The church that I go to (New City Fellowship) is a church that considers justice, racial reconciliation, and reaching out to the poor and oppressed is of utmost importance in the Christian calling. Consequently they have many programs that have this focus. For example, they have a tutoring program for inner city kids, they have a widows ministry, they have a school called the Freedom school for children who would normally not get a good education (The public school system in St. Louis is horrible), and one Saturday a month they have a work day where many people from different churches get together to help various people in need. They also have many connections with African churches; in particular, in Togo, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I believe they support many orphans in Africa, and they (I suppose I mean the members of the church when I say ‘they’) are currently trying to establish some clinics in the Congo.
Since I started attending this church last October, however, I have wondered if the church as an organization is not so good at reaching out to each other. Near the time I began to attend one friend of mine said that she had attended New City Fellowship(NCF) for a whole year but decided to move to a different church after that; one of the reasons she mentioned was that she found getting to know people very difficult.
I spoke with another lady, who still attends NCF, who told me that one has to be pretty agressive to get to know people in NCF.
In my house church (equivalent to a small group) we recently discussed this issue, and it turns out that several people had been thinking of this issue. One person made a distinction between ‘outreach’ and ‘inreach’. He said that the previous church he and his wife had attended was very welcoming and very good at supporting and encouraging one another, but it was not good at reaching out to the community. They were impressed with NCF because it did a good job of actually having a practical and noticeable influence on the community, although this guy did acknowledge that at NCF getting to know the people is more difficult than in their previous church. He said that managing both outreach and inreach is a tough balance to achieve.
Last Sunday I went out to eat with some people from church, and eventually we started talking about this topic. One lady there acknowledged that people are so busy that if you want to get to know people you have to be the one to take initiative; but she said that in comparison with her experience at other churches, NCF does a good job of providing a community within the church (e.g. house churches).
I myself have felt a lack of solidarity with anybody in the church. Was never even invited to a family’s house until a couple of months ago. People are nice to me at church, and I gather that they would like to get to know me better; but I think that many people are so busy during the week that they never follow through. On the other hand, I also have been very busy with school. I think I could have been more intentional in pursuing relationships. Maybe I am expecting too much.
What are your opinions on how to include both outreach and inreach in a church? I think that the answer is not to have a balance, but to have outreach and inreach integrated through love. After all, Jesus says that the world will know that we are his disciples by the love we have for each other.
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
I think that the emphasis on justice, racial reconciliation, and the poor is a misguided premise from the start. First, it forms a single lens through which they see the church. This makes for a church which overtly privileges misguided outreach over all else. Second, it neglects the fact that the Gospel is about so much more than this. Third, it’s emphasis is far too politically correct and far too reflective of this silly, Romanistic culture we live in.
My advice, run away as fast and as far as you can. Can you tell that I am a little jaded about the calling and emphases of churches these days? I am convinced that there are few churches remaining who get it right. And the thing is, it’s not that hard to do.
But, to answer your question, you already answered it. It’s about the whole Gospel and Love. I am convinced that one of the practical ways in which people (including pastors) within churches come to know this simple truth is through expository , not topical teaching of the Word. Churches where topical teaching/preaching is practiced will, by definition expose it’s soap boxes. I will never go to a church again that does not wrestle with every word of the Word.
I think you are right, Seth. However, it is hard to see what that looks like on a day to day basis. Hmmm…you are like a detective, asking questions of people in the church, and detecting clues as to the personality of the church and the spirit of the age. Hmmmm….
Uncle David, I have been thinking about visiting other churches; but I am willing to hold out a little longer to see if things get better; but I would say that the sermons are usually topical. I know one girl who left partly because she longed for deeper learning
I know one guy who went to New City Fellowship for several years. He said that the sermons were helpful because the pastor presented Christianity as an all-encompassing worldview; however, he said that basically every sermon was the same sermon. He told me that it was cool to see that you could preach the gospel from every and any passage, but he told me that eventually he got tired of hearing the same message over and over again. I am not sure what he meant, because I don’t think the Gospel could ever get old. I suspect he means that the Gospel was usually only applied to helping the poor.
