So I thought I would post this as my first post on this blog. It was on my school's forum and the question was "What are the 3 biggest challenges facing the church today?" These are my thoughts on the issue, part 1. Feel free to comment if you want to add something or just want to give a shout out.

Problem #1: The church has forgetten what it means to Incarnate the Gospel

It is helpful for me to think about the Incarnation in this whole process. Jesus came to 1st C Palestine. He came in a culturally specific way. Male, working class, Jewish, itinerant, etc. This was a crucial example to us. He chose to Incarnate the Good News in such a way that the message would be heard by the most people. Would he have had the same audience if he came to the same scenario as a woman? No. How about as one in a Pharasiaical family? No. What about as a cultural elite (like the Sadducees)? NO. He incarnated the Gospel in such a way that he would have no cultural barrier to the ones he was called to. At the end of John's gospel, Jesus prays for His people and says "as the Father has sent me, so I send you".

His mandate with the message is not to "market it", as if we can apply business priciples to grow churches. His mandate was for his people in every culture, place, time, etc to incarnate the Good News in such a way that our message won't get "Lost in Translation".

I live in the greater Seattle area. Less than 8% of our 5 million people attend any kind of church on Sunday. Throw out the liberal wacko churches and the number is alot less. Not only that, but we are now into our second generation of people (high school and new college) who are removed from any concept of Church attendence and even being formed within a Christian worldview. Now, I am a Reformed Theologian and a pastor. But, God has called me to be a missionary to this time and place. NOT to the 14th or 15th C. NOT to the 1st C. NOT to a society where the predominant world view was shaped by Christendom. NOT to a society where the church is considered the central place for spiritual answers. Therefore, as a good missionary, I need to do my "market research". I need to know the people whom God has called me to, what their hopes, dreams, and passions are, how they communicate, where they play, what their idols are, what is sacred to them, etc. Then, I need to engage them in their culture with the transformative truth of the Gospel. I need to constantly see how God would have me "Incarnate" His Good News, to re-tell their cultural narrative through the lens of the Gospel.

What generally happens in many churches is that we err in two ways. We have a tendency to over contextualize and ultimately compromise the Gospel or we withdraw from our culture, hunkering down in our bunkers with our rapture charts out, waiting for Jesus to come back .

A good balance with all of this is to approach the idols that our culture holds sacred. We need to decide what elements can be recieved. There are many aspects to our society which point to Jesus, Film, arts, music, etc all have elements that point us to God. These need to be recieved by Christians and affirmed as reflecting truth about God. We also need to decide what elements can be redeemed. These can be good things that have been turned into "God things". I think of the environmentalists. If anyone should be in the forefront of this it should be us Christians. Instead, we have neglected our responsibility to be stewards of the earth and have let others do it who are worshiping the creation instead of the Creator. Christians need to redeem this element of society back to Jesus, to show people what it means to steward the Creators world, not to worship it. Finally, we need to see what needs to be rejected. There are aspects of our society that are truly evil and must never be accepted. However, as a pastor I have found that when we are humbly engaging in the culture, recieving and redeeming elements back to Jesus, people are more open to hear why things need to be rejected.

Really, me and some fellow pastors in our network have concluded that you are right on in your ministry when you are shot at by both sides. The conservatives think you are too worldly and the liberals think you are too conservative!