 Paul D.
11/17 Herman B.
11/17 Brad B.
11/19 Terry A.
12/3 Pat B.
12/3 Steve P.
12/3 Samuel T.
12/9 Keith M.
12/9 Kyle T.
12/10 Louis B.
12/14 Kim H.
12/16 Mark B.

 2009 River City Ministry Restorations

1/6 Billy B.
1/8 Mack Y.
1/8 Rita W.
1/12 Geraldine L.
1/13 Aaron J.
1/20 Carlton W.
1/21 Cherry W.
1/22 Lilly W.
1/25 Donald B.
2/3 Brian S.
2/3 Wesley B.
2/4 Sharon H. G.
2/4 Gary Z. W.
2/4 Anthony S.
2/4 Michael Y.
2/5 Dan S.
2/11 Adam M.
2/11 Stephen S.
2/17 Alonzo M.
2/17 Willie L.
2/17 Ron M.
2/17 Earl M.
2/17 David R.
2/17 Ronnie K.
2/19 Billy B.
2/25 Oliver S.
2/26 Donald J.
2/26 Marcus T.
2/26 Joanna S.
3/2 Manuel O.
3/2 Desmond A.
3/4 Adrian B.
3/4 Wiley C.
3/4 Christy S.
3/9 Robert B.
3/10 Marty R.
3/16 Earle M.
3/17 Bryant R.
3/17 Barry M.
3/18 Albert B.
3/24 Terrence C.
3/25 Gary M.
3/30 Gastivus H.
4/1 Lloyd P.
4/1 Oliver S.
4/1 Tochelle W.
4/6  John G.
4/7 Larry H.
4/7 Kay M.
4/7  Ruth J.
4/13 Joe K.
4/16 Jeremy R.
4/20 Michael F.
4/21 Yolanda C.
4/21 Keith M.
4/22 Shantana M.
4/26 Sara B.
4/29 Danny P.
5/4 James W.
5/4 Calvin C.
5/6 Odell D.
5/7 Samuel T.
5/11 Willie J.
5/14 Mike H.
5/18 Kenneth H.
5/20 Ricky N.
5/21 Steve K.
5/26 Jay A. G.
5/27 Ed D.
5/28 John G.
6/1 Robert G.
6/5 James T.
6/9 Teraz H.
6/11 Yolanda M.
6/11 Lee B.
6/16 Dean B.
6/18 Wendell W.
6/19 Dwayne S.
6/22 Gastivus H.
6/23 Lenora B.
6/23 Michael S.
6/30 Robyne B.
7/1 Mark M.
7/13 O.J. W.
7/13 Linda H.
7/16 Tommie J.
7/22 Marcus T.
7/24 Dean D.
8/4 Roosevelt B.
8/4 Carl W.
8/11 Ronnie C.
8/11 Earnest A.
8/12 Gastivus H.
8/24 Victoria M.
8/31 Doris W.
8/31 Jesse M.
8/31 Charles C.
8/31 Linda H.
9/2 Jerry A.
9/2 Randy B.
9/9 Larry W.
9/10 Dante T.
9/15 William B.
9/21 Samuel T.
9/21 Herbert M.
9/21 Herman B.
9/21 Sylvia C.
9/22 Sylvia A.
9/22 Carlester Y.
9/28 Sandra D.
9/28 Jerry M.
9/29 Kenneth P.
9/29 Sharon W.
10/5 Frank P.
10/5 Rickey S.
10/8 Ed D.
10/8 Nandre E.
10/12 Jimmy D.
10/13 Clara H.
10/21 Tim J.
10/12 Clarence B.
10/21 Harold H.
10/21 Kenneth E.
10/22 Sherman C.
10/26 Vernon F.
10/28 Robert M.
11/2 Albert B.
11/4 Derrick C.
11/4 Terrence C.
11/5 George B.
11/5 Beth H.
11/9 Leroy K.
11/9 Andrew R.
11/9 Nathan M.
11/11 Marilyn G.
11/11 Willie J.
11/16 Charles C.
11/16 Bradley B.
11/18 Terry A.
11/18 Ronnie M.
11/18 Romero B.
11/23 Brian H.
11/24 Regina F.
11/24 Carol L.
11/30 Doris W.
11/30 L. P. F.
12/1 Donovan M.
12/1 Steve P.
12/2 Pamela B.
12/2 Dawn S.
12/14 Terrence W.
12/14 Robert A.
12/16 Rhonda B.
12/16 Darin Y.