I just looked through some of my sermon notes. In general a kingdom perspective is presented. Some of the themes are Christ as king and victor, God is all powerful, greatness in the kingdom is serving, we are children of God, humility, etc. The pastor usually makes some reference to the poor. I recall that one thing he often emphasizes is that since God has given us so much through his Son, we also should use our resources to be a blessing to others. At least in one of the sermons that I wrote down ‘others’ here means the poor and the refugee immigrants (for example).
I go to the same house church that the pastor goes to. I think that he loves the Lord, and that the Gospel has touched and changed his heart. I wonder however if his application of the Gospel can be one-sided sometimes.
I would agree with NCF that reaching out to the poor is very important. James says that pure and undefiled religion is to visit orphans and widows in their time of trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world; and in Galatians 2:9-10 Paul says, “…and when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that had been given to me, they gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. They desired only that we should remember the poor, the very thing which I also was eager to do.”
I think there is a lot of support in the Bible for helping the poor, and I think in St. Louis it would be a sin to overlook the need to reach out to the poor. The “White Flight” seems to have had a large impact on St. Louis, so that the city has apparently become very polarized between the rich and the poor. I have noticed that as I travel east (and north), the neighborhoods seem to become more run-down. I have been told that once nice neighborhoods have now become ghettos. In the west are where most of the richer people seem to be.
But like you said, Uncle David, the Gospel is about so much more than the poor. I think that if Gospel is not applied in all its depth and breadth, people’s spiritual, emotional, social, and intellectual needs will ultimately not be met.
On the other hand, I think that I would also flee from a church that emphasizes the teaching of the Word so much that it neglects to have a healing influence on the community around it, or, equivalently, that the Gospel becomes mostly academic.
Please pray that God would give me wisdom to know what I should do.
This is a somewhat tangential comment, but I thought I would throw it into the mix since this is such an interesting discussion. I agree that expository is better than topical in that expository keeps you more closely tied to the text. It’s less likely that you will use the text as a pretext to say whatever it is you wanted to say anyway. Having said that, I would like to say there are, in my view, two broad kinds of legitimate expository preaching: 1) the kind that focuses on one specific passage and eventually shows how it is connected to the rest of Scripture, and 2) the kind that focuses the whole story of the Bible from some perspective. The first type is the most common, and the latter type is sometimes accused of being topical. But if done properly, it isn’t. As examples of Type 2, I point you to Psalm 106, Psalm 107 and Acts 7. Following is a short statement I wrote a few years ago on ways of interpreting Scripture that will put my comments on preaching in context:
The key to both Type 1 and Type 2 expository preaching is making them Christ-centered. Some sermons are very closely tied to a particular passage and take the grammar very seriously, but never connect up the passage to the person and work of Christ in any significant way. On the other hand, just stringing together a bunch of passages that seem to support something you want to say, without showing how they point to Christ, is not good preaching.
Hmmm, very interesting. I agree, but I am confused in one sense. I don’t understand what “universal” preaching would look like. It seems like “universal” would be like making it Christ-centered because Christ is the hero of the Story, and so He is the universal way of preaching. Obviously, I am confused. 🙂
That’s philosophical language that I should have probably left out. In preaching, the issue is this: you can begin with particular passages, or you can begin with grand themes (like God’s presence, or the kingdom, or the covenant.) if you do it in a Christ-centered way. The particular words of a passage gain their meaning only in light of the grand themes, and the grand themes can only be discerned through a study of the words and grammar of particular passages.
I have much more to say on this, but given that it’s nearly 2am and I just got off a plane, and I have a meeting downtown in 6 hours, it will have to wait… possibly until this weekend.
