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KELLER ON PREACHING IN A POST-MODERN CITY II
Preaching To Create Spiritually Inclusive Worship
By Tim Keller, Senior Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church

The following is part 2 of Preaching in a Post-Modern City by Tim Keller. Part 1 was featured in the June 2004 issue.

THE NEED TO INCLUDE NON-CHRISTIANS IN SERVICES.

1. The either/or premise of evangelism and spiritual formation
There is a premise in much modern church-growth literature to the effect that you can't minister to Christians and non-Christians effectively in the same service. If this is the case, then a church has to either settle for being an outward facing, aggressively evangelistic church or an heavy discipling, teaching church. The evangelistic churches stress messages in their services that appeal to non-Christians but bore the Christians. The teaching churches stress the messages in their services that appeal to Christians but confuse, bore, or offend non-Christians. Some churches using the Willow model often try to do no spiritual formation (preaching to Christians) in the same services where they evangelize non-Christians. But this approach continues to have a pretty severe follow-up problem. Many seekers stay in the seeker services long term, never getting fed stronger meat. (And since the majority of attenders at the seeker services are usually Christians, the believers get stuck in elementary Christianity as well.)

But it is impossible to combine Christians and non-Christians in a major way unless the preacher and leaders understand that the gospel is not just the way people are justified, but also the way they are sanctified. The typical approach to the gospel is to see it is the "A-B-C's" part of Christian doctrine only, the minimum truth required to be saved. Then it is understood that we make progress in the Christian life through the application of other (more advanced) Biblical principles. If that is the case, then of course we cannot do both evangelism and spiritual formation at the same time. However, the Reformers, especially Luther, understood that the gospel is not only the way we are saved, but it is always the solution to every problem and the way to advance at every stage in the Christian life. (This is why the first of his 95 Theses were that "all of life is repentance.")

A simple example. If you are preaching a sermon on the subject of honesty, and you use the gospel on the Christians you are doing something that both interests and profits non-Christians. When you always solve Christian's problems with the gospel, then non-Christians a) get to hear it every week in multiple perspectives, and b) get to see how it really works in the Christian life. Both of these are extremely important for post-modern non-Christians.

2. Post-modern non-Christians need to be integrated
We live in an increasingly "post-modern" society. The older modern society rejected revelation as a source of truth, but still honored reason/science as a source of truth. "Post-moderns" are more deeply secular and skeptical of any kind of truth at all. I propose that the old "modern" times were more amenable to the segregation of Christians and non-Christians, but our current situation would be better addressed by having a "mixed" audience in the services. In a "mixed" group, when the preacher speaks somewhat more to non-Christians, the Christians present learn how to share the faith. This is extremely important today. It is becoming increasingly difficult for Christians to just share the gospel without doing apologetics. The old canned quickie training programs cannot prepare a Christian for dealing with the range of intellectual and personal difficulties people have with the Christian faith. They need to hear the preacher week in and week out dealing winsomely and intelligently with the problems of non-believers. This is excellent "training". On the other hand, when the preacher speaks more to Christians, the non-Christians present come to see how Christianity "works". More deeply secular "po-mo" non-Christians tend to decide on the faith on more pragmatic grounds. They do not examine in a detached intellectual way. They also are much more likely to make their commitment through a long process of mini-decisions. They will want to try Christianity on, see how it fits their problems and how it fleshes out in real life.

"CENTERED-SET" AND "BOUNDED-SET" CHURCHES

1. Creating 'centered set' communities with preaching
I am taking 'missional' from the Gospel and Our Culture Network books, especially Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, edited by Darrell L. Guder (Eerdmans, 1998). Essentially, the burden of the book is that, with the end of 'Christendom' in the West, every church in North America must consider itself now 'on the mission field'. Evangelism and mission can no longer be considered a department of the church nor something done by the church somewhere else. Now every aspect of the church – its worship, teaching, service – must be 'missional'. Though the seeker-sensitive church movement was a sincere effort to do this, it 'sold out' to modernity in different ways than did the old liberal mainline religion. [The 'Gospel and Our Culture' network has been inspired by the writings of Leslie Newbiggin. Its writings are generally edited by Craig Van Gelder of Calvin Seminary, George R. Hunsberger of Western Seminary, and Darrell L. Guder of Columbia Seminary (Decatur, GA). Besides its patron saint Newbiggin, the movement draws heavily from Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Douglas John Hall. By and large, this is a group with more mainline sensibilities who are in reaction to both the old mainline liberalism and the church growth/'seeker sensitive church' movement. They consider the former to have been a sell-out to the Enlightenment and now proven to be impotent and bankrupt. On the other hand, they also consider that the evangelical church growth/Willow Creek movement is an over-adaptation to modernity. They see it as sold out to technique, consumerism, individualism, and its allergy to historical rootedness. Thus both becoming obsolete. Unlike other critics of church growth, however, they do not simply call people to return to traditional ministry models that were appropriate for 'Christendom' – a churched culture. Instead, they call for a new ways of conceiving and doing church as being on a mission field-'missional church'. Reformed evangelicals should learn a lot from these writings. They do rely on a much more redemptive-historical understanding of the Bible and of the kingdom. However, they conceive of the kingdom as evangelism-plus-social justice and seem to ignore (or disagree with) the concept of cultural transformation.]