 Awesome.

As Anthony requests, “please take a few minutes to pray each by name that the faithfulness, security, hope and love of God will richly indwell them” – I know they’ll appreciate it. 🙂

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Nov 29 2009
4 Comments
Books, Campus Ministry, Leadership, Resources, Teaching, Theology

Teaching Toward a Biblical Worldview

The words on page 74-75 of Kinnaman & Lyon’s book, UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity … and Why It Matters, jump off the page at me every time I read them:

      The opportunities that outsiders have to hear about Christ and know Christians are nothing short of astounding [in the United States]. For nearly two decades, the Barna team has been exploring church participation among American teenagers. We consistently find that the vast majority of teenagers nationwide will spend a significant amount of their teen years participating in a Christian congregation. Most teenagers in America enter adulthood considering themselves to be Christians and saying they have made a personal committment to Christ. But with a decade, most of these young people will have left the church and will have placed emotional connection to Christianity on the shelf. For most of them, their faith was merely skin deep. This leads to the sobering finding that the vast majority of outsiders in this country, particularly among young generations, are actually de-churched individuals.

      In spite of the fact that many of them are currently disconnected from a church, most Americans, including two-thirds of all adult Mosaics and Busters (65 percent), tell us that they have made a commitment to Jesus Christ at some point in their life. This is slightly lower than the percent of older adults who have made such a commitment (73 percent). This is an amazing fact about our culture. The vast majority of Americans, regardless of age, assert they have already made a significant decision to follow Christ!

      Of course, this raises the question of the depth of their faith. If that many Americans have made a decision to follow Jesus, our culture and our world would be revolutionized if they simply lived that faith. It is easy to embrace a costless form of Christianity in America today, and we have probably contributed to that by giving people a superficial understanding of the gospel and focusing only on their decision to convert.

      At Barna, we employ dozens of tools to assess the depth of a person’s faith. Let me suggest one for our discussion: a biblical worldview. A person with a biblical worldview experiences, interprets, and responds to reality in light of the Bible’s principles. What Scripture teaches is the primary grid for making decisions and interacting with the world. For the purposes of our research, we investigate a biblical worldview based on eight elements.

      A person with a biblical worldview believes that …

  1. Jesus Christ lived a sinless life.
  2. God is the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe and He still rules today.
  3. Salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned.
  4. Satan is real.
  5. A Christian has a responsiblity to share his or her faith in Christ with other people.
  6. The Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches.
  7. Unchanging moral truth exists.
  8. Such moral truth is defined by the Bible.

      In our research, we have found that people who embrace these eight components live a substantially different faith from other Americans – indeed, from other believers. What we believe influences our choices.

      Getting back to the issue of spiritual depth, if two-thirds of young adults have made a commitment to Jesus before, how many do you think possess a biblical worldview? Our research shows only 3 percent of Busters and Mosaics embrace these eight elements. That is just one out of every twenty-two young adults who have made a committment to Christ. (Although older adults are more likely to have such a perspective, it is also a small slice – only 9 percent – who do).

      This means that out of ninety-five million Americans who are ages eighteen to forty-one, about sixty million say they have already made a commitment to Jesus that is still important; however, only about three million of them have a biblical worldview.

Wow – those numbers are shocking!

Quantifiable research done over the course of many years including hundreds of thousands of interviews has enlightened us to this: the vast majority of young adults living in America today who claim to be following Jesus don’t have a grasp of the most basic Christian doctrines.

The eight elements listed do not comprehensively paint a picture of a disciple of Christ, but they do represent many of the basics.

After reading UnChristian for the first time a couple of years ago, I set a goal to do my best to make sure those learning from me adopt a biblical worldview. Meeting this goal takes intentionality. Before I simply assumed most people who’d been part of my church for a while (barring brand new Christians) understood the basics. I’ve since learned it’s a mistake to assume too much – one I doubt I’ll make again anytime soon.

I’m interested in hearing from others …

Do these numbers shock you? Are any of these eight topics ever tackled at your church? Have any of you come up with a teaching strategy to instill a biblical worldview in others? What’s missing from this list that needs to be added?

Love to hear your thoughts.

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