I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
Not really sure about all I was going to say now,but…
I am reminded of how some Christian authors talk about Leadership. When one starts with a theme like “Christian Leadership”, it is difficult to refrain from taking a position. In other words, one can talk about Christian Leadership by finding all of the verses that pertain thereto. In doing so, he (1) tends to lose the context, and (2) tends to find ways to support his position. Ahh, you say, “but what if he doesn’t have a position”? But he does, no matter how insidious it is. (This keyboard is broken, so please excuse the weird spaces). If, however, he dissects entire sections of the Bible (preferably whole books) then he allows the truth to “emerge” and not to be presumed. This is the same principle involved in research and attempting to refrain from researcher bias. Many times, not always, teachers who do not exposit the “word”, fall prey to this malady. My suspicion is that Seth’s pastor has been a victim of this. I’ve seen it in too many churches. Oddly enough, in denominational churches. (Both PCA and Southern Baptist). That’s why I tend to like non-denominational churches.
I can see what you mean. Certainly justice and mercy are important themes in the Bible, but if one takes the verses piecemeal and uses them as ‘data’, as it were, then one can use the Bible to support a certain worldview. I have heard the words ‘justice’, ‘oppressed’, ‘poor’, ‘deeds of justice and mercy’, so much at NCF, I think that those words are beginning to irritate me a little.
A couple of Sundays ago a man spoke at the end of the service because he and his family are leaving and he wanted to express his appreciation for NCF. So he brought his young son up front (he was maybe 4 or 5 years old) and this man asked his son a couple of questions. The first question was something like, “What does God love?” and his son answered, in a cute voice I might add, “Justice.” He then asked his son, “And who does God fight for?” The cute answer was, “The oppressed.” The man then went on to say that his son probably doesn’t know much about what justice means; but before coming to NCF he didn’t know what justice was either. This may very well be true, but I grimaced when he asked his son these questions, because the answers seemed so one-sided.
I think that another consequence of focusing too much on one aspect of the Bible is looking down upon others who do not have the same interpretation of the Bible. At NCF, I have at times (but not always) perceived a degree of disrespect towards other PCA churches, in particular because of their lack of concern for the poor and for getting stuck in abstract theological debates. I believe these failings are present in the PCA in general, but I also believe that the outlook at NCF is not as holistic as the members would like to think.
I think NCF has certain gifts that other churches can learn and benefit from. I think that NCF has been stirred by and responded to an overwhelming need in St. Louis; but I think that a body with disproportionately huge arms and huge legs is an ugly one. I wonder though if the answer is to leave the church. Maybe NCF could benefit from someone with a different perspective…and maybe I can benefit from a different perspective as well.
Seth, very well said. I too have experienced churches who had a certain disdain for those who did not share the same passion for their perspective. I have always thought this to be an odd Christian witness. One benefit of these experiences, however, is that I am now able to readily discern those churches who have no agenda besides the gospel and love. It shows in the actions before and after the service, is shows in the teaching of the word. And it shows in the content of the songs they sing.
This all sounds ethnomethodological!
It is great 🙂
Yes, ethnomethodological in that all groups of people (ethno) have habitual ways (methods) of sustaining their view of what is important.
I’ve been too busy to weigh in on this – but I found a free rainy moment…so
First of all, I think there is a great danger in assuming that a deep commitment to expositional preaching will help keep preaching and doctrine more pure. The evangelical churches in England (especially Anglican ones) are idolatrously consumed with this type of thinking. In fact, they now refer to this method of preaching as “gospel preaching”. And they have taken it to such an extreme that they ONLY focus on the passage at hand. No other biblical themes are looked at. No other biblical passages are referred to. Because to introduce anything else, they claim, would be to taint the Word. This mistakenly assumes you can approach the passage without some sort of bias. But even worse, it ignores Jesus own hermeneutic when he claimed, “all Scripture is about me”. So we SHOULD approach it looking for the theme of “Jesus”. But as one evangelical pastor here told me, “If the passage says to do a certain thing because of the beauty of the finished work of Christ, I’ll preach Jesus. If it says – ‘just do it’, then I’ll preach – just buck up and DO it.” Now I think you can see the danger of where this leads. By trying to be more pure and true to the Scriptures, and by falsely assuming you can be unbiased yourself, they actually preach inconsistent contradictory messages. Grace one week – works the next. All in the name of purity. And in fact, they consider it to be the very topical infection David refers to when I preach how this passage is about Jesus if it isn’t blatantly clear within the very words of the passage.