How, then, can we move ahead to a new 'missional' church? One key to this is the 'bounded' and 'centered' set concept.

In mathematics, there are two different ways to define a 'set'. One is a 'bounded set'. A point is in the set if it is related properly to (i.e. if it is inside) the boundary. Another is the 'centered set'. A point is in the set if it is related properly to (i.e. if it is in alignment with or moving toward) the center of the set. Organizations that are 'bounded sets' put great emphasis on the lines of demarcation 'around the circle' – at all points. 1) A person cannot work with or be part of the organization in any meaningful sense without the rite of initiation and the adoption of extensive standards which set the person apart. 2) Differences between members and the outside world are emphasized. 3) Membership is defined in terms of common beliefs and policies and folkways that are pretty extensive. Organizations that are centered-sets put more emphasis on central goals and commitments. 1) A person can work with the organization as long as it shares basic goals and is willing to work for them. 2) Differences between members and the outside world are not emphasized. 3) Membership is defined in terms of active participation toward common tasks and goals.

Traditional churches were 'bounded sets'. It used to be very clear to what belonging to a church meant. You could move nearly any place in the country and the churches of the same denomination would be highly similar, because denominations were bounded sets. Many traditional and conservative evangelical churches are extremely 'bounded set' in their mentality. One of the main ways this expresses itself is in the way bounded-set churches use 'jargon' – almost a tribal dialect. On the one hand, it is the almost casual use of pieties such as, "it was a blessing" and "praise the Lord for that" and "we just ask for traveling mercies now". The outsider immediately realizes that he or she could not pray or talk out loud without revealing that they are outsiders. It would take months to learn the dialect. On the other hand, the bounded-set mentality is expressed when doctrinal distinctives (baptism, charismatic gifts-views, approaches to tithing, eschatology) are stressed and expounded in Sunday services.

Liberal, mainline churches have almost completely abandoned membership standards and firm boundaries of any kind in an effort to be more 'inclusive.' But in general this has not worked. If a community is not going to be primarily defined by its boundary (we are united in being different from the 'Other'), then it must be united by some common cause or goal (i.e. a centered-set mentality.) A liberal church that is not united by any common belief in God or salvation can only seek to rally around very nebulous goals such as doing charitable deeds in the community. As 'centered-sets' most liberal churches fail.

Another version of the 'centered-set' is the heavily seeker-driven churches spawned by the Willow Creek movement. Many of these experimental works have been so loath to talk about boundaries at all (and often they reject the very idea of membership) that it difficult to see how the church is becoming a radical kingdom counter-culture. Some seeker churches are rightly criticized as buying into American popular and consumer culture, not challenging materialistic, individualistic life-styles, etc. No need to go into all that here. The point is that a church must somehow express both the bounded-set concept and the centered-set concept in its life and structure.

Alan Roxburgh's chapter "Missional Leadership: Equipping God's People for Mission" in Missional Church, ed. D.Guder, 1998 insists that churches in North America must be both bounded-sets and centered-sets. His diagrams are helpful but they still leave open how this is to be practically realized. At Redeemer we basically see the Ministry Community Meeting and our cell-system as the key to our 'bounded-set' community (though we expect non-Christians in the small groups) and we see the worship and preaching as the key to our 'centered-set' community (though we expect to train and shape Christians mightily in the worship.) In short, the preaching aims at both Christians and non-Christians and creates a 'centered-set' environment in which non-believers feel somewhat welcomed and included and where their faith can be 'incubated.'

2. Creating 'centered set' communities with Christ-centered, gospel-centered sermons
Normal preaching should be evangelistic preaching. Ordinarily, 'edificational' preaching is more oriented to behavior ("you must obey Christ in this way and this way") while 'evangelistic' preaching is usually oriented toward belief ("you must believe in Christ in this way and this way"). But this misses the unity of the human soul. Edwards in his Affections argues persuasively that, essentially, "if truly believe, it changes behavior, and if you are not behaving properly, it is because of unbelief." A person may say, "I know God cares for me, but I am still petrified with fear." No. If they are running in fear, it is because they don't 'know' God's care.

Therefore, any failure in behavior in Christians is due to unbelief. The antidote to unbelief is a fresh telling of the gospel. So, if a sermon is Christ-centered in its exposition and application, and if it is oriented toward a) dismantling the unbelief systems of the human heart, and toward b) re-explaining and using the gospel on the unbelief – then it will be highly illuminating to non-Christians even when it is aimed primarily to Christians. Preaching that cannot both edify and evangelize at once is choosing behavior over belief or belief over behavior.

(continued on page 2)