Secondly – I think it is unrealistic to assume that any church can be equally focused on everything. A church has to decide – based on its context and calling – how to carry out gospel ministry with its community. If that happens to be a poor area of radical injustice, then that theme is an appropriate way to minister the gospel in that context. In fact, I find it ironic that very few wealthy white suburbanites complain that their churches focus too much on programs for kids, ministry to families, etc. That’s just their world. And appropriately so.
Having said that, I do think that it is important in those contexts to remember to faithfully point everything back to the gospel. Saying that God loves justice and fights for the oppressed is a great thing – as long as the ultimate application of that moves beyond the physically poor and oppressed. We can never forget the deeper issue of spiritual poverty and the oppression that sin brings into our lives. So, as long as the church uses their “context” of ministry to both serve the needs of their community whilst (British) faithfully pointing them to the deeper spiritual need that this physical issue is symptomatic of, then that is good (remember, Jesus did this all the time with physical things – healing, feedings, etc). But if the physical issue (whether poverty or youth programs) is seen as an end in itself, then it becomes warped. So the key is to keep the themes of the gospel in view as we carry out the application of them for our given context and calling.
Certainly there is a danger of forgetting that gospel foundation. And to the degree we do, we will begin to judge others who aren’t “keeping up” in those areas as much as we are. It’s a way of getting a righteousness of our own apart from Christ. And we all have to guard against that constantly.
Seth, you might think about asking the pastor how the themes of justice for the oppressed apply to the many wealthy white people who attend his church. If the answer is only – to give to the needs of the poor – then I would challenge him to remember that you too, are poor and oppressed yourself – by your own sin. And you need preaching and ministry that help you deal with those issues at the same time as you help the physically poor around you. If the church is unwilling to extend its ministry to that level, then it HAS become driven by a subtext of the gospel and has lost the bigger picture from which it flows. IF it gets to that point, David might be right – run! But I would hope that they would respond in a more biblical way – being reminded that even the physical poverty and oppression of their community is a pointer to the real poverty and oppression we all face. I hope this helps.
Well said, Alan.
I like what you said, Alan.
So, it seems that I probably offended many of you. And, while I am regretful of that fact, my position remains clear. I feel somewhat obliged to make my position known because I have A LOT of experience in this area. Another way in which I would sum up my stance is this… That through expository teaching, the church family studies and wrestles with the word together. When the corporate body does that, things like social issues get addressed because they are woven into the fabric throughout the gospel. Love for all of God’s creation is a natural outcome of this process. In studying the word in context, we work out our salvation. In my experience, when themes and issues are worn as a garment to be displayed, they are not nearly as attractive as the simple, yet beautiful gospel.
David, I am not in the least offended. I thought this was a good and interesting discussion, and I hope we have further opportunity to discuss things like this. I want to thank you for posting your thoughts. I think that what I said is implicit in what you said. I was just bringing out more implications. I fully agree with you that preaching should stick to Scripture. And your comments about research bias are very much to the point. In fact, I thought all your comments were good and helpful. My comment was meant to further your argument by looking more specifically at what it means to preach an expository sermon–that we should replace personal and social bias with Christ-centered bias as we wrestle with both the particular words and grand themes of Scripture.
In the interest of furthering the discussion, I’m attaching a short summary (3 pages) of my views on preaching Christ.
Click here to download.
Yes, I have been enjoying this discussion greatly. I am glad that we can freely express our thoughts and opinions here.
Yeah, me too!
Great! I am glad I didn’t offend. Janice, being an “F” gives me the sense sometimes that I come on too strong and may offend.